§ 7
Sylvia said that she would go to the dance; and great was the excitement, both at home and abroad. All day long, between fits of weeping, she labored to steel herself to the ordeal. When night came, she let herself be arrayed in rosy chiffon, and then went all to pieces, and fell upon the bed in a paroxysm, declaring that she could not, could not go. One by one came “Miss Margaret,” Aunt Varina, and Celeste, scolding her, beseeching her—but all in vain; until at last they sent for the Major, who, wiser than all of them, arrayed himself in his own evening finery, and put a white rosebud in his button-hole, and then went with cheerful face and breaking heart to Sylvia’s room.
“Come, little girl,” he said. “Daddy’s all ready.”
Sylvia sat up and stared at him through her tears. “You!” she exclaimed.
“Why, of course, honey,” he smiled. “Didn’t you know your old Papa was going with you?”
Sylvia had not known it, nor had anybody else known it up to a few minutes before. Her surprise (for the Major almost never went to dances) was sufficiently great to check her tears; and then came “Miss Margaret” with a glassful of steaming “hot toddy.” “My child,” she said, “drink this. You’ve had no nourishment—that’s why you go to pieces.”
So they washed her face again, and powdered it up; they straightened her hair and smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress, and got her bows and ribbons in order, and took her down stairs to where Aunt Nannie was waiting, grim and resolute—a double force of chaperones for this emergency!
You can imagine, perhaps, the excitement when they reached the club-house; how the whisper went round, and the swains crowded in the doorway to wait for her. The younger ones cheered when she entered—“Hi, yi! Whoop la! Miss Sylvia.” They came jumping and capering across the ball-room floor—one of them tearing a great palmetto-leaf from the decorations on the wall, and performing a wonderful, sprawling salaam before her. “I’m the King of the Cannibal Islands!” he proclaimed. “Will you be my Queen, Miss Sylvia?” Several others locked arms and executed a cake-walk, by way of manifesting their delight. The dance of the country-club was turned into a reception in her honor. They worshipped her for having come—it took nerve, by George, and nerve was the thing they admired. And then how lovely she was—how perfectly, unutterably lovely! Just a little more suffering like this, and she would be ready to be carried up in a chariot of fire and set among the seraphim!
Of course, in the face of such a welcome, it was unthinkable that she should not carry the thing through triumphantly. In the refreshment-room were egg-nog and champagne-punch, and she drank enough to keep her in a glow, to carry her along upon wings of excitement. One by one her old sweethearts came to claim a dance with her, and one by one they caused her to understand that hope was springing eternal in their breasts. She found herself so busy keeping them in order that life seemed quite as it had always been in Castleman County.
Save for one important circumstance. There had come a new element into its atmosphere—something marvellously stimulating, transcending and overshadowing all that had been before. Sylvia found out about it little by little; the first hint coming from old Mrs. Tagliaferro—the General’s wife, you may remember. She had come to Sylvia’s début party, hobbling with a gold-headed cane; but now, the General having died, she had thrown away her cane, and chaperoned her great-grandchildren at dances, because otherwise people would think she was getting old. She shook a sprightly finger at the belle of the evening, and demanded, “What’s this I hear, my child, about your latest conquest? I always knew you’d be satisfied with nothing less than a duke!” Sylvia’s face clouded, and the other went on her way with a knowing cackle. “Oh, you can’t fool me with your haughty looks!”
And then came Mabel Taylor, a girl who had been a hopeless wallflower in her early days, and had been saved because Sylvia took pity upon her, and compelled men to ask her to dance. Now she was Sylvia’s jealous rival; and greeting her in the dressing-room she whispered, “Sylvia, is he really in love with you?”
“When Sylvia asked, “Who?” the other replied, “Oh, it’s a secret, is it!”
The girl perceived that she must take some line at once. “Are you really going to marry him?” asked Charlie Peyton, with despair in his voice. “We can’t stand that sort of competition!” protested Harvey Richards. “We shall have to have a protective tariff, Miss Sylvia!” (Harvey, as you may recall, was a steel manufacturer.)
The thing had got upon Sylvia’s nerves. “Are you so completely awed by that man?” she demanded, in a voice of intense irritation.
“Awed by him?” echoed Harvey.
“Why don’t you at least mention his name? You are the fourth person who’s talked to me about him to-night and hasn’t dared to utter his name. I believe it’s not customary for Kings to use their family names, but they have Christian names, at least.”
“Why, Miss Sylvia!” exclaimed the other.
“Let us give him a title,” she pursued, savagely. “King Douglas the First, let us say!” And imagine the seven pairs of swift wings which that saying took unto itself! She called him a King! King Douglas the First! She referred to him as Royalty—she made fun of him as openly and recklessly as that! “What sublimity!” exclaimed her admirers. “What a pose!” retorted her rivals.
But even so, they could not but envy her the pose, and the consistency with which she adhered to it. She could not be brought to discuss the King—whether he was in love with her, whether he had asked her to marry him, whether he had come South on her account; nor did she show any particular signs of being impressed by him—as if she really did not consider him imposing, or especially elegant, or in any way unusual. Oh, but they were a haughty lot, those Castlemans—and Sylvia was the haughtiest of them all! The country-club began to revise its estimates of Knickerbocker culture, and to remember that, after all, the only real blood in America was in the South.