Sylvia: A Novel

The next morning came a note from van Tuiver. He was sure that Miss Castleman must have reconsidered her cruel decision, and he begged her to grant him one brief interview. Might he take her riding in his car that morning? The bearer would wait for an answer. Sylvia replied that her decision was unchanged and unchangeable—she was sorry to hurt his feelings, but she must ask him to give up all thought of her.

A couple of hours later came van Tuiver himself, and sent up his card and with a line scribbled on it, “What have I done to anger you?” She wrote back, “I am not angry, but I cannot see you.” After which an hour more elapsed and there came a telephone-call from “Tubby” Bates, who begged the honor of a few minutes talk.

“I ought to refuse to speak to you again,” said Sylvia. But in the end she gave way and told him he might call.

He had come as an emissary, of course. The young millionaire was in a dreadful state, he explained, being convinced that he had committed some unmentionable offence.

“I don’t care to talk about the matter,” said Sylvia.

“But,” persisted Bates, “he declares that I got him into the predicament, and now I’m honor-bound to get him out.”

So she had to set to work to explain her point of view. Mr. Bates, who himself owed no particular allegiance to Royalty, should be able to understand; he must realize that her annoyance was not personal, but was, so to speak, an affair of State. This had been her first experience at Court, she said; and the atmosphere had proven bad for her—had made her pale, and would soon turn her into a faded old woman.

Evidently “Tubby” had heard that part of the story also; first he grinned, and then in his rôle of diplomat set to work to smooth away her objections. “You surely don’t mind a little thing like that,” he pleaded. “Haven’t you any jealous ladies down South?”

“If we are going to discuss this question, Mr. Bates, I must speak frankly. Our hostesses are polite to their guests.”

The other began suddenly to laugh. “Even when the guests steal?”

“When they steal?”

“Jewels!” exclaimed the other. “Bright, particular, conspicuous jewels—crown-jewels, precious beyond replacing! Think, Miss Castleman, you trust a guest, you admit him to your castle—and suddenly you find that the great ruby of your diadem is gone!”

“Is it that Mrs. Winthrop hopes to marry van Tuiver to her daughter?” asked Sylvia, crossly.

“Oh, no,” said Bates. “He is to marry Dorothy Cortlandt—that was arranged when they were babies, and Mrs. Winthrop wouldn’t dream of cutting in on it.”

“But then, if I haven’t robbed Edith——”

“My dear Miss Castleman,” said the other, “you’ve robbed Mrs. Winthrop herself.”

“But I don’t understand,” said the girl.

“Please don’t misunderstand,” said Bates. “It’s all perfectly proper and noble, you know—and all that. I’ve nothing to say against Mrs. Winthrop—she’s a charming woman, and has a right to be admired by everybody. But being a queen, you see, she has to have a court, with a lot of distinguished courtiers. She reads poetry to them, and they write it to her, and they sit at her feet and dream wonderful dreams, and she gazes at them. I know a dozen fellows who’ve been that way all through college; and I suppose it does them good—they tell me I haven’t any soul and can’t understand these things. What I’ve always said is, ‘Maybe you’re right, and maybe I’m a brute, but it looks to me like the same old game.’”

“The same old game,” repeated Sylvia, wonderingly. She found herself thinking suddenly of one of the maxims of Lady Dee—one which she had been too young to understand, but had been made to learn nevertheless: “The young girl’s deadliest enemy is the married flirt!” Could it be that Mrs. Winthrop was anything so desperate as that?

“Mr. van Tuiver is one of these poets?” she asked, finally.

“I don’t think van Tuiver goes in for poetry; but he’s strong on manners and things like that, and he says that Mrs. Winthrop is the only hostess in America who has the old-world charm. Of course that ravished her, and they’ve been great chums.”

“And I came and spoiled it all!” exclaimed the girl.

“You came and spoiled it all!” said Bates.

Sylvia sat for a while in thought. “You know, Mr. Bates,” she remarked, “it rather puzzles me that people consider Mr. van Tuiver as having distinguished manners. I really haven’t been impressed that way.”

The other laughed. “My dear Miss Castleman, don’t you know that van Tuiver’s in love with you!”

“No! Surely not!”

“Perfectly head over heels in love with you. He’s been that way since the first moment he laid eyes on you. And the way you’ve treated him—you know you are rather high-handed. Anyhow, it’s rattled him so, he simply doesn’t know whether he’s on his head or his feet.”

“Did he tell you that, Mr. Bates?”

“Not in words—but by everything about him. I never saw a man so changed. Honestly, you don’t know him at all, as we’ve known him. You’d not believe it if I described him.”

“Tell me what you mean?”

