BOOK III Sylvia Loses

277

§ 1

Sylvia returned to New York, where she had some shopping to attend to, and where also Celeste was waiting for her, expecting to be taken to theatres, and treated to a new hat and some false curls and boxes of candy. Celeste had heard all about van Tuiver, it appeared, and was “thrilled to death”—her own phrase. There was no repressing her questions—“Is he nice, Sylvia?”—“What does he look like?”—and so on. Nor was there any concealing her surprise at Sylvia’s reticence and lack of interest in this subject.

The elder sister got a sudden realization of the extent to which she had changed during this last couple of weeks. “They will call you an Anarchist at home,” Frank had predicted; and now how worldly and hard seemed Celeste to her—how shameful and cruel her absorption in all the snobbery of Miss Abercrombie’s! Could it be that she, Sylvia, had ever been so “thrilled to death” over millionaire beaux and millionairess’ millinery? Her sister had grown so in the few months that Sylvia hardly knew her; she had grown, not merely in body but in mind. So serene she was, so self-possessed, so perfectly certain about herself and her life! Such energy she had, such determination—how her sharp, 278black eyes sparkled with delight in the glories of this world! Sylvia found herself stealing glances at her during the matinee, and wondering if this could be “Little Sister”?

Sylvia had dismissed her multimillionaire from her mind; but she was not to get rid of him as easily as that. (“He persists and persists,” Bates had said.) One afternoon, feeling tired, she sent her aunt forth to attend to some of the family commissions; when to her amazement there was sent up a note, written upon the hotel stationery, in the familiar square English handwriting.

“My dear Miss Castleman,” it ran. “I know that you will be angry when you see I have followed you to New York. I can only plead with you to have pity upon me. You have put upon me a burden of contempt which I can simply not bear; if I cannot somehow manage to win your respect, I cannot live. I ask only for your respect, and will promise never to ask for anything else, nor to think of anything else. However bad I may be, surely you cannot deny me the hope of becoming better!”

You see, it would have been hard for Sylvia to refuse the request. He struck the right chord when he asked for her pity, for she pitied all things that suffered—whether they deserved it or not.

She pitied him when she saw him, for his face was drawn and his look haunted. He, the man of fashion, the exemplar of good taste, stood 279before her like a whipped schoolboy, afraid to lift his eyes to hers.

He began, in a low voice, “It is kind of you to see me. There is something I wish to try to explain to you. I want you to know that I have thought over what you have said to me. I have hardly thought of anything else. I have tried to see things from your point of view, Miss Castleman. I know I have seemed to you monstrously egotistical—selfish, and all that. I have felt your scorn of me, like something burning me. I can’t bear it. I simply must show you that I am really not as bad as I have seemed. I want you to realize my side of it—I mean, how much I’ve had against me, how hard it was for me to be anything but what I am.”

He paused. He had his hat in his hands, and Sylvia observed to her dismay that he was twisting it, for all the world like a nervous schoolboy.

“I want to be understood,” he said, “but I don’t know if you are willing—if I bore you——”

“Pray go on, Mr. van Tuiver,” she said, in a gentler tone of voice than she had ever used to him before.

“This is the point!” he burst out. “You simply can’t know what it’s meant to be brought up as I was! I’ve come to realize why you hate me; but you must know that you’re the first who ever showed me any other viewpoint than that of money. There have been some who seemed to have other viewpoints, but they were only pretending, they always came round to the 280money viewpoint, they gave the money reaction. If you try things by a certain measure, and they fit it, you come to think that’s the measure they were made by. And that’s been my experience; since I was a little child, as far back as I can remember—men and women and even children, everybody I met was the same—until I met you.”

He stopped, waiting for her to give some sign. Her eyes caught his and held them. “How was I able to convince you?” she asked.

“You—” he said—and then hesitated. “You’ll be angry with me.”

“No,” she said, “go on. Let us talk frankly.”

“You refused to marry me, Miss Castleman.”

“That was the supreme test?” He shrank, but she pursued him. “You hadn’t thought that any woman would really refuse to marry you?”

He replied in a low voice: “I hadn’t.”

Sylvia sat, absorbed in thought. “What a world!” she whispered, half to herself; and then to him: “Tell me—is Mrs. Winthrop like that?”

Again he hesitated. “I—I don’t know,” he replied. “I never thought about her in that way. She already has her money.”

“If she still had to get it, then you don’t know what she’d be?”

She saw a quick look of fear. “You’re angry with me again?” he questioned. By things such as this she realized how thoroughly she had him cowed.

“No” she said, gently, “I’m really interested. 281I do see your side better. I have blamed you for being what you are, but you’re really only part of a world, and it’s this world that I hate.”

“Yes,” he exclaimed, with a sudden light of hope in his eyes. “Yes, that’s it exactly! And I want you to help me get out of that world—to be something better, so that you won’t have to despise me. I only ask you to be interested in me, to help me and advise me. I won’t even ask you to be my friend—you can decide that for yourself. I know I’m not worthy of you. Truly, I blush with shame when I think that I asked you to marry me!”

“You shouldn’t say that,” she smiled. “It was only so that you really came to trust me!”

But he would not jest. He had come there in one last forlorn effort, and he poured himself out in self-abasement, so that it hurt Sylvia merely to listen to him. She made haste to tell him that his boon was granted—she would think of him in a kindlier way, and would let him write to her of his struggles and his hopes. Some day, perhaps, she might even see him again and be his friend.

While they were still talking there came an interruption—a bell-boy with a telegram addressed to Sylvia. She glanced at it, tore it open and read it; and then van Tuiver saw her go white. “Oh!” she cried, as if in sudden pain. “Oh!”

She started to her feet, and the man did the same. “What is it?” he asked; but she did not seem to hear him. She stood with her hands 282clenched, staring before her, whispering, “Papa! Papa!”

She looked about her, distracted. “Aunt Varina’s gone!” she cried. “And I don’t know where she is! We’ll be delayed for hours!” She began to wring her hands with grief and distress.

Van Tuiver asked again, more urgently, “What is it?”

She put the telegram into his hands, and he read the message: “Come home at once. Take first train. Let nothing delay. Father.”

“He’s ill!” she cried. “I know he’s ill—maybe dead, and I’ll never see him again! Oh, Papa!” So she went on, quite oblivious to the presence of the man.

“But listen!” he protested. “I don’t understand. This telegram is signed by your father.”

“I know!” she cried. “But they’d do that—they’d sign his name, even if he were dead, so that I wouldn’t know. They’d want me home to break the news to me!”

“But,” he asked, “have you reason to think——”

“He was ill. I didn’t know just how ill, but that’s why I was going home. He must be dying, or they’d never telegraph me like that.” She gazed about her, wildly. “And don’t you see? Aunt Varina’s out. I’m helpless!”

“We’ll have to find her, Miss Castleman.”

“But I’ve no idea where she’s gone—she just said she would be shopping. So we’ll miss the four o’clock train, and then there’s none till eight, 283and that delays us nearly a whole day, because we have to lie over. Oh, God—I must do something. I can’t wait all that time!”

She sank on a chair by the table and buried her face in her hands, sobbing like one distracted. The man by her side was frightened, never having seen such grief.

“Miss Castleman,” he pleaded, “pray control yourself—surely it can’t be so bad. There are so many reasons why they might have telegraphed you.”

“No!” she exclaimed, “no, you don’t understand them. They’d never send me such a message unless something terrible had happened! And now I’ll miss the train.”

“Listen,” he said, quickly, “don’t think anything more about that—let me solve that problem for you. You can have a special, that will start the moment you are ready and will take you home directly.”

“A special?” she repeated.

“A private car. I’d put my own at your disposal, but it would have to be sent around by ferry, and that would take too long. I can order another in a few minutes, though.”

“But Mr. van Tuiver, I can’t let you——”

“Pray, don’t say that! Surely in an emergency like this one need not stand on ceremony. The cost will be nothing to speak of, and it will give me the greatest pleasure.”

He took her bewildered silence for consent, and stepped to the ’phone. While he was communicating 284with the railroad and giving the necessary orders, she sat, choking back her sobs, and trying to think. What could the message mean? Could it mean anything but death?

She came back to the man; she realized vaguely that he was a great help, cool, efficient and decisive. He phoned for a messenger, and wrote a check and an order for the train and sent it off. He had a couple of maids sent up by the hotel to do the packing. “Now,” he said, “do not give another thought to these matters—the moment your aunt comes you can step into a taxi, and the train will take you.”

“Thank you, thank you!” she said. She had a moment of wonder at his masterfulness; a special train was a luxury of which she would never have thought. She realized another of the practical aspects of Royalty—he would of course use a private car.

But then she began to pace the room again, her features working with distress. “Oh, Papa! Papa!” she kept crying.

“You really ought not to suffer like this, when it may be only a mistake,” he pleaded. “Give me the address and I will telegraph for further particulars. You can get the answer on your train, you know. And meantime I’ll try, and see if we can get your home on the long-distance ’phone.”

“Can we talk at this distance?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but at least we can relay a message.” So again she let him manage her 285affairs, grateful for his prompt decisiveness, which set all the machinery of civilization at work in her behalf.

“Now try to be calm,” he said, “until we can get some more definite information. People are sometimes ill without dying.”

