“Bob Shirley’s children will always be welcome to my home, so long as they behave themselves,” declared the father.
And so Sylvia left the matter, content with their attitude. Frank was wrong in his estimate of her family.
Two days later there came a negro man, riding a mule and carrying a bag, with a note from Frank. He begged her to accept this present of quail, because she had lost so much of her hunting time, and Charlie Peyton’s aim had been so bad. Sylvia read the note, and got from it a painful shock. The handwriting was boyish and the manner of expression crude. She was used to leisure-class stationery, with her monogram in gold at the top, and this was written upon a piece of cheap paper. Somehow it made the whole matter seem unreal and incredible to her. She found herself trying to recall how he looked.
So she went to sleep; and awakening early the next morning, waiting for the agreeable tinkle of the approaching coffee-cup—there suddenly he came to her! Just as real as he had been in the summer-house, with his breath upon her cheek! The delicious, blinding ecstasy possessed her again—and then fresh humiliation at the memory of his kisses! Oh, why did he not come to see her—instead of leaving her the prey of her fancy? She could not escape from the idea that she had lost his respect by flinging herself at his head—by permitting him to kiss her.
The next morning came the negro again, this time with a great bunch of golden-rod. “What a present!” exclaimed the whole family; but Sylvia understood and was happy. “It’s because of my hair,” she told the others, laughing. It must be that he loved her, despite her indiscretions!
He wrote that he was coming to see her that evening; and that because of the length of the ride, he would accept her invitation and come to dinner. So Sylvia braced herself for the ordeal.
She dressed very simply, so as not to attract attention. Uncle Mandeville was there, and two girl cousins from Louisville, visiting the family, and two of the Bishop’s boys and one of Barry Chilton’s, who dropped in at the last moment to see them. That was the way at Castleman Hall—there were never less than a dozen people at any meal, and the cook allowed for twenty. To all this crowd Sylvia had to introduce her strange new conquest, ignoring their glances of inquiry and parrying their mischievous shafts.
I must let you see this family at dinner. At the head of the table sits the Major, with gray hair and a gray imperial, wearing his black vest cut so low that he can plead it is evening dress; still adhering valiantly to the custom of his fathers, and carving the roast for his growing family, while the littlest girls, who come last, follow each portion with hungry eyes and count the number intervening. At the foot sits Mrs. Castleman, serving the salad and dessert, her ample figure robed in satin. “Miss Margaret” is just at that stage of her life, after the birth of the son and heir, when she has definitely abandoned the struggle with an expanding waistline. When I met her, some years later, she weighed two hundred and eighty pounds, and was the best-natured and most comically inefficient human soul I have ever encountered in my life.
There is Aunt Varina Tuis, humble and inconspicuous, weary after a day of trotting up and down stairs after the housekeeper, to see that the embroidered napkins were counted before they went to the laundry, that the drawing-room furniture was dusted, the dead flowers taken out of the dining-room, the fleas in the servants’ quarters kept in subjection. Mrs. Tuis’ queer little voice is seldom heard at the dinner-table, unless she is appealed to in some matter of family history: whom this one married, whom that one had been engaged to, whether or not it was true that some neighbor’s grandfather had kept a grocery store, as rumored.
Then there is Uncle Mandeville, home to recuperate from a spree in New Orleans; enormous in every direction, rosy-faced and prosperous, with a resounding laugh and an endless flow of fun. Beside him sits Celeste, the next daughter, presenting a curious contrast to Sylvia, with her restless black eyes, her positive manner and worldly viewpoint. There are the two cousins from Louisville, healthy and radiant, and the two Chilton boys, Clive and Harley, and Barry’s boy, who is a giant like Uncle Mandeville, and whenever he laughs, makes the cut glass to rattle on the buffet.