He was, he tells me, a lively boy; but after the age of eleven he always had, as the most prominent fact in his consciousness, the knowledge that men set him apart as something different from themselves. And this, of course, made intercourse with them difficult; if they were indifferent to him, that was insult, and if they were cordial, then they were taking pity upon him. He always knew that the people who met him, however politely they greeted him, were repeating behind his back the inevitable whisper, “His father wore stripes!” So naturally he found it pleasanter not to meet people.
Then, too, there were his mother and sisters; it was hard not to be bitter about them. He knew that the girls were gentle and lovely; and it rather made men seem cowardly, that it should be certain that no one in their own social world would ever ask them in marriage. There is so much asking in marriage in the South—it is really difficult for a gentlewoman to be passed over altogether. The Shirley girls could not discuss this, even in the bosom of their family; but Frank came to understand, and to brood over the thing in secret.
§ 11
So you see Frank Shirley was a difficult man to get at—as much so as if he had been an emperor or an anchorite. I have been interested in the psychology of sex, and I wondered how much this aloofness had to do with what happened to Sylvia. There were so many men, and they were all so much alike, and they were all so easy! But here was a man who was different; a man whom one could not get at without humiliating efforts; a man of mystery, about whom one could imagine things! I asked Sylvia, who thought there might be something in this; but much more in a deeper fact, which is known to poets and tellers of love-tales, but has not been sufficiently heeded by scientists—that intuitive, commanding and sometimes terrifying revelation of sexual affinity, which we smile at and discredit under the name of “love at first sight.” The first time Sylvia met Frank she did not know who he was; she saw at first only his back; and yet she began at once to experience a thrill which she had never known in her life before. Absurd as they may sound, I will repeat her words: “There was something about the back of his neck that took my breath!”
It had been some years since she had heard the Shirleys mentioned. They had quietly declined all invitations, and this made it easy for everybody to do with decency what everybody wanted to do—to cease sending invitations. The Shirley plantation was remotely located, some twenty miles away from Castleman Hall; and so little by little the family had been forgotten.
But there was a certain Mrs. Venable, a young widow who owned a hunting-lodge near the Shirley place; and as fate would have it, she was one of the people whom Sylvia had persuaded to take up Harriet Atkinson. One day, as the latter was driving to the lodge in her automobile, she was “mired” in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm, when along came a gentleman on horseback, who politely insisted upon her taking his waterproof, and then mounting behind him and riding to his home up on the hill; by which romantic method the delighted Harriet found herself conveyed to an old and evidently aristocratic homestead, and welcomed by some altogether lovely people.
Being younger than Sylvia, and not so much on the “inside” as to local history, Harriet had been obliged to get the story from Mrs. Venable. It had heightened her interest in the Shirleys—for Harriet’s great merit was that she was human and spontaneous where she should have been respectable. She went to call again on the family, and when she got home she made haste to tell Sylvia about it. “Sunny,” she said—that was her way of taking liberties with Sylvia’s complexion—“you ought to meet that man Frank Shirley.” She went on to tell how good-looking he was, how silent and mysterious, and what a fine voice he had. “And the sweetest, lazy smile!” she declared. “I’m sure he could be a lady-killer if he did not take life so seriously!” So, you see, Sylvia had something to start her imagination going, and a reason for accepting Mrs. Venable’s invitation to a hunting party.
One sunshiny morning in the late fall she was taking part in a deer-hunt, carrying a rifle and looking as picturesque as possible. They put her on a “stand” with Charlie Peyton, who ought to have been at college, but was hanging round making a nuisance of himself by sighing and gazing. After waiting a half hour or so, off in the woods they heard a dog yelping. Charlie went off to investigate, thinking it might be a bear; and so Sylvia was left to her fate.
She heard a sound in the bushes at one side, and thought it was a deer. The creature moved past her, hidden by a dense thicket, and passed a little way ahead, with a heavy trampling sound. She had half raised her gun, when suddenly the bushes parted, and with a leap over a fallen log there came into view—not a deer, but a horse with a rider upon his back.
The girl lowered her gun. The dog yelped again and the man reined up his horse and stood listening. The horse was restive; as he drew rein upon it, it turned slightly, exhibiting the rider’s face. To the outward eye he was a not unusual figure, wearing the khaki shirt and knickerbockers affected by the younger generation of planters when on duty. The shirt was open, with a red bandana handkerchief tucked round at the throat.