“I’ve always known that I was going to lose my father suddenly!” she broke out. “I don’t know why—he has tragedy in his very face. If you could only see it—his dear, dear face! I love him so, I can’t tell you. I wake up in the night, sometimes, and the thought comes to me: ‘Papa has to die! Some day I’ll have to part from him.’ And then the most dreadful terror seizes me—I don’t know how I can bear it! Papa, oh, Papa!”

She began to sob again; in his sympathy he came and stood by her. “Please, please,” he murmured.

“I’ve no right to inflict this upon you,” she exclaimed.

“Don’t think of that. If I could only help you—if I could suggest anything.”

“It’s one of those cases,” she said, “where nothing can be done. Whatever it is, I’ll have to endure it, somehow. If he’ll only live until I get there, so that I can see him, speak with him again, hear his voice. I’ve never really been able to tell him how much I love him. All that he’s done for me—you see, I’ve been his favorite child, we’ve been like two playmates. I’ve tended him when he was ill, I’ve read to him—everything. 286So he always thinks about me. He wants me to be happy, and so he hides his troubles from me. He hides them from everybody; and you know how it is—that makes people lean on him and take advantage of him. He’s a kind of family drudge—everybody comes to him, his brothers and sisters, his nephews and nieces—anybody that needs help or advice or money. He’s so generous—too generous, and so he gets into difficulties. I’ve seen his light burning till two or three o’clock in the morning, when he was working over his accounts; and then he looks pale and haggard, and still he smiles and won’t let me know. But I always know, because he stays close to me, like a child. And now there’s been an overflow, and maybe this year’s whole crop is ruined, and that’s a terrible misfortune, and he’s been worrying about it——”

Suddenly she stopped. This was Douglas van Tuiver she was talking to—telling him her family affairs! She had a sudden thrill of fear about it—she ought not to have let him know that her father was in difficulties as to money!

It was only for a moment, however; she could not think very long of anything but her father. What floods of memories came sweeping over her! “He was always so proud of me,” she continued. “When I came out, two years ago—dear old Daddy, he wore his wedding-suit, that he’d had put away in a cedar chest in the attic. He stood beside mother, under the lilies and the bright lights, and both of them would look at me and beam.”

287She had risen to her feet, and was pacing the room, talking brokenly, but eagerly, as if it were important to make her listener realize how very lovable her father was. “Just think!” she said. “He had an old purse in his hand—one that my mother had given him on their wedding journey. In it was an orange-blossom from their bridal-bouquet, and some rose leaves that she had bitten off and let fall at his feet, once when he was courting her. He had treasured them for twenty years; and now some one brushed against his hand and knocked the dead leaves to the floor, and they broke and went all to dust, and he got down on his knees and searched for them with tears in his eyes. I remember how mother scolded him for making a spectacle of himself, and he got up and went off by himself, to grieve because his bridal-flowers had turned to dust.”

Van Tuiver had listened in silence. When he spoke, his voice held a strange note. “Never mind,” he said, “you will make it up to him. You will give him flowers from your bridal wreath.”

Again Sylvia found herself uncomfortable. But they were interrupted by the telephone—the connections with her home had been established. She flew to the booth downstairs, but she could hear nothing but a buzzing noise, and so there were some torturing minutes while her questions were relayed—she talking with “Washington,” and “Washington” with “Atlanta,” and so on. What she finally got was this: No one was ill or dead, but she must come at once—nothing 288must delay her. They could not explain until she arrived. And of course that availed her simply nothing. She was convinced that they were hiding the truth until she was home.

When she went back to her room, she found that Aunt Varina had come. Their trunks were ready, and so they set off for the station, van Tuiver with them. He saw them settled in their car, and the girl perceived that at so much as a word from her he would have taken the long journey with her. She shook hands with him and thanked him—so gratefully that he was quite transported. As the car started and he hurried to the door and leaped off, he was a happier-looking van Tuiver than Sylvia had ever expected to see.

§ 2

By the time that Sylvia’s train reached home, she had gotten herself together. Although still anxious, she no longer showed it. Whatever the tragedy might be, she was ready to face it, not asking for help, but giving help to others. It was surely for that that they had summoned her.

She was on the car platform as the train slowed up; and there before her eyes stood her father. He was haggard, and gray, and old-looking—but alive, thank God!

She flew to his arms. “Papa! What’s the matter?”

289“Nothing, my child,” he answered.

“But who is ill?”

“Nobody is ill, Sylvia.”

“Tell me the truth!”

“No one,” he insisted.

“But then, why did you send for me?”

“We wanted you home.”

“But, Papa! In this fashion—surely you wouldn’t—” She stopped, and the Major turned to greet his sister.

Sylvia got into the motor, and they started. “Is Mamma well?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“And the baby?”

“Everybody is well.”

“And you, Papa?”

“I have not been so very fine, but I am better now.” Sylvia suspected he had got up from his sick-bed to come and meet her, and so her sense of dread increased. But she put no more questions—she knew she would have to wait. The Major had begun to talk about the state of the crops.

The car reached home; and there on the steps were her mother, and the baby shouting a lusty welcome, and Peggy and Maria dancing with glee—to say nothing of troops of servants, inside the house and out, grinning and waiting to be noticed. There was noise and excitement, so much that for several minutes Sylvia forgot her anxiety. Then everybody wanted to know if she had brought them presents; she had to stop and think what 290she had purchased, and what she had delayed to purchase, and what she had left behind in the rush of departure. Aunt Varina said something about the special train, and there were questions about that, and about Douglas van Tuiver, who had provided it. And still not a word about the mystery.

“But, Mamma,” cried Sylvia, at last, “why did you bring me home like this?”

“Hush, dear,” said “Miss Margaret.” “Not now.”

And so more delay. Aunt Nannie was expected shortly—she had said she would run over to greet the returning voyagers. Sylvia scented trouble in this, and would no longer be put off, but took her mother aside. “Mamma,” she pleaded, “please tell me what’s the matter!”

The other colored. “It isn’t time now, my child.”

“But why not, Mamma?”

“Wait, Sylvia, please. It is nothing——”

“But, Mamma, did you send me such a telegram for nothing? Don’t you realize that I have been almost beside myself? I was sure that somebody was dead.”

“Sylvia, dear,” pleaded “Miss Margaret,” “please wait—I will tell you by and by. There are people here now——”

“But there’ll always be people here. Come into the library with me.”

“I beg you to calm yourself——”

“But, Mamma, I want to know! Why should 291I be tormented with delay? Can’t I see by the manner of all of you that something is wrong? What is it?” She dragged her mother off to the library, and shut the door. “Now, Mamma, tell me!”

The other looked towards the door, as if she wished to make her escape. Something about her attitude reminded Sylvia of that “talk” she had had before her departure for school. “My dear Sylvia,” began the mother, “it is something—it is very difficult——”

“For heaven’s sake, go on!”

“My child, you are going to be dreadfully distressed, I fear. I wish that I could help you—oh, Sylvia, dear, I’d rather die than have to tell you this!”

Sylvia clutched her hands to her bosom in sudden fear. Her mother stretched out her arms to her. “Oh, my child,” she exclaimed, “you must believe that we love you, and you must let our love help! We tried to save you from this—from this——”

“Tell me!” cried the girl. “Tell me!”

“Oh, my poor child!” wailed “Miss Margaret” again, “Why did you have to love him? We were sure he would turn out to be bad! We——”

Sylvia sprang towards her and shook her by the arm.

“Mamma, answer me! What is it?”

“Miss Margaret” began searching in the bosom of her dress. She drew out a crumpled piece of paper—a telegram. Sylvia took it with trembling fingers, and spreading it out, read these words:

292“Frank Shirley arrested in disorderly house in Boston, held to await result of assault on another student. Possibly fatal. Get Sylvia home at once. Harley.”

She stood perfectly rigid, staring at her mother. She could not realize the words, they swam before her in a maze. The paper fluttered from her fingers. “It’s false!” she cried. “Do you expect me to believe that? It’s a plot! It’s some trick they’ve played on Frank!”

Her mother, frightened by the pallor of her face, put her arms around her. “My daughter—” she began.

“What have you done about this? I mean—to find out if it is true?”

“We telegraphed Harley to write us full particulars.”

“Oh, why did you send for me?” the girl exclaimed, passionately. “If Frank is arrested, I ought to be there!”

“Sylvia!” cried her mother, aghast. “Have you read the message? Don’t you see where he was arrested?”

Yes, Sylvia had read, but what could she make of it? In her mind was a medley of emotions: horror at what Frank had done, disbelief that he had done it, shame of a subject of which she had been taught not to think, anxiety for her lover in trouble—all these contended within her.

“The wretch!” exclaimed “Miss Margaret.” “To drag my child’s name in the mire!”

“Hush!” cried Sylvia, between her teeth. “It 293is not true! It’s somebody trying to ruin him! It’s a horrible, horrible lie!”

“But, Sylvia! The telegram came from your cousin!”

“I don’t care! It’s some tale they’ve told to Harley!”

“But—he says Frank is arrested!”

“Oh, I ought to go to him! I ought to find out the truth! Frank is not that kind of man!”

“My child,” ventured “Miss Margaret,” “how much do you know about men?”

Sylvia stared at her mother. Vague questions trembled on her lips; but she saw there was no help in that quarter. “I have always kept my daughter innocent!” the other was saying. “He ought to be killed for coming into our home and dragging you into such shame!”

