After this brief disposal of the question, she gave it no more thought, working with desperate speed to complete all her preparations. She had but a week for these, a week filled with incessant hurry, since she was naturally unwilling to ask help of her mother. Judith was off again with her father.

This absence greatly facilitated the moment of Sylvia's departure, which she had dreaded. But, as it happened, there was only her mother to whom to say the rather difficult good-bye, her mother who could be counted on never to make a scene.

About the middle of the morning of the twenty-third of December, she came down the stairs, her hand-bag in her hand, well-hatted, well-gloved, freshly veiled, having achieved her usual purpose of looking to the casual eye like the daughter of a wealthy man. She had put all of her autumn allowance for dress into a set of furs, those being something which no ingenuity could evolve at home. The rest of her outfit, even to the odd little scarlet velvet hat, with its successful and modish touch of the ugly, was the achievement of her own hands. Under its absurd and fashionable brim, her fresh face shone out, excessively pretty and very young.

Mrs. Marshall kissed her good-bye gently, not smiling at Sylvia's attempt to lighten the moment's seriousness by saying playfully, "Now, Mother, don't you be such an old worrier!" But she said nothing "uncomfortable," for which Sylvia was very grateful.

She had no sooner embarked upon the big Interurban trolley-car which was to take her to Mercerton than her attention was wholly diverted from uneasy reflections by the unexpected appearance of two of the house-party guests. Eleanor Hubert, every detail of her Complicated costume exquisitely finished as a Meissonier painting, sat looking out of the window rather soberly, and so intently that she saw neither Sylvia's entrance, nor, close upon her heels, that of a florid-faced, rather heavily built young man with a large, closely shaven jaw, who exclaimed joyfully at seeing Miss Marshall, and appropriated with ready a.s.surance the other half of her seat.

"Now, this is surely dandy! You're going to the house-party too, of course!" he cried, unb.u.t.toning and throwing back his bright tan overcoat. "Here's where I cut Jerry out all right, all right! Wait a minute! _How_ much time have we?" He appealed to the conductor as though a matter of life and death depended on the answer. "Four minutes?--here goes--" He sprang to his feet, dashed out of the car and disappeared, leaving his coat beside Sylvia. It was evidently quite new, of the finest material, with various cunningly st.i.tched seams and straps disposed upon its surface in a very knowing way.

Sylvia noted out of the corner of her eye that the address of the maker, woven into the neckband, was on Fifth Avenue, New York.

The four minutes pa.s.sed--and the conductor approached Sylvia. "Your friend's coming back, ain't he?" he asked, with the tolerant, good-natured respect natural for the vagaries of expensively dressed young men who wore overcoats made on Fifth Avenue. Sylvia, who had met the young man but once before, when Jerry had introduced him as an old friend, was a little startled at having a casual acquaintance so publicly affixed to her; but after an instant's hesitation, in which she was reflecting that she positively did not even remember her "friend's" name, she answered, "Oh yes, yes, I suppose so--here he is now."

The young man bounded up on the back platform panting, holding his hat on with one hand, a large box of candy in the other. Sylvia glanced at the name on the cover. "You didn't go all the way to _b.u.t.ton's!_" she cried.

He nodded, breathless, evidently proud of his feat, and when he caught his breath enough to speak, explained, "Yepp,--it's the only place in this b.u.m town where you can get Alligretti's, and they're the only kind that're fit to eat" He tore open the box as he spoke, demolishing with ruthless and practised hands the various layers of fine paper and gold cord which wrapped it about, and presented the rich layer of black chocolates to Sylvia. "Get a move on and take one," he urged cordially; "I pretend I buy 'em for the girls, but I'm crazy about 'em myself," He bit into one with an air of prodigious gusto, took off his hat, wiped his forehead, and looked at Sylvia with a relish as frank as his enjoyment of the bonbon. "That's a corking hat you got on,"

he commented. "Most girls would look like the old Harry with that dangling thing in their eyes, but _you_ can carry it off all right."

Sylvia's face a.s.sumed a provocative expression. "Did you ever make that remark to any other girl, I wonder?" she said reflectively.

He laughed aloud, eyeing her with appreciation, and clapping another large black chocolate into his mouth. "You're the prompt article, aren't you?" he said. He hitched himself over and leaned towards her.

"Something tells me I'm goin' to have a good time at this house-party, what?"

