BOOK I

SYLVIA

_By Upton Sinclair_

SYLVIA

LOVE’S PILGRIMAGE

PLAYS OF PROTEST

THE FASTING CURE

THE JUNGLE

THE INDUSTRIAL REPUBLIC

THE METROPOLIS

THE MONEYCHANGERS

SAMUEL THE SEEKER

KING MIDAS

PRINCE HAGEN

THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING

MANASSAS

THE OVERMAN

SYLVIA

_A NOVEL_

——BY——

UPTON SINCLAIR

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

PHILADELPHIA CHICAGO

Copyright, 1913, by

THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.

Published, May 15, 1913

First Printing, April, 1913. Second Printing, May, 1913

Third Printing, May, 1913

TO

THE PEOPLE AT HOME

------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTENTS

BOOK I

SYLVIA LOVES 11

BOOK II

SYLVIA LINGERS 147

BOOK III

SYLVIA LOSES 277

SYLVIA

BOOK I

_Sylvia Loves_

§ 1

This is the story of Sylvia Castleman, of her love and her marriage. The

story goes back to the days of her golden youth; but it has to be told

by an old woman who had no youth at all, and who never dreamed of having

a story to tell. It begins with scenes of luxury among the proudest

aristocracy of the South; it is told by one who for the first thirty

years of her life was a farmer’s wife in a lonely pioneer homestead in

Manitoba, and who, but for the pictures and stories in magazines, would

never have known that such a world as Sylvia Castleman’s existed.

Yet I believe that I can tell her story. Eight years of it I lived with

her, so intensely that it became as my own existence to me. And the rest

I gathered from her lips, even to the tiniest details. For years I went

about my daily tasks with Sylvia’s memories as a kind of radiance about

me, like a rainbow that shimmers over the head of a plodding traveler.

In the time that I knew her, I never came to the end of her picturesque

adventures, nor did I ever know what it was to be bored by them. The

incident might be commonplace—a bit of a flirtation, the ordering of a

costume, the blunder of a negro servant; but it was always Sylvia who

was telling it—there was always the sparkle of her eyes, the mischievous

smile, the swift glow of her countenance. And as the story progressed,

suddenly would come some incident so wild that it would make you catch

your breath; some fantastic, incredible extravagance; some strange,

quixotic trait of character. You would find yourself face to face with

an attitude to life out of the Middle Ages, with some fierce, vivid

passion that carried you back even farther.

What a world it is! I know that it exists—for Sylvia took me home with

her twice. I saw the Major wearing his faded gray uniform (it was

“Reunion Day”) and discoursing upon the therapeutic qualities of “hot

toddies.” I watched the negro boy folding and unfolding the newspaper,

because Mrs. Castleman was obeying her physician and avoiding

unnecessary exertion. I shook hands with Master Castleman Lysle, whose

names were reversed by special decree of the state legislature, so that

the memory of his distinguished ancestress might be preserved to

posterity. And yet it will always seem like a fairy-story world to me. I

can no more believe in the courtly Bishop, praying over my unrepentant

head, than I can believe in Don Quixote. As for “Uncle Mandeville”—I

could more easily persuade myself that I once talked with Pan Zagloba in

the flesh.

I have Sylvia’s picture on my desk—the youthful picture that means so

much to me, with its strange mixture of coquetry and wistfulness, of

mischief and tenderness. Downstairs in the dining-room is the portrait

of Lady Lysle, which is so much like her that strangers always mistook

it. And if that be not enough, now and then Elaine steals into my room,

and, silent as a shadow, takes her seat upon the little stool beside me,

watching me with her sightless eyes. Her fingers fly swiftly at her

knitting, and for hours, if need be, she moves nothing else. She knows

by the sound of my pen that I am busy; with the wonderful acuteness of

the blind she knows whether I am successful or not, whether what I write

be joyous or painful.

How much she knows—much more than I dream, perhaps! I wonder about it,

but I never ask her. Both Frank and I have tried to talk to her, but we

cannot; it is cowardly, pitiful, perhaps—but we cannot! She used to ask

questions in the beginning, but she must have felt our pain, for she

asks no more; she simply haunts our home, the incarnation of the

tragedy. So much of her mother she has—the wonderful red-brown eyes, the

golden hair, the mobile, delicate features. But the sparkle of the eyes

and the glow in the cheeks, the gaiety, the rapture—where are they? When

I think of this, I clutch my hands in a sort of spasm, and go to my work

again.

Or perhaps I go into Frank’s den and see him sitting there, with his

haggard, brooding face, his hair that turned gray in one week. He never

asks the question, but I see it in his eyes: “How much have you done

to-day?” A cruel taskmaster is that face of Frank’s! He is haunted by

the thought that I may not live to finish the story.

The hardest thing of all will be to make you see Sylvia as she was in

that wild, wonderful youth of hers, when she was the belle of her state,

when the suitors crowded about her like moths about a candle-flame. How

shall one who is old and full of bitter memories bring back the magic

spirit of youth, the glamor and the glow of it, the terrifying

blindness, the torrent-like rush, the sheer, quivering ecstasy of it?

What words shall I choose to bring before you the joyfulness of Sylvia?

When I first met her she was twenty-six, and had known the kind of

sorrow that eats into a woman’s soul as acid might eat into her eyes;

and yet you would think she had never been touched by pain—she moved

through life, serene, unflinching, a lamp of cheerfulness to every soul

who knew her. I met her and proceeded to fall in love with her like the

veriest schoolgirl; I would go away and think of her, and clasp my hands

together in delight. There was one word that kept coming to me; I would

repeat it over and over again—“Happy! Happy! Happy!” She was the

happiest soul that I have ever known upon the earth; a veritable

fountain of joy.

I say that much; and then I hasten to correct it. It seems to be easy

for some people to smile. There comes to me another word that I used to

find myself repeating about Sylvia. She was wise! She was wise! She was

wise with a strange, uncanny wisdom, the wisdom of ages upon ages of

womanhood—women who have been mothers and counselors and homekeepers,

but above all, women who have been managers of men! Oh, what a manager

of men was Sylvia! For the most part, she told me, she managed them for

their own good; but now and then the irresistible imp of mischievousness

broke loose in her, and then she managed them any way at all, so long as

she managed them!

Yet that, too, does her less than justice, I think. For you might search

all over the states of the South, where she lived and visited, and where

now they mention her name only in whispers; and nowhere, I wager, could

you find a man who had ceased to love her. You might find hundreds who

would wish to God that she were alive again, so that they might run away

with her. For that is the third thing to be noted about Sylvia

Castleman—that she was good. She was so good that when you knew her you

went down upon your knees before her, and never got up again. How many

times I have seen the tears start into her eyes over the memory of what

the imp of mischievousness and the genius of management had made her do

to men! How many times have I heard her laughter, as she told how she

broke their hearts, and then used her tears for cement to patch them up

again!

§ 2

I realize that I must make some effort to tell you how she looked. But

when I think of words—how futile, stale and shopworn seem all the words

that come to me. In my early days my one recreation was cheap

paper-covered novels and historical romances, from which I got my idea

of the _grand monde_. Now, when I try to think of words with which to

describe Sylvia, it is their words that come to me. I know that a

heroine must be slender and exquisite, must be sensitive and haughty and

aristocratic. Sylvia was all this, in truth; but how shall I bring to

you the thrill of wonder that came to me when I encountered her—that

living joy she was to me forever after, so different from anything the

books had ever brought me!

She was tall and very straight, free in her carriage; her look, her

whole aspect was quick and eager. I sit and try to analyze her charm,

and I think the first quality was the sense she gave you of cleanness. I

lived with her much; I saw her, not merely made up for parties, but as

she opened her eyes in the morning; and I cannot recall that I ever saw

about her any of those things that offend us in the body. Her eyes were

always clear, her skin always fair; I never saw her with a cold, or

heard her speak of a headache. If she were tired, she would not tell you

so—at least, not if she thought you needed her. If there was anything

the matter with her, there was only one way you found it out—that she

stopped eating.

She would do that at home, when someone was ill and she was under a

strain. She would literally fade away before your eyes—but still just as

cheerful and brave, laughing at the protests of the doctors, the

outcries of her aunts and her colored “aunties.” At such times she had a

quite new kind of beauty, that seemed to strike men dumb; she used to

make merry over it, saying that she could go out when other women had to

shut themselves behind curtains. For thinness brought out every line of

her exquisitely chiseled features; every quiver of her soul seemed to

show—her tense, swift being was as if cut there in living marble, and

she was some unearthly creature, wraith-like, wonderful, thrilling.

There were poets in Castleman County; they would meet her in this

depleted state, and behave after the fashion of poets in semi-tropical

climates—stand with their knees knocking and the perspiration oozing out

upon their foreheads; they would wander off by moonlight-haunted streams

and compose enraptured verses, and come back and fall upon their knees

and implore her to accept the poor, feeble tribute of their adoration.

I have seen her, too, when she was strong and happy, and then she would

be well-made and shapely, with a charm of a more earthly sort. Then her

color would be like the roses she always carried; and in each of her

cheeks would appear the most adorable of dimples, and under her chin

another. She had a nose that was very straight and finely carved; and

right in the center, under the tip, the sculptor had put a tiny little

groove. She had also a chin that was very straight, and right in the

center of this was a corresponding little groove. You will laugh

perhaps; but those touches added marvelously to the expressiveness of

her countenance. How they would shift and change when, for instance, her

nostrils quivered with anger, or when the imp of mischievousness took

possession of her, and the network of quaint wrinkles gathered round her

eyes!

Dimples, I know, are an ultra-feminine property; but Sylvia’s face was

not what is ordinarily called feminine—it was a kind of face that

painters would give to a young boy singing in a church. I used to tell

her that it was the kind they gave to angels of the higher orders;

whereupon she would put her arms about me and whisper, “You old goose!”

She had a pair of the strangest red-brown eyes, soft and tender; and

then suddenly lighting up—shining, shining!

