Character guide

Mr. Sylvester

major

Also known as Bertram, Bertram Sylvester, Sylvester, Mr. Bertram Sylvester

Bertram Sylvester moves through New York drawing rooms and bank corridors as a man whose word carries weight, yet whose composure masks something he is not saying. When his nephew stands accused of uttering threats in a Dey Street coffeehouse two years earlier, Sylvester produces the proof that clears him—then immediately turns the conversation toward the missing bonds and the absconded clerk Hopgood. His instinct to shield the young man while the shadow of suspicion still lingers makes him both protector and puzzle: a man whose generosity may be its own kind of concealment.

Paula

major

Also known as Paula Fairchild, Little Paula, Miss Paula

Paula Fairchild has come back to Grotewell to wait out the weeks before her marriage, her beauty restored but her thoughts still wandering to Cicely, to Bertram, and to a wretched woman dying in a New York hospital. The village gossips have tired of her; her aunts have offered her a home; and she has agreed to read a poem aloud at the Squire's entertainment, though the idea of exposing something private to strangers unsettles her. She is a woman learning to live between two worlds, and the poem she is about to read may be the first thing that belongs entirely to her.

Jacqueline Japha

major

Also known as Jacqueline, Japha, Miss Jacqueline

Jacqueline Japha is the pride of the Japha household, betrothed to one man while writing passionate, reckless letters to another—letters her mother finds half-burned in the stove and reads with mounting horror. The words are unmistakable: a married lover, a midnight gate, a plan to flee. What makes Jacqueline dangerous to the story is not simply what she does but what she is: a woman whose nature her own mother already knows cannot be appealed to, only feared. Her father will never speak her name again, and the silence that follows her will shape the mystery of the Japha mansion for years.

Edward Sylvester

supporting

Also known as Edward, Miss Belinda, Belinda

Edward Sylvester is a Sylvester by name and something else by experience—a man whose past has been cut cleanly from his present, leaving him to sit in the city and ache over garret rooms, a dead brother named Tom, and a mother whose eyes he was always too busy to meet. The memories come unbidden: the crow Jocko, the tied rooster, the long Sunday walks. He is not a plotter or a schemer; he is a man haunted by the ordinary happiness he once had and did not know how to hold. His grief gives the Sylvester family its emotional undertow.

Mr. Stuyvesant

supporting

Also known as Stuyvesant

Mr. Stuyvesant presides over the drawing room where Bertram Sylvester is formally cleared of the Dey Street coffeehouse charge—and where, in the same breath, word arrives that Hopgood the clerk has absconded with the bank's bonds. He is a man of standing who must weigh his confidence in one employee against the evidence against another, and his hesitation when he admits that the robbery alone is not proof of guilt tells you he is not a man who decides quickly. His household, and his daughter Cicely, sit at the center of the novel's social world.

Ona Delafield

supporting

Also known as Ona, Cousin Ona

Ona Delafield belongs to the intimate web of relatives and neighbors around Paula—the people whose questions Paula must answer with composure, whose gossip she must endure, and whose ordinary lives throw her own extraordinary season into relief. She is part of the texture of Grotewell: the village that watches, waits, and remembers. Her role is to keep the story grounded in the small claims of family even as the larger mystery of the Japha mansion and the stolen bonds pulls everyone toward darker questions.

Mr. Ensign

supporting

Also known as Clarence Ensign, Clarence

Clarence Ensign moves through New York's drawing rooms as a suitor of decided talent and uncertain patience, his courtship of Paula advancing through letters and visits that the blindest eye could not fail to remark. His temperament is mercurial, never long under the bondage of a severe thought, and he worships the lofty with tabor and cymbal rather than quiet constancy. His impetuous devotion forces Paula toward a dreaded yes or no, making him a quiet engine of the novel's romantic tension.

Cicely Stuyvesant

supporting

Also known as Cicely

Cicely Stuyvesant exists in the novel as the friend Paula invokes when she speaks of friendship as she believes in heaven, a woman whose regard reflects but one image while Paula's own heart owns allegiance to more than her bosom friend. Her letters carry weight enough to send Paula fleeing to her aunt with the cry that she cannot stay another day. Though largely offstage, Cicely's constancy and the news she sends about Mr. Sylvester make her a quiet pivot on which Paula's choices turn.

Mrs. Sylvester

supporting

Also known as Pope Mrs. Sylvester

Known in the tenements as Mrs. Smith, she moves through the novel's darkest corridors with a heart that alternates between faint kindness and gusts of passion, drawing the crippled child to her fire even as she defies heaven for taking her own. Her rage is aimed at the boy's mother, whose child lives and is beloved while hers lies dead, and her hideous laugh and smothered heart betray a grief that has curdled into something dangerous. Mr. Sylvester's glimpse of her carrying the child away plants an unease that shadows the early arc.

