Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day drift away.
This is your time and your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
The finished story.
She always sat in a corner of the west veranda at the hotel knitting something white and fluffy or pink and fluffy or pale blue and fluffy.
Always fluffy at least and always dainty.
Shawls and scarves and hoods the things were I believe.
When she finished one she gave it to some girl and began another.
Every girl at Harbour Light that summer wore some distracting thing that had been fashioned by Miss Sylvia's slim tireless white fingers.
Sylvia was old with that beautiful serene old age which is as beautiful in its way as youth.
Her girlhood and womanhood must have been very lovely to have ripened into such a beauty of 60 years.
It was a surprise to everyone who heard her call Miss Sylvia.
She looked so like a woman who ought to have stalwart grown sons and dimpled little grandchildren.
For the first two days after the arrival at the hotel she sat in her corner alone.
There was always a circle of young people around her.
Old folks and middle-aged people would have liked to join but Miss Sylvia while she was gracious to all let it be distinctly understood her sympathies were with the youth.
She sat among the boys and girls young men and maidens like a fine white queen.
Her dress was always the same and somewhat old-fashioned but nothing else would have suited her half so well.
She wore a lace cap on her snowy hair and a helitrope shawl over her black silk shoulders.
She knitted continually and talked a good deal but listened much more.
We sat around her at all hours of the day and told her everything.
When you were first introduced to Miss Sylvia you called her Miss Stanley Mayne.
Her endurance of that was limited to 24 hours.
Then she begged you to call her Miss Sylvia and as Miss Sylvia you spoke and thought of her forever more.
Miss Sylvia liked us all but I was her favourite.
She told us so frankly and let it be understood that when I was talking to her and her helitrope shawl was allowed to slip under one arm it was a sign we were not to be interrupted.
I was as vain of her favour as every lovelorn suitor whose lady has honoured him not knowing as I came to know her the reason for it.
Although Miss Sylvia had an unlimited capacity for receiving confidences she never gave any.
We were all sure there must be some romance in her life but our efforts to discover it were unsuccessful.
Miss Sylvia parried tentative questions so skilfully we knew she had something to defend.
But one evening when I'd known her for a month as time is reckoned and long years of affection and understanding are computed she told me her story,
At least what there was to tell of it.
The last chapter was missing.
We were sitting together on the verandah at sunset.
Most of the hotel people had gone for an harbour sale.
A few forlorn mortals prowled around the grounds and eyed our corner wistfully but by the sigh of the helitrope shawl they knew it was not for them.
I was reading one of my stories to Miss Sylvia.
In my own excuse I must allege she tempted me to do it.
I did not go around with manuscripts under my arm inflicting them on defenceless females but Miss Sylvia had discovered I was a magazine scribbler and moreover I had shut myself up in my room that very morning and perpetrated a short story.
Nothing would do but that I read it to her.
It was rather a sad little story.
The hero loved the heroine and she loved him.
There was no reason why he should not love her but there was a reason why he could not marry her.
When he found out he loved her he knew he must go away but might he not at least tell her that he loved her?
Might he not at least find out for his consolation if she cared for him?
There was a struggle.
He won and he went away without a word believing it to be the more manly course.
When I began to read this story Miss Sylvia was knitting a pale green something this time of the tender hue of young leaves in May but after a little her knitting slipped unheeded to her nap and her hands folded idly above it.
It was the most subtle compliment I had ever received.
When I turned the last page of the manuscript and looked up Miss Sylvia's soft brown eyes were full of tears.
She lifted her hands clasped them together and said in an agitated voice oh no no don't let him go away without telling her just telling her don't let him do it.
But you see Miss Sylvia I explained flattered beyond a measure my characters had seemed so real.
That would have spoiled the story.
It would have no reason for existence then.
Its motive is simply his mastery over self.
He believes it to be the nobler course.
No it wasn't.
If he loved her he should have told her.
Think of her shame and humiliation.
She loved him and he went without a word.
She could never even know he cared for her.
You must change it you must indeed.
I cannot bear to think of her suffering what I have suffered.
Then Miss Sylvia broke down and sobbed.
To appease her I promised I would remodel the story although I knew that the doing so would leave it absolutely pointless.
Oh I'm so glad said Miss Sylvia her eyes shining through her tears.
You see I know it would make her happier I just know it.
I'm going to tell you my poor little story to convince you but you must not tell it to any of the others.
