SYLVIA ASKS HERSELF "WHY NOT?"
If Sylvia wondered, as she dropped down the heights to the valley,
what her reception might be at her aunt's ceremonious household when
she entered escorted by a strange hatless man in blue overalls, her
fancy fell immeasurably short of the actual ensuing sensation. Mrs.
Marshall-Smith, her stepson, Felix Morrison, and old Mr. Sommerville
were all sitting together on the wide north veranda, evidently waiting
to be called to luncheon when, at half-past one, the two pedestrians
emerged through a side wicket in the thick green hedge of spruce, and
advanced up the path, with the free, swinging step of people who have
walked far and well. The effect on the veranda was unimaginable.
Sheer, open-mouthed stupefaction blurred for an instant the composed,
carefully arranged masks of those four exponents of decorum. They
gaped and stared, unable to credit their eyes.
And then, according to their natures, they acted. Mrs. Marshall-Smith
rose quickly, smiled brilliantly, and stepped forward with welcoming
outstretched hands. "Why, Sylvia dear, how delightful! What an
unexpected pleasure, Mr. Page!"
Old Mr. Sommerville fairly bounded past Sylvia, caught the man's arm,
and said in an anxious, affectionate, startled voice, "Why, Austin!
Austin! Austin!"
Morrison rose, but stood quietly by his chair, his face entirely
expressionless, palpably and correctly "at attention." He had not seen
Sylvia since the announcement of his engagement the day before. He
gave her now a graceful, silent, friendly salute from a distance as
she stood by her aunt, he called out to her companion a richly cordial
greeting of "Well, Page. This is luck indeed!" but he indicated by his
immobility that as a stranger he would not presume to go further until
the first interchange between blood-kin was over.
As for Arnold, he neither stirred from his chair, nor opened his mouth
to speak. A slow smile widened on his lips: it expanded. He grinned
delightedly down at his cigarette, and up at the ceiling, and finally
broke into an open laugh of exquisite enjoyment of the scene before
him.
Four people were talking at once; Mr. Sommerville, a dismayed old hand
still clutching at the new-comer, was protesting with extreme vigor,
and being entirely drowned out by the others. "Of course he can't
stay--as he _is!_ I'll go home with him at once! His room at my house
is always ready for him!--fresh clothes!--No, no--impossible to stay!"
Mrs. Marshall-Smith was holding firm with her loveliest manner of warm
friendliness concentrated on Page. "Oh, no ceremony, Mr. Page, not
between old friends. Luncheon is just ready--who cares how you look?"
She did not physically dispute with Mr. Sommerville the possession of
the new-comer, but she gave entirely that effect.
Sylvia, unable to meet Morrison's eyes, absorbed in the difficulty of
the moment for her, unillumined by the byplay between her aunt and old
Mr. Sommerville, strove for an appearance of vivacious loquacity, and
cast into the conversation entirely disregarded bits of description
of the fire. "Oh, Tantine, such an excitement!--we took nine men
with hoes up such a steep--!" And finally Page, resisting old Mr.
Sommerville's pull on his arm, was saying: "If luncheon is ready,
and I'm invited, no more needs to be said. I've been haying and
fire-fighting since seven this morning. A wolf is nothing compared
with me." He looked across the heads of the three nearest him and
called to Arnold: "Smith, you'll lend me some flannels, won't you? We
must be much of the same build."
Mrs. Marshall-Smith turned, taking no pains to hide her satisfaction.
She positively gloated over the crestfallen Mr. Sommerville. "Sylvia,
run quick and have Hélène smooth your hair. And call to Tojiko to put
on an extra place for luncheon. Arnold, take Mr. Page up to your room,
won't you, so that he--"
Sylvia, running up the stairs, heard her late companion protesting:
"Oh, just for a change of clothes, only a minute--you needn't expect
me to do any washing. I'm clean. I'm washed within an inch of my
life--yellow soap--kitchen soap!"
"And our little scented toilet futilities," Morrison's cameo of
small-talk carried to the upper hall. "What could they add to such a
Spartan lustration?"
"Hurry, Hélène," said Sylvia. "It is late, and Mr. Page is dying of
hunger,"
In spite of the exhortation to haste, Hélène stopped short, uplifted
brush in hand. "Mr. Page, the millionaire!" she exclaimed.
