The Bent Twig Part 17

From that absent but pervasive personality Sylvia took one suggestion after another. For instance, a very brief a.s.sociation with Eleanor caused her to relegate to the sc.r.a.pheap of the "common" the ready-made white ruching for neck and sleeves which she had always before taken for granted. Eleanor's slim neck and smooth wrists were always set off by a few folds of the finest white chiffon, laid with dexterous carelessness, and always so exquisitely fresh that they were obviously renewed by a skilful hand after only a few hours' wearing. The first time she saw Eleanor, Sylvia noticed this detail with appreciation, and immediately struggled to reproduce it in her own costume. Like other feats of the lesser arts this perfect trifle turned out to depend upon the use of the lightest and most adroit touch. None of the chiffon which came in Aunt Victoria's boxes would do. It must be fresh from the shop-counter, ruinous as this was to Sylvia's very modest allowance for dress. Even then she spoiled many a yard of the filmy, unmanageable stuff before she could catch the spirit of those apparently careless folds, so loosely disposed and yet never displaced. It was a phenomenon over which a philosopher might well have pondered, this spectacle of Sylvia's keen brain and well-developed will-power equally concerned with the problems of chemistry and philosophy and history, and with the problem of chiffon folds. She herself was aware of no incongruity, indeed of no difference, between the two sorts of efforts.

Many other matters of Eleanor's attire proved as fruitful of suggestion as this, although Aunt Victoria's well-remembered dictum about the "kitchen-maid's pin-cushion" was a guiding finger-board which warned Sylvia against the multiplication of detail, even desirable detail.

Mrs. Hubert had evidently studied deeply the sources of distinction in modern dress, and had grasped with philosophic thoroughness the underlying principle of the art, which is to show effects obviously costly, but the cost of which is due less to mere brute cash than to prodigally expended effort. Eleanor never wore a costume which did not show the copious exercise by some alert-minded human being, presumably with an immortal soul, of the priceless qualities of invention, creative thought, trained attention, and prodigious industry. Mrs.

Hubert's unchallengeable slogan was that dress should be an expression of individuality, and by dint of utilizing all the details of the attire of herself and of her two daughters, down to the last ruffle and b.u.t.tonhole, she found this medium quite sufficient to express the whole of her own individuality, the conspicuous force of which was readily conceded by any observer of the lady's life.

As for Eleanor's own individuality, any one in search of that very un.o.btrusive quality would have found it more in the expression of her eyes and in the childlike lines of her lips than in her toilets. It is possible that Mrs. Hubert might have regarded it as an unkind visitation of Providence that the results of her lifetime of effort in an important art should have been of such slight interest to her daughter, and should have served, during the autumn under consideration, chiefly as hints and suggestions for her daughter's successful rival.

That she was Eleanor's successful rival, Sylvia had Mrs. Draper's more than outspoken word. That lady openly gloried in the impending defeat of Mrs. Hubert's machinations to secure the Fiske money and position for Eleanor; although she admitted that a man like Jerry had his two opposing sides, and that he was quite capable of being attracted by two such contrasting types as Sylvia and Eleanor. She informed Sylvia indeed that the present wife of Colonel Fiske--his third, by the way--had evidently been in her youth a girl of Eleanor's temperament.

It was more than apparent, however, that in the case of the son, Sylvia's "type" was in the ascendent; but it must be set down to Sylvia's credit that the circ.u.mstance of successful compet.i.tion gave her no satisfaction. She often heartily wished Eleanor out of it. She could never meet the candid sweetness of the other's eyes without a qualm of discomfort, and she suffered acutely under Eleanor's gentle amiability.

Once or twice when Mrs. Draper was too outrageously late at an appointment for tea, the two girls gave her up, and leaving the house, walked side by side back across the campus, Sylvia quite aware of the wondering surmise which followed their appearance together. On these occasions, Eleanor talked with more freedom than in Mrs. Draper's presence, always in the quietest, simplest way, of small events and quite uninteresting minor matters in her life, or the life of the various household pets, of which she seemed extremely fond. Sylvia could not understand why, when she bade her good-bye at the driveway leading into the Hubert house, she should feel anything but a rather contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt for the other's insignificance, but the odd fact was that her heart swelled with inexplicable warmth. Once she yielded to this foolish impulse, and felt a quivering sense of pleasure at the sudden startled responsiveness with which Eleanor returned a kiss, clinging to her as though she were an older, stronger sister.

