§ 7
You must have a glimpse of Castleman Hall as it was at the time of the début. The old house stands upon a hill, terraced on one side, and overlooking the river from a high bluff on the other. It is of red brick, originally square, with a two-storied portico and hanging balcony in front; later on there had been added two wings of white painted wood, for the library and conservatory—now nearly covered with red roses and Virginia creepers. On the afternoon of the great day there was a reception to all the married friends of the family. They came in conveyances of every kind, from family coaches to modern high-power limousines; they came in costumes varying from the latest Paris modes to the antebellum splendor of old Mrs. Tagliaferro, who hobbled cautiously over the polished hardwood floors, with the help of her gold-headed cane on one side, and her husband, the General, on the other. Once arrived, she laid her hands upon Sylvia’s, and told her how pretty she was, and how she must contribute a new stone to the archway through which the Castlemans had marched to fame for so many generations. There had been many famous Castleman beauties, quavered the old gentleman, in his turn, but none more beautiful than the present one—save only, perhaps, her mother. (This last as “Miss Margaret” appeared at his elbow, clad in ample folds of gray satin and tulle.) So one by one ladies and gentlemen came up and delivered gallant speeches and grave exhortations, until Sylvia was overwhelmed with the sense of responsibility involved in being a daughter of the Castlemans.
And then came the evening, with the début dance for the young people. Ten years later I saw Sylvia in the gown she wore: white chiffon over white messaline, with roses and a string of pearls. Wonderful she must have been that night, at the age of eighteen, the climax of her beauty; eager, glowing, a-quiver with excitement. I picture her standing before the mirror, childishly ravished by her own loveliness, her mother and aunts, scarcely less excited, putting the final touches to her toilette. I picture her girl friends in the dressing-room and the hall, gossiping, chattering, laughing; the buzz of excitement, then the hush when she appeared, the cries of congratulation and applause. I picture the downstairs rooms, decorated with lilies, magnolias and white ribbons, the furniture covered with white brocade, the chandeliers turned into great bells of lilies, the soft light from white-shaded candles flooding everything. I picture the swains, waiting eagerly at the foot of the staircase, each with a bouquet for his chosen one in his hand. I can hear the strains of the violins floating up the staircase, and see the shimmering form of Sylvia floating down, crowned with her dazzling glory of golden hair. There was no one in Castleman County who failed to realize that a belle was born that night!
§ 8
It was just a week after these festivities that there occurred the death of Sylvia’s great-aunt. Nothing could have been more characteristic than the method of her departure. She left home and betook herself to an aristocratic boarding-house, kept by a “decayed gentlewoman” in New Orleans; she might be a long time a-dying, she said, and did not want anybody making a fuss over her. Also she did not care to have her nieces and nephews calling in to drop hints as to the disposition of her rosewood bedroom set, her miniature piano and her Queen Anne baby’s crib. She left a will in which she bequeathed her property to her grand-niece, Sylvia Castleman, to be held in trust for her until she was forty years of age. “Some man will take care of her while she is beautiful,” she wrote, “but later on she may find use for my pittance.” And finally the old lady put in a clause to the effect that the bequest was conditional upon her grand-niece’s obeying her injunction to wear no mourning for her. “It is impossible to make a woman with brown eyes look presentable in black,” she wrote. And this, you understand, in a document which had to be filed for probate! Most fortunate it was that all the editors of newspapers in the South are gentlemen, who can be relied upon not to print the news.
Sylvia obeyed the instructions of this extraordinary document, and felt it a solemn duty to go to entertainments, even with tears in her eyes. So now began a bewildering succession of dinners, dances and receptions, balls and suppers, house parties, hunting parties, auto parties, theatre parties. It speaks marvels for her constitution that she was able to stand the strain. When the last light had been extinguished she would drag herself upstairs to bed, a limp train hung over her limp arm, her feet aching in the tiny slippers and her back aching in the cruel stays. The Governor saw fit to appoint her as his “sponsor” at the state militia encampment; and so for ten days she would rise every morning at daybreak, ride out with an “escort” to witness guard-mount, and remain in the midst of a rush of gaieties until three or four o’clock the next morning, when the nightly dance came to an end.
Sylvia always refused to give photographs of herself to men. It was part of her feeling about them that she could not endure the thought of her image being in their rooms. But her enterprising Aunt Nannie, the Bishop’s wife, presented one to the editor of a metropolitan magazine, where it appeared under the heading of “A Reigning Beauty of the New South.” It was taken up and reproduced in Southern papers, and after that Sylvia found that her fame had preceded her—everywhere she went new worshippers joined her train, and came to her hometown to lay siege to her.
You may perhaps know something about these Southern men. I had never dreamed of such, and I would listen spellbound for hours to Sylvia’s tales of them. Men who, as Lady Dee had phrased it, had nothing to do but make love to their women! There were times when the realization of this brought me a shudder. I would see, in a sudden vision, the torment of a race of creatures who were doomed to spend their whole existence in the chase of their females; and the females devoting their energies to stinging them to fresh frenzies!
The men liked it; they liked nothing else in the world so much. “You may make me as unhappy as you please,” they would tell Sylvia—“if only you will let me love you!” And Sylvia, in the course of time, became reconciled to letting them love her. She learned to play the game—to play it with constantly increasing excitement, with a love of mischief and a thirst for triumph.
She would show her latest victim twenty moods in one evening, alluring him, repelling him, stimulating him, scorning him, pitying him, bewildering him. When they met again, she would be completely absorbed in the conversation of another man. He would be reduced at last to begging for a chance to talk seriously with her; and she, pretending to be touched, might let him call, and show him her loveliest and most sympathetic self. So, before he realized it, he would be caught fast. If he happened to be especially conspicuous, or especially rich, or especially otherwise worth while, she might take the trouble to goad him to desperation. Then he would be ready to give proofs of his devotion—to go through West Point, or to be made a judge, if only she would promise to marry him. Each of these tasks she set to an unfortunate wretch, who went off and performed it—and came back and found her married!