Chapter IV: Book I: Sylvia Loves (4)

Needless to say, the Major was startled by this pronouncement, delivered with all the solemnity of a pontiff _ex cathedra_. But Sylvia was ready with her proofs. There was Aunt Nannie, scheming and plotting day and night to make great marriages for her children. Spending her husband’s money in ways he disapproved, and getting—what? Was there a single one of her children that was happy? Was there a single couple—for all the rich marriages—that wasn’t living beyond its income, and jealous of other people who were able to spend more? Harley, grumbling because he couldn’t have a motor of his own—Clive, because he couldn’t afford to marry the girl he loved! And both of them drinking and gambling, and forcing Uncle Mandeville to pay their debts.

“Sylvia, you know I have protested to your Aunt Nannie.”

“Yes, Papa—but meantime you’re ruining your own health and fortune to enable your daughters to run the same race. Here’s Celeste, like a hound in the leash, eager to have her chance—just Aunt Nannie all over again! I know, Papa—it’s terrible, and I can’t bear to hurt you with it, but I have to tell you what my own decision is. I love Frank Shirley; I think my love for him is a true love, and I can’t for a moment think of giving it up. I’m sorry to have to break faith with the Family; I can only plead that I didn’t understand the bargain when I made it, and that I shall take care not to make my debt any greater.”

“What do you mean, Sylvia?”

“I mean that I want to give up the social game. I want to stop spending fortunes on clothes and travel and luxuries; I want to stop being paraded round and exhibited to men I’m not interested in. I want you to give me a little money—just what I need to live—and let me go to New York to study music for a year or two more, until I am able to teach and earn my own living.”

“Earn your own living! _Sylvia!_”

“Precisely, Papa. And meantime, Frank can go through college and law school, and when we can take care of ourselves, we’ll marry. That’s my plan, and I’m serious about it—I want you to let me do it this year.”

And there sat the poor Major, staring at her, his face a study of unutterable emotions, whispering to himself, “My God! My God!”

When Sylvia told me about this scene I reminded her of her experience with the young clergyman who had come to convert her from heresy. “Don’t you see now,” I asked, “why he called you the most dangerous woman in Castleman County?”

§ 27

This procedure of Sylvia’s was a beautiful illustration of what the military strategists call an “offensive defence.” By the simple suggestion of earning her own living, she got everything else in the world that she wanted. It was agreed that she might make known her engagement to Frank Shirley. It was agreed that she need have no more money spent upon clothes and parties. Most important of all, it was agreed that Aunt Nannie was to be informed that Sylvia’s course was approved by her parents, and that Frank Shirley was to be welcomed to Castleman Hall.

But of course she was not to be allowed to earn money. Her father made it clear that the bare suggestion of this caused him more unhappiness than she could endure to inflict. When she protested, “I want to learn something useful!” the dear old Major was ready with the proposition that they learn something useful together; and forthwith unlocked the diamond-paned doors of the old mahogany book-cases, and dragged forth dust-covered sets of Grote’s “History of Greece,” and Hume’s “History of England,” and Jefferson Davis’ “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government”—out of which ponderous volumes Sylvia read aloud to him for several hours each day thereafter.

So from now on this is to be the story of a wholly reformed and chastened huntress of hearts. No more for her the tournaments of coquetry, no more the trumpets of the ball-room peal. No longer shall we behold her, clad in armor of chiffon and real lace, with breastplate of American beauty roses and helmet of gold and pearls. No longer shall we see the arrows of her red-brown eyes flying over the stricken field, deep-dyed with the heart’s blood of Masculinity. Instead of this the dusty tome and the midnight oil and the green eye-shade confront us; we behold the uncanny spectacle of the loveliest of created mortals clad in blue stockings and black-rimmed spectacles.—All this scintillating wit, I make haste to explain, is not mine, but something which Avery Crittenden, the town wag, dashed off in a moment of illumination, and which appeared in the Castleman County _Register_ (no names, if you please!) a couple of weeks after the news of Sylvia’s reformation had stunned the world.

