§ 19
She went home; and at the dinner-table she was telling some of the adventures of the house party. “Oh, by the way,” she said, carelessly, “I met Frank Shirley.”
“Really?” exclaimed Mrs. Castleman. “Those poor, unfortunate people!”
“He must be quite a man now,” said Aunt Varina. “How old is he?”
“About twenty-one,” said the mother. Sylvia was amazed; she had not thought definitely of his age, but he had seemed a mature man to her.
“I see him now and then,” put in the Major. “He comes to town. Not a bad-looking chap.”
“He asked if he might call,” said Sylvia. “I told him, Yes. Was that right, Papa?”
“Why, certainly,” was the reply.
“He seems a very shy, silent kind of man,” she added. “He wasn’t sure that he’d be welcome.”
“Why, my dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Castleman. “I’m sure we’ve never made any difference in our treatment of the Shirleys!”
“Bob Shirley’s children will always be welcome to my home, so long as they behave themselves,” declared the father.
And so Sylvia left the matter, content with their attitude. Frank was wrong in his estimate of her family.
Two days later there came a negro man, riding a mule and carrying a bag, with a note from Frank. He begged her to accept this present of quail, because she had lost so much of her hunting time, and Charlie Peyton’s aim had been so bad. Sylvia read the note, and got from it a painful shock. The handwriting was boyish and the manner of expression crude. She was used to leisure-class stationery, with her monogram in gold at the top, and this was written upon a piece of cheap paper. Somehow it made the whole matter seem unreal and incredible to her. She found herself trying to recall how he looked.
So she went to sleep; and awakening early the next morning, waiting for the agreeable tinkle of the approaching coffee-cup—there suddenly he came to her! Just as real as he had been in the summer-house, with his breath upon her cheek! The delicious, blinding ecstasy possessed her again—and then fresh humiliation at the memory of his kisses! Oh, why did he not come to see her—instead of leaving her the prey of her fancy? She could not escape from the idea that she had lost his respect by flinging herself at his head—by permitting him to kiss her.
The next morning came the negro again, this time with a great bunch of golden-rod. “What a present!” exclaimed the whole family; but Sylvia understood and was happy. “It’s because of my hair,” she told the others, laughing. It must be that he loved her, despite her indiscretions!
He wrote that he was coming to see her that evening; and that because of the length of the ride, he would accept her invitation and come to dinner. So Sylvia braced herself for the ordeal.
She dressed very simply, so as not to attract attention. Uncle Mandeville was there, and two girl cousins from Louisville, visiting the family, and two of the Bishop’s boys and one of Barry Chilton’s, who dropped in at the last moment to see them. That was the way at Castleman Hall—there were never less than a dozen people at any meal, and the cook allowed for twenty. To all this crowd Sylvia had to introduce her strange new conquest, ignoring their glances of inquiry and parrying their mischievous shafts.
I must let you see this family at dinner. At the head of the table sits the Major, with gray hair and a gray imperial, wearing his black vest cut so low that he can plead it is evening dress; still adhering valiantly to the custom of his fathers, and carving the roast for his growing family, while the littlest girls, who come last, follow each portion with hungry eyes and count the number intervening. At the foot sits Mrs. Castleman, serving the salad and dessert, her ample figure robed in satin. “Miss Margaret” is just at that stage of her life, after the birth of the son and heir, when she has definitely abandoned the struggle with an expanding waistline. When I met her, some years later, she weighed two hundred and eighty pounds, and was the best-natured and most comically inefficient human soul I have ever encountered in my life.
There is Aunt Varina Tuis, humble and inconspicuous, weary after a day of trotting up and down stairs after the housekeeper, to see that the embroidered napkins were counted before they went to the laundry, that the drawing-room furniture was dusted, the dead flowers taken out of the dining-room, the fleas in the servants’ quarters kept in subjection. Mrs. Tuis’ queer little voice is seldom heard at the dinner-table, unless she is appealed to in some matter of family history: whom this one married, whom that one had been engaged to, whether or not it was true that some neighbor’s grandfather had kept a grocery store, as rumored.
