After Many Years

by Carolyn Strom Collins

  Yet often the pretty picture Sylvia and her little cats made in the prim, stately, haunted old garden charmed him. He wished that he were an artist and could paint her. Failing that, he wrote her into his new serial so vividly that she took possession of it and played hob with his plot. It would never do for the magazine he meant it for, or any other, and his summer’s work would go for nothing and he would be minus several hundred dollars and be on short commons for the winter. But still he wrote on at it, and would have nothing to do with any other tale.

  Occasionally he talked to Samuel about it and Samuel told of it, what seemed good unto him, to Miss Edgelow. Samuel was not satisfied with what he had done. He had meant to keep those two apart and had not succeeded. He had meant to keep Romney to himself, and Romney spent all the time he was not in the tower room at work, mooning about in the Whispering Lane with Miss Edgelow. Samuel was disgruntled, and took his revenge as he might.

  Both Romney and Miss Edgelow made a great pet of him, but that did not worry the vacuum where his conscience wasn’t in the least. He was an artistic liar and never told either of them anything that sounded out of keeping. So they kept on believing him and mistrusting each other and hankering for each other and meeting each other. Aunt Elizabeth and old Jim were not supposed to know anything about it and perhaps they didn’t.

  Miss Edgelow was very curious about the story Romney was writing of which she was the heroine. But he never mentioned it to her and she would not betray Samuel by mentioning it to him. She vowed, though, that he should have a final scene for it which he would never forget, and, with this in view, she was as sweet to him as if she had really been the coquette he believed her—and perhaps she was.

  At least, she was secretly much dissatisfied with her progress. Romney said delicious things to her and looked things still more delicious and played the part of devoted admirer to perfection. But Miss Edgelow wanted more than admiration. To spurn admiration would inflict no real wound, teach no lasting lesson. She wanted him to love her, so that he might feel it to the core of his soul when she finally laughed at him and dismissed him.

  And so far, in spite of three weeks’ delectable companionship and pretty speeches and prettier silences and moons and stars and kittens, she could give herself no assurance that he really cared a penny’s worth for her. Her failure annoyed her and caused her to say sarcastic things to old Jim.

  Romney considered that he was still a wise and prudent young man. He congratulated himself on his ability to refrain from loving not wisely but too well when there was such temptation to it. Not many men, he reflected, would have kept their heads in the face of such provocation, even though they knew her for a professed flirt and themselves for paupers. They would have been fools and fallen fathoms deep in love without being able to help themselves. Now he, Romney, was not a fool.

  True, sometimes at three o’clock at night wisdom and prudence seemed rather ugly and sordid virtues, and Romney thought it might have been just as well to let himself go, to put his neck under her scornful little foot and let her play with his heart and throw it away, and spend all his wealth and power of loving in one splendid, unreasonable, unreasoning burst of folly. But around the rest of the clock he was complacent and kept telling himself he had done well to keep fast hold of his heart.

  This was his state of mind when Clifford Hughes came to see him. Hughes was the owner of the string of magazines for one of which Romney had once intended his serial. Hughes wanted to know about the serial and was disgruntled because Romney told him it would never do.

  But that was not really what Hughes had come to talk about. He had fallen hopelessly in love and got himself engaged and he was so blindly, besottedly happy that he had to tell somebody all about the affair, and Romney was the only fellow he could tell about it. Romney had always been a dreamy, romantic chap. Romney would sympathize with him. So he sat in the tower room and raved for hours.

  Romney listened and sympathized, and grew more dismayed every minute. This fellow Hughes was saying about his lady just what he, Romney, wanted to say about Sylvia. This fellow Hughes was disgustingly happy in the very way he, Romney, wanted to be happy—in the very way he could be happy if Sylvia loved him as Hughes’ lady loved him. Romney was shocked and alarmed and upset, and didn’t know what he was saying to Hughes half the time. He only realized that a truly dreadful state of affairs had come about all at once.