Sylvia blinked at her in the glass, amazed conjectures racing through
her mind. But she had sufficient self-possession to say, carelessly as
though his identity was nothing to her: "I don't know. It is the first
time I have seen him. He certainly is not handsome."
Hélène thrust in the hairpins with impassioned haste and deftness, and
excitedly snatched a lace jacket from a drawer. To the maid's despair
Sylvia refused this adornment, refused the smallest touch of rouge,
refused an ornament in her hair. Hélène wrung her hands. "But see,
Mademoiselle is not wise! For what good is it to be so savage! He is
more rich than all! They say he owns all the State of Colorado!"
Sylvia, already in full retreat towards the dining-room, caught this
last geographic extravagance of Gallic fancy, and laughed, and with
this mirth still in her face made her re-entry on the veranda. She had
not been away three minutes from the group there, and she was to the
eye as merely flushed and gay when she came back as when she went
away; but a revolution had taken place. Closely shut in her hand, she
held, held fast, the key Hélène had thrust there. Behind her smile,
her clear, bright look of valiant youth, a great many considerations
were being revolved with extreme rapidity by an extremely swift and
active brain.
Swift and active as was the brain, it fairly staggered under the task
of instantly rearranging the world according to the new pattern:
for the first certainty to leap into sight was that the pattern was
utterly changed by the events of the morning. She had left the
house, betrayed, defenseless save for a barren dignity, and she had
re-entered it in triumph, or at least with a valid appearance of
triumph, an appearance which had already tided her over the aching
difficulty of the first meeting with Morrison and might carry her ...
she had no time now to think how far.
Page and Arnold were still invisible when she emerged again on the
veranda, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith pounced on her with the frankest
curiosity. "Sylvia, do tell us--how in the world--"
Sylvia was in the midst of a description of the race to the fire, as
vivid as she could make it, when Arnold sauntered back and after him,
in a moment, Page, astonishingly transformed by clothes. His height
meant distinction now. Sylvia noted again his long, strong hands, his
aquiline, tanned face and clear eyes, his thoughtful, observant eyes.
There was a whimsical quirk of his rather thin but gentle lips which
reminded her of the big bust of Emerson in her father's study. She
liked all this; but her suspiciousness, alert for affront, since the
experience with Morrison, took offense at his great ease of manner. It
had seemed quite natural and unaffected to her, in fact she had not at
all noticed it before; but now that she knew of his great wealth, she
instantly conceived a resentful idea that possibly it might come from
the self-assurance of a man who knows himself much courted. She held
her head high, gave to him as to Arnold a nod of careless recognition,
and continued talking: "Such a road--so steep--sand half-way to the
hubs, such water-bars!" She turned to Morrison with her first overt
recognition of the new status between them. "You ought to have seen
your fiancée! She was wonderful! I was proud of her!"
Morrison nodded a thoughtful assent. "Yes, Molly's energy is
irresistible," he commented, casting his remark in the form of a
generalization the significance of which did not pass unnoticed by
Sylvia's sharp ears. They were the first words he had spoken to her
since his engagement.
"Luncheon is ready," said Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "Do come in." Every one
by this time being genuinely hungry, and for various reasons extremely
curious about the happenings back of Sylvia's appearance, the meal was
dedicated frankly to eating, varied only by Sylvia's running account
of the fire. "And then Molly wanted to take the fire-fighters home,
and I offered to walk to have more room for them, and Mr. Page brought
me up the other side of Hemlock and over the pass between Hemlock and
Windward and down past Deer Cliff, home," she wound up, compressing
into tantalizing brevity what was patently for her listeners by far
the most important part of the expedition.
"Well, whatever route he took, it is astonishing that he knew the way
to Lydford at all," commented Mrs. Marshall-Smith. "I don't believe
you've been here before for years!" she said to Page.
"It's my confounded shyness," he explained, turning to Sylvia with a
twinkle. "The grand, sophisticated ways of Lydford are too much for
the nerves of a plain-living rustic like me. When I farm in Vermont
the spirit of the place takes hold of me. I'm quite apt to eat my pie
with my knife, and Lydford wouldn't like that."