I wish that space were less limited, so that I could tell you how Castleman County received the tidings, and some few of the comical episodes in the long war which it waged to break down her resolution of withdrawal. It was the light of their eyes going out, and they could not and would not be reconciled to it. They wrote letters, they sent telegrams; they would come and literally besiege the house—sit in the parlor and condole with “Miss Margaret,” no longer because Sylvia refused to marry them, but merely because she refused to lead the german with them! They would come with bands of music, with negro singers to serenade her. One spring night a whole fancy-dress ball adjourned by unanimous consent, and stormed the terraces of Castleman Hall and held its revels under the windows; and so of course Sylvia had to stop trying to read about Walpole’s ministry and invite them in and give them wine and cake. On the evening of one of the club dances there was an organized conspiracy; seventeen of her old sweethearts sent her roses, and when in spite of this she did not come, the next day came seventeen messengers, bearing seventeen packages, each containing a little cupid wrapped in cotton-wool—but with his wings broken!

Such was the pressure from outside; and within—there would be a new gown sent by Uncle Mandeville, who was on another spree in New Orleans; a gown that was really a dream of beauty and a crime not to wear. Or there would be talk at the table about Dolly Witherspoon, Sylvia’s chief rival, and the triumph she had won at the cotillion last night; how Stanley Pendleton was “rushing” her, and how Cousin Harley had been snubbed by her. And then some one gave a ball, and Charlie Peyton rang up to say that he was getting drunk and going to the devil unless Sylvia would come and dance with him! And when this device succeeded, and the rumor of it spread—how many of the nicest boys in the county took to getting drunk and going to the devil, because Sylvia would not come and dance with them!

I mention these things in order that you may understand that, sincere as Sylvia was in her effort to withdraw from “society,” she was not entirely successful. She still met “eligible” men, and she was still an object of family concern. A few days after the council, she had been surprised by a visit from Aunt Nannie, who came to apologize and make peace. “I want you to know, Sylvia dear,” she declared, “that what I said to you was said with no thought of anything but your own good.” There was a reconciliation, with tears in the eyes of both of them—and a renewal of the activities of Aunt Nannie. How often it happened to Sylvia, when at some dance she fell into the clutches of an undesirable man, that Aunt Nannie found a pretext for joining them—and presently, without quite realizing how, Sylvia found that the man was gone, and that she was settled for a _tête-à-tête_ with a more suitable companion! Once she stopped to luncheon with the Bishop, and found herself being shown a new album of photographs. There among English cathedrals and Rhenish castles she stumbled upon a picture of the “Mansion House,” the home of the wealthy Peytons. “What a lovely old place!” she exclaimed; and her aunt remarked, “Charlie will inherit that, lucky boy!”

She remembered also the case of Ned Scott, the young West Pointer who came home on furlough, setting all the girls’ hearts aflutter with his gray and gold gorgeousness. “My, what a handsome fellow!” exclaimed Aunt Nannie. “It makes me happy just to watch him walk!”

“An army man always has a good social position,” remarked “Miss Margaret,” casually.

“And an assured income,” added Aunt Varina, timidly.

“He has a mole on his nose,” observed Sylvia.

§ 28

Frank Shirley had passed the midwinter examinations at Harvard, and was settled in the dormitory of his fathers; and so for a while the acute agitation subsided. It began again in the summer, however—when Sylvia proposed staying at the Hall, instead of going with the family to the summer-place in the mountains of North Carolina. It was obvious that this was in order to be near her lover; and so the whole battle had to be fought over again. Aunt Nannie was unable to understand how Sylvia could be willing to “publish her infatuation to the world.”

“But I have only the summer when I can see him,” the girl argued.

“But even so, my dear—to give up everything else, to change all your plans, the plans of your whole family!”

“Nobody need change, Aunt Nannie. Aunt Varina will stay with me gladly.”

“Others have to stay, if it’s only to hide what you are doing. It’s not decent, Sylvia! Believe me, you will lose the man’s own respect if you behave so. No man can permanently respect a woman who betrays her feelings so openly.”

“My dear Aunt Nannie,” said Sylvia, quietly, “I am quite sure that I know Frank Shirley better than you do.”

“Poor, deluded child,” was Mrs. Chilton’s comment. “You’ll find to your sorrow some day that men are all alike!”

