Alcott Readathon 2018: Moods (1882)
Chapter 1: Sylvia
The Warwick/Ottila opening is gone, and the original Ch 2 is now Ch 1. Prue attempts to get her younger sister Sylvia out of bed, she resists, etc. When she's working in her garden she wears a short skirt, not trousers. Thus Moor's thoughts are different - "What a changeful thing it is! haunting one's premises unseen, and stealing one's books unsuspected; dreaming one half the day and masquerading the other half. What will happen next? Let us see but not be seen, lest the boy turn shy and run away before the pretty play is done!" becomes “What a changeful thing it is! haunting one's premises unseen, and stealing one's books unsuspected; dreaming one half the day and working hard the other half. What will happen next?"
Sylvia decides that Moor could be her friend.
Chapter 2: Moor
She returns Goethe's Wilhelm Meister to him and they walk in his garden with Tilly, the gardener's little girl. “It is so old-fashioned and well kept,” she says. He describes the uses of each herb. She asks if the bees ever sting Tilly and he says, no, children and animals understand one another. Some people like his friend never lose this understanding.
She visits his library and wonders what it might be like to be his . . . sister. He has a picture of Goethe, comparing him to Warwick. They sound even gayer than they did before. She also admires the painting of his mother.
Chapter 3: Dull, But Necessary
It does make sense to have this come earlier. John Yule made an impulsive marriage and came to regret it, and when Mrs. Yule died after giving birth to Sylvia she said "Free at last, thank God for that!" Whoa. So Sylvia never had a mother, and LMA tells us she never had a friend either, until Moor came along. She's interested in whether, having attended to his dead sister's physical ills, he can heal her mental ills.
The chapter opens by saying that readers who don't care for non-action can skip it. I love that.
Chapter 4: Warwick
A windy day follows a stormy night. After spending most of the day inside, Sylvia can't resist heading to the ocean.
"Ah, this is glorious!" sighed the girl, with a long breath of the sweet cold air that came winging its way across the wide Atlantic to refresh her. "Now I shall be happy, and can sing my heart out without disturbing any one."
Wrapping her cloak about her, she leaned in the recess that made her favorite seat, and let her voice rise and ring above the turmoil of the waves, as if she too felt the need of pouring out the restless spirit pent up in that young breast of hers. Sweet and shrill sounded the mingled music, and the wind caught it up to carry it with flecks of foam, sea scents, and flying leaves to the cliffs above, where a solitary figure stood to watch the storm.
She sings the same song Emil does in Jo's Boys. The tide comes in, stranding her on her cliff (at least temporarily). Warwick comes and lifts her up. “Next time you play Undine have a boat near, for there may be no Kuhlborn at hand to save you,” he says. She insists she could have swam and thanks him. She was crying for her mother and would have been glad to meet her. Due to the painting she recognizes him, and he's heard about her from her brother Max.
At home, she asks Max about Warwick. "Violently virtuous. He is a masterful soul, bent on living out his beliefs and aspirations at any cost; much given to denunciation of wrong-doing everywhere, and eager to execute justice upon all offenders high or low. Yet he possesses great nobility of character, great audacity of mind, and leads a life of the sternest integrity."
Blech. He cautions her that Moor might fall in love with her.
Warwick and Sylvia talk - he doesn't think Jessie is pretty because her face has no character. They both like Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, and Warwick has even met him. She thinks he's like the book. Max is a book of pictures of varying quality, Prue is a recipe book, Moor is good poetry. Warwick compares her to The Story without an End.
Chapter 5: Afloat
“I don't know why I must sit here and hem night-cap strings when the world is full of pleasant places and delightful people, if only I could be allowed to go and find them,” says our heroine to herself, echoing many modern 17-year-old girls.
Max says she can come on their trip if Mr. Yule and Prue say yes, though it will scandalize her. Sylvia says she went to a camping party last year, and everyone there was siblings or cousins. I'm not sure that argument holds up, given the amount of kissing cousins in these books.
