Part 10

In Jeanette's circle, Sylvia saw Mammon worship executed on so prodigious a scale and with such sacrificial ardor it fairly took her breath away. Everything was of the superlative degree. Sheer wealth, sheer elaboration, sheer success, sheer bigness, sheer speed, were all that counted it seemed. And in the melee the old-fashioned virtues, spiritual values, ideals, were somehow either dimmed beyond recognition or totally extinguished. Love showed itself chiefly in the guise of passion, often frankly illicit, and in lust frequently but thinly veiled. The motley throng of young-old men and old-young men who paid court to herself were obviously actuated by one of two motives or a combination of the two, the impulse of passion, or the impulse of avarice. Both points of view Sylvia loathed and thought degrading to herself as well as the men who held them. Nearly all of the group of more or less importunate suitors who thronged about her she frankly despised. The men she might have liked and respected did not come near her, much less enter the lists. No doubt they classed her with the other women with whom she appeared, women butterfly clad, butterfly souled, obviously unfit for the serious purposes of life. Sylvia did not wonder that the real men kept away. They showed their realness by so doing she thought.

Once, at a dinner, fate and her hostess allotted a different kind of companion, a grim looking person with very broad shoulders and very clear blue eyes, who let her severely alone during three courses and then when she was getting desperately bored by the over-assiduous attentions of the receding-chinned, narrow-browed scion of wealth who sat at her other elbow had suddenly turned to explode a question in her direction.

"What the devil do you see in all this?"

Sylvia had retorted that she didn't know what she saw but was trying to find out.

"When the pumpkin coach arrives I shall skip back home and think it over," she had added whimsically with a Sylvia smile.

Her neighbor had grunted a little at that and eyed her sharply from under his heavy brows.

"I thought as much," he said. "You don't belong."

"Don't I?" Sylvia had inquired dubiously. "Isn't my gown all right?" She was wearing a New York creation this time, of white tulle and gold tissue, a frock which Jeanette had pronounced a "dream," so her anxiety was not very deep-seated. "Or is it my hair? Ears are out just now, aren't they. They told me they were."

"Oh, you are protectively colored all right. It isn't that. Superficially you might be any one of this sea of ninnies that surround us. But, my dear young lady, your eyes betray you. You have a brain."

"Dear me!" sighed Sylvia, looking around her apprehensively. "Is it so bad as that? I hope nobody else suspects."

"No danger. They aren't looking for brains. Bodies content 'em. I hope you don't think this Punch and Judy show is the real New York? You are a stranger, I take it?"

"A pilgrim and a stranger. Where is the real New York?"

"Downtown, a good deal of it. Some of it is in the universities, especially in the night classes. Some of it is in the laboratories where they are fighting disease and achieving chemical miracles. Some of it is in the little back bedrooms where the chap from the up-state village has come down to peddle his dreams in the market place. The real New York--the real America--is made up of just two things--the dream and the deed. Those that make dreams their masters fail and go to pieces and that is a tragedy. Those that build without the vision will see the work of their hands filter to dust. And that's a worse tragedy. But those who can dream and transmute the dream to human gain, in tangible form--they are the real thing. These people here haven't the decency to dream nor the energy to do. They are the scum on the surface. They are punk--most of 'em. Rotten."

Sylvia had looked around her a little startled. The scene had looked brilliant and appealing to her a moment ago. Somehow now she saw it through this brutal stranger's eyes a "Punch and Judy show.". She shivered slightly. Suddenly she felt a bit like a little girl at a party, grown homesick, all at once, ready to be taken home quick. For she could not help believing her neighbor was right. Underneath the glamour and the beauty and the poise and the breeding around her there was a good deal that was more or less "rotten." She had seen it in men's eyes and heard it in their voices, yes, in the women's, too. She was filled with a great disgust and with some shame as well. For in her zest for experience had she not let her own shield get a little dented and tarnished? She turned back to her companion, her new knowledge in her eyes.