One dark late afternoon in early December, Sylvia waited alone in the candle-lighted shrine, neither Eleanor nor her hostess appearing.

After five o'clock she started home alone along the heavily shaded paths of the campus, as dim as caves in the interval before the big, winking sputtering arc-lights were flashed on. She walked swiftly and lightly as was her well-trained habit, and before she knew it, was close upon a couple sauntering in very close proximity. With the surety of long practice Sylvia instantly diagnosed them as a college couple indulging in what was known euphemistically as "campus work,"

and prepared to pa.s.s them with the slight effect of scorn for philanderings which she always managed to throw into her high-held head and squarely swinging shoulders. But as she came up closer, walking noiselessly in the dusk, she recognized an eccentric, flame-colored plume just visible in the dim light, hanging down from the girl's hat--and stopped short, filled with a rush of very complicated feelings. The only flame-colored plume in La Chance was owned and worn by Eleanor Hubert, and if she were out sauntering amorously in the twilight, with whom could she be but Jerry Fiske,--and that meant--Sylvia's pangs of conscience about supplanting Eleanor were swept away by a flood of anger as at a defeat. She could not make out the girl's companion, beyond the fact that he was tall and wore a long, loose overcoat. Jerry was tall and wore a long, loose overcoat. Sylvia walked on, slowly now, thoroughly aroused, quite unaware of the inconsistency of her mental att.i.tude. She felt a rising tide of heat. She had, she told herself, half a notion to step forward and announce her presence to the couple, whose pace as the Hubert house was approached became slower and slower.

But then, as they stood for a moment at the entrance of the Hubert driveway, the arc-lights blazed up all over the campus at once and she saw two things: one was that Eleanor was walking very close to her companion, with her arm through his, and her little gloved fingers covered by his hand, and next that he was not Jerry Fiske at all, but the queer, countrified "freak" a.s.sistant in chemistry with whom Eleanor, since Jerry's defection, had more or less masked her abandonment.

At the same moment the two started guiltily apart, and Sylvia halted, thinking they had discovered her. But it was Mrs. Hubert whom they had seen, advancing from the other direction, and making no pretense that she was not in search of an absent daughter. She bore down upon the couple, murmured a very brief greeting to the man, accompanied by a faint inclination of her well-hatted head, drew Eleanor's unresisting hand inside her arm, and walked her briskly into the house.

CHAPTER XVII

MRS. MARSHALL STICKS TO HER PRINCIPLES

During the autumn and early winter it not only happened unfortunately that the quartet played altogether too much Haydn, but that Sylvia's father, contrary to his usual custom, was away from home a great deal.

The State University had arrived at that stage of its career when, if its rapidly increasing needs and demands for State money were to be recognized by the Legislature, it must knit itself more closely to the rest of the State system of education, have a more intimate affiliation with the widely scattered public high schools, and weld into some sort of homegeneity their extremely various standards of scholarship. This was a delicate undertaking, calling for much tact and an accurate knowledge of conditions in the State, especially in the rural districts. Professor Marshall's twenty years of popularity with the more serious element of the State University students (that popularity which meant so little to Sylvia, and which she so ignored) had given him a large acquaintance among the cla.s.s which it was necessary to reach. He knew the men who at the University had been the digs, and jays, and grinds, and who were now the prosperous farmers, the bankers, the school-trustees, the leading men in their communities; and his geniality, vivacity, and knack for informal public speaking made him eminently fitted to represent the University in the somewhat thankless task of coaxing and coercing backward communities to expend the necessary money and effort to bring their schools up to the State University standard.

