Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Sylvia Arden]
SYLVIA ARDEN
DECIDES
BY
MARGARET REBECCA PIPER
AUTHOR OF
SYLVIA'S EXPERIMENT: THE CHEERFUL BOOK, (Trade Mark)
SYLVIA OF THE HILL TOP: THE SECOND CHEERFUL
BOOK, ETC. (Trade Mark)
FRONTISPIECE BY
HASKELL COFFIN
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
_Copyright, 1917_,
BY THE PAGE COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, September, 1917
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
I Of Futures and Other Important Matters
II Reasons and Wraiths
III Twenty-Two
IV The Ways of a Maid
V September Afternoon
VI Of Missions, and Omissions
VII October Developments
VIII Fire and Frost
IX The Moth and the Star
X The City
XI Margins
XII "Such Stuff as Dreams"
XIII Into Haven
XIV "And Having Eyes"
XV The City and Sylvia
XVI As Might Have Been Expected
XVII Barb Diagnoses
XVIII The Cause and the Career
XIX Oh, Suzanne!
XX Sylvia and Life
XXI A Chapter of Revelations
XXII Unto the Forest
XXIII Aftermath
XXIV High Tide
XXV Warp and Woof
XXVI The End and the Beginning
*SYLVIA ARDEN
DECIDES*
*CHAPTER I*
*OF FUTURES AND OTHER IMPORTANT MATTERS*
"I know what the trouble with Sylvia is," announced Suzanne, elevating
herself on one elbow and leaning forward out of the hammock just enough
to select and appropriate a plump bonbon from the box on the wicker
stand near by.
"Well," encouraged Sylvia, "what _is_ the trouble with me?"
At the moment as she stood leaning against the massive white pillar with
a smile on her lips and in her dark eyes, the sunshine glinting warm,
red-gold lights in her bronze hair, it seemed as if it would be hard
indeed to find any trouble with her so completely was she a picture of
radiant, joyous, care-free youth.
Suzanne demolished her bonbon, then proceeded to expatiate on her
original proposition.
"The trouble with you," she averred oracularly from her cushions, "is
that you are addicted to the vice of contentment."
"Well, why shouldn't she be?" demanded Barbara from the depths of the
huge arm-chair which nearly swallowed her diminutive figure. "I'd like
to know who has a better right? Hasn't Sylvia this minute got
everything anybody in the world could want? If I had been born to live
on a hill top, like Sylvia, I'd never leave it."
Suzanne sat up, brandishing a reproachful forefinger at the speaker.
"Barbie Day! I am shocked at you. What would your Aunt Josephine say?
Sylvia, she must be packed off at once. She mustn't be allowed to stay
even for the party. The flesh pots have gone to her head. Another day
at Arden Hall will ruin her for the Cause." And, with a prophetic shake
of her head, Suzanne helped herself to a "Turkish Delight" and relaxed
among her cushions, the leaf green color of which, contrasting with the
pale pink of her gown, made her look rather like a rose, set in its
calyx. Suzanne was extraordinarily pretty, much prettier, in fact, than
was at all necessary for a young person of distinct literary bent and a
pronounced--audibly pronounced--distaste for matrimony. Thus Nature,
willfully prodigal, lavishes her gifts.
"Speak for yourself," retorted Barbara with unusual spirit. "If the
flesh pots are ruining me they shall continue on their course of
destruction without let or hindrance until Wednesday next. I was born
poor, I have lived poor and I shall probably die poor, but I am not
above participating in the unearned increment when I get a heavenly
chance like this blessed week and if anybody says 'Votes for Women' to
me in the next five days he or she is likely to be surprised. I am
going to turn Lotus Eater for just this once. Don't disturb me." And
by way of demonstration Barb tucked one small foot up under her,
burrowed even deeper in the heart of the big chair and closed her eyes
with a sigh of complete satisfaction.
In the meanwhile Sylvia had absentmindedly plucked a scarlet spray from
the vine which was swaying in the September breeze just above her head
and her eyes were thoughtful. Unwittingly, the others had stirred
mental currents which lay always fairly near the surface with her,
suggested problems which had been asserting themselves of late rather
continuously. The generous-hearted little schoolgirl Sylvia who had
wanted to gather all the lonely people in the world into her Christmas
family, the puzzled Sylvia who even five years ago had been tormented by
the baffling question why she had so much and others so little was still
present in the Sylvia of almost two and twenty who considered herself
quite grown up and sophisticated and possessed a college diploma.
"I don't know that I am so viciously contented as you seem to think,
Suzanne," she said, "and I haven't the slightest intention of staying on
my hill top, as you mean it, Barb. But I can't just come down off it
and go tilting at windmills at random. I've got to know what my job is,
and I don't at all, at present--can't even guess at it. All the rest of
you girls had your futures neatly outlined and sub-topiced. Nearly
every one in the class knew, when she graduated last June, just what she
wanted to do or had to do next. Every one was going to teach or travel,
or 'slum' or study, or come out or get married. But poor me!" Sylvia
shrugged humorously, though her eyes were still thoughtful. "I haven't
any startling gifts or urgent duties. I haven't the necessity of
earning bread and butter, nor any special cause to follow. It is really
hopeless to be so--" She groped for a word then settled on
"unattached."
"There is more than one male who would be willing to remedy that defect,
I'm thinking," chuckled Suzanne wickedly. "How about the person who
disburses these delectable bonbons? Won't he do for a cause?"
"I am afraid not, the person being only Jack."
