‘Sylvie, Sylvie!’ shouted he; ‘she mun be i' t' house.’
Sylvia came slowly down the stairs, and stood before him. Her face was pale, her mouth set and determined; the light of her eyes veiled in gloom. Kester shrank from her look, and even more from her silence.
‘A'm come to ax pardon,’ said he, after a little pause.
She was still silent.
‘A'm noane above axing pardon, though a'm fifty and more, and thee's but a silly wench, as a've nursed i' my arms. A'll say before thy mother as a ought niver to ha' used them words, and as how a'm sorry for ‘t.’
‘I don't understand it all,’ said Bell, in a hurried and perplexed tone. ‘What has Kester been saying, my lass?’ she added, turning to Sylvia.
Sylvia went a step or two nearer to her mother, and took hold of her hand as if to quieten her: then facing once more round, she said deliberately to Kester,—
‘If thou wasn't Kester, I'd niver forgive thee. Niver,’ she added, with bitterness, as the words he had used recurred to her mind. ‘It's in me to hate thee now, for saying what thou did; but thou're dear old Kester after all, and I can't help mysel’, I mun needs forgive thee,’ and she went towards him. He took her little head between his horny hands and kissed it. She looked up with tears in her eyes, saying softly,—
‘Niver say things like them again. Niver speak on—’
. ‘A'll bite my tongue off first,’ he interrupted.
He kept his word.
In all Philip's comings and goings to and from Haytersbank Farm at this time, he never spoke again of his love. In look, words, manner, he was like a thoughtful, tender brother; nothing more. He could be nothing more in the presence of the great dread which loomed larger upon him after every conversation with the lawyer.
For Mr Donkin had been right in his prognostication. Government took up the attack on the Rendezvous with a high and heavy hand. It was necessary to assert authority which had been of late too often braved. An example must be made, to strike dismay into those who opposed and defied the press-gang; and all the minor authorities who held their powers from Government were in a similar manner severe and relentless in the execution of their duty. So the attorney, who went over to see the prisoner in York Castle, told Philip. He added that Daniel still retained his pride in his achievement, and could not be brought to understand the dangerous position in which he was placed; that when pressed and questioned as to circumstances that might possibly be used in his defence, he always wandered off to accounts of previous outrages committed by the press-gang, or to passionate abuse of the trick by which men had been lured from their homes on the night in question to assist in putting out an imaginary fire, and then seized and carried off. Some of this very natural indignation might possibly have some effect on the jury; and this seemed the only ground of hope, and was indeed a slight one, as the judge was likely to warn the jury against allowing their natural sympathy in such a case to divert their minds from the real question.1
Such was the substance of what Philip heard, and heard repeatedly, during his many visits to Mr Dawson. And now the time of trial drew near; for the York assizes opened on March the twelfth; not much above three weeks since the offence was committed which took Daniel from his home and placed him in peril of death.
Philip was glad that, the extremity of his danger never having been hinted to Bell, and travelling some forty miles2 being a most unusual exertion at that time to persons of her class, the idea of going to see her husband at York had never suggested itself to Bell's mind. Her increasing feebleness made this seem a step only to be taken in case of the fatal extreme necessity; such was the conclusion that both Sylvia and he had come to; and it was the knowledge of this that made Sylvia strangle her own daily longing to see her father. Not but that her hopes were stronger than her fears. Philip never told her the causes for despondency; she was young, and she, like her father, could not understand how fearful sometimes is the necessity for prompt and severe punishment of rebellion against authority.
Philip was to be in York during the time of the assizes; and it was understood, almost without words, that if the terrible worst occurred, the wife and daughter were to come to York as soon as might be. For this end Philip silently made all the necessary arrangements before leaving Monkshaven. The sympathy of all men was with him; it was too large an occasion for Coulson to be anything but magnanimous. He urged Philip to take all the time requisite; to leave all business cares to him. And as Philip went about pale and sad, there was another cheek that grew paler still, another eye that filled with quiet tears as his heaviness of heart became more and more apparent. The day for opening the assizes came on. Philip was in York Minster, watching the solemn antique procession in which the highest authority in the county accompanies the judges to the House of the Lord, to be there admonished as to the nature of their duties. As Philip listened to the sermon with a strained and beating heart, his hopes rose higher than his fears for the first time, and that evening he wrote his first letter to Sylvia.
