§ 27
Major and Mrs. Castleman arrived next morning, and after that there were busy times for Sylvia. There was the wedding-gown to be shown, and the trousseau and the presents; there were plans for the future to be told of, and many blessings to be received. “Miss Margaret” was in a “state” most of the time—tears of joy and tears of sorrow pursuing each other down her generous cheeks. “Sylvia,” she exclaimed, in one breath, “I know you will be happy!” And then, in the next breath, “Sylvia, I hope you will be happy!” And then, in a third breath, “Sylvia, how will we ever get on without you? Who will dare to spank the baby?”
It was with her father that she had the really trying ordeal; her father took her into a room alone, and held her hands in his and tried to read her soul. “Tell me, my child, are you going to be happy?”
“I think so, Papa,” she answered; and had to make herself look into his eyes.
“I want you to understand me, dear Sylvia—even now, at this last hour, don’t take the step unless you believe with your best judgment that you will be happy.”
There was a moment of madness, when she had the impulse to fling herself into his arms and cry, “I love Frank Shirley!” But instead of that she hurried on, “I believe he loves me deeply, Papa.”
Said the Major, in a trembling voice, “There is no more solemn moment in a father’s life than when he sees his dearly loved daughter taking this irrevocable step. I want you to know, my darling, that I have prayed earnestly, I have done my best to judge what is right for you.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said, “I know that.”
“I want you to know that if ever I have seemed to be stern, it has been because I believed my daughter’s welfare required it.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said, again.
“I am sure, this man loves you, Sylvia; and I believe he’s a good man—he ought to make you happy. But I want you to know that if by any chance my prayers are denied—if you find that you are not happy—then your father’s home will always be open to you, his arms will always be stretched wide to clasp you.”
“Dear old Daddy!” whispered the girl. She felt the arms about her now, and she began to sob softly, with a mixture of emotions. Oh, if only she might stay for the balance of her life in the shelter of those arms, that were so strong and so dependable! If only there were not the dreadful thing called marriage—which drove her out into another pair of arms, from which she shrunk with such unconquerable aversion!
This was the heart of her difficulty—her inability to conquer her physical shrinking from the man to whom she was betrothed. Here she was, upon the very eve of her wedding, and she had made no progress whatever. Mentally and spiritually she had probed him, and felt that she knew him intimately; but physically he was still an utter stranger to her—as much so as any man she might have met upon the street. She would sit talking with him, trying to forget herself and her fears for a while; and gradually she would be conscious of his gaze upon her, his eyes traveling over her form, devouring her in thought, longing for her. Then she would go almost beside herself—she would have to spring up and break the chain of his thoughts. It seemed to her that she was like the prey of some wild beast—or a beast that was just tame enough to wait patiently, knowing that at a certain time the prey would be in its grasp.
On the evening before the wedding van Tuiver was to attend a “stag-dinner” with his friends; but he called in to see her for a few minutes, and the family discreetly left them alone. In a sudden access of longing, he clasped her in his arms, and she forced herself to submit. Then he began to kiss her, to press passionate kisses upon her cheek and throat. His breath was hot, and utterly horrible to her; she could not endure it, and cried out to him to stop, and struggled and pushed him away. Still holding her, and gazing at her with desire blazing in his eyes, he whispered, “Not yet?”
“Oh, how could you?” she cried.
“Is it not time you were beginning to learn?” he demanded; and then, wholly beside himself, “Sylvia, how much longer am I to endure this? Can’t you understand what you make me suffer? I love you—I love you to distraction, and I get nothing from you—nothing! I dare not even tell you that I love you!”
The passion in his voice made her shudder; and yet, too, she pitied him. She was ashamed of herself for the way she treated him. “What can I do?” she cried. “I can’t help it—as God is my witness, I can’t control my feelings. I ask myself, ought I to marry you so?”
“It seems to me it’s rather late to bring up that question,” he responded.
“I know, I know! I have nothing to say for myself—except that I didn’t know, I couldn’t realize. It’s something I must tell you—how I have come to feel—that I ought not to marry you, that you ought not to want me to marry you, while things are like this. You must know this, so that if I marry you, the responsibility will be yours!”
“And you think that is fair of you?” he demanded, his voice grown suddenly hard.