"Why did you tell me?" she reproached.

"Why, indeed? You knew it without my telling you. See here, girl, I'm going to Alaska myself to-morrow. I can't stand much of this sort of thing. I'd like to think you were going to pull out, too, before the taint gets you. I said your eyes betrayed you. They did. But it isn't only that you have brains. The brains are there but there is something else too. You have faith. You've lived in a decent sort of world where people are straight and kind and honest and simple. Better go back to it while there is still time."

Sylvia drew a long breath.

"Thank you," she said. "I believe I will."

Later Jeanette asked her what she had found to say to Archibald Grant.

"He's the Arctic Explorer Grant, you know. Quite the biggest toad in the puddle there, to-night."

"Was he?" Sylvia had looked thoughtful. "I didn't know who he was but we had rather an interesting talk. Jeanette, I've got to go home."

"Go home! Why, Sylvia, you haven't been here two weeks yet!"

"I know. But I'm incurably a home person. I've had a wonderful time but I want to see Arden Hall and Felicia and--"

"Jack?" teased Jack's sister languidly.

Sylvia flushed a little. At the moment it did seem as if she would be very glad, indeed, to see Jack. Jack was so clean and young and joyous and wholesome. He seemed to her to belong to a different world from that which his sister inhabited. But, after all, at Jeanette's insistence, Sylvia agreed to stay another week.

Jeanette herself was almost feverish in her gayety these days. It seemed, indeed, as if she could not stop if she tried, as if "all the devils of Hell were loose and after her" as Jack had said. She was a puzzle to Sylvia. That she was not happy was apparent, but she was always gay, talkative, full of quick laughter and brilliant plans for new pleasures, something fresh every hour. There were always many men in her wake. Usually they were men of brains, men "who did things," as the phrase goes, musicians, writers, artists and the like. Jeanette did not affect fools, as she had said curtly to Sylvia once. She had brains herself and used them. She was rather famous and rather feared for her somewhat satirical wit. Her husband was a quiet, scholarly aristocrat, who spent most of his time reading memoirs of somebody or other, or bringing out elegant "privately printed" monographs. In Jeanette's scheme of things he seemed scarcely to count at all, beyond the essential facts of having provided her with an extravagant income and an assured place in New York society. To do her justice, however, Jeanette was by no means dependent upon her husband for these things. She made her own circle wherever she went. She did not need either the Latham money or name to assure her leadership. She was a born queen. These factors were merely contributing circumstances.

Among Jeanette's varied and numerous retinue was one young man whom Sylvia found less easy than the others to place. This was an artist, Charlton Haynes by name, a newcomer in the city who had been for some time engaged in "doing" Jeanette's portrait. Wherever Jeanette was, the young portrait painter appeared to be also by some magic process. The two had little to say to each other in public but Sylvia had noticed more than once how the painter's rather gloomy face lit up when Jeanette approached, giving an effect much like a sudden sunshine after a passing cloud. More than once, too, Sylvia had seen a flash of some quick, wordless communication pass between them. They spent long hours together mornings in the great ball-room where he worked in the north light. When Sylvia was with them, as she sometimes was, the artist was rather silent and absorbed in his work and Sylvia thought if he were always so quiet he must be rather dull company.

One morning she suffered an abrupt enlightenment as to the relations between her hostess and the artist. Jeanette had been detained and had asked Sylvia to go to the ballroom and explain to Mr. Haynes that she would be with him as soon as possible. As Sylvia opened the door he had turned with outstretched arms and an impulsive "Sweetheart, you are dreadfully late." And then his hands had fallen and a shamed, hang-dog, caught-in-the-act expression banished the eager look of expectant joy on his face as he met Sylvia's eyes and saw her quick flush.

He shrugged and tried to make the best of the situation by a hasty "Beg pardon, Miss Sylvia. I didn't see it was you."

"So I judged," said Sylvia and delivered her message gravely and departed. She wondered if this was what Jack had guessed and if that was why he had wanted her to go to Jeanette. Had he thought she could save her? Poor Jeanette! Could any one save her but herself?

