"Sylvia! Sylvia! Sylvia!"
The musical name echoed and reëchoed through the silent woods, but there
was no other answer. Austin lighted a match, shielded it from the rain
with his hand, and looked at his watch; it was just past midnight.
"Oh," he groaned, "where _can_ she be? What has happened to her? If I
only knew she was found, and unharmed, and safe at home again, I'd never
ask for anything else as long as I lived."
He had knocked his lantern against a tree some time before, and broken
it, and there was nothing to do but stumble blindly along in the
darkness, hoping against hope. Howard Gray had gone north, Thomas east,
and Austin south; before starting out, they had endeavored to telephone,
but the storm had destroyed the wires in every direction. After
travelling almost ten miles, Austin went home, thinking that by that time
either his father or his brother must have been successful in his search,
to be met only by the anxious despair of his mother and sisters.
"Don't you worry," he forced himself to say with a cheerfulness he was
very far from feeling; "she may have gone down that old wood-road that
leads out of the Elliotts' pasture. I heard her telling Thomas once that
she loved to explore, that they must walk down there some Sunday
afternoon; maybe she decided to go alone. I'll stop at the house, and see
if Fred happened to see her pass."
Fred had not; but Mrs. Elliott had; there was little that escaped her
eager eyes.
"My, yes, I see her go tearin' past before the storm so much as begun;
she's sure the queerest actin' widow-woman I ever heard of; Sally says
she goes swimmin' in a bathin'-suit just like a boy's, an' floats an'
dives like a fish--nice actions for a grievin' lady, if you ask me! Do
set a moment, Austin; set down an' tell me about the fire; I ain't had no
details at all, an' I'm feelin' real bad--" But the door had already
slammed behind Austin's hurrying figure.
"Sylvia, Sylvia, where are you?"
He ploughed along for what seemed like endless miles, calling as he went,
and hearing his own voice come back to him, over and over again, like a
mocking spirit. The wind, the rain, and the darkness conspired together
to make what was rough travelling in the daytime almost impassable;
strong as he was, Austin sank down more than once for a few minutes on
some fallen log over which he stumbled. At these times the vision of
Sylvia standing in the midst of the still-smoking ruins of the
buildings, which had been, in spite of their wretched condition, dear to
him because they were almost all he had in the world, seemed to rise
before him with horrible reality: Sylvia, dressed in her black, black
clothes, with her soft dark hair, and her deep-blue eyes, and her vivid
red lips which so seldom either drooped or smiled but lay tightly closed
together, a crimson line in her white face, which was no more sorrowful
than it was mask-like. The expression was as pure and as sad and as
gentle as that of a Mater Dolorosa he had chanced to see in a collection
of prints at the Wallacetown Library, and yet--and yet--Austin knew
instinctively that the dead husband, whoever he might have been, and his
own brother Thomas were not the only men besides himself who had found it
irresistibly alluring.
"I'm poorer than ever now," he groaned to himself, "and ignorant, and
mean, and dirty, and a beast in every sense of the word; I can't ever
atone for the way I've treated her--for the way I've--but if I could only
find her and _try_, oh, I've got to! Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia--"
The rain struck about by the wind, which had risen again, lashed against
the leaves of the trees, and the wet, swaying boughs struck against his
face as he started on again; but the storm and his own footsteps were the
only sounds he could hear.
It was growing rapidly colder, and he felt more than once in his pocket
to make sure that the little flask of brandy he had brought with him was
still safe, and tried to fasten his drenched coat more tightly about him.
His teeth chattered, and he shivered; but this, he realized, was more
with nervousness than with chill.
"If I'm cold, what must she be, in that linen habit? And she's so little
and frail--" He pulled himself together. "I must stop worrying like
this--of course, I'll find her,--alive and unharmed. Some things are too
dreadful--they just can't happen. I've got to have a chance to beg her
forgiveness for all I've said and done and thought; I've got to have
something to give me courage to start all over again, and make a man of
myself yet--to cleanse myself of ingratitude--and bitterness--and evil
passions. Sylvia--Sylvia--Sylvia!"
