Syl Graham was an only child. Her name was Sylvia, but everybody called
her Syl, except that sometimes, half playfully and half chidingly, her
father called her Sylly. But that was a liberty no one else took,--and
for which Mr. Graham himself was not unlikely to pay in extra
indulgence.
Syl was seventeen, and she had never known any trouble in all her
young, bright life. Her mother had died when she was two years old; and
this, which might easily have been the greatest of misfortunes,--though
Syl was too young to know it,--had been turned almost into a blessing
by the devotion of her father’s sister, Aunt Rachel, who came to take
care of the little one then, and had never left her since.
Not the dead Mrs. Graham herself could have been more motherly or more
tender than Aunt Rachel; and the girl had grown up like a flower in a
shaded nook, on which no rough wind had ever been allowed to breathe.
And a pretty flower she was; so her father thought when she ran into
the hall to meet him, as he came in from business at the close of the
short November day.
The last rays of daylight just bronzed her chestnut hair. Her face was
delicately fair,--as the complexion that goes with such hair usually
is,--colorless save in the lips, which seemed as much brighter than
other lips as if they had added to their own color all that which was
absent from the fair, colorless cheeks. The brown eyes were dancing
with pleasant thoughts, the little, girlish figure was wonderfully
graceful, and Papa Graham looked down at this fair, sweet maiden with a
fond pride, which the sourest critic could hardly have had a heart to
condemn.
“Are you cross?” she said laughingly, as she helped him off with his
overcoat.
“Very,” he answered, with gravity.
“I mean are you worse than usual? Will you be in the best humor now or
after dinner?”
“After dinner, decidedly, if Aunt Rachel’s coffee is good.”
Syl nodded her piquant little head. “I’ll wait, then.”
The dinner was good enough to have tempted a less hungry man than Mr.
Graham, and the coffee was perfect. Papa’s dressing-gown and slippers
were ready, upstairs; and when he had sat down in the great, soft
easy-chair that awaited him, and his daughter had settled herself on
a stool at his feet, I think it would have been hard to find a more
contented-looking man in all New York.
“Now I’m very sure you are as good as such a bear can be,” said saucy
Syl; “and now we’ll converse.”
To “converse” was Syl’s pet phrase for the course of request,
reasoning, entreaty, by which Papa Graham was usually brought to accede
to all her wishes, however extravagant. He rested his hand now on her
shining chestnut braids, and thought how like she was to the young wife
he had loved so well, and lost so early. Then he said teasingly,--
“What is it, this time? A Paris doll, with a trunk and a bandbox; or a
hand-organ?”
“For shame, papa! The doll was four years ago.”
“All the more reason it must be worn out. Then it’s the hand-organ. But
I must draw the line somewhere,--you can’t have the monkey. If Punch
and Judy would do, though?”
“Now, Father Lucius, you know I gave up the hand-organ two years ago,
and took a piano for my little upstairs room instead; and you know I’m
seventeen. Am I likely, at this age, to want monkeys, Punch and Judys,
and things?”
“O, no! I forgot. Seventeen,--it must be a sewing-machine. You want to
make all your endless bibs and tuckers more easily. Well, I’ll consent.”
Syl blushed. It was a sore point between her and Aunt Rachel that she
so seldom sewed for herself. Aunt Rachel had old-fashioned notions, and
believed in girls that made their own pretty things.
“Now, papa, you are not good-humored at all. I had better have asked
you before dinner. You don’t even let me tell you what I want.”
Papa sobered his face into a look of respectful attention, and waited
silently. But now Syl was not quite ready to speak.
“Don’t you think pomegranate is a pretty color, papa?”
“What is it like?”
“O, it’s the deepest, richest, brightest, humanest red you ever saw.”
“Why, I think it must be like your lips;” and he drew her to him, and
kissed the bright young mouth with a lazy content.
“Perhaps it _is_ like my lips; then, surely it will look well _with_
them.”
“Where does this blossom of beauty grow?”
“It grows at Stewart’s. It has been woven into a lovely, soft-falling
silk, at four dollars a yard. Twenty-five yards makes a gown, and eight
yards of velvet makes the trimming and the sleeveless jacket, and the
velvet is six dollars a yard. And then there is Madame Bodin, she
charges like a horrid old Jew,--forty dollars just to look at a gown;
and then there are the linings and buttons and things. Have you kept
account, papa, and added it all up in your head?”
“I think it means about two hundred dollars. Isn’t that what you call
it, Sylly?”
“Yes, if you please. It’ll be _worth_ that, won’t it, to have your
daughter look like a love, when all the people come on New Year’s Day?”
“So that’s it,--that’s what this conspiracy against my peace and my
pocket has for its object,--that Miss Syl Graham may sit at the receipt
of callers on New Year’s Day, in a robe like a red, red rose. O Sylly,
Sylly!”
