Kinraid took him by surprise from the hearty greeting he gave him, and which Philip would fain have avoided. But the specksioneer was full of kindliness towards all the world, especially towards all Sylvia's friends, and, convinced of her great love towards himself, had forgotten any previous jealousy of Philip. Secure and exultant, his broad, handsome, weather-bronzed face was as great a contrast to Philip's long, thoughtful, sallow countenance, as his frank manner was to the other's cold reserve. It was some minutes before Hepburn could bring himself to tell the great event that was about to befall him before this third person whom he considered as an intrusive stranger. But as Kinraid seemed to have no idea of going on, and as there really was no reason why he and all the world should not know of Philip's intentions, he told his uncle that he was bound for London the next day on business connected with the Fosters.
Daniel was deeply struck with the fact that he was talking to a man setting off for London at a day's notice.
‘Thou'll niver tell me this hasn't been brewin' longer nor twelve hours; thou's a sly close chap, and we hannot seen thee this se‘nnight; thou'll ha' been thinkin' on this, and cogitating it, maybe, a' that time.’
‘Nay,’ said Philip, ‘I knew nought about it last night; it's none o' my doing, going, for I'd liefer ha' stayed where I am.’
‘Yo'll like it when once yo're there,’ said Kinraid, with a travelled air of superiority, as Philip fancied.
‘No, I shan't,’ he replied, shortly. ‘Liking has nought to do with it.’
‘An' yo' knew nought about it last neet,’ continued Daniel, musingly. ‘Well, life's soon o'er; else when I were a young fellow, folks made their wills afore goin' to Lunnon.’
‘Yet I'll be bound to say yo' niver made a will before going to sea,’ said Philip, half smiling.
‘Na, na; but that's quite another mak' o' thing; goin' to sea comes natteral to a man, but goin' to Lunnon,—I were once there, and were near deafened wi' t' throng and t' sound. I were but two hours i' t' place, though our ship lay a fortneet off Gravesend.’
Kinraid now seemed in a hurry; but Philip was stung with curiosity to ascertain his movements, and suddenly addressed him:
‘I heard yo' were i' these parts. Are you for staying here long?’
There was a certain abruptness in Philip's tone, if not in his words, which made Kinraid look in his face with surprise, and answer with equal curtness.
‘I'm off i' th' morning; and sail for the north seas day after.’
He turned away, and began to whistle, as if he did not wish for any further conversation with his interrogator. Philip, indeed, had nothing more to say to him: he had learned all he wanted to know.
‘I'd like to bid good-by to Sylvie. Is she at home?’ he asked of her father.
‘A'm thinking thou'll not find her. She'll be off to Yesterbarrow t' see if she'd get a settin' o' their eggs; her grey speckled hen is cluckin’, and nought 'll serve our Sylvia but their eggs to set her upon. But, for a' that, she mayn't be gone yet. Best go on and see for thysel'.’
So they parted; but Philip had not gone many steps before his uncle called him back, Kinraid slowly loitering on meanwhile. Robson was fumbling among some dirty papers he had in an old leather case, which he had produced out of his pocket.
‘Fact is, Philip, t' pleugh's3 in a bad way, gearin' and a‘, an' folk is talkin' on a new kind o' mak‘; and if thou's bound for York—’
‘I'm not going by York; I'm going by a Newcastle smack.’
‘Newcassel—Newcassel—it's pretty much t' same. Here, lad, thou can read print easy; it's a bit as was cut out on a paper; there's Newcassel, and York, and Durham, and a vast more towns named, wheere folk can learn a' about t' new mak' o' pleugh.’
‘I see,’ said Philip: ‘“Robinson, Side, Newcastle, can give all requisite information.”’
‘Ay, ay,' said Robson; ‘thou's hit t' marrow on t' matter. Now, if thou'rt i' Newcassel, thou can learn all about it; thou'rt little better nor a woman, for sure, bein' mainly acquaint wi' ribbons, but they'll tell thee—they'll tell thee, lad; and write down what they sayn, and what's to be t' price, and look sharp as to what kind o' folk they are as sells ‘em, an' write and let me know. Thou'll be i' Newcassel to-morrow, maybe? Well, then, I'll reckon to hear fro' thee in a week, or mayhap, less,—for t' land is backward, and I'd like to know about t' pleughs. I'd a month's mind to write to Brunton, as married Molly Corney, but writin' is more i' thy way an' t' parson's nor mine; and if thou sells ribbons, Brunton sells cheese, and that's no better.’