"Only Jack, whom the mammas all smile upon and the daughters don their
fetchingest gowns and their artfullest graces for--quite the most
eligible young man in the market. Sylvia, you are spoiled if Jack
Amidon isn't good enough for you!"
"I didn't say he wasn't good enough for me." Sylvia came over to the
table to provide herself with one of Jack's bonbons before seating
herself on the India stool beside the hammock facing out over the lawn.
"Jack is a dear, but I've known him nearly all my life, seems to me, and
even to oblige you it would be hard to get up any romantic thrills over
him."
"Too bad!" murmured Suzanne, regretfully. "He is so good looking. You
two would look lovely prancing down the aisle together a la Lohengrin."
"Suzanne!" Barb opened her eyes to expostulate. "You are so dreadfully
flippant. I don't believe anything is sacred to you."
Suzanne laughed. "Maybe not," she admitted. Then she sat up abruptly to
add, "I forgot my Future. I have that shrined and canonized and burn
incense to it every night. It is the only thing in the world or out of
it I take seriously. I-am-going-to-write-plays." She thumped a plump
green cushion vigorously, allotting a single thump to each staccato
syllable. "I may not succeed this year or next year or in five years,
but some day I shall arrive with both feet. You two shall come and sit
in my first-nighter box and it will be _some_ play!" She vaunted
slangily, imparting a last emphatic punch upon the acquiescent cushion
before she relinquished it.
"We'll be there," promised Sylvia. "I only wish I had convictions like
that about my Future. Mine is just a nebular hypothesis at present. How
about you, Barbie? Are you as certain about your Cause as Suzanne is
about her Career?"
Barb uncurled herself to testify. "Not a bit," she sighed. "You see,
my Cause is a sort of inherited mantle, and I am never sure whether it
fits or not, though I never have the slightest doubt as to the propriety
of my attempting to wear it even if I have to take tucks in it."
Barbara's eyes crinkled around the corners in a way they had when she
was very much in earnest. "You know it has been understood all along
that I was to be Aunt Jo's secretary and general right-hand man as soon
as I graduated. That was what she educated me for. Of course I believe
in suffrage and all that. When I hear Aunt Jo talk I just get thrills
all up and down my spinal column and feel as strong as Samson making
ready to topple over the pillars, as if I could do anything and
everything to give women a chance. But when I get away from Aunt Jo I
cool off disgracefully. That is what makes me think sometimes it isn't
the real fire I have but a sort of surface heat generated by Aunt Jo's
extraordinary personal magnetism and fearful and wonderful vocabulary.
It worries me dreadfully sometimes."
Barb's small, brown, child-like face puckered in perplexity and her blue
eyes blinked as if they beheld too much light.
"It needn't," commented Suzanne sagely. "I know you. By the time you
have been flinging out the banner six weeks you will be white hot for
the Cause, especially if you can somehow manage to martyrize yourself
into the bargain. You would have made a perfect early Christian. I can
see you smiling with glad Pollyannaism into the faces of the abashed
lions."
"Oh, Suzanne!"
Barbara had spent many minutes all told during the past four years of
her college life saying, "Oh, Suzanne!" in precisely that shocked,
protesting, helpless tone. The two were the best of friends, but in
code of conduct and mode of thought they were the meeting extremes.
"Aren't you going to prescribe for me now you have diagnosed my case?"
Sylvia came to the rescue.
"I did prescribe, but you wouldn't swallow Mr. Jack Amidon, sugar-coated
pill though he is. How about your tawny-maned, giant, ex-football-hero
M.D.? He isn't so good looking as Jack but--"
"I think he is much nicer looking," Barb interposed surprisingly, then
blushed and subsided.
"Oho!" laughed Suzanne. "Better keep your eye on our Barbie if you want
to keep Doctor Philip Lorrimer on your waiting list, Sylvia. Such
unprecedented enthusiasm! And she has beheld him but once at that. Oh,
the witchery of that Commencement moon! I inadvertently nearly promised
to marry Roger Minot myself in its specious glamour. I'll wager our
demure Barbie flirted with your six-foot medicine man when you rashly
left him on her hands on the outskirts of Paradise. 'Fess up, Barb.
Didn't you flirt a teeny weeny little flirt in the moonshine?"
"No, I didn't," denied Barbara, flushed and indignant. "But I did like
Doctor Lorrimer. He talked sense, and I was awfully interested in his
work in the free clinic."
"Sense! Shop! By moonlight! Ye gods!" mocked Suzanne. "Never mind,
Barbie. Your tactics were admirable. Listen to 'em. Keep on listening
to 'em. It's what the sex likes. It gets 'em every time."
"But I don't want to get 'em," protested Barbara earnestly.
Whereupon Suzanne giggled and tossed her victim a silver sheathed bonbon
by way of reconciliation. Then she returned to her charge upon Sylvia,
who had sat silent during the last sally, meditatively playing with the
spray of scarlet creeper in her lap.
"Sorry, Sylvia, belovedest. But I can't seem to think of a single
suitable job for you except matrimony. You are eminently fitted for
that."
Sylvia looked up with an expression half mirthful, half dissenting.
"Thanks. But at this juncture I don't happen to want to get married one
bit more than you do, which to judge from your protestations and your
treatment of poor Roger isn't much."
"Right you are. No such 'cribb'd, cabin'd and confined' business as
matrimony for this child. What was the advice old Bacon cites as to when
a man should marry? 'A young man not yet, an elder man, not at all.'
Read woman for man and you have my sentiments in a nutshell."