“Well, in the first place, he’s always dignified—stately, even. When he speaks, it’s he speaking, and his Yea is Yea and his Nay is Nay. Then he’s very precise—he never does anything upon impulse, but always considers whether it’s the right thing for Douglas van Tuiver to do. You see, he has an acute consciousness of his social task—I mean, being a model to all the little people in the world. You wouldn’t understand his manners unless you realized that they’re imported from England. In England—have you ever been there?”

“No,” said Sylvia.

“Well, you’re walking along a country road, and you’re lost, and you see a gentleman coming the other way. You stop and begin, ‘I beg pardon’—and he goes by you with his eyes to the front, military fashion. You see, you’re not supposed to exist.”

“How perfectly dreadful!”

“I remember once I was walking in the country, and there came a carriage with two ladies in it. It stopped as I passed, and so I stopped. ‘Can you tell me where such and such a house is?’ she asked, and I replied that it was in such and such a direction. And then, without even a look, she sank back in her cushions, and the coachman drove on. She was a lady, and she thought it was a grand carelessness.”

“Oh, but surely she must have belonged to the ‘nouveaux riches’!” exclaimed Sylvia.

“On the contrary, she may have had the best blood in England. You see, that’s their system. They have a ruling caste, whose rudeness is their religion.”

“We have our family pride in the South,” said Sylvia, “but it’s supposed to show itself in a superior courtesy. In fact, if a person’s rude to his inferiors, we’re sure there must be plebeian blood somewhere.”

“Exactly, Miss Castleman—that’s what I’ve always been taught.” There was a pause; then suddenly Bates began to laugh. “They tell such a funny story about van Tuiver,” he went on. “It was a club-tea, and there were two ladies whom everybody knew to be social rivals. Van Tuiver was talking to Mrs. A. and suddenly, without any warning, he walked over and began to talk to Mrs. B. Afterwards somebody said to him, ‘Why did you leave Mrs. A. and go directly to Mrs. B.? You know they hate each other—did you want to make it worse?’ ‘No, I never thought of it,’ he said. ‘The point was, there was a fireplace at my back, and I don’t like a fireplace at my back.’ ‘But did you tell that to Mrs. A?’ asked the friend. ‘No,’ said van Tuiver—‘I told it to Mrs. B.’”

“Oh, dear me!” cried Sylvia.

“And you must understand that he saw nothing funny in it. And the significant thing is that he gets away with that pose!”

“In other words, he has introduced the English system into America,” said Sylvia.

“That’s what it comes to, Miss Castleman.”

“You have a king at Harvard!”

The man hesitated, and then a smile spread over his face. “Of course you realize,” he said, “that it’s a game we’re playing.”

“A game?” she repeated.

“Do you know they had a queen in New York, Miss Castleman—until she died, just recently? You came to the city, you intrigued and pulled wires, and perhaps she condescended to receive you—seated upon a regular throne of state, painted and covered with jewels like a Hindoo idol. Everybody agreed she was the queen, and nobody could go anywhere or do anything unless she said so. Only, of course, ninety-nine people out of a hundred paid no attention to her, and went ahead and lived their lives just as if she weren’t queen. And it’s the same way here.”

“Tubby” paused for encouragement; this was unusual eloquence for him.

“As to our king,” he continued, “one-eighth of the college pays him homage, and another eighth rebels against him—and the other three-quarters don’t know that he’s here. They’re busy cramming for exams, or training for the boat-race, or having a good time spending papa’s money. In other words, Miss Castleman, van Tuiver is our king when we are snobs; and some of us are snobs all the time, and others of us only when we go calling on the ladies. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” said Sylvia, intensely amused. “I suspect that you are one of the rebellious subjects. You are certainly a frank ambassador, Mr. Bates!”

It was his turn to laugh. “The truth is, van Tuiver’s been three years posing in a certain rôle, and he can’t turn round now and play a different one for you. I thought it over as I was coming here, and I said to myself, ‘I’ll ask her to see him, but I’ll be damned’—pardon me, but that’s what I said—‘I’ll be damned if I’ll help him to deceive her.’ You see, Miss Castleman—I hope I don’t presume—but I know van Tuiver’s in love with you, and I thought—well—I——”

The genial “Tubby” had turned several shades redder, and now he fell silent. “You may feel quite at ease, Mr. Bates,” smiled Sylvia. “The danger you fear does not exist at all.”

“Not by any possibility, Miss Castleman?”

“Not by any possibility, Mr. Bates.”

“He—he has an enormous lot of money!”

“After all our conversation! There are surely a few things in America which are not for sale.”

“Tubby” drew a deep breath of relief. “I was scared,” he said—“honest.”