He meant to rebuke her, and she felt that he had a right to rebuke her; but the wave of emotion which swept her along was not to be controlled by her reason. “Oh, you are going to be angry about it!” she cried. “How horrible of you!”
He exclaimed, “Sylvia! Can you expect me not to be hurt?”
“I told you that I couldn’t help it! I told you in the very beginning that you would have to take me as I was, and be satisfied if I did my best! I told you that again and again—that I loved another man, that I love him still—”
She stopped. A spasm of pain crossed his face—followed by a look of fear. He hesitated, and then, his voice low and trembling, he began, “Sylvia, forgive me. I know that you are right—that you are trying to do your best. I will be patient. You must be patient with me also.”
She stood, her head bowed, ashamed of what she had said. Yet—she felt that he ought to have heard it. “I hate to seem unfair,” she whispered, her voice almost breaking. “I don’t want to give you pain, but I can’t help these feelings, and I know it’s my duty to tell you of them. I don’t see how you can go on—I should think you would be afraid to marry me!”
For answer he caught her hands, exclaiming, “I will take my chances! I love you, and I will never rest until you love me!”
§ 28
So far I have put together this story from the memories of Sylvia and Frank Shirley. But now I have come to the point where you may watch the events through my own eyes. I will take a paragraph or two to give you an idea of the quality of these eyes, and then proceed without further delay.
Mary Abbott, the teller of this tale, was at the age of forty a crude farmer’s wife upon a lonely pioneer homestead in Manitoba. In winter in that part of the world it begins to grow dark at three o’clock in the afternoon, and it is not fully light until nine o’clock in the morning. We were a mile from the nearest neighbor, and had often three feet of snow upon the ground, with fifty degrees below zero and a sweeping wind. I had a husband whom I feared and despised, and for whom I cooked and washed and sewed, whether I was well or ill. Under these circumstances I had raised three children to maturity. I had moved to town and seen them through high-school; and now, the girl being married, and the two boys in college, I found myself suddenly free to see the world.
You must not think of me as altogether ignorant. I had fought desperately for books, and had grown up with my children. Discovering in the town the perpetual miracle of a circulating library, I had read wildly, acquiring a strange assortment of new ideas. But that, I am ashamed to say, made very little difference when I reached the East. It is one thing to read up in the theory of Socialism, and say that you have freed yourself from bourgeois ideals; it is quite another to come from a raw pioneer community, and be suddenly hit between the eyes by all the marvels of the great New Nineveh!
I forgot my principles; I wandered about, breathless with excitement. Everything that I had ever read about, in Sunday supplements and cheap magazines—here it was before my eyes! I got myself a hall-room in a “Greenwich Village” boarding-house, and for days I went, thrusting my inquisitive country face into everything that was cheap enough. The huge shops with their amazing treasures of silks and jewels; the great hotels with their gold and stucco splendors; the dizzy, tower-like office-buildings; the newspaper offices with their whirling presses; the theatres, the museums, the parks; the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, Grant’s Tomb and the Bowery—I was the very soul of that thing which the New Yorker derisively calls the “rubber-neck wagon!” I took my place in one of these moving grand-stands, and listened to all that came out of the megaphone. Here was the home of the steel-king, which had cost three millions of dollars! Here was the home where a fifty thousand dollar chef was employed! Here was the old van Tuiver mansion, where the millionaire-baby had been brought up! Here was the Palace Hotel, where Miss Sylvia Castleman was staying!
It was the day before the wedding; and I, like all the rest of the city, was thrilling over the Romance, knowing more about the preparations than the bride herself. I had read all the papers—morning papers and afternoon papers; I had read descriptions of the wedding-gown, the trousseau, the rooms full of gift-treasures with detectives on guard. I had stared at the outside of the church, and imagined the inside. Last of all, I had wandered up to the Palace Hotel and peered about in the lobby, amusing myself by imagining that each gorgeous female creature who floated by and disappeared into a motor-car might possibly be the Princess herself!
At the boarding-house we discussed the possibility of seeing the wedding-cortege, and everybody said that I could not come within a block of the church. “I’ll fight my way,” I declared; to which the reply was that I would find out something about New York policemen that would cure me of my fighting impulses. The result of the discussion was that I set out immediately after breakfast, fired with the spirit of the discoverers of Pike’s Peak.