If all this had happened a few years sooner, he undoubtedly would have taken Sylvia with him on many of these journeys into remote corners of the State, but Sylvia had her cla.s.s-work to attend to, and the Professor shared to the fullest extent the academic prejudice against parents who broke in upon the course of their children's regular instruction by lawless and casual junketings. Instead, it was Judith who frequently accompanied him, Judith who was now undergoing that home-preparation for the University through which Sylvia had pa.s.sed, and who, since her father was her princ.i.p.al instructor, could carry on her studies wherever he happened to be; as well as have the stimulating experience of coming in contact with a wide variety of people and conditions. It is possible that Professor Marshall's sociable nature not only shrank from the solitude which his wife would have endured with cheerfulness, but that he also wished to take advantage of this opportunity to come in closer touch with his second daughter, for whose self-contained and occasionally insensitive nature he had never felt the instinctive understanding he had for Sylvia's moods. It is certain that the result was a better feeling between the two than had existed before. During the long hours of jolting over branch railroads back to remote settlements, or waiting at cheerless junctions for delayed trains, or gaily eating impossible meals at extraordinary country hotels, the ruddy, vigorous father, now growing both gray and stout, and the tall, slender, darkly handsome girl of fifteen, were cultivating more things than history and mathematics and English literature. The most genuine feeling of comradeship sprang up between the two dissimilar natures, a feeling so strong and so warm that Sylvia, in addition to her other emotional complications, felt occasionally a faint p.r.i.c.king of jealousy at seeing her primacy with her father usurped.

A further factor in her temporary feeling of alienation from him was the mere physical fact that she saw him much less frequently and that he had nothing like his usual intimate knowledge of her comings and goings. And finally, Lawrence, now a too rapidly growing and delicate lad of eleven, had a series of bronchial colds which kept his mother much occupied with his care. As far as her family was concerned, Sylvia was thus left more alone than ever before, and although she had been trained to too delicate and high a personal pride to attempt the least concealment of her doings, it was not without relief that she felt that her parents had but a very superficial knowledge of the extent and depth to which she was becoming involved in her new relations. She herself shut her eyes as much as possible to the rate at which she was progressing towards a destination rapidly becoming more and more imperiously visible; and consciously intoxicated herself with the excitements and fatigues of her curiously double life of intellectual effort in cla.s.ses and her not very skilful handling of the shining and very sharp-edged tools of flirtation.

But this ambiguous situation was suddenly clarified by the unexpected call upon Mrs. Marshall, one day about the middle of December, of no less a person than Mrs. Jermain Fiske, Sr., wife of the Colonel, and Jerry's stepmother. Sylvia happened to be in her room when the shining car drove up the country road before the Marshall house, stopped at the gate in the osage-orange hedge, and discharged the tall, stooping, handsomely dressed lady in rich furs, who came with a halting step up the long path to the front door. Although Sylvia had never seen Mrs.

Fiske, Mrs. Draper's gift for satiric word-painting had made her familiar with some items of her appearance, and it was with a rapidly beating heart that she surmised the ident.i.ty of the distinguished caller. But although her quick intelligence perceived the probable significance of the appearance, and although she felt a distinct shock at the seriousness of having Jerry's stepmother call upon her, she was diverted from these capital considerations of such vital importance to her life by the trivial consideration which had, so frequently during the progress of this affair, absorbed her mind to the exclusion of everything else--the necessity for keeping up appearances. If the Marshall tradition had made it easier for her to achieve this not very elevated goal, she might have perceived more clearly where her rapid feet were taking her. Just now, for example, there was nothing in her consciousness but the embittered knowledge that there was no maid to open the door when Mrs. Fiske should ring.

She was a keen-witted modern young woman of eighteen, with a well-trained mind stored with innumerable facts of science, but it must be admitted that at this moment she reverted with pa.s.sionate completeness to quite another type. She would have given--she would have given a year of her life--one of her fingers--all her knowledge of history--anything! if the Marshalls had possessed what she felt any decently prosperous grocer's family ought to possess--a well-appointed maid in the hall to open the door, take Mrs. Fiske's card, show her into the living-room, and go decently and in order to summon the mistress of the house. Instead she saw with envenomed foresight what would happen. At the unusual sound of the bell, her mother, who was playing dominoes with Lawrence in one of his convalescences, would open the door with her ap.r.o.n still on, and her spectacles probably pushed up, rustic fashion, on top of her head. And then their ill.u.s.trious visitor, used as of course she was to ceremony in social matters, would not know whether this was the maid, or her hostess; and Mrs. Marshall would frankly show her surprise at seeing a richly dressed stranger on the doorstep, and would perhaps think she had made a mistake in the house; and Mrs. Fiske would not know whether to hand over the cards she held ready in her whitely gloved fingers--in the interval between the clanging shut of the gate and the tinkle of the doorbell Sylvia endured a sick reaction against life, as an altogether hateful and horrid affair.

