Sylvias Marriage | Page 7

met this girl before?
She said what everybody always says; she had been so much interested,
she had never dreamed that such conditions existed in the world. I,
applying the acid test, responded, "So many people have said that to me
that I have begun to believe it."
"It is so in my case," she replied, quickly. "You see, I have lived all my
life in the South, and we have no such 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