I don’t know if I make you see her. I can add only one detail more, the

one that people talked of most—her hair. You may see her hair, very

beautifully done, in the portrait of Lady Lysle. The artist was shrewd

and put the great lady in a morning robe, standing by the open window,

the sunlight falling upon a cascade of golden tresses. The color of

Sylvia’s hair was toned down when I knew her, but they told me that in

her prime it had been vivid to outrageousness. I sit before the

painting, and the present slips away and I see her as she was in the

glow of her youth—eager, impetuous, swept with gusts of merriment and

tenderness, like a mountain lake in April.

So the old chroniclers report her, nine generations back, when she came

over to marry the Governor of Massachusetts! They have her wedding gown

preserved in a Boston Museum, and the Lysles have a copy of it, so that

each generation can be married in one like it. But Sylvia was the first

it became, being the first blonde since her great progenitor. How

strange seems such a whim of heredity—not merely the color of the hair

and eyes, the cut of the features, but a whole character, a personality

hidden away somewhere in the germ-plasm, and suddenly breaking out,

without warning, after a couple of hundred years!

§ 3

When I think of Sylvia’s childhood and all the hairbreadth escapes of

which she told me, I marvel that she ever came to womanhood. It would

seem to be a perilous part of the world to raise children in, with

horses and dogs and guns, and so many half-tamed negroes—to say nothing

of all the half-tamed white people. Sylvia had three younger sisters and

whole troops of cousins—the Bishop’s eleven children, and the children

of Barry Chilton, his brother. I picture their existence as one long

series of perilous escapes, with runaway horses, kicking mules and

biting dogs, and negroes who shot and stabbed one another in sudden,

ferocious brawls, or set fire to Castleman Hall in order that some other

negro might be suspected and lynched.

Also there were the more subtle perils of the pantry and the green-apple

orchard. I did not see any accident during my brief stay at the place,

but I saw the dietetic ferocities of the family and marveled at them. It

seemed to me that the life of that most precious of infants, Castleman

Lysle, was one endless succession of adventures with mustard and ipecac

and castor oil. I want somehow to make you realize this world of

Sylvia’s, and I don’t know how I can do it better than by telling of my

first vision of that future heir of all the might, majesty and dominion

of the Lysles. It was one of the rare occasions when the Major was

taking him on a journey. The old family horses were hitched to the old

family carriage, and with a negro on the box, another walking at the

horses’ heads, a third riding on a mule behind, and a fourth sent ahead

to notify the police, the procession set forth to the station. I know

quite well that I shall be called a liar; yet I can only give my solemn

word that I saw it with my own eyes—the chief of police, duly notified,

had informed all the officers on duty, and the population of a bustling

town of forty thousand inhabitants, in the United States of America in

the twentieth century, were politely requested not to drive automobiles

along the principal avenue during the half hour that it took to convey

Master Lysle to the train! And of course such a “request” was a command

to all the inhabitants who were genteel enough to own automobiles. Was

not this the grandson of the late General Castleman, the grand-nephew of

a former territorial governor? Was he not the heir of the largest, the

oldest and the most famous plantation in the county, the future

dispenser of favors and arbiter of social fates? Was he not,

incidentally, the brother of the loveliest girl in the state, to whom

most of the automobile owners in the town had made violent love?

I would like to tell more about that world and Sylvia’s experiences in

it—some of those amazing tales! Of the negro boy who bit a piece out of

the baby’s leg, because he had heard someone say that the baby looked

sweet enough to eat; of the negro girl who heard a war-story about “a

train of gun-powder,” and proceeded with Sylvia’s aid to lay such a

train from the cellar to the attic of the house. I would like to tell

the whole story of her girlhood, and the strange ideas they taught her;

but I have to pick and choose, saving my space for the things that are

necessary to the understanding of her character.

Sylvia’s education was a decidedly miscellaneous one at first. “I think

it is time the child had some regular training,” her great-aunt, Lady

Dee, would say to the child’s mother. “Yes, I suppose you are right,”

would be the answer. But then Lady Dee would go, and Major Castleman

would come in, observing, “It’s marvelous the way that child picks

things up, Miss Margaret.” (A habit from his courtship days, you

understand.) “We must be careful not to overstimulate her mind.” To

which his wife would respond, agreeably, “I’m sure you know best, Mr.

Castleman.”

Every morning Sylvia would go with her father on his rounds to interview

the managers of the three plantations; the Major in his black broadcloth

frock-coat, a wide black hat and a white “bosom” shirt, riding horseback

with an umbrella over his head, and followed at a respectful distance by

his “boy” upon a mule. On these excursions Sylvia would recite the

multiplication table, and receive lessons in the history of her country,

from the point of view of its unreconstructed minority. Also she had

lessons on this subject from her great-aunt, who never paid one of her

numerous servants their small quarterly stipend that she did not

exclaim: “Oh, how I _hate_ the Yankees!”

I must not delay to introduce this great-aunt, who was Sylvia’s

monitress in the arts and graces of life, and left her on her death-bed

such a curious heritage of worldliness. Lady Dee was the last surviving

member of a younger branch of the line of the Lysles. She was not a real

countess, like her great ancestress; the name “Lady” had been given her

in baptism. Early in the last century she had come over the mountains in

a lumbering coach, with an escort of mounted riders, to marry the

Surveyor General of the Territory. She still had a picture of this

coach, along with innumerable other treasures in cedar chests in her

attic: fan-sticks of carved ivory, inlaid with gold; gold garter buckles

with wonderful enameling; old seals and silver snuff-boxes; rare jewels,

such as white topazes and red amethysts; and a whole trunkful of the

curious tiny silk parasols with which great ladies used to protect their

creamy complexions—no more than ten inches across, and with handles of

inlaid and carven ivory. When Sylvia was a little girl with two pigtails

hanging down her back, it was one of the joys of her life to explore

these treasures, and deck herself in faded ball costumes and chains of

jewels and gold.

Also, from Lady Dee she received contributions to her moral training;

not in set discourses, but incidentally and by allusions. Rummaging in

the cedar chests she once came upon a miniature which she had never seen

before; a lady in whom she recognized the eyes of the Lysles, and the

arrogance which all their portraits show. “Who is this, Aunt Lady?” she

asked; and the old gentlewoman frowned and answered, “We never speak of

her, my dear. She is the one woman who ever disgraced our name.”

Sylvia hesitated a long time before she spoke again. She had heard much

of family skeletons in the table-talk—but always other families. “What

did she do?” she asked, at last.

“She was married to three men,” was the reply.

Again Sylvia hesitated. “You mean,” she ventured—“you mean—at the same

time?”

Lady Dee stared. “No, my dear,” she said, gravely. “Her husbands died.”

“But—but—” began the other, timidly, groping to find her way in a

strange field of thought.

“If she had been a woman of delicacy,” pronounced Lady Dee, “she would

have been true to one love.” Then, after a pause, she added, solemnly,

“Remember this, my child. Think before you choose, for the women of our

family are like Sterne’s starling—when they have once entered their

cage, they never come out.”

It was Lady Dee who objected to the desultory nature of Sylvia’s

education, and began a campaign, as a result of which the Major sent her

off to a “college” at the age of thirteen. You must not be frightened by

this imposing statement, for it is easy to call yourself a “college” in

the South. Sylvia was away for three years, during which she really

studied, and acquired much more than the usual accomplishments of a

young lady.

She had an extraordinarily capable mind; serene and efficient, like

everything else about her. When I met her I was a woman of forty-five,

who a few years before had broken with my whole past, having discovered

the universe of knowledge. I had been like a starving person breaking

into a well-filled larder, and stuffing myself greedily and

promiscuously. I had taken upon myself the task of contending with other

people’s prejudices, and my rapture over Sylvia Castleman was partly the

realization that here was a woman—actually a woman—who had no prejudices

whatever. She wanted me to tell her all I knew; and it was a great

delight to expound to her a new set of ideas, and see her mind go from

point to point, leaping swiftly, laying hold of details, ordering,

comparing—above all, applying. That you may have a picture of this mind

in action, let me tell you what she did in her girlhood, all

unassisted—how she broke with the religion of her forefathers.

§ 4

That brings me to the Bishop, Basil Chilton, who had come into the

family by marriage to one of Sylvia’s aunts. At the time of his marriage

he had been a young Louisiana planter, handsome and fascinating. He had

met Nannie Castleman at a ball, and at four o’clock in the morning had

secured her promise to marry him before sunset. People said that he was

half drunk at the time, and this was probably a moderate estimate, for

he had been wholly drunk for a year or two afterwards. Then he had shot

a man in a brawl and, despite the fact that he was a gentleman, had

almost been punished for it. The peril had sobered him; a month or two

later, at a Methodist revival, he was converted, made a sensational

confession of his sins, and then, to the horror of his friends, became a

preacher of Methodism.

To the Castlemans this was a calamity—to Lady Dee a personal affront.

“Whoever heard of a gentleman who was a Methodist?” she demanded; and as

the convert had no precedents to cite, she quarreled with him and for

many years never spoke his name. Also it was hard upon Nannie

Castleman—who had entered her cage and had to stay! They had compromised

on the bargain that the children were to be brought up in her own faith,

which was Very High Church. So now the unhappy preacher, later Bishop,

sat in his study and wrote his sermons, while one by one his eleven

children came of age, and danced and gambled and drank themselves to

perdition in the very best form imaginable. When I met the family, the

last of the daughters, Caroline, was just making her _début_, and her

mother, nearly sixty, was the gayest dancer on the floor. It was the

joke of the county, how the family automobile would first take the

Bishop to prayer meeting, and then return to take the mother and the

children to a ball.

Basil Chilton looked like an old-world diplomat, as I had come to

conceive that personage from reading novels. He had the most charming

manners—the kind of manners which cannot be cultivated, but come from

nobility of soul. He was gentle and gracious even to servants; and yet

imposing, with his stately figure and smooth, ascetic face, lined by

care. He lived just a pony-ride from Castleman Hall, and almost every

morning during vacations Sylvia would stop and spend a little while with

him. People said that he loved her more than any of his own children.