They sail down the river; it's very busy. LMA describes the scenery, then Sylvia takes her turn at rowing. Max asks Warwick to sing for them.
They make camp and Sylvia performs a few scenes from Shakespeare. “What a lover she will make when the time comes,” Moor thinks. But Warwick enjoys it most of all.
The part with the cow is unchanged.
Chapter 6: Through Flood and Field and Fire
The scene with the book still makes me Hulk out.
Sylvia: “I should know a man made your basket and a woman mine.”
Warwick: “Because one is ugly and strong, the other graceful but unable to stand alone?”
They pick berries and lilies. A wood is on fire and Sylvia walks in that direction to get a better view. She gets a little too close and he rescues her again. “Obedience is an old-fashioned virtue, which you would do well to cultivate along with your common sense, young lady,” he says.
When they get back to the river their boat has floated away, so they must cross the bridge to meet Max and Moor. Sylvia dresses Warwick's burns. After she goes to bed he says to Max wow, she's a handful and randomly tells Moor he should marry.
Chapter 7: A Golden Wedding
A thunder-shower causes the foursome to seek refuge at the nearest house. A "lively old woman" welcomes them in. She and her husband are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with their seven sons, three daughters, their kids-in-law, and four dozen grandchildren.
They have a feast: pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; every possible article of food, from baked beans to wedding cake, finding a place on that sacrificial altar.Then dancing and singing. Abraham ends the night with an old-fashioned prayer that touches Sylvia more than any she has heard before.
Chapter 8: Sermons
Sermons? Oh joy.
The next day Warwick watches Sylvia nap, seeing “not only what she was, but what she might be.” He starts daydreaming about marrying her.
Moor recites Herbert's hymn “Lord, with what care you have begirt us round.” Warwick gives the sermon - he claims Max's besetting sin is indolence. The younger man needs a purpose. Moor lives too much for others and not enough for himself. If he continues this way “the feminine in you will get the uppermost.” Shut up, Adam.
Sylvia: “What must I do?”
Warwick: “Forget yourself.”
Sylvia: “Show me how”
Warwick: “My panacea for most troubles is work.”
Warwick's own flaw is a lack of mercy toward oppressors.
Moor, upon being asked, advises her to turn to Nature to find God.
Chapter 9: Why Sylvia Was Happy
Prue tells her, “Ever since that wild trip up the river you have been growing quiet, lovable, and cheerful, and I really begin to hope that you will become like other people.” And she's started caring about her clothes.
Sylvia and Warwick reminisce about their trip and how much good it did them. She mentions that Max has told her about all the prisons he's visited. She envies him his freedom. She winds wool using his hands; the UST is thick. Warwick's inner monologue tells us he knows Moor loves her.
Warwick disappears, but Sylvia consoles herself. “I will trust and wait.”
Chapter 10: No
Moor confesses his love; she has to tell him she doesn't love him. “I thought my youth, my faults, my follies, would make it impossible for you to see in me anything but a wayward girl, who frankly showed her regard, and was proud of yours.”
He tries to tell her she's too young to know her heart. Fuck you, Moor. On the other hand, he takes her second no for an answer.
Chapter 11: Yes
The Yules head to town for the winter. Sylvia consoles herself with the theater, but the tragedies only further her depression.
Mark paints a picture of the Golden Wedding and sends it to an Exhibition along with a Clytemnestra. He's so surprised to find Clytemnestra dismissed and the Wedding praised that he says "What the deuce does [the critic] mean!"
"The work which warms the heart is greater than that which freezes the blood," responds Mr. Yule.
The piece of success leads him to propose to Jessie. Sylvia is super happy for them. If there's one thing in this book I like it's the sibling relationships.
Her birthday is in April. Moor sends her a bouquet of snowdrops with the note “From you friend G. M.”
He comes to her house and she agrees to marry him.
Chapter 12: Wooing
One pair was of the popular order, for Max was tenderly tyrannical, Jessie adoringly submissive, and at all hours of the day they were to be seen making tableaux of themselves. The other pair were of the peculiar order, undemonstrative and unsentimental but quite as happy. Moor knew his power, but used it
generously, asking little while giving much.
