SYLVIA GOES VISITING
"How old did you say you were, Sylvia?"
"I'm sixteen in October, grandpa," answered Sylvia.
"Is it possible!" murmured the professor. "And to think that you've
never been to school."
"Why, I've been going to school every day, almost, ever since I can
remember. And haven't I had the finest teacher in the world, all to
myself?"
His face brightened responsive to her laugh.
This was at the tea-table--for the Keltons dined at noon in conformity
with local custom--nearly a week after the unsigned letter had been
delivered to Andrew Kelton by the unknown messenger. Sylvia and her
grandfather had just returned from a walk, prolonged into the cool dusk.
They sat at the square walnut table, where they had so long faced each
other three times a day. Sylvia had never doubted that their lives would
go on forever in just this way,--that they would always be, as her
grandfather liked to put it, "shipmates," walking together, studying
together, sitting as they sat now, at their simple meals, with just the
same quaintly flowered dishes, the same oddly turned teapot, with its
attendant cream pitcher (slightly cracked as to lip) and the sugar-bowl,
with a laboring ship depicted in blue on its curved side, which was not
related, even by the most remote cousinship, to anything else in the
pantry.
Professor Kelton was unwontedly preoccupied to-night. Sylvia saw that he
had barely touched his strawberries--their first of the season, though
they were fine ones and the cream was the thickest. She folded her hands
on the edge of the table and watched him gravely in the light of the
four candles whose flame flared in the breeze that swept softly through
the dining-room windows. Feeling her eyes upon him the old gentleman
suddenly roused himself.
"We've had good times, haven't we, Sylvia? And I wonder if I have really
taught you anything. I suppose I ought to have been sending you to
school with the other youngsters about here, but the fact is that I
never saw a time when I wanted to part with you! You've been a fine
little shipmate, but you're not so little any more. Sixteen your next
birthday! If that's so it isn't best for us to go on this way. You must
try your oar in deeper water. You've outgrown me--and I'm a dull old
fellow at best. You must go where you will meet other girls, and deal
with a variety of teachers,--not just one dingy old fellow like me. Have
you ever thought what kind of a school you'd like to go to?"
"I don't believe I have; I don't know much about schools."
"Well, don't you think you'd like to get away from so much mathematics
and learn things that will fit you to be entertaining and amusing? You
know I've taught you a lot of things just to amuse myself and they can
never be of the slightest use to you. I suppose you are the only girl of
your age in America who can read the sextant and calculate latitude and
longitude. But, bless me, what's the use?"
"Oh, if I could only--"
"Only what?" he encouraged her. He was greatly interested in getting her
point of view, and it was perfectly clear that a great idea possessed
her.
"Oh, if I could only go to college, that would be the finest thing in
the world!"
"You think that would be more interesting than boarding-school? If you
go to college they may require Greek and you don't even know what the
letters look like!"
"Oh, yes, I know a little about it!"
"I think not, Sylvia. How could you?"
"Oh, the letters were so queer, I learned them just for fun out of an
old textbook I found on the campus one day. Nobody ever came to claim
it, so I read it all through and learned all the declensions and
vocabularies, though I only guessed at the pronunciation."
Professor Kelton was greatly amused. "You tackled Greek just for fun,
did you?" he laughed; then, after a moment's absorption: "I'm going to
Indianapolis to-morrow and I'll take you with me, if you care to go
along. In fact, I've written to Mrs. Owen that we're coming, and I've
kept this as a little surprise for you."
So, after an early breakfast the next morning, they were off for the
station in one of those disreputable, shaky village hacks that Dr.
Wandless always called "dark Icarian birds," with their two bags piled
on the seat before them. On the few railway journeys Sylvia remembered,
she had been carried on half-fare tickets, an ignominy which she
recalled with shame. To-day she was a full-grown passenger with a seat
to herself, her grandfather being engaged through nearly the whole of
their hour's swift journey in a political discussion with a lawyer who
was one of the college trustees.
