Sylvias Marriage | Page 7

conditions there."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Our negroes at least can steal enough to eat," she said.
I smiled. Then--since one has but a moment or two to get in one's work in these social affairs, and so has to learn to thrust quickly: "You have timber-workers in Louisiana, steel-workers in Alabama. You have tobacco-factories, canning-factories, cotton-mills--have you been to any of them to see how the people live?"
All this I said automatically, it being the routine of the agitator. But meantime in my mind was an excitement, spreading like a flame. The loveliness of this young girl; the eagerness, the intensity of feeling written upon her countenance; and above all, the strange sense of familiarity! Surely, if I had met her before, I should never have forgotten her; surely it could not be--not possibly--
My hostess came, and ended my bewilderment. "You ought to get Mrs. van Tuiver on your child-labour committee," she said.
A kind of panic seized me. I wanted to say, "Oh, it is Sylvia Castleman!" But then, how could I explain? I couldn't say, "I have your picture in my room, cut out of a newspaper." Still less could I say, "I know a friend of your husband."
Fortunately Sylvia did not heed my excitement. (She had learned by this time to pretend not to notice.) "Please don't misunderstand me," she was saying. "I really _don't_ know about these things. And I would do something to help if I could." As she said this she looked with the red-brown eyes straight into mine--a gaze so clear and frank and honest, it was as if an angel had come suddenly to earth, and learned of the horrible tangle into which we mortals have got our affairs.
"Be careful what you're saying," put in our hostess, with a laugh. "You're in dangerous hands."
But Sylvia would not be warned. "I want to know more about it," she said. "You must tell me what I can do."
"Take her at her word," said Mrs. Allison, to me. "Strike while the iron is hot!" I detected a note of triumph in her voice; if she could say that she had got Mrs. van Tuiver to take up child-labour--that indeed would be a feather to wear!
"I will tell you all I can," I said. "That's my work in the world."
"Take Mrs. Abbott away with you," said the energetic hostess, to Sylvia; and before I quite understood what was happening, I had received and accepted an invitation to drive in the park with Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver. In her role of dea ex machina the hostess extricated me from the other guests, and soon I was established in a big new motor, gliding up Madison Avenue as swiftly and silently as a cloud-shadow over the fields. As I write the words there lies upon my table a Socialist paper with one of Will Dyson's vivid cartoons, representing two ladies of the great world at a reception. Says the first, "These social movements are becoming quite worth while!" "Yes, indeed," says the other. "One meets such good society!"
7. Sylvia's part in this adventure was a nobler one than mine, Seated as I was in a regal motor-car, and in company with one favoured of all the gods in the world, I must have had an intense conviction of my own saintliness not to distrust my excitement. But Sylvia, for her part, had nothing to get from me but pain. I talked of the factory-fires and the horrors of the sugar-refineries, and I saw shadow after shadow of suffering cross her face. You may say it was cruel of me to tear the veil from those lovely eyes, but in such a matter I felt myself the angel of the Lord and His vengeance.
"I didn't know about these things!" she cried again. And I found it was true. It would have been hard for me to imagine anyone so ignorant of the realities of modern life. The men and women she had met she understood quite miraculously, but they were only two kinds, the "best people" and their negro servants. There had been a whole regiment of relatives on guard to keep her from knowing anybody else, or anything else, and if by chance a dangerous fact broke into the family stockade, they had formulas ready with which to kill it.
"But now," Sylvia went on, "I've got some money, and I can help, so I dare not be ignorant any longer. You must show me the way, and my husband too. I'm sure he doesn't know what can be done."
I said that I would do anything in my power. Her help would be invaluable, not merely because of the money she might give, but because of the influence of her name; the attention she could draw to any cause she chose.