It seemed as if he had called it a thousand times; suddenly he stopped
short, listening, his heart beating like a hammer, then standing still in
his breast. It couldn't be--but, oh, it was, it was--
"Austin! Is that you?"
"Yes, yes, yes, where are you?"
"I don't know, I'm sure--what a question!" And instantly a feeling
of relief swept through him--she was _all right_--able to see
the absurdity of his question more than he could have done! "But
wherever I am, we can't be far apart; keep on calling, follow my
voice--Austin--Austin--Austin--"
"All right--coming--tell me--are you hurt?"
"No--that is, not much."
"How much?"
"Dolly was frightened by the storm, bolted, and threw me off; I must have
been stunned for a few minutes. I'm afraid I've sprained my ankle in
falling, for I can't walk; and, oh, Austin, I'm awfully cold--and
wet--and tired!"
"I know; it's--it's been just hellish for you. Keep on speaking to me,
I'm getting nearer."
"I'll put out my hands, and then, when you get here, you won't stumble
over me. I'm sure you're very near; your footsteps sound so."
"How long have you been here, should you think?"
"Oh, hours and hours. I was riding on the main road, when just what you
predicted happened. It served me right--I ought to have listened to you.
And so--oh, here you are--_I knew, all the time_, you'd come."
He grasped the little cold, outstretched hands, and sank down beside her,
chafing them in his own.
"Thank God, I've found you," he said huskily, and gulped hard, pressing
his lips together; then forcing himself to speak quietly, he went on,
"Sylvia--tell me exactly what happened--if you feel able; but first, you
must drink some brandy--I've got some for you--"
"I don't believe I can. I was all right until a moment ago--but now
everything seems to be going around--"
Austin put his arm around her, and forced the flask to her lips; then the
soft head sank on his shoulder, and he realized that she had fainted.
Very gently he laid her on the ground, and fumbled in the dark for the
fastenings of her habit; when it was loosened, he pulled off his coat and
flannel shirt, putting the coat over her, and the shirt under her head
for a pillow; then listening anxiously for her breathing, felt again for
her mouth, and poured more brandy between her lips. There were a few
moments of anxious waiting; then she sighed, moved restlessly, and tried
to sit up.
"Lie still, Sylvia; you fainted; you've got to keep very quiet for a
few minutes."
"How stupid of me! But I'm all right now."
"I said, lie still."
"All right, all right, I will; but you'll frighten me out of my wits if
you use that tone of voice."
"I didn't mean to frighten you; but you've got to keep quiet, for your
own sake, Sylvia."
"I thought you said you wouldn't call me Sylvia."
"I've said a good many foolish things in the course of my life, and
changed my mind about them afterwards."
"Or feel sorry if I came to grief--"
"And a good many untrue and wicked ones for which I have repented
afterwards."
"Well, I did come to grief--or pretty nearly. I met three Polish workmen
on the road. I think they were--intoxicated. Anyway, they tried to stop
me. I was lucky in managing to turn in here--so quickly they didn't
realize what I was going to do. If I hadn't been near the entrance to
this wood-road--Austin, what makes you grip my hand so? You hurt."
"Promise me you'll never ride alone again," he said, his voice shaking.
"I certainly never shall."
"And could you possibly promise me, too, that you'll forgive the
absolutely unforgivable way I've acted all summer, and give me a chance
to show that I can do better--_Sylvia_?"
"Oh, yes, _yes_! Please don't feel badly about that. I--I--never
misunderstood at all. I know you've had an awfully hard row to hoe, and
that's made you bitter, and--any man hates to have a woman
help--financially. Besides"--she hesitated, and went on with a humility
very different from her usual sweet imperiousness--"I've been pretty
unhappy myself, and it's made _me_ self-willed and obstinate and
dictatorial."
"You! You're--more like an angel than I ever dreamed any woman could be."