"I told Mrs. Owen not to meet us; it's a nuisance having to meet
people," said the professor when they had reached the city. "But she
always sends a carriage when she expects me."
As they stepped out upon the street a station wagon driven by an old
negro appeared promptly at the curb.
"Mawnin', Cap'n; mawnin'! Yo' just on time. Mis' Sally tole me to kerry
you all right up to the haouse. Yes, seh."
Sylvia did not know, what later historians may be interested to learn
from these pages, that the station wagon, drawn by a single horse, was
for years the commonest vehicle known to the people of the Hoosier
capital. The panic of 1873 had hit the town so hard, the community's
punishment for its sins of inflation had been so drastic, that it had
accepted meekly the rebuke implied in its designation as a one-horse
town. In 1884 came another shock to confidence, and in 1893, still
another earthquake, as though the knees of the proud must at intervals
be humbled. The one-horse station wagon continued to symbolize the
quiet domesticity of the citizens of the Hoosier capital: women of
unimpeachable social standing carried their own baskets through the
aisles of the city market or drove home with onion tops waving
triumphantly on the seat beside them. We had not yet hitched our wagon
to a gasoline tank, but traffic regulations were enforced by cruel
policemen, to the terror of women long given to leisurely manoeuvres on
the wrong side of our busiest thoroughfares. The driving of cattle
through Washington Street did not cease until 1888, when cobbles yielded
to asphalt. It was in that same year that Benjamin Harrison was chosen
to the seat of the Presidents. What hallowed niches now enshrine the
General's fence, utterly disintegrated and appropriated, during that
bannered and vociferous summer, by pious pilgrims!
Down the busy meridional avenue that opened before Sylvia as they drove
uptown loomed the tall shaft of the soldiers' monument, and they were
soon swinging round the encompassing plaza. Professor Kelton explained
that the monument filled a space once called Circle Park, where the
Governor's Mansion had stood in old times. In her hurried glimpses
Sylvia was unable to account for the lack of sociability among the
distinguished gentlemen posed in bronze around the circular
thoroughfare; and she thought it odd that William Henry Harrison wore so
much better clothes than George Rogers Clark, who was immortalized for
her especial pleasure in the very act of delivering the Wabash from the
British yoke.
"I wonder whether Mrs. Owen will like me?" said Sylvia a little
plaintively, the least bit homesick as they turned into Delaware Street.
"Of course she will like you!" laughed Professor Kelton, "though I will
say that she doesn't like everybody by any manner of means. You mustn't
be afraid of her; she gets on best with people who are not afraid to
talk to her. She isn't like anybody you ever saw, or, I think, anybody
you are ever likely to see again!" And the professor chuckled softly to
himself.
Mrs. Owen's big comfortable brick house stood in that broad part of
Delaware Street where the maple arch rises highest, and it was
surrounded by the smoothest of lawns, broken only by a stone basin in
whose centre posed the jolliest of Cupids holding a green glass
umbrella, over which a jet of water played in the most realistic
rainstorm imaginable.
Another negro, not quite as venerable as the coachman, opened the door
and took their bags. He explained that Mrs. Owen (he called her "Mis'
Sally") had been obliged to attend a meeting of some board or other, but
would return shortly. The guests' rooms were ready and he at once led
the way upstairs, where a white maid met them.
Professor Kelton explained that he must go down into the city on some
errands, but that he would be back shortly, and Sylvia was thus left to
her own devices.
It was like a story book to arrive at a strange house and be carried off
to a beautiful room, with a window-seat from which one could look down
into the most charming of gardens. She opened her bag and disposed her
few belongings and was exploring the bathroom wonderingly (for the bath
at home was an affair of a tin tub to which water was carried by hand)
when a maid appeared with a glass of lemonade and a plate of cakes.
