 | The snow-image |  |
SYLPH ETHEREGE.
On a bright summer evening, two persons stood
among the shrubbery of a garden, stealthily watching a
young girl, who sat in the window-seat of a neighboring
mansion. One of these unseen observers, a gentleman,
was youthful, and had an air of high breeding and
refinement, and a face marked with intellect, though
otherwise of unprepossessing aspect. His features wore
even an ominous, though somewhat mirthful expression,
while he pointed his long forefinger at the girl, and
seemed to regard her as a creature completely within
the scope of his influence.
“The charm works!” said he, in a low, but emphatic
whisper.
“Do you know, Edward Hamilton, — since so you
choose to be named, — do you know,” said the lady
beside him, “that I have almost a mind to break the
spell at once? What if the lesson should prove too
severe! True, if my ward could be thus laughed out
of her fantastic nonsense, she might be the better for it
through life. But then, she is such a delicate creature!
And, besides, are you not ruining your own chance, by
putting forward this shadow of a rival?”
“But will he not vanish into thin air, at my bidding?”
rejoined Edward Hamilton. “Let the charm
work!”
The girl's slender and sylph-like figure, tinged with
radiance from the sunset clouds, and overhung with the
rich drapery of the silken curtains, and set within the
deep frame of the window, was a perfect picture; or,
rather, it was like the original loveliness in a painter's
fancy, from which the most finished picture is but
an imperfect copy. Though her occupation excited so
much interest in the two spectators, she was merely
gazing at a miniature which she held in her hand,
encased in white satin and red morocco; nor did there
appear to be any other cause for the smile of mockery
and malice with which Hamilton regarded her.
“The charm works!” muttered he, again. “Our
pretty Sylvia's scorn will have a dear retribution!”
At this moment the girl raised her eyes, and, instead
of a life-like semblance of the miniature, beheld the ill-omened
shape of Edward Hamilton, who now stepped
forth from his concealment in the shrubbery.
Sylvia Etherege was an orphan girl, who had spent
her life, till within a few months past, under the guardianship,
and in the secluded dwelling, of an old bachelor
uncle. While yet in her cradle, she had been the destined
bride of a cousin, who was no less passive in the
betrothal than herself. Their future union had been
projected, as the means of uniting two rich estates, and
was rendered highly expedient, if not indispensable, by
the testamentary dispositions of the parents on both
sides. Edgar Vaughan, the promised bridegroom, had
been bred from infancy in Europe, and had never seen
the beautiful girl whose heart he was to claim as his
inheritance. But already, for several years, a correspondence
had been kept up between the cousins, and
but imperfectly acquaint them with each other's character.
Sylvia was shy, sensitive, and fanciful; and her
guardian's secluded habits had shut her out from even
so much of the world as is generally open to maidens
of her age. She had been left to seek associates and
friends for herself in the haunts of imagination, and
to converse with them, sometimes in the language of
dead poets, oftener in the poetry of her own mind.
The companion whom she chiefly summoned up was
the cousin with whose idea her earliest thoughts had
been connected. She made a vision of Edgar Vaughan,
and tinted it with stronger hues than a mere fancy-picture,
yet graced it with so many bright and delicate
perfections, that her cousin could nowhere have encountered
so dangerous a rival. To this shadow she cherished
a romantic fidelity. With its airy presence sitting
by her side, or gliding along her favorite paths, the
loneliness of her young life was blissful; her heart was
satisfied with love, while yet its virgin purity was
untainted by the earthliness that the touch of a real
lover would have left there. Edgar Vaughan seemed
to be conscious of her character; for, in his letters, he
gave her a name that was happily appropriate to the
sensitiveness of her disposition, the delicate peculiarity
of her manners, and the ethereal beauty both of her
mind and person. Instead of Sylvia, he called her
Sylph, — with the prerogative of a cousin and a lover, —
his dear Sylph Etherege.
When Sylvia was seventeen, her guardian died, and
she passed under the care of Mrs. Grosvenor, a lady
though a distant one. While an inmate of Mrs. Grosvenor's
family, she still preserved somewhat of her life-long
habits of seclusion, and shrank from a too familiar
intercourse with those around her. Still, too, she was
faithful to her cousin, or to the shadow which bore his
name.
The time now drew near when Edgar Vaughan,
whose education had been completed by an extensive
range of travel, was to revisit the soil of his nativity.
Edward Hamilton, a young gentleman, who had been
Vaughan's companion, both in his studies and rambles,
had already recrossed the Atlantic, bringing letters to
Mrs. Grosvenor and Sylvia Etherege. These credentials
insured him an earnest welcome, which, however,
on Sylvia's part, was not followed by personal partiality,
or even the regard that seemed due to her cousin's most
intimate friend. As she herself could have assigned no
cause for her repugnance, it might be termed instinctive.