But the girl was obdurate. The family had to proceed to desperate measures. First her mother declared that she would stay also—she must remain to protect her unfortunate child. And then, of course, the Major decided that it was his duty to remain. There came the question of Celeste, who had planned a house party, and foresaw the spoiling of her fun by the selfishness of her sister. There was also the baby—the precious, ineffable baby, the heir of all the might, majesty and dominion of the Lysles. The family physician intervened—the child must positively have the mountain air. Also the Major’s liver trouble was serious, he was sleeping badly and working too hard, and was in desperate need of a change. Prompted by Aunt Nannie, the doctor said this in Sylvia’s hearing—and settled the matter.

It had been Frank’s idea to remain at Cambridge and study during the summer, so as to make up some “conditions;” but when he learned that Sylvia intended to remain at the Hall, he decided to stand the expense of coming home. He arrived there to find that she had suddenly changed her mind and was going—and offering but slight explanation of her change. Sylvia was intensely humiliated because of the attitude of her family, and was trying to spare Frank the pain of knowing about it.

So came the beginning of unhappiness between them. Frank was acutely conscious of his inferiority to her in all worldly ways. And he knew that her relatives were trying to break down her resolution. He could not believe that they would succeed; and yet, there was a bitter and disillusioned man within him who could not believe that they would fail. In his soul there were always thorns of doubt, which festered, and now and then would cause him pangs of agony. But he was as proud as any savage, and would have died before he would ask for mercy. When he learned that she was going away from him, for no better reason than her relatives’ objections, he felt that she did not care enough for him. And then, when he did not protest, it was Sylvia’s turn to worry. So it really did not matter to him whether she stayed or not! It might be that Aunt Nannie was right after all, that a man ceased to love a woman who gave herself too freely.

§ 29

The matter was complicated by the episode of Beauregard Dabney, about which I have to tell.

You have heard, perhaps, of the Dabneys of Charleston; the names of three of them—Beauregard’s grandfather and two great-uncles—may be read upon the memorial tablets in the stately old church which is the city’s pride. In Charleston they have a real aristocracy—gentlemen so poor that they wear their cuffs all ragged, yet are received with homage in the proudest homes in the South. The Dabneys had a city mansion with front steps crumbling away, and a country house which would not keep out the rain; and yet when Beauregard, the young scion of the house, fell prey to the charm and animation of Harriet Atkinson, whose father’s street railroad was equal to a mint, the family regarded it as the greatest calamity since Appomattox.

He had followed Harriet to Castleman County; and when the news got out, a detachment of uncles and aunts came flying, and captured the poor boy, and were on the point of shipping him home, when Harriet called Sylvia to the rescue. Sylvia could impress even the Dabneys; and if only she would have Beauregard and one of the aunts invited to Castleman Hall, it might yet be possible to save the situation.

Sylvia had met young Dabney once, when visiting in Charleston. She remembered him as an effeminate-mannered youth, with what would have been a doll-baby face but for the fact that the nose caved in in the middle in a disturbing way. “Tell me, Harriet,” she asked, when she met her friend—“are you in love with him?”

“I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I’m afraid I’m not—at least, not very much.”

“But why do you want to marry a man you don’t love?”

Harriet was driving, and she grasped the reins tightly and gave the horse a flick with the whip. “Sunny,” she said, “you might as well face the fact—I could never fall in love as you have. I don’t believe in it. I wouldn’t want to. I’d never let myself trust a man that much.”

“But then, why marry?”

“I have to marry. What can I do? I’m tired of being chaperoned, and I don’t want to be an old maid.”

Sylvia pondered for a moment. “Suppose,” she said, “that you should marry him, and then meet a man you loved?”

“I’ve already answered that—it won’t happen. I’m too selfish.” She paused, and then added, “It’s all right, Sunny. I’ve figured over it, and I’m not making any mistake. He’s a good fellow, and I like him. He’s a gentleman—he does not offend me. Also, he’s very much in love with me, which is the best way; I’ll always be the boss in my own home. He’s respected, and I’ll help out my poor struggling family if I marry him. You know how it is, Sunny—I vowed I’d never be a climber, but it’s hard to pull back when your people are eager for the heights. And then, too, it’s always a temptation to want to go where you’re told you can’t go.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Sylvia. “But that’s a joke, and marrying’s a serious matter.”