It was while she munched her cakes and sipped the cool lemonade in the
window-seat with an elm's branches so close that she could touch them,
and wondered how near to this room her grandfather had been lodged, and
what the mistress of the house was like, that Mrs. Owen appeared, after
the lightest tap on the high walnut door. Throughout her life Sylvia
will remember that moment when she first measured Mrs. Owen's fine
height and was aware of her quick, eager entrance; but above all else
the serious gray eyes that were so alive with kindness were the chief
item of Sylvia's inventory.
"I thought you were older,--or younger! I didn't know you would be just
like this! I didn't know just when you were coming or I should have
tried to be at home--but there was a meeting,--there are so many things,
child!"
Mrs. Owen did not sigh at the thought of her burdens, but smiled quite
cheerfully as though the fact of the world's being a busy place was
wholly agreeable. She sat down beside Sylvia in the window-seat and took
one of the cakes and nibbled it while they talked. Sylvia had never been
so wholly at ease in her life. It was as though she had been launched
into the midst of an old friendship, and she felt that she had conferred
the greatest possible favor in consenting to visit this house, for was
not this dear old lady saying,--
"You see, I'm lonesome sometimes and I almost kidnap people to get them
to visit me. I'm a terribly practical old woman. If you haven't heard it
I must tell you the truth--I'm a farmer! And I don't let anybody run my
business. Other widows have to take what the lawyers give them; but
while I can tell oats from corn and horses from pigs I'm going to handle
my own money. We women are a lot of geese, I tell you, child! I'm
treasurer of a lot of things women run, and I can see a deficit through
a brick wall as quick as any man on earth. Don't you ever let any man
vote any proxy for you--you tell 'em you'll attend the stockholders'
meetings yourself, and when you go, kick!"
Sylvia had not the faintest notion of what proxy meant, but she was sure
it must be something both interesting and important or Mrs. Owen would
not feel so strongly about it.
"When I was your age," Mrs. Owen continued, "girls weren't allowed to
learn anything but embroidery and housekeeping. But my father had some
sense. He was a Kentucky farmer and raised horses and mules. I never
knew anything about music, for I wouldn't learn; but I own a stock farm
near Lexington, and just between ourselves I don't lose any money on it.
And most that I know about men I learned from mules; there's nothing in
the world so interesting as a mule."
When Professor Kelton had declared to Sylvia on the way from the station
that Mrs. Owen was unlike any other woman in the world, Sylvia had not
thought very much about it. To be sure Sylvia's knowledge of the world
was the meagrest, but certainly she could never have imagined any woman
as remarkable as Mrs. Owen. The idea that a mule, instead of being a
dull beast of burden, had really an educational value struck her as
decidedly novel, and she did not know just what to make of it. Mrs. Owen
readjusted the pillow at her back, and went on spiritedly:--
"Your grandpa has often spoken of you, and it's mighty nice to have you
here. You see a good many of us Hoosiers are Kentucky people, and your
grandpa's father was. I remember perfectly well when your grandpa went
to the Naval Academy; and we were all mighty proud of him in the war."
Mrs. Owen's white hair was beautifully soft and wavy, and she wore it in
the prevailing manner. Her eyes narrowed occasionally with an effect of
sudden dreaminess, and these momentary reveries seemed to the adoring
Sylvia wholly fascinating. She spoke incisively and her voice was deep
and resonant. She was exceedingly thin and wiry, and her movements were
quick and nervous. Hearing the whirr of a lawn-mower in the yard she
drew a pair of spectacles from a case she produced from an incredibly
deep pocket, put them on, and criticized the black man below sharply for
his manner of running the machine. This done, the spectacles went back
to the case and the case to the pocket. In our capital a woman in a
kimono may still admonish her servants from a second-story window
without loss of dignity, and gentlemen holding high place in dignified
callings may sprinkle their own lawns in the cool of the evening if they
find delight in that cheering diversion. Joy in the simple life dies in
us slowly. The galloping Time-Spirit will run us down eventually, but on
Sundays that are not too hot or too cold one may even to-day count a
handsome total of bank balances represented in our churches, so strong
is habit in a people bred to righteousness.