Hamilton's person, it is true, was the reverse of attractive,
especially when beheld for the first time. Yet, in
the eyes of the most fastidious judges, the defect of
natural grace was compensated by the polish of his
manners, and by the intellect which so often gleamed
through his dark features. Mrs. Grosvenor, with whom
he immediately became a prodigious favorite, exerted
herself to overcome Sylvia's dislike. But, in this
matter, her ward could neither be reasoned with nor
persuaded. The presence of Edward Hamilton was
sure to render her cold, shy, and distant, abstracting all
the vivacity from her deportment, as if a cloud had
come betwixt her and the sunshine.
The simplicity of Sylvia's demeanor rendered it easy
for so keen an observer as Hamilton to detect her feelings.
Whenever any slight circumstance made him
sensible of them, a smile might be seen to flit over the
young man's sallow visage. None, that had once beheld
this smile, were in any danger of forgetting it; whenever
they recalled to memory the features of Edward
Hamilton, they were always duskily illuminated by this
expression of mockery and malice.
In a few weeks after Hamilton's arrival, he presented
to Sylvia Etherege a miniature of her cousin, which,
as he informed her, would have been delivered sooner,
but was detained with a portion of his baggage. This
was the miniature in the contemplation of which we
beheld Sylvia so absorbed, at the commencement of our
story. Such, in truth, was too often the habit of the
shy and musing girl. The beauty of the pictured countenance
was almost too perfect to represent a human
creature, that had been born of a fallen and world-worn
race, and had lived to manhood amid ordinary troubles
and enjoyments, and must become wrinkled with age
and care. It seemed too bright for a thing formed of
dust, and doomed to crumble into dust again. Sylvia
feared that such a being would be too refined and delicate
to love a simple girl like her. Yet, even while her
spirit drooped with that apprehension, the picture was
but the masculine counterpart of Sylph Etherege's
sylph-like beauty. There was that resemblance between
her own face and the miniature which is said often
to exist between lovers whom Heaven has destined for
each other, and which, in this instance, might be owing
to the kindred blood of the two parties. Sylvia felt,
so like a friend did the eyes smile upon her,
and seem to imply a knowledge of her thoughts. She
could account for this impression only by supposing
that, in some of her day-dreams, imagination had conjured
up the true similitude of her distant and unseen
lover.
But now could Sylvia give a brighter semblance of
reality to those day-dreams. Clasping the miniature to
her heart, she could summon forth, from that haunted
cell of pure and blissful fantasies, the life-like shadow,
to roam with her in the moonlight garden. Even at
noontide it sat with her in the arbor, when the sunshine
threw its broken flakes of gold into the clustering shade.
The effect upon her mind was hardly less powerful
than if she had actually listened to, and reciprocated,
the vows of Edgar Vaughan; for, though the illusion
never quite deceived her, yet the remembrance was as
distinct as of a remembered interview. Those heavenly
eyes gazed forever into her soul, which drank at them
as at a fountain, and was disquieted if reality threw a
momentary cloud between. She heard the melody of a
voice breathing sentiments with which her own chimed
in like music. O, happy, yet hapless girl! Thus to
create the being whom she loves, to endow him with all
the attributes that were most fascinating to her heart,
and then to flit with the airy creature into the realm
of fantasy and moonlight, where dwelt his dreamy kindred!
For her lover wiled Sylvia away from earth,
which seemed strange, and dull, and darksome, and
lured her to a country where her spirit roamed in
peaceful rapture, deeming that it had found its home.
and wandered so long in its enchanted groves, that,
when banished thence, they feel like exiles everywhere.
The dark-browed Edward Hamilton, like the villain
of a tale, would often glide through the romance wherein
poor Sylvia walked. Sometimes, at the most blissful
moment of her ecstasy, when the features of the miniature
were pictured brightest in the air, they would suddenly
change, and darken, and be transformed into his
visage. And always, when such change occurred, the
intrusive visage wore that peculiar smile with which
Hamilton had glanced at Sylvia.
Before the close of summer, it was told Sylvia
Etherege that Vaughan had arrived from France, and
that she would meet him — would meet, for the first
time, the loved of years — that very evening. We will
not tell how often and how earnestly she gazed upon
the miniature, thus endeavoring to prepare herself for
the approaching interview, lest the throbbing of her
timorous heart should stifle the words of welcome.
While the twilight grew deeper and duskier, she sat
with Mrs. Grosvenor in an inner apartment, lighted only
by the softened gleam from an alabaster lamp, which
was burning at a distance on the centre-table of the
drawing-room. Never before had Sylph Etherege
looked so sylph-like. She had communed with a creature
of imagination, till her own loveliness seemed but
the creation of a delicate and dreamy fancy. Every
vibration of her spirit was visible in her frame, as she
listened to the rattling of wheels and the tramp upon the
pavement, and deemed that even the breeze bore the
sound of her lover's footsteps, as if he trode upon the
the tremulous flow of Sylvia's feelings, was deeply
moved; she looked uneasily at the agitated girl, and
was about to speak, when the opening of the street door
arrested the words upon her lips.
