Sylvia found less easy than the others to place. This was an artist,
Charlton Haynes by name, a newcomer in the city who had been for some
time engaged in "doing" Jeanette's portrait. Wherever Jeanette was, the
young portrait painter appeared to be also by some magic process. The
two had little to say to each other in public but Sylvia had noticed
more than once how the painter's rather gloomy face lit up when Jeanette
approached, giving an effect much like a sudden sunshine after a passing
cloud. More than once, too, Sylvia had seen a flash of some quick,
wordless communication pass between them. They spent long hours
together mornings in the great ball-room where he worked in the north
light. When Sylvia was with them, as she sometimes was, the artist was
rather silent and absorbed in his work and Sylvia thought if he were
always so quiet he must be rather dull company.
One morning she suffered an abrupt enlightenment as to the relations
between her hostess and the artist. Jeanette had been detained and had
asked Sylvia to go to the ballroom and explain to Mr. Haynes that she
would be with him as soon as possible. As Sylvia opened the door he had
turned with outstretched arms and an impulsive "Sweetheart, you are
dreadfully late." And then his hands had fallen and a shamed, hang-dog,
caught-in-the-act expression banished the eager look of expectant joy on
his face as he met Sylvia's eyes and saw her quick flush.
He shrugged and tried to make the best of the situation by a hasty "Beg
pardon, Miss Sylvia. I didn't see it was you."
"So I judged," said Sylvia and delivered her message gravely and
departed. She wondered if this was what Jack had guessed and if that
was why he had wanted her to go to Jeanette. Had he thought she could
save her? Poor Jeanette! Could any one save her but herself?
Two hours later Jeanette came to Sylvia, writing letters in her own room
at the little teakwood desk.
"Sylvia."
"Yes?" Sylvia had turned, wondering what Jeanette would say, wondering
almost more what she herself was going to say.
"Charlton says he gave himself away awhile ago, did he?"
"Rather."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean you to know for fear it might bother you.
Otherwise, of course, I don't mind your knowing. We have been in love
for some time. There doesn't seem to be anything to do about it at
present."
Jeanette's tone was impersonal. She might as easily have been
discussing the relation between the moon and the tides as the relation
between herself and Charlton Haynes. The facts existed. That was all
apparently. At least all Jeanette cared to admit.
"Couldn't he go away?" asked Sylvia, equally matter of fact.
"He could, but it would make talk if he went before the portrait was
done. Besides, I don't want him to go. He offered to. It is I who am
keeping him. I hope you are not too much shocked, Sylvia."
"I'm not shocked at all, but I am sorry. Does Jack know?"
"Jack!" For the first time, Jeanette showed a quaver of emotion in her
voice. "Jack! Good gracious, no! Why should he? I wouldn't have Jack
know for anything. What made you ask that?"
"Jack tried to warn me something about you before I came. He seemed to
think you needed me."
And suddenly Jeanette's calm broke. She flung herself face down among
the silken cushions of the couch. Sylvia came and knelt beside her
putting both arms around her. In a moment Jeanette sat up, flushed but
tearless. Sylvia slipped back upon the floor, her hands clasped around
her knees, her eyes pitiful.
"I do need you. I need somebody. Sylvia, listen to me. It is a
dreadful thing for a girl to marry if she isn't in love. Fate is sure
to strike back at her sooner or later. That is what happened to me. I
married Francis because I thought he could give me the things I
wanted--the things I thought I wanted. And he has, but it isn't what I
really wanted at all. I am just beginning to understand what I do
want--what life might mean, if one deserved to have it mean anything. I
hate this house and the servants and the hideous kind of existence we
live--the kind I elected to live. It wasn't Francis' choice. It was
mine. But I hate it all now. I'd like to leave it this minute. But I
can't. I'm bound, hand and foot, by conventions and fears and
selfishness. I couldn't live now without luxury, I've had it so long.
I couldn't stand poverty or shame or sacrifice or honesty of any kind.
I'm a sham. I love Charlton. But I shan't try to get a divorce and I
shan't run off with him because I'm not big enough. I'm just big enough
to squirm and suffer and hate myself for being such a pitiful little
coward. I'm not even big enough to send him away. I'm not worth his
wrecking his life and ideals for, but I don't tell him that. I tell him
I love him and that is enough to keep him here like a lap dog. Pah! He
isn't very big either or he would make me go with him or leave me
outright."
"But, Jeanette, it is all such a tangle. If you really care, why don't
you go to Francis and tell him the truth? Surely nothing can be so bad
as going on like this."