"You needn't be afraid of me; my bark is worse than my bite; you have to
talk just that way to these black people. They've all worked for me for
years and they don't any of 'em pay the slightest attention to what I
say. But," she concluded, "they'd be a lot worse if I didn't say it."
We reckon time in our capital not from fires or floods or even _anno
urbis conditæ_, but from seemingly minor incidents that have
nevertheless marked new eras and changed the channels of history.
Precedents sustain us in this. A startled goose rousing the sleeping
sentinels on the ramparts; a dull peasant sending an army in the wrong
direction; the mischievous phrase uttered by an inconspicuous minister
of the gospel to a few auditors,--such unconsidered trifles play havoc
with Fame's calculations. And so in our calendar the disbanding of the
volunteer fire department in 1859 looms gloomily above the highest
altitudes of the strenuous sixties; the fact that Billy Sanderson, after
his father's failure in 1873, became a brakeman on the J.M. & I.
Railroad and invested his first month's salary in a silver-mounted
lantern, is more luminous in the retrospect than the panic itself; the
coming of a lady with a lorgnette in 1889 (the scion of one of our
ancient houses married her in Ohio) overshadows even the passing of
Beecher's church; and the three-days' sojourn of Henry James in 1905
shattered all records and established a new orientation for our people.
It was Sally Owen who said, when certain citizens declared that Mr.
James was inaudible, that many heard him perfectly that night in the
Propylæum who had always thought Balzac the name of a tooth-powder.
Mrs. Owen's family, the Singletons, had crossed the Ohio into Hoosier
territory along in the fifties, in time for Sally to have been a
student--not the demurest from all accounts--at Indiana Female College.
Where stood the college the Board of Trade has lately planted itself,
frowning down upon Christ Church, whose admirable Gothic spire chimed
for Union victories in the sixties (there's a story about that, too!)
and still pleads with the ungodly on those days of the week appointed by
the Book of Common Prayer for offices to be said or sung. Mrs. Jackson
Owen was at this time sixty years old, and she had been a widow for
thirty years. The old citizens who remembered Jackson Owen always spoke
of him with a smile. He held an undisputed record of having been
defeated for more offices than any other Hoosier of his time. His chief
assets when he died were a number of farms, plastered with mortgages,
scattered over the commonwealth in inaccessible localities. His wife,
left a widow with a daughter who died at fourteen, addressed herself
zealously to the task of paying the indebtedness with which the
lamented Jackson had encumbered his property. She had made a point of
clinging to all the farms that had been so profitless under his
direction, and so successfully had she managed them that they were all
paying handsomely. A four-hundred-acre tract of the tallest corn I ever
saw was once pointed out to me in Greene County and this plantation, it
was explained, had been a worthless bog before Mrs. Owen "tiled" it; and
later I saw stalks of this corn displayed in the rooms of the
Agricultural Society to illustrate what intelligent farming can do.
At the State Fair every fall it was taken as a matter of course that "S.
Owen" (such was her business designation) should win more red ribbons
than any other exhibitor either of cereals or live stock. There was
nothing that Sally Owen did not know about feeding cattle, and a paper
she once read before the Short-Horn Breeders' Association is a classic
on this important subject. Mrs. Owen still retained the active control
of her affairs, though she had gradually given over to a superintendent
much of the work long done by herself; but woe unto him who ever tried
to deceive her! She maintained an office on the ground floor of her
house where she transacted business and kept inventories of every stick
of wood, every bushel of corn, every litter of pigs to which she had
ever been entitled. For years she had spent much time at her farms,
particularly through the open months of the year when farm tasks are
most urgent; but as her indulgence in masculine pursuits had not abated
her womanly fastidiousness, she carried with her in all her journeys a
negro woman whose business it was to cook for her mistress and otherwise
care for her comfort. She had acquired the farm in Kentucky to continue
her ties with the state of her birth, but this sentimental consideration
did not deter her from making the Lexington farm pay; Sally Owen made
everything pay! Her Southern ancestry was manifest in nothing more
strikingly than in her treatment of the blacks she had always had about
her. She called them niggers--as only a Southerner may, and they called
her "Mis' Sally" and were her most devoted and obedient servants.
