§ 13
There came a new dance, the sixth, and a new partner, who was short, and was speedily discovered to be Jackson. Then came the seventh dance, and Sylvia expected that it would be her Faun again, but was disappointed. It was a man unknown, and she wondered if Bates had lost his nerve. But with Number Eight came the inevitable return.
Van Tuiver was so anxious this time that he asked before he began to dance, “Is that you?” And when Sylvia answered “Yes,” she could hear his sigh of relief. All through the dance she could feel his excitement. Once or twice he tried to talk, but she whispered to him to keep the rules.
The moment they were seated he said, “Miss Castleman, you must explain to me what you mean.”
“I knew I’d have to explain,” she responded. “I’ve been thinking how I could make you understand. You see, I’m a comparative stranger to this world of yours, and things might shock me which would seem to you quite a matter of course. I suppose I’m what you’d call a country girl, and have a provincial outlook.”
“Please go on,” he said.
“Well, Mr. van Tuiver, you have an enormous amount of money. Twenty or thirty million dollars—forty or fifty million dollars—the authorities don’t seem to agree about it. As well as I can put the matter, you have so much that it has displaced you; it isn’t you who think, it isn’t you who speak—it’s your money. You seem to be a sort of quivering, uneasy consciousness of uncounted millions of dollars; and the only thing that comes back to you from your surroundings is an echo of that quivering consciousness.”
“Do I really seem like that to you?”
“It’s the impression you’ve made upon everyone who knows you.”
“Oh, surely not!” he cried.
“Quite literally that,” said Sylvia. “I hated you before I ever laid eyes on you—because of the way you’d impressed your friends.”
There was a pause; when van Tuiver spoke again it was in a low and uncertain voice. “Miss Castleman,” he said, “has it ever occurred to you to think what might be the difficulties of my situation?”
“No, I haven’t had time for that.”
“Well, take this one fact. You say that I have made a certain impression upon everyone who knows me. But you are the first person in my whole lifetime who’s ever told me.”
Sylvia gave an exclamation of incredulity.
“Don’t you see?” pressed on the other, eagerly. “What is a man to do? I have a great deal of money. I can’t help that. And I can’t help the fact that it gives me a great deal of power. I can’t help having a sense of responsibility.”
“The sense of responsibility has been too much for you,” said Sylvia.
This was too subtle for him. He hurried on: “Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong—but circumstances have given me a certain position, and I have to maintain it. I have certain duties which I must fulfill, which I can’t possibly get away from.”
There was a pause. He seemed to feel that the situation was not satisfactory, and started again. “It’s all very well for you, who don’t realize my position, the responsibilities I have—it’s all very well for you to talk about my consciousness of money. But how can I get away from it? People know about my money, they think about it—they expect certain things of me. They put me in a certain position, whether I will or not.”
He stopped again. He was so greatly agitated that Sylvia was beginning to feel pity. “Do you have to be what people expect you to be?” she said.
“But,” he argued, “I have the money, and I have to make use of it—to invest it—to protect it——”
“Ah, but all that is in the business world. What I’m talking about is in a separate sphere—your social relations.”
“But, Miss Castleman, that’s just it—is it separate? It ought to be, you’ll say—but is it? I tell you, you simply don’t know, that’s all. People profess friendship for me, but they want something, and by and by I find out what it is they want. You say that’s monstrous; I know, I used to think it was, myself. You say, I ought not to know it; but I can’t help knowing it; it’s forced upon me by all the circumstances of my life. Sometimes I think I’ve never had a disinterested friend since I was born!”
Sylvia perceived the intensity behind his words, and was silent for a minute. “But surely,” she said, “here—in the democracy of college life——”
“It’s exactly the same here as anywhere else. Here are clubs, social cabals, everybody pushing and intriguing, exactly as in New York society. Take that fact you spoke of—that all the fellows dislike me, and yet not one of them has dared to tell me so!”
“Dared?” repeated Sylvia.
“Oh, well, perhaps they dared—the point is, they didn’t. The ones who had to make their own way were busy making it; and the others, who had got in of right—well, they believe in money. They’d all shrug their shoulders and say, ‘What’s the use of antagonizing such a man?’”
“I see,” said Sylvia, fascinated.
“Whatever the reason is, they never call me down—not a man of them. And then, as for the women——”
Sylvia had not made any sound, but somehow he felt her sudden interest. He said, with signs of agitation, “Please, Miss Castleman, don’t be offended. You asked me to talk about it.”