“It’s only that because we make it so,” retorted the other. “I find myself bored to death, and here’s something that rouses my fighting blood. They say I sha’n’t have him—and so I want him. I’m going to break into that family, and then I’m going to shake the rats out of the hair of some of those old maid aunts of his!”

She laughed savagely and drove on for a while. “Sunny,” she resumed at last, “you’re all right. You know it, but I tell you so anyway. You never were a snob that I know—but I’m cynical enough to say that it’s only because you are too proud. Can you imagine how you’d feel if anybody tried to patronize you? Can you imagine how you’d feel if everybody did it? I’m tired of it—don’t you see? And Beauregard is my way of escape. I’m going to marry him if I possibly can; my mind is made up to it. I’ve got the whole plan of campaign laid out—your part included.”

“What’s my part, Harriet?”

“It’s very simple. I want you to let Beauregard fall in love with you.”

“With _me_!”

“Yes. I want you to give him the worst punishment you ever gave a man in your life.”

“But what’s that for?”

“He’s in love with me—he wants me—and he’s too much of a coward to marry me. And I want to see him suffer for it—as only you can make him. I want you to take him and maul him, I want you to bray him and pound him in your mortar, I want you to roll him and toss him about, to walk on him and stamp on him, to beat him to a jelly and grind him to a powder! I want you to keep it up till he’s thoroughly reduced—and then you can turn him over to me.”

“And then you will heal him?” inquired Sylvia—who had not been alarmed by this bloodthirsty discourse.

“Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t,” said the other. “What is there in the maxims of Lady Dee about a broken heart?”

“The best way to catch a man,” quoted Sylvia, “is on the rebound!”

§ 30

I don’t know how this adventure will seem to you. To me it was atrocious; but Sylvia undertook it with a child’s delight.

“I had on a white hat with pink roses,” she said, when she told me about it; “and I could always do anything to a man when I had pink roses on. Beauregard was waiting for Harriet to go driving when I first saw him; she was upstairs, late on purpose. He said something about my looking like a rose myself—he was the most obvious of human creatures. And when he asked me to get in and sit by him, I said, ‘Harriet will be jealous.’ Of course he was charmed at the idea of Harriet’s being jealous. So he asked me to take a little drive with him, and we stayed out an hour—and by the time we got back, I had him!”

Two days later he was on his knees begging Sylvia to marry him. At which, of course, she was horrified. “Why, you’re supposed to be in love with my best friend!”

He was frank about it, poor soul. “Of course, Miss Sylvia,” he explained, “I was in love with Harriet; and Harriet’s a fine girl, all right. It’s bad about her family, but I thought we could go away where nobody knew her, and people would accept her as my wife, and they’d soon forget. She’s jolly and interesting, and all that. But you understand, surely, Miss Sylvia—no man would marry Harriet Atkinson if he could get you. You—you’re quite different, Miss Sylvia. You’re one of us!”

He made Sylvia furious by his matter-of-fact snobbery; and so she was lovely to him. She told him that she, too, had been in love, but her family was opposed to the man, and now she was very unhappy. She told him that she was not worthy of the love of such a man as he. Poor Beauregard tried his best to reassure her, and followed her about day and night for ten days, and was a most dreadful nuisance.

Each day she would report to Harriet the stage of infatuation to which he had come; until at last Harriet’s thirst for blood was satisfied. Then, dressed all in snow-white muslin and lace, Sylvia took her devoted suitor off to a seat in a distant grape-arbor, and there administered the dose she had prepared for him. “Mr. Dabney,” she said, “this joke has got to be such a bore that I can’t stand it.”

“What joke?” asked Beauregard, innocently.

“You know that I have called myself a friend of Harriet Atkinson’s. When you came to me and told me that you loved her, but wanted to marry me because my family was better than hers—did it never occur to you how it would strike her friend? Evidently not. Well, let me tell you then—I could think that it was the stupidest joke I had ever heard, or else that you were the most arrogant jack that ever walked on two legs. I said that I would punish you—and I’ve been doing it. You must understand that I never felt the least particle of interest in you; I never met a man who’d be less apt to attract me, and I can’t see how you managed to interest Harriet. I assure you you’ve no reason for holding the extravagant opinion of yourself which you do.”

