Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  And Hester, that Sylvia would fain have loved for her uniform gentleness and patience with all around her, seemed so cold in her unruffled and undemonstrative behaviour; and moreover, Sylvia felt that Hester blamed her perpetual silence regarding Philip’s absence without knowing how bitter a cause Sylvia had for casting him off.

  The only person who seemed to have pity upon her was Kester; and his pity was shown in looks rather than words; for when he came to see her, which he did from time to time, by a kind of mutual tacit consent, they spoke but little of former days.

  He was still lodging with his sister, widow Dobson, working at odd jobs, some of which took him into the country for weeks at a time. But on his returns to Monkshaven he was sure to come and see her and the little Bella; indeed, when his employment was in the immediate neighbourhood of the town, he never allowed a week to pass away without a visit.

  There was not much conversation between him and Sylvia at such times. They skimmed over the surface of the small events in which both took an interest; only now and then a sudden glance, a checked speech, told each that there were deeps not forgotten, although they were never mentioned.

  Twice Sylvia — below her breath — had asked Kester, just as she was holding the door open for his departure, if anything had ever been heard of Kinraid since his one night’s visit to Monkshaven: each time (and there was an interval of some months between the inquiries) the answer had been simply, no.

  To no one else would Sylvia ever have named his name. But indeed she had not the chance, had she wished it ever so much, of asking any questions about him from any one likely to know. The Corneys had left Moss Brow at Martinmas, and gone many miles away towards Horncastle. Bessy Corney, it is true was married and left behind in the neighbourhood; but with her Sylvia had never been intimate; and what girlish friendship there might have been between them had cooled very much at the time of Kinraid’s supposed death three years before.

  One day before Christmas in this year, 1798, Sylvia was called into the shop by Coulson, who, with his assistant, was busy undoing the bales of winter goods supplied to them from the West Riding, and other places. He was looking at a fine Irish poplin dress-piece when Sylvia answered to his call.

  ‘Here! do you know this again?’ asked he, in the cheerful tone of one sure of giving pleasure.

  ‘No! have I iver seen it afore?’

  ‘Not this, but one for all t’ world like it.’

  She did not rouse up to much interest, but looked at it as if trying to recollect where she could have seen its like.

  ‘My missus had one on at th’ party at John Foster’s last March, and yo’ admired it a deal. And Philip, he thought o’ nothing but how he could get yo’ just such another, and he set a vast o’ folk agait for to meet wi’ its marrow; and what he did just the very day afore he went away so mysterious was to write through Dawson Brothers, o’ Wakefield, to Dublin, and order that one should be woven for yo’. Jemima had to cut a bit off hers for to give him t’ exact colour.’

  Sylvia did not say anything but that it was very pretty, in a low voice, and then she quickly left the shop, much to Coulson’s displeasure.

  All the afternoon she was unusually quiet and depressed.

  Alice Rose, sitting helpless in her chair, watched her with keen eyes.

  At length, after one of Sylvia’s deep, unconscious sighs, the old woman spoke:

  ‘It’s religion as must comfort thee, child, as it’s done many a one afore thee.’

  ‘How?’ said Sylvia, looking up, startled to find herself an object of notice.

  ‘How?’ (The answer was not quite so ready as the precept had been.) ‘Read thy Bible, and thou wilt learn.’

  ‘But I cannot read,’ said Sylvia, too desperate any longer to conceal her ignorance.

  ‘Not read! and thee Philip’s wife as was such a great scholar! Of a surety the ways o’ this life are crooked! There was our Hester, as can read as well as any minister, and Philip passes over her to go and choose a young lass as cannot read her Bible.’

  ‘Was Philip and Hester — — ’

  Sylvia paused, for though a new curiosity had dawned upon her, she did not know how to word her question.

  ‘Many a time and oft have I seen Hester take comfort in her Bible when Philip was following after thee. She knew where to go for consolation.’

  ‘I’d fain read,’ said Sylvia, humbly, ‘if anybody would learn me; for perhaps it might do me good; I’m noane so happy.’