"Oh, Suzanne!" Thus the refrain from the big chair. But Sylvia only
laughed, knowing what Barbara seemed never to be able to learn, that
Suzanne rarely meant more than a half or at best a quarter of what she
said and thoroughly delighted in being iconoclastic, especially if the
idols made considerable noise smashing, as she would have put it
herself.
"Look at your neighbor, Mrs. Doctor Tom." Suzanne warmed her to her
subject. "She used to write for all the best magazines and travel and
live the broadest, freest, splendidest kind of life. How does she put in
her time now? Eternally making rompers for Marjory, trying to keep
Thomas Junior's face clean and his vocabulary expurgated, seeing that
the dinner is warm and the cook's temper cool when Doctor Tom is late to
meals, and so on and so on to the end of the chapter. Only there isn't
any end to the chapter. It goes on forever like Tennyson's stupid
brook. Bah! Excuse me!" And Suzanne's gesture betokened insuperable
scorn for the ways of the wifely.
"But Mrs. Daly looks as if she enjoyed doing all those things, and I
think it is lovely to have babies." There was a little wistful note in
Barb's voice as she made the statement.
"H-mp! Maybe so. But I say it is a shame for anybody who could write
the way she could to give it up. Don't you, Sylvia?"
"O dear!" groaned Sylvia. "Yes and no. Why do I always have to see both
sides of things? Lois _is_ happy. At least I think she is. You can't
always tell about Lois, she is so cool and serene and deep. Anyway, the
babies are lovely. But I can't help agreeing with you a little,
Suzanne. It does seem a pity."
"Of course it is a pity. And there is your Felicia. She is another
case in point. She gave up her work and a fortune to marry a man who
lived just long enough to leave her with a big heartache to carry round
inside her and two children to provide immediate bread and butter for.
You can say what you like. I say it was too much of a price."
"O, but, Suzanne, Marianna and Donald are such dears!" pleaded Barb.
"Of course they are dears. They are adorable. But you can't deny they
have kept her back. She is just beginning to be a real sculptor after
all these years. And now she is beginning appears this Kinnard person
to spoil it all."
Sylvia looked up a trifle startled.
"What do you mean, Suzanne? Mr. Kinnard isn't spoiling anything. He is
helping. Felicia hasn't a bit of faith in herself. She never would
have thought of entering into that mural relief competition if he hadn't
made her. And I know her designs are going to be splendid. Mr. Kinnard
says they are, and he knows."
Suzanne shrugged.
"I fear the Greeks bearing gifts. No man ever gave a woman something
for nothing since time began. You'll see."
"What shall I see?"
"You might have seen the way he looked at your Felicia yesterday
afternoon. You needn't stare. She is the loveliest thing imaginable;
and, anyway, widows always marry again. They can't seem to help it. It
is in the system."
"Oh, he looks at every woman. How can he help it with eyes like that?
He is much more likely to be wooing Hope. He has been sketching her all
summer and she makes lovely shy dryad eyes at him while he works. I
don't see how he can resist her myself, she is so deliciously pretty."
"'A violet by a mossy stone.' Mr. Kinnard isn't looking for violets.
You'll see, as I said before."
And in spite of her denial, Sylvia couldn't help wondering if there were
any truth in Suzanne's implications. She had accepted Stephen Kinnard
quite simply as Felicia had explained him, an old friend and fellow
artist of Paris days. He had been in Greendale nearly all summer doing
some sketches of Southern gardens for a magazine, and it had seemed
perfectly natural to Sylvia that he should come often up the hill to see
Mrs. Emory. They were both artists and had much in common beside their
old friendship. That any factors deeper than those which appeared on
the surface might be keeping Stephen Kinnard in Felicia's proximity had
not until the moment occurred to Sylvia. For a moment it flashed across
her mind how sadly Arden Hall would fare without Felicia who with the
dear "wonder babies" had come to help Sylvia keep Christmas nearly six
years ago and had remained in the old house ever since to its young
owner's infinite content and well being.
"I never thought of Felicia's marrying again," she said after a moment
of silence.
"Well, Stephen Kinnard has thought of it, if you haven't," pronounced
Suzanne. "By the way, he said a rather nice thing about you yesterday.
He said you had a genius for happiness."
Sylvia smiled a little as her gaze strayed past the white pillars, past
the giant magnolia-tree lifting its shining leaves to the sun, past the
pink and white glory of cosmos and the dial beyond, dedicating itself
discreetly to none but sunny hours; beyond still farther to the clear
turquoise space of sky visible behind it all.
"Being happy isn't much of an art when you can't help being it," she
said, her gaze and her thoughts coming back from their momentary
journey.
"Oh, but he didn't mean just your being happy," put in Barb in her
quick, serious way. "He meant your way of making other people happy.
It's true. I noticed it often in college. But it is truer than ever
here. Everybody in Arden Hall is happy. It is like Shakespeare's
forest. It makes you feel different--not just only happy but better,
being here."
"That is the house. It has been like that ever since I had my Christmas
family here. Of course, it is realty mostly Felicia. She is the
mainspring of it all. But we like to pretend there is something magic
about the house itself. You don't know how I love every stick and brick
of it. I have never had half enough of it. I have been in school so
much, I've only snatched a few vacations on the wing, as it were, and
even that only in the last few years since I captured Felicia. Ugh!
Nobody knows how I hated those dreadful holidays in hotels after Aunt
Nell died and I came to America. And nobody knows how I love this."
