§ 29
The matter was complicated by the episode of Beauregard Dabney, about which I have to tell.
You have heard, perhaps, of the Dabneys of Charleston; the names of three of them—Beauregard’s grandfather and two great-uncles—may be read upon the memorial tablets in the stately old church which is the city’s pride. In Charleston they have a real aristocracy—gentlemen so poor that they wear their cuffs all ragged, yet are received with homage in the proudest homes in the South. The Dabneys had a city mansion with front steps crumbling away, and a country house which would not keep out the rain; and yet when Beauregard, the young scion of the house, fell prey to the charm and animation of Harriet Atkinson, whose father’s street railroad was equal to a mint, the family regarded it as the greatest calamity since Appomattox.
He had followed Harriet to Castleman County; and when the news got out, a detachment of uncles and aunts came flying, and captured the poor boy, and were on the point of shipping him home, when Harriet called Sylvia to the rescue. Sylvia could impress even the Dabneys; and if only she would have Beauregard and one of the aunts invited to Castleman Hall, it might yet be possible to save the situation.
Sylvia had met young Dabney once, when visiting in Charleston. She remembered him as an effeminate-mannered youth, with what would have been a doll-baby face but for the fact that the nose caved in in the middle in a disturbing way. “Tell me, Harriet,” she asked, when she met her friend—“are you in love with him?”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I’m afraid I’m not—at least, not very much.”
“But why do you want to marry a man you don’t love?”
Harriet was driving, and she grasped the reins tightly and gave the horse a flick with the whip. “Sunny,” she said, “you might as well face the fact—I could never fall in love as you have. I don’t believe in it. I wouldn’t want to. I’d never let myself trust a man that much.”
“But then, why marry?”
“I have to marry. What can I do? I’m tired of being chaperoned, and I don’t want to be an old maid.”
Sylvia pondered for a moment. “Suppose,” she said, “that you should marry him, and then meet a man you loved?”
“I’ve already answered that—it won’t happen. I’m too selfish.” She paused, and then added, “It’s all right, Sunny. I’ve figured over it, and I’m not making any mistake. He’s a good fellow, and I like him. He’s a gentleman—he does not offend me. Also, he’s very much in love with me, which is the best way; I’ll always be the boss in my own home. He’s respected, and I’ll help out my poor struggling family if I marry him. You know how it is, Sunny—I vowed I’d never be a climber, but it’s hard to pull back when your people are eager for the heights. And then, too, it’s always a temptation to want to go where you’re told you can’t go.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Sylvia. “But that’s a joke, and marrying’s a serious matter.”
“It’s only that because we make it so,” retorted the other. “I find myself bored to death, and here’s something that rouses my fighting blood. They say I sha’n’t have him—and so I want him. I’m going to break into that family, and then I’m going to shake the rats out of the hair of some of those old maid aunts of his!”
She laughed savagely and drove on for a while. “Sunny,” she resumed at last, “you’re all right. You know it, but I tell you so anyway. You never were a snob that I know—but I’m cynical enough to say that it’s only because you are too proud. Can you imagine how you’d feel if anybody tried to patronize you? Can you imagine how you’d feel if everybody did it? I’m tired of it—don’t you see? And Beauregard is my way of escape. I’m going to marry him if I possibly can; my mind is made up to it. I’ve got the whole plan of campaign laid out—your part included.”
“What’s my part, Harriet?”
“It’s very simple. I want you to let Beauregard fall in love with you.”
“With me!”
“Yes. I want you to give him the worst punishment you ever gave a man in your life.”
“But what’s that for?”
“He’s in love with me—he wants me—and he’s too much of a coward to marry me. And I want to see him suffer for it—as only you can make him. I want you to take him and maul him, I want you to bray him and pound him in your mortar, I want you to roll him and toss him about, to walk on him and stamp on him, to beat him to a jelly and grind him to a powder! I want you to keep it up till he’s thoroughly reduced—and then you can turn him over to me.”
“And then you will heal him?” inquired Sylvia—who had not been alarmed by this bloodthirsty discourse.
“Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t,” said the other. “What is there in the maxims of Lady Dee about a broken heart?”
“The best way to catch a man,” quoted Sylvia, “is on the rebound!”
§ 30
I don’t know how this adventure will seem to you. To me it was atrocious; but Sylvia undertook it with a child’s delight.
“I had on a white hat with pink roses,” she said, when she told me about it; “and I could always do anything to a man when I had pink roses on. Beauregard was waiting for Harriet to go driving when I first saw him; she was upstairs, late on purpose. He said something about my looking like a rose myself—he was the most obvious of human creatures. And when he asked me to get in and sit by him, I said, ‘Harriet will be jealous.’ Of course he was charmed at the idea of Harriet’s being jealous. So he asked me to take a little drive with him, and we stayed out an hour—and by the time we got back, I had him!”
Two days later he was on his knees begging Sylvia to marry him. At which, of course, she was horrified. “Why, you’re supposed to be in love with my best friend!”