I must get at least a glimpse, I told myself. What a tale to be able to tell at the Women’s Club receptions at home! To say: “I saw her! She was the loveliest thing! And oh, her dress! It was cream-white satin, with four graduated flounces of exquisite point-lace!” Of course I could have got all that from the newspapers; but I wanted to be able to say it truly.
The wedding-hour was noon, but at nine there was already a respectable crowd. I established myself upon the steps of a nearby house, with a newspaper to sit on and a pair of borrowed opera-glasses in my hand-bag. In the meantime I entertained myself talking with the other watchers, who were a new type to me, well-dressed women, kept in luxury, whether legal or otherwise, who fed their empty minds upon fashion sheets and “society notes,” and had no idea in the world beyond the decking of their persons and the playing of their little part in the great game of Splurge. We talked about the van Tuiver family, its history and its present status; we talked with awe about the bride; we talked about the presents, the decorations, the costumes—there was so much to talk about!
Shortly after ten o’clock a calamity befell us—the police began to clear the steps, driving the crowd far back from the church-entrance. What agonies, what expostulations! How outrageous—when we had waited there an hour already! Sometimes the steps were our own steps, sometimes they were the steps of friends; but even that made no difference. “I’m sorry, lady, the orders are to clear everything.” They were as gentle about it as they could be, but that was none too gentle; we had the butt-ends of clubs, pressing into our stomachs, and back we went, arguing, scolding, threatening, sometimes weeping or fainting.
I was tremendously disappointed. To have to go back to the boarding-house, and admit defeat to the milliner’s assistant who sat next to me at meals! To hear “I told you so” from the “floor-walker” who sat across the way! “I won’t do it!” I said to myself.
And then suddenly came my chance. Behind me there was a commotion, angry protests—“Officer, let us through here! We have cards!” Cards—how our souls thrilled as we heard the word! Here, right close to us, were some of the chosen ones! Let us see them at least—a bit of Royalty at second hand!
They pushed their way through—three women and two men. As they neared me, I saw the engraved invitations in their hands, and it flashed over me that in my hand-bag was a milliner’s advertisement of nearly the same size and shape. I dived in, and fished it out with trembling fingers, and fell in behind the party, and pushed through the crowd past the line of police. There before me was the open space in front of the church!
I had acted on impulse, with no idea what to do next. I could scarcely hope to get in to the wedding on a milliner’s card. But fortunately my problem solved itself, for there were always the guests pushing into the entrance, and everybody was perfectly willing to push ahead of me. All I had to do was to “mark time,” and I was free to stay, inhaling delicious perfumes and feasting my ears upon scraps of the conversation of the élite. I foresaw that the banner of the great Northwest would wave triumphantly in “Greenwich Village” that night!
§ 29
I will not stop to detail the separate thrills of this adventure. Carriage after carriage, motor after motor drew up, and released new revelations of grace and elegance. The time for the ceremony drew near, and from the stir in the throng about me I knew that the guests from the wedding-breakfast were passing. How I longed to talk to someone—to ask who was this and that and the other one! Then I might have been able to tell you how “Miss Margaret” wept, and how Aunt Varina trembled, and what “Queen Isabella” was wearing! But the only persons I could be sure of were the five lovely bridesmaids, and the bride, leaning upon the arm of a stately old white-haired gentleman. How we craned our necks, and what rapture transported us! We heard the thunder of the organ and the orchestra within, and it corresponded to the state of our souls.
There was still quite a throng at either side of the entrance—newspaper reporters, people who had come out of houses nearby, people who, like myself, had got by the police-lines upon one pretext or another. Down the street we could see a solid line of bluecoats, and behind them people crowded upon steps, leaning out of windows, clinging to railings and lamp-posts. We were in fear lest at any time we might be ordered to join this throng, so we stayed silent and very decorous, careful not to crowd or to make ourselves conspicuous.
