Sylvia's Lovers Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  ‘But yo' said as he might ha' been carried off by t' gang—yo' did, Kester, tho' now yo're a' for t' other side.’

  ‘My lass, a'd fain have him alive, an' a dunnot fancy Philip for thy husband; but it's a serious judgment as thou's put me on, an' a'm trying it fair. There's allays one chance i' a thousand as he's alive, for no man iver saw him dead. But t' gang were noane about Monkshaven then: there were niver a tender on t' coast nearer than Shields, an' those theere were searched.’

  He did not say any more, but turned back into the field, and took up his hay-making again.

  Sylvia stood quite still, thinking, and wistfully longing for some kind of certainty.

  Kester came up to her.

  ‘Sylvie, thou knows Philip paid me back my money, and it were eight pound fifteen and three-pence; and t' hay and stock 'll sell for summat above t' rent; and a've a sister as is a decent widow-woman, tho' but badly off, livin' at Dale End; and if thee and thy mother 'll go live wi' her, a'll give thee well on to all a can earn, and it'll be a matter o' five shilling a week. But dunnot go and marry a man as thou's noane taken wi‘, and another as is most like for t' be dead, but who, mebbe, is alive, havin' a pull on thy heart.’

  Sylvia began to cry as if her heart was broken. She had promised herself more fully to Philip the night before than she had told Kester; and, with some pains and much patience, her cousin, her lover, alas! her future husband, had made the fact clear to the bewildered mind of her poor mother, who had all day long shown that her mind and heart were full of the subject, and that the contemplation of it was giving her as much peace as she could ever know. And now Kester's words came to call up echoes in the poor girl's heart. Just as she was in this miserable state, wishing that the grave lay open before her, and that she could lie down, and be covered up by the soft green turf from all the bitter sorrows and carking cares and weary bewilderments of this life; wishing that her father was alive, that Charley was once more here; that she had not repeated the solemn words by which she had promised herself to Philip only the very evening before, she heard a soft, low whistle, and, looking round unconsciously, there was her lover and affianced husband, leaning on the gate, and gazing into the field with passionate eyes, devouring the fair face and figure of her, his future wife.

  ‘Oh, Kester,’ said she once more, ‘what mun I do? I'm pledged to him as strong as words can make it, and mother blessed us both wi' more sense than she's had for weeks. Kester, man, speak! Shall I go and break it all off?—say.’

  ‘Nay, it's noane for me t' say; m'appen thou's gone too far. Them above only knows what is best.’

  Again that long, cooing whistle. ‘Sylvie!’

  ‘He's been very kind to us all,’ said Sylvia, laying her rake down with slow care, ‘and I'll try t' make him happy.’

  CHAPTER XXIX

  Wedding Raiment

  Philip and Sylvia were engaged. It was not so happy a state of things as Philip had imagined. He had already found that out, although it was not twenty-four hours since Sylvia had promised to be his. He could not have defined why he was dissatisfied; if he had been compelled to account for his feeling, he would probably have alleged as a reason that Sylvia's manner was so unchanged by her new position towards him. She was quiet and gentle; but no shyer, no brighter, no coyer, no happier, than she had been for months before. When she joined him at the field-gate, his heart was beating fast, his eyes were beaming out love at her approach. She neither blushed nor smiled, but seemed absorbed in thought of some kind. But she resisted his silent effort to draw her away from the path leading to the house, and turned her face steadily homewards. He murmured soft words, which she scarcely heard. Right in their way was the stone trough for the fresh bubbling water, that, issuing from a roadside spring, served for all the household purposes of Haytersbank Farm. By it were the milk-cans, glittering and clean. Sylvia knew she should have to stop for these, and carry them back home in readiness for the evening's milking; and at this time, during this action, she resolved to say what was on her mind.

  They were there. Sylvia spoke.

  ‘Philip, Kester has been saying as how it might ha' been——’

  ‘Well!’ said Philip.

  Sylvia sate down on the edge of the trough, and dipped her hot little hand in the water. Then she went on quickly, and lifting her beautiful eyes to Philip's face, with a look of inquiry—‘He thinks as Charley Kinraid may ha' been took by t' press-gang.’