  He loved Sylvia, loved her just as wholly and madly as ever a man loved a woman. How could he have been so blind and besotted as not to have known it before? Why, he had loved her from the moment he had first seen her in the Edgelow garden! And she didn’t care a snap for him, and he couldn’t ask her to marry him if she did, and how was he ever to get himself past three o’clock that night? Then he would realize his position to the full. And even now it was quite unbearable.

  “Hello,” said Hughes, looking out of the window. “Who’s the pretty girl over there, Cooper?”

  “Pretty girl!” Hopeless idiot! Blind bat! Couldn’t he see that Sylvia was the most beautiful woman in the world?

  “Syl—Dorcas Edgelow,” said Romney indifferently.

  “Know her?”

  “I’ve a nodding acquaintance with her,” said Romney indifferently. “You know there’s an old feud between the families. It has petered out pretty well in our generation, but it doesn’t make for cordiality.”

  “I see. Pity. She’s really quite nice looking.” Then Hughes dropped the subject. To prevent any possible return to it Romney took him fishing. He forgot to ask Samuel and Samuel was so furious that he went straight to Miss Edgelow and told her that he had been fishing with them and heard them talking about her, and Romney had told the city man that she was a nice small thing and that he could have her for the asking, but didn’t mean to ask because he was too poor and a wife was a nuisance anyway.

  Samuel, being angry, was less artistic than usual and for the first time Miss Edgelow wondered if he was not painting the lily. He looked so guileless and cherubic that it was hard to believe it of him; but really Romney Cooper didn’t seem like a man who would say such things to a friend about any girl. Nevertheless, Samuel couldn’t be making it all up out of whole cloth; something must have been said.

  She was very disdainful and saucy when Romney came that night to the Whispering Lane. But all her disdain and sauciness didn’t keep her away from the lane nor from making a very careful toilet before she went there nor from looking radiantly entrancing when she got there.

  “So your friend has gone?” she said.

  “Yes, thank Heaven,” said Romney. “If he had stayed any longer I should have gone crazy.”

  “Do your friends always have that effect on you?

  “No, not always. But he is engaged to be married. He was so insultingly happy that I couldn’t tolerate him. And he kept talking about his lady fair when I wanted to be talking about mine.”

  “O, so you have one?” Miss Edgelow tucked a kitten under her chin and spoke only with languid interest.

  “Yes. I’ve never told you about her, have I?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “May I? I suppose I’ve caught the infection from Hughes. I want to talk about her to-night. You don’t mind?”

  “O, no,” quite graciously.

  “Her name,” began Romney gravely, “is Sylvia. It couldn’t be anything else. Sylvia is the only name in any language that absolutely suits and expresses her.”

  “We had an old black cook once named Sylvia,” murmured Miss Edgelow reminiscently. “Go on.”

  “Her name is Sylvia. She is about five feet six. She has jet-black hair that grows off her face in a widow’s peak. She has a creamy skin and lips as red as the rose of love. She has wonderful hands. She has straight black brows. She has eyes that are—why, I swear they are dark, dark blue! It has only come home to me this minute what colour they really are.
She has such a trick of veiling them with her lashes, you know.”

  “She has no imperfections, of course,” said Miss Edgelow, a trifle contemptuously.

  “O, yes. She isn’t Tennyson’s Maud at all; not ‘faultily faultless,’ not she. She has a number of little golden freckles and her nose is—is—”

  “Crooked?” suggested Miss Edgelow.

  She smiled a bit.

  “No, no—not crooked. I swear it’s not crooked. Just a trifle more than aquiline.”

  Miss Edgelow was quite angry. She knew—let it be accounted unto her for vanity or not—that Romney was describing her to her face. He was trying out a scene for his story in all probability.

  “It will be very witchlike when she grows old, no doubt.”

  “Sylvia will never grow old,” said Romney. “She is the incarnation of eternal youth.”

  “Does this paragon return your affection?” dared Miss Edgelow.