Sylvia stiffened. She did not like his sitting so close to her, she detected now on his breath a faint odor of alcohol, and she was afraid that Eleanor Hubert would think her lacking in dignity. She regretted having succ.u.mbed to the temptation to answer him in his own tone; but, under her bravado, she was really somewhat apprehensive about this expedition, and she welcomed a diversion. Besides, the voluble young man showed not the slightest sign of noting her attempt to rebuff him, and she found quite unavailing all her efforts to change the current of the talk, the loud, free-and-easy, personally admiring note of which had the effect on her nerves of a draught of raw spirits. She did not enjoy the taste while it was being administered, but the effect was certainly stimulating, not to say exciting, and absorbed her attention so entirely that uncomfortable self-questionings were impossible. She was also relieved to note that, although the young man flung himself about in the public conveyance with the same unceremonious self-a.s.surance that he would have shown in a lady's drawing-room, Eleanor Hubert, at the other end of the car, was apparently unaware of his presence. Perhaps she too had some grounds for uncomfortable thought, for throughout the hour's journey she continued to stare unseeingly out of the window, or to look down fixedly and rather sadly at her gloved hands.

Even through the confusion of her own ideas and plans, and the need for constant verbal self-defense against the encroaching familiarity of her companion, the notion flitted across Sylvia's mind that probably Eleanor was thinking of the young a.s.sistant in chemistry. How queer and topsy-turvy everything was, she reflected, as she bandied lively words with the lively young man at her side, continuing to eat his candies, although their rich, cloying taste had already palled on her palate--here was Mrs. Hubert throwing Eleanor at Jerry's head, when what Eleanor wanted was that queer, rough-neck freak of an a.s.sistant prof; and here were Jerry's parents making such overtures to Sylvia, when what _she_ wanted--she didn't know what she did want.

Yes, she did, she wanted a good time, which was somehow paradoxically hard to attain. Something always kept spoiling it,--half the time something intangible inside her own mind. She gave the candy-box a petulant push. "Oh, take it away!" she said impatiently; "I've eaten so many now, it makes me sick to look at them!"

The donor showed no resentment at this ingrat.i.tude, holding the box on his knees, continuing to help himself to its contents with unabated zest, and to keep the conversation up to concert pitch: "--the only girl I ever saw who'd stop eating Alligretti's while there was one left--another proof that there's only one of you--I said right off, that any co-ed that Jerry Fiske would take to must be a unique specimen--" He did not further specify the period to which he referred by his "right off," but the phrase gave Sylvia a tingling, uncomfortable sense of having been for some time the subject of speculation in circles of which she knew nothing.

They were near Mercerton now, and as she gathered her wraps together she found that she was bracing herself as for an ordeal of some sort.

The big car stopped, a little way out of town, in front of a long driveway bordered with maple-trees; she and the young man descended from one end-platform and Eleanor Hubert from the other, into the midst of loud and facetious greetings from the young people who had come down to meet them. Jerry was there, very stalwart, his white sweater stretched over his broad chest. All the party carried skates, which flashed like silver in the keen winter sun. They explained with many exclamations that they had been out on the ice, which was, so the three new-comers were a.s.sured many times, "perfectly grand, perfectly dandy, simply elegant!"

A big, many-seated sled came jingling down the driveway now, driven by no less a personage than Colonel Fiske himself, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, his big mustache white against the red of his strongly marked old face. With many screams and shouts the young people got themselves into this vehicle, the Colonel calling out in a masterful roar above the din, "Miss Marshall's to come up here with me!"

He held in his pawing, excited horses with one hand and helped Sylvia with the other. In the seat behind them sat Jerry and Eleanor Hubert and the young man of the trolley trip. Sylvia strained her ears to catch Jerry's introduction of him to Eleanor, so that she might know his name. It was too absurd not even to know his name! But the high-pitched giggles and deeper shouts of mirth from the rest of the party drowned out the words. As a matter of fact, although he played for an instant a rather important role in Sylvia's drama, she was destined never to know his name.

The Colonel looked back over the sleighload, shouted out "All aboard!"

loosened the reins, and snapped his whip over the horses' heads. They leaped forward with so violent a spring that the front runners of the long sled were for an instant lifted into the air. Immediately all the joyful shrieking and screaming which had gone on before, became as essential silence compared to the delighted uproar which now rose from the sleigh. The jerk had thrown most of the young people over backward into each other's arms and laps, where, in a writhing, promiscuous ma.s.s, they roared and squealed out their joy in the joke, and made ineffectual and not very determined efforts to extricate themselves.