Philip promised to do his best, and to write word to Robson, who, satisfied with his willingness to undertake the commission, bade him go on and see if he could not find the lass. Her father was right in saying that she might not have set out for Yesterbarrow. She had talked about it to Kinraid and her father in order to cover her regret at her lover's accompanying her father to see some new kind of harpoon about which the latter had spoken. But as soon as they had left the house, and she had covertly watched them up the brow in the field, she sate down to meditate and dream about her great happiness in being beloved by her hero, Charley Kinraid. No gloomy dread of his long summer's absence; no fear of the cold, glittering icebergs bearing mercilessly down on the Urania, nor shuddering anticipation of the dark waves of evil import, crossed her mind. He loved her, and that was enough. Her eyes looked, trance-like, into a dim, glorious future of life; her lips, still warm and reddened by his kiss, were just parted in a happy smile, when she was startled by the sound of an approaching footstep—a footstep quite familiar enough for her to recognize it, and which was unwelcome now, as disturbing her in the one blessed subject of thought in which alone she cared to indulge.
‘Well, Philip! an' what brings yo' here?’ was her rather ungracious greeting.
‘Why, Silvie, are yo' sorry to see me?’ asked Philip, reproachfully. But she turned it off with assumed lightness.
‘Oh, yes,’ said she. ‘I've been wanting yo' this week past wi' t' match to my blue ribbon yo' said yo'd get and bring me next time yo' came.’
‘I've forgotten it, Sylvie. It's clean gone out of my mind,’ said Philip, with true regret. ‘But I've had a deal to think on,’ he continued, penitently, as if anxious to be forgiven. Sylvia did not want his penitence, did not care for her ribbon, was troubled by his earnestness of manner—but he knew nothing of all that; he only knew that she whom he loved had asked him to do something for her, and he had neglected it; so, anxious to be excused and forgiven, he went on with the apology she cared not to hear.
If she had been less occupied with her own affairs, less engrossed with deep feeling, she would have reproached him, if only in jest, for his carelessness. As it was, she scarcely took in the sense of his words.
‘You see, Sylvie, I've had a deal to think on; before long I intend telling yo' all about it; just now I'm not free to do it. And when a man's mind is full o' business, most particular when it's other folk's as is trusted to him, he seems to lose count on the very things he'd most care for at another time.’ He paused a little.
Sylvia's galloping thoughts were pulled suddenly up by his silence; she felt that he wanted her to say something; but she could think of nothing besides an ambiguous—
‘Well?’
‘And I'm off to London i' t' morning,’ added he, a little wistfully, almost as if beseeching her to show or express some sorrow at a journey, the very destination of which showed that he would be absent for some time.
‘To Lunnon!’ said she, with some surprise. ‘Yo're niver thinking o' going to live theere, for sure!’
Surprise, and curiosity, and wonder; nothing more, as Philip's instinct told him. But he reasoned that first correct impression away with ingenious sophistry.
‘Not to live there: only to stay for some time. I shall be back, I reckon, in a month or so.’
‘Oh! that's nought of a going away,’ said she, rather petulantly. ‘Them as goes to t' Greenland seas has to bide away for six months a
nd more,’ and she sighed.
Suddenly a light shone down into Philip's mind. His voice was changed as he spoke next.
‘I met that good-for-nothing chap, Kinraid, wi' yo'r father just now. He'll ha' been here, Sylvie?’
She stooped for something she had dropped, and came up red as a rose.
‘To be sure; what then?’ And she eyed him defiantly, though in her heart she trembled, she knew not why.
‘What then? and yo'r mother away. He's no company for such as thee, at no time, Sylvie.’
‘Feyther and me chooses our own company, without iver asking leave o' yo',’ said Sylvia, hastily arranging the things in the little wooden work-box that was on the table, preparatory to putting it away. At the time, in his agitation, he saw, but did not affix any meaning to it, that the half of some silver coin was among the contents thus turned over before the box was locked.