A friend of Max's tells him Warwick is preparing to join a Polar expedition.
Sylvia and Jessie prepare their wedding clothes under Prue's guidance. Sylvia confesses to her groom that she was in love before, and since he has zero idea she means Warwick he's like that's okay, I'm not jealous.
Chapter 13: Wedding
Prue cries as she wakes up Sylvia for the last time. Max and Jessie do the ceremony first. Little Tilly runs up to Sylvia who cares not at all. Other than that, it goes off smoothly.
Chapter 14: Sylvia's Honeymoon
The Moors journey to the mountains, both enjoying the trip very much.
MOOR: I'm going to visit the ice palace.
SYLVIA: I'll stay here.
WARWICK: Hi!
SYLVIA: Hi.
WARWICK: I've wandered a lot, not going to the North Pole though
SYLVIA: I -
WARWICK: and I came back to Massachusetts, or wherever this book is set, and I asked someone where the Yules were
SYLVIA: Yeah, about that -
WARWICK: The only letter that reached me while travelling was one from Moor saying you turned him down
SYLVIA: Um -
WARWICK: And I'm glad you did because that must mean you're in love with -
SYLVIA: WE'RE MARRIED.
Warwick weeps manly tears.
Chapter 15: A Fireside Fete
Three months later, Warwick and his cousin Faith Dane visit Moor and Sylvia. Moor asks Warwick why he looks so gaunt. Warwick answers vaguely. Bhaer-like, he plays with Tilly, and Sylvia is charmed.
Faith is the narrator of Alcott's My Contraband, or The Brothers.
Chapter 16: Early and Late
Moor tells Sylvia he's playing matchmaker with Warwick and Faith. She says she won't interfere.
The gang gossips about Helen Chesterfield, who married a Frenchman old enough to be her father and ran away with a younger man. Sylvia is sympathetic to the motherless friendless girl; Mark is astonished that she can excuse her. Warwick says she should have "demanded her liberty" and married the lover. Prue is scandalized. He adds that people should take more thought before leaping into matrimony. Faith thinks that Helen should have tried harder to love her husband.
Chapter 17: In the Twilight
Warwick insists that Sylvia is doing all three of them wrong and it's her duty to confess and leave Moor. And she replies “What right have you to come between us and decide my duty, Adam?”
He must leave in order not to tempt her, she says, so he does.
Chapter 18: Asleep and Awake
Opens with Moor writing at two o'clock in the morning. His sleepwalking wife comes in and wakes herself up by saying, "No, no, you must not speak! I will not hear you!"
She asks what he's studying and he answers his wife. He knows she's been unhappy these past few months. "Sylvia, what stands between us?" "Adam Warwick." Moor feels shocked and upset while she is relieved.
Is “difficult of belief” a weird phrase?
He says she should leave him, she says she doesn't want to hurt him like that, and he says they are already apart in their hearts and that's no different from being legally apart. He suggests they go to bed and deal with it in the morning.
Chapter 19: What Next?
But when she wakes up she finds a note from him, saying he's gone to Faith's, and he left his Diary [sic] for her to read.
Sylvia decides to seek Faith's advice herself. Which man ought she to have married? Neither, according to Faith, for she was too young and unstable for anyone, and Warwick is too overwhelming for any woman to marry. While in the first edition Faith says merely “I had an unhappy girlhood in a discordant home” here she says “I had an unhappy girlhood in a discordant home, and there was no escape except by a marriage that would be slavery to me.”
“Unhappy marriages are the tragedy of the world,” she concludes.
Moor decides to leave for Europe, with Sylvia's blessing so that she can “grow worthy” of him. Warwick surprises them by showing up at the dock and joining him. “Standing thus they passed from sight, never to come sailing home together as the woman on the shore was praying God to let her see them come.”
Chapter 20: A Year
Sylvia falls ill, in danger of dying for a few days and for the first time caring whether she dies. The town gossips about the couple and she bears it meekly. She returns to the Yule house and devotes herself to her father and Max's baby Sylvia.
