Aunt Varina put her arms about her and wept with her. “Oh, it is horrible, Sylvia,” she said—“but think how much better that you should find it out before it’s too late! Oh, dear girl, it is so awful to find it out when it’s too late.” Thus the voice of Aunt Varina’s wasted life!
Aunt Nannie came later, as tactful as could have been expected. She did not say, “I told you so,” but she managed to leave with Sylvia the idea that the outcome was within the limits of human understanding. It was a matter of “bad blood;” and “bad blood” was like murder—it would always out. Also Aunt Nannie ventured to hint that it might be that Sylvia had allowed Frank Shirley to “take liberties” with her; and this, of course, made its impression upon the girl, who persuaded herself that she must be partly to blame for her own disgrace.
She became bitter against men; she did not see how she could ever tolerate the presence of one. Her mother, discussing the subject, remarked, “The reason I married your father was that he was the one good man I knew.”
“How did you know that he was good?” demanded the girl.
“Sylvia!” exclaimed her mother, in horror.
“But how? Because he told you so?”
“Miss Margaret” answered hesitatingly, choosing her words for a difficult subject. “I had heard things. Your Aunt Lady told me—how the young men in your father’s set had tried to get him to—to live the wicked life they lived. They made fun of him—called him ‘Miss Nancy’—.” She broke off suddenly. “I cannot talk about such things to my daughter!”
Even from “Aunt Mandy,” the old “black mammy” who had been the first person to hold Sylvia in her arms, the girl now received counsel. “Aunt Mandy” served the coffee in the early morning, and stood in the bedrooms and grinned while the ladies of the family gossiped; she often took part in the conversation, having gathered stores of family wisdom in her sixty-odd years. “Honey, I’se had my cross to bear,” she said to Sylvia, and went on to discuss the depravity of the male animal. “I’se had to beat my old man wid a flatiron, when I ketched him lookin’ roun’ too much—an’ even dat didn’t help much, honey. Now I got dem boys o’ mine, what’s allus up in cou’t, makin’ de Major come to pay jail-fines. But how kin I be cross wid ’em, when I knows it’s my own fault?”
“Your fault, Mammy?” said Sylvia. “Why, you are as good a mother——”
“I know, honey, I’se tried to be good; I’se prayed to de Lord—yes, I’se took dem boys to de foot o’ de cross. But de Lord done tole me it’s my fault. ‘Mandy,’ he says, ‘Mandy—look at de daddy you give dem niggers!’ Oh, honey, take dis from yo’ ole mammy, ef you’se gwine ter bring any chillun into de worl’—be careful what kind of a daddy you gives ’em!”