  It was the first time she had named the name of her former lover to her present one since the day, long ago now, when they had quarrelled about him; and the rosy colour flushed her all over; but her sweet, trustful eyes never flinched from their steady, unconscious gaze.

  Philip's heart stopped beating; literally, as if he had come to a sudden precipice, while he had thought himself securely walking on sunny greensward. He went purple all over from dismay; he dared not take his eyes away from that sad, earnest look of hers, but he was thankful that a mist came before them and drew a veil before his brain. He heard his own voice saying words he did not seem to have framed in his own mind.

  ‘Kester's a d—dd fool,’ he growled.

  ‘He says there's mebbe but one chance i' a hundred,’ said Sylvia, pleading, as it were, for Kester; ‘but oh! Philip, think yo' there's just that one chance?’

  ‘Ay, there's a chance, sure enough,’ said Philip, in a kind of fierce despair that made him reckless what he said or did. ‘There's a chance, I suppose, for iverything i' life as we have not seen with our own eyes as it may not ha' happened. Kester may say next as there's a chance as your father is not dead, because we none on us saw him——’

  ‘Hung,’ he was going to have said, but a touch of humanity came back into his stony heart. Sylvia sent up a little sharp cry at his words. He longed at the sound to take her in his arms and hush her up, as a mother hushes her weeping child. But the very longing, having to be repressed, only made him more beside himself with guilt, anxiety, and rage. They were quite still now. Sylvia looking sadly down into the bubbling, merry, flowing water: Philip glaring at her, wishing that the next word were spoken, though it might stab him to the heart. But she did not speak.

  At length, unable to bear it any longer, he said, ‘Thou sets a deal o' store on that man, Sylvie.’

  If ‘that man' had been there at the moment, Philip would have grappled with him, and not let go his hold till one or the other were dead. Sylvia caught some of the passionate meaning of the gloomy, miserable tone of Philip's voice as he said these words. She looked up at him.

  ‘I thought yo' knowed that I cared a deal for him.’

  There was something so pleading and innocent in her pale, troubled face, so pathetic in her tone, that Philip's anger, which had been excited against her, as well as against all the rest of the world, melted away into love; and once more he felt that have her for his own he must, at any cost. He sate down by her, and spoke to her in quite a different manner to that which he had used before, with a ready tact and art which some strange instinct or tempter ‘close at his ear’1 supplied.

  ‘Yes, darling, I knew yo' cared for him. I'll not say ill of him that is—dead—ay, dead and drowned—whativer Kester may say—before now; but if I chose I could tell tales.’

  ‘No! tell no tales; I'll not hear them,’ said she, wrenching herself out of Philip's clasping arm. ‘They may misca' him for iver, and I'll not believe 'em.’

  ‘I'll niver miscall one who is dead,’ said Philip; each new unconscious sign of the strength of Sylvia's love for her former lover only making him the more anxious to convince her that he was dead, only rendering him more keen at deceiving his own conscience by repeating to it the lie that long ere this Kinraid was in all probability dead—killed by either the chances of war or tempestuous sea; that, even if not, he was as good as dead to her; so that the word ‘dead' might be used in all honest certainty, as in one of its meanings Kinraid was dead for sure.

  ‘Think yo' that if he were not dead he wouldn't
ha' written ere this to some one of his kin, if not to thee? Yet none of his folk Newcassel-way but believe him dead.’

  ‘So Kester says,’ sighed Sylvia.

  Philip took heart. He put his arm softly round her again, and murmured—

  ‘My lassie, try not to think on them as is gone, as is dead, but t' think a bit more on him as loves yo' wi' heart, and soul, and might, and has done iver sin' he first set eyes on yo'. Oh, Sylvie, my love for thee is just terrible.’

  At this moment Dolly Reid was seen at the back-door of the farmhouse, and catching sight of Sylvia, she called out—

  ‘Sylvia, thy mother is axing for thee, and I cannot make her mind easy.’

  In a moment Sylvia had sprung up from her seat, and was running in to soothe and comfort her mother's troubled fancies.

