CHAPTER VIII

SYLVIA PARTS FROM HER MOTHER

Meanwhile Mrs. Thesiger laughed her shrill laugh and chatted noisily in the garden of the hotel.  She picnicked on the day of Sylvia’s ascent amongst the sham ruins on the road to Sallanches with a few detached idlers of various nationalities.

“Quite, quite charming,” she cried, and she rippled with enthusiasm over the artificial lake and the artificial rocks amongst which she seemed so appropriate a figure; and she shrugged her pretty shoulders over the eccentricities of her daughter, who was undoubtedly burning her complexion to the color of brick-dust among those stupid mountains.  She came back a trifle flushed in the cool of the afternoon, and in the evening slipped discreetly into the little Cercle at the back of the Casino, where she played baccarat in a company which flattery could hardly have termed doubtful.  She was indeed not displeased to be rid of her unsatisfactory daughter for a night and a couple of days.

“Sylvia won’t fit in.”

Thus for a long time she had been accustomed piteously to complain; and with ever more reason.  Less and less did Sylvia fit in with Mrs. Thesiger’s scheme of life.  It was not that the girl resisted or complained.  Mrs. Thesiger would have understood objections and complaints.  She would not have minded them; she could have coped with them.  There would have been little scenes, with accusations of ingratitude, of undutifulness, and Mrs. Thesiger was not averse to the excitement of little scenes.  But Sylvia never complained; she maintained a reserve, a mystery which her mother found very uncomfortable.  “She has no sympathy,” said Mrs. Thesiger.  Moreover, she would grow up, and she would grow up in beauty and in freshness.  Mrs. Thesiger did her best.  She kept her dressed in a style which suited a younger girl, or rather, which would have suited a younger girl had it been less decorative and extreme.  Again Sylvia did not complain.  She followed her usual practice and shut her mind to the things which displeased her so completely, that they ceased to trouble her.  But Mrs. Thesiger never knew that secret; and often, when in the midst of her chatter she threw a glance at the elaborate figure of her daughter, sitting apart with her lace skirts too short, her heels too high, her hat too big and too fancifully trimmed, she would see her madonna-like face turned toward her, and her dark eyes thoughtfully dwelling upon her.  At such times there would come an uncomfortable sensation that she was being weighed and found wanting; or a question would leap in her mind and bring with it fear, and the same question which she had asked herself in the train on the way to Chamonix.

“You ask me about my daughter?” she once exclaimed pettishly to Monsieur Pettigrat.  “Upon my word, I really know nothing of her except one ridiculous thing.  She always dreams of running water.  Now, I ask you, what can you do with a daughter so absurd that she dreams of running water?”