"You don't know what you are talking about, Sylvia. I'd die before I
would go to Francis and I'd die if he found out, but I'm going on
risking everything until something happens. I don't know what."
And in the face of such reasoning or non-reasoning, Sylvia had no answer
to make. She was beginning to hate the city heartily. It seemed to be
weaving nothing but misery for everybody. Was there any happiness in
it? Surely she herself had found none. She desired more than anything
else in the world to run away from it all, to get back to Felicia and,
yes, to Jack. They two seemed the only refuge in a heaving sea of
trouble.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED*
It seemed as if Sylvia's cup of disenchantment were destined to brim
over before the city was done with her. She tried to view Jeanette's
affair with the portrait painter with an open mind and tolerant
attitude. She saw that there was no real evil in it as yet--probably
never would be for Jeanette was likely to "play safe" having much at
stake. But somehow it all disheartened the younger girl. She thought
she could have forgiven both the transgressors more easily if they had
dared a little more, or cared a little more for each other and less for
themselves. If they had eloped she would have been shocked and troubled
but she would have understood their conduct. It was the amazing bad
taste and effrontery of carrying on so half-hearted a liaison in Francis
Latham's own house and under his very eyes which was to Sylvia the least
excusable phase of the matter. Deceit of any sort was obnoxious to her
straightforward soul. She herself could never have kept on living a
daily lie such as Jeanette was living. Something would have snapped.
And somehow Sylvia found herself seeing things all around her blacker,
no doubt, than they were, because of her too much recently acquired
knowledge, and often she remembered the explorer's terse verdict that
these people were "punk." It was all very disillusioning and made one
sick at heart.
But Sylvia had other cause to feel that happiness was eluding her these
days in early January. The wound to her pride that Phil Lorrimer had
dealt, though seared over, was by no means healed. She tried to be
perfectly fair and sane, to admit that if Jeanette's supposition were
correct, Barb would doubtless make Phil a better wife than she herself
would have done, to acknowledge that it was entirely natural and
appropriate that Phil and Barb should have learned to care for each
other during the intimate months past when she herself had deliberately
neglected Phil. Even so, Phil need not have looked at her as he had
that night on Jeanette's doorstep. He needn't have let her all but
propose to him. That was the deepest rankling thorn of all. She had
almost offered herself to him on Jeanette's threshold. If he had really
cared as his eyes had said wouldn't he have understood what she was
trying to tell him that the money was nothing at all, that it didn't
matter in the least, that there was, indeed, nothing to be afraid of, as
she had twice taken the pains to reassure him?
If he had really cared would he not have found means to see her during
her weeks with Jeanette in spite of her mantle of invisibility? It was
all too evident that he didn't care, that it was Barb who could give him
what he wanted, or rather let him give everything as his pride demanded.
Sylvia knew perfectly well that she had wanted Phil Lorrimer to ask her
to marry him, knew too, that she had meant to say yes if he did ask her,
but she also knew that though her pride was offended, her heart was far
from being broken. Indeed, love in its entirety, in its heights and
depths, its glory and its mortal agony, its madness and its abiding joy,
she had scarcely as yet conceived.
She was still questing experience, tasting life, and even the bitter
flavor of this last new-gained knowledge was interesting because
bitterness was new to Sylvia Arden. Youth drinks its gall and wormwood
with almost as supreme satisfaction as it does its nectar and ambrosia.
Not that Sylvia understood all this or consciously analyzed her mental
processes. She did nothing of the sort. She only knew she had been
hurt, and found it a rather fascinating game to hide the hurt from
herself and the rest of the world.
Perhaps her zest for the hiding game made her play a little more
recklessly with the men who dogged her footsteps than was entirely wise
or kind. Certainly it made her eyes a little starrier, her cheeks a
little deeper carmine, her laugh a little more tantalizing. Men saw and
smiled and said the little Maryland "Deb" was a queen, a beauty, and a
wit as well as an heiress, an unbelievably lucky combination.
"Knows how to hold her own too," they agreed. "She'll lead you on to the
limit and then when you think you have her--she isn't there. Got the
elusive game to perfection, wherever she learned it."
But the last night of her stay in the city Sylvia came near playing her
game an inch too far. There had been a theater party and supper
afterward at the Astor and when at last they started for home she
chanced to get separated from Jeanette who, supposing her guest was with
her husband, had gone on in another car.
