Garratt Skinner looked sharply at Sylvia.
"Did your mother send you to me?"
"No," she answered. "But she let me go. I came of my own accord. A letter came from you--"
"Did you see it?" interrupted her father. "Did she show it you?"
"No, but she gave me your address when I told her that I must come away."
"Did she? I think I recognize my wife in that kindly act," he said, with a sudden bitterness. Then he looked curiously at his daughter.
"Why did you want to come away?"
"I was unhappy. For a long time I had been thinking over this. I hated it all--the people we met, the hotels we stayed at, the life altogether.
Then at Chamonix I went up a mountain."
"Oho," said her father, sitting up alertly. "So you went up a mountain?
Which one?"
"The Aiguille d"Argentiere. Do you know it, father?"
"I have heard of it," said Garratt Skinner.
"Well, somehow that made a difference. It is difficult to explain. But I felt the difference. I felt something had happened to me which I had to recognize--a new thing. Climbing that mountain, staying for an hour upon its summit in the sunlight with all those great still pinnacles and ice-slopes about me--it was just like hearing very beautiful music." She was sitting now leaning forward with her hands clasped in front of her and speaking with great earnestness. "All the vague longings which had ever stirred within me, longings for something beyond, and beyond, came back upon me in a tumult. There was a place in shadow at my feet far below, the only place in shadow, a wall of black rock called the Col Dolent. It seemed to me that I was living in that cold shadow. I wanted to get up on the ridge, with the sunlight. So I came to you."
It seemed to Sylvia, that intently as she spoke, her words were and must be elusive to another, unless that other had felt what she felt or were moved by sympathy to feel it. Her father listened without ridicule, without a smile. Indeed, once or twice he nodded his head to her words.
Was it comprehension, she wondered, or was it only patience?
"When I came down from that summit, I felt that what I had hated before was no longer endurable at all. So I came to you."
Her father got up from his chair and stood for a little while looking out of the window. He was clearly troubled by her words. He turned away with a shrug of his shoulders.
"But--but--what can I do for you here?" he cried. "Sylvia, I am a very poor man. Your mother, on the other hand, has some money."
"Oh, father, I shan"t cost you much," she replied, eagerly. "I might perhaps by looking after things save you money. I won"t cost you much."
Garratt Skinner looked at her with a rueful smile.
"You look to me rather an expensive person to keep up," he said.
"Mother dressed me like this. It"s not my choice," she said. "I let her do as she wished. It did not seem to matter much. Really, if you will let me stay, you will find me useful," she said, in a pathetic appeal.
"Useful?" said Garratt Skinner, suddenly. He again took stock of her, but now with a scrutiny which caused her a vague discomfort. He seemed to be appraising her from the color of her hair and eyes to the prettiness of her feet, almost as though she was for sale, and he a doubtful purchaser.
She looked down on the carpet and slowly her blood colored her neck and rose into her face. "Useful," he said, slowly. "Perhaps so, yes, perhaps so." And upon that he changed his tone. "We will see, Sylvia. You must stay here for the present, at all events. Luckily, there is a spare room.
I have some friends here staying to supper--just a bachelor"s friends, you know, taking pot-luck without any ceremony, very good fellows, not polished, perhaps, but sound of heart, Sylvia my girl, sound of heart."
All his perplexity had vanished; he had taken his part; and he rattled along with a friendly liveliness which cleared the shadows from Sylvia"s thoughts and provoked upon her face her rare and winning smile. He rang the bell for the housemaid.
"My daughter will stay here," he said, to the servant"s astonishment.
"Get the spare room ready at once. You will be hostess to-night, Sylvia, and sit at the head of the table. I become a family man. Well, well!"
He took Sylvia up-stairs and showed her a little bright room with a big window which looked out across the garden. He carried her boxes up himself. "We don"t run to a butler," he said. "Got everything you want?
Ring if you haven"t. We have supper at eight and we shan"t dress.
Only--well, you couldn"t look dowdy if you tried."
Sylvia had not the slightest intention to try. She put on a little frock of white lace, high at the throat, dressed her hair, and then having a little time to spare she hurriedly wrote a letter. This letter she gave to the servant and she ran down-stairs.
"You will be careful to have it posted, please!" she said, and at that moment her father came out into the pa.s.sage, so quickly that he might have been listening for her approach.
She stopped upon the staircase, a few steps above him. The evening was still bright, and the daylight fell upon her from a window above the hall door.
"Shall I do?" she asked, with a smile.
The staircase was paneled with a dark polished wood, and she stood out from that somber background, a white figure, delicate and dainty and wholesome, from the silver buckle on her satin slipper to the white flower she had placed in her hair. Her face, with its remarkable gentleness, its suggestion of purity as of one unspotted by the world, was turned to him with a confident appeal. Her clear gray eyes rested quietly on his. Yet she saw his face change. It seemed that a spasm of pain or revolt shook him. Upon her face there came a blank look. Why was he displeased? But the spasm pa.s.sed. He shrugged his shoulders and threw off his doubt.
"You are very pretty," he said.
Sylvia"s smile just showed about the corners of her lips and her face cleared.
"Yes," she said, with satisfaction.
Garratt Skinner laughed.
"Oh, you know that?"
"Yes," she replied, nodding her head at him.
He led the way down the pa.s.sage toward the back of the house, and throwing open a door introduced her to his friends.
"Captain Barstow," he said, and Sylvia found herself shaking hands with a little middle-aged man with a shiny bald head and a black square beard.
He had an eye-gla.s.s screwed into his right eye, and that whole side of his face was distorted by the contraction of the muscles and drawn upward toward the eye. He did not look at her directly, but with an oblique and furtive glance he expressed his sense of the honor which the introduction conferred on him. However, Sylvia was determined not to be disappointed.
She turned to the next of her father"s guests.
"Mr. Archie Parminter."
He at all events looked her straight in the face. He was a man of moderate height, youthful in build, but old of face, upon which there sat always a smirk of satisfaction. He was of those whom no beauty in others, no grace, no sweetness, could greatly impress, so filled was he with self-complacency. He had no time to admire, since always he felt that he was being admired, and to adjust his pose, and to speak so that his words, carried to the right distance, occupied too much of his attention.
He seldom spoke to the person he talked with but generally to some other, a woman for choice, whom he believed to be listening to the important sentences he uttered. For the rest, he had grown heavy in jaw and his face (a rather flat face in which were set a pair of sharp dark eyes) narrowed in toward the top of his head like a pear.
He bowed suavely to Sylvia, with the air of one showing to the room how a gentleman performed that ceremony, but took little note of her.
But Sylvia was determined not to be disappointed.
Her father took her by the elbow and turned her about.
"Mr. Hine."
Sylvia was confronted with a youth who reddened under her greeting and awkwardly held out a damp coa.r.s.e hand, a poor creature with an insipid face, coa.r.s.e hair, and manner of great discomfort. He was as tall as Parminter, but wore his good clothes with Sunday air, and having been introduced to Sylvia could find no word to say to her.
"Well, let us go in to supper," said her father, and he held open the door for her to pa.s.s.