Sylvia

“ Methinks I press thee, kiss thee, hear thee sigh, behold thy eyes, and all the wondrous beauty of thy face; a solemn joy has spread itself through every vein, sensibly through every artery of my heart, and I can think of nothing but of Sylvia, the lovely Sylvia, the blooming flowing Sylvia! ”

“ Thy Rigour, oh Sylvia, will shorten thy Reign,
And make our bright Goddess a Mortal again.
Love heightens our Joys, he's the ease of our Care,
A spur to the Valiant, a Crown to the Fair;
Oh seize his soft Wings then before 'tis too late,
Or Cruelty quickly will hasten thy Fate.
'Tis kindness, my Sylvia, 'tis kindness alone,
Will add to thy Lovers, and strengthen thy Throne;
In Love, as in Empire, Tyrannical sway,
Will make Loyal Subjects forget to Obey. ”

“ Thy fair beauteous charms are so lovely,
Few with Sylvia can compare:
Swift I will fly to my treasure,
Heav'ns my Sylvia to restore,
None can her excel,
With her I will dwell,
Sylvia I ever must adore. ”

“ Her accent, her look, the tones of her voice, some emanation of deep humanity from her whole person, reached Sylvia's inner self, the first message that had penetrated to that core of her being since the deadly, echoing news of the telegram. Upon her icy tension poured a flood of dissolving warmth. Her hideous isolation was an illusion. This plain old woman, whom she had never seen before, was her sister, her blood-kin,—they were both human beings. ”

“ Sylvia was really in her element. She petted and scolded the girl, whom she found flung upon her bed like a castaway flower, sobbing pitifully.
“What on earth is the matter?” demanded Sylvia, in a honeyed tone, which at once stung and sweetened. “Here you are in the dark, crying and going without your victuals. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
As she spoke Sylvia struck a match and lit the lamp. Rose buried her face deeper in the bed. ”

“ Behind Sylvia stalked her cold and haughty husband, and behind him tripped the wonderful nursemaid, with her wonderful blue streamers, and her wonderful bundle of ruffles and lace. All the huge family had to fall upon Sylvia and kiss and embrace her rapturously, and shake the hand of the cold and haughty husband, and peer into the wonderful bundle, and go into ecstasies over its contents. Rarely, indeed, did the great ones of this earth condescend to spread so much of their emotional life before the public gaze ”

“ Now the very change in Sylvia's whole manner and ways, which grieved and vexed Philip, made his wife the more attractive to Hester. Brought up among Quakers, although not one herself, she admired and respected the staidness and outward peacefulness common amongst the young women of that sect. Sylvia, whom she had expected to find volatile, talkative, vain, and wilful, was quiet and still, as if she had been born a Friend: she seemed to have no will of her own; she served her mother and child for love; she obeyed her husband in all things, and never appeared to pine after gaiety or pleasure. ”

“ Sylvia had not known how to live, but now she proved that she did know how to die. So beautifully were the two made one, the winning girl, the deep-hearted woman, that she seemed the same beloved Sylvia, yet Sylvia strengthened, purified, and perfected by the hard past, the solemn present. Those about her felt and owned the unconscious power, which we call the influence of character, and which is the noblest that gives sovereignty to man or woman. ”

“ I take every opportunity of telling my Sylvia what I have so often repeated, and shall be ever repeating with the same joy while I live, that I love my Sylvia to death and madness; that my soul is on the rack, till she send me the happy advancing word. ”

“ To Sylvia the sudden change into brightness and bustle occasioned by the entrance of her father and the specksioneer was like that which you may effect any winter's night, when you come into a room where a great lump of coal lies hot and slumbering on the fire; just break it up with a judicious blow from the poker, and the room, late so dark, and dusk, and lone, is full of life, and light, and warmth. ”

“ But Sylvia was too highly strung for banter. If she had not been one of those who went to mock, but remained to pray, she had gone to church with the thought of the cloak-that-was-to-be uppermost in her mind, and she had come down the long church stair with life and death suddenly become real to her mind, the enduring sea and hills forming a contrasting background to the vanishing away of man. ”

“ Every girl at Harbour Light that summer wore some distracting thing that had been fashioned by Miss Sylvia's slim, tireless, white fingers.
She was old, with that beautiful, serene old age which is as beautiful in its way as youth. Her girlhood and womanhood must have been very lovely to have ripened into such a beauty of sixty years. It was a surprise to everyone who heard her called Miss Sylvia. She looked so like a woman who ought to have stalwart, grown sons and dimpled little grandchildren. ”

“ Sylvia had her way, and talked things out with the agonised Celeste. And the next day came Aunt Varina, hardly able to contain herself. “Oh, Sylvia, such a horrible thing! To hear such words coming from your little sister’s lips—like the toads and snakes in the fairy story! To think of these ideas festering in a young girl’s brain!” And then again: “Sylvia, your sister declares she will never go to a party again! You are teaching her to hate men! You will make her a STRONG-MINDED woman!”—that was another phrase they had summing up a whole universe of horrors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not even the shadow of death had ever fallen across Sylvia's life, or that of her father, to explain the premonitory emotion which now drew them together like two frightened children. Sylvia felt the inexorable music beating in her own veins, and when she took her father's hand it seemed to her that its strong pulses throbbed to the same rhythm; beauty, and despair ... hope ... life ... death. ”

“ Now, when she heard the quiet little note of admiration in his voice when he spoke of Sylvia, when she studied Sylvia’s pictures and found them beautiful, when she realized how pledged he was to the service of Sylvia’s interests, anxious to do everything that Sylvia would approve, she appreciated that forces as strong as love bound them together, and she fancied—and not without a little wistful pain—that love might easily—easily!—be there too. ”

