Sylvania

“ Ruth got out of bed and lifted her blind. The dawn was hardly yet pink, and the light from the sandbank was not yet extinguished. But the bushes of euonymus against the white palings of the front garden could be seen, also the light surface of the road winding away like a riband to the north entrance of Sylvania Castle, thence round to the village, the cliffs, and the Cove behind. Upon the road two dark figures could just be discerned, one a little way behind the other, but overtaking and joining the foremost as Ruth looked. ”

“ How are you to get on without a pilot?"
"I can have one on board in half an hour at the most. There are plenty of them, and I find they are glad to serve in such a nobby craft as the Sylvania, where they have easy work and the best of grub," I replied.
"There comes a boat. I see the Panama hat and light clothes in it," added Washburn, evidently relieved, for he was impatient for the voyage to begin.
In a minute more the pilot was on the deck of the steamer. ”

“ But the negro cabins were upset and many of them were floating about. It was evident enough that they had been built on lower ground than the residences of the planters. The knoll was covered with shade-trees and shrubs, and the estates were as beautiful as anything I ever looked upon—that is, what I could see of them above the water.
"Eight feet!" shouted the leadsman, with energy.
I rang to stop her, for I could feel a sort of sensation as though the keel of the Sylvania was making a furrow in the field under us. The steamer stopped almost as soon as I rang the bell. ”

“ I had it bound up, and just as the boat was approaching the shoal place, Cornwood asked me what ailed my neck. It was clear enough that he did not know what had transpired in the woods.
"In accordance with the plan you arranged with Captain Boomsby before you came on board of the Sylvania, I have been shot," I replied. "The ball, instead of going through my head, only grazed my neck. Your man is a very bad shot."
"My man! Who is my man?" demanded Cornwood. But I saw that he was pale under the charge.
"Griffin Leeds, of course," I answered. ”

“ Vehe took the papers and read out the title: "Against the idolatry of the Trinity and the worship of the two-fold Nature." "That title is rather strong," said he, casting his wolfish eyes distrustfully in the direction of the Italian.
"The stronger the better," rejoined Sylvan. "The Ambassador of the Woywode, and our friends in Transylvania must be convinced, that we seriously mean going over, otherwise we shall never receive any suitable livings. I am leaving here, because I have been thrust to one side, and these Northgerman and French starvelings have been stuck under my nose. ”

“ Many such old people set out betimes, on the Sunday afternoon to which Sylvia had been so looking forward, to scale the long flights of stone steps--worn by the feet of many generations--which led up to the parish church, placed on a height above the town, on a great green area at the summit of the cliff, which was the angle where the river and the sea met, and so overlooking both the busy crowded little town, the port, the shipping, and the bar on the one hand, and the wide illimitable tranquil sea on the other--types of life and eternity. ”

“ Sylvia’s was the true aristocratic attitude towards the rest of the world. It could never have occurred to her to imagine that anywhere upon the whole earth there were people superior to the Castlemans of Castleman County. If you had been ignorant enough to suggest such an idea, you would have seen her eyes flash and her nostrils quiver; you would have been enveloped in a net of bewilderment and transfixed with a trident of mockery and scorn. That was what she had done in her husband-hunt. ”

“ Cora had become quite calm by this time, and she answered quietly:
"No; you misapprehend me, Sylvan. It was not from indignation or resentment that I cried, and not at all for myself. I grieved for him, the spellbound old man! No, Sylvanus; since we feel assured that no power of ours, no power on earth, can turn him from his purpose, we must do our duty by him. We must refrain from giving him pain or making him angry; for his own poor old sake, we must do this! Sylvan, I must attend his bride to the altar ”

“ The eyes of the hunter, dark, brilliant, and keen as an eagle's, pierced hers. "You have no fear?" he said. "You are a woman, alone, in a desolate place. For what you know, my mates and I may be a set of brigands."
"Baedeker does not mention the existence of brigands at present in the Rhaetian Alps," retorted Sylvia, with quaint dryness. "I have always found him very trustworthy. I've great faith in the chivalry of Rhaetian men, whose Emperor—though he thinks meanly of women—sets so good an example. But if you knew how hungry I am, you would not keep me waiting for talk of brigands. ”