Prue marries a thrice-widowed minister with nine children. It's just as funny the second time. His name is Gameliel Bliss; perhaps he's related to Annabel from Eight Cousins?
Moor and Warwick send her a book of their essays and poems. Mr. Yule dies suddenly and painlessly. In April she moves back to Moor's Manse and sends a letter - “Husband, come home.”
Chapter 21: Adam Keeps His Promise
I'm so glad this chapter wasn't deleted.
In a small Italian town not far from Rome, a traveller stood listening to an account of a battle lately fought near by, in which the place had suffered much, yet been forever honored in the eyes of its inhabitants by having been the headquarters of the Hero of Italy. An inquiry of the traveller's concerning a countryman of whom he was in search created a sensation at the little inn, and elicited the story of the battle, one incident of which was still the all-absorbing topic with the excited villagers. This was the incident which one of the group related with the dramatic effects of a language composed almost as much of gesture as of words, and an audience as picturesque as could well be conceived.
It's Moor searching for Warwick, who became a hero by protecting a convent of women, children, and wounded from the “marauding Croats.” He met Giuseppe Garibaldi, who gave Warwick his cloak, but he let another fighter be buried in it. Of course you did, says Moor.
Two weeks later they find themselves on a sinking ship. Warwick is like go, you have a wife! and Moor is like not without you! They argue about it so long that the lifeboat floats away without them, but they are so close to shore they decide to go for it. Moor makes it. Warwick drowns.
Chapter 22: At Last
Sylvia hears about the wreck before she gets word from Moor. “I could have spared Adam,” she thinks, but she's heartbroken over her husband until she gets the news.
They reunite happily and talk about themselves and Warwick. Moor says “Death makes a saint of him, may life make a hero of me.”
To which she replies “Love and God's help can work all miracles since it has worked this one so well.”
This entry was originally posted at https://nocowardsoul.dreamwidth.org/45063.html
The Warwick/Ottila opening is gone, and the original Ch 2 is now Ch 1. Prue attempts to get her younger sister Sylvia out of bed, she resists, etc. When she's working in her garden she wears a short skirt, not trousers. Thus Moor's thoughts are different - "What a changeful thing it is! haunting one's premises unseen, and stealing one's books unsuspected; dreaming one half the day and masquerading the other half. What will happen next? Let us see but not be seen, lest the boy turn shy and run away before the pretty play is done!" becomes “What a changeful thing it is! haunting one's premises unseen, and stealing one's books unsuspected; dreaming one half the day and working hard the other half. What will happen next?"
Sylvia decides that Moor could be her friend.
Chapter 2: Moor
She returns Goethe's Wilhelm Meister to him and they walk in his garden with Tilly, the gardener's little girl. “It is so old-fashioned and well kept,” she says. He describes the uses of each herb. She asks if the bees ever sting Tilly and he says, no, children and animals understand one another. Some people like his friend never lose this understanding.
She visits his library and wonders what it might be like to be his . . . sister. He has a picture of Goethe, comparing him to Warwick. They sound even gayer than they did before. She also admires the painting of his mother.
Chapter 3: Dull, But Necessary
It does make sense to have this come earlier. John Yule made an impulsive marriage and came to regret it, and when Mrs. Yule died after giving birth to Sylvia she said "Free at last, thank God for that!" Whoa. So Sylvia never had a mother, and LMA tells us she never had a friend either, until Moor came along. She's interested in whether, having attended to his dead sister's physical ills, he can heal her mental ills.
The chapter opens by saying that readers who don't care for non-action can skip it. I love that.
Chapter 4: Warwick
A windy day follows a stormy night. After spending most of the day inside, Sylvia can't resist heading to the ocean.
"Ah, this is glorious!" sighed the girl, with a long breath of the sweet cold air that came winging its way across the wide Atlantic to refresh her. "Now I shall be happy, and can sing my heart out without disturbing any one."
