She thrust the lamp forward, peered into my face, and said, with not the faintest trace of a smile or the slightest evidence of embarrassment:
"Why, that's all right, Johnny Stanhope. I accept your apology. Come right in."
I went in. We sat in the sitting-room and talked of our school-days and our fortunes. I told her how I had gone down to the city, how I had prospered, of my adventures in the world, of my marriage—dealing very gently with my relations with the late Mrs. Stanhope—of my bereavement and present idyllic existence. And she told me of herself, how she had lived on and on in the little cottage, caring only for the support and education of her niece, Phyllis Kinglake, an orphan for nearly twenty years. "You remember Sylvia?" she said, with the first touch of emotion.
Did I remember Sylvia? My little fair-haired playmate with the large eyes and the blue veins showing through the delicate beauty of her face? Little Sylvia, who first won my boyish affection, and with whom I made a solemn contract of marriage when we were only seven years old? Did I not remember how I would pass her house on my way to school, and stand at the gate and whistle until she came shyly out, with her face as red as her little hood and tippet, and give me her books to carry, and protest with the ever present coquetry of girlhood that she thought I had gone long ago? Could I ever forget how I saved my coppers, one by one, until I had accumulated a sum large enough to buy a whole cocoanut, which I presented to her in the proudest moment of my life, and how the other girls tossed their heads with the affectation of a sneer, and with pretended indifference to this astonishing stroke of fortune? And that fatal evening when I provoked my little beauty's wrath, and in all the receding opportunities of "Post-Office" and "Copenhagen" she had turned her face and rosy lips away from me, until the world was black with a hopeless despair? And the singing-school where she was our shining ornament, and that blissful night when I stood up with her in the village church, while we sang our duet descriptive of the special virtues of some particular flower nominated in the cantata? And how, growing older and shyer, we still preserved our youthful fancy even to the day I struck out into the world, both believing in the endurance of the tie that would draw me back? What caprice of fate is it that dispels the illusions of youth and restores them tenfold in the reflection of after years and over the gulf of the grave? Did I remember Sylvia?
Then Mary went on to tell me of Sylvia's happy marriage to George Kinglake, how, when little Phyllis had come, and the world was at its brightest, the parents had been stricken down in the same week by a virulent disease, and how, with her dying breath, the mother had asked her sister to look after her little one and protect her from sorrow and harm. Very simply this stern-featured woman told the story of her efforts to do her duty to her sister's child, and it seemed to me that her face grew softer and her voice gentler as she went over the years they had grown older together, while the beauty of this woman's life was glorified by the willing sacrifices of imposed motherhood. I could not see Phyllis, for she was spending the night with friends in another part of the village. Next time, she hoped, I might be more successful.
Walking slowly to the tavern my mind still went back to my little playmate and the golden days of youth, and if my heart grew a little tenderer, and my eyes were moistened by the recall, what need to be ashamed of the emotion? And if in the night I dreamed that I was a boy again, and that a fair-haired child played with me in the changing glow of dreamland in the best and purest scenes of the human comedy, was it a delusion to be dispelled, a memory to be put aside? Did I remember Sylvia?
THE thought that my train was to leave at ten o'clock did not depress me as I awoke, with the sunlight streaming through the window, for, after all, I was obliged to admit that the monotony of Meadowvale and the sluggishness of my village friends were beginning to have an appreciable effect. Then the memory of little Sylvia came to me again, and nothing seemed pleasanter, as a benediction to the old days, than a visit to the burying-ground where she was sleeping. The previous day I had paid the obligations of remembrance and respect to the graves of my kindred, and it gave me at first an uncomfortable feeling to realize that the thought of them was less potent than the recollection of this young girl. But was it strange or inexcusable? Had they not lived out their lives of honored usefulness, and grown old and weary of the battle? And had not she passed away just as the greater joys of living were unfolding, and the assurance of happiness was the stronger? Poor Sylvia!
The spectacle of a correctly dressed, middle-aged man passing down the street, bearing a somewhat cumbersome burden of lilies-of-the-valley and forget-me-nots, must have had its peculiar significance to the inhabitants of the village, and many curious glances were my reward. I passed along, however, without explanations in distinct violation of rural etiquette. The old caretaker of the burying-ground met me at the entrance and gave me the directions—second path to the right, half way up the hill, just to the left of the big elm. The old man had known me as a boy and would have detained me in conversation, but I pleaded that my time was short, and reluctantly he let me go my way. Slowly up the hill I walked, occasionally pausing to place a forget-me-not on the grave of one I had known in childhood. Even old Barrows did not escape my passing tribute—a cynical, cross-grained old fellow, the aversion of the boys, who tormented him and whom he tormented with reciprocal vigor. No need of a forget-me-not for Barrows, for he never forgot anything, so I gave his somewhat neglected grave the token of a long stem of little lilies, in evidence that the past was forgiven, and moved on to avoid possible protestation.