Sylvia stood silent, utterly bewildered. She knew that there were dreadful things in the world, of which she had gathered only the vaguest hints. “A disorderly house!” She had heard the name—she had heard other such names; she knew that these were unmentionable places, where wicked women lived and vile things were done; also she knew that men went there—but surely not the men she knew, surely not gentlemen, not those who ventured to ask for her love!

But why should she torment herself with such thoughts now? This charge against Frank could not be true! “How long will it be,” she demanded, “before we can have the letter from Harley?”

“At least another day, your father says.”

294“And there is nothing else we can do?” She tried to think. “We might telephone to Harley.”

“Your Aunt Nannie suggested that, but your father would not have such a matter talked about over the ’phone.”

Sylvia racked her brains, but there was no other plan she could suggest. She saw that she had at least one day of torment and suspense before her. “Very well, Mamma,” she said. “Let me go to my room now. I’ll try to be calm. But don’t let anybody come, please—I want to be alone.”

She could hardly endure to go out into the hall, because of her shame, and the fear of meeting some member of the family. But there was no need of that—they all knew what was happening, and went about on tiptoe, as in a house of mourning. Everyone kept out of her way, and she went up to her room and shut herself in and locked the door. There passed twenty-four hours of agony, during which she by turns paced the floor, or lay upon the bed and wept, or sat in a chair, staring into space with unseeing eyes. They brought her food, but she would not touch it; they tempted her with wine, with coffee, but for nothing would she open the door. “Bring me Harley’s letter when it comes,” was all she would say.

295

§ 3

On the morning of the next day her mother came to her. “Has the letter come?” asked Sylvia.

The mother hesitated, and so Sylvia knew that it had come. “Give it to me!” she cried.

“It was addressed to your father, Sylvia——”

“Where is Papa?”

She started to the door. But “Miss Margaret” stood in her way. “Your father, my child, has asked your Uncle Basil to come over.” And then, as Sylvia persisted, “Sylvia, you can’t talk of such things to your father. He thinks it is a matter which your Uncle Basil ought to attend to. Please spare your father, Sylvia—he has been ill, and this has been such a dreadful blow to him!”

“But for God’s sake, Mamma, what is in the letter?”

“It justifies our worst fears, my child. But you must be patient—it is not a thing that a young girl can deal with. Where is your modesty, Sylvia? Your father will lose respect for you if you do not calm yourself. You ought to be hating the man who has so disgraced you—who cares no more for you—”

“Hush!” cried Sylvia. “You must not say it! You don’t know that it is true!”

“But it is true! You will see that it is true. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, to cling to a man who has been willing to—to—oh, what 296a shameful thing it is! Sylvia, get yourself together, I implore you—do not let your father and your uncle see you in such a state about a man—an unworthy man!”

So there was another hour of distracted waiting, until the Bishop came up, his gentle face a picture of grief. “Miss Margaret” fled, and Sylvia shut and locked the door, and turned upon her uncle. “Now, Uncle Basil, let me see the letter.”

He put it into her hands without a word. There was also a newspaper-clipping, and she glanced first at that, and went sick with horror. There was Frank’s picture, and that of another man, with the label: “Harvard student who may die as a result of injuries received in a brawl.” Sylvia’s eyes sped over the reading matter which went with the pictures; it was from one of the sensational papers, the kind which revel in personal details, and so she had the whole story. Frank had got into a fight with a man in a “resort,” and had knocked him down; in falling, the man had struck his head against a piece of furniture, and the doctors had not yet determined whether his skull was fractured. In the meantime, Frank was held in three thousand dollars bail. The account went on to say that the arrested man had been prominently mentioned as candidate for class-president, on behalf of the “Yard” against the “Gold Coast;” also that he was the son of Robert Shirley, who had died in State’s prison under sentence for embezzlement.

It seemed hardly necessary to read any more; 297but Sylvia turned to Harley’s letter, which gave various additional details, and some comments. There was one point in particular which etched itself upon her mind: “There need be no doubt as to the character of the place. It is one of the two or three high-class houses of prostitution in Boston which are especially patronized by college men. This is not mentioned in the newspaper accounts, of course, but I know a man who was present and saw the row, so there can be no question as to that part of the matter.”

Sylvia let the letter fall, and sinking down upon the bed, buried her face in her arms. The Bishop could see her form racked and shuddering. He came and sat by her, and put his hand upon her shoulder, waiting in silence. “My poor child!” he began in a whisper, at last. “My poor, poor child!”

He dared not let her suffer too long without trying to help her. “My dear,” he pleaded, “let me talk to you. Make an effort, hear me. Sylvia, you have to bear it. My heart bleeds for you, but there’s no help—it has to be borne. Won’t you listen to the advice of an old man, who’s had to endure terrible grief, and shame—agony almost as great as yours?”

“Well?” she demanded, suddenly. Her voice sounded strange and hard to him.

“Sylvia, dear, I tried to prove God’s words to you by logic, and I could not. God was never proved by logic, my child—men don’t believe in Him for that reason. They believe 298because at some awful moment they could not face life alone—because suffering and grief had broken their hearts, and they were forced to pray. Sylvia, there is only one way of help for you—and that is through prayer.”

He waited to know what effect his words were having. Suddenly he heard the strange, hard voice again. “Uncle Basil.”

“Well, my child.”

“I want you to tell me one thing. I have to understand this, but I can’t—I can’t ask anybody.”

“What is it, Sylvia?”

“I want to know—do men do such things?”

The Bishop answered, in a low tone, “Yes, my child, I am sorry to say—many of them do.”

“Oh, I hate them!” she cried, with sudden fierceness. “I hate them! I hate life! It’s a shameful, hideous world, and I wish that I could die!”

“Ah, don’t say that, my child!” he pleaded. “I beg you not to take it that way. If we let affliction harden us, instead of chastening and humbling us, then we miss all the purpose for which it is sent. Who knows, Sylvia—perhaps this is a punishment which God in His wisdom has adjudged you?”

“Punishment, Uncle Basil? What have I done?”

“You have denied His word, my child. You have presumed to set your own feeble mind against His will and doctrine. And now——”

299“Oh, Uncle Basil, stop!” she exclaimed. “Your words have no meaning to me whatever!” She buried her face in the pillow, and terrible sobbing shook her, burst after burst of it, as a tempest shakes a tree. “Oh, I loved him so! I loved him so!”

The old man had tried speaking as a Bishop; now he thought that the time had come for him to speak as a Castleman. His voice became suddenly stern. “Sylvia,” he said, “the man was not worthy of your affection, and you must manage to put him from your thoughts. You are the child of a proud race, Sylvia—the daughter of pure women! You must bear this trouble with character, and with the consciousness of your purity.”

“Uncle Basil,” she answered, “please go. I can’t bear to talk to anyone now. I must be alone for a while.”

He rose and stood hesitating. “There’s no way I can help you?” he asked.

“Nobody can help me,” she answered. “Thank you, Uncle Basil, but please go.”

§ 4

And so began the second stage of Sylvia’s ordeal. For days she roamed the house like a guilt-haunted ghost. She could hardly be got to speak to any one—she avoided even people’s 300eyes, so great was her shame. She would not eat, and she could not sleep—at least, not until she had managed to bring herself to the point of utter exhaustion. Knowing this, she would pace the room until she sank upon the bed almost fainting. In their terror they sent for the doctors, but these could do nothing for her. The Major came several times a day, and made timid efforts to talk to her about her roses and the new plants he had got for her. But she could think about nothing but Frank, and sent him away. Once after midnight he crept to her room and found that she was gone, and discovered her in the rose-garden, pacing back and forth distractedly, bare-footed and clad only in her nightgown. He led her in, and found that her feet were cut and full of gravel and thorns; but she did not mind this, she said—the pain was good, it was the only way to distract her mind.

What made the thing so cruel to her was that element of obscenity in it, which was like an extinguisher clapped down upon her mind, making it impossible for her to talk of it, even to think of it. Sylvia had never discussed such things, and now she hated Frank for having forced them upon her. She felt herself degraded—made vile to the whole world, and to her own soul. She knew that everybody she met was thinking one dreadful thing; she felt that she could never face the world again, could never lift up her head again. She had given her heart to a man to keep, and he had taken it to a “high-class house of prostitution!”

301On the third day the Major came to her room and knocked. He had a painful duty to perform, he explained. (He did not add that there had been a family council for nearly an hour past, and that he had been assigned to execute the collective decision.) There had come a letter—a letter addressed to Sylvia from Frank Shirley.

The girl sprang to her feet. “Give it to me!”

“My daughter!” exclaimed the Major, with a shocked face.

She waited, looking at him with wondering eyes. “What do you mean, Papa?”

He took the missive from his pocket, and held it in his hand as he spoke. “Do you think,” he asked, “that it would be consistent with my daughter’s dignity to read such a letter? My child, this man has dragged your name in the mire; do you think that you ought to continue in any sort of relationship with him? Is he to be able to boast that he had you so under his thumb, that even after such an outrage as he had inflicted upon you——”

The Major stopped, words failing him. “Papa,” pleaded Sylvia, “might there not be some explanation?”

“Explanation!” cried the other. “What explanation—that my daughter could read?” His voice fell low. “That is the point—I do not wish my daughter’s mind to be soiled with explanations of this subject. Sylvia, you cannot know about it!”

