Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia ScarlettMacKenzie, Compton
General
Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
MacKenzie, Compton
Fiction
"Yes, but I have been thinking, Sylvia. I have been thinking very much.
When I was going to be English and you were saying to me that I should
have a passport and be going to England and be English myself, it was
good for me to care nothing at all for men; but now what does it matter?
I am nothing. I am just being somebody lost, and if I am going with men
or not going with men I am still nothing. Why to be worried for money? I
shall show you how easy it is for me to have money. It is true what I am
speaking. You could be having no idea how much money I can have. And if
I am nothing, always nothing, why must I be worrying any more about
money? You are so sweet to me, Sylvia, so kind. No one was ever being so
kind to me before. So I must be kind to you now. Yes, I think? Are you
crying about that money? I think you are stupid to cry for such a little
thing as money."
"There are things, my rose, that must not, that shall not happen,"
Sylvia cried, clasping the child in her arms. "And that you should ever
again sell yourself to a man is one of them."
"But I am nothing."
"Ah," thought Sylvia, "here is the moment when I should be able to say
that every one to God is everything; but if I say it she will not
understand. What hope is there for this child?" Then aloud she added,
"Are you nothing to me?"
"No, to you I am something, and if my brother was here I would be
something to him."
"Very well, then, you must not think of selling yourself. I lost the
money. I shall find a way of getting more money. I have a friend in
Bucharest. I will telegraph to him to-morrow and he will send us money."
And to herself she thought: "This is indeed the ultimate irony, that I
should ask a favor of Philip. Yet perhaps I am glad, for if I did him
the least injury years ago, no priest could have imagined a more
appropriate penance. Yes, perhaps I deserve this."
The next morning, when Sylvia ordered coffee, the waiter presented the
bill for it at the same time, and when she tore it up he seemed inclined
to take away the coffee; he retreated finally with a threat that in
future nothing should be served to them that was not paid for in
advance.
"They are being nasty with us," Queenie solemnly enunciated.
"Never mind. We shall have some money to-night, or at any rate to-morrow
morning. We must put up with fasting to-day. It's Friday, appropriately
enough. Good heavens!" Sylvia exclaimed. "I haven't even got the money
to send a telegram. We must raise a few francs. Perhaps I could borrow
some money with a trinket. Good gracious! I never realized until this
moment that I haven't a single piece of jewelry! It takes the sudden
affliction of extreme poverty to discover one's abnormality and to prove
how essential it is not to be different from everybody else. Come,
Queenie, you must lend me your two brooches."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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