Chapter V (3)

"I believe the silly old fool thought I was making overtures to him when I suggested we should make merry in my room," she laughed to herself. "Oh dear, it shows how much one can tell and how little of oneself need be revealed in the telling of it. Stupid old ass! But rather pleasant in a way. He's like finding an old Christmas number of the _Graphic_--colored heartiness, conventional mirth, reality mercifully absent, and _O mihi proeteritos_ printed in Gothic capitals on the cover. I suppose these pre-war figures still abound in England. And I'm not sure he isn't right in believing that his outlook on life is worth preserving as long as possible. Timbered houses, crusted port, and Dickens are nearer to fairyland than anything else that's left nowadays. To what old age will this blackened, mutilated, and agonized generation grow? Efficiency and progress have not spared the monuments of bygone art except to imprison them in libraries, museums, and iron railings. Will it spare the Englishman? Or will the generations of a century hence read of him only, and murmur, 'This was a Man'? Will they praise him as the last and noblest individual, turning with repulsion and remorse from the sight of themselves and their fellows, the product of the triumphant herd eternally sowing where it does not reap? Night thoughts of the young on perceiving a relic of insular grandeur in an exceptionally fine state of preservation--preserved in oil! And here he comes to interrupt my sad soliloquy."

The night passed away as the evening had passed away. Mr. Porter sustained his joviality in a fashion that would have astounded Sylvia, if all capacity for being astounded had not been exhausted in watching him drink champagne. It was incredible not so much that his head could withstand the fumes as that his body, fat though it was, should be expansive enough to contain the cubic quantity of liquor. It was four o'clock before he had finished the last drop and was shaking Sylvia's hand in cordial farewell.

"Haven't enjoyed an evening so much for months. By George! I haven't. Ha-ha-ha! Well, you'll forgive an old man--always accuse myself of being old when the wine is low, but I shall be as young as a chicken again after three hours' sleep--you'll excuse an old man. Little present probably damned useful in these hard times. Ha-ha-ha! Under your pillow. Good girl. Never made me feel an old man by expecting me to make love. I've often set out to make a night of it, and only succeeded in making a damned fool of myself. Sixty-four next month. Youth's the time! Ha-ha-ha! Good-by. God bless you. Sha'n't see you in the morning. By George! I _shall_ have a busy day."

He shook her warmly by the hand, avoided the ice-stand with a grave bow, and left her with a smell of cigar-smoke. Under the pillow she found four five-hundred-franc notes.

"Really," Sylvia exclaimed, "I might be excused for thinking myself a leading character in a farce by fate. I fail to make a halfpenny by offering myself when the necessity is urgent, and make two thousand francs by not embarrassing an old gentleman's impotence. Meanwhile, it's too late--it's just too late. But I shall be able to buy back my golden bag. I suppose fate thinks that's as good a curtain as I'm entitled to in a farce."

Sylvia left Avereshti next morning with a profound conviction that, whatever the future held, nothing should induce her to put foot in that town again. There was some satisfaction in achieving even so much sense of finality, negative though the achievement might be.

"I don't advise you to go to Dedeagatch," said Mr. Mathers when Sylvia presented herself at the passport-office for the recommendation for a visa. "I may tell you in confidence that the situation in Bulgaria is very grave--very grave indeed. Anything may happen this week. The feeling here is very tense, too. If you are determined to take the risk of being held up in Bulgaria, I counsel you to travel by Rustchuk, Gorna Orechovitza, and Sofia to Nish. From Nish you'll get down to Salonika, and from there to the Piræus. At the same time I strongly advise you to keep away from Bulgaria. With the mobilization, passenger traffic is liable to be very uncertain."

"But if I go back through Russia I may find it is just as hard to get back to England. No, no. I'll risk Bulgaria. To-day's Tuesday the 28th. When can I have my visa?"