There was a silence. “What do you want me to do, Papa?”

302“There is but one thing a proud woman can do, Sylvia. Send back this letter, with a note saying that you cannot receive communications from Mr. Shirley.”

There was a long silence. Sylvia sank down upon the bed, and he heard her sobbing softly to herself. “Sylvia!” he exclaimed, “this man had your affection—he kissed your pure young lips!” He saw her wince, and followed up his advantage—“He kissed you when you were in Boston, did he not?”

She could hardly bring herself to answer. “Yes, Papa.”

“And do you realize that two or three days later he had gone to this—this place?” He paused, while the words sank into her soul. “My daughter,” he cried, “where is your pride?”

There was something commanding in his voice. She looked up at him; his face was white, his eyes blazing. “Sylvia,” he exclaimed, “you are a Castleman! You have wept enough! Rise up, my daughter!”

She rose, like one under a spell. Yes, it was something to be a Castleman. It meant to be capable of bearing any torture for the sake of pride, of facing any danger for the sake of honor. How many tales she had heard of that Castleman honor! Had not the man who stood before her, the captain of a regiment when only a half-grown youth, marched and fought with a broken shoulder-blade, and slept in mud and rain without shelter or even a blanket, living for weeks upon an allowance of six grains of corn a day?

303She drew herself up, and her face became cold and set. “Very well, Papa,” she said, “he deserves my scorn.”

“Then write as I say.” And he stood by her desk and dictated:

“Mr. Shirley: I have received the enclosed letter, but do not care to read it. All relationship between us is at an end. Sylvia Castleman.”

And to such a height of resolution had she been lifted by her Castleman pride, that she addressed an envelope, and took Frank’s letter, and folded it and put it inside, and sealed and stamped the envelope, and gave it to her father. Nor did she give a sign of pain or grief until after she had dismissed him, and closed and locked the door.

§ 5

In the days that followed, Sylvia’s longing for her sweetheart overcame her pride many times; she paced her room, tearing at the neck of her gown like one suffocating, flinging out her arms in abandonment of grief, crying under her breath (for she must not let others know that she was suffering), “Oh, Frank, Frank! How could you?” Anger would come; she hated him—she hated all men! But again the memory of his slow smile, his straight-forward gaze, his voice of sincerity. She would find herself whispering, incoherently, “My love! My love!”

304For the sake of her family, she labored to repress her feelings. But she would have nightmares, and would toss and moan in her sleep, sometimes screaming aloud. Once she awakened, bathed in tears, and hearing faint sobbing, put out her hand, and found her mother, crouching in the darkness, watching, weeping.

They besought her to let her mind be diverted by others. For many days there was a regular watch kept, with family consultations daily, and some one always deputed to be with her—or at least to be near her door. Little by little, as she yielded to their persuasions, Sylvia got the views of the various members of her family upon what had occurred.

Aunt Varina put her arms about her and wept with her. “Oh, it is horrible, Sylvia,” she said—“but think how much better that you should find it out before it’s too late! Oh, dear girl, it is so awful to find it out when it’s too late.” Thus the voice of Aunt Varina’s wasted life!

Aunt Nannie came later, as tactful as could have been expected. She did not say, “I told you so,” but she managed to leave with Sylvia the idea that the outcome was within the limits of human understanding. It was a matter of “bad blood;” and “bad blood” was like murder—it would always out. Also Aunt Nannie ventured to hint that it might be that Sylvia had allowed Frank Shirley to “take liberties” with her; and this, of course, made its impression upon the girl, who persuaded herself that she must be partly to blame for her own disgrace.

305She became bitter against men; she did not see how she could ever tolerate the presence of one. Her mother, discussing the subject, remarked, “The reason I married your father was that he was the one good man I knew.”

“How did you know that he was good?” demanded the girl.

“Sylvia!” exclaimed her mother, in horror.

“But how? Because he told you so?”

“Miss Margaret” answered hesitatingly, choosing her words for a difficult subject. “I had heard things. Your Aunt Lady told me—how the young men in your father’s set had tried to get him to—to live the wicked life they lived. They made fun of him—called him ‘Miss Nancy’—.” She broke off suddenly. “I cannot talk about such things to my daughter!”

Even from “Aunt Mandy,” the old “black mammy” who had been the first person to hold Sylvia in her arms, the girl now received counsel. “Aunt Mandy” served the coffee in the early morning, and stood in the bedrooms and grinned while the ladies of the family gossiped; she often took part in the conversation, having gathered stores of family wisdom in her sixty-odd years. “Honey, I’se had my cross to bear,” she said to Sylvia, and went on to discuss the depravity of the male animal. “I’se had to beat my old man wid a flatiron, when I ketched him lookin’ roun’ too much—an’ even dat didn’t help much, honey. Now I got dem boys o’ mine, what’s allus up in cou’t, makin’ de Major come to pay jail-fines. 306But how kin I be cross wid ’em, when I knows it’s my own fault?”

“Your fault, Mammy?” said Sylvia. “Why, you are as good a mother——”

“I know, honey, I’se tried to be good; I’se prayed to de Lord—yes, I’se took dem boys to de foot o’ de cross. But de Lord done tole me it’s my fault. ‘Mandy,’ he says, ‘Mandy—look at de daddy you give dem niggers!’ Oh, honey, take dis from yo’ ole mammy, ef you’se gwine ter bring any chillun into de worl’—be careful what kind of a daddy you gives ’em!”

The family had gathered in a solid phalanx about Sylvia. Uncle Barry, whose plantation was a hundred miles away, and who was a most hard-working and domestic giant, left his overseers and his family and came to beg her to let him give her a hunting party. Uncle Mandeville came from New Orleans to urge her to go to a house party he would give her. Uncle Mandeville it was who had assured Sylvia as a little girl that he would protect her honor with his life; and now he caused it to be known throughout Castleman County that if ever Frank Shirley returned and attempted to see his niece, he, Frank Shirley, would be “shot like a dog.” And this was not merely because Uncle Mandeville was drunk, but was something that he soberly meant, and that everybody who heard him understood and approved.

Just how tight was the cordon around her, Sylvia learned when Harriet Atkinson arrived, 307fresh from a honeymoon-voyage to the Mediterranean and the Nile.

“Why, Sunny, what’s this?” she demanded. “Why wouldn’t you see me?”

“See you?” echoed Sylvia. “What do you mean. I haven’t refused to see you.” It transpired that Harriet had been writing and ’phoning and calling for a week, being put off in a fashion which would have discouraged anyone but the daughter of a self-made Yankee. “I suppose,” she said, “they thought maybe I’d come from Frank Shirley.”

Sylvia’s face clouded, but Harriet went on—“My dear, you look like a perfect ghost! Really, this is horrible!” So she set to work to console her friend and drag her out of her depression. “You take it too seriously, Sunny. Beauregard says you make a lot more fuss about the thing than it deserves. If you knew men better——”

“Oh don’t, Harriet!” cried the other. “I can’t listen to such things!”

“I know,” said Harriet, “there you are—the thing I’ve always scolded you for! You’ll never be happy, Sunny, while you persist in demanding more than life will give. You say what you want men to be—and paying no attention at all to what they really are.”

“Are you happy?” asked Sylvia, trying to change the subject.

“About as I expected to be,” said the other. “I knew what I was marrying. The only trouble is that I haven’t been very well. I suppose it’s 308too much rambling about. I’ll be glad to settle down in my home.” She was going to Charleston to live in the old Dabney Mansion, she explained; at present she was paying a flying visit to her people.

“Well, Sunny,” she remarked, “you are going to give him up?”

“How can I do otherwise, Harriet?”

“I suppose you couldn’t—with that adamantine pride of yours. And of course it was awkward that he had to get into the papers. But Beau says these things blow over sooner than one would expect. Nobody thinks it’s half as bad as they all pretend to think it.” (Harriet, you must understand, felt rather sorry for Frank, and thought that she was pleading his cause. She did not understand that her few words would do more to damn him than all that the family had been able to say.)

But she perceived that Sylvia did not want to talk about the subject. “Well, Sunny,” she said, after a pause, “I see you’ve got a substitute ready.”

“How do you mean?” asked Sylvia, dully.

“I mean your Dutch friend.”

“My Dutch friend? Oh—you are talking about Mr. van Tuiver?”

“You are most penetrating, Sylvia!”

“You’ve heard about him?” said the other, without heeding her friend’s humor.

“Heard about him! For heaven’s sake, what else can one hear about in Castleman County just now?”

309Sylvia said nothing for a while. “I suppose,” she remarked, at last, “it’s because I came in a special train.”

“My dear,” said the other, “it’s because he came in a special train.”

“He came?” repeated Sylvia, puzzled.

And her friend stared at her. “Good Lord,” she said, “I believe you really don’t know that Mr. van Tuiver’s in town!”

Sylvia started as if she had been struck. “Mr. van Tuiver in town!” she gasped.

“Why, surely, honey—he’s been here three or four days. How they must be taking care of you!”

Sylvia sprang to her feet. “How perfectly outrageous!” she cried.

“What, Sunny? That you haven’t seen him?”

“Harriet, stop joking with me!”

“But I’m not joking with you,” said Harriet, bewildered. “What in the world is the matter?”

Sylvia’s face was pale with anger. “I won’t see him! I won’t see him! He has no right to come here!”