“How lovely of you!” said Sylvia. She suddenly felt like a mother to this big fat boy who was said to have no soul.

“I said to myself,” he continued, “‘I’ll tell her the truth about van Tuiver, even if she never forgives me for it.’ You see, Miss Castleman, I see the real man—as you’d never be allowed to, not in a thousand years. And you must take my word and be careful, for van Tuiver’s a man who has never had to do without anything in his whole lifetime. No matter what it’s been that he’s wanted, he’s had it—always, always! I’ve seen one or two times when it looked as if he mightn’t get it—and I can tell you that he’s cunning, and that he persists and persists—he’s a perfect demon when he’s got his mind fixed on something he wants and hasn’t got.”

“Dear me!” said Sylvia. “That is a new view of him!”

“Well, I said I’d warn you. I hope you don’t mind.”

Sylvia smiled. “I thought you had set out to persuade me to see him again!”

Bates watched her. “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe mine was the best way to persuade you.”

“Why, how charming!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “You are really subtle.”

“We want to fight the introduction of the English system, Miss Castleman! I don’t mind an aristocracy, because I’m one of ’em; but I don’t want any kings in America! It’s a patriotic duty to pull them off their thrones and keep them off.”

Sylvia pondered. It was a most entertaining view. “And the queens too?” she laughed.

“Yes, and the queens too!”

There was a pause, while she thought. Then she said, “Yes, I think you’re right, Mr. Bates. You may tell His Majesty that I’ll see him—once more!”

§ 16

Sylvia had said that she would go motoring with van Tuiver the following afternoon. He came in a cab, explaining that he had been to dinner in Cambridge, and that his car had run out of fuel. “I’ve a chauffeur who is troubled with absent-mindedness,” he remarked, with what Sylvia soon realized was enforced good-nature. For the car was longer in coming than he expected, and when at last it arrived, she was given an exhibition of his system of manners as applied to servants.

The chauffeur tried to make some explanation. There had been an accident, which he wanted to tell of; but the other would not give him a chance. “I’ve not the least desire to listen to you,” he said. “I do not employ you to make excuses. I told you when you came to me that I required promptness from my servants. You have had your opportunity, and you are not equal to it. You may consider yourself under notice.”

“Very good, sir,” said the man; and Sylvia stepped into the car and sat thinking, not hearing what van Tuiver said to her.

It was not the words he had used; he had a right to give his chauffeur notice, she told herself. It was his tone which had struck her like a knife—a tone of insolence, of deliberate provocativeness. Yet he, apparently, had no idea that she would notice it; doubtless he would think it meant a lack of breeding in her to notice it.

She wished to do justice to him; and she knew that it was partly her Southern shrinking from the idea of white servants. She was used to negroes, about whose feelings one did not bother.

If Aunt Nannie discovered one of the chambermaids trying on her mistress’ ball-gown, it would be, “Get out of here, you bob-tailed monkey!” Or if Uncle Mandeville’s boy forgot to feed a favorite horse, the rascal would be dragged out by one ear and soundly caned—and would expect it, knowing that if it was never done the horse would never be fed. But to talk so to a white man—and not in a blaze of anger, but with cold and concentrated malevolence!

The purpose of this ride was a definite one—that van Tuiver might find out the meaning of Sylvia’s change of mind at the dance. He propounded the question very soon; and the girl had to try to explain the state of mind in which she found herself. She would begin, she said, with the situation she had found at Harvard. Here were two groups of men, working for different ends, one desiring democracy in college life, and the other wishing to preserve the old spirit of caste. The conflict between them had become intense, and Sylvia’s sympathies were with van Tuiver’s opponents.

“Tell me,” she said, “what has Harvard meant to you? What has it given you that you couldn’t have got elsewhere? Here are men from all over America, but you’ve only met one little set. All the others—whom you’re probably too refined to call ‘rough-necks’—could none of them have taught you anything?”

“Perhaps they could,” he answered, “but it’s not easy to know them. If I met people promiscuously, they’d presume upon the acquaintance. I’d have no time to myself, no privacy——”

He saw the scorn in Sylvia’s face. “That’s all very well,” he cried, “but you simply don’t realize! Take your own case—do you meet anybody who comes along?”