Colonel Japha

supporting

Also known as Byron, Colonel

Colonel Japha lives in seclusion in the old Grotewell mansion, broken by the flight and degradation of his only daughter and opening his doors to few visitors, among them the narrator he liked and saw the makings of a considerable man in. Before sailing for Europe he places five one-thousand-dollar bills in that young man's hands as a trust for the daughter he has forbidden his house but cannot forget. His misplaced confidence becomes the hinge on which another man's fortune and guilt turn, making him the unwitting author of the novel's central moral crisis.

Mr. Roger Holt

minor

Also known as Roger, Roger Holt, Holt, Mr. Holt

A man with a name that appears in the narrative, possibly a suitor or acquaintance.

Mr. Mandeville

supporting

Also known as Bertram Mandeville, Mandeville, Bertram

Bertram Mandeville moves through the Sylvester household as a young man of feeling, sickened by the mockery of luxury's bronze image when death has emptied the halls of the woman who was luxury itself. When he knocks at the door with the strange lock, he finds his uncle wearing a wild and paralyzed look that makes his face almost that of a stranger, and is drawn into a private room where Mr. Sylvester asks whether he would perform a son's work and obey without questions. His willing assent binds him to a family secret whose weight shapes the middle of the book.

Mr. Preston

minor

Also known as Preston

A character with a name that appears, possibly a family member or acquaintance.

Robert Holt

minor

Also known as young Robert Holt, Mr. Robert Holt, Robert

A younger Holt, possibly a relative of Roger Holt, with a minor role.

Hamlet Hopgood

minor

Also known as Hamlet, Hopgood

A character with a literary name, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Mrs. Hamlin

minor

Also known as Margery Hamlin, Margery

A woman with a name that appears, possibly a neighbor or acquaintance.

Mr. Gryce

minor

A detective or investigator, possibly involved in the mystery.

Young Mandeville

minor

Also known as Young, Mandeville

A younger member of the Mandeville family, possibly a son or brother.

Aunt Belinda

minor

Also known as Belinda

An older relative, possibly of Paula or the Sylvesters, with a caring role.

Farrar

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Sir Beaufort

minor

Also known as Beaufort

A character with a title, possibly a historical or literary reference.

Miss Abby

minor

Also known as Old Miss Abby

An older woman, possibly a spinster or relative, with a minor role.

Damocles

minor

Also known as Damocles of old

The legendary figure from the title, referenced as a symbol.

Miss Stuyvesant

minor

Also known as XI Miss Stuyvesant

A member of the Stuyvesant family, possibly an older relative.

John Hopgood

minor

Also known as John, Hopgood

A member of the Hopgood family, possibly a servant or local figure.

Fanning

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Miss Fairchild

minor

Also known as Miss Fairchild⁠

A relative of Paula, possibly an aunt or older sister.

Enguerrand

minor

Also known as young Enguerrand the valiant, fiery Enguerrand

A historical or literary figure mentioned, possibly in a story or allusion.

Sassard

minor

Also known as stern Sassard, cruel Sassard

A character from a story or allusion, possibly a villain.

Cummins

minor

Also known as The Man Cummins

A man whose name appears in a chapter title, possibly a key figure in a subplot.

Mr. Delafield

minor

Also known as Jacob Delafield

A member of the Delafield family, possibly Paula's father or uncle.

Samuel

minor

Also known as Julius Caesar Samuel

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Mr. Folger

minor

Also known as Folger, Besides Folger

A character with a name that appears, possibly a friend or acquaintance.

Martino

minor

Also known as Signior Martino

A character with an Italian name, possibly a musician or servant.

Germain

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Mr. Turner

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a friend or acquaintance.

Constantia Maria

minor

A character with a formal name, possibly a historical or literary reference.

Mrs. Kirkshaw

minor

A woman with a name that appears, possibly a housekeeper or neighbor.

Mr. Williams

minor

A character with a common name, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Jessup

minor

Also known as Mr. Jessup

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or local figure.

Mrs. Smith

minor

A character with a common name, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Mrs. Fitzgerald

minor

A woman with a name that appears, possibly a friend or acquaintance.

Geraldine

minor

Also known as little Geraldine

A young girl, possibly a child in the story.

Mr. Wheelock

minor

Also known as Wheelock

A character with a name that appears, possibly a friend or acquaintance.

Mr. Phelps

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a friend or acquaintance.

Nita

minor

Also known as Nita Alack

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Grotewell

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a place or family name.

Briggs

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Mrs. Fairchild

minor

A member of the Fairchild family, possibly Paula's mother or aunt.

Aunty

minor

Also known as aunty

An affectionate term for an older woman, possibly a relative.

Mighty Hugh

minor

Also known as Hugh the mighty

A historical or literary figure mentioned, possibly in a story.

Selby

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a place or family name.

Elsie

minor

A young girl, possibly a child in the story.

Thaddeus Stuyvesant

minor

A member of the Stuyvesant family, possibly a relative of Mr. Stuyvesant.

Hicks

minor

A character with a name that appears, possibly a servant or minor figure.

Mr. Harrington

minor

Also known as Harrington

A character who is absent but mentioned, possibly a friend or relative.