  Her eyes, as she looked up at Alice’s stern countenance, were full of tears.

  The old woman saw it, and was touched, although she did not immediately show her sympathy. But she took her own time, and made no reply.

  The next day, however, she bade Sylvia come to her, and then and there, as if her pupil had been a little child, she began to teach Sylvia to read the first chapter of Genesis; for all other reading but the Scriptures was as vanity to her, and she would not condescend to the weakness of other books. Sylvia was now, as ever, slow at book-learning; but she was meek and desirous to be taught, and her willingness in this respect pleased Alice, and drew her singularly towards one who, from being a pupil, might become a convert.

  All this time Sylvia never lost the curiosity that had been excited by the few words Alice had let drop about Hester and Philip, and by degrees she approached the subject again, and had the idea then started confirmed by Alice, who had no scruple in using the past experience of her own, of her daughter’s, or of any one’s life, as an instrument to prove the vanity of setting the heart on anything earthly.

  This knowledge, unsuspected before, sank deep into Sylvia’s thoughts, and gave her a strange interest in Hester — poor Hester, whose life she had so crossed and blighted, even by the very blighting of her own. She gave Hester her own former passionate feelings for Kinraid, and wondered how she herself should have felt towards any one who had come between her and him, and wiled his love away. When she remembered Hester’s unfailing sweetness and kindness towards herself from the very first, she could better bear the comparative coldness of her present behaviour.

  She tried, indeed, hard to win back the favour she had lost; but the very means she took were blunders, and only made it seem to her as if she could never again do right in Hester’s eyes.

  For instance, she begged her to accept and wear the pretty poplin gown which had been Philip’s especial choice; feeling within herself as if she should never wish to put it on, and as if the best thing she could do with it was to offer it to Hester. But Hester rejected the proffered gift with as much hardness of manner as she was capable of assuming; and Sylvia had to carry it upstairs and lay it by for the little daughter, who, Hester said, might perhaps learn to value things that her father had given especial thought to.

  Yet Sylvia went on trying to win Hester to like her once more; it was one of her great labours, and learning to read from Hester’s mother was another.

  Alice, indeed, in her solemn way, was becoming quite fond of Sylvia; if she could not read or write, she had a deftness and gentleness of motion, a capacity for the household matters which fell into her department, that had a great effect on the old woman, and for her dear mother’s sake Sylvia had a stock of patient love ready in her heart for all the aged and infirm that fell in her way. She never thought of seeking them out, as she knew that Hester did; but then she looked up to Hester as some one very remarkable for her goodness. If only she could have liked her!

  Hester tried to do all she could for Sylvia; Philip had told her to take care of his wife and child; but she had the conviction that Sylvia had so materially failed in her duties as to have made her husband an exile from his home — a penniless wanderer, wifeless and childless, in some strange country, whose very aspect was friendless, while the cause of all lived on in the comfortable home where he had placed her, wanting for nothing — an object of interest and regard to many friends — with a lovely little child to give her joy for the present, and hope for the future;
while he, the poor outcast, might even lie dead by the wayside. How could Hester love Sylvia?

  Yet they were frequent companions that ensuing spring. Hester was not well; and the doctors said that the constant occupation in the shop was too much for her, and that she must, for a time at least, take daily walks into the country.

  Sylvia used to beg to accompany her; she and the little girl often went with Hester up the valley of the river to some of the nestling farms that were hidden in the more sheltered nooks — for Hester was bidden to drink milk warm from the cow; and to go into the familiar haunts about a farm was one of the few things in which Sylvia seemed to take much pleasure. She would let little Bella toddle about while Hester sate and rested: and she herself would beg to milk the cow destined to give the invalid her draught.

  One May evening the three had been out on some such expedition; the country side still looked gray and bare, though the leaves were showing on the willow and blackthorn and sloe, and by the tinkling runnels, making hidden music along the copse side, the pale delicate primrose buds were showing amid their fresh, green, crinkled leaves. The larks had been singing all the afternoon, but were now dropping down into their nests in the pasture fields; the air had just the sharpness in it which goes along with a cloudless evening sky at that time of the year.