"Oh, I'm not, I'm not--please don't think so for a minute. Because, if
you do, we'll start out on a false basis, and not be real friends, the
way I hope we're going to be now--"
"Yes--"
"And, please, may I sit up now? And really, my hands are warm"--he
dropped them instantly--"and I would like to hear about the
storm--whether it has done much damage, if you know."
"It has destroyed every building we owned except the house itself."
"Austin! You're not in earnest!"
"I never was more so."
"Oh, I'm sorry--more sorry than I can tell you!" One of the little hands
that had been withdrawn a moment earlier groped for his in the darkness,
and pressed it gently; she did not speak for some minutes, but finally
she went on: "It seems a dreadful thing to say, but perhaps it may prove
a blessing in disguise. I believe Thomas is right in thinking that a
smaller farm, which you could manage easily and well without hiring help,
would be more profitable; and now it will seem the most natural thing in
the world to sell that great southern meadow to Mr. Weston."
"Yes, I suppose so; he offered us three thousand dollars for it; he
doesn't care to buy the little brick cottage that goes with it--which
isn't strange, for it has only five rooms, and is horribly out of repair.
Grandfather used it for his foreman; but, of course, we've never needed
it and never shall, so I wish he did want it."
"Oh, Austin--could _I_ buy it? I've been _dying_ for it ever since I
first saw it! It could be made perfectly charming, and it's plenty big
enough for me! I've sold my Fifth Avenue house, and I'm going to sell the
one on Long Island too--great, hideous, barnlike places! Your mother
won't want me forever, and I want a little place of my very own, and _I
love_ Hamstead--and the river--and the valley--I didn't dare suggest
this--you all, except Thomas, seemed so averse to disposing of any of the
property, but--'
"If we sell the meadow to Weston, I am sure you can have the cottage and
as much land as you want around it; but the trouble is--"
"You need a great deal more money; of course, I know that. Have you any
insurance?"
"Very little."
For some moments she sat turning things over in her mind, and was quiet
for so long that Austin began to fear that she was more badly hurt than
she had admitted, and found it an effort to talk.
"Is anything the matter?" he asked at last, anxiously. "Are you in pain?"
"No--only thinking. Austin--if you cannot secure a loan at some local
bank, would you be very averse to borrowing the money from me--whatever
the sum is that you need? I am investing all the time, and I will ask the
regular rates of interest. Are you offended with me for making such a
suggestion?"
"I am not. I was too much moved to answer for a minute, that is all. It
is beyond my comprehension how you could bring yourself to do it, after
overhearing what you heard me say the other evening."
"Then you'll accept?"
"If father and Thomas think best, I will; and thank you, too, for not
calling it a gift."
"Are you likely to be offended if I go on, and suggest something
further?"
"No; but I am likely to be so overwhelmed that I shall not be of much
practical use to you."
"Well, then, I'd like you to take a thousand dollars more than you need
for building, and spend it in travelling."
"In travelling!"
"Yes; Thomas is a born farmer, and the four years that he is going to
have at the State Agricultural College are going to be exactly what he
wants and needs. He isn't sensitive enough so that he'll mind being a
little older than most of the fellows in his class. But, of course, for
you, anything like that is entirely out of the question. How old are
you, anyway?"
"Twenty-seven."
"Well, if you could get away from here for a time, and see other people,
how they do things, how they make a little money go a long way, and a
little land go still farther, how they work hard, and fail many times,
and succeed in the end--not the science of farming that Thomas is going
to learn, but the accomplished fact--I believe it would be the making of
you. My Uncle Mat was one of the first importers of Holstein cattle in
this country, and I'd like to have you do just what he did when he got
through college. Of course, you can buy all the cows you want in the
United States now, of every kind, sort, and description, and just as
good as there are anywhere in the world; but I want you to go to Europe,
nevertheless. Start right off while Thomas is still at home to help your
father; take a steamer that goes direct to Holland; get into the
interior with an interpreter. Then cross over to the Channel Islands. By
that time you'll be in a position to decide whether you want to stock
your farm with Holsteins, which have the strongest constitutions and
give the most milk, or Jerseys, which give the richest. While you're
over there, go to Paris and London for a few days--and see something
besides cows. Come home by Liverpool. I know the United States Minister
to the Netherlands very well, and no end of people in Paris. I'll give
you some letters of introduction, and you'll have a good time besides
getting a practical education. The whole trip needn't take you more than
eight weeks. Then next spring visit a few of the big farms in New York
and the Middle West, and go to one of those big cattle auctions they
hold in Syracuse in July. Then--"
"For Heaven's sake, Sylvia! Where did you pick up all this information
about farming?"