“ Sylvia said to herself that she would turn homewards when she came within sight of this cove,—Headlington Cove, they called it. All the way along she had met no one since she had left the town, but just as she had got over the last stile, or ladder of stepping-stones, into the field from which the path descended, she came upon a number of people—quite a crowd, in fact; men moving forward in a steady line, hauling at a rope, a chain, or something of that kind; boys, children, and women holding babies in their arms, as if all were fain to come out and partake in some general interest. ”

“ And I do tell you, my friend, that when the Countess Sylvia comes to her inheritance, and good soldiers and good treasure are at her beck, she will ride on a milk-white courser at the head of more than a thousand beautiful fighting soldiers, each clad in a corslet of steel as bright as a mirror, with a long white plume in his cap, and the motto of her house painted in scarlet upon a cloth of white camlet upon his breast. And she shall sack this fair city, and see to it that all Jews, heretics, and Moriscoes are put to the sword. ”

“ It was curious, said Sylvia, but nobody was free from this kind of vanity. There was dear old Uncle Basil, a more godly bishop never lived, and yet he had a foible for carving! In his opinion the one certain test of a gentleman was the ease with which he found the joints of all kinds of meat, and he was in arms against the modern tendency to turn such accomplishments over to butlers. He would hold forth on the subject, illustrating his theories with an elegant knife, and Sylvia remembered how her father and the Chilton boys had wired up the joints of a duck for the bishop to work on. ”

“ How he loves his mistress who sits him so light, so firm, so easily swaying; she bends him to her will by master-strength; yet pats and soothes as she might a frightened child. Sweetness and strength! that is all the magic. The rein is a channel through which intelligence goes most subtly. Good Sylvan knows and loves his rider—feels her vividly to the core of his quick sense; will serve her unquestioning to the limit of his speed and stay. ”

“ She was going to Salzbrück in a few days, according to Frau Johann. But Salzbrück was not Heiligengelt, and Maximilian the Emperor was not, at his palace, in the way of meeting tourists. It was good-bye to Miss de Courcy as well as to the mountains.
"She'll never know to whom she gave her ring," he thought, with the dense innocence of a man who has studied all books save woman's looks. "And I'll never know who gives her a plain gold one for the finger on which she once wore this."
But in the next room, divided from him by a single wall, sat Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald. ”

“ She would spend the rest of her days in Castleman County, and the sunshine and peace would gradually enfold her.
Such were her thoughts when the unforeseen event befel. A man on horse-back rode down a side-street, crossing Main Street a little way in front of her; a man dressed in khaki, with a khaki riding hat pulled low over his face. He rode rapidly—appearing and vanishing, so that Sylvia scarcely saw him—really did not see him with her conscious mind at all. ”

“ That's what we must do, Sylvia. He must have no suspicion that we are working against him. We must lull him to sleep. That is our only way to keep Wallie Hine with us. So that, Sylvia, must be our plan of campaign."
The luncheon bell rang as he ended his oration. He got out of the hammock quickly, as if to prevent discussion of his plan; and the book which he was carrying caught in the netting of the hammock and fell to the ground. Sylvia could read the title now. She did read it, hastily, as Garratt Skinner stooped to pick it up. It was entitled "The Alps in 1864." ”

“ Sylvia replied.
"Where did you meet your fellow-traveler—the Bulgarian?"
"The rose-grower?"
"Oh, you think he is a rose-grower?"
"I didn't speculate upon the problem. He got into the train at Plevna and did all he could to make himself useful and agreeable," Sylvia said.
"That's one for you, Antitch," the Englishman laughed. "Another Bulgarophile. We're hopeless, aren't we? Upon my soul, people like Prussians and Bulgarians are justified in thinking that we're traitors to our convictions when they witness the immediate affinity between most of them and most of us. ”