He was frank about it, poor soul. “Of course, Miss Sylvia,” he explained, “I was in love with Harriet; and Harriet’s a fine girl, all right. It’s bad about her family, but I thought we could go away where nobody knew her, and people would accept her as my wife, and they’d soon forget. She’s jolly and interesting, and all that. But you understand, surely, Miss Sylvia—no man would marry Harriet Atkinson if he could get you. You—you’re quite different, Miss Sylvia. You’re one of us!”
He made Sylvia furious by his matter-of-fact snobbery; and so she was lovely to him. She told him that she, too, had been in love, but her family was opposed to the man, and now she was very unhappy. She told him that she was not worthy of the love of such a man as he. Poor Beauregard tried his best to reassure her, and followed her about day and night for ten days, and was a most dreadful nuisance.
Each day she would report to Harriet the stage of infatuation to which he had come; until at last Harriet’s thirst for blood was satisfied. Then, dressed all in snow-white muslin and lace, Sylvia took her devoted suitor off to a seat in a distant grape-arbor, and there administered the dose she had prepared for him. “Mr. Dabney,” she said, “this joke has got to be such a bore that I can’t stand it.”
“What joke?” asked Beauregard, innocently.
“You know that I have called myself a friend of Harriet Atkinson’s. When you came to me and told me that you loved her, but wanted to marry me because my family was better than hers—did it never occur to you how it would strike her friend? Evidently not. Well, let me tell you then—I could think that it was the stupidest joke I had ever heard, or else that you were the most arrogant jack that ever walked on two legs. I said that I would punish you—and I’ve been doing it. You must understand that I never felt the least particle of interest in you; I never met a man who’d be less apt to attract me, and I can’t see how you managed to interest Harriet. I assure you you’ve no reason for holding the extravagant opinion of yourself which you do.”
The poor youth sat staring at her, unable to believe his ears. And so, of course, Sylvia began to feel sorry for him. “I can see,” she said, “that there might be something in you to like—if only you had the courage to be yourself. But you’re so terrorized by your aunts and uncles, you’ve let them make you into such a dreadful snob——”
She paused. “You really think I am a snob?” he cried.
“The worst I ever met. I couldn’t bring myself to discuss it with you. Let me give you this one piece of advice, though; if you think you’re too good to marry a girl, pray find it out before you tell her that you love her. Of course, I’m not sorry that it happened this time, for you won’t break Harriet’s heart, and she’s a thousand times too good for you. So I’m not sorry that you’ve lost her.”
“You—you think that I’ve lost her, Miss Sylvia?” gasped the other.
“Lost her?” echoed Sylvia. “Why, you don’t mean—” But then she stopped. She must not make it impossible for him to think of Harriet again. “You’ve lost her, unless she’s a great deal more generous than I’d ever be.”
Beauregard took his drubbing very well. He persuaded Sylvia to discuss his snobbery with him, and confessed the offence, and got up quite a fire of indignation against his banded relatives. Also he admitted that Harriet was too good for him, and that he had treated her like a cad. His speeches grew shorter and his manner more anxious, and Sylvia could see that his main thought was to get back and find out if he’d really lost Harriet.
So she called her friend up on the ’phone and announced, “He’s coming. Get on your prettiest dress without delay!” And then Sylvia went away and had a cry—first, because she had said such cruel things, and second, because her mother and father would be unhappy when they learned that Beauregard had escaped her.
An hour later Harriet called up to say that it was all over. “Did you accept him?” asked Sylvia.
To which the other answered, “You may trust me now, Sunny! You have made him into a soft dough, and I’ll knead him.” And sure enough, the new Beauregard Dabney sent his aunts and uncles flying, and followed Harriet to her summer home on the Gulf, and was hardly to be induced to wait for a conventional wedding—so eager was he to prove to himself and to Sylvia Castleman that he was really not a coward and a snob!
§ 31
It was in the midst of these adventures that Frank Shirley made his unexpected return from the North. On the day when he came to see her first, she naturally forgot about the existence of Beauregard Dabney—until Beauregard suddenly appeared and flew into a fit of jealousy. Then the imp of mischievousness got hold of Sylvia; she found herself wondering, “Would it be possible for Frank to be jealous of Beauregard? And if he was, how would he behave?”
“I knew it was dreadful then,” she told me, “but I couldn’t have helped it if I’d been risking my life. I had to see what Frank would do when he was jealous. I simply had to! It was a kind of insanity!”
So she tried it, and did not get much fun out of the experience. Frank was like an Indian in captivity; he could not be made to cry out under torture. He saw Beauregard’s position, and the unconcealed delight of the family; but he set his lips together and never gave a sign. Sylvia was going away for the summer, and Beauregard was talking about following her. There would be other suitors following her, no doubt—and new ones on the ground. Frank went home, and Sylvia did not hear from him for several days.
The Beauregard episode came to its appointed end, and then, in a letter to Frank, Sylvia mentioned that she had accomplished her purpose—the youth was engaged to Harriet. She thought this was explaining things. But how could Frank imagine the complications of the art of man-catching? Was Sylvia jesting with him, or trying to blind him, or apologizing to him, or what?