"From Uncle Mat--but I'll tell you all about that some other time. The
question is now, 'Will you go?'"
"God bless you, _yes_!"
"That's settled, then," she cried happily. "I was fairly trembling with
fear that you'd refuse. Why _is_ it so hard for you to accept things?"
"I don't know. I've been bitter all my life because I've had to go
without so much, and this summer I've been equally bitter because things
were changing. It must be just natural cussedness--but I'm honestly going
to try to do better."
"We've got to stay here until morning, haven't we?"
"I'm afraid we have. You can't walk, and even if you could, the chances
are ten to one against our finding the highroad in this Egyptian
darkness! When the sun comes up, I can pick my own way along through the
underbrush all right, and carry you at the same time. You must weigh
about ninety pounds."
"I weigh one hundred and ten! The idea!--There's really no chance, then,
of our moving for several hours?"
"I'm sorry--but you must see there is not. Does it seem as if you
couldn't bear being so dreadfully uncomfortable that much longer?"
"Not in the least. I'm all right. But--"
"Do you mind being here--alone with me?"
"No, _no, no_! Why on earth should I? Let me finish my sentence. I was
only wondering if it might not help to pass the time if I told you a
story? It's not a very pleasant one, but I think it might help you over
some hard places yourself, if you heard it; and if you would tell part of
it--as much as you think best--to your family after we get home, I should
be very grateful. Some of it should, in all justice, have been told to
you all long ago, since you were so good as to receive me when you knew
nothing whatever about me, and the rest is--just for you."
"Is the telling going to be hard for you?"
"I don't think so--this way--in the dark--and alone. It has all
seemed too unspeakably dreadful to talk about until just lately; but
I've been growing so much happier--I think it may be a relief to tell
some one now."
"Then do, by all means. I feel--"
"Yes--"
"More honored than I can tell you by your--confidence."
"Austin--when it's _in_ you to say such nice things as you have several
times to-night, _why_ do you waste time saying disagreeable ones--the way
you usually do to everybody?"
"I've just told you, I don't know, but I'm going to do better."
"Well--there was once a girl, whose father had died when she was a baby
and who lived with her mother and a maid in a tiny flat in New York City.
It was a pretty little flat, and they had plenty to eat and to wear, and
a good many pleasant friends and acquaintances; but they didn't have much
money--that is, compared to the other people they knew. This girl went to
a school where all her mates had ten times as much spending money as she
did, who possessed hundreds of things which she coveted, and who were
constantly showering favors upon her which she had no way of returning.
So, from the earliest time that she could remember, she felt discontented
and dissatisfied, and regarded herself as having been picked out by
Providence for unusual misfortunes; and her mother agreed with her.
"I fancy it is never very pleasant to be poor. But if one can be frankly
poor, in calico and overalls, the way you've been, I don't believe it's
quite so hard as it is to be poor and try 'to keep up appearances'; as
the saying is. This girl learned very early the meaning of that
convenient phrase. She gave parties, and went without proper food for a
week afterwards; she had pretty dresses to wear to dances, and wore
shabby finery about the house; she bought theatre tickets and candy, but
never had a cent to give to charity; she usually stayed in the sweltering
city all summer, because there was not enough money to go away for the
summer, and still have some left for the next winter's season; and she
spent two years at miserable little second-rate 'pensions' in
Europe--that pet economy of fashionable Americans who would not for one
moment, in their own country, put up with the bad food, and the
unsanitary quarters, and the vulgar associates which they endure there.