“But Sunny—what’s the matter? What’s the man done?”

“He wants to marry me, Harriet, and he’s come here—oh, how shameful! how insulting! At such a time as this!”

“But I should think this was just the time for him to come!” said Harriet, laughing in spite of herself. “Surely, Sylvia, if you haven’t gone formally into mourning——”

310“I won’t see him!” cried the other, passionately. “He must be made to understand it at once—he’ll gain nothing by coming here!”

“But, Sunny,” suggested her friend, “hadn’t you better wait until he tries to see you?”

“Where is he, Harriet?”

“He’s staying with Mrs. Chilton.”

“With Aunt Nannie!” Sylvia stood, staring at Harriet with sudden fear in her face. She saw now why van Tuiver had made no attempt to see her, why nothing had been said to her as yet! She clenched her hands tightly and exclaimed, “I won’t marry him! They sha’n’t sell me to him—they sha’n’t, they sha’n’t!”

Her friend was gazing at her in wonder, not unmixed with alarm. “Good God, Sunny,” she exclaimed, “can he be so bad that you’d refuse to marry him?”

§ 6

All this while, you must understand, there was Sylvia’s “world” outside, looking on at the drama—pitying, wondering, gossiping, speculating. Frank arrested, Frank out on bail! Frank let off with a fine, because the man did not die! Frank leaving college and coming back to his plantation! Would he try to see Sylvia, and what would Sylvia do about it? Would Mandeville Castleman carry out his threat to shoot him? How was Sylvia taking it, anyway? Would she 311be seen at the next club-dance? And then—interest piled upon interest—Douglas van Tuiver had come! Was it true that the Yankee Crœsus wanted to marry Sylvia? Was it true that he had already asked her? Could it be that she had actually refused to see him? And what would the family do about that?—All this, you understand, most decorously, most discreetly—and yet with such thrills, such sensations!

When the audience is stirred, the actors know it; and people so sensitive and proud as the Castlemans could not fail to be aware that the world’s attention was focussed upon them. So Sylvia was not left for long to indulge her grief. As soon as her relatives had made sure of her breach with Frank, they turned their energies to persuading her to present a smiling front to “society.” “You must not let people see that you are eating your heart out over a man!”—such was their cry. There were few things worse that could happen to a woman than to have it known that she was grieving about a man. Just as a savage laughs at his enemies while they are torturing him, so must a woman wear a smile upon her face while her heart was breaking.

From the first moment, of course, her old suitors rallied to protect her—a kind of outer phalanx, auxiliary to the family. They wrote to her, they sent flowers, they called and lingered in the hope that she might see them. When the time for the club-dance came, the siege of the suitors became a general assault. A dozen times 312a day came her mother or Aunt Varina to plead with her, to scold her. “I don’t want to dance—I couldn’t dance!” she wailed; but it would be, “Here’s Charlie Peyton on the ’phone—he begs you to speak to him just a moment. Go, Sylvia, please—don’t let people think you are so weak!”

At last she told one man that he might call. Malcolm McCallum it was—the same who had crawled upon his knees to prove his devotion to her. She had long ago convinced him that his suit was hopeless, so now he was able to plead with her without offense. Her friends wanted so to help her—would she not give them a chance? They were indignant because of the way a scoundrel had treated her; they wanted somehow to show her their loyalty, their devotion. If only she would come—such a tribute as she would receive! And surely she was not going to give up her whole life, because of one such fellow! She had so many true friends—would she punish them all for the act of one? No, they would not have it! No, not if they had to raid the house and carry her away! The belle of Castleman Hall should not wither up and be an old maid!

Sylvia promised to think it over; and then came Aunt Nannie, to protest in the name of all her cousins against her inflicting further notoriety upon the family. For Sylvia to be exhibiting such unseemly grief over Frank Shirley was almost as bad as to be engaged to him. She must positively take up her normal life again; she must go to this dance!

313Sylvia, perceiving that it would be necessary to have the matter out sooner or later, inquired, “Is Mr. van Tuiver to be there?”

She was surprised at the answer, “He is not.”

“Where is he?” she asked; and learned that the visitor had gone with two of the boys on a fishing-trip. Sylvia and her aunt exchanged looks—as two swordsmen might, while their weapons are being measured and the ground laid out for their duel. The girl could imagine what had happened, almost as well as if she had been present. Van Tuiver, with his usual crude egotism, had come post-haste to Castleman Hall; it was Aunt Nannie who had persuaded him to wait, and let her handle the affair with tact. Sylvia must first be drawn out into social life, and then it would be less easy for her to avoid van Tuiver. But although Sylvia felt sure of this, she could not say so. When she hinted the charge, her aunt had a shrewd retort ready: “I have daughters of my own—and may I not have plans of my own for so eligible a young man as Douglas van Tuiver?”

§ 7

Sylvia said that she would go to the dance; and great was the excitement, both at home and abroad. All day long, between fits of weeping, she labored to steel herself to the ordeal. When 314night came, she let herself be arrayed in rosy chiffon, and then went all to pieces, and fell upon the bed in a paroxysm, declaring that she could not, could not go. One by one came “Miss Margaret,” Aunt Varina, and Celeste, scolding her, beseeching her—but all in vain; until at last they sent for the Major, who, wiser than all of them, arrayed himself in his own evening finery, and put a white rosebud in his button-hole, and then went with cheerful face and breaking heart to Sylvia’s room.

“Come, little girl,” he said. “Daddy’s all ready.”

Sylvia sat up and stared at him through her tears. “You!” she exclaimed.

“Why, of course, honey,” he smiled. “Didn’t you know your old Papa was going with you?”

Sylvia had not known it, nor had anybody else known it up to a few minutes before. Her surprise (for the Major almost never went to dances) was sufficiently great to check her tears; and then came “Miss Margaret” with a glassful of steaming “hot toddy.” “My child,” she said, “drink this. You’ve had no nourishment—that’s why you go to pieces.”

So they washed her face again, and powdered it up; they straightened her hair and smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress, and got her bows and ribbons in order, and took her down stairs to where Aunt Nannie was waiting, grim and resolute—a double force of chaperones for this emergency!

315You can imagine, perhaps, the excitement when they reached the club-house; how the whisper went round, and the swains crowded in the doorway to wait for her. The younger ones cheered when she entered—“Hi, yi! Whoop la! Miss Sylvia.” They came jumping and capering across the ball-room floor—one of them tearing a great palmetto-leaf from the decorations on the wall, and performing a wonderful, sprawling salaam before her. “I’m the King of the Cannibal Islands!” he proclaimed. “Will you be my Queen, Miss Sylvia?” Several others locked arms and executed a cake-walk, by way of manifesting their delight. The dance of the country-club was turned into a reception in her honor. They worshipped her for having come—it took nerve, by George, and nerve was the thing they admired. And then how lovely she was—how perfectly, unutterably lovely! Just a little more suffering like this, and she would be ready to be carried up in a chariot of fire and set among the seraphim!

Of course, in the face of such a welcome, it was unthinkable that she should not carry the thing through triumphantly. In the refreshment-room were egg-nog and champagne-punch, and she drank enough to keep her in a glow, to carry her along upon wings of excitement. One by one her old sweethearts came to claim a dance with her, and one by one they caused her to understand that hope was springing eternal in their breasts. She found herself so busy keeping them 316in order that life seemed quite as it had always been in Castleman County.

Save for one important circumstance. There had come a new element into its atmosphere—something marvellously stimulating, transcending and overshadowing all that had been before. Sylvia found out about it little by little; the first hint coming from old Mrs. Tagliaferro—the General’s wife, you may remember. She had come to Sylvia’s début party, hobbling with a gold-headed cane; but now, the General having died, she had thrown away her cane, and chaperoned her great-grandchildren at dances, because otherwise people would think she was getting old. She shook a sprightly finger at the belle of the evening, and demanded, “What’s this I hear, my child, about your latest conquest? I always knew you’d be satisfied with nothing less than a duke!” Sylvia’s face clouded, and the other went on her way with a knowing cackle. “Oh, you can’t fool me with your haughty looks!”

And then came Mabel Taylor, a girl who had been a hopeless wallflower in her early days, and had been saved because Sylvia took pity upon her, and compelled men to ask her to dance. Now she was Sylvia’s jealous rival; and greeting her in the dressing-room she whispered, “Sylvia, is he really in love with you?”

“When Sylvia asked, “Who?” the other replied, “Oh, it’s a secret, is it!”

The girl perceived that she must take some line at once. “Are you really going to marry 317him?” asked Charlie Peyton, with despair in his voice. “We can’t stand that sort of competition!” protested Harvey Richards. “We shall have to have a protective tariff, Miss Sylvia!” (Harvey, as you may recall, was a steel manufacturer.)

The thing had got upon Sylvia’s nerves. “Are you so completely awed by that man?” she demanded, in a voice of intense irritation.

“Awed by him?” echoed Harvey.

“Why don’t you at least mention his name? You are the fourth person who’s talked to me about him to-night and hasn’t dared to utter his name. I believe it’s not customary for Kings to use their family names, but they have Christian names, at least.”

“Why, Miss Sylvia!” exclaimed the other.