Sylvia had seen the jerk coming and saved herself by a clutch forward at the dashboard. Glancing back, she saw that Jerry and Eleanor Hubert still sat upright; although the gay young man beside them had let himself go backward into the waving arms and legs, and, in a frenzy of high spirits, was shouting and kicking and squirming with the others.

It was a joke after his own heart.

Colonel Fiske, so far from slackening his pace to help his young guests out of their predicament, laughed loudly and cracked his whip over the horses' ears. They went up the long, curving driveway like a whirlwind, and drew up under the porte-cochere of a very large brick-and-stone house with another abrupt jerk which upset those in the sleigh who had succeeded in regaining their seats. Pandemonium broke out again, in the midst of which Sylvia saw that Mrs. Fiske had come to the doorway and stood in it with a timid smile. The Colonel did not look at her, Jerry nodded carelessly to her as he pa.s.sed in, and of all the disheveled, flushed, and laughing young people who crowded past her into the house, only Sylvia and Eleanor recognized her existence. The others went past her without a glance, exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, cried out that they must go and "fix up" for lunch, and ran upstairs, filling the house with their voices. Sylvia heard one girl cry to another, "_Oh_, I've had such a good time! I've hollered till I'm hoa.r.s.e!"

After luncheon, a meal at which more costly food was served than Sylvia had ever before seen, Jerry suggested between puffs of the cigarette he was lighting that they have a game of billiards. Most of the young people trooped off after him into the billiard-room, but Sylvia, after a moment's hesitation, lingered near the big wood-fire in the hall, unwilling to admit that she had never seen a billiard table. She made a pretext of staying to talk to Mrs. Fiske, who sat stooping her tall figure forward in a chair too small for her. Sylvia looked at this ungraceful att.i.tude with strong disapproval. What she thought was that such inattention to looks was perfectly inexcusable.

What she said was, in a very gracious voice: "What a beautiful home you have, Mrs. Fiske! How wonderfully happy you must be in it."

The other woman started a little at being addressed, and looked around vaguely at the conventional luxury of the room, with its highly polished floors, its huge rich rugs, its antlers on the wall, and its deeply upholstered leather chairs. When Sylvia signified her intention of continuing the talk by taking a seat beside the fire, Mrs. Fiske roused herself to the responsibility of entertaining the young guest.

After some futile attempts at conversation in the abstract, she discharged this responsibility through the familiar expedient of the family photograph alb.u.m. With this between them, the two women were able to go through the required form of avoiding silences. Sylvia was fearfully bored by the succession of unknown faces, and utterly unable to distinguish, in her hostess' somewhat disconnected talk, between the different sets of the Colonel's children. "This one is Stanley, Jermain's brother, who died when he was a baby," the dull voice droned on; "and this is Mattie in her wedding dress."

"Oh, I didn't know Jerry had a married sister," murmured Sylvia indifferently, glad of any comment to make.

"She's only his half-sister, a great deal older."

"But _you_ haven't a daughter old enough to be married?" queried Sylvia, astonished.

"Oh--no--no. Mattie is the daughter of the Colonel's first wife."

"Oh," said Sylvia awkwardly, remembering now that Mrs. Draper had spoken of the Colonel's several marriages. She added to explain her question, "I'd forgotten that Jerry's mother was the Colonel's second wife and not his first."

"She was his third," breathed Mrs. Fiske, looking down at the pages of the alb.u.m.

Sylvia repressed a "Good gracious!" of startled repugnance to the topic, and said, to turn the conversation, "Oh, who is that beautiful little girl with the fur cap?"

"That is my picture," said Mrs. Fiske, "when I was eighteen. I was married soon after. I've changed very much since my marriage."

Decidedly it was not Sylvia's lucky day for finding topics of talk.

She was wondering how the billiard game was progressing, and was sorry she had not risked going with the others. She was recalled by Mrs.

Fiske's saying with a soft earnestness, "I want you to know, Miss Marshall, how I _appreciate_ your kindness to me!"

Sylvia looked at her in astonishment, half fearing that she was being made fun of.

The other went on: "It was _very_ nice of you--your staying here to talk with me instead of going off with the young people--the others don't often--" She played nervously with a gleaming pendant on a platinum chain which hung over her flat chest, and went on: "I--you have _always_ seemed to me the very nicest of Jerry's friends--and I shall never forget your mother's kindness. I hope--I hope so much I shall see more of her. The Colonel thinks so too--we've liked so much having him like you." The incoherence of this did not prevent Sylvia's having a chillingly accurate grasp on its meaning. "It is the Colonel's hope," she went on painfully, "to have Jerry marry as soon as he graduates from the Law School. The Colonel thinks that nothing is so good for a young man as an early marriage--though of course Jerry isn't so very, very young any more. He--the--Colonel is a great believer in marriage--" Her voice died away into murmurs. Her long, thin throat contracted in a visible swallow.