Sylvia was aware, through the laughter which followed this joking
remark, that there was an indefinable stir around the table. His
turning to her had been pronounced. She took a sore pleasure in
Morrison's eclipse. For the first time he was not the undisputed
center of that circle. He accepted it gravely, a little preoccupied,
a little absent, a wonderfully fine and dignified figure. Under her
misanthropic exultation, Sylvia felt again and again the stab of
her immense admiration for him, her deep affinity for his way of
conducting life. Whatever place he might take in the circle around the
luncheon table, she found him inevitably at the center of all her own
thoughts. However it might seem to those evidently greatly struck with
her extraordinary good luck, her triumph was in reality only the most
pitiful of pretenses. But such as it was, and it gleamed richly enough
on the eyes of the onlookers, she shook it out with a flourish and
gave no sign of heartsick qualms. She gave a brilliantly undivided
attention to the bit of local history Page was telling her, of a
regiment of Green Mountain Boys who had gone down to the Battle of
Bennington over the pass between Windward and Hemlock Mountain, and
she was able to stir Page to enthusiasm by an appreciative comparison
of their march with the splendid and affecting incident before
Marathon, when the thousand hoplites from the little town of Plataea
crossed the Cithaeron range and went down to the plain to join the
Athenians in their desperate stand.
"How do you _happen_ to come East just now, anyhow?" inquired old Mr.
Sommerville, resolutely shouldering his way into the conversation.
"My yellow streak!" affirmed his nephew. "Colorado got too much for
me. And besides, I was overcome by an atavistic longing to do chores."
He turned to Sylvia again, the gesture as unconscious and simple as a
boy's. "My great-grandfather was a native of these parts, and about
once in so often I revert to type."
"All my mother's people came from this region too," Sylvia said. She
added meditatively, "And I think I must have reverted to type--up
there on the mountain, this morning."
He looked at her silently, with softening eyes.
"You'll be going back soon, I suppose, as usual!" said old Mr.
Sommerville with determination.
"To Colorado?" inquired Page. "No, I think--I've a notion I'll stay on
this summer for some time. There is an experiment I want to try with
alfalfa in Vermont."
Over his wineglass Arnold caught Sylvia's eye, and winked.
"Still reading as much as ever, I suppose." Mr. Sommerville was not
to be put down. "When I last saw you, it was some fool socialistic
poppycock about the iniquity of private exploitation of natural
resources. How'd they ever have been exploited any other way I'd like
to know! What's socialism? Organized robbery! Nothing else! 'Down with
success! Down with initiative! Down with brains!' Stuff!"
"It's not socialism this time: it's Professor Merritt's theories on
property," said Sylvia to the old gentleman, blandly ignoring his
ignoring of her.
Page stared at her in astonishment. "Are you a clairvoyant?" he cried.
"No, no," she explained, laughing. "You took it out of your pocket up
there by the brook."
"But you saw only the title. Merritt's name isn't on the cover."
"Oh, it's a pretty well-known book," said Sylvia easily. "And my
father's a professor of Economics. When I was little I used to have
books like that to build houses with, instead of blocks. And I've had
to keep them in order and dusted ever since. I'm not saying that I
know much about their insides."
"Just look there!" broke in Arnold. "Did I ever see a young lady pass
up such a perfectly good chance to bluff!"
As usual nobody paid the least attention to his remark. The
conversation shifted to a radical play which had been on the boards in
Paris, the winter before.
After luncheon, they adjourned into the living-room. As the company
straggled across the wide, dimly shining, deeply shaded hall, Sylvia
felt her arm seized and held, and turning her head, looked into the
laughing face of Arnold. "What kind of flowers does Judy like the
best?" he inquired, the question evidently the merest pretext to
detain her, for as the others moved out of earshot he said in a
delighted whisper, his eyes gleaming in the dusk with amused malice:
"Go it, Sylvia! Hit 'em out! It's worth enduring oceans of Greek
history to see old Sommerville squirm. Molly gone--Morrison as poor as
a church mouse; and now Page going fast before his very eyes--"
She shook off his hand with genuine annoyance. "I don't know what
you're talking about, Arnold. You're horrid! Judith doesn't like cut
flowers at all,--any kind. She likes them alive, on plants."