‘DEAR SYLVIA,
‘It will be longer first than I thought for. Mr Dawson says Tuesday in next week. But keep up your heart. I have been hearing the sermon to-day which is preached to the judges; and the clergyman said so much in it about mercy and forgiveness, I think they cannot fail to be lenient this assize. I have seen uncle, who looks but thin, but is in good heart: only he will keep saying he would do it over again if he had the chance, which neither Mr Dawson nor I think is wise in him, in especial as the gaoler is by and hears every word as is said. He was very fain of hearing all about home; and wants you to rear Daisy's calf, as he thinks she will prove a good one. He bade me give his best love to you and my aunt, and his kind duty to Kester.
‘Sylvia, will you try and forget how I used to scold you about your writing and spelling, and just write me two or three lines. I think I would rather have them badly spelt than not, because then I shall be sure they are yours. And never mind about capitals; I was a fool to say such a deal about them, for a man does just as well without them. A letter from you would do a vast to keep me patient all these days till Tuesday. Direct—
‘Mr Philip Hepburn,
‘Care of Mr Fraser, Draper,
‘Micklegate, York.
‘My affectionate duty to my aunt.
‘Your respectful cousin and servant,
‘PHILIP HEPBURN.
‘PS. The sermon was grand. The text was Zechariah vii. 9, “Execute true judgment and show mercy.” God grant it may have put mercy into the judge's heart as is to try my uncle.’
Heavily the days passed over. On Sunday Bell and Sylvia went to church, with a strange, half-superstitious feeling, as if they could propitiate the Most High to order the events in their favour by paying Him the compliment of attending to duties in their time of sorrow which they had too often neglected in their prosperous days.
But He ‘who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust‘,3 took pity upon His children, and sent some of His blessed peace into their hearts, else they could scarce have endured the agony of suspense of those next hours. For as they came slowly and wearily home from church, Sylvia could no longer bear her secret, but told her mother of the peril in which Daniel stood. Cold as the March wind blew, they had not felt it, and had sate down on a hedge bank for Bell to rest. And then Sylvia spoke, trembling and sick for fear, yet utterly unable to keep silence any longer. Bell heaved up her hands, and let them fall down on her knees before she replied.
‘The Lord is above us,’ said she, solemnly. ‘He has sent a fear o' this into my heart afore now. I niver breathed it to thee, my lass——’
‘And I niver spoke on it to thee, mother, because———’
Sylvia choked with crying, and laid her head on her mother's lap, feeling that she was no longer the strong one, and the protector, but the protected. Bell went on, stroking her head,
‘The Lord is like a tender nurse as weans a child to look on and to like what it lothed once.
He has sent me dreams as has prepared me for this, if so be it comes to pass.’
‘Philip is hopeful,’ said Sylvia, raising her head and looking through her tears at her mother.
‘Ay, he is. And I cannot tell, but I think it's not for nought as the Lord has ta'en away all fear o' death out o' my heart. I think He means as Daniel and me is to go hand-in-hand through the valley—like as we walked up to our wedding in Crosthwaite Church. I could never guide th' house without Daniel, and I should be feared he'd take a deal more nor is good for him without me.’
‘But me, mother, thou's forgetting me,’ moaned out Sylvia. ‘Oh, mother, mother, think on me!’
‘Nay, my lass, I'm noane forgetting yo’. I'd a sore heart a' last winter a-thinking on thee, when that chap Kinraid were hanging about thee. I'll noane speak ill on the dead, but I were uneasylike. But sin' Philip and thee seem to ha' made it up——’
Sylvia shivered, and opened her mouth to speak, but did not say a word.
‘And sin' the Lord has been comforting me, and talking to me many a time when thou's thought I were asleep, things has seemed to redd theirselves up,4 and if Daniel goes, I'm ready to follow. I could niver stand living to hear folks say he'd been hung; it seems so unnatural and shameful.’
