“Yes,” he replied, dubiously. “At least—I never liked to be teased before.”
“Well, I will tell you this for your comfort. There’s no remotest possibility of my ever marrying you, so you can feel quite safe.”
Somehow he did not seem sure whether he was pleased at this pledge. After a pause he went on: “What I mean is that I think a man in my position ought to have somebody to tell him the truth.”
“Something like the court-jesters in old days,” said Sylvia.
But he was not interested in mediæval customs. He was interested in his own need, and she had to promise that she would admit him to the arcanum of her friendship, and that she would always tell him exactly what she thought about him—his actions, his ideas, even his manners. In fulfilment of which promise she spent the rest of that séance, and the two that followed, in listening to him talk about himself and his life.
It was really most curious—an inside glimpse into a kind of life of which one heard, but with no idea of ever encountering it; just as one read of train-robbers and safe-blowers, but never expected to sit and chat with them. Douglas van Tuiver had achieved notoriety before he had cut a single tooth; his mother and father having been killed in a railroad accident when he was two months old, the courts had appointed trustees and guardians, and the newspapers had undertaken a kind of unofficial supervision. The precious infant had been brought up by a staff of tutors, with majordomos and lackeys in the background, and two private detectives and a great-uncle and Mrs. Harold Cliveden to oversee the whole. It did not need much questioning to get the details of this life—the lonely palace on Fifth Avenue, the monumental “cottage” at Newport, the “camp” in the Adirondacks, the yacht in the West Indies; the costly toys, the “blooded” pets, the gold plate, the tedious, suffocating solemnity. If Sylvia had been furious with van Tuiver before, she was ready now to go to the opposite extreme and weep over him. A child brought up wholly by employees, with no brothers and sisters to kick and scratch him into decency, no cousins, no playmates even—unless he was first togged out in an Eton suit and escorted by a tutor to the birthday party of some other little togged-out aristocrat!
Yes, assuredly this unhappy man needed someone to tell him the truth! Sylvia resolved that she would fill the rôle. She would be quite unmoved by his Royalty (the word by which she had come to sum up to herself the whole phenomenon of van Tuiverness). She would persist in regarding him as any other human being, saying to him what she felt like, pretending to him, and even to herself, that he really was not Royalty at all!
But alas, she soon found what a task she had undertaken! The last dance had been danced, and amid much merriment the guests unmasked—and still van Tuiver wanted to stay and talk to his one friend. He escorted her to supper, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Winthrop had other arrangements for him. And even if he had behaved himself, there was the tale which “Tubby” Bates had been diligently spreading. The girl realized all at once that she had achieved a new and startling kind of prominence; all the guests, men and women, were watching her, whispering about her, envying her. She felt a wicked thrill of triumph and pleasure. She, a stranger, an obscure girl from the provinces, who would ordinarily have been an object of suspicion and investigation—she had leaped at one moment into supremacy! She had become the favorite of the King!
Pretty soon came Harley, a-tremble with delight. “Gee whiz, old girl, you sure have scored to-night! For God’s sake, how did you manage it?” Sylvia felt herself hot with sudden shame.
And then came Bates. She tried to scold him, but he would simply not have it. “Now, Miss Castleman! Now, Miss Castleman!”—that was all he would say. What it meant was: “It is all right for you to pretend, of course; but you can’t persuade me that you are really angry!”