  Philip sate on by the well-side, his face buried in his two hands. Presently he lifted himself up, drank some water eagerly out of his hollowed palm, sighed, and shook himself, and followed his cousin into the house. Sometimes he came unexpectedly to the limits of his influence over her. In general she obeyed his expressed wishes with gentle indifference, as if she had no preferences of her own; once or twice he found that she was doing what he desired out of the spirit of obedience, which, as her mother's daughter, she believed to be her duty towards her affianced husband. And this last motive for action depressed her lover more than anything. He wanted the old Sylvia back again; captious, capricious, wilful, haughty, merry, charming. Alas! that Sylvia was gone for ever.

  But once especially his power, arising from whatever cause, was stopped entirely short—was utterly of no avail.

  It was on the occasion of Dick Simpson's mortal illness. Sylvia and her mother kept aloof from every one. They had never been intimate with any family but the Corneys, and even this friendship had considerably cooled since Molly's marriage, and most especially since Kinraid's supposed death, when Bessy Corney and Sylvia had been, as it were, rival mourners. But many people, both in Monkshaven and the country round about, held the Robson family in great respect, although Mrs Robson herself was accounted ‘high' and ‘distant’; and poor little Sylvia, in her heyday of beautiful youth and high spirits, had been spoken of as ‘a bit flighty’, and ‘a set-up lassie’. Still, when their great sorrow fell upon them, there were plenty of friends to sympathize deeply with them; and, as Daniel had suffered in a popular cause, there were even more who, scarcely knowing them personally, were ready to give them all the marks of respect and friendly feeling in their power. But neither Bell nor Sylvia were aware of this. The former had lost all perception of what was not immediately before her; the latter shrank from all encounters of any kind with a sore heart, and sensitive avoidance of everything that could make her a subject of remark. So the poor afflicted people at Haytersbank knew little of Monkshaven news. What little did come to their ears came through Dolly Reid, when she returned from selling the farm produce of the week; and often, indeed, even then she found Sylvia too much absorbed in other cares or thoughts to listen to her gossip. So no one had ever named that Simpson was supposed to be dying till Philip began on the subject one evening. Sylvia's face suddenly flashed into glow and life.

  ‘He's dying, is he? t' earth is well rid on such a fellow!’

  ‘Eh, Sylvie, that's a hard speech o' thine!’ said Philip; ‘it gives me but poor heart to ask a favour of thee!’

  ‘If it's aught about Simpson,’ replied she, and then she interrupted herself. ‘But say on; it were ill-mannered in me for t' interrupt yo'.’

  ‘Thou would be sorry to see him, I think, Sylvie. He cannot get over the way, t' folk met him, and pelted him when he came back fra' York,—and he's weak and faint, and beside himself at times; and he'll lie a-dreaming, and a-fancying they're all at him again, hooting, and yelling, and pelting him.’

  ‘I'm glad on ‘t,' said Sylvia; ‘it's t' best news I've heered for many a day,—he, to turn again' feyther, who gave him money for t' get a lodging that night, when he'd no place to go to. It were his evidence as hung feyther; and he's rightly punished for it now.’

  ‘For a' that,—and he's done a vast o' wrong beside, he's dying now, Sylvie!’

  ‘Well! let him die—it's t' best thing he could do!’

  ‘But he's lying i' such dree poverty,—and niver a friend to go near him,—niver a person to speak a kind word t' him.’

  ‘It seems as yo've been speaking wi' him, at any rate,’ said Sylvia, turning round on Philip.

  ‘Ay. He sent for me by Nell Manning, th' old beggar-woman, who sometimes goes in and makes his bed for him, poor wretch,—he's lying in t' ruins of th' cowhouse of th' Mariners' Arms, Sylvie.’

  ‘Well!’ said she, in the same hard, dry tone.

  ‘And I went and fetched th' parish doctor, for I thought he'd ha' died before my face,—he was so wan, and ashen-gray, so thin, too, his eyes seem pushed out of his bony face.’

  ‘That last time—feyther's eyes were starting, wil-like, and as if he couldn't meet ours, or bear the sight on our weeping.’

  It was a bad look-out for Philip's purpose; but after a pause he went bravely on.

  ‘He's a poor dying creature, anyhow. T' doctor said so, and told him he hadn't many hours, let alone days, to live.’

  ‘And he'd shrink fra' dying wi' a' his sins on his head?’ said Sylvia, almost exultingly.

  Philip shook his head. ‘He said this world had been too strong for him, and men too hard upon him; he could niver do any good here, and he thought he should, maybe, find folks i' t' next place more merciful.’