At this point only Sylvia's perception of the other's anguished embarra.s.sment prevented her from literally running away. As it was, they sat silent, fingering over the pages of the alb.u.m and gazing unseeingly at the various set countenances which looked out at them with the unnatural glare of the photographed. Sylvia was canva.s.sing desperately one possibility of escape after another when the door opened, and the lively young man of the trolley-car stepped in.

He tiptoed to the fireplace with exaggerated caution, looking theatrically over his shoulder for a pursuer. Sylvia positively welcomed his appearance and turned to him with a cordiality quite unlike the cool dignity with which she had planned to treat him. He sat down on the rug before the fire, very close to her feet, and looked up at her, grinning. "Here's where I get another one on Jerry--what?" he said, ignoring Mrs. Fiske. "Old Jerry thinks he's playing such a wonderful game in there he can't tear himself away--but there'll be something doing, I guess, when he does come and finds where I am!" He had partaken freely of the excellent white wine served at luncheon (the first Sylvia had ever seen), and though entirely master of his speech, was evidently even more uplifted than was his usual hilarious wont. Sylvia looked down at him, and across at the weak-faced woman opposite her, and had a moment of wishing heartily she had never come. She stood up impatiently, a movement which the young man took to mean a threat of withdrawal. "Aw, _don't_ go!" he pleaded, sprawling across the rug towards her. As she turned away, he s.n.a.t.c.hed laughingly at her skirts, crying out, "Tag! You're caught!

You're It!"

At this moment Jerry Fiske appeared in the doorway. He looked darkly at his friend's cheerful face and said shortly: "Here, Stub--quit it!

Get up out of that!" He added to Sylvia, holding out his hand: "Come on, go skating with me. The ice is great."

"Are the others going?" asked Sylvia.

"Oh yes, I suppose so," said Jerry, a trifle impatiently.

The young man on the floor scrambled up. "Here's one that's going, whoever else don't," he announced.

"Get yourself a girl, then," commanded Jerry, "and tell the rest to come along. There's to be eats at four o'clock."

The ice was even as fine as it had been so redundantly represented to Sylvia. Out of doors, leaning her supple, exquisitely poised body to the wind as she veered like a bird on her flying skates, Sylvia's spirits rebounded with an instant reaction into enjoyment. She adored skating, and she had in it, as in all active exercise, the half-wild pleasure of one whose childhood is but a short time behind her.

Furthermore, her costume prepared for this event (Mrs. Draper had told her of the little lake on the Fiske estate) was one of her successes.

It had been a pale cream broadcloth of the finest texture, one of Aunt Victoria's reception gowns, which had evidently been spoiled by having coffee spilled down the front breadth. Sylvia had had the bold notion of dyeing it scarlet and making it over with bands of black plush (the best bits from an outworn coat of her mother's). On her gleaming red-brown hair she had perched a little red cap with a small black wing on either side (one of Lawrence's pet chickens furnished this), and she carried the m.u.f.f which belonged with her best set of furs.

Thus equipped, she looked like some impish, slender young Brunhilde, with her two upspringing wings. The young men gazed at her with the most unconcealed delight. As she skated very well, better than any of the other girls, she felt, sweeping about the pond in long, swift curves, that she was repaid for her ignorance of billiards.

Jerry and the young man he called Stub were openly in compet.i.tion for her attention, highly jocose on Stub's part and not at all so on Jerry's, whose brow did not clear at the constant crackling of the other's witticisms. On the sh.o.r.e burned a big fire, tended by a man-servant in livery, who was occupied in setting out on a long table a variety of sandwiches and cups of steaming bouillon. Sylvia had never encountered before a real man-servant in livery. She looked at him with the curiosity she might have shown at seeing a mediaeval knight in full armor. Jerry brought her a cup of the bouillon, which was deliciously hot and strong. Experienced as she was in the prudent provisioning of the Marshall kitchen she was staggered to think how many chickens had gone into filling with that clear liquor the big silver tureen which steamed over the glittering alcohol lamp. The table was set, for that casual outdoor picnic lunch, as she could hardly have imagined a royal board.

"What beautiful things your people have!" she exclaimed to Jerry, looking at a pile of small silver forks with delicately carved ivory handles. "The rugs in the house are superb."