"Why!" exclaimed Sylvia, from the curbing. "I do believe they have all
deserted me. There goes Jeanette, and Francis went with the Homers."
"Well, here am I!" challenged Porter Robinson, at her elbow. Porter
Robinson was the most daring and insistent of all the swarmers about the
most popular new rose. "Whither thou goest I will go! Here, Cabby,"
and his uplifted finger summoned a taxicab in which he and Sylvia were
in a moment ensconced.
It was a wonderful night. Brilliant stars studded the heavens and the
trees in the park were laden with a fleecy burden of new-fallen snow.
The little girl still in Sylvia who loved snow storms and had too little
of them in Maryland cried out in ecstasy at the sight.
"Oh-h! Couldn't we drive in there a little and see it? It's so lovely
after the lights and the crowd--like a different world!"
Naturally Porter Robinson had no objections to driving at midnight in a
closed cab through the park with the prettiest, liveliest, most piquant
girl he had met in many a season.
But a half hour later Sylvia flashed into the library at the Lathams
with wrath and shame in her heart and ran square into Jack standing with
his back to the fireplace.
"Ugh! I hate men," she greeted him stormily.
"You do! What's up? Where is Jeanette? You look like a Valkyr or an
avenging fury."
"I don't know where Jeanette is. Porter Robinson brought me home."
"Oh," comprehended Jack. "So that is the rumpus. Didn't Porter behave
like a perfect gentleman?"
"He did not." Sylvia threw off her cloak with a wrathful gesture,
leaving her slim, rounded young loveliness, clad in the white tulle and
gold "dream," suddenly revealed to Jack's eyes. "He tried to kiss me,
if you must know."
"And what did you expect at this time of night when you had shed your
lawful chaperones?" inquired Jack blandly. "Especially after you had
been flirting like the mischief with him all the evening!"
Sylvia slipped into a chair and stared up at Jack. "How did you know?"
she asked with astonished meekness.
Jack laughed.
"Didn't. I just guessed. So you did flirt with him like the mischief?"
"I--shouldn't wonder," admitted Sylvia with a grimace. "He's a beast,
but then maybe I was a little to blame. I suppose I shouldn't have
asked him to take me riding in the park at this time of night."
"Possibly not," agreed Jack.
"You wouldn't have taken advantage of a situation like that, Jack. You
know you wouldn't."
"H-m-m?" interrogated Jack dubiously. "That so? If you looked one half
as pretty in the cab as you do this minute, I'm morally or immorally
certain I should not only have tried to kiss you but have succeeded."
"Jack!"
"Like this!" And suddenly, to Sylvia's utter surprise, he had stooped
and kissed her full on one crimson, excited cheek. "Game's up,
sweetheart. My turn. You've had your fling, and I guess from all
Jeanette writes it has been a pretty lively one. Honest Injun, Sylvia,
aren't you sick of it all, ready to try it out on a different line with
me? No, don't speak just yet. I'm not quite through. I promised I
would get busy and show you I could hold down a man's job if necessary.
Well, I've done it. I'm not boasting, but you can ask Dad if I haven't
made good and kept my promise to the letter. That is all on that
subject. Secondly, I don't pretend to be a saint, but thanks to you and
the Christmas Family setting me straight some years ago I'm a fairly
decent specimen as men go. I believe I'd show up moderately well by
comparison with the Porter Robinsons and the rest. That is all of that.
Thirdly, I love you. There isn't any other girl, never has been, and,
so far as I can see, never will be. Now--did you mind very much having
me kiss you?"
Sylvia's eyes were demurely downcast, her cheeks flushed, but a quiver
of a smile appeared around the corners of her mouth.
"Not much. I rather think I--I liked it--a little," she admitted.
That was enough for Jack, and five minutes later when Jeanette came in
she found him on the arm of Sylvia's chair, her tulle and gold rather
crushed and mussed but with her eyes looking very starry.
He sprang up with alacrity as his sister entered and went to give her a
brotherly kiss.
"'Lo, Jeannie. Sylvia and I have just got engaged. Hope you don't
mind?"
Jeanette shot a straight, questioning, dubious look at Sylvia then
remarked she was delighted, of course, and if they would excuse her she
would go to bed as she was very tired. Sylvia had vaguely realized at
the moment that Jeanette was white, but it was not until the next day
that she understood. Charlton Haynes had left suddenly for California on
the midnight train and he and Jeanette had apparently parted for all
time. Of what lay behind Sylvia could not even surmise and Jeanette
kept her own counsel. At any rate, Sylvia was able to perceive that
under the circumstances the other woman had little enthusiasm left over
for the love affairs of even her sole and beloved brother.