“Let us give him a title,” she pursued, savagely. “King Douglas the First, let us say!” And imagine the seven pairs of swift wings which that saying took unto itself! She called him a King! King Douglas the First! She referred to him as Royalty—she made fun of him as openly and recklessly as that! “What sublimity!” exclaimed her admirers. “What a pose!” retorted her rivals.

But even so, they could not but envy her the pose, and the consistency with which she adhered to it. She could not be brought to discuss the King—whether he was in love with her, whether he had asked her to marry him, whether he had come South on her account; nor did she show 318any particular signs of being impressed by him—as if she really did not consider him imposing, or especially elegant, or in any way unusual. Oh, but they were a haughty lot, those Castlemans—and Sylvia was the haughtiest of them all! The country-club began to revise its estimates of Knickerbocker culture, and to remember that, after all, the only real blood in America was in the South.

§ 8

The next afternoon came Harriet Atkinson, to bid Sylvia farewell, and incidentally to congratulate her upon her triumph. After they had chatted for a while, she put her hand upon her friend’s, and remarked in a serious tone, “Sunny, I’ve had a letter from Frank Shirley.”

She felt the hand quiver in hers, and she pressed it more firmly. “He wanted to explain things to me,” she said.

“What did he say?” asked Sylvia, in a faint voice.

But Harriet did not answer. “I wrote to him,” she continued, “that I declined to have anything to do with the matter.” Seeing her friend’s lip beginning to tremble, she added, “Sunny, I did it for your own good—believe me. I don’t want you to open up things with that man again.”

“Why not, Harriet?”

“After what’s happened, you ought to know 319that your people would never stand for it—there’d surely be some kind of a shooting-scrape. And even supposing that you got away with him—what sort of an existence would you have? Frank Shirley is no money-maker, and somehow I don’t seem to feel that you were cut out for cottage-life.”

She stopped and fixed her gaze upon her friend. “Sunny,” she said, “I want you to marry the other man.” Then, as Sylvia started—“Don’t ask me what other man. I’m no Mabel Taylor.”

Sylvia perceived that her words were being cherished these days. “Harriet,” she exclaimed in an agitated voice, “I can’t endure Douglas van Tuiver.”

“Now, Sunny, I want you to listen to me. This may be the last chance I’ll have to talk to you—I’m going off to-morrow, to settle down to domestic virtue. I want to give it to you straight—to take the place of your Aunt Lady in this crisis. You fall in love at first sight, and it brings you wonderful thrills, and you marry on the strength of it—and then in a year or two the thrills are gone, and where are you? Take my advice, Sunny, there’s a whole lot more in life than this young-love business. Try to look ahead a little and realize the truth about yourself. If ever there was a creature born to be a sky-lark, it’s you; and here’s a man who could take you out and give you a chance to spread your wings. For God’s sake, Sunny, don’t throw the chance away, and settle down to be a barnyard fowl here in Castleman County.”

320“Harriet!” cried Sylvia, frantically, “I tell you I can’t endure the man!”

“I know, Sunny—but that’s just nonsense. You’re in love with one man, and of course it sets you wild to think of another. But women can get used to things; and one doesn’t have to be too intimate with one’s husband. The man is dead in love with you, and so you’d always be able to manage him. I told you that about Beau—and I can assure you I’ve found it a convenient arrangement. From what I can make out, Mr. van Tuiver isn’t a bad sort at all—he seems to have charmed everybody down here. He’s not bad-looking, and he certainly has wonderful manners. He can go anywhere in the world, and if he had you to manage him and do things with him—really, Sunny, I can’t see what more you could want! Certainly it’s what your family wants—and after all, you’ll find it’s nice to be able to please your people when you marry. I know how you despise money, and all that—but, Sylvia, there aren’t many fortunes made out of cotton planting these days, and if you could hear poor Beau tell about what his folks have been through, you’d understand that family pride without cash is like mustard without meat!”

So Harriet went on. She was a sprightly young lady, and generally able to hold her audience; but after several minutes of this exhortation, she stopped and asked, “Sunny, what are you thinking about?”

And Sylvia, her face grown suddenly old with 321grief, caught her by the hand. “Oh, Harriet,” she whispered, “tell me the truth—do you think I ought to hear his explanation?”

§ 9

There were more dances and entertainments; and each time, of course, it was harder for Sylvia to escape. She had been to one, and so people would expect her at the next. There was always somebody who would be hurt if she refused, and there was always that dreadful phenomenon called “people”—it would say that the task had been too much for her, that she was still under the spell of the man who had flaunted her. So evening after evening Sylvia would choke back her tears, and drink more coffee, and go forth and pretend to be happy.

It was at the third of these entertainments that she met Douglas van Tuiver. No one had told her of his return—she had no warning until she saw him enter the room. She had to get herself together and choose her course of action, with the eyes of the whole company upon her. For this was the meeting about which Castleman County had been gossiping and speculating for weeks—the rising of the curtain upon the second act of the thrilling drama!

He was his usual precise and formal self; unimpeachably correct, and yet set apart by a 322something—a reserve, a dignity. This extended even to his costume, which tolerated no casual wrinkle, no presumptuous speck. There was always just a slight difference between van Tuiver’s attire and that of other men—and somehow you knew that this was the difference between the best and the average.

It seemed strange to Sylvia to see him here, in her old environment; strange to compare him with her own people. She realized that she would have to treat him differently now, for he was a stranger, a guest. She discovered also a difference in him. He may have been touched by the change he saw in her; at any rate he was very gentle, and very cautious. He asked for a dance, and promised that he would not ask for more. To her great surprise he kept the promise.

“Miss Sylvia,” he said, when they strolled out after the dance, “may I call you Miss Sylvia, as they all seem to here? I want to explain something, if you will let me. I’m afraid that my being here will seem to you an impertinence. I hope you will accept my apology. When I got back to Cambridge I learned from your cousin what—what the news would mean to you; and I came because I thought perhaps I might help. It was absurd, I suppose—but I didn’t know. Then, when I got here, I did not dare to ask to see you. I don’t know now if you will send me away——”

He stopped. “I am sure, Mr. van Tuiver,” she said, quietly, “you have a perfect right to stay here if you wish.”

323“No right, Miss Sylvia, but the right you give me!” he exclaimed. “I won’t take refuge in quibbles. I thought that if I promised not to bother you, and really kept the promise—if I never asked to see you unless you desired it——”

It was not easy to send him away upon those terms. She did not see what good it would do him to stay, but she refrained from asking the question. He paused—perhaps to make sure that she would not ask. “Miss Sylvia,” he continued, finally, “I am afraid you will laugh at me—but I want to be near you, I don’t want to be anywhere else. I want to see the world you belong in; I want to know your relatives and your friends—your home, the places you go to—everything. I want to hear people talk about you. And at the same time I’m uncomfortable, because I know you dislike me, and I’m afraid I’ll anger you, just by being here. But if you send me away—you see, I don’t know where to go——”

He stopped, and there was a long silence. “You are missing your examinations,” she said, at last.

“I don’t care anything about Harvard,” he replied. “I’ve lost all interest—I shall never go back.”

“But how about the reforms you were going to work for? Have you lost interest in them?”

He hesitated. “They’ve all—don’t you see?” He stopped, embarrassed. “The movement’s gone to pieces.”

324“Oh!” said Sylvia, and felt a slow fire of shame mounting in her cheeks. It had not occurred to her to think of the plight of the would-be revolutionists of the “Yard” after their candidate had landed himself in jail.

They turned to go in, and van Tuiver asked, timidly, “You won’t send me away, Miss Sylvia?”

“I wish,” she answered, “that you would not put the burden of any such decision upon me.” And so the matter rested, van Tuiver apparently content with what he had gained. Sylvia’s next partner claimed her, and she did not see “King Douglas the First” again; a circumstance which, needless to say, was duly noted by Castleman County, to its great mystification. Could it be that rumor was mistaken—that he was not really after Sylvia at all? Could it be that her flouting of “Royalty” was a common case of “sour grapes”?

§ 10

Sylvia would not be content to drift and suffer indefinitely. It was not her nature to give up and acknowledge failure, but to make the best of things. Her thoughts turned to those in her own home, and how she could help them.

All through the tragedy she had been aware of her father, moving about the house like a ghost, silent, wrung with grief; her heart bled for the suffering she had caused him. Her chief 325thought was to make it up to him, to be cheerful and busy for his sake—to put him into the place in her heart which Frank Shirley had left empty. After all, he was the one man she could really trust—the one who was good and true and generous.

She sought him out one night, while the light was burning in his office. She drew up a chair and sat close to him, so that she could look into his eyes. “Papa,” she said, “I’ve been thinking hard—and I want to tell you, I’m going to try to be good.”

“You are always good, my child,” he declared.

“I have been selfish and heedless. But now I’m going to think about other people—about you most of all. I want to do the things I used to be happy doing with you. Let us begin to-morrow and take care of our roses, and have beautiful flowers again. Won’t that be nice, Daddy?”

There were tears in his eyes. “Yes, dear,” he said.

“And then I must begin and read to you. I know you are using your eyes too much, and mine are young. And Papa—this is the principal thing—I want you to let me help you with the accounts, to learn to be of some use to you in business ways. No, you must not put me off, because I know—truly I know.”

“What do you know, dear?” he asked, smiling.

