§ 20
The engagement was announced at once, the wedding to take place six weeks later in New York. Just as Sylvia had anticipated, the family made a great to-do over the place of the ceremony; but finding that both she and van Tuiver were immovable, they cast about for some pretext to make a New York wedding seem plausible to a suspicious world. They bethought themselves of an almost forgotten relative of the family, a step-sister of Lady Dee’s, who had lived in haughty poverty for half a century in the metropolis, and was now discovered in a boarding-house in Harlem, and transported to a suite of apartments in the Palace Hotel, to become responsible for Sylvia’s desertion of Castleman County. She had nothing to do but be the hostess of her “dear niece”—since Mrs. Harold Cliveden had kindly offered to see to the practical details of the ceremonial.
The thrilling news of the betrothal spread, quite literally with the speed of lightning; the next day all America read of the romance. Since the story of van Tuiver’s infatuation, his treason to the “Gold Coast” and his forsaking of college, has been the gossip of New York and Boston clubs for months, there was a delightful story for the “yellows,” of which they did not fail to make use. Of course there was nothing of that kind in the Southern papers, but they had their own way of responding to the general excitement, of gratifying the general curiosity.
Sylvia was really startled by the furore she had raised; she was as if caught up and whirled away by a hurricane. Such floods of congratulations as poured in! So many letters, from people whose names she could barely remember! Was there a single person in the county who had a right to call, who did not call to wish her joy? Even Celeste wrote from Miss Abercrombie’s—a letter which brought the tears to her sister’s eyes.
Through all these events Sylvia played her rôle; she played it day and night—not even in the presence of her negro maid did she lay it aside! The rôle of the blushing bride-to-be, the ten-times-over happy heroine of a romance in high-life! She must be smiling, radiant with animation decorously repressed; she must go about with the lucky bridegroom-to-be, and receive the congratulations of those she knew, and be unaware—yet not ungraciously unaware—of the interest and the stares of those she did not know. More difficult yet, she had to look the Major in the eyes, and say to him that she had come to realize that she was fond of “Mr. van Tuiver,” and that she honestly believed she would be happy with him. Since her mother and Aunt Varina were dear sentimental Southern ladies, incapable of taking a cold-blooded look at a fact, she had to pretend even to them that she was cradled in bliss.
At first van Tuiver was with her all the time, pouring out the torrents of his happiness and gratitude. But Aunt Nannie soon came to the rescue here; Sylvia must not have the inconveniences of matrimony until the knot had actually been tied. Van Tuiver was ordered off to New York, until Sylvia should come for the buying of her wedding trousseau.
The dear old Major had suspected nothing when his friend, the president of the bank, had suddenly discovered that he could “carry” the troublesome notes. So now he was completely free from care, and his daughter had a week of bliss in his company. She read history to him, and drove with him, and tended his flowers in the conservatory, and was hardly apart from him an hour in the day.
Sylvia had set out some months ago at the task of democratizing van Tuiver; even in becoming engaged she had kept some lingering hope of accomplishing this. But alas, how quickly the idea vanished before the reality of her situation! She remembered with a smile how glibly she had advised the young millionaire to step away from his shadow; and how he had labored to make plain to her that he could not help being a King. Now suddenly she found that she could sympathize with him—she who was about to be a Queen!
There were a thousand little ways in which she felt the difference. Even the manner of her friends was changed. She could not go anywhere that she was not conscious of people staring at her. It was found necessary to appoint a negro to guard the grounds, because of the number of strangers who came in the hope of getting a glimpse of her. Her mail became suddenly a flood: letters from inventors who wished to make her another fortune; letters from distressed women who implored her to save them; letters from convicts languishing in prison for crimes of which they were innocent; letters from poets with immortal, unrecognized blank-verse dramas; letters from lonely farmers’ wives who thrilled over her romance, and poured out their souls in ill-spelled blessings; letters from prophets of the class-war who frightened her with warnings of the wrath to come!
On the second day after the engagement was announced, Sylvia went out, all unsuspecting, for a horseback-ride, and had hardly mounted when a man with a black box stepped from behind a tree, and proceeded calmly to snap-shot the fair equestrienne. Sylvia cried out in indignation, and springing from the horse, rushed in to tell the Major what had happened; whereupon the Major sallied out with a cane, and there was a cross-country gallop after the intruder, ending in a violent collision between the camera and the cane. The funniest part of the matter was that the photographer spent the better part of a day trying to get a warrant for his assailant—imagining that it was possible to arrest a Castleman in Castleman County! By way of revenge he telegraphed the story to New York, where it appeared, duly worked up—with the old photograph of the “reigning beauty of the New South,” in place of the one which had died in the camera!