You might have expected, perhaps, that when all the protagonists of the drama had entered the church, the crowd would have dispersed; but not a soul went. We stood, listening to the faint music, and imagining the glories that were hid from our eyes. We pictured the procession up the aisle, with the guests standing on the seats in order to get a glimpse of it. We pictured the sacred ceremony. (There were some who had prayer-books in their hands, the better to aid their imaginations.) We pictured the bride, kneeling upon a white silk cushion embroidered with gold, receiving the blessings of the millionaire bishop. We heard the wild burst of chimes which told us that the two were made one, and our pulses leaped with excitement.
All this took perhaps half an hour; and I think that about half that time had passed when I first noticed Claire. I never knew how she got there; but fate, or providence, or what you will, had set her next to me, and that strange intuition which sometimes comes to me, and puts me inside the soul of another person in less time than it takes for my eye to look them over, gave me the warning of danger from her presence.
She was a tall and striking woman, beautifully gowned, with high color and bold black eyes—a woman you would have noticed in any gathering. You would have thought at once that she was a foreigner, but you might have been puzzled as to her country, for she had none of the characteristic French traits, and her English was quite perfect. I glanced at her once, and thereafter I forgot everything else—the crowd, the ceremony, all. What was the matter with this woman?
What first made me turn was a quick motion, as of a nervous spasm. Then I saw that her hands were clenched tightly, and drawn up in front of her as if she were struggling with someone. Her lips were moving, yet I heard no sound; she was staring in front of her fixedly, but at nothing.
I must explain that it did not occur to me that she had been drinking. My country imagination was not equal to that flight. To be sure, since my arrival I had learned that the women of the New Nineveh did drink; I had peered into the “orange room,” and the “palm room,” and several other strange rooms, and had seen gorgeous peacock-creatures with little glasses of highly-colored liquids before them. But I had not got so far as to imagine any consequences; I had never thought of connecting the high color in women’s cheeks, the sparkle in women’s eyes, the animation of women’s chatter with the little glasses of highly-colored liquids. They had so many other reasons for being animated, these fortunate, victorious ones!
No, I only knew that this woman was excited; and I began forthwith to imagine most desperate and romantic things. You must remember what I said when I was first telling about Sylvia—that my ideas of the grand monde had been derived from cheap fiction in “Farm” and “Home” and “Fireside” publications. You all know the old story of the beautiful heroine who marries the dissolute duke; how the duke’s cast-off mistress attends the wedding, and does something melodramatic and thrilling—perhaps shoots at the duke, perhaps throws vitriol at the bride, perhaps hands her a letter which is worse than vitriol to her innocent young soul. I smile when I think how instantly I understood this situation, and with what desperate seriousness I made ready to play my part—watching the woman like a cat, ready to spring and seize her at the first hostile move. And yet, after all, it was no joke, for Claire was really quite capable of a murderous impulse when she was in her present condition.
Other people had begun to notice her peculiar behavior; I saw one or two women edging away from her, but I stayed all the closer. The time came when we heard the music of the Mendelssohn March, and the excitement in the crowd told us what was coming. Suddenly the doors of the church swung open—and there, in her radiant loveliness—the bride!
Her veil was thrown back, but her eyes were cast down, and she clung to the arm of her husband. Oh, what a vision she was, and what a thrill went about! For myself, however, I scarcely saw her. My eyes were on the strange woman.
She looked like a mad creature; quivering in every nerve, her fingers twisting and untwisting themselves like writhing snakes. She had crouched, as if ready to spring; and I had my hands within a foot of hers, ready to stop her. The procession moved through the passage kept clear by the police, and I literally held my breath while they passed—held it until the bride had stepped into a limousine, and the bridegroom had followed, and the door had slammed. Then suddenly the strange woman drew herself up and turned upon me, her face glaring into mine. I saw her wild eyes—and also I got a whiff of her breath. She laughed, a hysterical, hateful laugh, and muttered: “She’ll pay for what she gets!”
I whispered “Hush!” But the woman cried again, so that several people heard her: “She’ll pay for everything she gets from him!” She added a phrase in French, the meaning and import of which I learned to understand long afterwards—“Le cadeau de noce que la maitresse laisse dans la corbeille de la jeune fille!” Then suddenly I saw her sway, and I caught her and steadied her, as I know how to steady people with my big strong arms.
And that, reader, was the strange way of my coming into the life of Sylvia Castleman!