‘But, mother, he won't!—he shan't be hung!’ said Sylvia, springing to her feet. ‘Philip says he won't.’
Bell shook her head. They walked on, Sylvia both disheartened and almost irritated at her mother's despondency. But before they went to bed at night Bell said things which seemed as though the morning's feelings had been but temporary, and as if she was referring every decision to the period of her husband's return. ‘When father comes home,’ seemed a sort of burden at the beginning or end of every sentence, and this reliance on his certain coming back to them was almost as great a trial to Sylvia as the absence of all hope had been in the morning. But that instinct told her that her mother was becoming incapable of argument, she would have asked her why her views were so essentially changed in so few hours. This inability of reason in poor Bell made Sylvia feel very desolate.
Monday passed over—how, neither of them knew, for neither spoke of what was filling the thoughts of both. Before it was light on Tuesday morning, Bell was astir.
‘It's very early, mother,’ said weary, sleepy Sylvia, dreading returning consciousness.
‘Ay, lass!’ said Bell, in a brisk, cheerful tone; ‘but he'll, maybe, be home to-night, and I'se bound to have all things ready for him.’
‘Anyhow,’ said Sylvia, sitting up in bed, ‘he couldn't come home to-night.’
‘Tut, lass! thou doesn't know how quick a man comes home to wife and child. I'll be a' ready at any rate.’
She hurried about in a way which Sylvia wondered to see; till at length she fancied that perhaps her mother did so to drive away thought. Every place was cleaned; there was scarce time allowed for breakfast; till at last, long before mid-day, all the work was done, and the two sat down to their spinning-wheels. Sylvia's spirits sank lower and lower at each speech of her mother's, from whose mind all fear seemed to have disappeared, leaving only a strange restless kind of excitement.
‘It's time for t' potatoes,’ said Bell, after her wool had snapped many a time from her uneven tread.
‘Mother,’ said Sylvia, ‘it's but just gone ten!’
‘Put ‘em on,’ said Bell, without attending to the full meaning of her daughter's words. ‘It'll, maybe, hasten t' day on if we get dinner done betimes.’
‘But Kester is in t' Far Acre field, and he'll not be home till noon.’
This seemed to settle matters for a while; but then Bell pushed her wheel away, and began searching for her hood and cloak. Sylvia found them for her, and then asked sadly—
‘What does ta want ‘em for, mother?’
‘I'll go up t' brow and through t' field, and just have a look down t' lane.’
‘I'll go wi' thee,’ said Sylvia, feeling all the time the uselessness of any looking for intelligence from York so early in the day. Very patiently did she wait by her mother's side during the long half-hour which Bell spent in gazing down the road for those who never came.
When they got home Sylvia put the potatoes on to boil; but when dinner was ready and the three were seated at the dresser, Bell pushed her plate away from her, saying it was so long after dinner time that she was past eating. Kester would have said something about its being only half-past twelve, but Sylvia gave him a look beseeching silence, and he went on with his dinner without a word, only brushing away the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand from time to time.
‘A'll noane go far fra' home t' rest o' t' day,’ said he, in a whisper to Sylvia, as he went out.
‘Will this day niver come to an end?’ cried Bell, plaintively.
‘Oh, mother! it'll come to an end some time, never fear. I've heerd say—
“Be the day weary or be the day long,
At length it ringeth to even-song.”’5
‘To even-song—to even-song,’ repeated Bell. ‘D‘ye think now that even-song means death, Sylvie?’
‘I cannot tell—I cannot bear it. Mother,’ said Sylvia, in despair, ‘I'll make some clap-bread: that's a heavy job, and will while away t' afternoon.’
‘Ay, do!’ replied the mother. ‘He'll like it fresh—he'll like it fresh.’
Murmuring and talking to herself, she fell into a doze, from which Sylvia was careful not to disturb her.