  But Hester walked homewards slowly and languidly, speaking no word. Sylvia noticed this at first without venturing to speak, for Hester was one who disliked having her ailments noticed. But after a while Hester stood still in a sort of weary dreamy abstraction; and Sylvia said to her,

  ‘I’m afeared yo’re sadly tired. Maybe we’ve been too far.’

  Hester almost started.

  ‘No!’ said she, ‘it’s only my headache which is worse to-night. It has been bad all day; but since I came out it has felt just as if there were great guns booming, till I could almost pray ‘em to be quiet. I am so weary o’ th’ sound.’

  She stepped out quickly towards home after she had said this, as if she wished for neither pity nor comment on what she had said.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  THE RECOGNITION

  Far away, over sea and land, over sunny sea again, great guns were booming on that 7th of May, 1799.

  The Mediterranean came up with a long roar on a beach glittering white with snowy sand, and the fragments of innumerable sea-shells, delicate and shining as porcelain. Looking at that shore from the sea, a long ridge of upland ground, beginning from an inland depth, stretched far away into the ocean on the right, till it ended in a great mountainous bluff, crowned with the white buildings of a convent sloping rapidly down into the blue water at its base.

  In the clear eastern air, the different characters of the foliage that clothed the sides of that sea-washed mountain might be discerned from a long distance by the naked eye; the silver gray of the olive-trees near its summit; the heavy green and bossy forms of the sycamores lower down; broken here and there by a solitary terebinth or ilex tree, of a deeper green and a wider spread; till the eye fell below on the maritime plain, edged with the white seaboard and the sandy hillocks; with here and there feathery palm-trees, either isolated or in groups — motionless and distinct against the hot purple air.

  Look again; a little to the left on the sea-shore there are the white walls of a fortified town, glittering in sunlight, or black in shadow.

  The fortifications themselves run out into the sea, forming a port and a haven against the wild Levantine storms; and a lighthouse rises out of the waves to guide mariners into safety.

  Beyond this walled city, and far away to the left still, there is the same wide plain shut in by the distant rising ground, till the upland circuit comes closing in to the north, and the great white rocks meet the deep tideless ocean with its intensity of blue colour.

  Above, the sky is literally purple with heat; and the pitiless light smites the gazer’s weary eye as it comes back from the white shore. Nor does the plain country in that land offer the refuge and rest of our own soft green. The limestone rock underlies the vegetation, and gives a glittering, ashen hue to all the bare patches, and even to the cultivated parts which are burnt up early in the year. In spring-time alone does the country look rich and fruitful; then the corn-fields of the plain show their capability of bearing, ‘some fifty, some an hundred fold’; down by the brook Kishon, flowing not far from the base of the mountainous promontory to the south, there grow the broad green fig-trees, cool and fresh to look upon; the orchards are full of glossy-leaved cherry-trees; the tall amaryllis puts forth crimson and yellow glories in the fields, rivalling the pomp of King Solomon; the daisies and the hyacinths spread their myriad flowers; the anemones, scarlet as blood, run hither and thither over the ground like dazzling flames of fire.

  A spicy odour lingers in the heated air; it comes from the multitude of aromatic flowers that blossom in the early spring. Later on they will have withered and faded, and the corn will have been gathered, and the deep green of the eastern foliage will have assumed a kind of gray-bleached tint.

  Even now in May, the hot sparkle of the everlasting sea, the terribly clear outline of all objects, whether near or distant, the fierce sun right overhead, the dazzling air around, were inexpressibly wearying to the English eyes that kept their skilled watch, day and night, on the strongly-fortified coast-town that lay out a little to the northward of where the British ships were anchored.

  They had kept up a flanking fire for many days in aid of those besieged in St Jean d’Acre; and at intervals had listened, impatient, to the sound of the heavy siege guns, or the sharper rattle of the French musketry.

