CHAPTER V

SOMETHING ABOUT HUSBANDS

She did not by any means always sit in the hotel and watch Pauline care for different portions of Aunt Victoria’s body.  Mrs. Marshall-Smith took, on principle, a drive every day, and Sylvia was her favorite companion.  At first they went generally over the asphalt and in front of the costly and incredibly differing “mansions” of the “residential portion” of town, but later their drives took them principally along the winding roads and under the thrifty young trees of the State University campus.  They often made an excuse of fetching Professor Marshall home from a committee meeting, and as the faculty committees at that time of year were, for the most part, feverishly occupied with the classification of the annual flood-tide of Freshmen, he was nearly always late, and they were obliged to wait long half-hours in front of the Main Building.

Sylvia’s cup of satisfaction ran over as, dressed in her simple best, which her mother without comment allowed her to put on every day now, she sat in the well-appointed carriage beside her beautiful aunt, at whom every one looked so hard and so admiringly.  The University work had not begun, but unresigned and harassed professors and assistants, recalled from their vacations for various executive tasks, were present in sufficient numbers to animate the front steps of the Main Building with constantly gathering and dissolving little groups.  These called out greetings to each other, and exchanged dolorous mutual condolences on their hard fate; all showing, with a helpless masculine naivete, their consciousness of the lovely, observant figure in the carriage below them.  Of a different sort were the professors’ wives, who occasionally drifted past on the path.  Aunt Victoria might have been a blue-uniformed messenger-boy for all that was betrayed by their skilfully casual glance at her and then away, and the subsequent directness of their forward gaze across the campus.  Mrs. Marshall-Smith had for both these manifestations of consciousness of her presence the same imperturbable smile of amusement.  “They are delightful, these colleagues of your father’s!” she told Sylvia.  Sylvia had hoped fervently that the stylish Mrs. Hubert might see her in this brief apotheosis, and one day her prayer was answered.  Straight down the steps of the Main Building they came, Mrs. Hubert glistening in shiny blue silk, extremely unaware of Aunt Victoria, the two little girls looking to Sylvia like fairy princesses, with pink-and-white, lace-trimmed dresses, and big pink hats with rose wreaths.  Even the silk laces in their low, white kid shoes were of pink to match the ribbons, which gleamed at waist and throat and elbow.  Sylvia watched them in an utter admiration, and was beyond measure shocked when Aunt Victoria said, after they had stepped daintily past, “Heavens!  What a horridly over-dressed family!  Those poor children look too absurd, tricked out like that.  The one nearest me had a sweet, appealing little face, too.”