I'm sorry you think the admonition necessary I said reproachfully.
Indeed I do not she hastened to assure me.
I know I can trust you but it's such a poor little story.
You mustn't have laughed at it.
It's all the romance I had.
Years ago 40 years ago when I was a young girl of 20 I learned to care very much for someone.
I met him at a summer resort like this.
I was there with my aunt and he was there with his mother who was very delicate.
We saw a great deal of each other for a little while.
He was oh he was like no other man I've ever seen.
You remind me of him somehow.
That's partly why I like you so much.
I noticed the resemblance the first time I saw you.
I don't know in just what it consists.
In your expression maybe and the way you carry your head.
He was not strong.
He coughed a good deal then one day he went away suddenly.
I thought he cared for me but he never said so he just went away.
Oh the shame of it.
After a time I heard he'd been ordered to California for his health and he died out there the next spring.
My heart broke then.
I never cared for anybody again.
I couldn't.
I have always loved him.
But it would have been so much easier to bear if I'd only known that he loved me.
Oh it would have made all the difference in the world.
And the sting of it has been here all these years.
I can't even permit myself the joy of dwelling on his memory because of the thought perhaps he did not care for me.
He must have cared I said warmly.
He couldn't have helped it Miss Sylvia.
Miss Sylvia shook her head with a sad smile.
I cannot be sure.
Sometimes I think he did but then the doubt creeps back in.
I would give almost anything to know he cared.
To know I'd not lavished all the love of my life on a man who did not want it.
But now I can never know.
Never.
You don't understand.
A man couldn't fully understand what my pain has been over it.
You see now why I want you to change the story.
I'm sorry for that poor girl in your story.
But if you only let her know he really loves her she will not mind all the rest so very much.
She will be able to bear the pain of lifelong separation if she only knows.
Miss Sylvia then picked up her knitting and went away.
As for me I thought savagely of the dead man she loved and called him a cad or at best a fool.
The next day Miss Sylvia was her serene smiling self again and she could not make any reference to what she told me.
A fortnight later she returned home and I went my way back to the wall.
During the following winter I wrote several letters to Miss Sylvia and received several replies from her.
Her letters were very like herself.
When I sent her the third-rate magazine containing my story nothing but a third-rate magazine would take its rewritten form.
She would then write to say she was so glad I had let the poor girl know.
Early in April I received a letter from an aunt of mine in the country saying she intended to sell her place and come up to the city to live.
She asked me to go out to Sweetwater for a few weeks and assist her in the business of setting up the estate.
When I arrived at Sweetwater I found it moist and chill with the sunny moisture and teasing chill of our Canadian springs.
They're long and fickle and reluctant these springs of ours but oh the unnameable charm.
There was something even in the red buds of the maples at Sweetwater and the long smoking stretches of hillside fields that sent a thrill through my veins.
A week after my arrival when we'd got the larger affairs pretty well straightened out Aunt Mary suggested I'd better overhaul Uncle Alan's room.
The things there have never been meddled with since he died,
Said she.
In particular there's an old trunk full of his letters and his papers.
It was brought over from California after his death.
I never examined them.
I don't suppose there's anything of any importance.
But I'm not going to carry all that rubbish to town so I wish you'd look over them.
If there's anything that should be kept keep it and the rest may be burned.
I felt no particular interest in this task.
My uncle Alan Blair was a mere name to me.
He was my mother's eldest brother and had died years before I was even born.
I had heard he'd been very clever and great things had been expected of him.
But I anticipated no pleasure from exploring musty old letters and papers of 40 neglected years.
I went up to Uncle Alan's room at dusk that night.
We had been having a day of warm spring rain but it had cleared away and the bare maple boughs outside the window were strung with glistening drops.
The room looked to the north and was always dim by reason of the close growing sweetwater pines.
A gap had been cut through to the northwest and in it I had a glimpse of the sea that Uncle Alan had loved.
Above it hung a wondrous sunset sky fleeced over with little clouds pale and pink and golden and green that suddenly reminded me of Miss Sylvia and her fluffy knitting.
It was with the thought of her in my mind I lighted a lamp and began the task of grubbing into Uncle Alan's trunk full of papers.
There were several college papers and essays and a lot of loose miscellanea pertaining to boyhood days.
I went through the collection rapidly until at the bottom of the trunk I came to a small book bound in dark green leather.