“ As the days pass I fall in love with Sylvia, who has been persuaded to turn my arbor into a reading-room, and is often to be found there of mornings with one of Sir Walter's novels. Sometimes I leave her alone, sometimes lie on the bench facing her, while she reads aloud, or, tiring, prattles. Little half-fledged spirit, to whom the yard is the earth and June eternity, but who peeps over the edge of the nest at the chivalry of the ages, and fancies that she knows the world. ”

“ The library was still lighted, and standing there alone he saw Sylvia, wearing an expression that startled him. Both hands pushed back and held her hair away as if she scorned concealment from herself. Her eyes seemed fixed with a despairing glance on some invisible disturber of her peace. All the light and color that made her beautiful were gone, leaving her face worn and old, and the language of both countenance and attitude was that of one suddenly confronted with some hard fact, some heavy duty, that must be accepted and performed. ”

“ Alone in her chamber Sylvia searched herself. She pictured the life that would be hers with Moor. The old house so full of something better than its opulence, an atmosphere of genial tranquillity which made it home-like to whoever crossed its threshold. Herself the daily companion and dear wife of the master who diffused such sunshine there; whose serenity soothed her restlessness; whose affection would be as enduring as his patience; whose character she so truly honored. She felt that no woman need ask a happier home, a truer or more tender lover. ”

“ So Sylvia contrived to get her baby as much as possible to herself, in spite of the nursemaid; and, above all, she would carry it out, softly cradled in her arms, warm pillowed on her breast, and bear it to the freedom and solitude of the sea-shore on the west side of the town where the cliffs were not so high, and there was a good space of sand and shingle at all low tides. ”

“ Like a strong and beneficent magician, she built up again and illuminated Sylvia's black and shattered world. "Your father is just as pure a man as I am a woman, and I would be ashamed to look any child of mine in the face if he were not. You know no men who are not decent—except two—and those you did not meet in your parents' home." ”

“ She took Sylvia to her bosom, as it were. “Let us sit on the fence and enjoy this spectacle! My dear, you can have no idea what an uproar you are making! The young married women gather in their boudoirs and whisper ghastly secrets to each other; some of them are sure they have it, and some of them say they can trust their husbands—as if any man could be trusted as far as you can throw a bull by the horns! ”

“ Sylvia came out of her delirium to find herself in the ward of a hospital kept by French nuns; she asked what had been the matter with her, and, smiling compassionately, they said it was a bad fever. She lay for a fortnight in a state of utter lassitude, watching the nuns going about their work as she would have watched birds in the cool deeps of a forest. ”

“ To Moor the world was glorified with the purple light which seldom touches it but once for any of us; the journey was a wedding march, made beautiful by summer, victorious by joy; his young wife the queen of women, and himself an equal of the gods because no longer conscious of a want. Sylvia could not be otherwise than happy, for finding unbounded liberty and love her portion, she had nothing to regret, and regarded marriage as an agreeable process which had simply changed her name and given her protector, friend, and lover all in one. ”

“ Sylvia was by all acknowledged and treated as the belle. When they played at blind-man’s-buff, go where she would, she was always caught; she was called out repeatedly to do what was required in any game, as if all had a pleasure in seeing her light figure and deft ways. She was sufficiently pleased with all this to have got over her shyness with all except Charley. ”

“ The Seraph—it is clear—had not responded. I know now—indeed, I knew at the time—that Sylvia had made an indelible impression on his receptive, emotional nature. Her wilful, rebellious self-confidence had galvanised him as every woman of strong character will galvanise a man of hesitations and doubts, reservations, and self-criticism. Knowing Sylvia, I find no difficulty in understanding the ascendancy she had established over his mind; knowing him, I can well appreciate his exasperating diffidence and self-depreciation. ”

“ I learned all that Sylvia had been taught on the subject of the male animal; I opened that amazing unwritten volume of woman traditions, the maxims of Lady Dee Lysle.
Sylvia’s maternal great-aunt had been a great lady out of a great age, and incidentally a grim and grizzled veteran of the sex-war. Her philosophy started from a recognition of the physical and economic inferiority of woman, as complete as any window-smashing suffragette could have formulated, but her remedy for it was a purely individualist one, the leisure-class woman’s skill in trading upon her sex. ”

“ Love to Sylvia gave Philip tact. He seemed to find out that to please the women of the household he must pay all possible attention to the man; and though he cared little in comparison for Daniel, yet this autumn he was continually thinking of how he could please him. When he had said or done anything to gratify or amuse her father, Sylvia smiled and was kind. Whatever he did was right with his aunt ”

“ Sylvia scouted the notion of cousin Philip coming into their household in the character of an amusing or entertaining person, till she nearly made her mother angry at her ridicule of the good steady young fellow, to whom Bell looked up as the pattern of all that early manhood should be. But the moment Sylvia saw she had been giving her mother pain, she left off her wilful little jokes, and kissed her, and told her she would manage all famously, and ran out of the back-kitchen, in which mother and daughter had been scrubbing the churn and all the wooden implements of butter-making. ”

“ If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen’s, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia’s great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. “Every girl should have a background,” had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse to ride, special roses which no one else was allowed to wear. ”

“ But Sylvia, a shuddering chip on the torrent, always found herself in the exact middle of the most crowded spot, feeling her body horrifyingly pressed upon by various invisible ones behind her and several only too visible ones in front, breathing down the back of somebody's neck, often a dirty and sweaty one, with somebody breathing hotly down the back of her own. ”