“I am a girl,” said Sylvia. “People seem to think it’s necessary to protect girls. But even so, I remember experiences that you might profit by. I went last year to our State University, where one of my cousins was graduating. At one of the dances I was accidentally introduced to a man, a decent fellow, whom I liked. ‘I won’t ask you to dance with me, Miss Castleman,’ he said. I asked, ‘Why not?’ and he said, ‘I’m a “goat”.’ I said, ‘I’ll dance with a goat, if he’s a good dancer,’ and so we danced. And then came my cousin. ‘Sylvia, don’t you know who the man is you were dancing with? He’s a “goat”!’ ‘I like him,’ I said, ‘and he dances as well as any of you. I shall dance with him.’ ‘But, Miss Castleman,’ they all said, ‘you’ll break up the fraternity system in the college.’ ‘What strange fraternity!’ I answered. ‘I think it needs breaking up. I’ll dance with him, and if anybody doesn’t like it, I won’t dance with him.’ So I had my way.”

“That’s all right,” said the other. “If a pretty girl chooses to have her whim, everybody can allow for it. But if you set to work to run a college on that basis, you’d abolish social life there. Men of a certain class would simply not go where they had undesirable companionship forced upon them. Is that what you want to bring about?”

Sylvia thought for a moment, and then countered, “Is the only way you can think of to avoid undesirable companionship to have a private house?”

“A house?” replied van Tuiver. “Lots of people live in houses. Doesn’t your father?”

“My father has a family,” said Sylvia. “You have no one but yourself—and you don’t have the house because you need it, but simply for ostentation.”

He was very patient. “My dear Miss Castleman,” he said, “it happens that I was raised in a house, and I’m used to it. And I happen to have the money—why shouldn’t I spend it?”

“You might spend it for the good of others.”

“You mean in charity? Haven’t you learned that charity never does any good?”

“Sometimes I wish that I were a man, so that I could understand these things,” exclaimed Sylvia. “But surely you might find some way of doing good with your money, instead of only harm, as at present.”

“Only harm, Miss Castleman?”

“You are spending your money setting up false ideals in your college. You are doing all in your power to make everyone who meets you, or sees you, or even knows of you, a toady or else an Anarchist. And at the same time you are killing the best things in the college.”

“What, for instance?”

“There is Memorial Hall—a building that stands for something. I can see that, even if all my people were on the other side in the war. There you find the democracy of the college, the spirit of real comradeship. But did you ever eat a meal in Memorial Hall?”

“No,” said he, “I never did.”

Sylvia thought for a moment. “Do ladies eat there?” she asked; and when he answered in the negative, she laughed. “Of course, that was only a ‘pretty girl’s whim’—as you call it. But if you, Douglas van Tuiver, would go there, as a matter of course—right along, I mean——”

“Eat at Memorial Hall!” he exclaimed. “My dear Miss Castleman, I wouldn’t eat—I’d be eaten!”

“In other words,” said she, coldly, “you admit that you can’t take care of yourself as a man among men.”

It was amusing to perceive his dismay over her idea. He came back to it, after a minute. He wanted to know if that was the sort of thing he’d have to do to win her regard; and he repeated the phrase with a sort of fascinated horror. “Eat at Memorial Hall!”

Until at last Sylvia declared with asperity, “Mr. van Tuiver, I don’t care whether you eat at all, until you’ve found something better to do with your life.”

He took these rages of hers very humbly. He was becoming extraordinarily tame. “I suppose you find me exasperating,” he said, “but you must realize that I’m trying my best to understand you. You want me to make my life all over, and it isn’t easy for me to see the necessity of it. What harm do I do here, just by keeping to myself?”

Sylvia was touched by his tone, and she tried again to explain. “It isn’t that you keep to yourself,” she said. “You cultivate a contempt for your classmates, and they reply with hatred and envy, and so you break up college life. It’s true, isn’t it, that there’s a struggle going on now?”

“The class elections, you mean?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. So much bitterness and intriguing, because you keep to yourself! Why do you come to college at all? Surely you won’t say it’s the professors and the studies!”

“No,” said he, smiling in spite of himself.

“You come, and you make yourself into a kind of idol. Excuse me, if it isn’t polite, but what I said the other night is the truth—the Golden Calf! And what I say is, try the other plan a while. Stop thinking about yourself, and what they are thinking about you—above all, what they are thinking about your money. They won’t all be thinking about your money.”

He did not answer promptly. “Apparently,” she said, “you don’t feel quite sure. If you can’t, I know several real men that I could introduce you to—men right in your own class.”

“Who are they?”

She hesitated. She was about to say Frank Shirley, but concluded not to. “I met one the other day—he doesn’t belong to a club, yet he’s the most interesting person I’ve encountered here. He talked about you, and he wasn’t complimentary; but if you sought him out in the right way, and made it clear you weren’t trying to patronize him, I’m sure he’d be a friend.”

“What’s his name?”

“Mr. Firmin.”

“Oh!” said van Tuiver, and looked annoyed.

“You know him?”

“By sight. He has a bitter tongue.”