  “Alas, no. She laughs at me. She mocks me. She doesn’t care for me at all. It’s just as well, of course. I can’t marry her, you see.”

  “Why not?” Miss Edgelow’s lashes hid her eyes very securely.

  “She is rich and going to be richer. I am poor and will probably be poorer. Besides, as aforesaid, she doesn’t and couldn’t care for me.”

  “This,” thought Miss Edgelow, “is the point in the story where I should say, ‘Have you asked her?’ with the soft pedal on. I shall not say anything of the sort. Instead I shall say:

  “You are very likely correct in your opinion.”

  “I know I am,” said Romney, folding his arms and scowling ferociously at space. “I know I am. But O, you have no idea how madly I love her! How madly I shall always love her!”

  “How many girls have you loved—always—before her?” asked Miss Edgelow impertinently.

  “Not one. I never even fancied I loved before.”

  “How interesting. Now I—” Miss Edgelow paused, and went through the motions of a blush. “I have been in love, or imagined myself in love, several times. Three, to be exact. Yet I am soundly heart-whole at the present moment. So you see there is hope of your ultimate recovery.”

  “I shall never recover. I don’t want to recover. Why didn’t you marry those men?”

  “It is not permitted to marry three men,” said Miss Edgelow plaintively. “And there were other reasons. One of them was a young lawyer. He was the handsomest man I have ever known.”

  “He had piggy eyes. I swear he had piggy eyes,” said Romney viciously.

  “He had not. And he made love so artistically. It was quite a pleasure to listen to him.”

  “He must have had heaps of practice”—still more viciously.

  “The same idea occurred to me,” said Miss Edgelow composedly. “I think that was why I didn’t marry him. A man with a talent like that couldn’t bury it in a napkin. He’d have to keep on using it. The second object of my affections was a professor of McGill. He was the cleverest man I ever met.”

  “Moon-face, pursy-mouth, tortoise-shell glasses! I can see him,” said Romney.

  “He was very intellectual looking,” murmured Miss Edgelow. “And yet he asked my opinion about things. That was his way of making love. It was agreeable. But I had a presentiment that after we were married he would stop asking my opinions. That would not be agreeable.”

  “There was a third, I think,” said Romney, seeing that Miss Edgelow had lapsed into apparent reverie.

  “O, yes, there was a third. Note the tense. He is—was—moderately good looking and moderately clever. I think I liked him better than any of the others.”

  “Why didn’t you marry him?”

  “He didn’t ask me to. He…he told me he loved another lady. He even described her to me, talked to me about her. I couldn’t with any self-respect care for him one moment after that, could I?”

  Miss Edgelow shot an upward glance at Romney before her concluding words. Romney remembered what Samuel had said old Mary Edgelow had said, “She can’t help making eyes at any man who happens to be around.”

  “She is luring me on,” he thought miserably. “I won’t be lured. She can laugh at me in her sleeve but she shall not have the satisfaction of laughing at me openly!”

  He strode on in silence. They turned at the gate and walked back. At the entrance to the lane they paused. The old Edgelow house and garden, drowned in lilac sunset light, incredibly delicate and elusive, lay below them in a dip at the long Hill. They stood and looked down on it.

  After a long silence Miss Edgelow said dreamily: “It is a house of memories. I am haunted by them. So many Edgelow women, and all unhappy! There has never been a happy Edgelow woman; or if they were happy they were never happy long. Some of them deserved their unhappiness; some of them didn’t. I wonder—” Miss Edgelow looked reflective “—in which class I shall belong.”

  “She has taken a new tack. She is trying to play on my sympathy now,” thought Romney. “She is not content with my veiled avowal. She must have my scalp to dangle openly at her belt. She can’t claim it yet because her name is not Sylvia.”

  “Some of the Edgelow men were to blame for their women’s unhappiness, weren’t they?” he said.

  “Yes, some. I think Uncle Jim must have been a horrid sort of husband. I was here one summer when I was a little girl. I have never forgotten Aunt Fanny’s eyes. She died by inches through the years. Most of the other tragedies were sudden and speedy.”