Much of this Sylvia was to learn later; but just now, as Mrs. Owen sat
in the cool window-seat, it was enough for Sylvia to be there, in the
company of the first woman--so it seemed to her--she had ever known,
except Irish Mary at home. The wives of the professors in Buckeye Lane
were not like this; no one was ever like this, she was sure!
"We shall be having luncheon at half-past twelve, and my grandniece
Marian will be here. Marian is the daughter of my niece, Mrs. Morton
Bassett, who lives at Fraserville. Marian comes to town pretty often and
I've asked her down to-day particularly to meet you."
"I'm sure that is very kind," murmured Sylvia, though she would have
been perfectly happy if just she and her grandfather had been left alone
with Mrs. Owen.
"There's the bell; that must be Marian now," said Mrs. Owen a moment
later, and vanished in her quick fashion. Then the door opened again
instantly and she returned to the room smiling.
"What _is_ your name, dear?" Mrs. Owen demanded. "How very stupid of me
not to have asked before! Your grandpa in speaking of you always says my
granddaughter, and that doesn't tell anything, does it?"
"My name is Sylvia--Sylvia Garrison."
"And that's a very nice name," said Mrs. Owen, looking at her fixedly
with her fine gray eyes. "You're the first Sylvia I have ever known. I'm
just plain Sally!" Then she seized Sylvia's hands and drew her close and
kissed her.
As Sylvia had brought but one white gown, she decided that the blue
serge skirt and linen shirt-waist in which she had traveled would do for
luncheon. She put on a fresh collar and knotted a black scarf under it
and went downstairs.
She ran down quickly, to have the meeting with the strange niece over as
quickly as possible. Mrs. Owen was not in sight, and her grandfather had
not returned from town; but as Sylvia paused a moment at the door of the
spacious high-ceilinged drawing-room she saw a golden head bent over a
music rack by the piano. Sylvia stood on the threshold an instant, shy
and uncertain as to how she should make herself known. The sun flooding
the windows glinted on the bright hair of the girl at the piano; she was
very fair, and her features were clear-cut and regular. There was no
sound in the room but the crisp rustle of the leaves of music as the
girl tossed them about. Then as she flung aside the last sheet with an
exclamation of disappointment, Sylvia made herself known.
"I'm Sylvia Garrison," she said, advancing.
They gravely inspected each other for a moment; then Marian put out her
hand.
"I'm Marian Bassett. Aunt Sally told me you were coming."
Marian seated herself with the greatest composure and Sylvia noted her
white lawn gown and white half-shoes, and the bow of white ribbon at the
back of her head. Sylvia, in her blue serge, black ribbons, and high
shoes, felt the superiority of this radiant being. Marian took charge of
the conversation.
"I suppose you like to visit; I love it. I've visited a lot, and I'm
always coming to Aunt Sally's. I'm in Miss Waring's School, here in this
city, so I come to spend Sundays with Aunt Sally very often. Mama is
always coming to town to see how I'm getting on. She's terribly
ambitious for me, but I hate school, and I simply _cannot_ learn French.
Miss Waring is terribly severe; she says it's merely a lack of
application in my case; that I _could_ learn but won't. When mama comes
she takes me to luncheon at the Whitcomb and sometimes to the matinée.
We saw John Drew last winter: he's simply perfect--so refined and
gentlemanly; and I've seen Julia Marlowe twice; she's my favorite
actress. Mama says that if I just will read novels I ought to read good
ones, and she gave me a set of Thackeray for my own; but you can skip a
whole lot in him, I'm here to state! One of our best critics has said
(mama's always saying that) that the best readers are those who know
how to skip, and I'm a good skipper. I always want to know how it's
going to come out. If they can't live happy forever afterward I want
them to part beautifully, with soft music playing; and _he_ must go away
and leave _her_ holding a rose as a pledge that _he_ will never forget."