‘But thy mother wouldn't like it, Sylvie; he's played false wi' other lasses, he'll be playing thee false some o' these days, if thou lets him come about thee. He went on wi' Annie Coulson, William's sister, till he broke her heart; and sin then he's been on wi' others.’
‘I dunnot believe a word on 't,' said Sylvia, standing up, all aflame.
‘I niver telled a lie i' my life,’ said Philip, almost choking with grief at her manner to him, and the regard for his rival which she betrayed. ‘It were Willie Coulson as telled me, as solemn and serious as one man can speak to another; and he said it weren't the first nor the last time as he had made his own game with young women.’
‘And how dare yo' come here to me wi' yo'r backbiting tales?’ said Sylvia, shivering all over with passion.
Philip tried to keep calm, and to explain.
‘It were yo'r own mother, Sylvia, as knowed yo' had no brother, or any one to see after yo‘; and yo' so pretty, so pretty, Sylvia,’ he continued, shaking his head, sadly, ‘that men run after yo' against their will, as one may say; and yo'r mother bade me watch o'er ye and see what company yo' kept, and who was following after yo‘, and to warn yo‘, if need were.’
‘My mother niver bade yo' to come spying after me, and blaming me for seeing a lad as my feyther thinks well on. An' I don't believe a word about Annie Coulson; an' I'm not going to suffer yo' to come wi' yo'r tales to me; say ‘em out to his face, and hear what he'll say to yo'.’
‘Sylvie, Sylvie,’ cried poor Philip, as his offended cousin rushed past him, and upstairs to her little bedroom, where he heard the sound of the wooden bolt flying into its place. He could hear her feet pacing quickly about through the unceiled rafters. He sate still in despair, his head buried in his two hands. He sate till it grew dusk, dark; the wood fire, not gathered together by careful hands, died out into gray ashes. Dolly Reid had done her work and gone home. There were but Philip and Sylvia in the house. He knew he ought to be going home, for he had much to do, and many arrangements to make. Yet it seemed as though he could not stir. At length he raised his stiffened body, and stood up, dizzy. Up the little wooden stairs he went, where he had never been before, to the small square landing, almost filled up with the great chest for oat-cake. He breathed hard for a minute, and then knocked at the door of Sylvia's room.
‘Sylvie! I'm going away; say good-by.’ No answer. Not a sound heard. ‘Sylvie!’ (a little louder, and less hoarsely spoken). There was no reply. ‘Sylvie! I shall be a long time away; perhaps I may niver come back at all;’ here he bitterly thought of an unregarded death. ‘Say good-by.’ No answer. He waited patiently. Can she be wearied out, and gone to sleep, he wondered. Yet once again—‘Good-by, Sylvie, and God bless yo‘! I'm sorry I vexed yo’.’
No reply.
With a heavy, heavy heart he creaked down the stairs, felt for his cap, and left the house.
‘She's warned, any way,’ thought he. Just at that moment the little casement window of Sylvia's room was opened, and she said—
‘Good-by, Philip!’
The window was shut again as soon as the words were spoken. Philip knew the uselessness of remaining; the need for his departure; and yet he stood still for a little time like one entranced, as if his will had lost all power to compel him to leave the place. Those two words of hers, which two hours before would have been so far beneath his aspirations, had now power to re-light hope, to quench reproach or blame.
‘She's but a young lassie,’ said he to himself; ‘an' Kinraid has been playing wi' her, as such as he can't help doing, once they get among t' women. An' I came down sudden on her about Annie Coulson, and touched her pride. Maybe, too, it were ill advised to tell her how her mother was feared for her. I couldn't ha' left the place to-morrow if he'd been biding here; but he's off for half a year or so, and I'll be home again as soon as iver I can. In half a year such as he forgets, if iver he's thought serious about her; but in a' my lifetime, if I live to fourscore, I can niver forget. God bless her for saying, “Good-by, Philip.” ’He repeated the words aloud in fond mimicry of her tones: ‘Good-by, Philip.’