  In the morning, on the 7th of May, a man at the masthead of the Tigre sang out that he saw ships in the offing; and in reply to the signal that was hastily run up, he saw the distant vessels hoist friendly flags. That May morning was a busy time. The besieged Turks took heart of grace; the French outside, under the command of their great general, made hasty preparations for a more vigorous assault than all many, both vigorous and bloody, that had gone before (for the siege was now at its fifty-first day), in hopes of carrying the town by storm before the reinforcement coming by sea could arrive; and Sir Sidney Smith, aware of Buonaparte’s desperate intention, ordered all the men, both sailors and marines, that could be spared from the necessity of keeping up a continual flanking fire from the ships upon the French, to land, and assist the Turks and the British forces already there in the defence of the old historic city.

  Lieutenant Kinraid, who had shared his captain’s daring adventure off the coast of France three years before, who had been a prisoner with him and Westley Wright, in the Temple at Paris, and had escaped with them, and, through Sir Sidney’s earnest recommendation, been promoted from being a warrant officer to the rank of lieutenant, received on this day the honour from his admiral of being appointed to an especial post of danger. His heart was like a war-horse, and said, Ha, ha! as the boat bounded over the waves that were to land him under the ancient machicolated walls where the Crusaders made their last stand in the Holy Land. Not that Kinraid knew or cared one jot about those gallant knights of old: all he knew was, that the French, under Boney, were trying to take the town from the Turks, and that his admiral said they must not, and so they should not.

  He and his men landed on that sandy shore, and entered the town by the water-port gate; he was singing to himself his own country song, —

  Weel may the keel row, the keel row, &C.

  and his men, with sailors’ aptitude for music, caught up the air, and joined in the burden with inarticulate sounds.

  So, with merry hearts, they threaded the narrow streets of Acre, hemmed in on either side by the white walls of Turkish houses, with small grated openings high up, above all chance of peeping intrusion.

  Here and there they met an ample-robed and turbaned Turk going along with as much haste as his stately self-possession would allow. But the majority of the male inhabitants were gathered together to defend the breach, where the French guns
thundered out far above the heads of the sailors.

  They went along none the less merrily for the sound to Djezzar Pacha’s garden, where the old Turk sate on his carpet, beneath the shade of a great terebinth tree, listening to the interpreter, who made known to him the meaning of the eager speeches of Sir Sidney Smith and the colonel of the marines.

  As soon as the admiral saw the gallant sailors of H.M.S. Tigre, he interrupted the council of war without much ceremony, and going to Kinraid, he despatched them, as before arranged, to the North Ravelin, showing them the way with rapid, clear directions.

  Out of respect to him, they had kept silent while in the strange, desolate garden; but once more in the streets, the old Newcastle song rose up again till the men were, perforce, silenced by the haste with which they went to the post of danger.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon. For many a day these very men had been swearing at the terrific heat at this hour — even when at sea, fanned by the soft breeze; but now, in the midst of hot smoke, with former carnage tainting the air, and with the rush and whizz of death perpetually whistling in their ears, they were uncomplaining and light-hearted. Many an old joke, and some new ones, came brave and hearty, on their cheerful voices, even though the speaker was veiled from sight in great clouds of smoke, cloven only by the bright flames of death.

  A sudden message came; as many of the crew of the Tigre as were under Lieutenant Kinraid’s command were to go down to the Mole, to assist the new reinforcements (seen by the sailor from the masthead at day-dawn), under command of Hassan Bey, to land at the Mole, where Sir Sidney then was.

  Off they went, almost as bright and thoughtless as before, though two of their number lay silent for ever at the North Ravelin — silenced in that one little half-hour. And one went along with the rest, swearing lustily at his ill-luck in having his right arm broken, but ready to do good business with his left.

  They helped the Turkish troops to land more with good-will than tenderness; and then, led by Sir Sidney, they went under the shelter of English guns to the fatal breach, so often assailed, so gallantly defended, but never so fiercely contested as on this burning afternoon. The ruins of the massive wall that here had been broken down by the French, were used by them as stepping stones to get on a level with the besieged, and so to escape the heavy stones which the latter hurled down; nay, even the dead bodies of the morning’s comrades were made into ghastly stairs.