  “Tell me about them—if you don’t mind talking about them.”

  “O, I don’t. I’m rather proud of my family ghosts and demons. I shall be one of them some day, and I shall come and haunt this old place. Our house in Montreal isn’t really ghostable. I shall wander about this old garden and my ghost chum will be Thyra Edgelow, Great-uncle Fairfax’s bride. Just a few weeks after her marriage she went gayly out to those woods away over there to gather nuts and never returned.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “That question has been asked a thousand times and never answered. She simply vanished from among the living that autumn afternoon. No trace of her was ever discovered. Some thought she must have been drowned in the river and her body swept out to sea. Some thought—but there were all sorts of surmises. She hadn’t wanted to marry Fairfax Edgelow, it seems. She was a gay, merry creature.

  “Then there were Tom and Dorothy Edgelow. They were married children; he was nineteen and she was seventeen. They had one glorious summer in that old house at least. He was Grandfather Edgelow’s brother. They both died in the same week of typhoid. Great-aunt Edith was a wonderful musician and very ambitious. One of her hands was so mangled by a door slamming on it that she could never play again. She went insane brooding over it. Uncle Jim’s sister, Aunt Lilian, was killed by lightning in the room I sleep in, struck while trying on her wedding dress. The Edgelow fate seems to have a special hatred of our brides. None of us have been happy in our love affairs. It’s the old Edgelow curse, you know. We have a family curse as well as a family feud, you see.”

  “I never heard of the curse. What of it?”

  “My great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Edgelow, was a harsh creditor. He sold out at a chattel mortgage sale the household possessions of a poor old woman. She cursed him and his descendants. ‘Your women shall never be happy,’ she said. ‘One and all they shall die in sorrow, as I die.’ She hanged herself that night. Do you believe in curses? I don’t. But it is the truth that there has never since that day been a happy Edgelow woman, whether she was Edgelow by birth or Edgelow by marriage.

  “Uncle Jim’s father was blinded by an explosion of his gun three months after he was married to Cora Graham, the great beauty. And after that he made her life wretched through his jealousy for fifty years. For they lived together that long and he never seemed to realize that she had grown old. He was as madly jealous of h
er when she was seventy as when she was twenty.

  “Katherine Edgelow was jilted by her lover. She never went out of that house afterward except once. When her false lover was married in Clifton Church she dressed herself in widow’s weeds and went to the wedding. She stood a little behind the bridal party during the ceremony; nobody dared interfere with her. The bride fainted when she turned and saw her. Katherine was living when I was here that summer long ago. She was incredibly old and I was terribly frightened.

  “But the bitterest of our ghosts must be my great-great-grandmother Edgelow. She was jealous. She thought her husband loved Adella Cooper. That was the beginning of the Edgelow-Cooper feud, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. I never knew what began it; I thought it was something trivial. What did your great-great-grandmother do?”

  “She met her husband one night when he was returning, so she thought, from Adella, and threw vitriol in his face. He was blinded for life.”

  Romney shuddered. The sun had dropped into a bank of western cloud and a chill and a shadow swept over Hill o’ the Winds and rolled down its sides to the valley.

  “At least she was in earnest. She didn’t play at loving,” he said, as they turned away.

  “No; but wouldn’t it have been better if she had?” retorted Miss Edgelow.

  “Undoubtedly. Yet I think I rather like ladies who love in earnest.”

  “Would your Sylvia love in earnest?”

  “If she loved me at all. But you see, she doesn’t.”

  “Are you quite sure she doesn’t?”

  “Quite.”

  “And you are quite sure you couldn’t marry her if she did?”

  “Quite.”

  “So it is a blessing she doesn’t?”

  “Exactly.”

  Miss Edgelow turned to the gate that opened from the Whispering Lane into the Edgelow garden.

  “I think,” she said, “that I am going to be very busy for the rest of my stay here.”