CHAPTER XVIII
Eddy in Love's Current
The next morning shone bright and clear, if ever a March morning did. The beguiling month was coming in like a lamb, with whatever storms it might go raging out. It was long since Philip had tasted the freshness of the early air on the shore, or in the country, as his employment at the shop detained him in Monkshaven till the evening. And as he turned down the quays (or staithes) on the north side of the river, towards the shore, and met the fresh sea-breeze blowing right in his face, it was impossible not to feel bright and elastic. With his knapsack slung over his shoulder, he was prepared for a good stretch towards Hartlepool, whence a coach would take him to Newcastle before night. For seven or eight miles the level sands were as short and far more agreeable a road than the up and down land-ways. Philip walked on pretty briskly, unconsciously enjoying the sunny landscape before him; the crisp curling waves rushing almost up to his feet, on his right hand, and then swishing back over the fine small pebbles into the great swelling sea. To his left were the cliffs rising one behind another, having deep gullies here and there between, with long green slopes upward from the land, and then sudden falls of brown and red soil or rock deepening to a yet greater richness of colour at their base towards the blue ocean before him. The loud, monotonous murmur of the advancing and receding waters lulled him into dreaminess; the sunny look of everything tinged his day-dreams with hope. So he trudged merrily over the first mile or so; not an obstacle to his measured pace on the hard, level pavement; not a creature to be seen since he had left the little gathering of bare-legged urchins dabbling in the sea-pools near Monkshaven. The cares of land were shut out by the glorious barrier of rocks before him. There were some great masses that had been detached by the action of the weather, and lay half embedded in the sand, draperied over by the heavy pendent olive-green sea-weed. The waves were nearer at this point; the advancing sea came up with a mighty distant length of roar; here and there the smooth swell was lashed by the fret against unseen rocks into white breakers; but otherwise the waves came up from the German Ocean upon that English shore with a long steady roll that might have taken its first impetus far away, in the haunt of the sea-serpent on the coast of ‘Norroway over the foam’.1 The air was soft as May; right overhead the sky was blue, but it deadened into gray near the sea lines. Flocks of seagulls hovered about the edge of the waves, slowly rising and turning their white under-plumage to glimmer in the sunlight as Philip approached. The whole scene was so peaceful, so soothing, that it dispelled the cares and fears (too well founded in fact) which had weighed down on his heart during the dark hours of the past night.
There was Haytersbank gully opening down its green entrance among the warm brown bases of the cliffs. Below, in the sheltered brushwood, among the last year's withered leaves, some primroses might be found. He half thought of gathering Sylvia a posy of them, and rushing up to the farm to make a little farewell peace-offering. But on looking at his watch, he put all thoughts of such an action out
of his head; it was above an hour later than he had supposed, and he must make all haste on to Hartlepool. Just as he was approaching this gully, a man came dashing down, and ran out some way upon the sand with the very force of his descent; then he turned to the left and took the direction of Hartlepool a hundred yards or so in advance of Philip. He never stayed to look round him, but went swiftly and steadily on his way. By the peculiar lurch in his walk—by everything—Philip knew it was the specksioneer, Kinraid.
Now the road up Haytersbank gully led to the farm, and nowhere else. Still any one wishing to descend to the shore might do so by first going up to the Robsons' house, and skirting the walls till they came to the little slender path down to the shore. But by the farm, by the very house-door they must of necessity pass. Philip slackened his pace, keeping under the shadow of the rock. By-and-by Kinraid, walking on the sunlit open sands, turned round and looked long and earnestly towards Haytersbank gully. Hepburn paused when he paused, but as intently as he looked at some object above, so intently did Hepburn look at him. No need to ascertain by sight towards whom his looks, his thoughts were directed. He took off his hat and waved it, touching one part of it as if with particular meaning. When he turned away at last, Hepburn heaved a heavy sigh, and crept yet more into the cold dank shadow of the cliffs. Each step was now a heavy task, his sad heart tired and weary. After a while he climbed up a few feet, so as to mingle his form yet more completely with the stones and rocks around. Stumbling over the uneven and often jagged points, slipping on the sea-weed, plunging into little pools of water left by the ebbing tide in some natural basins, he yet kept his eyes fixed as if in fascination on Kinraid, and made his way almost alongside of him. But the last hour had pinched Hepburn's features into something of the wan haggardness they would wear when he should first be lying still for ever.
Sylvia's Lovers Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Page 27