第57章

IN WHICH ONCE MORE I BECOME OCCUPIED IN MY OWN AFFAIRSDuring a pause in my matrimonial lecture, Orlando had written a little farewell note to Sylvia,--a note which, of course, Ididn't read, but which it is easy to imagine "wild with all regret." This I undertook to have delivered to her the same night, and promised to call upon her on the morrow, further to illuminate the situation, and to offer her every consolation in my power.To conclude the history of Orlando and his Rosalind, Imay say that I saw them off from Yellowsands by the early morning coach.There was a soft brightness in their faces, as though rain had fallen in the night; but it was the warm sweet rain of joy that brings the flowers, and is but sister to the sun.They are, at the time of my writing, quite old friends of mine, and both have an excessive opinion of my wisdom and good-nature.

"That lie," Orlando once said to me long after, "was the truest thing I ever said in my life,"--a remark which may not give the reader a very exalted idea of his general veracity.

As the coach left long before pretty young actresses even dreamed of getting up, I had to control my impatient desire to call on Mademoiselle Sylvia Joy till it was fully noon.And even then she was not to be seen.I tried again in the afternoon with better success.

Rain had been falling in the night with her too, I surmised, but it had failed to dim her gay eyes, and had left her complexion unimpaired.Of course her little affair with Orlando had never been very serious on her side.She genuinely liked him."He was a nice kind boy," was the height of her passionate expression, and she was, naturally, a little disappointed at having an affectionate companion thus unexpectedly whisked off into space.Her only approach to anger was on the subject of his deceiving her about his wife.Little Sylvia Joy had no very long string of principles; but one generous principle she did hold by,--never, if she knew it, to rob another woman of her husband.

And that did make her cross with Orlando.He had not played the game fair.

There is no need to follow, step by step, the progression by which Sylvia Joy and I, though such new acquaintances, became in the course of a day or two even more intimate than many old friends.We took to each other instinctively, even on our first rather difficult interview, and very gently and imperceptibly Ibid for the vacant place in her heart.

That night we dined together.

The next day we lunched and dined together.

The next day we breakfasted, lunched, and dined together.

And on the next I determined to venture on the confession which, as you may imagine, it had needed no little artistic control not to make on our first meeting.

She looked particularly charming this evening, in a black silk gown, exceedingly simple and distinguished in style, throwing up the lovely firm whiteness of her throat and bosom, and making a fine contrast with her lurid hair.

It was sheer delight to sit opposite her at dinner, and quietly watch her without a word.Shall I confess that I had an exceedingly boyish vanity in thus being granted her friendship?

It is almost too boyish to confess at my time of life.It was simply in the fact that she was an actress,--a real, live, famous actress, whose photographs made shop windows beautiful,--come right out of my boy's fairyland of the theatre, actually to sit eating and drinking, quite in a real way, at my side.This, no doubt, will seem pathetically naive to most modern young men, who in this respect begin where I leave off.An actress! Great heavens! an actress is the first step to a knowledge of life.

Besides, actresses off the stage are either brainless or soulful, and the choice of evils is a delicate one.Well, I have never set up for a man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's "Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I, and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old poetry to look it up.

"You are very beautiful to-night," I said, in one of the meditative pauses between the courses.

"Thank you, kind sir," she said, making a mock courtesy; "but the compliment is made a little anxious for me by your evident implication that I didn't look so beautiful this morning.You laid such a marked emphasis on to-night.""Nay," I returned, " `for day and night are both alike to thee.' I think you would even be beautiful--well, I cannot imagine any moment or station of life you would not beautify.""I must get you to write that down, and then I'll have it framed.It would cheer me of a morning when I curl my hair,"laughed Sylvia.

"But you are beautiful," I continued, becoming quite impassioned.

"Yes, and as good as I'm beautiful."

And she was too, though perhaps the beauty occasionally predominated.

When the serious business of dining was dispatched, and we were trifling with our coffee and liqueurs, my eyes, which of course had seldom left her during the whole meal, once more enfolded her little ivory and black silk body with an embrace as real as though they had been straining passionate arms; and as I thus nursed her in my eyes, I smiled involuntarily at a thought which not unnaturally occurred to me.