So you can imagine what it meant when one day the girl said to him,

“Uncle Basil, I have something to tell you. I’ve been thinking about it,

and I’ve made up my mind that I don’t believe in either heaven or hell.”

Where had she got such an idea? She had certainly not learned it at the

“college,” for the institution was “denominational” and had no

text-books of later date than 1850. Somewhere she had found a volume of

Huxley’s “Lay Sermons,” but she had got nothing out of that, for the

Major had discovered her reading page three, and had solemnly consigned

the book to the flames. No, it was simply that she had been thinking for

herself.

The Bishop took it well. He did not try to frighten her, he did not even

show her his distress of mind. He told her that she was an angel, the

very soul of purity and goodness, and that God would surely lead her to

truth if only she kept herself humble. As Sylvia put it to me: “He knew

that I would come back, and I knew that I would never come back.”

And that was the situation between them to the very end—the bitter end.

He always believed that she would learn to see things as he saw them. He

died a year or so ago, the courtly old gentleman—consoled by the thought

that he was now to meet his God and Sylvia face to face, and hear the

former explain to the latter the difference between Divine Law and mere

human ideas of Justice.

The rest of the family were not so patient as the Bishop. To have a

heretic in the household was even worse than having a Methodist! Mrs.

Castleman, who agreed with the Bible as she agreed with everything, was

dumb with bewilderment; while the Major set to work to hunt out dusty

volumes from the attic. He read every word of Paley’s “Evidences” aloud

to his daughter, and some of Gladstone’s essays, and several other

books, the very names of which she forgot. You may smile at this

picture, but it was a serious matter to the Castlemans, who had based

their morality upon the fear of fire and brimstone and the weeping and

gnashing of teeth, and who kept Sylvia three months from school to

impress such images upon her imagination.

There were several religious sects represented in the county. These were

generally at war with one another, but they all made common cause in

this emergency, and committees of old ladies from the “Christians,” the

“hard-shell Baptists,” the “predestination Presbyterians,” would come to

condole with “Miss Margaret,” and would kneel down in the parlor with

Sylvia and pray for her salvation, shedding tears over the cream velour

upholstery of the hand-carved mahogany sofas. A distant cousin who was

“in orders,” a young gentleman of charming presence and special training

in dialectics, was called in to answer the arguments of this wayward

young lady, and stayed for three days, probing deeply into his patient’s

mind—not merely her theological beliefs, but the attitude to life which

underlay them. When he had finished he said to her, “My dear Sylvia, it

is my opinion that you are the most dangerous person in this county.”

She told me the story, and added, “I hadn’t the remotest idea what the

man meant!” But I answered her that he had been perfectly right. In

truth, he was a seer, that young clergyman!

§ 5

There was a general feeling that Sylvia had learned more than was good

for her; and so the family made inquiries, and selected the most

exclusive and expensive “finishing school” in New York, for the purpose

of putting a stop to her intellectual development. And so we come to the

beginning of Sylvia’s wordly career, and to the visit she paid to Lady

Dee—who now, at the age of ninety, felt herself failing rapidly, and

wished to leave to her great-niece her treasures of worldly counsel.

Lady Dee was one of those quaint figures you meet in the South, who go

to balls and parties when they are old enough to be sewing the

_layettes_ of their great-grandchildren. I have seen a picture of her at

the age of eighty-five, in a cerise-colored silk ball-gown with a lace

“bertha,” her white hair curled in front and done in a pile with a

coronet of diamonds. You must imagine her now, in an invalid’s chair

upon the gallery, but still with her hair dressed as of old; telling to

Sylvia tales of her own young ladyhood—and incidentally, with such

deftness that the girl never guessed her purpose, introducing

instruction in the strategy and tactics of the sex war.

Life was short, according to Lady Dee, and the future was uncertain. A

woman bloomed but once, and must make the most of that. To be the center

of events during her hour, that was life’s purpose; and to achieve it,

it was necessary to know how to hold men. Men were sometimes said to be

strange and difficult creatures, but in reality they were simple and

easily handled. The trouble was that most women went blindly at the

task, instead of availing themselves of the wisdom which their sex had

been storing up for ages, in the minds of such authorities as Lady Dee.

The old lady went on to expound the science of coquetry. I had read of

the sex game, as it is played in the _grand monde_, but I had never

supposed that the players were as conscious and deliberate as this

veteran expert. She even used the language of battle: “A woman’s shield,

my child, is her innocence; her sharpest weapon is her _naïveté_. The

way to disarm a man’s suspicions is to tell him what you’re doing to

him—then you’re sure he won’t believe it!”

She would go into minute details of these Amazonian arts: how to beguile

a man, how to promise to marry him without really promising, how to keep

him at the proper temperature by judicious applications of jealousy. Nor

was this sex war to stop after the wedding ceremony—when most women

foolishly laid down their weapons. A woman must sleep in her armor,

according to Lady Dee. She must never let her husband know how much she

loved him, she must make him think of her as something rare and

unattainable, she must keep him in a state where her smile was the

greatest thing in life to him. Said the old lady, gravely: “The women of

our family are famous for henpecking their husbands—they don’t even take

the trouble to hide it. I’ve heard your grandfather, the General, say

that it was all right for a man to be henpecked, if only it was by the

right hen.”

A training, you perceive, of a decidedly worldly character; and yet

there was nothing upon which Sylvia’s relatives laid more stress than

the preserving of what they called her “innocence.” There were wild

people in this part of the world—high-spirited and hot-tempered, hard

drinkers and fast livers; there were deeds of violence, and strange and

terrible tales that you might hear. But when these tales had anything to

do with sex, they were carefully kept from Sylvia’s ears. Only once had

this rule been broken—an occasion which made a great impression upon the

child. The daughter of one of the neighboring families had eloped, and

the dreadful rumor was whispered that she had traveled in a sleeping-car

with the man, and been married at the end of the journey, instead of at

the beginning.

And there was Uncle Mandeville, the youngest of the Major’s

brothers—half drunk, though Sylvia did not know it—pacing the veranda

and discussing the offending bridegroom. “He should have been shot!”

cried Mandeville. “The damned scoundrel, he should have been shot like a

dog!” And suddenly he paused before the startled child. He was a giant

of a man, and his voice had the power of a church-organ. He placed his

hands upon Sylvia’s shoulders, pronouncing in solemn tones, “Little

girl, I want you to know that I will protect the honor of the women of

our family with my life! Do you understand me, little girl?”

And Sylvia, awe-stricken, answered, “Yes, Uncle Mandeville.” The worthy

gentleman was so much moved by his own nobility and courage that the

tears stood in his eyes; he went on, melodramatically, “With my life!

With my life! And remember the boast of the Castlemans—that there was

never a man in our family who broke his word, nor a woman with a stain

upon her name!”

That had been in Sylvia’s childhood. But now she was a young lady, about

to start for the metropolis, and the family judged that the time had

come for her to be instructed in some of these delicate matters. There

had been consultations between her mother and aunts, in which the former

had been prodded on to the performing of one of the most difficult of

all maternal duties. Sylvia remembered the occasion vividly, for her

mother’s agitation was painful to witness; she led the girl solemnly

into a darkened room, and casting down her eyes, as if she were

confessing a crime, she said:

“My child, you will probably hear evil-minded girls talking of things of

which my little daughter has never heard. When these things are

discussed, I want you to withdraw quietly from the company. You should

remain away until vulgar topics have been dismissed from the

conversation. I want your promise to do this, my daughter.”

Her mother’s sense of shame had communicated itself to Sylvia. At first

she had been staring wonderingly, but now she cast down her own eyes.

She gave the desired promise; and that was all the education concerning

sex that she had during her girlhood. This experience determined her

attitude for many years—a mingling of shame and fear. The time had come

for her to face the facts of her own physical development, and she did

so with agony of soul, and in her ignorance came near to injuring her

bodily health.

Also, the talk had another consequence, over which Mrs. Castleman would

have been sorely distressed had she known it. Though the girl tried her

best, it was impossible for her to avoid hearing some of the “vulgar”

conversation of the very sophisticated young ladies at the “finishing

school.” In spite of herself, she learned something of what sex and

marriage meant—enough to make her flesh creep and her cheeks burn with

horror and disgust. It seemed to her that she could no longer bear to

meet and talk to men. When she came home for the Christmas holidays and

discovered that her mother was expecting a child, the thought of what

this meant filled her with shame for both her parents; she wondered how

they could expect a pure-minded girl to love them, when they had so

degraded themselves. So intense was this impression that it continued

over the Easter vacation, when she returned to find the house in

possession of the new heir of all the might, majesty and dominion of the

Lysles.

§ 6

Miss Abercrombie’s “finishing school” was located on Fifth Avenue,

immediately opposite—so the catalogue informed you—to the mansions of

the oldest Knickerbocker families. It was Miss Abercrombie’s boast that

she had married more than half her young ladies to millionaires, and she

took occasion to drop allusions to the subject to all whom it might

interest. She ran her establishment upon an ingenious plan, about half

her pupils being the daughters of Western buccaneers, who paid high

prices, and the other half being the daughters of Southern aristocrats,

accepted at reduced rates. So the young ladies from the West got the

“real thing” in refinement, and the young ladies from the South made

acquaintances whose brothers were “eligible.”

Sylvia had always had everything that she wanted, and was under the

impression that immense sums of money had been spent upon her

upbringing. But among these new associates she found herself in the

class of the poorest. She had never owned a dress which they would

consider expensive, whereas the dresses of these girls were trimmed with

real lace, and cost several hundreds of dollars each. It was a startling

experience to many of them to discover that a girl who had so few jewels

as Sylvia could be so haughty and self-possessed; which was, of course,

just what they had come for—to acquire that superiority to their wealth

which is the apex of culture in millionairedom.