“No more bitter than you need, Mr. van Tuiver—if you are going to hear the truth about yourself.”

The other hesitated. “I really do want to win your regard—” he began.

“I don’t want you to do anything to win my regard! If you do these things, it must be because you want to do them. At present you’re just your money, your position—your Royalty, as I’ve come to call it. But I’m not the least bit concerned about your Royalty; your houses and your servants and your automobiles are a bore to me—worse than that, they’re wicked, for no man has a right to spend so much money on himself, to have a whole house to himself——.”

“Please,” he pleaded, “stop scolding about my house. I couldn’t change now, for it’s only a couple of weeks to Commencement.”

“It would have all the more effect,” she declared, “if you moved into a dormitory now. Here are the class elections, and your class split up——”

“You don’t realize my position,” he interrupted. “It’s not merely a question of what I want. There’s Ridgely Shackleford, our candidate for class president; if I deserted him and went over to the ‘Yard,’ they’d say I was a traitor, a coward—worse than that, they’d say I was a fool! I wouldn’t have a friend left in the college.”

“You really think it would be so bad?”

“It would be worse. I haven’t told you half. When the story got about, I’d become a booby in society; I’d have to give up my clubs, I’d be a complete outcast. I tell you, you simply can’t break down the barriers of your class.”

Sylvia sat in silence, pondering his words. Suddenly she became aware that he was gazing at her eagerly. “Miss Castleman,” he began, his voice trembling slightly, “what I want above all else is your friendship. I’d do anything to win it—I’d give up anything in the world. I have a regard for you—a most intense admiration. If I knew it would make me mean something to you—why then, I’d be willing to go to any extreme, to defy everybody else. But suppose I do this, and I’m left all alone——”

“If you did this you’d have new friends—real friends.”

“But the friend I want is you!”

Sylvia answered, “If you did what was right because it was right, if you showed yourself willing to dare something for the sake of principle—why then, right away you’d become worth while. You’d not have to ask for my friendship.”

He hesitated. “Suppose—suppose that I should find that I wanted more than friendship——”

She had been prepared for that—and she stopped him instantly. “Friendship comes first,” she said.

“But,” he pleaded, “give me some idea. Could I not expect——”

“You asked me to be a friend to you, to help you by telling you the truth. That is what we have been discussing. Pray let there be no mistake about it. Friendship comes first.”

Why did Sylvia take such a course with him? You would have a false idea of her character if you did not realize that it was the first time she had ever done such a thing—and that it was a hard thing for her to do. To refuse to let a man propose to her! To forbear to draw him on, to investigate him, to see what he would reply to various baffling remarks!

It was not because she was engaged to Frank Shirley. Under the code which Lady Dee had taught her that made simply no difference whatever. Under that code it was her duty to secure every man who came into her reach; she might remain uncertain in her own mind, she might continue to explore and experiment up to the very moment when the wedding ring was slipped upon her finger. Sylvia had never forgotten Aunt Lady’s vivid image: “Stand them up in a line, my child, and when you get ready, walk down the line and pick the one you want!”

She had set up a barrier before van Tuiver, and he pushed against it. The more firm she made it, the more he was moved to push. But suppose she gave way the least little bit, suppose he felt the barrier breaking—then would he not stop pushing, would he not shrink away? What fun to try him, to watch him hesitating, advancing and retreating, trembling with desire and with terror! To analyze the mixture of his longing and his caution, to add a little to the one or the other, and then see the result. Sylvia with a new man was like a chemist’s assistant, mixing strange liquids in a test-tube, possessed with a craze to know whether the precipitate would be red or green or yellow—and quite undeterred by the possibility of being blown through the skylight.

But tempting as was the game, she could not play it with Douglas van Tuiver. It was as if an angel stood between them with a flaming sword. Douglas van Tuiver was no subject for joke, he was not a man as other men—he was Royalty. With Royalty one must be stern and unfaltering. “Friendship comes first,” she had said; and though before that ride was over he had come again and again to the barrier, he never broke past it, nor felt any sign of its yielding to his touch.

§ 18

Sylvia was making her plans to leave in a couple of days. It was close to Commencement, and she would have liked to stay, but there had come a disturbing letter from home—the Major was not well, and there had been an overflow, entailing serious damage to the crops and still more serious cares. At such a time the family reached out blindly to Sylvia—no matter what was going wrong, they were sure it would go right if she were present.

And besides, her work at Harvard was done. This was duly certified to by Harley, who came to see her the next morning, in such a state of bliss as is not often vouchsafed to Freshmen. “It’s all right, old girl,” he said, “you can go whenever you get ready. You surely are a witch, Sylvia!”

“What has happened?” she asked.

“I had a call from Douglas van Tuiver last night.”