Syl pouted a little, the most becoming pout in the world.
“Well, I’m sure I thought you cared how I look. If you don’t, never
mind. My old black silk is still very neat and decent.”
“September, October, November,--it’s nearly three months old, isn’t
it? What a well-behaved gown it must be to have kept neat and decent
so long! And as to the other, I’ll consider, and you can ask me again
when I come home to-morrow.”
Syl knew what Papa Graham’s considers meant, and how they always ended.
She had gained her point, and she danced off and sang to the piano some
old Scotch airs that her father loved, because Syl’s mother used to
sing them; and Papa Graham listened dreamily to the music, while his
thoughts went back twenty years, to the first winter when he brought
his girl-bride home, only a year older, then, than Syl was now. He
remembered how the firelight used to shine on her fair, upturned face,
as she knelt beside him; how sweet her voice was; how pure and true and
fond her innocent young heart. And now Syl was all he had left of her.
Should he lose Syl herself, soon? Would some bold wooer come and carry
her away, and leave him with only Aunt Rachel’s quiet figure and fading
face beside him for the rest of his life?
Just then Syl might have asked him not in vain for any thing, even to
the half of his kingdom.
Next morning Syl went into the sewing-room. A young girl just about
her own age was there--altering, sewing, making all the foolish little
fancies in which Syl’s heart delighted, though her idle fingers never
wrought at them. Out of pure kindness of heart Syl found her way into
the sewing-room very often when Mary Gordon was there. She knew her
presence carried pleasure with it, and often she used to take some
story or poem and read to the young listener, with the always busy
fingers, and the gentle, grateful face.
But to-day she found the girl’s eyes very red as if with long weeping.
If Syl was selfish it was only because she never came in contact with
the pains and needs of others. She had “fed on the roses and lain among
the lilies of life,”--how was she to know the hurt of its stinging
nettles? But she could not have been the lovesome, charming girl she
was if she had had a nature hard and indifferent to the pains of others.
To see Mary Gordon’s red eyes was enough. Instantly she drew the work
out of the fingers that trembled so; and then she set herself to draw
the secret sorrow out of the poor, trembling heart.
It was the old story, so sadly common and yet so bitterly sad, of a
mother wasting away and fading out of life, and a daughter struggling
to take care of her, and breaking her heart because she could do so
little.
“I’m used to all that,” the girl said sadly, “and I don’t let myself
cry for what I can’t help. But this morning I heard her say to herself,
as I was getting every thing ready for her, ‘O, the long, lonesome
day!’ She thought I did not hear her, for she never complains; but
somehow it broke me down. I keep thinking of her, suffering and weary
and all alone. But I can’t help that, either; and I must learn to be
contented in thinking that I do my best.”
“But can’t you stay at home with her and work there?” cried Syl, all
eager sympathy and interest.
“No, I can’t get work enough in that way. People want their altering
and fixing done in their own houses, and plain sewing pays so poorly.
Sometimes I’ve thought if I only had a machine, so I could get a great
deal done, I might manage but to hire one would eat up all my profits.”
Syl thought a little silent while; and it was a pretty sight to see the
fair young face settle into such deep earnestness.
“Well,” she said at length, “at least you shall stay at home with her
to-morrow; for all those ruffles can be done just as well there as
here, and you shall carry them home with you. And you’d better go early
this afternoon; there’ll be enough work to last you, and I can’t bear
to think of her waiting for you, and wanting you, so many long hours.
We’ll give her a little surprise.”
Mary Gordon did not speak for a moment. I think she was getting her
voice steady, for when she did begin it trembled.
“I _can’t_ thank you, Miss Syl,--it’s no use to try; but the strange
part is how you understand it all, when you’ve no mother yourself.”
“Ah, but you see I have papa and auntie, and I just know.”
That day, after Syl and Aunt Rachel had lunched together, Syl said, in
a coaxing little way she had,--
“Aunt Rachel, we never want to see the other half of that cold chicken
again, do we?”
“Why, Syl--we”--
“Why, auntie, no--we never want to-morrow’s lunch furnished coldly
forth by this sad relic. And there’s a tumbler of jelly we don’t want,
either--and those rolls, and,--let me see, can sick people eat cake?”
“Why, Syl Graham, what are you talking about! Who’s sick?”
Syl grew sober.
“I’m thinking about poor Mary Gordon’s mother, auntie. She’s sick, and
dying by inches; and Mary has to leave her all alone; and I’ve told her
she shall stay at home to-morrow and make my ruffles, and we’ll pay her
just the same as if she came here. And don’t you see that we must give
her her dinner to take home, since she can’t come here after it?”