And that next afternoon Sylvia and Jack went South together, and the
Minotaur did not get Sylvia after all. But whether she had not stepped
blithely into a deeper labyrinth than the one she had evaded was another
question.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*BARB DIAGNOSES*
The evening that culminated in Sylvia's engagement to Jack, Phil had
spent with Barbara. Barb had discovered that it was neither impossible
nor very difficult to slip back into the beaten way of friendship with
the young doctor, especially as he himself had never left that safe and
sane path and had no faintest conception of the mad little, sad little
detour the girl had accomplished beneath his very eyes. Barb was a very
wise and brave little lady and having realized that she had been
reaching for the moon withdrew her hand and made the most she could out
of every day sunbeams. Phil never guessed that his occasional visits to
Miss Murray's apartment were rather bittersweet occasions to Barb, nor
did he notice that she was quieter, graver, not quite so responsive as
he had hitherto found her. As a matter of fact, Phil wasn't seeing much
of anything these days except his own stolidly endured misery. It had
been bad enough to know Sylvia was in Greendale where he couldn't see
her at all, but to know she was within easy reach and yet farther from
him to all intents and purposes than if an ocean or a desert separated
them was incomparably worse.
He hated Jeanette Latham's kind of life, hated to have Sylvia's fresh
radiance tarnished by its contact, hated to think of her, night after
night, in the society, even in the arms of the Porter Robinsons of
Jeanette's circle, jealous of it all because it kept Sylvia from him,
hurt that she would give up none of her gayeties for his sake, blindly
conscious that he had offended her, though only half guessing how and to
what extent.
One night he had been at the opera, way up in the upper tiers, as was
his custom, and between the acts he had wandered about in the galleries
and seen Sylvia in a box below, surrounded by a swarm of devoted male
attendants, and he had watched her with mingled gloom and avidity. She
was so lovely in her chiffons and furs and her exquisite youthfulness
and grace, her face uplifted, her hair shining in the light like
burnished copper, her lips parted with laughter. She seemed so
eminently a part of the picture to fit into the brilliant scene as a
diamond sparkles appropriately in its hoop of gold that Phil's heart
sank heavier than ever. Well, it only proved he had been right. What
had he to offer Sylvia in exchange for all this? She belonged to it and
it to her, as a bird belongs to the air.
Perhaps it was the intensity of his gaze that had made Sylvia look up.
At any rate she raised her eyes and met his, staring hungrily down at
her. The exciting, haunting music of Tristan and Isolde had stirred
strange deeps in Sylvia, begotten an elan of flesh and soul which flared
like a pure flame in her eyes at the moment. The man at her side,
Porter Robinson, as it happened, saw the look and followed her gaze with
curiosity to see what had lit the flame. But in all that sea of faces he
had no means of distinguishing the one which stood out for the girl as
if it had been the one face in the world. In a second she had turned
away and lowered her eyes.
"What was it?" asked her companion. "Did you see a vision?"
"Maybe," said Sylvia. "Hush! The music is beginning."
All the rest of the evening she half hoped Phil would seek her out in
the box but he had not come. And the next night had been the one when
she had discovered Porter Robinson was a beast and an hour later had
found herself rather unexpectedly engaged to Jack Amidon.
As for Phil, his will tugged at its moorings that night. He, too, had
been moved by the music, and even more by the challenge of Sylvia's
eyes. He had telephoned her the next day to try to make an engagement
with her for the evening but Sylvia was submerged with engagements, had
a tea, a dinner, a theater party, and so forth, already on hand, and her
voice over the telephone was as cool and remote as a mountain stream.
She even forgot to tell him she was leaving the city the next day.
Sylvia's pride in its way matched Phil's own.
And so instead of spending the evening with Sylvia, Phil had dropped in
to see Barbara, which is where this chapter really began.
He was certainly anything but good company that night. He sat somberly
looking into the fire, answering Barb's casual chatter with brief
absent-minded monosyllables. Barb, watching out of the corner of her
eye, and with the sure intuition that love teaches, guessed the source
of his gloom. She forgot all about her own hurt in sorrow for his and
longed with all the mother in her to comfort him. Suddenly the silence
which had fallen became intolerable, the weight of the unspoken thing
too heavy to be endured another minute. So out of a clear sky Barb
dropped a bomb.
"Phil, why don't you ask Sylvia to marry you?"