As a matter of fact, nothing of all this took place. When the bell rang, her mother called out a tranquil request to her to go and open the door, and so it was Sylvia herself who confronted the unexpected visitor,--Sylvia a little flurried and breathless, but ushering the guest into the house with her usual graceful charm of manner.

She had none of this as a moment later she went rather slowly upstairs to summon her mother. It occurred to her that Mrs. Marshall might very reasonably be at a loss as to the reason of this call. Indeed, she herself felt a sinking alarm at the definiteness of the demonstration.

What could Mrs. Fiske have to say to Mrs. Marshall that would not lead to some agitating crystallization of the dangerous solution which during the past months Mrs. Marshall's daughter had been so industriously stirring up? Mrs. Marshall showed the most open surprise at the announcement, "Mrs. Colonel Fiske to see me? What in the world--" she began, but after a glance at Sylvia's down-hung head and twisting fingers, she stopped short, looking very grave, and rose to go, with no more comments.

They went down the stairs in silence, tall mother and tall daughter, both sobered, both frightened at what might be in the other's mind, and at what might be before them, and entered the low-ceilinged living-room together. A pale woman, apparently as apprehensive as they, rose in a haste that had almost some element of apology in it, and offered her hand to Mrs. Marshall. "I'm Mrs. Fiske," she said hurriedly, in a low voice, "Jerry's stepmother, you know. I hope you won't mind my coming to see you. What a perfectly lovely home you have! I was wishing I could just stay and _stay_ in this room."

She spoke rapidly with the slightly incoherent haste of shy people overcoming their weakness, and glanced alternately, with faded blue eyes, at Sylvia and at her mother. In the end she remained standing, looking earnestly into Mrs. Marshall's face. That lady now made a step forward and again put out her hand with an impulsive gesture at which Sylvia wondered. She herself had felt no attraction towards the thin, sickly woman who had so little grace or security of manner. It was constantly surprising Sylvia to discover how often people high in social rank seemed to possess no qualifications for their position.

She always felt that she could have filled their places with vastly more aplomb.

"I'm very glad to see you," said Mrs. Marshall in a friendly tone. "Do sit down again. Sylvia, go and make us some tea, won't you? Mrs. Fiske must be cold after driving out here from town."

When Sylvia came back ten minutes later, she found the guest saying, "My youngest is only nine months old, and he is having _such_ a time with his teeth."

"Oh!" thought Sylvia scornfully, pouring out the tea. "She's _that_ kind of a woman, is she?" With the astonishingly quick shifting of viewpoint of the young, she no longer felt the least anxiety that her home, or even that she herself should make a good impression on this evidently quite negligible person. Her anguish about the ceremony of opening the door seemed years behind her. She examined with care all the minutiae of the handsome, unindividualized costume of black velvet worn by their visitor, but turned an absent ear to her talk, which brought out various facts relating to a numerous family of young children. "I have six living," said Mrs. Fiske, not meeting Mrs.

Marshall's eyes as she spoke, and stirring her tea slowly, "I lost four at birth."

Sylvia was indeed slightly interested to learn through another turn of the conversation that the caller, who looked to her unsympathetic eyes any age at all, had been married at eighteen, and that that was only thirteen years ago. Sylvia thought she certainly looked older than thirty-one, advanced though that age was.

The call pa.s.sed with no noteworthy incidents beyond a growing wonder in Sylvia's mind that the brilliant and dashing old Colonel, after his other matrimonial experiences, should have picked out so dull and colorless a wife. She was not even pretty, not at all pretty, in spite of her delicate, regular features and tall figure. Her hair was dry and thin, her eyes l.u.s.terless, her complexion thick, with brown patches on it, and her conversation was of a domesticity unparalleled in Sylvia's experience. She seemed oddly drawn to Mrs. Marshall, although that lady was now looking rather graver than was her wont, and talked to her of the overflowing Fiske nursery with a loquacity which was evidently not her usual habit. Indeed, she said navely, as she went away, that she had been much relieved to find Mrs. Marshall so approachable. "One always thinks of University families as so terribly learned, you know," she said, imputing to her hostess, with a child's tactlessness, an absence of learning like her own. "I really dreaded to come--I go out so little, you know--but Jerry and the Colonel thought I ought, you know--and now I've really enjoyed it--and if Miss Marshall will come, Jerry and the Colonel will be quite satisfied. And so, of course, will I." With which rather jerky valedictory she finally got herself out of the house.