Wrapping her cloak about her, she leaned in the recess that made her favorite seat, and let her voice rise and ring above the turmoil of the waves, as if she too felt the need of pouring out the restless spirit pent up in that young breast of hers. Sweet and shrill sounded the mingled music, and the wind caught it up to carry it with flecks of foam, sea scents, and flying leaves to the cliffs above, where a solitary figure stood to watch the storm.
She sings the same song Emil does in Jo's Boys. The tide comes in, stranding her on her cliff (at least temporarily). Warwick comes and lifts her up. “Next time you play Undine have a boat near, for there may be no Kuhlborn at hand to save you,” he says. She insists she could have swam and thanks him. She was crying for her mother and would have been glad to meet her. Due to the painting she recognizes him, and he's heard about her from her brother Max.
At home, she asks Max about Warwick. "Violently virtuous. He is a masterful soul, bent on living out his beliefs and aspirations at any cost; much given to denunciation of wrong-doing everywhere, and eager to execute justice upon all offenders high or low. Yet he possesses great nobility of character, great audacity of mind, and leads a life of the sternest integrity."
Blech. He cautions her that Moor might fall in love with her.
Warwick and Sylvia talk - he doesn't think Jessie is pretty because her face has no character. They both like Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, and Warwick has even met him. She thinks he's like the book. Max is a book of pictures of varying quality, Prue is a recipe book, Moor is good poetry. Warwick compares her to The Story without an End.
Chapter 5: Afloat
“I don't know why I must sit here and hem night-cap strings when the world is full of pleasant places and delightful people, if only I could be allowed to go and find them,” says our heroine to herself, echoing many modern 17-year-old girls.
Max says she can come on their trip if Mr. Yule and Prue say yes, though it will scandalize her. Sylvia says she went to a camping party last year, and everyone there was siblings or cousins. I'm not sure that argument holds up, given the amount of kissing cousins in these books.
They sail down the river; it's very busy. LMA describes the scenery, then Sylvia takes her turn at rowing. Max asks Warwick to sing for them.
They make camp and Sylvia performs a few scenes from Shakespeare. “What a lover she will make when the time comes,” Moor thinks. But Warwick enjoys it most of all.
The part with the cow is unchanged.
Chapter 6: Through Flood and Field and Fire
The scene with the book still makes me Hulk out.
Sylvia: “I should know a man made your basket and a woman mine.”
Warwick: “Because one is ugly and strong, the other graceful but unable to stand alone?”
They pick berries and lilies. A wood is on fire and Sylvia walks in that direction to get a better view. She gets a little too close and he rescues her again. “Obedience is an old-fashioned virtue, which you would do well to cultivate along with your common sense, young lady,” he says.
When they get back to the river their boat has floated away, so they must cross the bridge to meet Max and Moor. Sylvia dresses Warwick's burns. After she goes to bed he says to Max wow, she's a handful and randomly tells Moor he should marry.
Chapter 7: A Golden Wedding
A thunder-shower causes the foursome to seek refuge at the nearest house. A "lively old woman" welcomes them in. She and her husband are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary with their seven sons, three daughters, their kids-in-law, and four dozen grandchildren.
They have a feast: pyramids of cake, regiments of pies, quagmires of jelly, snow-banks of bread, and gold mines of butter; every possible article of food, from baked beans to wedding cake, finding a place on that sacrificial altar.Then dancing and singing. Abraham ends the night with an old-fashioned prayer that touches Sylvia more than any she has heard before.
Chapter 8: Sermons
Sermons? Oh joy.
The next day Warwick watches Sylvia nap, seeing “not only what she was, but what she might be.” He starts daydreaming about marrying her.
Moor recites Herbert's hymn “Lord, with what care you have begirt us round.” Warwick gives the sermon - he claims Max's besetting sin is indolence. The younger man needs a purpose. Moor lives too much for others and not enough for himself. If he continues this way “the feminine in you will get the uppermost.” Shut up, Adam.
Sylvia: “What must I do?”
Warwick: “Forget yourself.”