“You don’t mean it, Harley!”

“Yes. Did you ask him to do it?”

“I should think I did not!”

“Well, whatever the reason was, he was as nice as could be. Said he was interested in me, and that he’d back me for one of the earlier tens.”

“How perfectly contemptible of him!” exclaimed Sylvia.

Needless to say, this was a turn not expected by Harley. “See here,” he protested, “it seems to me you’re taking a little too high a line with van Tuiver. There’s really no need to go so far——”

“Now please,” said Sylvia, “don’t concern yourself with that. I came up here to help you, and I’ve done it, and that’s all you can ask.”

“Oh, very well,” he said, and there was a sulky pause. Finally, however, the sun of his delight broke through the clouds again. “Say, Sylvia!” he exclaimed. “Do you know, the whole college is talking about what happened at that dance. Tell me, honestly—did you know anything about what they meant to do?”

“I think that’s a question you’d know better than to ask, Harley.”

“I was ready to knock a fellow down because he hinted it. But Bates is square—he takes it all on himself. They say Mrs. Winthrop will never forgive him.”

Sylvia pondered. “Won’t it make Edith angry with you?” she asked.

“I’ll keep away from her for a few days,” laughed Harley. “If I get my social position established, she’ll get over her anger, never fear. By the way, would you like to know what Edith thinks about you?”

“Why—did she tell you?”

“No, but there’s a chap in my class who knows her. He told me what she said—only of course one can’t be sure.”

“Tell me what it was,” said Sylvia, “and I’ll know if she said it.”

“That you were shallow; that with the arts you used any woman could snare a man. But she would scorn to use them.”

“Yes,” laughed the other, “she said it.”

“Are you really as bad as that?” asked Harley. “What arts does she mean?”

“This is a woman’s affair, Harley. What else did she say?”

“She said her mother was disappointed in you. She thought you had a beautiful soul, but you’d let it be spoiled by flattery. She said you had no real understanding of a character like van Tuiver, or the responsibilities of his position.”

Sylvia said nothing, but sat considering the matter. She had no philosophy about these affairs; she was following her instincts, and sometimes she was assailed by doubts and troubled by new points of view. She was surprised to realize how very revolutionary a standpoint she had come to take in the matter of Mrs. Winthrop’s favorite. Why should she, Sylvia Castleman, a descendant of Lady Lysle, be trying to pull down the pillars of the social temple?

That was still her mood when, after Harley’s departure, the telephone rang and she found herself voice to voice with “Queen Isabella.” “Won’t you come and have luncheon with me, Sylvia?” asked the latter. “I’ve sent Edith away, so that we can be to ourselves. I want to have a long talk with you.” And Sylvia, in a penitent state, answered that she would come.

§ 19

She chose for this visit one of her simplest costumes—a white muslin, with pale green sprigs in it, and a pale green toque of a most alluringly Quakerish effect. A poet had designed it for her—one of her victims at the State University—and had specified that she must never wear it without a prayer-book in her hand. In this costume she sat in Mrs. Winthrop’s sombre paneled dining-room, with generations of sombre Puritan governors staring down from the walls at her; while the strange white servants stole noiselessly about on the velvet carpets, she gazed with wide, innocent eyes, and listened to her hostess’ delicately-worded sermon.

Mrs. Winthrop appreciated the symbolism of the costume, and used it in making a cautious approach to her subject. She said that Sylvia had wonderful gifts of beauty—not merely of the person, but of taste and understanding. Women so favored owed a great debt to life, and must needs feel keenly the desire to make recompense for their privileges. That, said Mrs. Winthrop, was something always present in her own thoughts. How could she pay for her existence? It was fatally easy to fall into the point of view of those who rebelled against social conditions, and justified the discontent of the poor. “You know, we have such people even in Boston,” she explained, “and they win a good deal of sympathy. But there is a deeper and saner view, it seems to me. Life must have its graces, its embellishments; there must be those who embody a higher ideal than mere animal comfort. I think we should take our stand there—we should justify ourselves, having the consciousness of a mission in preserving the allurements and amenities of life. People talk about the poor shop-girls, and how hard they have to work; they seem to desire that one should give up one’s ease, one’s culture, and go and join the shop-girls. But I say, No, I am not to be seduced by such arguments. I am something in the lives of those shop-girls, something definite, something vital; I am to them an uplifting vision, an ideal of grace and dignity. When one goes among the lower classes and sees the brutality, the sordid animalism of their lives—oh, it is terrifying! One flies back to the world of refinement and serenity as to a city of refuge.”