Her expansive gesture made "this" include house and lawn and magnolia
and pink and white bloom and sun dial and all the rest, perhaps even the
turquoise stretch of sky. "I've never had my fill of homeness," she
concluded.
"Funny!" mused Suzanne. "Now, I don't want to be at home at all.
Norton is such a stuffy, snippy, gossipy, little town, and I loathe
being officially the 'parson's daughter.' Sometimes it used to seem to
me I'd rather throw myself in the river than go to another prayer
meeting and hear Deacon Derby drone out minute instructions to the Lord
as to how he should manage his business. And being home isn't so sweet
and simple as it seems either. I adore my mother, but we don't see two
things alike in the wide world. She likes the chairs stiff and straight
against the walls, just in the same position year in, year out. I like
'em at casual experimental angles, different every day. That is typical
of our two viewpoints. She likes things eternally straight and the
same. I like 'em eternally on the bias and different. We can't either
of us help it. We are made that way. And we're both more or less
miserable, whether we give in or whether we don't. Mother and Dad are
regular darlings, both of them, but I don't mean to stay at home with
them a bit more than I can help. They don't need me. They are perfectly
used to doing without me and are really much happier sans Suzanne. I
just stir things up and they like to snuggle down in their nice
comfortable ruts. I've got to live in New York. I'd smother in Norton,
Pa."
"Roger doesn't seem to be smothering in Norton," Sylvia reminded her.
"Jack stopped over to see him last week and he said Roger was stirring
things up with a vengeance since he has been sitting among the city
fathers."
"Oh, Roger!" Suzanne shrugged Roger away as entirely negligible.
"Roger Minot would stir things up in a graveyard. He likes to live in a
small town. I don't. The biggest city in the world isn't one bit too
big for me. New York for mine. Better change your mind, Sylvia, and
come on, too. There will be plenty of room in my garret. More room than
anything else probably. Aunt Sarah's legacy has its limits, more's the
pity. But come on and share my crust."
"Maybe I will, temporarily. I've promised Jeanette Latham to visit her
next winter and I'll include you and Barb in my rounds if invited."
"Jeanette Latham? Mrs. Francis VanDycke Latham? _The_ Mrs. Latham who
figures in 'Vanity Fair' and the Sunday supplement? The only Jack's
sister? There will be some contrast between visiting her and visiting
me. She inhabits a Duplex on the Drive, doesn't she? One of the
utterly utter."
"That depends. Mr. Latham is awfully rich and old family, if that is
what you mean, and Jeanette does like to be at the extreme of
everything, but underneath all her dazzle and glitter she is really as
simple and genuine as Jack is. I like her, and she is Jack's favorite
sister."
"Which helps," murmured Suzanne. "See here, Sylvia, if you once get
into that high society labyrinth you'll never get out."
"Oh, yes I shall--unless the Minotaur gets me. I just want a bit of
Jeanette's kind of life to see what it is really like. In fact, I want
to try all kinds."
Sylvia smiled as she spoke, but she meant her last assertion for all
that. Hers was an eager, active, questing temperament. She was avid
for life in its entirety, with a healthy zest for experience whose sword
blades rather than poppy seeds appealed to her just now, as is natural
with youth. The college world from which she had been recently
emancipated, full and various and strenuous as it had often been, had
never fully satisfied her free, quick, young spirit. She had always the
memory of those early rich years in Paris with her aunt from which to
draw comparison. She had once complained to Felicia that college was
too much like the Lady of Shallott's tower whose occupants perceived
life in a polished mirror instead of in direct contact. She was already
frankly a little tired of "shadows," ready for the real thing, whatever
that was.
"Maybe I am glad I don't have to do any one thing," she continued. "All
through school you are so pushed and guarded and guided and instructed
you don't have half a chance to be yourself. I'm thankful for a
breathing space to find out who I really am."
"Why, Sylvia! How funny!" puzzled Barb. "Don't you know all about
yourself?"
"No, do you?"
Barbara shook her head with a faint sigh.
"Maybe not. Or, if I do, I don't let myself look at the real Barb for
fear--" She broke off and Suzanne intervened.
"Well, I know all there is to know about Suzanne Morrison. I have taken
considerable pains to get acquainted, in fact. It is great to know
precisely what you want and that you are going to get it sooner or
later." Thus the sublime arrogance of the young twenties.
"I wish I did!" said Sylvia quickly.
"Which?"
"Both," parried Sylvia.
But Barb, who was watching her, was aware of something in her friend's
face which she could not quite fathom. Was it possible there was
anything in the world Sylvia Arden wanted and could not have? It was a
startling thought to Barb, who was accustomed to considering Sylvia as
the Princess of all the Heart's Desires.
Just then the Japanese gong from within sent out its silver-tongued
invitation. With the alacrity of the healthily hungry and heart-free
the three friends rose, the conclave ended, consigning to temporary
oblivion Causes, Careers and all Concomitant Problems.
*CHAPTER II*
*REASONS AND WRAITHS*
Mrs. Emory laid down her sewing on the porch table and rose to greet
Stephen Kinnard, a tall, lean man with a rather angular but interesting
face, with hair slightly graying on the temples, and remarkably
beautiful eyes, slate-gray shot with tiny topaz colored flecks, eyes
which as Sylvia said "looked" at women. They looked now, which was
scarcely strange considering how beautiful Felicia Emory was at
thirty-three.
"Will you have tea?" inquired Felicia.