“ She turned an affectionate look on her friend. "You are not only very pretty, my dear Sylvia, but you look what the people here probably regard as being of far more consequence, that is, opulent."
"So I am," said Sylvia gaily, "opulent and very, very happy, dear Anna! I am so glad that you brought me here, and first made me acquainted with this delightful place! I am sure Switzerland would not have been half as amusing as Lacville——"
The public gambling room was much quieter and emptier than it had been on the Saturday when Sylvia had first seen it. ”

“ Sylvain, in these intervals, wanted an indolent repose. His home was his castle. He wanted no scenes too exciting there. Light jousts and plays were well enough, but no grave encounters. He liked to lounge, to sing, to read, to sleep. In fine, Sylvain became the kind, but preoccupied husband, Mariana, the solitary and wretched wife. He was off continually, with his male companions, on excursions or affairs of pleasure. At home Mariana found that neither her books nor music would console her.
She was of too strong a nature to yield without a struggle to so dull a fiend as despair. ”

“ To Castleman County a foreigner was a strange, dark person who mixed up his consonants, and was under suspicion of being a fiddler or an opera-singer. The people she had met under her husband’s charge had been socially indubitable, but still, they were foreigners, and Sylvia could never really be sure what they meant. ”

“ Don't you, Sylvia?"
"Yes, indeed!" said Sylvia, almost in a whisper, "if—if it isn't troubling you too much!"
"I have been turning over thy words in my mind," said Fakrash to Horace, still ignoring Sylvia, "and I am convinced that thou art right. Even if the contents of the seal were known of all men, they would raise no clamour about affairs that concern them not. Therefore it is nothing to me in whose hands the seal may be. Dost thou not agree with me in this?" ”

“ Sylvia improved daily, and early in September her nephew prepared for departure. He was going to Heidelberg. One beautiful morning he felt in the mood for a long farewell ride. He sent word to Sylvia that he should not be at Miolans before evening, mounted, and rode off at a brisk pace. He was out all day under the blue sky, and enjoyed it. He had some wonderful new views of Mont Blanc, some exhilarating speed over tempting stretches of road, a lunch at a rustic inn among the vineyards, and the uninterrupted companionship of his own thoughts. ”

“ By virtue of a contract made between Sylvain’s and the city, the diners are screened off from the street and from the twentieth century by a row of high potted evergreens. Pass within the screen, and you leave behind you the modern epoch. The Third Republic recedes; the Second Empire recedes; Louis-Philippe has never been, nor even Napoleon; the Revolution has not begun to announce itself. You are become suddenly a grand seigneur. Every gesture and tone of every member of the personnel of Sylvain’s implores your excellency with one word:
“Deign!” ”

“ And then one day in January, like a bolt from the blue, came a cablegram from Sylvia, dated Cairo: “Sailing for New York, Steamship ‘Atlantic,’ are you there, answer.”
Of course I answered. And I consulted the sailing-lists, and waited, wild with impatience. She sent me a wireless, two days out, and so I was at the pier when the great vessel docked. Yes, there she was, waving her handkerchief to me; and there by her side stood her husband.
It was a long, cold ordeal, while the ship was warped in. We could only gaze at each other across the distance, and stamp our feet and beat our hands. ”

“ In process of time the women, with whom these Sylvans would have lovingly cohabited, were either taught by mankind, or induced by an abhorrence of their shapes, to shun their embraces; so that our sages were necessitated to mix with beasts. This by degrees occasioned the hair of their posterity to grow higher than their middles; it rose in one generation to their arms, in the second it invaded their necks, in the third it gained the ascendant of their heads, till the degenerate appearance, in which the species is now immersed, became completed. ”

“ As they left the station, from far away came a burst of martial music, a military band playing the national air which the chamois-hunter had heard the English girl singing at Heiligengelt. The shops were closed for the day; from nearly every window hung a flag or banner, while the old narrow streets and the broad new streets were festooned with bunting, wreaths of evergreen, and autumn flowers. Prosperous citizens in their best, peasants in gay holiday attire, streamed toward the Maximilian Platz. It seemed to Sylvia that the air tingled with expectation ”