Two hours later Jeanette came to Sylvia, writing letters in her own room at the little teakwood desk.

"Sylvia."

"Yes?" Sylvia had turned, wondering what Jeanette would say, wondering almost more what she herself was going to say.

"Charlton says he gave himself away awhile ago, did he?"

"Rather."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean you to know for fear it might bother you. Otherwise, of course, I don't mind your knowing. We have been in love for some time. There doesn't seem to be anything to do about it at present."

Jeanette's tone was impersonal. She might as easily have been discussing the relation between the moon and the tides as the relation between herself and Charlton Haynes. The facts existed. That was all apparently. At least all Jeanette cared to admit.

"Couldn't he go away?" asked Sylvia, equally matter of fact.

"He could, but it would make talk if he went before the portrait was done. Besides, I don't want him to go. He offered to. It is I who am keeping him. I hope you are not too much shocked, Sylvia."

"I'm not shocked at all, but I am sorry. Does Jack know?"

"Jack!" For the first time, Jeanette showed a quaver of emotion in her voice. "Jack! Good gracious, no! Why should he? I wouldn't have Jack know for anything. What made you ask that?"

"Jack tried to warn me something about you before I came. He seemed to think you needed me."

And suddenly Jeanette's calm broke. She flung herself face down among the silken cushions of the couch. Sylvia came and knelt beside her putting both arms around her. In a moment Jeanette sat up, flushed but tearless. Sylvia slipped back upon the floor, her hands clasped around her knees, her eyes pitiful.

"I do need you. I need somebody. Sylvia, listen to me. It is a dreadful thing for a girl to marry if she isn't in love. Fate is sure to strike back at her sooner or later. That is what happened to me. I married Francis because I thought he could give me the things I wanted--the things I thought I wanted. And he has, but it isn't what I really wanted at all. I am just beginning to understand what I do want--what life might mean, if one deserved to have it mean anything. I hate this house and the servants and the hideous kind of existence we live--the kind I elected to live. It wasn't Francis' choice. It was mine. But I hate it all now. I'd like to leave it this minute. But I can't. I'm bound, hand and foot, by conventions and fears and selfishness. I couldn't live now without luxury, I've had it so long. I couldn't stand poverty or shame or sacrifice or honesty of any kind. I'm a sham. I love Charlton. But I shan't try to get a divorce and I shan't run off with him because I'm not big enough. I'm just big enough to squirm and suffer and hate myself for being such a pitiful little coward. I'm not even big enough to send him away. I'm not worth his wrecking his life and ideals for, but I don't tell him that. I tell him I love him and that is enough to keep him here like a lap dog. Pah! He isn't very big either or he would make me go with him or leave me outright."

"But, Jeanette, it is all such a tangle. If you really care, why don't you go to Francis and tell him the truth? Surely nothing can be so bad as going on like this."

"You don't know what you are talking about, Sylvia. I'd die before I would go to Francis and I'd die if he found out, but I'm going on risking everything until something happens. I don't know what."

And in the face of such reasoning or non-reasoning, Sylvia had no answer to make. She was beginning to hate the city heartily. It seemed to be weaving nothing but misery for everybody. Was there any happiness in it? Surely she herself had found none. She desired more than anything else in the world to run away from it all, to get back to Felicia and, yes, to Jack. They two seemed the only refuge in a heaving sea of trouble.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED*

It seemed as if Sylvia's cup of disenchantment were destined to brim over before the city was done with her. She tried to view Jeanette's affair with the portrait painter with an open mind and tolerant attitude. She saw that there was no real evil in it as yet--probably never would be for Jeanette was likely to "play safe" having much at stake. But somehow it all disheartened the younger girl. She thought she could have forgiven both the transgressors more easily if they had dared a little more, or cared a little more for each other and less for themselves. If they had eloped she would have been shocked and troubled but she would have understood their conduct. It was the amazing bad taste and effrontery of carrying on so half-hearted a liaison in Francis Latham's own house and under his very eyes which was to Sylvia the least excusable phase of the matter. Deceit of any sort was obnoxious to her straightforward soul. She herself could never have kept on living a daily lie such as Jeanette was living. Something would have snapped. And somehow Sylvia found herself seeing things all around her blacker, no doubt, than they were, because of her too much recently acquired knowledge, and often she remembered the explorer's terse verdict that these people were "punk." It was all very disillusioning and made one sick at heart.