“I know you work too hard, and that you have things to worry you, and that you try to 326hide them from me. I know how many bills there are, and how everybody wastes money, and never thinks of you. I’ve done it myself, and now it’s Celeste’s turn—she must have everything, and be spared every care, and write checks whenever she pleases. Papa, if it’s true that this year’s crop is ruined, you’ll have to borrow money—”

“My child!” he began, protestingly.

“I know—you don’t want me to ask. But see, Papa—if I married, I’d have to know about my husband’s affairs, and help him, wouldn’t I? And now that I shall never marry—yes, I mean that, Papa. I want you not to try to marry me off any more, but to let me stay at home and be a help to you and Mamma.”

The other was shrewd enough to humor her. They would get to work at the roses in the morning, and they would take up Alexander H. Stephens’ Confederate History without delay; also Sylvia might take the bills as they came in each month, and find out who had ordered what, and prevent the tradesmen from charging for the same thing twice over. But of course, he did not tell her any of his real worries, nor let her see his bank-books and accounts; nor could he quite see his way to promise that Aunt Nannie should let her alone while she settled into old-maidenhood.

Aunt Nannie came round the next morning, as it happened. Sylvia did not see her, being up to the wrists in black loam in the rose-garden; 327but she learned the purpose of the visit at lunchtime. “Sylvia,” said her mother, “do you think it’s decent for us to go much longer without inviting Mr. van Tuiver over here?”

“Do you think he wants to come?” asked Sylvia, with a touch of her old mischief.

“Your Aunt Nannie seems to think so,” was the reply—given quite naïvely. “I wrote to ask him to dinner. I hope you won’t mind.”

Sylvia said that she would find some way to make the occasion tolerable. And she found a quite unique way. It was one of her times for bitterness, when she hated the world, and especially the male animals upon it, and herself for a fool for not having known about them. It chanced to be the same day of the week that she had prepared for Frank’s coming, and had introduced him to the family with so many tremblings and agonies of soul. So now, when she came to dress, she picked out the gown she had worn that evening, and had them bring her a bunch of the same kind of roses: which seemed to her a perfectly diabolical piece of cynicism—like to the celebrating of a “black mass”!

She descended, radiant and lovely, in a mood of somewhat terrible gaiety. She laughed and all but sang at the dinner-table; she joked with van Tuiver, and flouted him outrageously—and in the next breath charmed and delighted him, to the bewilderment of the family, who knew nothing about her adventures with Royalty, and the various strange moods to which its presence drove her.

328In the course of that meal she told him a story—one of the wildest and most wonderful of her stories. So at least it seemed to me, who for years have been longing for a poet to take it up and make a ballad of it—a real American ballad! It is curious, but I can hear the very rhyme and rhythm of that ballad, which I cannot write. I wonder if I may not awaken in some grey dawn, and find it all complete, singing itself in my mind!

The story of the burning of “Rose Briar,” it was. “Rose Briar” was the old home of one of the Peytons, which had stood for three generations on a high bluff on the river-bank a mile or so from Sylvia’s home. It had the largest and most beautiful ball-room in the county, and was a centre of continuous hospitality. One night had come a telephone-message to the effect that it was on fire, and the neighbors gathered from miles around; on a wild night, with a gale blowing and the whole roof and upper part of the house in flames, they saw that the place was doomed.

And there was the splendid ball-room, in which they and their fathers and their grandfathers had celebrated so many festivities! “One last dance!” cried the young folks, and in they trooped. The servants were trying to get the piano out, but the master of the house himself stopped them—what was a piano in comparison to a romantic thrill? So one played, and the rest danced—danced while the fire roared deafeningly in the stories above them, and creeping veils of smoke 329gathered about their heads. They danced like mad creatures, laughing, singing in chorus. Eddying gusts of flame poured in at the windows, and still they sang—

“When you hear dem bells go ting-a-ling-a-ling,

All join hands and sweetly we will sing—

There’ll be a hot time in the old town to-night!”

And so on, until there came a crashing of rafters above them, and showers of cinders and burning wood through the windows. Then they fled, and gathered in a group upon the lawn, and watched the roof of their pleasure-house fall in, sending a burst of flame and sparks to the sky.

And here, thought Sylvia, was the roof of her pleasure-house falling in! There was something terrifying in the symbol; the house of civilization was falling in, and people were dancing, dancing! “Don’t you feel that, Mr. van Tuiver?” she asked. “It seems to me sometimes that I can see the world going to destruction before my eyes, and people don’t know about it, they don’t care about it. They are dancing, drunk with dancing! On with the dance!”

She laughed, a trifle hysterically, for her nerves were near the breaking point. Then she happened to look towards her sister Celeste, and caught a strange look in her eyes. She took in the meaning of it in an instant—Celeste was conscious of the presence of Royalty, and shocked by this display of levity upon a solemn occasion! “Sister, 330how dare you?” the look seemed to say; and the message gave a new fillip to the mad steeds of Sylvia’s fancy. “Never mind, Chicken!” she laughed. (“Chicken” was a childhood nickname, which, needless to say, was infuriating to a young lady soon to make her début.) “Never mind, Chicken! The roof will last till you’ve had your dance!”

And then, the meal at an end, Sylvia took her guest into the library. She put him in the same chair that Frank had occupied, and turned on the same lights upon her loveliness; she took her seat, and looked at him once, and smiled alluringly—and then suddenly looked away, and bit her lip until it bled, and sprang up and fled from the room, and rushed upstairs and flung herself upon her bed, sobbing, choking with her grief.

§ 11

There were ups and downs like this. The next day, of course, Sylvia was ashamed of her behavior; she had promised to be happy, and not to distress her people—and this was the way she kept her promise. She began to make new resolutions, and to think of ways of atoning. She took her father out into the garden, and pretended deep interest in the new cinnamon-roses. She spent a couple of hours going over his old check-stubs and receipted bills, and with 331evidence thus discovered went into town and made a row with a tradesman, and saved her father a couple of hundred dollars.

Then, after lunch, she took him for a drive behind the new pony which Uncle Mandeville had given her. She got him out into the country, and then opened up on him in unexpected fashion. “Papa, it isn’t possible for people like us to economize, is it?”

“Not very much, my child,” he answered smiling. “Why?”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “It’s all wrong—but I don’t know what to do about it. You spent so much money on me; I didn’t want it, but I didn’t realize it till it was too late. And now comes Celeste’s turn, and you have to spend as much on her, or she’ll be jealous and angry. And Peggy and Maria will see what Celeste gets, and they will demand their turn. And the Baby—he’s smashing his toys now, and in a few years he’ll be smashing windows, and in a few more he’ll be gambling like Clive and Harley. And you can’t do anything about any of it!”

“My child,” he said, “I don’t want you to worry about such things——”

“No, you want to do all the worrying yourself. But, Papa, I have to make my life of some use. Since I can’t earn money, I’ve been thinking that perhaps the most sensible thing would be for me to marry some rich man, and then help all my family and friends.”

“Sylvia,” protested the Major, “I don’t like 332one of my daughters to have such thoughts in her mind. I don’t want a child of mine to marry for money—there is no need of it, there never will be!”

“Not while you can sit up all night and worry over accounts. But some day you won’t be able to, Papa. I can see that you’re under a strain, and yet I can’t get you to let me help you. If you make sacrifices for me, why shouldn’t I make them for you?”

“Not that kind of a sacrifice, my child. It’s a terrible thing for a woman to marry for money.”

“Do you really think so, Papa? So many women do it. Are they all bad, and are they all unhappy?”

Thus Sylvia—trying to do her duty, and keep her mind occupied. They got back home, and she found new diversions—Castleman Lysle had been feeding himself in the kitchen, and had been picked up black in the face with convulsions. This, you understand, was one of the features of life at Castleman Hall; one baby had been lost that way, since which time “Miss Margaret” always fainted when it occurred. As poor Aunt Varina had not the physical strength for such emergencies, Sylvia had to get a tub of hot water, and hold the child in it—while some one else held a spoon in his mouth, in order that he might not chew his tongue to pieces!

Thus the afternoon passed busily, and in the evening was the spring dance of the Young 333Matrons’ Cotillion Club. Sylvia absolutely had to go to that, in order to dance with Douglas van Tuiver and atone for her rudeness. She had promised it by way of pacifying Aunt Nannie; and also her father had made plans to accompany her again.

So she put on a new “cloth of silver” gown which she had bought in New York, and drank a “toddy” of the Major’s mixing, and sallied forth upon his arm. There were lights and music, happy faces, cheery greetings—so she was uplifted, dreaming of happiness again. And then came the most dreadful collapse of all.

She had strolled out upon the veranda with Stanley Pendleton. Feeling chilly, she sent her partner in for a wrap; and then suddenly came a voice—his voice!

If it had been his ghost, Sylvia could not have been more startled. She whirled about and stared, and saw him—standing in the semidarkness of the garden, close to the railing of the veranda. It had rained that day, and the roads were deep in mire, and he had ridden far. His clothing was splashed and his hair in disarray; as for his face—never had Sylvia seen such grief on a human countenance.

“Sylvia!” he whispered. “Sylvia!” She could only gaze at him, dumb. “Sylvia, give me one minute! I have come here to tell you——”

He stopped, his voice breaking with intensity of feeling. “Oh!” she gasped. “You ought not to be here!”

334“I had to see you!” he exclaimed. “There was no other way——”

But he got no farther. There was a step behind Sylvia, and she turned, and at the same moment heard the terrible voice of her father—“What does this mean?”