When Marian paused there was a silence as Sylvia tried to pick out of
this long speech something to which she could respond. Marian was
astonishingly wise; Sylvia felt herself immeasurably younger, and she
was appalled by her own ignorance before this child who had touched so
many sides of life and who recounted her experiences so calmly and
lightly.
"This is the first time I ever visited," Sylvia confessed. "I live with
my grandfather Kelton, right by Madison College, that's at Montgomery,
you know. Grandfather was a professor in the college, and still lectures
there sometimes. I've never been to school--"
"How on earth do you escape?" demanded Marian.
"It's not an escape," laughed Sylvia; "you see grandfather, being a
professor, began teaching me almost before I began remembering."
"Oh! But even that would be better than a boarding-school, where they
make you study. It would be easy to tell your grandfather that you
didn't want to do things."
"I suppose it would," Sylvia acknowledged; "but it's so nice to have him
for a teacher that I shouldn't know just how to do it."
This point of view did not interest Marian, and she recurred to her own
affairs.
"I've been to Europe. Papa took us all last year. We went to Paris and
London. It was fine."
"My grandfather was in the United States Navy, before he began teaching
at Madison, so I know a good deal from him about Europe."
"Blackford--he's my brother--is going to Annapolis," said Marian, thus
reminded of her brother's aspirations. "At least he says he is, though
he used to talk about West Point. I hope he will go into the Army. I
should like to visit West Point; it must be perfectly fascinating."
"I suppose it is. I think I should like college."
"Not for me!" exclaimed Marian. "I want to go to a convent in Paris. I
know a girl right here in Indianapolis who did that, and it's perfectly
fine and ever so romantic. To get into college you have to know algebra,
don't you?"
"Yes; I think they require that," Sylvia replied, on guard against a
display of too much knowledge.
"Do you know algebra?" demanded Marian.
"Sometimes I think I don't!"
"Well, there's no doubt about me! I'm sure I don't. It's perfectly
horrid."
The entrance of Mrs. Owen and the return of Professor Kelton terminated
these confidences. The four were soon at the luncheon table, where the
array of crystal and silver seemed magnificent to Sylvia's unaccustomed
eyes. She had supposed that luncheon meant some such simple meal as the
suppers she had been used to at home; but it included fried chicken and
cold ham, and there were several vegetables; and hot biscuits and hot
corn bread; and it became necessary for Sylvia to decline an endless
succession of preserves and jellies. For dessert there were the most
fragrant red raspberries conceivable, with golden sponge cake. The
colored man who served the table seemed to enjoy himself immensely. He
condescended to make suggestions as he moved about. "A little mo' of the
cold ham, Cap'n?" or, "I 'membah you like the sparrograss, Mis' Marian,"
he murmured. "The co'n bread's extra fine, Mis'"--to Sylvia. "The hossis
is awdahed for three, Mis' Sally"--to Mrs. Owen.
"You still have Kentucky cooking, Sally," remarked Professor Kelton, who
had praised the corn bread.
"I do, Andrew," replied the old lady; "everybody knows that the best
things in Indiana came through Kentucky. That includes you and me!"
Prompted by Mrs. Owen's friendly questioning, Sylvia found herself
talking. She felt that she was talking more than Marian; but she was
much less troubled by this than by Marian's sophisticated manner of
lifting her asparagus stalks with her fingers, while Sylvia resorted to
the fork. But Sylvia comforted herself with the reflection that this was
all in keeping with Marian Bassett's general superiority. Marian
conducted herself with the most mature air, and she made it quite
necessary for Professor Kelton to defend the Navy against her assertion
that the Army was much more useful to the country. The unhurried meal
passed, and after they had returned to the drawing-room Marian left to
meet her mother at the dressmaker's and return with her to Fraserville.
"I hope to see you again," said Marian, shaking hands with Sylvia.
"I hope so, too," Sylvia replied.