Sylvia felt that she ought to accept this offer; she was destitute and she wished to avoid charity, having grasped that, though it was a great thing to make oneself indispensable, it was equally important not to put oneself under an obligation; finally it would be a satisfaction to pay back what her father owed. Not that she fancied his ghost would be disturbed by the recollection of any earthly debts; it would be purely a personal satisfaction, and she told Mrs. Meares that she was willing to help under the proposed terms.
Somewhere about nine o’clock Sylvia sat down with Mrs. Meares in the breakfast-room to supper, which was served by Amelia as if she had been unwillingly dragged into a game of cards and was showing her displeasure in the way she dealt the hand. The incandescent gas jigged up and down, and Mrs. Meares swept her plate every time she languorously flung morsels to the numerous cats, some of which they did not like and left to be trodden into the threadbare carpet by Amelia. Sylvia made inquiries about Mr. Morgan and the baron, but they had both left; the guests at present were a young actor who hoped to walk on in the new production at the St. James’s, a Nonconformist minister who had been persecuted by his congregation into resigning, and an elderly clerk threatened with locomotor ataxia, who had a theory, contrary to the advice of his doctor, that it was beneficial to walk to the city every morning. His symptoms were described with many details, but, owing to Mrs. Meares’s diving under the table to show the cats where a morsel of meat had escaped their notice, it was difficult to distinguish between the symptoms of the disease, the topography of the meat, and the names of the cats.
Next day Sylvia watched Amelia put on the plumage of departure and leave with her yellow tin trunk; then she set to work to help Mrs. Meares make the beds of Mr. Leslie Warburton, the actor; Mr. Croasdale, the minister; and Mr. Witherwick, the clerk. Her companion’s share was entirely verbal and she disliked the task immensely. When the beds were finished, she made an attempt with Mrs. Meares to put away the clean linen, but Mrs. Meares went off in the middle to find the words of a poem she could not remember, leaving behind her towels to mark her passage as boys in paper-chases strew paper on Hampstead Heath. She did not find the words of the poem, or, if she did, she had forgotten them when Sylvia discovered her; but she had decided to alter the arrangement of the drawing-room curtains, so that to the unassorted unburied linen were added long strips of faded green silk which hung about the house for some days. Mrs. Meares asked Sylvia if she would like to try her hand at an omelette; the result was a failure, whether on account of the butter or the eggs was not quite certain; the cat to which it was given was sick.
The three lodgers made no impression on Sylvia. Each of them in turn tried to kiss her when she first went into his room; each of them afterward complained bitterly of the way the eggs were poached at breakfast and asked Mrs. Meares why she had got rid of Amelia. Gradually Sylvia found that she was working as hard as Clara used to work, that slowly and gently she was being smothered by Mrs. Meares, and that the process was regarded by Mrs. Meares as an act of holy charity, to which she frequently alluded in a very superior way.
Early one afternoon at the end of April Sylvia went out shopping for Mrs. Meares, which was not such a simple matter, because a good deal of persuasiveness had to be used nowadays with the tradesmen on account of unpaid books. As she passed the entrance to the Earl’s Court Exhibition she saw Mabel Bannerman coming out; though she had hated Mabel and had always blamed her for her father’s death, past enmity fled away in the pleasure of seeing somebody who belonged to a life that only a month of Mrs. Meares had wonderfully enchanted. She called after her; Mabel, only slightly more flaccid nowadays, welcomed her without hesitation.
“Why, if it isn’t Sylvia! Well, I declare! You are a stranger.”
They talked for a while on the pavement, until Mabel, who disliked such publicity except in a love-affair, and who was frankly eager for a full account of what had happened after she left Swanage, invited Sylvia to “have one” at the public house to which her father in the old days used to invite Jimmy, and where once he had been surprised by Sylvia’s arrival with his friend.
Mabel was shocked to think that Henry had perhaps died on her account, but she assured Sylvia that for any wrong she had done him she had paid ten times over in the life she had led with the other man.
“Oh, he was a brute. Your dad was an angel beside him, dear. Oh, I was a stupid girl! But there, it’s no good crying over spilt milk. What’s done can’t be undone, and I’ve paid. My voice is quite gone. I can’t sing a note. What do you think I’m doing now? Working at the Exhibition. It opens next week, you know.”
“Acting?” Sylvia asked.