"Well, strictly speaking, it's already too late to-day to entertain applications, but as you were a friend of Mr. Iredale, I'll ask Mr. Abernethy to put it through for you. If you come in to-morrow morning at ten, I will give you a letter for the Consulate. There will be the usual fee to pay there. Oh dear me, you haven't brought the four photographs that are necessary. I must have them, I'm afraid. Two for us, one for the Consulate, and one for the French authorities. The Italians don't insist upon a photograph at present. I'm afraid I sha'n't be able to put it through for you to-day. The French are very strict and insist on a minimum of four days. But in view of the Bulgarian crisis I'll get them to relax the rule. Luckily one of the French officers is a friend of mine--a very nice fellow."

Three days elapsed before Sylvia was finally equipped with her passport _visé_ for Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Italy, France, and England. The representatives of the first two nations, who seemed most immediately concerned with her journey, made the least bother; the representative of Italy, the nation that seemed least concerned with it, made the most.

While she was waiting for the result of the accumulated contemplation upon her age, her sex, her lineaments, and her past history, Sylvia bought back her gold bag for eighteen hundred francs, which left her with just over fifteen hundred francs for the journey--none too much, but she should no longer have any scruples in telegraphing to England for help if she found herself stranded.

On Friday afternoon she called for the last time at the passport-office to get a letter of introduction that Mr. Mathers had insisted on writing for her to a friend of his in the American Tobacco Company at Cavalla.

"You're not likely to go there," he said, "but if you do, it may be useful."

The clerk handed her the letter, and there was something magnificently protective in the accompanying gesture; he might have been handing her a personal letter to the Prime Minister and giving her an assurance that the Foreign Secretary would personally meet her at Waterloo and see that she did not get into the wrong tube.

When Sylvia was leaving the office, Maud Moffat came in, at the sight of whom Mr. Mathers's spectacled benevolence turned to an aspect of hate for the whole of humanity.

"It's too late, madam, to-day. Nothing can be done until further inquiries have been made," he said, sharply.

"Too late be damned!" Maud shouted. "I'm not going to be---- about any longer. My passport's been stolen and I want another. I'm an honest English girl who's been earning her living on the Continent and I want to go home and see my poor old mother. Perhaps you'll say next that I'm not English?"

"Nobody says that you're not English," Mr. Mathers replied through set teeth. "And please control your language."

At this moment Maud recognized Sylvia.

"Oh, you've come back, have you? I suppose you didn't have any difficulty with your passport. Oh no, people as frequents the company of German spies can get passports for nothing, but me who's traveled for seven years on the Continent without ever having any one give me so much as a funny look, me, I repeat, gets cross-examined and messed about as if I was a murderer instead of an artiste. Yes, war's a fine thing for some people," she went on. "Young fellows that ought to be fighting for their country instead of bullying poor girls from the other side of a table thoroughly enjoys _theirselves_. Nice thing when an honest English girl--and not a German spy--can't mislay her passport without being--"

"I must repeat, madam," Mr. Mathers interrupted, "that the circumstances have to be gone into."

"Circumstances? I'm in very good circumstances, thank you. But I sha'n't be if you keep me mucking about in Bucharest so as I forfeit my engagement at the White Tower, Saloniker. You'll look very funny, Mr. Nosey Parker, when my friend the Major who I know in Egypt and still writes to me lodges a complaint about your conduct. Why don't you ask this young lady about me? She knows I'm English."

"I keep telling you that nobody questions your nationality."

"Well, you've asked me enough questions. You know the size of my corsets and the color of my chemise and how many moles I've got, and whether my grandmother was married, and if it's true my uncle Bill ran away to Africa because he couldn't stand my aunt Jane's voice. Nationality! I reckon you couldn't think of any more questions, unless you became a medical student and started on my inside. Why don't you tell him you know all about me?" she added, turning to Sylvia.

"Because I don't," Sylvia replied, coldly.

"Well, there's a brazen-faced bitch!" Miss Moffat gasped.

Sylvia said good-by hurriedly to Mr. Mathers and left him to Maud. When she was in the train on the way to Rustchuk, it suddenly struck her that Zozo might be able to explain the missing passport.