"Thanks, no." He shook his head with a humorous gesture. "I've taken
tea at the Oriole Inn--almost forcible feeding, in fact. It seems they
are serving a new kind of sandwich to-day and Sylvia waylaid me and
insisted on trying it on the dog so to speak. She and Suzanne and
Barbara and Martha and Hope all stood by to watch the effect. I was
never so nervous in my life. May I smoke to calm my spirit?"
Felicia nodded assent and sat down, resuming her sewing.
"I am glad to see you still survive," she said, as he lit his cigarette
and dropped into a near-by chair.
"Oh, yes, I still survive. It was really an excellent sandwich in its
way, though I should hate to have to pass an examination on its
contents. It was one of Sylvia's inventions it seems. Tell me, does
she have the whole Hill on her hands? First it's a garden party at
'Hester house,' Sylvia at the helm; then it is the Byrd sisters who have
to be petted or scolded or braced, or a patient of Doctor Tom's who
needs attention, or his babies that have to be story-told to, or
Marianna and Donald who have to have her assistance in a dramatic
performance of Lord Ullin's Daughter. I heard her shouting 'I'll
forgive your Highland Chief' yesterday while the kids eloped in the
hammock, amidst high billows, I judge from the way the boat was rocking.
To-day it is the Oriole Inn sandwich. She is a most remarkable young
person, this Sylvia of yours, with a most insatiable energy."
"She is, indeed," agreed Felicia heartily. "The Hill can hardly get
along without Sylvia. We all mope and get selfish and lazy, what she
calls 'rutty' when she is away from it. I am so glad she is home for
keeps now. The Hill is never quite the same without her."
"But she won't stay on it forever," warned Stephen Kinnard. "She is a
live wire--that young lady. She isn't going to be content to settle
down on even so lovely a hill as hers. Also she is more than likely to
get married."
"I suppose so," sighed Felicia.
"What a lugubrious tone to vouchsafe to the holy state!" he teased.
"It isn't the holy state in itself. It is Sylvia. I hate to have her
get grown up and married and settled down. I'd like to keep things just
as they are for awhile. The dread of changes seems to grow on me as I
get old."
Felicia smiled as she made the statement but there was genuine feeling
behind it.
"Would you dread change for yourself?"
"For myself? I don't know. I wasn't thinking especially about myself."
"Do you ever?"
"Not oftener than is agreeable. I am getting to be a very placid,
settled sort of person. That is the comfort of being in the thirties.
You don't expect so much of life. Now, ten years ago if I had been
thinking of submitting designs for a competition I should have been
frightfully excited. Now, I think I would almost rather not win, which
is fortunate considering how little chance there is of my doing so."
"There is all the chance in the world," objected Stephen. "You need a
little of the virus of vanity instilled into you. Felicia, do you
remember back there in Paris when old Regnier used to insist you had
more talent than any man in his class?"
Felicia tranquilly snipped off her thread and admitted that she
remembered.
"And do you remember how he raved when you told him you were going to
marry Syd?"
Felicia nodded. She remembered that, too; remembered also, though she
did not say so, how she had smiled at the old master's ravings, sure
that love would prove no hindrance to her art, sure that she and Sydney
would work and achieve fame together. She had not dreaded changes in
those days. She had welcomed them, taken risks blithely, unafraid. And
there had been risks. Her aunt had raved also, to more purpose than the
Master, and in a moment of rage had changed her will, cutting off from
inheritance the willful girl who chose to reject the French count her
judicious relative had selected for her and insisted on marrying instead
a penniless artist. The loss of her inheritance had seemed to Felicia
at the time a trifle light as air, quite as irrelevant indeed as the
Master's gloomy prediction as to the eternal incompatibility of art and
matrimony. All these things she had thrown into the scales with love in
the opposite balance and love had weighed immeasurably heaviest.
There had followed a few years of idyllic happiness. Though with the
coming of the babies the art she loved had been temporarily suspended;
both she and her husband promised themselves eagerly that it was only a
suspension, that she would go back to it again as soon as Marianna and
Brother were just a little older. But before Marianna and Brother were
much older Felicia was left alone with a "big heartache to carry round
inside her and two children to provide immediate bread and butter for,"
as Suzanne had put it. And so the old dreams had been thrust out of
sight, and the young woman whom the Master pronounced to have possessed
more talent than twenty talented young men, fell to earning a living for
herself and her little folk by painting place cards and Christmas
greetings and calendars and such like small ilk. All this drifted in
retrospect through Felicia Emory's mind as she bent over her sewing, and
something in the droop of her mouth touched Stephen as he perceived it.
Impulsively he threw away his cigarette and leaned forward letting his
hand touch hers.
"Felicia, forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt you."
"You didn't. It just came back to me for a moment how fearfully young
and happy and ignorant I was in those days. But with all the wisdom
I've garnered since, if I had it to do over again, I suppose I should
travel precisely the same road. Isn't it queer, Stephen? Don't you
feel that way about the past, too?"
"No, my road was too devilish rough. I'd like it different."
Felicia looked up, surprised both at his words and the unusual passion
in his voice.
"Do you suppose I have ever forgotten I didn't get what I wanted?
Felicia, I loved you before Syd ever saw you."
"I know. I'm sorry. I was always sorry. You know that, Stephen."
"You needn't be. Loving you made a man of me, though it did make the
road rough. Things had come my way rather too easily up to that time.
Syd was the better man. I always owned that."
"You were fine, Stephen. I've never forgotten how fine. And Sydney
cared more for you than for any one else in the world--barring us." She
smiled a little and her eyes strayed out to the magnolia tree beneath
whose generous shade Marianna and Donald were laboriously engaged in the
construction of a kite with much chatter and argument.