Mrs. Winthrop paused. Her beautiful eyes had talked with her; they had gazed terrified into social abysses, and now they came back to regions of brooding calm. Sylvia was under their spell, and was not conscious of any extravagance in the lady’s next utterance: “Speaking with a deep conviction, I say that I am something necessary to life, that the world could not get on without me. I say, I am Beauty, I am Art! Have you ever felt that, Sylvia?”

“I have thought a good deal about such things, Mrs. Winthrop. But as a rule, I only manage to bewilder myself and make myself unhappy. There is so much terrible suffering in the world!”

“Yes,” said the other. “How many times I find myself asking, with tears in my eyes, ‘How can you be happy, while all around you the world is dying? Go, bow your head with shame, because you have been happy!’” And sure enough, Mrs. Winthrop bowed her head, and two glistening, pearly tears trickled slowly from her eyes. “It is a faith I have had to fight for,” she continued, “something I feel most earnestly about. For we live in times when, as it seems to me, civilization is threatened by the terrible forces of materialism—by the blind greed of the masses especially. And I think that we who have the task of keeping alive the flame of beauty ought to be aware of our mission, and to support one another.”

Sylvia thought that this was the point of approach to the real subject; but she said nothing, and Mrs. Winthrop veered off again. “I have always been especially interested in University life,” she said. “My father was a University professor, and I was brought up in a University town. After I was married and found that I had leisure and opportunity, I said to myself that it would be my task in life to do what I could to influence young men during their student years, by teaching them generous ideals, and above all by giving them a model of a dignified and gracious social life. It is in these years, you see, that the tastes of young men are formed; afterwards they go out to set an example to the rest of the world. More than any university, I think, Harvard is our source of culture and idealism; our crude Western colleges look to its graduates for teachers, and to its standards for their models. So you see it is really no little thing to feel that you are helping to guide and shape the social life of Harvard.”

“I can understand that,” said Sylvia, much impressed.

“You come from another part of our country,” continued Mrs. Winthrop—“a part which has its own lovely culture. Whether you have ever realized it consciously or not, I am sure that ideas such as these must have been often impressed upon you by your family.”

“Yes,” said Sylvia, “my mother often talks of such things.”

“I felt that, Sylvia, when I saw you. I said, ‘Here is an ally.’ You see, I must have help from the young people—especially from the girls, if I am to do anything with the men.”

There was a solemn pause. “I hope I haven’t disappointed you too much,” said Sylvia at last.

Mrs. Winthrop fixed upon her one of those intense gazes. “I’ve been perplexed,” she said. “You must understand, I can’t help hearing what’s going on. People come to ask me for advice, and I must give it. And I’ve felt that what I’ve learned made it really necessary for me to talk to you. I hope that you won’t mind, or think that I’m presuming.”

“My dear Mrs. Winthrop,” said Sylvia, “please don’t apologize. I am glad to have your advice.”

“I will speak frankly, then. As well as I can read the situation, you seem to have taken offense at the social system we have at Harvard. Is that true?”

Sylvia thought. “Yes,” she said—“some parts of it have offended me.”

“Can you explain, Sylvia?”

“I don’t know that I can. It’s a thing that one feels. I have had a sense of something cruel about it.”

“Something cruel? But can’t one feel that about any social system? Haven’t you classes at home? Don’t your people hold themselves above some others?”

“Yes, but I don’t think they are so hard about it—so deliberate, so matter of fact.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Winthrop, “that is something I have often talked about with Southern people. The reason is that in the South you have a social class which is definitely separated by color, and which never thinks of crossing the line. But in the North, my dear, our servants look like us, and it’s not quite so simple drawing the line.”

“Oh, but I’m not talking of servants, Mrs. Winthrop. I mean here, within the boundaries of a college class. Your servants do not go to college.”

The other laughed. “But they do,” she said.

“Oh, surely not!”

“It costs a hundred and fifty dollars a year to go to Harvard. Any man can come, black or white, who can borrow the money. He may come, and earn his living while he’s here by tending furnaces. As a matter of fact, there’s a man in the class with Douglas van Tuiver whose father is a butler.”

“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Sylvia.

“A man,” said Mrs. Winthrop, “named Firmin.”

Sylvia was aghast. “Tom Firmin!”

“Yes. Have you heard of him before?”

She answered in a faint voice, “Yes,” and then was silent.

“You see, my dear,” said the other, gently, “why we are conscious of our class lines in the North!”

§ 20

Sylvia judged that it was about time for the cat to come out of the bag. And now she observed him emerging—with a grave and stately tread, as became a feline of New England traditions. Said Mrs. Winthrop: “I have just had a talk with Douglas van Tuiver. Of course, you must know, Sylvia, that he has conceived an intense admiration for you. And you must know that when a man so intensely admires a woman, she has a great influence upon him—an influence which she can use either for good or for evil.”