So Sylvia became an uncrowned queen, and all the lumber princesses and

copper duchesses and railroad countesses vied in entertaining her. They

treated her to box-parties, where, duly chaperoned, they listened to

possibly indecent musical comedies; and to midnight feasts where they

imperiled their complexions with peanut butter and almond paste and

chocolate creams and stuffed olives and anchovies and crackers and

mustard pickles and fruit cake and sardines and plum pudding and sliced

ham and salted almonds—and what other delicacies might come along in

anybody’s boxes from home. To aid in the digestion of these “goodies”

Sylvia was taken out twice daily, and marched in a little private parade

up Fifth Avenue, wearing a hat so large that all her attention was

required to keep it on in windy weather, and so heavy that it made her

head ache if the air were still; a collar so high that she could not

bend her head to balance the hat; high-heeled shoes upon which she

toddled with her feet crowded down upon the toes; and a corset laced so

tight that her lower ribs were bent out of shape and her liver

endangered. About the highest testimony that I can give to the

altogether superhuman wonderfulness of Sylvia is that she stayed for two

years at Miss Abercrombie’s, and came home a picture of radiant health,

eager, joyous—and lovely as the pearly tints of dawn.

She came home to prepare for her _début_; and what an outfit she

brought! You may picture her unfolding the treasures in her big bedroom,

which had been freshly done over in pink silk; her mother and aunts and

cousins bending over the trays, and the negro servants hovering in the

doorway, breathless with excitement, while the “yard-man” came panting

up the stairs with new trunks. Such an array of hats and gowns and

_lingerie_, gloves and fans, ribbons and laces, silk hose and satin

slippers, beads and buckles! The “yard-man,” a negro freshly promoted

from the corn-fields, went down into the kitchen with shining eyes,

exclaiming, “I allus said dis house was heaven, and now I knows it,

’cause I seen dem ‘golden slippers’!”

It was not a time for a girl to do much philosophizing; but Sylvia knew

that these “creations” of Paris dressmakers had cost frightful sums of

money, and she wondered vaguely why the family had insisted upon them.

She had heard rumors of a poor crop last year, and of worries about some

notes. Glad as the Major was to see her, she thought that he looked

careworn and tired.

“Papa,” she said, “I’ve been spending an awful lot of money.”

“Yes, honey,” he answered.

“I hope you don’t think I have been extravagant, Papa.”

“No, no, honey.”

“I tried to economize, but you’ve no idea how things cost in New York,

and how those girls spend money. My clothes—Mamma and Aunt Nannie

_would_ have me buy them——”

“It’s all right, my child—you have only one springtime, you know.”

Sylvia paused a moment. “I feel as if I ought to marry a very rich man,

after all the money you’ve spent upon me.”

Whereat the Major looked grave. “Sylvia,” he said, “I don’t want any

daughter of mine to feel that she has to marry. I shall always be able

to support my children, I hope.”

This was noble, and Sylvia was grateful for it; but with that serene,

observing mind of hers she could not help noting that if her father by

any chance called her attention to some man of her acquaintance, it was

invariably a “marriageable” man; and always there was added some detail

as to the man’s possessions. “Billy Harding’s a fellow with a future

before him,” he would remark. “He’s one of the cleverest business men I

know.”

Sylvia was also impressed with a comical phrase of her mother’s, which

seemed to indicate that that good lady classified poverty with smallpox

and diphtheria. The Major had suggested inviting to supper a young

medical student who was honest but penniless; and “Miss Margaret”

replied, “I really cannot see what we have to gain by exposing our

daughters to an undesirable marriage.” Sylvia concluded that her family

pinned its faith to the maxim of Tennyson’s “Northern Farmer”—

“Doän’t thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!”

§ 7

You must have a glimpse of Castleman Hall as it was at the time of the

_début_. The old house stands upon a hill, terraced on one side, and

overlooking the river from a high bluff on the other. It is of red

brick, originally square, with a two-storied portico and hanging balcony

in front; later on there had been added two wings of white painted wood,

for the library and conservatory—now nearly covered with red roses and

Virginia creepers. On the afternoon of the great day there was a

reception to all the married friends of the family. They came in

conveyances of every kind, from family coaches to modern high-power

limousines; they came in costumes varying from the latest Paris modes to

the antebellum splendor of old Mrs. Tagliaferro, who hobbled cautiously

over the polished hardwood floors, with the help of her gold-headed cane

on one side, and her husband, the General, on the other. Once arrived,

she laid her hands upon Sylvia’s, and told her how pretty she was, and

how she must contribute a new stone to the archway through which the

Castlemans had marched to fame for so many generations. There had been

many famous Castleman beauties, quavered the old gentleman, in his turn,

but none more beautiful than the present one—save only, perhaps, her

mother. (This last as “Miss Margaret” appeared at his elbow, clad in

ample folds of gray satin and tulle.) So one by one ladies and gentlemen

came up and delivered gallant speeches and grave exhortations, until

Sylvia was overwhelmed with the sense of responsibility involved in

being a daughter of the Castlemans.

And then came the evening, with the _début_ dance for the young people.

Ten years later I saw Sylvia in the gown she wore: white chiffon over

white messaline, with roses and a string of pearls. Wonderful she must

have been that night, at the age of eighteen, the climax of her beauty;

eager, glowing, a-quiver with excitement. I picture her standing before

the mirror, childishly ravished by her own loveliness, her mother and

aunts, scarcely less excited, putting the final touches to her toilette.

I picture her girl friends in the dressing-room and the hall, gossiping,

chattering, laughing; the buzz of excitement, then the hush when she

appeared, the cries of congratulation and applause. I picture the

downstairs rooms, decorated with lilies, magnolias and white ribbons,

the furniture covered with white brocade, the chandeliers turned into

great bells of lilies, the soft light from white-shaded candles flooding

everything. I picture the swains, waiting eagerly at the foot of the

staircase, each with a bouquet for his chosen one in his hand. I can

hear the strains of the violins floating up the staircase, and see the

shimmering form of Sylvia floating down, crowned with her dazzling glory

of golden hair. There was no one in Castleman County who failed to

realize that a belle was born that night!

§ 8

It was just a week after these festivities that there occurred the death

of Sylvia’s great-aunt. Nothing could have been more characteristic than

the method of her departure. She left home and betook herself to an

aristocratic boarding-house, kept by a “decayed gentlewoman” in New

Orleans; she might be a long time a-dying, she said, and did not want

anybody making a fuss over her. Also she did not care to have her nieces

and nephews calling in to drop hints as to the disposition of her

rosewood bedroom set, her miniature piano and her Queen Anne baby’s

crib. She left a will in which she bequeathed her property to her

grand-niece, Sylvia Castleman, to be held in trust for her until she was

forty years of age. “Some man will take care of her while she is

beautiful,” she wrote, “but later on she may find use for my pittance.”

And finally the old lady put in a clause to the effect that the bequest

was conditional upon her grand-niece’s obeying her injunction to wear no

mourning for her. “It is impossible to make a woman with brown eyes look

presentable in black,” she wrote. And this, you understand, in a

document which had to be filed for probate! Most fortunate it was that

all the editors of newspapers in the South are gentlemen, who can be

relied upon not to print the news.

Sylvia obeyed the instructions of this extraordinary document, and felt

it a solemn duty to go to entertainments, even with tears in her eyes.

So now began a bewildering succession of dinners, dances and receptions,

balls and suppers, house parties, hunting parties, auto parties, theatre

parties. It speaks marvels for her constitution that she was able to

stand the strain. When the last light had been extinguished she would

drag herself upstairs to bed, a limp train hung over her limp arm, her

feet aching in the tiny slippers and her back aching in the cruel stays.

The Governor saw fit to appoint her as his “sponsor” at the state

militia encampment; and so for ten days she would rise every morning at

daybreak, ride out with an “escort” to witness guard-mount, and remain

in the midst of a rush of gaieties until three or four o’clock the next

morning, when the nightly dance came to an end.

Sylvia always refused to give photographs of herself to men. It was part

of her feeling about them that she could not endure the thought of her

image being in their rooms. But her enterprising Aunt Nannie, the

Bishop’s wife, presented one to the editor of a metropolitan magazine,

where it appeared under the heading of “A Reigning Beauty of the New

South.” It was taken up and reproduced in Southern papers, and after

that Sylvia found that her fame had preceded her—everywhere she went new

worshippers joined her train, and came to her hometown to lay siege to

her.

You may perhaps know something about these Southern men. I had never

dreamed of such, and I would listen spellbound for hours to Sylvia’s

tales of them. Men who, as Lady Dee had phrased it, had nothing to do

but make love to their women! There were times when the realization of

this brought me a shudder. I would see, in a sudden vision, the torment

of a race of creatures who were doomed to spend their whole existence in

the chase of their females; and the females devoting their energies to

stinging them to fresh frenzies!

The men liked it; they liked nothing else in the world so much. “You may

make me as unhappy as you please,” they would tell Sylvia—“if only you

will let me love you!” And Sylvia, in the course of time, became

reconciled to letting them love her. She learned to play the game—to

play it with constantly increasing excitement, with a love of mischief

and a thirst for triumph.

She would show her latest victim twenty moods in one evening, alluring

him, repelling him, stimulating him, scorning him, pitying him,

bewildering him. When they met again, she would be completely absorbed

in the conversation of another man. He would be reduced at last to

begging for a chance to talk seriously with her; and she, pretending to

be touched, might let him call, and show him her loveliest and most

sympathetic self. So, before he realized it, he would be caught fast. If

he happened to be especially conspicuous, or especially rich, or

especially otherwise worth while, she might take the trouble to goad him

to desperation. Then he would be ready to give proofs of his devotion—to

go through West Point, or to be made a judge, if only she would promise

to marry him. Each of these tasks she set to an unfortunate wretch, who

went off and performed it—and came back and found her married!

§ 9

Such were the customs of young ladies in Sylvia’s world; but I must not

fail to mention that she had sometimes the courage to set her face

against this “world.” For instance, she had a prejudice against

drunkenness. She stood fast by the bold precedent that she would never

permit an intoxicated person to dance with her; and terrible

humiliations she put upon two or three who outraged her dignity. They

hid in their rooms in an agony of remorse, and sent deputations of their

friends to plead for pardon, and went away from home and stayed for

months, until Sylvia consented to take them into her favor again.

