“But I thought he was a monk,” Sylvia said.
Mrs. Merivale laughed with what seemed rather like relief. “No, he’s neither priest nor monk, thank goodness, though the prospect still hangs over us.”
“After all these years?” Sylvia asked, in astonishment.
“Oh, my dear Miss Scarlett, don’t forget the narrow way is also long. But I didn’t come to talk to you about Michael. I simply most shamelessly availed myself of his having met you a long time ago to give myself an excuse for talking to you about your performance. Of course it’s absolutely great. How lucky you are!”
“Lucky?” Sylvia could not help glancing at the handsome boy beside her.
“He’s rather a lamb, isn’t he?” Mrs. Merivale agreed. “But you started all sorts of old, forgotten, hidden-away, burned-out fancies of mine this afternoon, and—you see, I intended to be a professional pianist once, but I got married instead. Much better, really, because, unless—Oh, I don’t know. Yes, I am jealous of you. You’ve picked me up and put me down again where I was once. Now the conversation’s backed into me, and I really do want to talk about you. Your performance is the kind about which one wonders why nobody ever did it before. That’s the greatest compliment one can pay an artist, I think. All great art is the great expression of a great commonplace; that’s why it always looks so easy. I do hope you’re having the practical success you deserve.”
“Yes, I think I shall be all right,” Sylvia said. “Only, I expect that after the New-Year I shall have to cut my show considerably and take a music-hall engagement. I’m not making a fortune at the Pierian.”
“How horrid for you! How I should love to play with you! Oh dear! It’s heartrending to say it, but it’s much too late. Well, I mustn’t keep you. You’ve given me such tremendous pleasure and just as much pain with it as makes the pleasure all the sharper.... I’ll write and tell Michael about you.”
“I expect he’s forgotten my name by now,” Sylvia said.
“Oh no, he never forgets anybody, even in the throes of theological speculation. Good-by. I see that this is your last performance for the present. I shall come and hear you again when you reopen. How odious about music-halls. You ought to have called yourself Silvia Scarletti, told your press agent that you were the direct descendant of the composer, vowed that when you came to England six months ago you could speak nothing but Polish, and you could have filled the Pierian night and day for a year. We’re queer people, we English. I think, you know, it’s a kind of shyness, the way we treat native artists. You get the same thing in families. It’s not really that the prophet has no honor, etc.; it really is, I believe, a fear of boasting, which would be such bad form, wouldn’t it? Of course we’ve ruined ourselves as a nation by our good manners and our sense of humor. Why, we’ve even insisted that what native artists we do support shall be gentlemen first and artists second. In what other country could an actor be knighted for his trousers or an author for his wife’s dowry? Good-by. I do wish you great, great success.”