But Sylvia had other cause to feel that happiness was eluding her these days in early January. The wound to her pride that Phil Lorrimer had dealt, though seared over, was by no means healed. She tried to be perfectly fair and sane, to admit that if Jeanette's supposition were correct, Barb would doubtless make Phil a better wife than she herself would have done, to acknowledge that it was entirely natural and appropriate that Phil and Barb should have learned to care for each other during the intimate months past when she herself had deliberately neglected Phil. Even so, Phil need not have looked at her as he had that night on Jeanette's doorstep. He needn't have let her all but propose to him. That was the deepest rankling thorn of all. She had almost offered herself to him on Jeanette's threshold. If he had really cared as his eyes had said wouldn't he have understood what she was trying to tell him that the money was nothing at all, that it didn't matter in the least, that there was, indeed, nothing to be afraid of, as she had twice taken the pains to reassure him?

If he had really cared would he not have found means to see her during her weeks with Jeanette in spite of her mantle of invisibility? It was all too evident that he didn't care, that it was Barb who could give him what he wanted, or rather let him give everything as his pride demanded. Sylvia knew perfectly well that she had wanted Phil Lorrimer to ask her to marry him, knew too, that she had meant to say yes if he did ask her, but she also knew that though her pride was offended, her heart was far from being broken. Indeed, love in its entirety, in its heights and depths, its glory and its mortal agony, its madness and its abiding joy, she had scarcely as yet conceived.

She was still questing experience, tasting life, and even the bitter flavor of this last new-gained knowledge was interesting because bitterness was new to Sylvia Arden. Youth drinks its gall and wormwood with almost as supreme satisfaction as it does its nectar and ambrosia.

Not that Sylvia understood all this or consciously analyzed her mental processes. She did nothing of the sort. She only knew she had been hurt, and found it a rather fascinating game to hide the hurt from herself and the rest of the world.

Perhaps her zest for the hiding game made her play a little more recklessly with the men who dogged her footsteps than was entirely wise or kind. Certainly it made her eyes a little starrier, her cheeks a little deeper carmine, her laugh a little more tantalizing. Men saw and smiled and said the little Maryland "Deb" was a queen, a beauty, and a wit as well as an heiress, an unbelievably lucky combination.

"Knows how to hold her own too," they agreed. "She'll lead you on to the limit and then when you think you have her--she isn't there. Got the elusive game to perfection, wherever she learned it."

But the last night of her stay in the city Sylvia came near playing her game an inch too far. There had been a theater party and supper afterward at the Astor and when at last they started for home she chanced to get separated from Jeanette who, supposing her guest was with her husband, had gone on in another car.

"Why!" exclaimed Sylvia, from the curbing. "I do believe they have all deserted me. There goes Jeanette, and Francis went with the Homers."

"Well, here am I!" challenged Porter Robinson, at her elbow. Porter Robinson was the most daring and insistent of all the swarmers about the most popular new rose. "Whither thou goest I will go! Here, Cabby," and his uplifted finger summoned a taxicab in which he and Sylvia were in a moment ensconced.

It was a wonderful night. Brilliant stars studded the heavens and the trees in the park were laden with a fleecy burden of new-fallen snow. The little girl still in Sylvia who loved snow storms and had too little of them in Maryland cried out in ecstasy at the sight.

"Oh-h! Couldn't we drive in there a little and see it? It's so lovely after the lights and the crowd--like a different world!"