She took her place upon the icy heights of her maidenhood, and was not

to be drawn therefrom. There were only two men in the world, outside of

fathers and uncles and cousins, who could boast that they had ever

kissed her. About both of these I shall tell you in the course of time.

She was famous among other men for her reserve—they would make wagers

and lay siege to her for months, but no one ever dared to claim that he

had secured his kiss.

With boyish frankness they would tell her of these things; they told her

all they thought about her. I have never heard of men who dealt so

frankly in personalities, who would discuss a woman and her various

“points” so openly to her face. “Miss Sylvia, you look like all your

roses to-night.”—“Miss Sylvia, I swear you’ve got the loveliest eyes in

the world!”—“You’ll be fading soon now; you’d better marry while you’ve

got a chance!”—“I came to see if you were as pretty as they say, Miss

Castleman!”

She would laugh merrily. “Are you disappointed? Don’t you find me

ado’able?”

So far I have made no attempt to give you an idea of Sylvia’s way of

speaking English. It was a drawl so charming that Miss Abercrombie had

given instructions not to mar it by rash corrections. I can only mention

a few of her words—which is as if I gave you single hairs out of her

golden glory. She always spoke of “cannles.” She could, of course, make

nothing of the letter r, and said “funnichuh” and “que-ah” and “befo-ah

mawnin’.” There had been an English heiress at Miss Abercrombie’s who

had won the whole school over to “gel,” but when Sylvia arrived, she

swept the floor with “go-il.” The most irresistible word of all I

thought was “bug;” there is no way to indicate this by spelling—you must

simply take three times as long to say it, lingering over the vowel

sound, caressing it as if you thought that “bu-u-u-gs” were the most

“ado’able” things in all the “wo’il.”

Sylvia learned to apply with deadly effect the maxim of Lady Dee—that a

woman’s sharpest weapon is her _naïveté_. “Beware of me!” she would warn

her helpless victims. “Haven’t you heard that I’m a coquette? No, I’m

not joking. It’s something I’m bitterly ashamed of, but I can’t help it;

I’m a cold-hearted, selfish creature, a deliberate breaker of hearts.”

And then, of course, the victim would thrill with excitement and

exclaim, “See what you can do to me, Miss Sylvia! I’ll send you armfuls

of roses if you can break my heart!” You may judge how these

competitions ended from a chance remark which Sylvia made to me—“When I

look back upon my life, it seems to me that I waded in a river of

roses.”

The only protection which nature has vouchsafed against these terrors is

the fact that sooner or later such cold and cruel huntresses themselves

get snared. In the simile of “Sterne’s starling,” they are lured up to a

certain cage, and after much hopping about and hesitating, much

advancing and retreating, much chattering and chirping, they adorn

themselves in satin robes and lace veils and lilies-of-the-valley, and

to the sound of sweet strains from “Lohengrin” they enter the golden

cage. And then, snap! the door is shut and locked fast, and the

proprietor of the cage mounts guard over it—in Sylvia’s part of the

world with a shotgun in his hands.

§ 10

So I come to the time when this haughty lady was humbled; that is to

say, the time of her meeting with Frank Shirley. Because it was through

Harriet Atkinson that she came to know him, I must first tell you in a

few words about that active and pushing young lady.

Harriet Atkinson was the one weak spot in the fortifications of

respectability which Sylvia’s parents had built up about her. Harriet’s

ancestors were Yankees, of the very most odious “carpet-bag” type. Her

grandfather had been a pawnbroker in Boston, so fierce rumor declared;

and her father was a street-railroad president, who purchased “red-neck”

legislators for use in his business. Harriet herself was a brunette

beauty, so highly colored that she looked artificial, no matter how hard

she tried to look natural.

But in spite of these appalling facts, Harriet Atkinson was the most

intelligent girl whom Sylvia had met during her three years at the

“college.” She had a wit that was irresistible, and also she understood

people. You might spend weeks in her company and never be bored; whereas

there were persons who could prove possession of the “very best blood in

the South,” but who were capable of boring you most frightfully when

they got you alone for half an hour.

Sylvia was never allowed to go to Harriet’s home, nor was Harriet ever

asked to Castleman Hall. But Sylvia refused to give up her friend, and

for a year she intrigued incessantly to force Harriet upon her

hostesses, and to persuade her own suitors to call at the Atkinson home.

In the end she married her off to the scion of a great family—with

consequences which are to be told at a later stage of my story. The

point for the present is that things happened exactly as Sylvia’s aunts

had predicted; through her intimacy with the undesirable Harriet

Atkinson she was “exposed” to the acquaintance of several undesirable

men, among them Frank Shirley.

Sylvia had known about the Shirleys from earliest childhood. She had

heard the topic talked about at the family dinner-table, and had seen

tears in her father’s eyes when the final tragedy came. For the Shirleys

were among the “best people,” and this was not the kind of thing which

was allowed to happen to such.

About twelve years previously the legislature had appropriated money for

the building of a veterans’ home, and the funds had been entrusted to a

committee, of which Robert Shirley was treasurer. The project had lapsed

for a couple of years, and when the money was called for, Robert Shirley

was unable to produce it. Rumors leaked out, and there came a demand in

the legislature for an accounting.

The Major was one of a committee of friends who were asked by the

Governor to make a private investigation. They found that Shirley had

deposited the money to his private bank account, after the

unbusinesslike methods of a Southern gentleman. Checks had been drawn

upon it; but there was evidence at the bank tending to show that the

checks might not have been signed by Shirley himself. He had a younger

brother, a spendthrift and gambler, whom he had indulged and protected

all his life. Such were the hints which Sylvia had heard at home—when

suddenly Robert Shirley proceeded to the state Capitol and requested the

Governor to stop the investigation, declaring that he alone was to

blame.

It was a terrible thing. Shirley was besought to fly, he was told by the

Governor’s own authority that he might live anywhere outside the state,

and the search for him would be nominal. But he stood fast; the money

was gone, and some one must pay the penalty. So the world saw the

unprecedented spectacle of a man of “good family” standing trial, and

receiving a sentence of five years in the penitentiary.

He left a broken-hearted wife and four children. Sylvia remembered the

horror with which her mother and her aunts had contemplated the fate of

these latter. Two girls, soon to become young ladies, and cut off from

all hope of a future! “But, Mamma,” Sylvia cried, “it isn’t _their_

fault!” She recollected the very tone of her mother’s voice, the dying

away to a horrified whisper at the end: “My child, their father _wore

stripes_!”

The Shirleys made no attempt to hold up their heads against the storm,

but withdrew into strict seclusion on their plantation. Now, ten years

later, Robert Shirley having died in prison, his widow was a pitiful

shadow, his daughters were hopeless old maids, and his two sons were

farmers, staying at home and acting as their own managers.

Of these, Frank Shirley was the elder. I am handicapped in setting out

to tell you about him by the fact that he sits in the next room, and

will have to read what I write; he is not a man to stand for any

nonsense about himself—nor yet one whose ridicule an amateur author

would wish to face. I will content myself with stating simple facts,

which he cannot deny; for example, that he is a man a trifle below the

average height, but sturdily built and exceedingly powerful. He had in

those days dark hair and eyes, and he would not claim to have been

especially bad-looking. He is the most reserved man I have ever known,

but his feelings are intense when they are roused, and on these rare

occasions he is capable of being eloquent. He is, in general, a very

solid and dependable kind of man; he does not ask anything of anybody,

but he is willing to give, cautiously, after he has made sure that his

motive will be understood. As I read that over, it seems to me a

judicious and entirely unsentimental statement about him, which he will

have to pass.

He was, he tells me, a lively boy; but after the age of eleven he always

had, as the most prominent fact in his consciousness, the knowledge that

men set him apart as something different from themselves. And this, of

course, made intercourse with them difficult; if they were indifferent

to him, that was insult, and if they were cordial, then they were taking

pity upon him. He always knew that the people who met him, however

politely they greeted him, were repeating behind his back the inevitable

whisper, “His father wore stripes!” So naturally he found it pleasanter

not to meet people.

Then, too, there were his mother and sisters; it was hard not to be

bitter about them. He knew that the girls were gentle and lovely; and it

rather made men seem cowardly, that it should be certain that no one in

their own social world would ever ask them in marriage. There is so much

asking in marriage in the South—it is really difficult for a gentlewoman

to be passed over altogether. The Shirley girls could not discuss this,

even in the bosom of their family; but Frank came to understand, and to

brood over the thing in secret.

§ 11

So you see Frank Shirley was a difficult man to get at—as much so as if

he had been an emperor or an anchorite. I have been interested in the

psychology of sex, and I wondered how much this aloofness had to do with

what happened to Sylvia. There were so many men, and they were all so

much alike, and they were all so easy! But here was a man who was

different; a man whom one could not get at without humiliating efforts;

a man of mystery, about whom one could imagine things! I asked Sylvia,

who thought there might be something in this; but much more in a deeper

fact, which is known to poets and tellers of love-tales, but has not

been sufficiently heeded by scientists—that intuitive, commanding and

sometimes terrifying revelation of sexual affinity, which we smile at

and discredit under the name of “love at first sight.” The first time

Sylvia met Frank she did not know who he was; she saw at first only his

back; and yet she began at once to experience a thrill which she had

never known in her life before. Absurd as they may sound, I will repeat

her words: “There was something about the back of his neck that took my

breath!”

It had been some years since she had heard the Shirleys mentioned. They

had quietly declined all invitations, and this made it easy for

everybody to do with decency what everybody wanted to do—to cease

sending invitations. The Shirley plantation was remotely located, some

twenty miles away from Castleman Hall; and so little by little the

family had been forgotten.

But there was a certain Mrs. Venable, a young widow who owned a

hunting-lodge near the Shirley place; and as fate would have it, she was

one of the people whom Sylvia had persuaded to take up Harriet Atkinson.