Sylvia kept putting off her start to the mountains—she could not bear to go while things were in such a state between them. But, while she was still hesitating, to her consternation she received a note from him saying that he was starting for Colorado. He had received a telegram that an aunt was dead; there were business matters to be attended to—some property which for his sisters’ sake could not be neglected. It was a cold, business-like note, with not a word of sorrow at parting; and Sylvia shed tears over it. Such is the irrationality of those in love, she had forgotten all about young Dabney or any other cause for doubt and unhappiness she might have given Frank. She thought that he, and he alone, had been unkind. And meantime, Frank had made up his mind that she was repenting of her engagement, and that it was his duty to make it easy for her to withdraw.
So the two spent an unhappy summer. Sylvia let herself be taken about to parties, but she grew more weary every hour of the social game. “I’ve smiled until I’ve got the lockjaw,” she would say. She was losing weight and growing pale, in spite of the mountain air.
September came, and Harriet’s wedding was set for the next month, and likewise Frank’s return to Harvard. He came back from the West, and Sylvia wrote asking him to come and visit her for a week. But to her consternation there came in reply a polite refusal from Frank. There was so much that needed his attention on the plantation, and some studying that must be done if he was to make good. For three days Sylvia struggled with herself, the last stand of that barbarian pride of hers; then she gave way completely and sent him a telegram: “Please come at once.”
She would have recalled it an hour afterwards, but it was too late; and that evening she received an answer, to the effect that he would arrive in the morning. She spent a sleepless night imagining his coming, and a score of different ways in which she would meet him. She would throw herself at his feet and beg him not to torture her; she would array herself in her newest gown and fascinate him in the good old way; she would climb once more upon the pinnacle of her pride and compel him to humble himself before her.
In the morning she drove to meet him, together with a cousin who had come on the same train. She never stood a worse social ordeal than that drive and the luncheon with the family. But at last they were alone together, and sat gazing at each other with eyes full of bewilderment and pain.
“Sylvia,” said Frank, finally, “you do not look happy.”
“Why should I be happy?” she asked.
There was a pause. “Listen,” he said. “Can we not deal honestly with each other—openly and sincerely, for once. Surely that is the best way, Sylvia—no matter how much it hurts.”
“I am ready to do it,” she replied.
“You don’t have to spare my feelings,” he went on. “I know all you have to contend with, and I sha’n’t blame you. The one thing I can’t bear is to be played with, to be lured by false hopes, to drag on and on, tormented by uncertainty.”
She was gazing at him, bewildered. “Why do you say all that, Frank?” she cried.
“Why should I not say it?” he asked; and again they stared at each other.
Suddenly she broke out, in a voice full of anguish, “Frank, this is what I want to know—answer me this! Do you love me?”
“Do I love you?” he echoed.
“Yes,”—and with greater intensity, “I want you to be honest about it!”
“Honey!” he said, his voice trembling, “it’s the question of whether I’m allowed to love you. It’s so terrible to me—I can’t stand the uncertainty.”
She cried again, “But do you want to love me?”
She heard his voice break, she saw the emotion that was shaking him, and with a sudden sob she was in his arms. “Oh, Frank, Frank!” she exclaimed. “What have we been doing to each other?”
And so at last the fog of misunderstanding was lifted. “Sweetheart,” he exclaimed, “what could you have been thinking?”
“I thought you had stopped loving me because I had been too bold, because I had been unwomanly.”
“Why, Sylvia, you must be mad! Have I not been hungry for your love?”
“Oh, tell me that I can love you!” she wailed. “Tell me that you won’t grow tired of me if I love you!”
He clasped her in his arms and covered her lips with kisses; he soothed her like a frightened child. She was free now to sob out her grief, to tell him what she had felt throughout all these months of misery. “Oh, why didn’t you come to me like this before?” she asked.
“But, Sylvia,” he answered, “how could I know? I saw you letting another man make love to you——”
“But, Frank, that was only a joke!”
“But how could I know that?”
“How could you imagine anything else? That I could prefer Beauregard Dabney to you!”
“That’s easy to say,” he replied. “But there was your family—I knew what they’d prefer, and I saw how they were struggling to keep us apart. And what was I to think—why should you be giving him your time, unless you wanted to let me know——”
“Ah, don’t say that! Don’t say that!” she cried, quickly. “It’s wicked that such a thing should have happened.”
“We must learn to talk things out frankly,” he said. “For one thing you must not let your family come between us again. You must free me from this dreadful fear that they are going to take you from me.”
And suddenly Sylvia blazed up. All the misunderstanding had come from the opposition of her family, and her unwillingness to talk to Frank about it. “I never saw it so clearly before,” she exclaimed. “Frank, I can never make them see things my way. And they’ll always have this dreadful power over me—because I love them so!”
“What can you do then?” he asked.
“I’m going to betray them to you!” she cried. And as he looked puzzled, she went on, “I’m going to tell you about them! I’m going to tell you everything they’ve said and done, and everything they may say and do in the future!”
“And that,” said Frank to me, “was the most loving thing she ever said!” Such was the power, in Sylvia’s world, of the ideal of the Family!