The poor youth sat staring at her, unable to believe his ears. And so, of course, Sylvia began to feel sorry for him. “I can see,” she said, “that there might be something in you to like—if only you had the courage to be yourself. But you’re so terrorized by your aunts and uncles, you’ve let them make you into such a dreadful snob——”

She paused. “You really think I am a snob?” he cried.

“The worst I ever met. I couldn’t bring myself to discuss it with you. Let me give you this one piece of advice, though; if you think you’re too good to marry a girl, pray find it out before you tell her that you love her. Of course, I’m not sorry that it happened this time, for you won’t break Harriet’s heart, and she’s a thousand times too good for you. So I’m not sorry that you’ve lost her.”

“You—you think that I’ve lost her, Miss Sylvia?” gasped the other.

“Lost her?” echoed Sylvia. “Why, you don’t mean—” But then she stopped. She must not make it impossible for him to think of Harriet again. “You’ve lost her, unless she’s a great deal more generous than I’d ever be.”

Beauregard took his drubbing very well. He persuaded Sylvia to discuss his snobbery with him, and confessed the offence, and got up quite a fire of indignation against his banded relatives. Also he admitted that Harriet was too good for him, and that he had treated her like a cad. His speeches grew shorter and his manner more anxious, and Sylvia could see that his main thought was to get back and find out if he’d really lost Harriet.

So she called her friend up on the ’phone and announced, “He’s coming. Get on your prettiest dress without delay!” And then Sylvia went away and had a cry—first, because she had said such cruel things, and second, because her mother and father would be unhappy when they learned that Beauregard had escaped her.

An hour later Harriet called up to say that it was all over. “Did you accept him?” asked Sylvia.

To which the other answered, “You may trust me now, Sunny! You have made him into a soft dough, and I’ll knead him.” And sure enough, the new Beauregard Dabney sent his aunts and uncles flying, and followed Harriet to her summer home on the Gulf, and was hardly to be induced to wait for a conventional wedding—so eager was he to prove to himself and to Sylvia Castleman that he was really not a coward and a snob!

§ 31

It was in the midst of these adventures that Frank Shirley made his unexpected return from the North. On the day when he came to see her first, she naturally forgot about the existence of Beauregard Dabney—until Beauregard suddenly appeared and flew into a fit of jealousy. Then the imp of mischievousness got hold of Sylvia; she found herself wondering, “Would it be possible for Frank to be jealous of Beauregard? And if he was, how would he behave?”

“I knew it was dreadful then,” she told me, “but I couldn’t have helped it if I’d been risking my life. I had to see what Frank would do when he was jealous. I simply _had_ to! It was a kind of insanity!”

So she tried it, and did not get much fun out of the experience. Frank was like an Indian in captivity; he could not be made to cry out under torture. He saw Beauregard’s position, and the unconcealed delight of the family; but he set his lips together and never gave a sign. Sylvia was going away for the summer, and Beauregard was talking about following her. There would be other suitors following her, no doubt—and new ones on the ground. Frank went home, and Sylvia did not hear from him for several days.

The Beauregard episode came to its appointed end, and then, in a letter to Frank, Sylvia mentioned that she had accomplished her purpose—the youth was engaged to Harriet. She thought this was explaining things. But how could Frank imagine the complications of the art of man-catching? Was Sylvia jesting with him, or trying to blind him, or apologizing to him, or what?

Sylvia kept putting off her start to the mountains—she could not bear to go while things were in such a state between them. But, while she was still hesitating, to her consternation she received a note from him saying that he was starting for Colorado. He had received a telegram that an aunt was dead; there were business matters to be attended to—some property which for his sisters’ sake could not be neglected. It was a cold, business-like note, with not a word of sorrow at parting; and Sylvia shed tears over it. Such is the irrationality of those in love, she had forgotten all about young Dabney or any other cause for doubt and unhappiness she might have given Frank. She thought that he, and he alone, had been unkind. And meantime, Frank had made up his mind that she was repenting of her engagement, and that it was his duty to make it easy for her to withdraw.

So the two spent an unhappy summer. Sylvia let herself be taken about to parties, but she grew more weary every hour of the social game. “I’ve smiled until I’ve got the lockjaw,” she would say. She was losing weight and growing pale, in spite of the mountain air.