One day, as the latter was driving to the lodge in her automobile, she

was “mired” in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm, when along came a

gentleman on horseback, who politely insisted upon her taking his

waterproof, and then mounting behind him and riding to his home up on

the hill; by which romantic method the delighted Harriet found herself

conveyed to an old and evidently aristocratic homestead, and welcomed by

some altogether lovely people.

Being younger than Sylvia, and not so much on the “inside” as to local

history, Harriet had been obliged to get the story from Mrs. Venable. It

had heightened her interest in the Shirleys—for Harriet’s great merit

was that she was human and spontaneous where she should have been

respectable. She went to call again on the family, and when she got home

she made haste to tell Sylvia about it. “Sunny,” she said—that was her

way of taking liberties with Sylvia’s complexion—“you ought to meet that

man Frank Shirley.” She went on to tell how good-looking he was, how

silent and mysterious, and what a fine voice he had. “And the sweetest,

lazy smile!” she declared. “I’m sure he could be a lady-killer if he did

not take life so seriously!” So, you see, Sylvia had something to start

her imagination going, and a reason for accepting Mrs. Venable’s

invitation to a hunting party.

One sunshiny morning in the late fall she was taking part in a

deer-hunt, carrying a rifle and looking as picturesque as possible. They

put her on a “stand” with Charlie Peyton, who ought to have been at

college, but was hanging round making a nuisance of himself by sighing

and gazing. After waiting a half hour or so, off in the woods they heard

a dog yelping. Charlie went off to investigate, thinking it might be a

bear; and so Sylvia was left to her fate.

She heard a sound in the bushes at one side, and thought it was a deer.

The creature moved past her, hidden by a dense thicket, and passed a

little way ahead, with a heavy trampling sound. She had half raised her

gun, when suddenly the bushes parted, and with a leap over a fallen log

there came into view—not a deer, but a horse with a rider upon his back.

The girl lowered her gun. The dog yelped again and the man reined up his

horse and stood listening. The horse was restive; as he drew rein upon

it, it turned slightly, exhibiting the rider’s face. To the outward eye

he was a not unusual figure, wearing the khaki shirt and knickerbockers

affected by the younger generation of planters when on duty. The shirt

was open, with a red bandana handkerchief tucked round at the throat.

But Sylvia was not looking with the outward eye. Sylvia had been reading

romances, and had a vague idea of a lover who would some day appear,

being distinguished from the ordinary admirers of salons and ball-rooms

by something knightly in his aspect. And this man seemed to have that

something. His face was a face of power, yet not harsh, rather with a

touch of melancholy.

As a rule Sylvia was immediately observant of her own emotional states,

especially where men were concerned; but this once she was too much

interested to think what she was thinking. She was noting the man’s

deeply-shadowed eyes and shiny black hair, his statue-like figure and

his mastery of the horse. She wondered if he would look in her

direction, and she waited, fascinated, for the moment when his glance

would rest upon her.

The moment came. He started slightly, and then quickly his hand went up

to his hat. “I beg your pardon,” he said, politely.

Sylvia noted his deep, full-toned voice; and with a sudden thrill she

recollected Harriet’s adventure. “Can this be Frank Shirley?” she

thought. She caught herself together and smiled. “It is for me to beg

pardon,” she said. “I came near shooting at you.”

“I deserved it,” he answered, smiling in turn. “I was trespassing on my

neighbor’s land.”

Sylvia had by now been “out” a full year, and it must be admitted that

she was a sophisticated young lady. When she met a man, her thought was:

“Could I love him? And how would it be if I married him?” Her

imagination would leap ahead through a long series of scenes: the man’s

home, his relatives and her own, his occupations, his amusements, his

ideas. She would see herself traveling with him, driving with him,

presiding at dinner-parties for him—perhaps helping to get him sober the

next morning. As a drowning man is said to live over his whole past in a

few seconds, so Sylvia might live her whole future during a figure at a

“german.”

But with this man it was different. She could not imagine him in any

position in her world. He was an elemental creature, belonging in some

wild place, where there was danger to be faced and deeds to be done.

Sylvia had read “Paul and Virginia,” and “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Typee,”

and in her mind was a vague idea of a primitive, close-to-nature life,

which one yearned for when one was tightly laced, or was sent into the

parlor to entertain an old friend of the family. She imagined this

strange knight springing forward and lifting her upon his saddle-bow, to

bear her away to such a world. She could feel his powerful arms about

her, his whispered words in her ear; she could hear the clatter of his

horse’s hoofs—away, away!

She had to make another effort, and remember who she was. “You are not

lost, I suppose?” he was asking.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I am on a ‘stand.’”

“Of course,” he replied; again there was a pause, and again Sylvia’s

brain went whirling. It was absurd how the beating of her heart kept

translating itself into the clatter of horse’s hoofs.

The man turned for a moment to listen to the dog; and she stole another

look at him. His eyes came back and caught her glance. She absolutely

had to say something—instantly, to save the situation. “I—I am not

alone,” she stammered. Oh, how dreadful—that she, Sylvia Castleman,

should stumble over words!

“My escort has gone to look for the dog,” she added. “He will be back in

a moment.”

“Oh,” he said; and Sylvia noted a sudden change in his expression—a set,

repressed look. She saw the blood mounting slowly, until it colored his

cheeks to a crimson.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, coldly. “Good-morning.” He turned his

horse and started on his way.

He had taken her words as a dismissal. But that was the least part of

the mistake. Sylvia read his mind in a flash—he was Frank Shirley, and

he thought that she had recognized him, and was thinking of his father

who had worn stripes! Yes, surely it must be that—for what right had he

to be hurt otherwise—that she did not care to stand conversing with a

strange man in a forest?

The thought sent her into a panic. She thought of nothing but the

cruelty of that idea. “No, no!” she cried, the tears almost starting

into her eyes. “I did not mean to send you away at all!”

He turned, startled by her vehemence. For a moment or two they stood

staring at each other. The girl had this one swift thought: “How

dreadful it must be to have such a thing in your mind, to have to be

waiting for insults from people—or at best, for pity!”

Then, in his quiet voice, he said, “I really think I had better go.”

Again he turned his horse, and without another glance rode away, leaving

Sylvia staring at his vanishing figure, with her hands tightly clutching

her gun.

§ 12

After that Sylvia felt that she had in common decency to meet Frank

Shirley. She asked nothing more about her motives—she simply _had_ to

meet him, to remove one thought from his mind. But for two days she was

at her wit’s end, and went round bored to death by everything and

everybody. She had a sudden whim to be let alone; and how difficult it

is to be let alone at a house party! There was the everlasting Charlie

Peyton, looking at her out of sickly blue eyes, and forever trying to

get hold of her hand; there was Billy Aldrich, with his sybaritic silk

socks, his shiny finger nails and talcum-powdered face; there was

Malcolm McCallum, a dandy from Louisville, with his endless stream of

impeccable suits and his caravan of trunks; there was Harvey Richards, a

“steel-man” from Birmingham, who had thrown his business to the winds

and settled down to the task of boring Sylvia. He was big and burly, and

had become the special favorite of her family; he dandled the baby

brother and made fudge with the sisters—but Sylvia declared viciously

that his idea of love-making was to poke at her with his finger.

She took to getting up very early in the morning, so that she could go

riding alone. As there was but one road, it was not her fault if she

passed near the Shirley place. And if by any remote chance he were to be

out riding too——

It was the third morning that she met him. He came round a turn, and it

all happened in a flash, before she had time to think. He gave her the

stiffest greeting that was consistent with good breeding; and then he

was past. Of course she could not look back. It was ten chances to one

that he would not do the same, but still he might, and that would be

dreadful.

She went on. She was angry with herself for her stupidity. That she

should have met him thus, and had no better wit than to let him get by!

Theoretically, of course, ladies cannot stop gentlemen to whom they have

not been introduced; but there are always things that can happen, in

cases of emergency like this. She thought of plans, and then she fell

into a rage with herself for thus pursuing a man.

The next morning when she went riding, she forced herself to turn the

horse’s head in the other direction from the Shirley place. But her

thoughts would come back to Frank, and presently she was making excuses

for herself. This man was not as other men; if he avoided her, it was

not because he did not want to know her, but because of his misfortune.

It was wicked that a man should be tied up in such a net of

misapprehension; to get him out of it would be, not unmaidenly, but

heroic. When she had met him yesterday morning, she ought to have

stopped her horse, and made him stay and talk with her. She was to leave

in two days more!

She turned her horse and went back; and when she was near the Shirley

house—here he came!

She saw him far down the road, and so had plenty of time to get her wits

together. Had he, by any chance, come out in the hope of meeting her? Or

would he be annoyed by her getting in his way? Suppose he were to snub

her—how could she ever get over it?

She took a diamond ring from her finger, and reached back and shoved it

under the saddle-cloth. It was a “marquise” ring, with sharp points, and

when she threw her weight upon it, the horse gave a jump. She repeated

the action, and it began to prance. “Now then!” whispered Sylvia to

herself.

§ 13

He came near; and she reined up her chafing steed. “I beg pardon,” she

said.

He raised his hat, and holding it, looked at her inquiringly.

“I think my horse must have a stone in his foot.”

“Oh!” he said, and was off in a moment, throwing the reins of his mount

over its head and handing them to her.

“Which foot?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He bent down and examined one hoof, then another, and so on for all

four, without a word. Then, straightening up, he said, “I don’t see

anything.”

He looked very serious and concerned. How “easy” he would be! “There

really must be something,” she said. “He’s all in a lather.”

“There might be something deep in,” he answered, making his

investigation all over again. “But I don’t see any blood.” (What a fine

back he has! thought Sylvia.)

He stood up. “Let me see his mouth,” he said. “Are you sure you’ve not

held him too tight?”

“I am used to horses,” was her reply.

“Some of them have peculiarities,” he remarked. “Possibly the saddle has

rubbed——”

“No, no,” answered Sylvia, in haste, as he made a move to lift the

cloth.