It proved to be a sort of journal and I began to glance over it with languid interest.
It had been begun in the spring after he'd graduated from college.
Although suspected only by himself the disease which was to end his life had already fastened upon him.
The entries were those of a doomed man who,
Feeling the curse fall upon him like a frost blighting all the fair hopes and promises of life seeks some help and consolation in the outward self-communing of a journal.
There was nothing morbid though,
Nothing unmanly.
As I read I found myself liking him and wishing he might have lived and been my friend.
His mother had not been well that summer and the doctor ordered her to the seashore.
He accompanied her and he incurred a hiatus in the journal.
No leaves had been torn out but a quire or so of them had apparently become loosened from the threads that held them in place.
I found them later on in the trunk but at the time I passed to the next page it began abruptly.
This thing is the girl,
The sweetest thing that God ever made.
I'd not known a woman could be so fair and sweet.
Her beauty awes me,
The purity of her soul shines so clearly like an illuminating lamp.
I must not seek her love though.
If I were well and strong I should win it,
Yes.
I believe I could win it and nothing in the world would prevent me from trying.
But as things are it would be part of a coward to try.
It would have been hard to die without having known love and I'm glad it's come to me,
Even if its price is unspeakable bitterness.
A man has not lived for nothing who has known and loved Sylvia Stanley Mayne.
She is in my thoughts day and night.
Oh Sylvia,
I love you my sweet.
A week later there was another entry.
July 17th.
I'm afraid today I met Sylvia's eyes and in them was a look which at first stirred my heart to its deeps with a tumultuous delight.
Then I remembered I must spare her that suffering at whatever cost to myself.
Then July 18th.
This morning I took the train to the city.
I was determined to know the worst once and for all.
The time had come when I must.
My doctor at home had put me off with vague hopes.
So I went to a noted physician in the city.
I told him I wanted the whole truth.
I made him tell me it.
I'd expected it,
Although not quite so soon.
I have perhaps eight months or a year to live.
July 19th.
It is over.
I said goodbye to Sylvia today before others for I dared not trust myself to see her alone.
She looked hurt as if someone had struck her but she will soon forget.
Even if I have not been mistaken in the reading of her eyes.
As for me,
The bitterness of death is already over in that parting.
All that now remains is to play the man to the end.
From further entries in the journal,
I learned Alan Blair had returned to Sweetwater and later on ordered to California.
The entries during his sojourn,
There were few and far between and in all of them he spoke of Sylvia.
After a long silence,
He wrote,
I think the end's not far off now.
I'm not sorry for myself.
It's been great of late.
Last night I was easier and I slept and dreamed that I saw Sylvia.
Once more I thought I would arrange to have this book sent to her after my death.
But I decided it would be unwise.
It's sunset in this wonderful summer land.
I shall destroy it when I feel the time has come.
If I could but see her once more.
Then there was a little blot where the pen had fallen.
Evidently the end had been nearer than Alan Blair thought.
At least there were no more entries and the little green book had not been destroyed.
I was glad it had not been and I felt glad that it was thus put in my power to write the last chapter of Miss Sylvia's story.
As soon as I could leave Sweetwater,
I went to the city 300 miles away where Miss Sylvia lived.
I found her in the library in her black silk dress and shawl knitting up cream wool for all the world as if she'd just been transplanted from the veranda corner of Harbour Light.
My dear boy,
She said.
Do you know why I've come?
I asked.
I'm vain enough to think it's because you wanted to see me.
She smiled.
I did want to see you but I'd never have waited till summer if it had not been I wish to bring you the missing chapter of your story.
I don't understand.
I had an uncle,
Alan Blair.
He died 40 years ago in California.
Recently I've had occasion to examine some of his papers and I found a journal among them.
I brought it to you because I think you have the best right to it.
I dropped the parcel in Miss Sylvia's lap and she was silent with surprise and bewilderment.
Now,
I added,
I'm going away.
You won't want to see me or anyone for a while after you've read this.
But I will come to see you tomorrow.
When I went to see her the next day,
Miss Sylvia herself met me at the door.
She caught my hand and drew me into the hall and her eyes were softly radiant.
You've made me so happy,
She said tremulously.
You can never know how happy.
Nothing hurts now,
Nothing can ever hurt because I know he did care.
Then she lay her face down on my shoulder as a girl might have nestled to her lover and I bent and kissed her for my dear Uncle Alan.