“Go on,” she said. “I’m really most curious. I suppose all the women want to marry you?”
“It isn’t only that. They want anything. They just want to be seen with me. Of course, when they start to make love to me—” He paused.
“You stop them, I hope,” said Sylvia, modestly.
“I do when I know it. But, you see——”
He paused again; it was evidently a difficult topic. “Pray don’t mind,” said Sylvia, laughing. “They’re subtle creatures, I know. Do many of them make love to you?”
“I know you’re laughing at me, Miss Castleman. But believe me, it’s no joke. If you’d see some of the letters I get!”
“Oh, they write you love letters?”
“Not only love letters. I don’t mind them—but the letters from women in distress, the most terrible stories you can imagine. Once I was foolish enough—didn’t anybody tell you the scrape I got into?”
“No.”
“That’s curious—they generally like to tell it. I was weak enough to let one woman get into my house in Cambridge. She had a tragedy to rehearse, and I listened to her, and finally she wanted ten thousand dollars. I didn’t know if her story was true, and I said No, and then she began to scream for help. The servants came running, and she said—well, you can imagine, how I’d insulted her, and all that. I told my man to throw her out, but she said she’d scratch his eyes out, she’d scream from the window, she’d stand on the street outside and denounce me till the police came, she’d give the newspapers the whole story of the way I’d abused her. And so finally I had to give her all the money I happened to have on me.”
“Great Heavens!” exclaimed Sylvia, who had not thought of anything so serious as that.
“You see how it is. For the most part I’ve escaped that kind of thing, because I was taught. My Great-uncle Douglas, who died recently—he was my guardian, and he taught me all about women when I was very young—not more than ten. He had charge of my upbringing, and he wouldn’t allow a woman in my household.”
“Dear me,” said Sylvia, “what a cynic he must have been!”
“He died a bachelor,” said the other, “and left me a great deal of money. So you see—that is——”
“He’d had to be a cynic!” laughed the girl. And van Tuiver laughed with her—more humanly than she had ever thought possible.
She considered for a moment, and then suddenly asked, “Mr. van Tuiver, has it never occurred to you that I might be making love to you?”
She could not see his face, but she knew that he was staring at her in dismay. “Oh, surely not, Miss Castleman!” he exclaimed.
“But how can you be sure?” she asked. “Where is your training?”
“Miss Castleman,” he said, “please take me seriously.”
“I’m quite serious. In fact, I think I ought to tell you, I have been making love to you.”
“Surely not!” he said.
“I mean it, quite literally. I’ve been doing it from the first moment I met you—doing it in spite of all my resolutions to the contrary!”
“But why?”
“Well, because I hated you, and also because I pitied you. I said, I’ll get him in my power and punish him—and at the same time teach him.”
“Oh!” exclaimed van Tuiver; and she thought that she detected a note of relief in the word.
“You are glad I don’t mean to marry you,” she said; and when he started to protest, she cut him short with, “You’re not applying the wisdom of your great-uncle! I say I don’t want to marry you, but most likely that’s a device to disarm you, to make you want to marry me.”
In spite of his evident distress, she was incorrigible. “You ought to be up and away,” she declared—“scared out of your wits. I tell you I’m the most dangerous woman you’ve ever met. And I mean it literally. I’ll wager that if your great-uncle had ever met my great-aunt, he would not have died a bachelor! Take my advice, and fall ill and leave this party at once.”
“Why should I be afraid of you?” he demanded. “Why shouldn’t I marry you if I want to?”
“What! a poor girl like me?”
“Well, I don’t know. I can afford to marry a poor girl if I feel like it.”
“But—think of the ignominy of being trapped!”
He considered this. “I’m not afraid of that either,” he said. “If you’ve had the wit to do it—and none of the others had——”
“Oh!” she laughed. “Then you’re willing to be hunted!”
“Miss Castleman,” he protested, “you are unkind. I’ve thought seriously. You really are a most beautiful woman, and at the same time a most amazingly clever woman. You would be an ornament in my life—I’d always be proud of you—”
He paused. “Mr. van Tuiver,” she demanded, “am I to understand that this is a serious proposal?”
She could feel his quiver of fear. “Why,” he stammered—“really——”
“Don’t you see how dangerous it is!” she exclaimed. “You were almost caught! Make your escape, Mr. van Tuiver!”
And then came the sound of the bell. She started up. “Go and tell Mr. Bates!” she cried. “Don’t let him do this again—if you do, you are lost forever!”