"Felicia."
"Yes?"
"Are you so afraid of change you wouldn't risk beginning over
again--with me?"
Felicia's sewing dropped in her lap and her blue eyes opened wide with
surprise and consternation as she looked up to meet his dark, eager
eyes.
"Stephen!"
"Well? Is it so impossible to conceive? Haven't you guessed I was going
to ask it sooner or later?"
"No. Oh, Stephen, I wish you hadn't."
"Why? I don't expect the same kind of love you gave Syd. You couldn't
give it, of course. That is past. But you are too young to have life
stop altogether for you--too young and too lovely. Other men will ask it
if I don't, and I--well, I want to get in ahead." He laughed boyishly,
but his eyes, which were grave enough, never left her face. "Is there
any reason you couldn't say yes?" he asked.
"I am afraid there are many. One of them--rather two of them--are out
under the tree at present."
His gaze followed her gesture.
"Are they really a reason? I love the kiddies and they like me. Surely
it would be no injustice nor detriment to them. Why should it?"
"Not to them--rather to you--to any man I married. They are a very
piece of me. They are me. If there ever came to be a decision between
them and--well, call the man you--I should decide for them. Is that
fair to you? Would you risk it?"
"Willingly. Why should there be any decision or division? What do you
think I am? If I marry you I marry them too. I am crazy over children.
I've always wanted them."
"Exactly," said Felicia quietly. "That would be part of the injustice
to you. I don't want children. Marianna and Donald are enough."
"So they would be for me. Felicia, can't you understand, I want nothing
except what you want--what will make you happy? Is there any other
reason?"
"Yes, she is coming up the Hill now."
He turned quickly and saw Sylvia, with her friends on either side, just
going up the path which led to the door of the Byrd sisters preparatory
to an afternoon call.
"What nonsense!" He turned back to Felicia to protest. "Sylvia would
be the last to stand in the way of your happiness."
"Oh, I know that. But listen, Stephen. You accused me of not
understanding a moment ago. Now it is you who do not understand. Do you
know what Sylvia has been to me all these years? No, you couldn't
possibly know. No man could. Six years ago I was weary almost unto
death, and discouraged with a weight of hopelessness which was beginning
to make even the children seem a burden. That Christmas was the
blackest time of all the months since Sydney went. I tell you honestly
it didn't seem as if I could go on with it all. I was too near the
breaking point. And then straight out of the delightful good fairyland
where she lives came Sylvia begging me to be her Christmas sister and
bring the babies to round out her magic Christmas circle. I believe it
was Sylvia's smile and Sylvia's pleading eyes that began to heal the
hurt in me then and there. I have had lonely moments since, of course,
and some black ones, too, but they have never been so bad since that
Christmas. Do you wonder that next to my own children I care more for
Sylvia and her happiness than for anything else in the world?"
Stephen shook his head soberly, trying his best to understand since she
desired it.
"After the Christmas family scattered I came to be what Sylvia calls her
homekeeper and that I have been for over five years now. You can see a
little what it has meant to me to have a home like Arden Hall for the
children to grow up in instead of a cramped city apartment with no
outdoors except public parks to play in. It has made all the difference
in the world to them and to me, body, mind and soul. I couldn't have
been half a mother to them the way I was working and living. And all of
this we owe to Sylvia."
"But you have rendered good measure. You have given her a home no less
than she has given you one. It has been a fair exchange."
"I know. It has meant almost as much to Sylvia as it has to me. It has
given us both what we wanted most. I don't pretend it hasn't been give
and take. It has. But this one year is the one of all the six since
I've known Sylvia that she needs me most. I wouldn't fail her now for
anything."
"And they say women have no sex loyalty," muttered Stephen Kinnard.
"See here, Felicia, do you realize you have as good as accepted me?"
"Accepted you! I have been refusing you with reasons for fifteen
minutes." Felicia's serene voice was a bit ruffled and there was a
flush in her cheeks.
"You've been giving reasons, I grant you, but not refusal. Look at me,
Felicia. If there weren't any Marianna and Donald and Sylvia in the
world wouldn't you say this minute, 'Stephen, I'll marry you just as
soon as you can get the license'? No quibble now. Honest."
Felicia laughed softly and her flush deepened.
"If there weren't any Marianna and Donald and Sylvia in the world I
should be so desperately lonesome I should tell the first man that asked
me I would marry him as soon as he could get the license, but seeing
that there are Marianna and Donald and Sylvia, not only in the world but
on this very Hill, I am not in the least lonesome and quite satisfied
with my mothering-sistering job, thank you."
"Then it is really no?"
The mirth died out of her eyes at the gravity of his tone.
"Yes, Stephen. I am sorry, but it is really no. Aside from Sylvia and
the children there would always be Sydney. You are too fine to be a
second best, Stephen, dear. Do go and find somebody who is fresher and
younger and less--tired than I am."
At her words there rose to both their minds a vision of Hope Williams'
dainty, wild rose beauty and wistful "dryad" eyes. Stephen had been
sketching her only that morning in the Oriole Inn garden and every line
of her exquisite, fragile, flower-like face and lithe, graceful young
body was in his head still. And Felicia had more than once surprised an
unforgettable expression in Hope's eyes when the artist had come
suddenly into the girl's presence. Hope was young, younger than Sylvia,
and Stephen Kinnard was forty. But he was of the eternally young type
of man, brimming over with that inexplicable, irresistible thing we call
charm, and his years abroad had stamped him with a picturesque, foreign
quality which was sure to appeal to the romantic fancy of youth. One
ardent gaze from those strange, gold-flecked eyes of his had no doubt
been enough to set many a maid dreaming ere this, and he had been kind
to Hope, perhaps more than kind for all Felicia knew.
