Part of the steadying effect of her engagement expressed itself in a sincere desire to stop the unsatisfactory flitting from flower to flower process, sipping honey here and there, into which she had drifted during the restless winter months past. She had had enough tasting of experience and honestly sought serious employment for her energies.
Luckily there was always plenty to occupy her on the Hill. More and more the Byrd sisters came to depend on her, especially as Julietta was now away getting acquainted with her grandson, Gloria's boy, recently arrived upon this planet. The girls at "Hester house," and Hope and Martha, also came in for a generous share of her attention. The old buoyant, radiant Sylvia seemed to have come back to them, ready to cheer and comfort and command at need. Never was her genius for happiness more in demand or more in evidence than it was that February. It seemed as if everything had been awry and sad and bad while she had been away in the city and that now she was home it must all just naturally straighten itself out.
She took up her music again with rigorous hours of practice. She fulfilled her long made threat of learning to cook, much to Aunt Mandy's pride and delight in her role as chief professor of the culinary arts. She went in, seriously, this time, into Red Cross work, organizing a unit which she kept sternly to its task of rolling bandages and all the rest of the necessary if rather prosaic labor. She also got under way a class in first aid instruction under the tuition of a young doctor whom Tom Daly had recommended, too busy himself to take on any new duties.
Doctor Tom and Sylvia saw a great deal of each other off and on but always in the comfortable, wholesome, brother and sister relation which their November interlude had interrupted but not destroyed. Sylvia was often at the cottage playing with the babies whom she adored and kept out of Lois' way as often as possible so that the latter might have time for the typing of her book which was almost ready for the publisher's hands. Marianna and Donald, too, came in for a large share of Sylvia's time. For them she spun rare tales old and new and rendered Kim and the Water Babies, the Immortal Alice and other beloved favorites of the realms of gold until she knew them nearly by heart. With the children Sylvia was happiest of all. Living in their world she almost forgot her own, which in spite of her boasted contentment did not wholly satisfy her. She had learned that the busier she was, the better life seemed, leaving fewer crannies and nooks for doubts and wonders to seep in.
Of course there was plenty of gayety both in Greendale and in the near-by city, but she steadily refused to go in for an excess of this kind of thing, though here, too, she and Jack came near to dissension. It must be admitted Jack was scarcely so assiduous a devotee of business now that he felt his assiduity no longer essential to the winning of his liege lady. He was ready now to enjoy the fruits of his labor and have a thoroughly frivolous holiday with Sylvia as mistress of the revels. But just as he wanted to cut loose Sylvia wanted to go sedately. He complained that he saw infinitely less of her now he was engaged to her than he had when he was not, and resented somewhat sharply the thousand and one claims and duties which Sylvia acknowledged. Yet the two never really quarreled. Jack was too sunny-tempered and Sylvia too tactful, and on the whole they were very happy together, Sylvia, oddly enough, happier than Jack.
Meanwhile the war went on overseas and men began to shake their heads and prophesy that we would be in it soon. But that was still nineteen hundred and fifteen and we kept out. About this time came a letter from Hilda, the first in many months. The chief item told simply and with scarcely any comment was that Bertram had been killed early in October. "I can hardly realize it or feel it," wrote Hilda. "It is getting to be an old story over here. Women see their lovers and their sons and their husbands go and they don't come back, or if they do, they come maimed and crippled, only the shadow of the men that went forth. In the meanwhile we try to heal as many as we can, though it is discouraging to heal them and send them back to be killed outright perhaps next time."
The letter and its sad news had haunted Sylvia for a long time. What a strange romance Hilda's had been--so brief it must almost have seemed a dream! She had known Bertram only a few weeks in August. By the first of September they had become engaged. A week later he had gone to the front. In October he had been overtaken by death. And that was the end. What a waste there was to it all!
Half consciously all that month Sylvia expected to hear that Barb and Phil were engaged. She had long since made up her mind that that particular consummation was natural, even desirable. She, herself, was far too sane a person to spend many moments prying among ashes to see if any sparks remained. Nor would she permit herself to regret that which had perhaps never been more than moonshine and dream stuff. She was able to persuade herself quite easily that since she was able to be so placidly happy without Phil she had never needed him overmuch. That miracle moment on Lover's Leap and that other music intoxicated moment in December came to seem to her mere magic casements through which she had looked for the briefest interval of time into another world, essentially unreal, fantastic, a sort of mirage of the soul. And mirages were not in Sylvia's line, so she did not often let herself remember those irrevocable moments.
Once in her desultory reading she came across a little poem called "Remembrance," one stanza of which particularly haunted her.
Not unto the forest--not unto the forest, O my lover!
Take me from the silence of the forest!
I will love you by the light and the beat of drums at night
And echoing of laughter in my ears,
But here in the forest
I am still, remembering a forgotten, useless thing,
And my eyelids are locked down for fear of tears--
There is memory in the forest.