Then there is Uncle Mandeville, home to recuperate from a spree in New Orleans; enormous in every direction, rosy-faced and prosperous, with a resounding laugh and an endless flow of fun. Beside him sits Celeste, the next daughter, presenting a curious contrast to Sylvia, with her restless black eyes, her positive manner and worldly viewpoint. There are the two cousins from Louisville, healthy and radiant, and the two Chilton boys, Clive and Harley, and Barry’s boy, who is a giant like Uncle Mandeville, and whenever he laughs, makes the cut glass to rattle on the buffet.
All this family hunts in one pack. They know all each other’s affairs, and take an interest in them, and stand together against the rest of the world. They are a noisy crew, good-humored, careless, but with hot tempers and little control of them—so that when their interests clash and they get on one another’s toes, they quarrel as violently as before they loved. Their conversation is apt to be bewildering to a stranger, for they seldom talk about general questions, having a whole arcanum of family allusions not easily understood. At this meal, for example, they are merry for half an hour over the latest tales of the doings of an older brother of Clive and Harley, who has married a girl with rich parents, but is too proud to take a dollar from them, and is forcing his bride to play at decent poverty. When the provisions run out they visit the Bishop, or the Major, or Uncle Barry, as may be most convenient, and go off with an automobile-load of hams and sausage-puddings and pickles and preserves. How many jokes there are, and what gales of merriment go round the table! The Bishop’s son the first kleptomaniac in the family! Barry’s young giant declaring that a single smile from the bride cost his father a cow and calf! The little girls, Peggy and Maria, chiming in with their tale of how the predatory couple found a lone chicken foraging in the rose-garden, confiscated it, carried it off under Basil’s coat, tied it by the leg under the piazza at the back of their house in town—and then forgot it and let it starve to death!
Sylvia sat watching this tableful of care-free, rollicking people—the men handsome, finely built, well-fed and well-groomed, the women delicate, soft-skinned and exquisitely gowned—representing the best type their civilization could produce. A pleasant scene it was, with snowy damask cloth and bouquets of roses, precious old silver and quaint hand-painted china, with a background of mahogany furniture and paneled walls. She watched Frank in the midst of it, thinking of his home as Harriet had pictured it—the people subdued and sombre, the stamp of poverty upon everything. She was glad to see that he was able to fit himself into the mood of this company, enjoying the sallies of fun and pleasing those he talked to.
The house being full of young couples who wanted to be alone, Sylvia took Frank into the library. She liked this room, with its red leather furniture and cozy fireplace, and queer old book-cases with diamond-shaped panes of glass. She liked it because the lights were on the table, and no woman looks beautiful when lighted from over her head. This may seem a small matter to you, but Sylvia had learned how much depends upon detail. She remembered one of the maxims of Lady Dee: “Get a man on your home-ground, where you can have things as you want them; and then place your chair to show the best side of your face.”
These things I set down as Sylvia told them to me—a long time afterwards, when we could laugh over them. It was a fact about her all the way through, that whatever she did, good or bad, she knew why she was doing it. In this she differed from a good many other women, who are not honest, even with themselves, and who feel that things become vulgar only when they are mentioned. The study of her own person and its charms was of course the very essence of her rôle as a “belle.” At every stage of her life she had been drilled and coached—how to dance, how to enter a drawing-room, how to receive a compliment, how to toy with a suitor. At Miss Abercrombie’s, the young ladies had an etiquette teacher who gave them instructions in the most minute details of their deportment; not to bend your body too much, but mainly your knees, when you sat down; not to let your hands lie flat at your sides, but to turn your little fingers gracefully out; never to hesitate or think of yourself when entering a room, but to fix your thoughts upon some person, and move towards that person with decision. Sylvia had needed this last instruction especially, for in the beginning she had had a terrible time entering rooms. It should be a comfort to some would-be belles to know that Sylvia Castleman, who attained in the end to such eminence in her profession, was at the outset a terrified child with shaking knees and chattering teeth, who never would have gone anywhere of her own choice!