"Before she was sixteen years old this girl began to be 'attractive to
men,' as another stock phrase goes. I may be mistaken, and I'll never
have a chance now to find out whether I am or not, but I believe if I had
a daughter like that, it would be my earnest wish to bring her up in some
quiet country place where she could dress simply, and spend much time
outdoors, and not see too many people until she was nineteen or twenty.
But the mother I have been talking about didn't feel that way. She
taught her daughter to make the most of her looks--her eyes and her
mouth, and her figure; she showed her how to arrange her dress in a way
which should seem simple--and really be alluring; she drilled her in the
art of being flippant without being pert, of appearing gentle when she
was only sly, of saying the right thing at the right time, and--what is
much more important--keeping still at the right time. The pupil was
docile because she was eager to learn and she was clever. She made very
few mistakes, and she never made the same one twice.
"Of course, all this education had one aim and end--a rich husband. 'I
hope I've brought you up too sensibly,' the mother used to say, 'for you
to even think of throwing yourself away on the first attractive boy that
proposes to you. Your type is just the kind to appeal to some big, heavy,
oversated millionaire. Keep your eyes open for him.' The daughter was as
obedient in listening to this counsel as she had been in regard to the
others, for it fell in exactly with her own wishes; she was tired of
being poor, of scrimping and saving and 'keeping up appearances.' The
innumerable young bank clerks and journalists and teachers and college
students who fluttered about her burnt their moth-wings to no avail. But
that _rara avis_, a really rich man, found her very kind to him.
"Well, you can guess the result. When she was not quite eighteen, a man
who was beyond question a millionaire proposed to her, and she accepted
him. He was nearly twenty years older than she was, and was certainly
big, heavy, and oversated. Her uncle--her father's brother--came to her
mother, and told her certain plain facts about this man, and his father
and grandfather before him, and charged her to tell the child what she
would be doing if she married him. Perhaps if the uncle had gone to the
girl herself, it might have done some good--perhaps it wouldn't have--you
see she was so tired of being poor that she thought nothing else
mattered. Anyway, he felt a woman could break these ugly facts to a young
girl better than a man, and he was right. Only, you see, the mother never
told at all; not that she really feared that her daughter would be
foolish and play false to her excellent training--but, still, it was just
as well to be on the safe side. The millionaire was quite mad about his
little fiancée; he was perfectly willing to pay--in advance--all the
expenses for a big, fashionable wedding, with twelve bridesmaids and a
wedding-breakfast at Sherry's; he was eager to load her with jewels, and
settle a large sum of money upon her, and take her around the world for
her honeymoon journey; he loved her little soft tricks of speech, the shy
way in which she dropped her eyes, the curve of the simple white dress
that fell away from her neck when she leaned towards him; and though she
saw him drink--and drank with him more than once before her marriage--he
took excellent care that it was not until several nights afterwards that
she found him--really drunk; and they must have been married two months
before she began to--really comprehend what she had done.
"There isn't much more to tell--that can be told. The woman who sells
herself--with or without a wedding ring--has probably always existed, and
probably always will; but I doubt whether any one of them ever has
told--or ever will--the full price which she pays in her turn. She
deserves all the censure she gets, and more--but, oh! she does deserve a
little pity with it! When this girl had been married nearly a year, she
heard her husband coming upstairs one night long after midnight, in a
condition she had learned to recognize--and fear. She locked her bedroom
door. When he discovered that, he was furiously angry; as I said before,
he was a big man, and he was very strong. He knocked out a panel, put his
hand through, and turned the key. When he reached her, he reminded her
that she had been perfectly willing to marry him--that she was his wife,
his property, anything you choose to call it; he struck her. The next
day she was very ill, and the child which should have been born three
months later came--and went--before evening. The next year she was not so
fortunate; her second baby was born at the right time--her husband was
away with another woman when it happened--a horrible, diseased little
creature with staring, sightless eyes. Thank God! it lived only two
weeks, and its mother, after a long period of suffering and agony during
which she felt like a leper, recovered again, in time to see her husband
die--after three nights, during which she got no sleep--of delirium
tremens, leaving her with over two million dollars to spend as she
chose--and the degradation of her body and the ruin of her soul to think
of all the rest of her life!"
