Harriet Atkinson was the one weak spot in the fortifications of respectability which Sylvia’s parents had built up about her. Harriet’s ancestors were Yankees, of the very most odious “carpet-bag” type. Her grandfather had been a pawnbroker in Boston, so fierce rumor declared; and her father was a street-railroad president, who purchased “red-neck” legislators for use in his business. Harriet herself was a brunette beauty, so highly colored that she looked artificial, no matter how hard she tried to look natural.
But in spite of these appalling facts, Harriet Atkinson was the most intelligent girl whom Sylvia had met during her three years at the “college.” She had a wit that was irresistible, and also she understood people. You might spend weeks in her company and never be bored; whereas there were persons who could prove possession of the “very best blood in the South,” but who were capable of boring you most frightfully when they got you alone for half an hour.
Sylvia was never allowed to go to Harriet’s home, nor was Harriet ever asked to Castleman Hall. But Sylvia refused to give up her friend, and for a year she intrigued incessantly to force Harriet upon her hostesses, and to persuade her own suitors to call at the Atkinson home. In the end she married her off to the scion of a great family—with consequences which are to be told at a later stage of my story. The point for the present is that things happened exactly as Sylvia’s aunts had predicted; through her intimacy with the undesirable Harriet Atkinson she was “exposed” to the acquaintance of several undesirable men, among them Frank Shirley.
Sylvia had known about the Shirleys from earliest childhood. She had heard the topic talked about at the family dinner-table, and had seen tears in her father’s eyes when the final tragedy came. For the Shirleys were among the “best people,” and this was not the kind of thing which was allowed to happen to such.
About twelve years previously the legislature had appropriated money for the building of a veterans’ home, and the funds had been entrusted to a committee, of which Robert Shirley was treasurer. The project had lapsed for a couple of years, and when the money was called for, Robert Shirley was unable to produce it. Rumors leaked out, and there came a demand in the legislature for an accounting.
The Major was one of a committee of friends who were asked by the Governor to make a private investigation. They found that Shirley had deposited the money to his private bank account, after the unbusinesslike methods of a Southern gentleman. Checks had been drawn upon it; but there was evidence at the bank tending to show that the checks might not have been signed by Shirley himself. He had a younger brother, a spendthrift and gambler, whom he had indulged and protected all his life. Such were the hints which Sylvia had heard at home—when suddenly Robert Shirley proceeded to the state Capitol and requested the Governor to stop the investigation, declaring that he alone was to blame.
It was a terrible thing. Shirley was besought to fly, he was told by the Governor’s own authority that he might live anywhere outside the state, and the search for him would be nominal. But he stood fast; the money was gone, and some one must pay the penalty. So the world saw the unprecedented spectacle of a man of “good family” standing trial, and receiving a sentence of five years in the penitentiary.
He left a broken-hearted wife and four children. Sylvia remembered the horror with which her mother and her aunts had contemplated the fate of these latter. Two girls, soon to become young ladies, and cut off from all hope of a future! “But, Mamma,” Sylvia cried, “it isn’t their fault!” She recollected the very tone of her mother’s voice, the dying away to a horrified whisper at the end: “My child, their father wore stripes!”
The Shirleys made no attempt to hold up their heads against the storm, but withdrew into strict seclusion on their plantation. Now, ten years later, Robert Shirley having died in prison, his widow was a pitiful shadow, his daughters were hopeless old maids, and his two sons were farmers, staying at home and acting as their own managers.
Of these, Frank Shirley was the elder. I am handicapped in setting out to tell you about him by the fact that he sits in the next room, and will have to read what I write; he is not a man to stand for any nonsense about himself—nor yet one whose ridicule an amateur author would wish to face. I will content myself with stating simple facts, which he cannot deny; for example, that he is a man a trifle below the average height, but sturdily built and exceedingly powerful. He had in those days dark hair and eyes, and he would not claim to have been especially bad-looking. He is the most reserved man I have ever known, but his feelings are intense when they are roused, and on these rare occasions he is capable of being eloquent. He is, in general, a very solid and dependable kind of man; he does not ask anything of anybody, but he is willing to give, cautiously, after he has made sure that his motive will be understood. As I read that over, it seems to me a judicious and entirely unsentimental statement about him, which he will have to pass.