"She _would!_" Arnold was rapt in his habitual certainty that every
peculiarity of Judith's was another reason for prostrate adoration.
"I'll send her a window-box for every window in the hospital." His
admiration overflowed to Judith's sister. He patted her on the
shoulder. "You're all right too, Sylvia. You're batting about
three-sixty, right now. I've always told the girls when they said Page
was offish that if they could only get in under his guard once--and
somehow you've done it. I bet on _you_--" He began to laugh at her
stern face of reproof. "Oh, yes, yes, I agree! You don't know what I'm
talking about! It's just alfalfa in Vermont! Only my low vulgarity to
think anything else!" He moved away down the hall. "Beat it! I slope!"
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Away! Away!" he answered. "Anywhere that's away. The air is rank with
Oscar Wilde and the Renaissance. I feel them coming." Still laughing,
he bounded upstairs, three steps at a time.
Sylvia stepped forward, crossed the threshold of the living-room,
and paused by the piano, penetrated by bitter-sweet associations. If
Morrison felt them also, he gave no sign. He had chosen a chair by a
distant window and was devoting himself to Molly's grandfather, who
accepted this delicate and entirely suitable attention with a rather
glum face. Mrs. Marshall-Smith and Page still stood in the center
of the room, and turned as Sylvia came in. "Do give us some music,
Sylvia," said her aunt, sinking into a chair while Page came forward
to sit near the piano.
Sylvia's fingers rested on the keys for a moment, her face very grave,
almost somber, and then, as though taking a sudden determination, she
began to play a Liszt Liebes-Traum. It was the last music Morrison had
played to her before the beginning of the change. Into its fevered
cadences she poured the quivering, astonished hurt of her young heart.
No one stirred during the music nor for the moment afterward, in which
she turned about to face the room. She looked squarely at Morrison,
who was rolling a cigarette with meticulous care, and as she looked,
he raised his eyes and gave her across the room one deep, flashing
glance of profound significance. That was all. That was enough. That
was everything. Sylvia turned back to the piano shivering, hot and
cold with secret joy. His look said, "Yes, of course, a thousand times
of course, you are the one in my heart." What the facts said for him
was, "But I am going to marry Molly because she has money."
Sylvia was horrified that she did not despise him, that she did not
resent his entering her heart again with the intimacy of that
look. Her heart ran out to welcome him back; but from the sense of
furtiveness she shrank back with her lifetime habit and experience of
probity, with the instinctive distaste for stealth engendered only by
long and unbroken acquaintance with candor. With a mental action as
definite as the physical one of freeing her feet from a quicksand she
turned away from the alluring, dim possibility opened to her by that
look. No, no! No stains, no smears, no shufflings! She was conscious
of no moral impulse, in the usual sense of the word. Her imagination
took in no possibility of actual wrong. But when, with a fastidious
impulse of good taste, she turned her back on something ugly, she
turned her back unwittingly on something worse than ugly.
But it was not easy! Oh, not at all easy! She quailed with a sense of
her own weakness, so unexpected, so frightening. Would she resist it
the next time? How pierced with helpless ecstasy she had been by that
interchange of glances! What was there, in that world, by which she
could steady herself?
"How astonishingly well you play," said Page, rousing himself from the
dreamy silence of appreciation.
"I ought to," she said with conscious bitterness. "I earn my living by
teaching music."
She was aware from across the room of an electric message from Aunt
Victoria protesting against her perversity; and she reflected with
a morose amusement that however delicately phrased Aunt Victoria's
protests might be, its substance was the same as that of Hélène,
crying out on her for not adding the soupçon of rouge. She took a
sudden resolution. Well, why not? Everything conspired to push her
in that direction. The few factors which did not were mere imbecile
idealism, or downright hypocrisy. She drew a long breath. She smiled
at Page, a smile of reference to something in common between them.
"Shan't I play you some Beethoven?" she asked, "something with a
legato passage and great solemn chords, and a silver melody binding
the whole together?"
"Oh yes, do!" he said softly. And in a moment she was putting all of
her intelligence, her training, and her capacity to charm into the
tones of the E-flat Minuet.