But already the vision of Hope had vanished from Stephen's mind. He saw
only the mature grace and loveliness of the woman who had long ago been
the one fixed star of his errant youth and to whom he now brought the
homage of ripened manhood.
"I don't want anybody in the smallest particular different from
yourself, sweet Lady Love. Don't worry though," as he saw her troubled
eyes. "I am not going to pester you. I shall take myself off to-morrow
but I shall come back and some day I shall surprise you in a lonely hour
and you will say, 'Stephen, do hurry and get the license.'"
Seeing his whimsical, reassuring smile, Felicia smiled back, half
relieved, and indeed not quite knowing how much of it all had been in
earnest; glad, at all events, to have him slip back so easily into the
familiar channels of friendliness.
And just then the girls, having finished their call, came gayly
chattering up the walk, demanding of Stephen whether he had suffered any
ill effects from the experimental sandwich he had so manfully
encountered. And amidst the general confusion of talk and laughter
Stephen rose to take his departure, giving no hint of finality about his
leave taking, except a slightly lengthened clasp of Felicia's hand and a
steady gaze into her blue eyes. Consequently the girls, at least, were
considerably surprised the next day to receive three boxes of sweet peas
each with Stephen Kinnard's card, rose pink for Suzanne, shell pink for
Barb, delicate lavendar for Sylvia. Sylvia's box also contained a
charming little note thanking the girl for her summer's hospitality and
regretting that the writer was called out of town without opportunity
for formal farewells. For Felicia had come violets, but no word at all,
not even a card.
"H-m-m," murmured the astute Suzanne, when the girls were alone, "Called
out of town, indeed! Needn't tell me. Your Felicia didn't have such a
becoming extra bloom yesterday for nothing. You are safe for the
present, Sylvia. She evidently dismissed him."
Down the Hill, at the Oriole Inn, Hope and Martha Williams reigned in
the absence of the young proprietor who since her grandmother's death
had been traveling in Europe with the Armstrongs, her sister Constance
and her husband, Sylvia's erstwhile gardener. And to the Oriole Inn
also came flowers, dainty, half-open, pink rosebuds nestled in
maidenhair fern. Came also a brotherly affectionate note of thanks and
adieu from the artist.
"The sketches are bound to be a success," he wrote, "for you are the
very spirit of Southern gardens, the veriest rose of them all." So he
had put it, poet fashion, and Hope, with fluttering pink and white in
her cheeks, ran off to enjoy her treasures in happy solitude, leaving
her sister Martha stolidly measuring lengths for the new dining-room
curtains. No one had ever sent roses to Martha in all her life. Nor
had any one ever written poet lines about her or to her. She was not
that kind, as she would herself have explained. But it was not that
that brought a wry twist to her lips and a worried look to her eyes as
she bent over her work.
"Why couldn't he a been a little meaner to her?" she demanded of the
curtains. "'Twould have been a whole lot kinder than being kind."
In which theory she unconsciously paraphrased the words of a person she
had never heard of, another perturbed guardian of another flower-like
maid, the Lily Maid of Astolat. Of Launcelots and Elaines there are a
plenty in this somewhat uneconomical world.
*CHAPTER III*
*TWENTY-TWO*
"Please, Felicia. Look at me. Am I all right?"
Mrs. Emory turned from her mirror before which she had been adjusting a
last hairpin in her blond hair and smiled at the radiant vision which
hovered on her threshold. But before she had time to render verdict the
vision ceased to be stationary and became before her eyes a vivid,
ecstatic flash and whirl of white chiffon and silver.
"Bless us, child!" laughed Felicia. "You are as bad as Marianna. How
can I tell anything about you when you are spinning like a Dervish? You
look as if you might float out the window any minute and join the moon
sprites."
Sylvia laughed, too, and came to a halt, though one silver slipper
paused tip toe as if it scorned prosaic levels and held itself ready for
further airy revolutions.
"And leave my birthday party! Not much! The moon sprites shan't get me
to-night. Honest, Felicia, I just can't keep still. I'm too alive."
The chiffons and silver began to shimmer and quiver again in testimony
and Felicia smiled understandingly. But even as she smiled she felt a
sharp little pang--the pang of chastened maturity for exuberant youth.
A vagrant bit of verse flashed through her mind.
"Pity that ever the jubilant springs should fail at their flow
And that youth so utterly knowing it not should one day know."
Yes, that was the pity. Here was Sylvia Arden, glad, and young, and
free, smiling into the future with fearless eyes, challenging
experience. Must she too, one day know? At any rate, the hour of too
much knowing was as yet afar off. At twenty-two Sylvia was still very
close to the jubilant springs. But even as she reached this comforting
conclusion Felicia saw the girl's eyes grow sober.
"Felicia, sometimes I think it's a dreadful thing to grow up. Life is
so fearfully complex somehow. All sorts of questions jump out and 'Boo'
at you from behind every tree."
"What kind of questions?"
"Oh, all kinds!" Sylvia dropped down on the low window seat, like a
bird suddenly alighting, and clasped her hands around her knees in
reckless disregard of her billowing chiffons. "I'm a little afflicted
with socialism and that is a sad disease for a person who has as much
money as I have. But that isn't all. I am so at sea about so many
things, and there are so many strings pulling in all directions.