September came, and Harriet’s wedding was set for the next month, and likewise Frank’s return to Harvard. He came back from the West, and Sylvia wrote asking him to come and visit her for a week. But to her consternation there came in reply a polite refusal from Frank. There was so much that needed his attention on the plantation, and some studying that must be done if he was to make good. For three days Sylvia struggled with herself, the last stand of that barbarian pride of hers; then she gave way completely and sent him a telegram: “Please come at once.”

She would have recalled it an hour afterwards, but it was too late; and that evening she received an answer, to the effect that he would arrive in the morning. She spent a sleepless night imagining his coming, and a score of different ways in which she would meet him. She would throw herself at his feet and beg him not to torture her; she would array herself in her newest gown and fascinate him in the good old way; she would climb once more upon the pinnacle of her pride and compel him to humble himself before her.

In the morning she drove to meet him, together with a cousin who had come on the same train. She never stood a worse social ordeal than that drive and the luncheon with the family. But at last they were alone together, and sat gazing at each other with eyes full of bewilderment and pain.

“Sylvia,” said Frank, finally, “you do not look happy.”

“Why should I be happy?” she asked.

There was a pause. “Listen,” he said. “Can we not deal honestly with each other—openly and sincerely, for once. Surely that is the best way, Sylvia—no matter how much it hurts.”

“I am ready to do it,” she replied.

“You don’t have to spare my feelings,” he went on. “I know all you have to contend with, and I sha’n’t blame you. The one thing I can’t bear is to be played with, to be lured by false hopes, to drag on and on, tormented by uncertainty.”

She was gazing at him, bewildered. “Why do you say all that, Frank?” she cried.

“Why should I not say it?” he asked; and again they stared at each other.

Suddenly she broke out, in a voice full of anguish, “Frank, this is what I want to know—answer me this! Do you love me?”

“Do I love you?” he echoed.

“Yes,”—and with greater intensity, “I want you to be honest about it!”

“Honey!” he said, his voice trembling, “it’s the question of whether I’m allowed to love you. It’s so terrible to me—I can’t stand the uncertainty.”

She cried again, “But do you _want_ to love me?”

She heard his voice break, she saw the emotion that was shaking him, and with a sudden sob she was in his arms. “Oh, Frank, Frank!” she exclaimed. “What _have_ we been doing to each other?”

And so at last the fog of misunderstanding was lifted. “Sweetheart,” he exclaimed, “what could you have been thinking?”

“I thought you had stopped loving me because I had been too bold, because I had been unwomanly.”

“Why, Sylvia, you must be mad! Have I not been hungry for your love?”

“Oh, tell me that I can love you!” she wailed. “Tell me that you won’t grow tired of me if I love you!”

He clasped her in his arms and covered her lips with kisses; he soothed her like a frightened child. She was free now to sob out her grief, to tell him what she had felt throughout all these months of misery. “Oh, why didn’t you come to me like this before?” she asked.

“But, Sylvia,” he answered, “how could I know? I saw you letting another man make love to you——”

“But, Frank, that was only a joke!”

“But how could I know that?”

“How could you imagine anything else? That I could prefer Beauregard Dabney to you!”

“That’s easy to say,” he replied. “But there was your family—I knew what they’d prefer, and I saw how they were struggling to keep us apart. And what was I to think—why should you be giving him your time, unless you wanted to let me know——”

“Ah, don’t say that! Don’t say that!” she cried, quickly. “It’s wicked that such a thing should have happened.”

“We must learn to talk things out frankly,” he said. “For one thing you must not let your family come between us again. You must free me from this dreadful fear that they are going to take you from me.”

And suddenly Sylvia blazed up. All the misunderstanding had come from the opposition of her family, and her unwillingness to talk to Frank about it. “I never saw it so clearly before,” she exclaimed. “Frank, I can never make them see things my way. And they’ll always have this dreadful power over me—because I love them so!”

“What can you do then?” he asked.

“I’m going to betray them to you!” she cried. And as he looked puzzled, she went on, “I’m going to tell you about them! I’m going to tell you everything they’ve said and done, and everything they may say and do in the future!”

“And that,” said Frank to me, “was the most loving thing she ever said!” Such was the power, in Sylvia’s world, of the ideal of the Family!