Sylvia: “Show me how”
Warwick: “My panacea for most troubles is work.”
Warwick's own flaw is a lack of mercy toward oppressors.
Moor, upon being asked, advises her to turn to Nature to find God.
Chapter 9: Why Sylvia Was Happy
Prue tells her, “Ever since that wild trip up the river you have been growing quiet, lovable, and cheerful, and I really begin to hope that you will become like other people.” And she's started caring about her clothes.
Sylvia and Warwick reminisce about their trip and how much good it did them. She mentions that Max has told her about all the prisons he's visited. She envies him his freedom. She winds wool using his hands; the UST is thick. Warwick's inner monologue tells us he knows Moor loves her.
Warwick disappears, but Sylvia consoles herself. “I will trust and wait.”
Chapter 10: No
Moor confesses his love; she has to tell him she doesn't love him. “I thought my youth, my faults, my follies, would make it impossible for you to see in me anything but a wayward girl, who frankly showed her regard, and was proud of yours.”
He tries to tell her she's too young to know her heart. Fuck you, Moor. On the other hand, he takes her second no for an answer.
Chapter 11: Yes
The Yules head to town for the winter. Sylvia consoles herself with the theater, but the tragedies only further her depression.
Mark paints a picture of the Golden Wedding and sends it to an Exhibition along with a Clytemnestra. He's so surprised to find Clytemnestra dismissed and the Wedding praised that he says "What the deuce does [the critic] mean!"
"The work which warms the heart is greater than that which freezes the blood," responds Mr. Yule.
The piece of success leads him to propose to Jessie. Sylvia is super happy for them. If there's one thing in this book I like it's the sibling relationships.
Her birthday is in April. Moor sends her a bouquet of snowdrops with the note “From you friend G. M.”
He comes to her house and she agrees to marry him.
Chapter 12: Wooing
One pair was of the popular order, for Max was tenderly tyrannical, Jessie adoringly submissive, and at all hours of the day they were to be seen making tableaux of themselves. The other pair were of the peculiar order, undemonstrative and unsentimental but quite as happy. Moor knew his power, but used it
generously, asking little while giving much.
A friend of Max's tells him Warwick is preparing to join a Polar expedition.
Sylvia and Jessie prepare their wedding clothes under Prue's guidance. Sylvia confesses to her groom that she was in love before, and since he has zero idea she means Warwick he's like that's okay, I'm not jealous.
Chapter 13: Wedding
Prue cries as she wakes up Sylvia for the last time. Max and Jessie do the ceremony first. Little Tilly runs up to Sylvia who cares not at all. Other than that, it goes off smoothly.
Chapter 14: Sylvia's Honeymoon
The Moors journey to the mountains, both enjoying the trip very much.
MOOR: I'm going to visit the ice palace.
SYLVIA: I'll stay here.
WARWICK: Hi!
SYLVIA: Hi.
WARWICK: I've wandered a lot, not going to the North Pole though
SYLVIA: I -
WARWICK: and I came back to Massachusetts, or wherever this book is set, and I asked someone where the Yules were
SYLVIA: Yeah, about that -
WARWICK: The only letter that reached me while travelling was one from Moor saying you turned him down
SYLVIA: Um -
WARWICK: And I'm glad you did because that must mean you're in love with -
SYLVIA: WE'RE MARRIED.
Warwick weeps manly tears.
Chapter 15: A Fireside Fete
Three months later, Warwick and his cousin Faith Dane visit Moor and Sylvia. Moor asks Warwick why he looks so gaunt. Warwick answers vaguely. Bhaer-like, he plays with Tilly, and Sylvia is charmed.
Faith is the narrator of Alcott's My Contraband, or The Brothers.
Chapter 16: Early and Late
Moor tells Sylvia he's playing matchmaker with Warwick and Faith. She says she won't interfere.