Naturally Porter Robinson had no objections to driving at midnight in a closed cab through the park with the prettiest, liveliest, most piquant girl he had met in many a season.

But a half hour later Sylvia flashed into the library at the Lathams with wrath and shame in her heart and ran square into Jack standing with his back to the fireplace.

"Ugh! I hate men," she greeted him stormily.

"You do! What's up? Where is Jeanette? You look like a Valkyr or an avenging fury."

"I don't know where Jeanette is. Porter Robinson brought me home."

"Oh," comprehended Jack. "So that is the rumpus. Didn't Porter behave like a perfect gentleman?"

"He did not." Sylvia threw off her cloak with a wrathful gesture, leaving her slim, rounded young loveliness, clad in the white tulle and gold "dream," suddenly revealed to Jack's eyes. "He tried to kiss me, if you must know."

"And what did you expect at this time of night when you had shed your lawful chaperones?" inquired Jack blandly. "Especially after you had been flirting like the mischief with him all the evening!"

Sylvia slipped into a chair and stared up at Jack. "How did you know?" she asked with astonished meekness.

Jack laughed.

"Didn't. I just guessed. So you did flirt with him like the mischief?"

"I--shouldn't wonder," admitted Sylvia with a grimace. "He's a beast, but then maybe I was a little to blame. I suppose I shouldn't have asked him to take me riding in the park at this time of night."

"Possibly not," agreed Jack.

"You wouldn't have taken advantage of a situation like that, Jack. You know you wouldn't."

"H-m-m?" interrogated Jack dubiously. "That so? If you looked one half as pretty in the cab as you do this minute, I'm morally or immorally certain I should not only have tried to kiss you but have succeeded."

"Jack!"

"Like this!" And suddenly, to Sylvia's utter surprise, he had stooped and kissed her full on one crimson, excited cheek. "Game's up, sweetheart. My turn. You've had your fling, and I guess from all Jeanette writes it has been a pretty lively one. Honest Injun, Sylvia, aren't you sick of it all, ready to try it out on a different line with me? No, don't speak just yet. I'm not quite through. I promised I would get busy and show you I could hold down a man's job if necessary. Well, I've done it. I'm not boasting, but you can ask Dad if I haven't made good and kept my promise to the letter. That is all on that subject. Secondly, I don't pretend to be a saint, but thanks to you and the Christmas Family setting me straight some years ago I'm a fairly decent specimen as men go. I believe I'd show up moderately well by comparison with the Porter Robinsons and the rest. That is all of that. Thirdly, I love you. There isn't any other girl, never has been, and, so far as I can see, never will be. Now--did you mind very much having me kiss you?"

Sylvia's eyes were demurely downcast, her cheeks flushed, but a quiver of a smile appeared around the corners of her mouth.

"Not much. I rather think I--I liked it--a little," she admitted.

That was enough for Jack, and five minutes later when Jeanette came in she found him on the arm of Sylvia's chair, her tulle and gold rather crushed and mussed but with her eyes looking very starry.

He sprang up with alacrity as his sister entered and went to give her a brotherly kiss.

"'Lo, Jeannie. Sylvia and I have just got engaged. Hope you don't mind?"

Jeanette shot a straight, questioning, dubious look at Sylvia then remarked she was delighted, of course, and if they would excuse her she would go to bed as she was very tired. Sylvia had vaguely realized at the moment that Jeanette was white, but it was not until the next day that she understood. Charlton Haynes had left suddenly for California on the midnight train and he and Jeanette had apparently parted for all time. Of what lay behind Sylvia could not even surmise and Jeanette kept her own counsel. At any rate, Sylvia was able to perceive that under the circumstances the other woman had little enthusiasm left over for the love affairs of even her sole and beloved brother.

And that next afternoon Sylvia and Jack went South together, and the Minotaur did not get Sylvia after all. But whether she had not stepped blithely into a deeper labyrinth than the one she had evaded was another question.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*BARB DIAGNOSES*