“Yes, Mrs. Winthrop,” said Sylvia.

“I gather that his admiration for you is—is not entirely reciprocated, Sylvia.”

“Er—no,” said the girl, “not entirely.”

“He has come to me in great distress. You have criticized him, and he has felt your disapproval keenly. I won’t need to repeat what he said—no doubt you understand. The point is that you have brought Douglas to a state of distraction; he wants to please you, and he doesn’t know how to do it. You have put ideas into his head—really, Sylvia, you will ruin the man—you will utterly destroy him. I cannot but feel that you have acted without fully realizing the gravity of the situation—the full import of the demands you have made upon him.”

“Really,” protested Sylvia, “I have made no demands upon him.”

“Not formally, perhaps. But you must understand, the man is beside himself, and he takes them as demands.”

There was an awkward silence. “I have tried earnestly to avoid Mr. van Tuiver,” said Sylvia. “I would prefer never to see him again.”

“But that is not what I want. You can’t help seeing him—he is determined to see you. My point is that your advice to him should take another form—you should realize the peculiar position of a man like Douglas, the immense responsibilities he carries, and which he cannot lay aside. If you could sympathize with him——”

There was again a pause. “I hope you won’t think it obstinate of me,” said the girl, “but I know that I could never change my attitude—that unless Mr. van Tuiver changed his way of life, he could never be a friend of mine.”

“But, Sylvia dear,” remonstrated the other, gently, “he has been a friend of mine.”

And so the real battle was on. There have been defences of the Divine Right of Kings, composed by eminent and learned men; there have been treatises composed upon the upbringing of statesmen and princes—from Machiavelli and Castiglione on; Sylvia was ignorant of their very existence, and so she was in no way a match for a scholarly person like Mrs. Winthrop. But one thing she knew, and knew it with overwhelming certainty, and repeated it with immovable obstinacy—she did not like van Tuiver as he was, she could not tolerate him as he was. Mrs. Winthrop argued and pleaded, apologized and philosophized, interpreting most eloquently the privileges and immunities incidental to the possession of fifty millions of dollars. But Sylvia did not like van Tuiver, she could not tolerate van Tuiver.

At last Mrs. Winthrop stopped, the edges of her temper somewhat frayed. She gazed at Sylvia intently. “May I ask you one thing?” she said.

“What is it?” inquired the girl.

“Has Douglas asked you to marry him?”

“No, he has not.”

“Do you think that he will ask you?”

“I really don’t know; but I can assure you that he will not if I can prevent it.”

There was a long pause, while the other weighed this utterance. “Sylvia,” she said, at last, “he has a great deal of money.”

“I have heard that fact mentioned,” responded the girl.

“But have you realized, my dear, how much money he has?”

To which Sylvia answered, “We are not taught to think so deliberately about money in the South.”

Again there was a silence. She divined that Mrs. Winthrop was struggling desperately to be noble. “Do I understand you to mean, Sylvia, that you would really refuse to marry him if he asked you?”

“I most certainly mean it,” was her reply—and it was given convincingly.

The other drew a breath of relief. She had found the struggle exhausting. “My dear child,” she said, “I appreciate your fineness of character.” She paused. “But tell me this—if you do not intend to marry Douglas, ought you to permit him to compromise himself for you?”

“Compromise himself, Mrs. Winthrop? I don’t understand you.”

“I mean, Sylvia, that he is exposing himself to the ridicule of his friends—he is making a spectacle of himself to the whole University. And then, after he has done this, you propose to cap the climax of his humiliation by refusing to marry him!”

Sylvia had so far been most decorous; but at this point her sense of fun was too much for her, and merriment broke out upon her countenance. “Mrs. Winthrop,” she declared, “there is but one way out—you must keep Mr. van Tuiver from proposing to me!”

The other’s pose became haughty and full of rebuke; but Sylvia was not to be frightened. “See the dilemma I am in!” she exclaimed. “If I refuse him, I humiliate him and compromise him. But if I marry him—what becomes of my fineness of character?” She paused for a moment, then added, “You must do this, Mrs. Winthrop; you must take the responsibility of forbidding me to see him again. You must make it so emphatic that I’ll simply have to obey you.”

“Queen Isabella’s” feelings were approaching a state of turmoil; but the girl urged her proposition seriously, finding a quite devilish amusement in plaguing her hostess with it. The other protested that she would not, she could not, she dared not take the responsibility of interfering with Mr. van Tuiver’s love affairs; and all without having the least idea of the abysses of malice which were hidden within the circumference of the pale green Quaker bonnet in front of her!