The gang gossips about Helen Chesterfield, who married a Frenchman old enough to be her father and ran away with a younger man. Sylvia is sympathetic to the motherless friendless girl; Mark is astonished that she can excuse her. Warwick says she should have "demanded her liberty" and married the lover. Prue is scandalized. He adds that people should take more thought before leaping into matrimony. Faith thinks that Helen should have tried harder to love her husband.
Chapter 17: In the Twilight
Warwick insists that Sylvia is doing all three of them wrong and it's her duty to confess and leave Moor. And she replies “What right have you to come between us and decide my duty, Adam?”
He must leave in order not to tempt her, she says, so he does.
Chapter 18: Asleep and Awake
Opens with Moor writing at two o'clock in the morning. His sleepwalking wife comes in and wakes herself up by saying, "No, no, you must not speak! I will not hear you!"
She asks what he's studying and he answers his wife. He knows she's been unhappy these past few months. "Sylvia, what stands between us?" "Adam Warwick." Moor feels shocked and upset while she is relieved.
Is “difficult of belief” a weird phrase?
He says she should leave him, she says she doesn't want to hurt him like that, and he says they are already apart in their hearts and that's no different from being legally apart. He suggests they go to bed and deal with it in the morning.
Chapter 19: What Next?
But when she wakes up she finds a note from him, saying he's gone to Faith's, and he left his Diary [sic] for her to read.
Sylvia decides to seek Faith's advice herself. Which man ought she to have married? Neither, according to Faith, for she was too young and unstable for anyone, and Warwick is too overwhelming for any woman to marry. While in the first edition Faith says merely “I had an unhappy girlhood in a discordant home” here she says “I had an unhappy girlhood in a discordant home, and there was no escape except by a marriage that would be slavery to me.”
“Unhappy marriages are the tragedy of the world,” she concludes.
Moor decides to leave for Europe, with Sylvia's blessing so that she can “grow worthy” of him. Warwick surprises them by showing up at the dock and joining him. “Standing thus they passed from sight, never to come sailing home together as the woman on the shore was praying God to let her see them come.”
Chapter 20: A Year
Sylvia falls ill, in danger of dying for a few days and for the first time caring whether she dies. The town gossips about the couple and she bears it meekly. She returns to the Yule house and devotes herself to her father and Max's baby Sylvia.
Prue marries a thrice-widowed minister with nine children. It's just as funny the second time. His name is Gameliel Bliss; perhaps he's related to Annabel from Eight Cousins?
Moor and Warwick send her a book of their essays and poems. Mr. Yule dies suddenly and painlessly. In April she moves back to Moor's Manse and sends a letter - “Husband, come home.”
Chapter 21: Adam Keeps His Promise
I'm so glad this chapter wasn't deleted.
In a small Italian town not far from Rome, a traveller stood listening to an account of a battle lately fought near by, in which the place had suffered much, yet been forever honored in the eyes of its inhabitants by having been the headquarters of the Hero of Italy. An inquiry of the traveller's concerning a countryman of whom he was in search created a sensation at the little inn, and elicited the story of the battle, one incident of which was still the all-absorbing topic with the excited villagers. This was the incident which one of the group related with the dramatic effects of a language composed almost as much of gesture as of words, and an audience as picturesque as could well be conceived.
It's Moor searching for Warwick, who became a hero by protecting a convent of women, children, and wounded from the “marauding Croats.” He met Giuseppe Garibaldi, who gave Warwick his cloak, but he let another fighter be buried in it. Of course you did, says Moor.
Two weeks later they find themselves on a sinking ship. Warwick is like go, you have a wife! and Moor is like not without you! They argue about it so long that the lifeboat floats away without them, but they are so close to shore they decide to go for it. Moor makes it. Warwick drowns.
Chapter 22: At Last
Sylvia hears about the wreck before she gets word from Moor. “I could have spared Adam,” she thinks, but she's heartbroken over her husband until she gets the news.
They reunite happily and talk about themselves and Warwick. Moor says “Death makes a saint of him, may life make a hero of me.”
To which she replies “Love and God's help can work all miracles since it has worked this one so well.”
This entry was originally posted at https://nocowardsoul.dreamwidth.org/45063.html