Footsteps ascended the staircase, with a confident and
familiar tread, and some one entered the drawing-room.
From the sofa where they sat, in the inner apartment,
Mrs. Grosvenor and Sylvia could not discern the visiter.
“Sylph!” cried a voice. “Dearest Sylph! Where
are you, sweet Sylph Etherege? Here is your Edgar
Vaughan!”
But instead of answering, or rising to meet her lover,
— who had greeted her by the sweet and fanciful name,
which, appropriate as it was to her character, was known
only to him, — Sylvia grasped Mrs. Grosvenor's arm,
while her whole frame shook with the throbbing of her
heart.
“Who is it?” gasped she. “Who calls me Sylph?”
Before Mrs. Grosvenor could reply, the stranger
entered the room, bearing the lamp in his hand.
Approaching the sofa, he displayed to Sylvia the features
of Edward Hamilton, illuminated by that evil
smile, from which his face derived so marked an individuality.
“Is not the miniature an admirable likeness?” inquired
he.
Sylvia shuddered, but had not power to turn away
her white face from his gaze. The miniature, which
she had been holding in her hand, fell down upon the
floor, where Hamilton, or Vaughan, set his foot upon it,
and crushed the ivory counterfeit to fragments.
“There, my sweet Sylph!” he exclaimed. “It was
I that created your phantom-lover, and now I annihilate
him! Your dream is rudely broken. Awake, Sylph
Etherege, awake to truth! I am the only Edgar
Vaughan!”
“We have gone too far, Edgar Vaughan,” said Mrs.
Grosvenor, catching Sylvia in her arms. The revengeful
freak, which Vaughan's wounded vanity had suggested,
had been countenanced by this lady, in the hope
of curing Sylvia of her romantic notions, and reconciling
her to the truths and realities of life. “Look at the
poor child!” she continued. “I protest I tremble for
the consequences!”
“Indeed, madam!” replied Vaughan, sneeringly, as
he threw the light of the lamp on Sylvia's closed eyes
and marble features. “Well, my conscience is clear.
I did but look into this delicate creature's heart; and
with the pure fantasies that I found there, I made what
seemed a man, — and the delusive shadow has wiled her
away to Shadow-land, and vanished there! It is no
new tale. Many a sweet maid has shared the lot of
poor Sylph Etherege!”
“And now, Edgar Vaughan,” said Mrs. Grosvenor,
as Sylvia's heart began faintly to throb again, “now try,
in good earnest, to win back her love from the phantom
which you conjured up. If you succeed, she will be the
better, her whole life long, for the lesson we have given
her.”
Whether the result of the lesson corresponded with
Mrs. Grosvenor's hopes, may be gathered from the
closing scene of our story. It had been made known
to the fashionable world that Edgar Vaughan had
of Edward Hamilton, had won the affections of the
lovely girl to whom he had been affianced in his boyhood.
The nuptials were to take place at an early
date. One evening, before the day of anticipated bliss
arrived, Edgar Vaughan entered Mrs. Grosvenor's drawing-room,
where he found that lady and Sylph Etherege.
“Only that Sylvia makes no complaint,” remarked
Mrs. Grosvenor, “I should apprehend that the town air
is ill-suited to her constitution. She was always,
indeed, a delicate creature; but now she is a mere gossamer.
Do but look at her! Did you ever imagine
anything so fragile?”
Vaughan was already attentively observing his mistress,
who sat in a shadowy and moonlighted recess of
the room, with her dreamy eyes fixed steadfastly upon
his own. The bough of a tree was waving before the
window, and sometimes enveloped her in the gloom of
its shadow, into which she seemed to vanish.
“Yes,” he said, to Mrs. Grosvenor. “I can scarcely
deem her `of the earth, earthy.' No wonder that I call
her Sylph! Methinks she will fade into the moonlight,
which falls upon her through the window. Or, in the
open air, she might flit away upon the breeze, like a
wreath of mist!”
Sylvia's eyes grew yet brighter. She waved her
hand to Edgar Vaughan, with a gesture of ethereal
triumph.
“Farewell!” she said. “I will neither fade into the
moonlight, nor flit away upon the breeze. Yet you
cannot keep me here!”
There was something in Sylvia's look and tones that
But, as she was rushing towards the girl, Vaughan held
her back.
“Stay!” cried he, with a strange smile of mockery
and anguish. “Can our sweet Sylph be going to
heaven, to seek the original of the miniature?”
| The snow-image | |