The days were now getting long, although as cold as ever; and at Haytersbank Farm the light lingered, as there was no near horizon to bring on early darkness. Sylvia had all ready for her mother's tea against she wakened; but she slept on and on, the peaceful sleep of a child, and Sylvia did not care to waken her. Just after the sun had set, she saw Kester outside the window making signs to her to come out. She stole out on tip-toe by the back-kitchen, the door of which was standing open. She almost ran against Philip, who did not perceive her, as he was awaiting her coming the other way round the corner of the house, and who turned upon her a face whose import she read in an instant. ‘Philip!’ was all she said, and then she fainted at his feet, coming down with a heavy bang on the round paving stones of the yard.
‘Kester! Kester!’ he cried, for she looked like one dead, and with all his strength the wearied man could not lift her and carry her into the house.
With Kester's help she was borne into the back-kitchen, and Kester rushed to the pump for some cold water to throw over her.
While Philip, kneeling at her head, was partly supporting her in his arms, and heedless of any sight or sound, the shadow of some one fell upon him. He looked up and saw his aunt; the old dignified, sensible expression on her face, exactly like her former self, composed, strong, and calm.
‘My lass,’ said she, sitting down by Philip, and gently taking her out of his arms into her own. ‘Lass, bear up! we mun bear up, and be agait6 on our way to him, he'll be needing us now. Bear up, my lass! the Lord will give us strength. We mun go to him; ay, time's precious; thou mun cry thy cry at after!’
Sylvia opened her dim eyes, and heard her mother's voice; the ideas came slowly into her mind, and slowly she rose up, standing still, like one who has been stunned, to regain her strength; and then, taking hold of her mother's arm, she said, in a soft, strange voice—
‘Let's go. I'm ready.’
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Ordeal
It was the afternoon of an April day in that same year, and the sky was blue above, with little sailing white clouds catching the pleasant sunlight. The earth in that northern country had scarcely yet put on her robe of green. The few trees grew near brooks running down from the moors and the higher ground. The air was full of pleasant sounds prophesying of the coming summer. The rush, and murmur, and tinkle of the hidden watercourses; the song of the lark poised high up in the sunny air; the bleat of the lambs calling to their mothers—everything inanimate was full of hope and gladness.
For the first time
for a mournful month the front door of Haytersbank Farm was open; the warm spring air might enter, and displace the sad dark gloom, if it could. There was a newly-lighted fire in the unused grate; and Kester was in the kitchen, with his clogs off his feet, so as not to dirty the spotless floor, stirring here and there, and trying in his awkward way to make things look home-like and cheerful. He had brought in some wild daffodils which he had been to seek in the dawn, and he placed them in a jug on the dresser. Dolly Reid, the woman who had come to help Sylvia during her mother's illness a year ago, was attending to something in the back-kitchen, making a noise among the milk-cans, and singing a ballad to herself as she worked; yet every now and then she checked herself in her singing, as if a sudden recollection came upon her that this was neither the time nor the place for songs. Once or twice she took up the funeral psalm which is sung by the bearers of the body in that country—
Our God, our help in ages past.1
But it was of no use: the pleasant April weather out of doors, and perhaps the natural spring in the body, disposed her nature to cheerfulness, and insensibly she returned to her old ditty.
Kester was turning over many things in his rude honest mind as he stood there, giving his finishing touches every now and then to the aspect of the house-place, in preparation for the return of the widow and daughter of his old master.
It was a month and more since they had left home; more than a fortnight since Kester, with three halfpence in his pocket, had set out after his day's work to go to York—to walk all night long, and to wish Daniel Robson his last farewell.
Daniel had tried to keep up and had brought out one or two familiar, thread-bare, well-worn jokes, such as he had made Kester chuckle over many a time and oft, when the two had been together afield or in the shippen at the home which he should never more see. But no ‘Old Grouse in the gun-room’2 could make Kester smile, or do anything except groan in but a heart-broken sort of fashion, and presently the talk had become more suitable to the occasion, Daniel being up to the last the more composed of the two; for Kester, when turned out of the condemned cell, fairly broke down into the heavy sobbing he had never thought to sob again on earth. He had left Bell and Sylvia in their lodging at York, under Philip's care; he dared not go to see them; he could not trust himself; he had sent them his duty, and bade Philip tell Sylvia that the game-hen had brought out fifteen chickens at a hatch.
Sylvia's Lovers Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Page 38