From "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales"
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
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 of wealth and fashion, and Sylvia's nearest relative, 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
The simplicity of Sylvia's demeanor rendered it easy for so
keen an observer as
In a few weeks after
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. Many, in their youth, have visited that land of dreams, 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
Before the close of summer, it was told Sylvia Etherege that
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 visitor.
"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
"Indeed, madam!" replied
"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 returned from
"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?"
"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 startled
Mrs. Grosvenor with a terrible apprehension.
But, as she was rushing towards the girl,
"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?"