"Sylvia!"--the cry with which Austin broke his long silence came from the
innermost depths of his being--"Sylvia, Sylvia, you shan't say such
things--they're not true. Don't throw yourself on the ground and cry that
way." He bent over her, vainly trying to keep his own voice from
trembling. "If I could have guessed what--telling this--this hideous
story would mean to you, I never should have let you do it. And it's all
my fault that you felt you ought to do it--partly because of those vile
speeches I made the other evening, partly because I've let you see how
wickedly discontented I've been myself, partly because you must have
heard me urging my own sister to make practically this same kind of a
marriage. Oh, if it's any comfort to you to know it, you haven't told me
in vain! Sylvia, do speak to me, and tell me that you believe me, and
that you forgive me!"
She managed to give him the assurance he sought, her desperate,
passionate voice grown gentle and quiet again. But she was too tired and
spent to be comforted. For a long time she lay so still that he became
alarmed, thinking she must have fainted again, and drew closer to her to
listen to her breathing; at first there was a little catch in it,
betraying sobs not yet wholly controlled, then gradually it grew calm and
even; she had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.
Austin, sitting motionless beside her, found the night one of
purification and dedication. To men of Thomas's type, slow of wit, steady
and stolid and unemotional, the soil gives much of her own peaceful
wholesomeness. But those like Austin, with finer intellects, higher
ambitions, and stronger passions, often fare ill at her hands. Their
struggles towards education and the refinements of life are balked by
poverty and the utter fatigue which comes from overwork; while their
search for pleasure often ends in a knowledge and experience of vices so
crude and tawdry that men of greater wealth and more happy experience
would turn from them in disgust, not because they were more moral, but
because they could afford to be more fastidious. Between Broadway and the
"main street" of Wallacetown, and other places of its type--small
railroad or manufacturing centres, standing alone in an otherwise purely
agricultural community--the odds in favor of virtue, not to say decency,
are all in favor of Broadway; and Wallacetown, to the average youth of
Hamstead, represents the one opportunity for a "show," "something to
drink," and "life" in general. Sylvia had unlocked the door of material
opportunity for Austin; but she had done far more than this. She had
given him the vision of the higher things that lay beyond that, and the
desire to attain them. Further than that, neither she nor any other woman
could help him. The future, to make or mar, lay now within his own hands.
And in the same spirit of consecration with which the knights of old
prayed that they might attain true chivalry during the long vigil before
their accolade, Austin kept his watch that night, and made his vow that
the future, in spite of the discouragements and mistakes and failures
which it must inevitably contain, should be undaunted by obstacles, and
clean of lust and high of purpose.
The wind and rain ceased, the clouds grew less heavy, and at last, just
before dawn, a few stars shone faintly in the clearing sky; then the sun
rose in a blaze of glory. Sylvia had not moved, and lay with one arm
under her dark head, the undried tears still on her cheeks. Austin lifted
her gently, and started towards the highroad with her in his arms. She
stirred slightly, opened her eyes and smiled, then lifted her hands and
clasped them around his neck.
"It'll be easier to carry me that way," she murmured drowsily.
"Austin--you're awfully good to me."
Her eyes closed again. A sheet of white fire, like that of which he had
been conscious on the afternoon when they straightened out the yard
together, only a thousand times more powerful, seemed to envelop him
again. He looked down at the lovely, sleeping face, at the dark lashes
curling over the white cheeks and the red, sweet lips. If he kissed her,
what harm would be done--she would never even know--
Then he flung back his head. Sylvia was as far above him as those pale
stars of the early dawn. It was clear to him that no one must ever guess
how dearly he loved her; but he knew that it was far, far more essential
that he, in his unworthiness, should not profane his own ideal. She was
not for his touch, scarcely for his thoughts. The kiss which did not
reach her lips burned into his soul instead, and cleansed it with its
healing flame.