Sylvia looked at her mother inquiringly. "If I go where?" she asked.

Something must have taken place while she was out of the room getting the tea.

"She called to invite you formally to a Christmas house-party at the Fiskes' place in Mercerton," said Mrs. Marshall, noting smilelessly Sylvia's quick delight at the news. "Oh, what have I got to wear!"

cried the girl. Mrs. Marshall said merely, "We'll see, we'll see,"

and without discussing the matter further, went back to finish the interrupted game with Lawrence.

But the next evening, when Professor Marshall returned from his latest trip, the subject was taken up in a talk between Sylvia and her parents which was more agitating to them all than any other incident in their common life, although it was conducted with a great effort for self-control on all sides. Judith and Lawrence had gone upstairs to do their lessons, and Professor Marshall at once broached the subject by saying with considerable hesitation, "Sylvia--well--how about this house-party at the Fiskes'?"

Sylvia was on the defense in a moment. "Well, how about it?" she repeated.

"I hope you don't feel like going."

"But I do, very much!" returned Sylvia, tingling at the first clear striking of the note of disapproval she had felt for so many weeks like an undertone in her life. As her father said nothing more, biting his nails and looking at her uncertainly, she added in the accent which fitted the words, "Why shouldn't I?"

He took a turn about the room and glanced at his wife, who was hemming a napkin very rapidly, her hands trembling a little. She looked up at him warningly, and he waited an instant before speaking. Finally he brought out with the guarded tone of one forcing himself to moderation of speech, "Well, the Colonel is an abominable old black-guard in public life, and his private reputation is no better."

Sylvia flushed. "I don't see what that has to do with his son. It's not fair to judge a young man by his father--or by anything but what he is himself--you yourself are always saying that, if the trouble is that the father is poor or ignorant or something else tiresome."

Professor Marshall said cautiously, "From what I hear, I gather that the son in this case is a good deal like his father."

"No, he _isn't!_" cried Sylvia quickly. "He may have been wild when he first came up to the University, but he's all right now!" She spoke as with authoritative and intimate knowledge of all the details of Fiske, Jr.'s, life. "And anyhow, I don't see what difference it makes, _what_ the Colonel's reputation is. I'm just going up there with a lot of other young people to have a good time. Eleanor Hubert's invited, and three or four other society girls. I don't see why we need to be such a lot more particular than other people. We never are when it's a question of people being dirty, or horrid, other ways! How about Cousin Parnelia and Mr. Reinhardt? I guess the Fiskes would laugh at the idea of people who have as many queer folks around as we do, thinking _they_ aren't good enough."

Professor Marshall sat down across the table from his daughter and looked at her. His face was rather ruddier than usual and he swallowed hard. "Why, Sylvia, the point is this. It's evident, from what your mother tells me of Mrs. Fiske's visit, that going to this house party means more in your case than with the other girls. Mrs. Fiske came all the way to La Chance to invite you, and from what she said about you and her stepson, it was evident that she and the Colonel--" He stopped, opening his hands nervously.

"I don't know how they think they know anything about it," returned Sylvia with dignity, though she felt an inward qualm at this news.

"Jerry's been ever so nice to me and given me a splendid time, but that's all there is to it. Lots of fellows do that for lots of girls, and n.o.body makes such a fuss about it."

Mrs. Marshall laid down her work and went to the heart of the matter.

"Sylvia, you don't _like_ Mr. Fiske?"

"Yes, I do!" said Sylvia defiantly, qualifying this statement an instant later by, "Quite well, anyhow. Why _shouldn't_ I?"

Her mother a.s.sumed this rhetorical question to be a genuine one and answered it accordingly. "Why, he doesn't seem at all like the type of young man who would be liked by a girl with your tastes and training.

I shouldn't think you'd find him interesting or--"

Sylvia broke out: "Oh, you don't know how sick I get of being so everlastingly high-brow! What's the _use_ of it? People don't think any more of you! They think less! You don't have any better time--nor so good! And why should you and Father always be so down on anybody that's rich, or dresses decently? _Jerry's_ all right--if his clothes _do_ fit!"