  ‘He'll meet feyther theere,’ said Sylvia, still hard and bitter.

  ‘He's a poor ignorant creature, and doesn't seem to know rightly who he's like to meet; only he seems glad to get away fra' Monkshaven folks; he were really hurt, I am afeared, that night, Sylvie,—and he speaks as if he'd had hard times of it ever since he were a child,—and he talks as if he were really grieved for t' part t' lawyers made him take at th' trial,—they made him speak, against his will, he says.’

  ‘Couldn't he ha' bitten his tongue out?' asked Sylvia. ‘It's fine talking o' sorrow when the thing is done!'

  ‘Well, anyhow he's sorry now; and he's not long for to live. And, Sylvie, he bid me ask thee, if, for the sake of all that is dear to thee both here, and i' th' world to come, thou'd go wi' me, and just say to him that thou forgives him his part that day.’

  ‘He sent thee on that errand, did he? And thou could come and ask me? I've a mind to break it off for iver wi' thee, Philip.’ She kept gasping, as if she could not say any more. Philip watched and waited till her breath came, his own half choked.

  ‘Thee and me was niver meant to go together. It's not in me to forgive,—I sometimes think it's not in me to forget. I wonder, Philip, if thy feyther had done a kind deed—and a right deed—and a merciful deed—and some one as he'd been good to, even i' t' midst of his just anger, had gone and let on about him to th' judge, as was trying to hang him,—and had getten him hanged,—hanged dead, so that his wife were a widow, and his child fatherless for ivermore,—I wonder if thy veins would run milk and water, so that thou could go and make friends, and speak soft wi' him as had caused thy feyther's death?’

  ‘It's said in t' Bible, Sylvie, that we're to forgive.’

  ‘Ay, there's some things as I know I niver forgive; and there's others as I can't—and I won't, either.’

  ‘But, Sylvie, yo' pray to be forgiven your trespasses, as you forgive them as trespass against you.’

  ‘Well, if I'm to be taken at my word, I'll noane pray at all, that's all. It's well enough for them as has but little to forgive to use them words; and I don't reckon it's kind, or pretty behaved in yo', Philip, to bring up Scripture again' me. Thou may go about thy business.’

  ‘Thou'rt vexed with me, Sylvie; and I'm not meaning but that it would go hard with thee to forgive him; but I think it would be right and Christian-like i' thee, and that thou'd find thy comfort in thinking on it after. If thou'd only go, a
nd see his wistful eyes—I think they'd plead wi' thee more than his words, or mine either.’

  ‘I tell thee my flesh and blood wasn't made for forgiving and forgetting. Once for all, thou must take my word. When I love I love, and when I hate I hate; and him as has done harm to me, or to mine, I may keep fra' striking or murdering, but I'll niver forgive. I should be just a monster, fit to be shown at a fair, if I could forgive him as got feyther hanged.’

  Philip was silent, thinking what more he could urge.

  ‘Yo'd better be off,’ said Sylvia, in a minute or two. ‘Yo' and me has got wrong and it'll take a night's sleep to set us right. Yo've said all yo' can for him; and perhaps it's not yo' as is to blame, but yo'r nature. But I'm put out wi' thee, and want thee out o' my sight for awhile.’

  One or two more speeches of this kind convinced him that it would be wise in him to take her at her word. He went back to Simpson, and found him, though still alive, past the understanding of any words of human forgiveness. Philip had almost wished he had not troubled or irritated Sylvia by urging the dying man's request: the performance of this duty seemed now to have been such a useless office.

  After all, the performance of a duty is never a useless office, though we may not see the consequences, or they may be quite different to what we expected or calculated on. In the pause of active work, when daylight was done, and the evening shades came on, Sylvia had time to think; and her heart grew sad and soft, in comparison to what it had been when Philip's urgency had called out all her angry opposition. She thought of her father—his sharp passions, his frequent forgiveness, or rather his forgetfulness that he had even been injured. All Sylvia's persistent or enduring qualities were derived from her mother, her impulses from her father. It was her dead father whose example filled her mind this evening in the soft and tender twilight. She did not say to herself that she would go and tell Simpson that she forgave him; but she thought that if Philip asked her again that she should do so.