Phil jumped and stared and frowned.
"Reason's sufficiently obvious I should say. The gown and the furs and
the pearls she had on last night probably cost more than my year's
income."
"What of it? Gowns and furs and pearls aren't important. There are
things that Sylvia cares much more about."
"What?"
"You," was on the tip of Barb's tongue, but she did not say it. After
all, that was for Sylvia to say. She had no means of knowing how Sylvia
felt except that vivid memory of the way the other girl's eyes had
looked that night on Lover's Leap.
"Happiness, for one thing," she substituted. "Phil Lorrimer, don't you
know Sylvia Arden well enough to know the things that money buys are not
the real things--the things she cares for. She is willing to play with
them while she is waiting. Who wouldn't? I would myself, if I had the
chance. But Sylvia never mixes things up. She knows what counts and
what doesn't count as well as anybody I know. If you think her having
money and your not having it makes the slightest difference to her,
you're even stupider than I gave you credit for." Barb had warmed to
her subject and did not care if the lash of her tongue did sting a
little. She rather thought Phil Lorrimer needed a sting or two. She
had forgotten for the moment she had ever been in love with this young
man herself. She remembered only she was a woman speaking for her sex
in plain round terms.
"You mean Sylvia wants me to ask her to marry her?"
Barb made an impatient gesture.
"I don't know anything about that. That is between you two. What I do
know, and what I am trying to tell you, is that the modern woman
despises a man just as much for not wanting to ask her to marry him
because she has money as she does for wanting to ask her to marry him
because she has it. That kind of idea is ancient and exploded and
idiotic and disgusting."
Phil threw out his hand in half humorous, half serious protest.
"My word! What an avalanche! So you think it is thoroughly
contemptible in me to care whether the woman I marry has a million
dollars or not when I haven't a red cent?"
"I do," asserted Barb stoutly. "The money isn't any of your affair, any
more than the kind of knife you use on the operating table is hers, or
the color of your hair or eyes, for that matter. It just hasn't
anything to do with it."
"What is my affair? What is the male end of the bargain, according to
the latest approved feministic standards?"
"It's the male end of the bargain, if you choose to put it that way, to
give a woman love and respect and comradeship, a clean, strong, healthy
body and mind and soul, to be the kind of man she would like the father
of her children to be. I believe that is about all. Read Beatrice
Forbes-Robinson Hale's chapter on the 'New Man' and you'll understand
why Sylvia's money has nothing to do with the case and why your pride is
stupid and conceited and old-fashioned, a relic of the time when man
expected to be the sole provider and expected his wife to be the chief
parasite of the family, when he gloried in his high and mighty
superiority and expected her to be meekly grateful and appreciative of
said superiority. Now, do you understand?"
"A little," said Phil Lorrimer slowly. "Thank you, Barb. Maybe I have
been an idiot, as you say. It takes you to clear away the rubbish in a
fellow's mind. Jack tried to tell me the same thing and, well, I guess
Sylvia tried, too, only she didn't put it as violently visibly as you
have, and I threw the words back in her face like the donkey I am.
Barb, do you believe there is any chance she'll forgive me?" he begged
anxiously.
"I don't know how much she has to forgive," retorted Barb shortly. "But
you had better be about it before her forgiveness is all she has left to
give. You can't expect a girl like Sylvia to sit down and wait for a
man to get his eyes open like a Maltese kitten. I suppose you know Jack
is hot on the trail, and no doubt there are plenty of others here in New
York."
"Lord! Don't I know it?" Phil got to his feet. "You needn't rub it in,
Barb. I'm scared enough on that score already and jealous as the old
one. I'd have liked to drop asphyxiating gas on the moon-faced calf I
saw with her last night at the opera, looking as if he owned her. Gee!
I've got to get out and let the air circulate through my brains a
little. I feel as if I had a hot box up there." He gave his tawny head
a thump. "Honest, Barb, I'm much obliged to you for your efficiently
brutal treatment. You are some doctor, all right."
And in his genuine gratitude Phil started to seize both Barb's small
hands in his, but she backed away, fearful perhaps lest he see more than
she wanted, now that his eyes were unsealed in other respects. In a
moment he was gone and Barb walked deliberately over to the mirror and
surveyed her flushed face and big, excited eyes.
"They say a critic is a man who can't write. I begin to think a
reformer--at least, a woman reformer--is a woman who can't have what she
wants. Maybe I can get the sacred fire after all. Wonder if Aunt Jo got
it--my way."