It was always hard for her to keep from laughing for long; and there was

something so comical in his gravity. Then too, something desperate must

be done, for presently he would mount and ride away. “There’s surely no

stone in his foot,” he declared.

Whereat Sylvia broke into one of her radiant smiles. “Perhaps,” she

said, “it’s in _your_ horse’s foot!”

He looked puzzled.

“Don’t you see?” she laughed. “Something _must_ be wrong—or you couldn’t

be here talking to me!”

But he still looked bewildered. “Dear me, what a man!” thought she.

A color was beginning to mount in his cheeks. Perhaps he was going to be

offended! Clearly, with such a man one’s cue was frankness. So her tone

changed suddenly. “Are you Mr. Shirley?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“And do you know who I am?”

“Yes, Miss Castleman.”

“Our families are old friends, you know.”

“Yes, I know it.”

“And then, tell me—” She paused. “Honestly!”

“Why—yes.”

“I’ve been honest and told you—I’m not really worried about my horse.

Now you be honest and say why you rode out this morning.”

He waited before replying, studying her face—not boldly, but gravely. “I

think, Miss Castleman, that it would be better if I did not.”

Then it was Sylvia’s turn to study. Was it a rebuke? Had he not come out

on her account at all? Or was it still the ghost of his father’s

prison-suit?

He did not help her with another word. (I can hear Frank’s laugh as he

told me about this episode. “We silent fellows have such an advantage!

We just wait and let people imagine things!”)

Sylvia’s voice fell low. “Mr. Shirley, you have me at a great

disadvantage.” And as she said this she gazed at him with the wonderful

red-brown eyes, wide open, childlike. So far there had never been a man

who could resist the spell of those eyes. Would this man be able? The

busy little brain behind them was watching every sign.

“I don’t understand,” he replied; and she took up the words:

“It is _I_ who don’t understand. And I dare not ask you to explain!”

She was terrified at this temerity; and yet she must press on—there was

no other way. She saw gates opening before her—gates into wonderland!

She leaned forward with a little gesture of abandonment. “Listen, Frank

Shirley!” she said. (What a masterstroke was that!) “I have known about

you since I was a little girl. And I understand the way things are now,

because I am a friend of Miss Atkinson’s. She asked you to come over and

meet me, and you didn’t. Now if the reason was that you have no interest

in me—why then I’m annoying you, and I’m behaving outrageously, and I’m

preparing humiliation for myself. But if the reason is that you think I

wouldn’t meet you fairly—that I wouldn’t judge you as I would any other

man—why, don’t you see, that would be cruel, that would be wicked! If

you were afraid that I wanted to—to patronize you—to do good to you——”

She stopped. Surely she had said enough!

There was a long silence, while he gazed at her—reading her very soul,

she feared. “Suppose, Miss Castleman,” he said, at last, “that I was

afraid that you wanted to do _harm_ to me?”

That was getting near to what she wanted! “Are you afraid?” she asked.

“Possibly I am,” he replied. “It is easy for those who have never

suffered to preach to those who have never done anything else.”

Sylvia did not know quite how to meet that. It was so much more serious

than she had been looking for, when she had slipped that ring under the

saddle-cloth! “Oh,” she cried, “what shall I say to you?”

“I will tell you exactly,” he said, “and then neither of us will be

taking advantage of the other. You are offering me your friendship, are

you not?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, can you say to me that if I were to accept it, the shame of

my family would never make any difference to you?”

She cried instantly, “That is what I’ve been trying to tell you! Of

course it would not.”

“You can say that?” he persisted. “It would make no difference

whatever?”

She was about to answer again; but he stopped her. “Wait and think. You

must know just what I mean. It is not a thing about which I could endure

a mistake. Think of your family—your friends—your whole world! And think

of everything that might arise between us!”

She stared at him, startled. He was asking if he might make love to her!

She had not meant it to go so far as that—but there it was. Her own

recklessness, and his forthrightness, had brought it to that point. And

what could she say?

“Think!” he was saying. “And don’t try to evade—don’t lie to me. Answer

me the truth!”

His eyes held hers. She waited—thinking, as he forced her to. At last,

when she spoke, it was with a slightly trembling voice. “It would make

no difference,” she said.

And then she tried to continue looking at him, but she could not. She

was blushing; it was a dreadful habit she had!

It was an absolutely intolerable situation, and she must do

something—instantly. _He_ never would—the dreadful sphinx of a man! She

looked up. “Now we’re friends?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Then,” she said, laughing, “reach under the saddle-cloth and get out my

ring. I might lose it.”

Bewildered, he got the ring, and understanding at last, laughed with

her. “And now,” cried Sylvia, in her friendliest tone of voice, “get on

your horse again and behave like a man of enterprise! Come!” She touched

her mount and went galloping; she heard him pounding away behind her,

and she began to sing:

“Waken, lords and ladies gay,

On the mountain dawns the day,

All the jolly chase is near

With hawk and hound and hunting-spear!”

§ 14

They were good comrades now; all their problems solved, and a

stirrup-cup of happiness to quaff between them. Sylvia was amazed at

herself—the surge of exultation which arose in her and swept her along

upon its crest. Never in all her life had she been as full of verve and

animation as she was throughout that ride. She laughed, she sang, she

poured out a stream of fantasy; and all the while the clatter of the

horses hoofs—romance blending itself with reality!

But also she was studying the man. There was something in her which must

always be studying people. Thank Heaven, he was a man who could forget

himself, and laugh and be good fun! It was something to have got him out

of his melancholy, and set him to galloping here—admiring her, marveling

at her! She felt his admiration like a storm of wind pushing her along.

At last she drew up, breathless. “Dear me,” she exclaimed, “what a lot

of chattering I have done! And we must be—how many miles from home?”

“Ten, I should say,” he replied.

“And I’ve had no breakfast!” she said. “We really _must_ go back.”

He made no objection, and they turned. “You must come and see me at the

lodge,” she said. “I am going home to-morrow afternoon.”

But he shook his head. “Don’t ask me,” he replied. “You know I don’t

belong among smart people.”

She started to protest; but then she thought of Billy Aldrich with his

tight collars and fancy stick-pins—of Malcolm McCallum with his Japanese

valet; no, there was no use pretending about such things. And besides,

she did not want these people to know her secret.

“But where can we meet?” she said. (How perfectly appalling was

that—without any hint from him!)

“Can’t we ride again to-morrow morning?” he asked, quite simply.

And so they settled it. He left her at the place where the road turned

in to the lodge. He tried to thank her for what she had taken the

trouble to do; but she was frightened now—she dared not stay and listen

any longer to his voice. She waved him a bright farewell, and rode off,

feeling suddenly faint and bewildered.

She had half a mile or so to ride alone, and in that ride it was exactly

as if he were by her side. She still heard his horse’s hoofs, and felt

how he would look if she were to turn. Once she thought of Lady Dee, and

then she could not help laughing. What _would_ Lady Dee have said! How

many of the rules of coquetry had she not broken in the space of two

brief hours! But after a little more thought, she consoled herself.

Possibly there were moves in this game which even Lady Dee had never

heard of! “I don’t think I managed it so badly,” she was saying to

herself, as she dismounted from her horse.

And that was the view she took when she told Harriet about it. She had

not meant to tell Harriet at all, but the secret would out—she had to

have some one to talk to. “Oh, my dear,” she exclaimed, “he’s perfectly

wonderful!”

“Who? What do you mean?” asked Harriet.

“Frank Shirley.”

“What? You’ve met him?”

“Met him? I’ve been riding with him the whole morning, and I’ve almost

let him propose to me!”

“Sylvia!” cried Harriet, aghast.

The other stood looking before her, grown suddenly thoughtful. “Yes, I

did. And what’s more, I believe that to-morrow morning I’m _going_ to

let him propose to me.”

“Sunny,” exclaimed her friend, “are you a woman, or one of Satan’s

imps?”

For answer Sylvia took her seat at the piano and began to sing—a song by

which all her lovers set much store:

“Who is Sylvia? What is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair and wise is she—

The heavens such grace did lend her

That she might adored be!”

§ 15

Sylvia did very little thinking that first day—she was too much

possessed by feelings. Besides this she had to go through all the

routine of a house party; to go to breakfast and make apologies for her

singular desire to ride alone; to go quail-shooting and remind Charlie

Peyton to fire off his gun now and then; to curl her hair and select a

gown for dinner—and all the while in a glow of happiness so intense as

to come close to the borderland of pain.

It was not a definite emotion, but a vague, suffused ecstasy. She was

like one who goes about hearing exquisite music; angels singing in the

sky above her, little golden bells ringing in every part of her body.

And then always, penetrating the mist of her feelings, was the memory of

Frank Shirley. She could see his eyes, as they had looked up at her; she

could hear the tones of his voice—its low intensity as he had said,

“Think of everything that might happen between us!” She would find

herself blushing crimson at the dinner-table, and would have to chatter

to hide her confusion.

When night came she went into a sleep that was a half swoon of

happiness; and awoke in the early dawn, first bewildered, then

horrified, because of what she had done—her boldness, her lack of

dignity and reserve. She had thrown herself at a man’s head! And of

course he would be disgusted and would flee from her. She drank her

coffee and dressed a full half hour too early; and meanwhile she was

planning how she would treat him that morning. But then, suppose he did

not come that morning?

She rode out in the light of a sunrise she did not see, amid the song of

birds she did not hear. Suppose he did not come! When she saw him, far

up the road, she wanted to turn and flee. Her heart pounded, her cheeks

burned, there was a clashing as of cymbals in her ears. She reined up

her horse and sat motionless, telling herself that she must be calm. She

clenched her hands and bit a little hole in her tongue; and so, when he

arrived, he found a young woman of the world awaiting him.

She saw at once that something was wrong with him. He too had been

having moods and agonies, and had come full of resolutions and

reservations! He greeted her politely, and had almost nothing to say as

they rode away together. Sylvia’s heart sank. He had come because he had

promised; but he was regretting his indiscretions. Very well, she would

show him that she, too, could be polite! Under the spur of her fierce

pride, she could be a light-hearted child, utterly unaware of the

existence of any sulking male.

