Sylph Etherege

by Nathaniel Hawthorne




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 tine cousins, and had
produced an intellectual intimacy, though it could 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 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 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 sylphlike 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, indeed, that there was something
familiar in the countenance, 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. 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 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 viewless air. Mrs. Grosvenor, too, while she watched 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
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 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 returned
from France, and, under the assumed name 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 startled Mrs.
Grosvenor with a terrible apprehension. 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?”