Sylvias Marriage | Page 3

child-labour committee.
You may think that a woman so situated would not have been apt to
meet Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver, _née_ Castleman, and to be chosen for
her bosom friend; but that would only be because you do not know the
modern world. We have managed to get upon the consciences of the
rich, and they invite us to attend their tea-parties and disturb their peace
of mind. And then, too, I had a peculiar hold upon Sylvia; when I met
her I possessed the key to the great mystery of her life. How that had

come about is a story in itself, the thing I have next to tell.
2. It happened that my arrival in New York from the far West coincided
with Sylvia's from the far South; and that both fell at a time when there
were no wars or earthquakes or football games to compete for the front
page of the newspapers. So everybody was talking about the
prospective wedding. The fact that the Southern belle had caught the
biggest prize among the city's young millionaires was enough to
establish precedence with the city's subservient newspapers, which had
proceeded to robe the grave and punctilious figure of the bridegroom in
the garments of King Cophetua. The fact that the bride's father was the
richest man in his own section did not interfere with this--for how
could metropolitan editors be expected to have heard of the glories of
Castleman Hall, or to imagine that there existed a section of America
so self-absorbed that its local favourite would not feel herself exalted in
becoming Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver?
What the editors knew about Castleman Hall was that they wired for
pictures, and a man was sent from the nearest city to "snap" this
unknown beauty; whereupon her father chased the presumptuous
photographer and smashed his camera with a cane. So, of course, when
Sylvia stepped out of the train in New York, there was a whole battery
of cameras awaiting her, and all the city beheld her image the next day.
The beginning of my interest in this "belle" from far South was when I
picked up the paper at my breakfast table, and found her gazing at me,
with the wide-open, innocent eyes of a child; a child who had come
from some fairer, more gracious world, and brought the memory of it
with her, trailing her clouds of glory. She had stepped from the train
into the confusion of the roaring city, and she stood, startled and
frightened, yet, I thought, having no more real idea of its wickedness
and horror than a babe in arms. I read her soul in that heavenly
countenance, and sat looking at it, enraptured, dumb. There must have
been thousands, even in that metropolis of Mammon, who loved her
from that picture, and whispered a prayer for her happiness.
I can hear her laugh as I write this. For she would have it that I was
only one more of her infatuated lovers, and that her clouds of glory
were purely stage illusion. She knew exactly what she was doing with
those wide-open, innocent eyes! Had not old Lady Dee, most cynical of
worldlings, taught her how to use them when she was a child in

pig-tails? To be sure she had been scared when she stepped off the train,
and strange men had shoved cameras under her nose. It was almost as
bad as being assassinated! But as to her heavenly soul--alas, for the
blindness of men, and of sentimental old women, who could believe in
a modern "society" girl!
I had supposed that I was an emancipated woman when I came to New
York. But one who has renounced the world, the flesh and the devil,
knowing them only from pictures in magazines and Sunday
supplements; such a one may find that he has still some need of fasting
and praying. The particular temptation which overcame me was this
picture of the bride-to-be. I wanted to see her, and I went and stood for
hours in a crowd of curious women, and saw the wedding party enter
the great Fifth Avenue Church, and discovered that my Sylvia's hair
was golden, and her eyes a strange and wonderful red-brown. And this
was the moment that fate had chosen to throw Claire Lepage into my
arms, and give me the key to the future of Sylvia's life.
3. I am uncertain how much I should tell about Claire Lepage. It is a
story which is popular in a certain sort of novel, but I have no wish for
that easy success. Towards Claire herself I had no trace of the
conventional attitude, whether of contempt or of curiosity. She was to
me the product of a social system, of the great