So they rode on. It was such a beautiful morning, the odor of the

pine-forests was so refreshing and the song of the birds so free, that

Sylvia was soon all that she had set out to pretend. She forgot her

cavalier for several minutes, laughing and humming. When she realized

him again, she had the boldness to tease him about himself—

“Oh, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone, and palely loitering?”

And when he had no poetry ready to reply, she grew tired of him

altogether, and touched her horse and cantered quickly on. Let him

follow her if he chose—what mattered it! Moreover, she rode well, and

men always noticed it; she was bare-headed, and no man ever saw the

golden glory of her hair in bright sunlight that his heart did not begin

to quiver within him!

After a while he spurred his horse and rode at her side, and without

looking, she saw that he was watching her. She gave him just a little

smile, absent-minded and barely polite. Resolving to punish him still

more, she asked him the time. He gravely drew out his watch and replied

to her question. “I will ride as far as the spring,” she said. “Then I

must be going back.”

But he did not make the expected protest. He was going to lose her, and

he did not care! Oh, what a man!

As they drew near the spring, Sylvia began to be uneasy again. She did

not want him to lose her; she wanted him to care. She stopped to breathe

her horse, and to look at the moss-ringed pool of water, and at the

field of golden-rod beyond. “How lovely!” she said; and repeated, “How

lovely!” He never said a word—and when he might so easily have said,

“Let us stay a while!”

She was growing desperate. Her horse had got its breath and had had some

water—what else? “I must have some of that golden-rod!” she exclaimed,

suddenly. What was the matter with him, staring into space in that

fashion? Had he no manners at all? “I must have some golden-rod,” she

repeated; and when he still made no move, she said, “Hold my horse,

please,” and started to dismount.

He sprang off, and took the reins of her horse, and those of his own in

the same hand, giving his other hand to her. It was the first time he

had touched her, and it sent a shock through her that sent her flying in

a panic—out into the field of flowers, where she could hide her cheeks

and her trembling!

§ 16

He made the horses fast to the fence, carefully and deliberately; and

meantime she was gathering golden-rod. She knew that she made a picture

in the midst of flowers. She was very much occupied as he came to her

side.

A moment later she heard his voice: “Miss Castleman.”

Panic seized her again, but she looked up, with her last flicker of

courage. “Well?” she asked.

“There is something I want to tell you,” he began. “I can’t play this

game with you—I am no match for you at all.”

“Why—what do you mean?” she managed to say.

As usual, she knew just what he meant. “I am not a man who can play with

his emotions,” he said. “You must understand this at the very outset—the

thing is real to me, and I’ve got to know quickly whether or not it is

real to you.”

There he was! Like a storm of wind that threatened to sweep away her

pretenses, the whole pitiful little structure of her coquetry. But she

could not let the structure go; it was her only shelter, and she strove

desperately to hold it in place. “Why should you assume that I play with

my emotions?” she demanded.

“You play, not with your own, but with other peoples’ emotions,” he

replied. “I know; I’ve heard about you—long ago.”

She drew herself up haughtily. “You do not approve of me, Mr. Shirley?

I’m very sorry.”

“You must know—” he began.

But she went on, in a rush of defensive recklessness: “You think I’m

hollow—a coquette—a trifler with hearts. Well, I am. It’s all I know.”

She flung her head up, looking at him defiantly.

“No, Miss Castleman,” he said, “it’s _not_ all you know!”

But her recklessness was driving her—that spirit of the gambler that was

in the blood of all her race. “It _is_ all I know.” She bent over and

began strenuously to pluck sprays of golden-rod.

“To break men’s hearts?” he asked.

She laughed scornfully. “I had a great-aunt, Lady Dee—perhaps you’ve

heard of her. She taught me—and I’ve found out through much experience

that she was right.” She gazed at him boldly, over the armful of

flowers. “‘Sylvia, never let yourself be sorry for men. Let them take

care of themselves. They have all the advantage in the game. They are

free to come and go, they pick us up and look us over and drop us when

they feel like it. So we have to learn to manage them. And, believe me,

my child, they like it—it’s what they’re made for!’”

“And you believe such things as that?”

She laughed, a superbly cynical laugh, and began to gather more flowers.

“I used to think they were cruel—when I was young. But now I know that

Aunt Lady was right. What else have men to do but to make love to us?

Isn’t it better for them than getting drunk, or gambling, or breaking

their necks hunting foxes? ‘It’s the thing that lifts them above the

brute,’ she used to say. ‘Naturally, the more of them you lift, the

better.’”

“Did she teach you to deceive men deliberately?”

“She told me that when she was ordering her wedding trousseau, she was

engaged to a dozen; a cousin of hers was engaged to another dozen, and

couldn’t make up her mind which to choose, so she sent notes to them all

to say that she’d marry the man who got to her first.”

He smiled—his slow, quiet smile. Sylvia did not know how he was taking

these things; nor did his next remark enlighten her. “Did it not

surprise you to be taught that men were the centre of creation?”

“No. They taught me that God was a man.”

He laughed, then became grave. “Why do you need so many men? You can’t

marry but one.”

“Not in the South. But when I am ready to marry that one, I want it to

be the one I want; and the only way to be sure is to have a great many

wanting _you_. When a man sees a girl so surrounded with suitors that he

can’t get near her, he knows it’s the one girl in the world for him.

Aunt Lady had a saying about it, full of wisdom.” And Sylvia looked very

wise herself. “‘Men are sheep!’”

“I see,” he said, somewhat grimly. “I fear, Miss Castleman, I cannot

enter such a competition.”

“Is it cowardice?”

“Perhaps. It has been said that discretion is the better part of valor.

You see, to me love is not a game, but a reality. It could never be that

to you, I fear.”

Poor Sylvia! She was trying desperately hard to remember and make use of

her training. But the rules she had learned were, so to speak, for

fresh-water sailing; no one had ever thought that her frail craft might

be blown out upon a stormy ocean like this. Picture her as a terrified

navigator, striving to steer with a broken rudder, and gazing up into a

mountain-wave that comes roaring down upon her!

He was a man who meant what he said. She had tried her foolish arts upon

him and had only disgusted him. He was going away; and once he had left

her, she would be powerless to get hold of him again!

Love could never be a reality to her, he had said. With sudden tears in

her voice she exclaimed, “It could! It could!”

His whole aspect changed in a moment. A fire seemed to leap into his

eyes. “You mean that?” he asked. And that was enough for her. As he

moved towards her, she backed away a step or two. She thrust out the

great bunch of golden-rod, filling his arms with that, and retreated

farther into the yellow field.

He stood for a moment, nonplussed, looking rather comical with his

unexpected load. Then he turned away without a word, and went to where

his horse was fastened, and began to tie the flowers to his saddle.

She joined him before he had finished and mounted her own horse, saying

casually, “It is late. We must return.” He mounted and rode beside her

in silence.

At last he remarked, “You are going away this afternoon?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then where can I see you?”

“You will have to come to my home.”

There was a pause. “It will be a difficult experience,” he observed.

“You will have to help me through it.”

She answered, promptly, “You must come as any other man would come. You

must learn to do that—you must simply not _know_ what other people are

thinking.”

At which he smiled sadly. “There is nothing in that. When everybody in

the world is thinking one thing about you, you find there’s no use

pretending not to know what it is.”

There he was again—simple and direct. He had a vision of the hostility

of her relatives, the horror of her friends; he went on to speak his

thoughts quite baldly. Was she prepared to face these difficulties? She

might have the courage, she might not; but at least she must be

forewarned, and not encounter them blindly. She said, “My own people

will be kind, I assure you.” And when he smiled dubiously, she added,

“Leave it to me. I promise you I’ll manage them.”

§ 17

Sylvia, as you know, had been taught to discuss the affairs of her heart

in the language of military science. Continuing the custom, the fortress

of her coquetry had withstood an onslaught which had brought dismay to

the garrison, who had never before known what it was to be in real

danger. In the hope of restoring confidence to the troops there was now

undertaken a raid into the territory of perfectly innocent and

defenseless neighbors.

The first victim was Charlie Peyton. He had implored one last

opportunity to prove his devotion—being unable to imagine how his

devotion could be of no interest to Sylvia. So the guests of the house

party were treated to the amazing spectacle of this dignified and

self-conscious youth standing for two hours in the crotch of an

apple-tree. Meanwhile Sylvia went off for a walk with Malcolm McCallum;

and when at last Charlie’s time was up, and he set out in search of her,

he found his rival occupied in crawling on his knees the length of a

splintery dock which ran out into the lake. Sylvia sat by, absorbed in a

book, and when Charlie questioned her as to the meaning of this strange

phenomenon, she replied that Mr. McCallum (known to us previously as

“the Louisville dandy”) was probably experimenting with the creases in

his trousers.

Dressing for luncheon and the trip home, Sylvia had a consultation with

her friend Harriet. “Do you suppose I’m really in love?” was her

question.

“With whom?” asked Harriet.

But Sylvia paid no heed to this feeble wit. “I don’t think he approves

of me, Harriet. He thinks I’m shallow and vain—a trifler with hearts.”

“What would you have him think?” persisted the other.

“He isn’t like other men, Harriet. He makes me ashamed of myself. I

think I ought to treat him differently.”

Whereat her friend became suddenly serious. “Look here, Sunny, don’t you

lose your nerve! You stick to your game!”

“But suppose he won’t stand it?”

“_Make_ him stand it! Take my advice, now, and don’t go trying

experiments. You’ve learned one way, and you’re a wonder at it—don’t get

yourself mixed up at the critical moment.”

Sylvia was gazing at herself in the mirror, wondering at the look on her

own face. “I don’t know what to do next!” she cried.

“The Lord takes care of children and fools,” said Harriet. “I hope He’s

on His job!” Then the luncheon gong sounded, and they went downstairs.