She sprang to him with a quick cry. “Papa!” She caught his arm with her hands, trying to stop what she feared he might do. “No, Papa, no!” For one moment the Major stood staring at the apparition in the darkness.

She could feel him trembling with fury. “Sir, how dare you approach my daughter?”

“Papa, no!” exclaimed Sylvia, again.

“Sir, do you wish to make it necessary for me to shoot you?”

Then Frank answered, his voice low and vibrant with pain. “Major Castleman, I would be grateful to you.”

The other glared at him for a moment; then he said, “If you wish to die, sir, choose some way that will not drag my daughter to disgrace.”

Frank’s gaze had turned to the girl. “Sylvia,” he exclaimed, “I tell you that I went to that place——”

“Stop!” almost shouted the Major.

“Major Castleman,” said Frank, “Allow me to speak to your daughter. It has been——”

Sylvia was clutching her father in terror. She knew that he had a weapon, and was on the point of using it; she knew also that she had not the physical force to prevent him. She cried hysterically, “Go! Go away!”

335And Frank looked at her—a last look, that she never forgot all the days of her life. “You mean it, Sylvia?” he asked, his voice breaking.

“I mean it!” she answered.

“Forever?”

For the smallest part of a second she hesitated. “Forever!” commanded her father; and she echoed, “Forever!” Frank turned, without another word, and was gone in the darkness; and Sylvia fell into her father’s arms, convulsed with an agony that shook her frame.

§ 12

They got her home, where her first action, in spite of her exhaustion, was to insist upon seeing her Uncle Mandeville. So determined, so vehement she was, that it was necessary to rout the worthy gentleman out from a poker-game at two o’clock in the morning. There had been other witnesses of what Frank had done, and Sylvia knew that her uncle must hear; so she told him herself, with her arms about him, clinging to him in frenzy, and beseeching him to give her his word of honor that he would not carry out his threat against Frank Shirley.

It was not an easy word to get; she would probably have failed, had it not been for the Major. He could see the force in her argument that a shooting-affair would only serve to publish 336the matter to the world, and make it seem more serious. After all, from the family’s point of view, the one thing to be desired was to make certain that there would be no further communication between the two. And Sylvia was willing to assure them of that, she declared. She rushed to her desk, and with trembling fingers wrote a note to “Mr. Frank Shirley,” informing him that the scene which had just occurred had been intolerable to her, and requesting him to perform her one last service—to write a note to her father to the effect that he would make no further attempt to communicate with her. The Major, after some discussion, decided that he would accept this as a settlement; and he being the elder brother, his word was law with Mandeville—at least so long as Mandeville was sober.

I remember Sylvia’s account of the state of exhaustion in which she found herself after this ordeal; how for two days she had the sensation that her mind was breaking up. Yet—a circumstance worth noting—at no time did she blame those who had put her through this ordeal. She could not blame the men of her family; if any one were at fault, it was herself, for being at the mercy of her emotions, and capable of a secret longing to have parleyings with a man who had dragged her name in the mire. You see, Sylvia believed in her heritage. She was proud of the Castlemans—and apparently you could not have rare, aristocratic virtues without also having terrifying vices. If one’s men-folk got drunk and 337shot people, one’s consolation was that at least they did it in a bold and striking and “high-spirited” way.

You will perhaps find yourself impatient with the girl at this stage of her story. I recall my own frantic protests while I listened. What a cruel, needless tragedy! I cried out for the evidence of some gleam of sense on the part of any one person concerned. Surely Sylvia, knowing Frank, must have come to doubt that he could have been unfaithful to her! Surely, with the hints she got at that meeting, she must have realized that there was something more to be said! Surely he, on his part, would have found some way of getting an interview with her, or at least of sending an explanation by some friend! Surely he would never have given up until he had done that!

I have claimed for Sylvia the possession of clear-sightedness. She displayed it when it was a question of revising her religion, she displayed it when it was a question of managing her family, and obtaining permission to be engaged to a convict’s son. But, if you look to see her display anything of that sort in the present emergency, you will look in vain. Sylvia could be bold in a matter of theology, she could be bold in a matter of love, but she could not possibly be bold in a matter of a house of prostitution. If I were to give you illustrations of the completeness of her ignorance upon the subject of sex, you would simply not be able to believe what I told; and not only 338was she ignorant, she could not conceive that it was possible for her to be other than ignorant. She could not conceive that it was possible for a pure-minded girl to talk about such a subject with any human being, man or woman.

I doubt very much, if it had come to an actual test, whether Sylvia would have been capable of marrying against her family’s will. She had opposed them vehemently, but this was because she knew that she was right, and that they, in their inmost hearts, knew it also. The Major and “Miss Margaret” were good and generous-hearted people, and they could not sincerely condemn Frank Shirley for his father’s offense. But how different it was now! In the present matter she faced the phalanx of the family, not on an open field where she could manœuvre and outwit them—but in a place of darkness and terror, where she dared not stir a foot alone.

And let me tell you also that you mistake Frank Shirley if you count upon the mere physical fact that he could have got an explanation to Sylvia. It was not easy for him to explain about such matters to the woman he loved; and if you think it was easy, you are a modern, matter-of-fact person, not understanding the notions of an old-fashioned Southerner. The simple fact was that when Frank wrote to Harriet Atkinson, to ask her to hear his plea, he felt that he was doing something desperate and unprecedented; and when Harriet wrote, coldly refusing to have anything to do with the matter, he felt that she 339had rebuked him for his boldness. As for the last effort he had made to see Sylvia, it was the act of a man driven frantic by love—a man willing to sacrifice his life, and even his self-respect. I have portrayed Frank poorly if I have not made you realize that from the first hour he approached Sylvia with a sense of inferiority and of guilt; that he had remained her lover against the incessant protests of his pride. People are making money rapidly these days in the South, and so becoming like us “Yankees”; yet it will be a long time, I think, before a Southerner without money will make love to a rich woman without feeling in his heart that he is acting the knave.

§ 13

There came another long struggle for Sylvia, another climb out of the pit. For the sake of her father, she could not delay; as soon as she was able to move about, she was out among her roses again, and reading Alexander Stephens in the evenings. Within a week she had been to a card-party and a picnic, and also had received a call from Douglas van Tuiver.

Never before had Sylvia worn such an ethereal aspect; he was gentle, even reverent, in his manner to her. He had a particular reason for calling to see her, he said. He owned a yacht, considered quite a beautiful vessel; it was now 340in commission, but idle, and he had taken the liberty of ordering it to the Southern coast, and wished to beg her to use it to bring the color back into her cheeks. She might take her Aunt Varina, her sister—a whole party, if she chose—and cruise up the coast, to Maine and the St. Lawrence, or over in the North Sea—wherever her fancy suggested. He would go with her and take charge, if she would permit—or he would stay behind, and be happy in the knowledge that she was recovering her health.

Of course, Sylvia could not accept such a favor; she insisted that it was impossible, in spite of all his arguments and urgings. She thanked him so cordially, however, that he went away quite happy.

Then came Mrs. Chilton, and there was a conclave of the ladies. Why should she not accept the offer? It was the very thing she needed to divert her mind, and get her out of this disgraceful state.

“Aunt Nannie,” cried the girl, “how can you think of wanting me to accept such a gift from a comparative stranger? It must cost hundreds of dollars a month to run such a yacht!”

“About five thousand dollars a month, my dear,” said the other, quietly.

Sylvia was aghast; once in a while even a fiery revolutionist like herself was awe-stricken by the actuality of Royalty. “I don’t want things like that,” she said, at last. “I want to stay quietly at home and help Papa.”

341“You need a change,” declared the other. “So long as you are here you are never safe from that evil man; and anyway you are surrounded by reminders of him. A yachting-trip would force you to put your mind on other things. The sea-air would do you good; and if you took Celeste with you—think what a treat for her!”

“Oh, Sylvia, please do!” cried Celeste.

Sylvia looked at her sister. “You’d like to go?”

“Oh, how can you ask?” she replied. “It would be heaven!”

Sylvia said that she would think it over. But in reality she wanted to think about something else. She waited until they left her alone with her sister, and then she said, “You like Mr. van Tuiver, don’t you?”

“How could I fail to like him?” asked Celeste.

The other tried to draw her out. Why did she like him? He had such beautiful manners, such dignity—there were no loose ends about him. He had been everywhere, met everybody of consequence; compared with him the men at home seemed like country-fellows. It was that indescribable thing called elegance, said Celeste, gravely. She could not understand her sister’s attitude at all; she thought Sylvia treated van Tuiver outrageously, and her eyes flashed a danger-signal as she said it. It was a woman’s right to reject a man’s advances if she chose to; but she ought not to humiliate him, when his only offense was admiring her to excess.

“I only wish it was you he admired,” said Sylvia, who was in a gentle mood.

342“No chance of that,” remarked the other, with a touch of bitterness in her voice. “He has no eyes or ears for anybody else when you are about.”

“I’m going to try to lend him eyes and ears,” responded Sylvia. For that was the idea that had occurred to her—van Tuiver must be persuaded to transfer his interest to Celeste! Celeste would marry him; she would marry him without the least hesitation or distress; and then the elder sister might settle down with her family and her rose-gardens and her Confederate History!