Suzanne thinks New York is the only place in the world to really live in
and she wants me to come and live with her and study or do something.
She doesn't think it matters much what, so long as I breathe New York,
and Barb is nearly as bad. They are both full of up-to-date notions and
they think I'm just going to slip behind if I stay here and maybe I
shall. I can see pretty easily how I could. Everybody here expects me
to do the regular coming out performance, teas and dinners and balls and
the rest, with maybe a little discreet charity work thrown in, and
possibly a paper on art or ethics for the literary club. You know what
Greendale is. The Gordons want me to go to Japan with them and Hilda
wants me to join her in Berlin, or did before the war. Goodness knows
where she is now. I haven't heard since July. And--well, there are
other things."
Felicia quite understood that Jack Amidon might possibly be another
string pulling the girl. It was no secret from the Hill, and certainly
not from the wise-eyed "Big Sister," that that devoted, persistent and
"magerful" young man had every intention of storming Sylvia's hill top
and carrying off its princess if such a feat were humanly possible.
"And you don't want to do any of these things?"
Sylvia smiled dubiously.
"Oh, yes, a little of me wants to do all those things. But the most of
me wants to stay right here at Arden Hall and do nothing particular.
I'd like a kind of year o' grace I think. I don't seem to have any
especial ambitions nor desires except to learn to live as broad and deep
and quick as I can." She shifted her position slightly and looked out
into the night where her beloved rose garden lay in magical moonlight
and shadow and a faint sigh escaped her, born of the very beauty,
poignant almost as pain, so quick was her response to it. Suddenly she
turned back and her eyes smiled at Felicia.
"Life's funny, isn't it?" she said, springing up. "Felicia, what ever in
the world should I do without you?" She eyed a little sternly the bunch
of violets Felicia was wearing, a fresh bunch which had arrived that
day. "Felicia, Mr. Kinnard isn't--you aren't--?"
Felicia laughed.
"Your observations lack a certain finished coherence but I assure you I
am not, nor is he--at least, not seriously."
"I'm so glad!" sighed Sylvia. "I know I'm a pig but I should simply
hate Stephen Kinnard if I thought he were going to carry you off, and I
should hate to hate him he is so exceedingly nice. I wish he could have
stayed for the party to-night. Oh me! We ought to be downstairs this
blessed minute. _Am_ I all right, Felicia? You never did tell me."
And Sylvia whirled around to the mirror for a last critical survey.
Felicia, whose eyes also sought the reflected figure in the glass,
thought she had never seen the girl lovelier than she was to-night in
all her shimmering bravery of white and silver. But there was always
something more than mere prettiness about Sylvia, something which seemed
to shine from within out. She was so exquisitely alive like the fire in
the heart of an opal or a jet of pure flame.
"Aren't you coming, Syl?" Suzanne's voice called from the hall as she
knocked and entered almost simultaneously, followed by Barbara.
"'The feast is set,
The guests are met.
May'st hear the merry din.'"
she chanted gayly, looking more impishly charming even than usual in her
beruffled corn yellow taffeta, which set off her sparkling brunette
beauty to perfection. "Do come down quick and get the hand shaking over
so we can begin to dance. It is a shame to waste a moment of that
heavenly music. And here's Barb just dying to get to cracking the hearts
of the Greendale swains. Look at her. Behold my handiwork. She even
let me apply the faintest soupcon of Nature's sweet reenforcer. Madame
Delphine's Parisian Bloom. Isn't she adorable? Barbie, my child,
revolve for the ladies."
"Oh, Suzanne!" The roses in Barb's cheeks needed no further
reenforcement at the moment. "Do please rub it off. It's dreadful.
Does it show, Sylvia? She would do it."
"Nothing shows except that you're the cunningest mite I ever laid eyes
on," approved Sylvia. "Felicia, do look at her. Doesn't she look
precisely like one of Marianna's dolls? In that darling white baby
dress and blue sash to match her eyes, would you ever suspect her of
being a Summa cum Laude and a frightfully new woman?"
"You all look new enough when it comes to that," laughed Felicia. "You
haven't a notion how young you really are. Now, shoo, every one of you.
I'll follow as soon as I have rounded up Donald and Marianna."
It was a rather heterogeneous assembly which met at the Hall that night,
as Sylvia's parties were apt to be. The guests ranged from "Grandpa
McIntosh," getting to be rather an old gentleman these days but still
hale and a little crusty as became a good Scotchman, down to little Mary
Lane, the youngest, shyest member of the "Hester house" family which
continued to hold its hospitable doors open to those who needed a home
"with some one to care" as Sylvia had stipulated from the beginning.
Marianna, still fairy-like, in spite of her eleven-year-old dignity,
flitted happily among the guests feeling delightfully grown up and
important, but Donald, younger and shyer, boyishly conscious of his
hands and feet, slipped into unobtrusive corners save for the rare
moments when he could squeeze into an empty space beside his mother.
Of course the Hill was all there, Miss Priscilla, and Miss Rosalie and
Julietta feasted their eyes delightedly on Sylvia, telling every one who
would listen what a very picture of her Aunt Eleanor Arden the child
was, rapturously reminiscent of other days and other parties when they,
too, like Arden Hall were younger than at present, and Doctor Tom and
Lois were there also, rallying each other on being such old fogies that
a party was an event and the new dances utterly beyond their ken.