Aunt Rachel never said a word, but she got up and kissed Syl on each
cheek. Then she brought a basket, and into it went the cold chicken and
a cold tongue and jelly and buttered rolls and fruit, till even Syl
was satisfied; and she took the heavy basket and danced away with it to
the sewing-room, with a bright light in her dear brown eyes.
“I think you’d best go now,” she said. “I can’t get your mother,
waiting there alone, out of my mind, and it’s spoiling my afternoon,
don’t you see? And because you mustn’t come here to dine to-morrow, you
must carry your dinner home with you; and Aunt Rachel put some fruit
and some jelly in the basket that maybe your mother will like.”
That night, when Mr. Lucius Graham let himself into the hall with his
latch-key, his daughter heard him and went to meet him, as usual. But
she was very silent, and he missed his teasing, saucy, provoking Syl.
“Why, daughter, are you in a dream?” he asked once during dinner; but
she only laughed and shook her head. She held her peace until she had
him at her mercy, in the great easy-chair, and she was on the stool
beside him, as her wont was. Then, suddenly, her question came.
“Papa, do you think a pomegranate silk without velvet would be very
bad?”
He was inclined to tease her, and began with “Hideous!” but then he saw
that her lips were fairly trembling, and her face full of eagerness,
and forbore.
“How did you know you were to have the silk at all? But you know your
power over me. Here is your needful;” and he put into her hands ten
bright, new twenty-dollar bills.
“O, thank you! and _do_ you think it would be bad without the velvet?”
“Sylly, no; but why shouldn’t you have the velvet if you want it?”
And then came the whole story of poor Mary Gordon, and--in such an
eager tone,--
“Don’t you see, with the money the velvet would cost, and a little
more, I could get her the sewing-machine; and Madame Bodin wouldn’t ask
so much to make the dress if it is plainer?”
Mr. Graham was a rich man, and his first thought was to give her the
money for the machine, and let her have her pretty dress, as she had
fancied it, first. But a second thought restrained him. She was just
beginning to learn the joy and beauty of self-sacrifice. Should he
interfere? He kissed her with a half-solemn tenderness, and answered
her,--
“You shall do precisely as you please, my dear. The two hundred dollars
is yours. Use it _just_ as you like. I shall never inquire into its
fate again.”
And then she went away--and was it her voice or that of some blessed
spirit that came to him, a moment after, from the shadowy corner where
the piano stood, singing an old middle-age hymn, about the city--
“Where all the glad life-music,
Now heard no longer here,
Shall come again to greet us,
As we are drawing near.”
The next day, who so busy and happy as Syl--dragging Aunt Rachel from
one warehouse to another--it was in the days when sewing-machines were
costly--till she was quite sure she had found just the right machine;
and then ordering it sent, at three o’clock, no earlier, no later, to
Miss Gordon, No. 2 Crescent Place.
At a quarter before three Syl went there herself. The pleasure of
witnessing Mary Gordon’s surprise was the thing she had promised
herself, in lieu of velvet on her gown. She found the poor room neat
and clean, and by no means without traces of comfort and refinement;
and Mrs. Gordon was a sweet and gentle woman, such as Mary’s mother
must have been to be in keeping with Mary. She chatted with them for a
few minutes, noticing the invalid’s short breath and frequent cough,
and Mary’s careful tenderness over her.
“It’s too bad Mary can’t be at home all the time,” said Syl.
“Yes; but then to have her to-day is such a blessing. If you knew how
we had enjoyed our day together, and our feast together, I know you
would feel paid for any inconvenience it cost you.”
Just then an express wagon rumbled up to the door and the bell rang
loudly. Mary opened it at once, for their room was on the ground floor.
“A sewing-machine for Miss Gordon,” said a somewhat gruff voice.
“No, that cannot be. There is some mistake,” said Mary’s gentle tones.
And then Syl sprang forward, in a flutter of excitement, which would
have been pretty to see had there been anybody there to notice it.
“I’m sure it’s all right. Bring it in, please; and Mary, you will tell
them where to put it, in the best light.”
And in five minutes or less it was all in its place, and Mary was
looking, with eyes full of wonder, and something else beside wonder, at
Syl Graham.
“It’s nothing,” said Syl hurriedly; “it’s only my New Year’s present to
you, a little in advance of time.”
She had thought she should enjoy Mary’s surprise; but this was
something she had not looked for,--this utter breaking down, these
great wild sobs, as if the girl’s heart would break. And when she could
speak at length, she cried with a sort of passion,--
“O Miss Syl, I do believe you have saved my mother’s life! She will get
better--she must--now that I can stay here all the time and take care
of her.”
Syl was glad to get out into the street. She felt something in her own
throat choking her. Just a few steps off she met Dr. Meade,--her own
doctor, as it chanced,--and it struck her that it would be a good thing
if he would go in to see Mrs. Gordon. So she asked him.
“I’m going there,” he said. “I try to see her once every week.”
“And will she live--can she?”