________________________________________________
_ Hester went out on the evening of the day after that on which the
unknown owner of the half-crown had appointed to call for it again
at William Darley's. She had schooled herself to believe that time
and patience would serve her best. Her plan was to obtain all the
knowledge about Philip that she could in the first instance; and
then, if circumstances allowed it, as in all probability they would,
to let drop by drop of healing, peacemaking words and thoughts fall
on Sylvia's obdurate, unforgiving heart. So Hester put on her
things, and went out down towards the old quay-side on that evening
after the shop was closed.
Poor little Sylvia! She was unforgiving, but not obdurate to the full
extent of what Hester believed. Many a time since Philip went away
had she unconsciously missed his protecting love; when folks spoke
shortly to her, when Alice scolded her as one of the non-elect, when
Hester's gentle gravity had something of severity in it; when her
own heart failed her as to whether her mother would have judged that
she had done well, could that mother have known all, as possibly she
did by this time. Philip had never spoken otherwise than tenderly to
her during the eighteen months of their married life, except on the
two occasions before recorded: once when she referred to her dream
of Kinraid's possible return, and once again on the evening of the
day before her discovery of his concealment of the secret of
Kinraid's involuntary disappearance.
After she had learnt that Kinraid was married, her heart had still
more strongly turned to Philip; she thought that he had judged
rightly in what he had given as the excuse for his double dealing;
she was even more indignant at Kinraid's fickleness than she had any
reason to be; and she began to learn the value of such enduring love
as Philip's had been--lasting ever since the days when she first
began to fancy what a man's love for a woman should be, when she had
first shrunk from the tone of tenderness he put into his especial
term for her, a girl of twelve--'Little lassie,' as he was wont to
call her.
But across all this relenting came the shadow of her vow--like the
chill of a great cloud passing over a sunny plain. How should she
decide? what would be her duty, if he came again, and once more
called her 'wife'? She shrank from such a possibility with all the
weakness and superstition of her nature; and this it was which made
her strengthen herself with the re-utterance of unforgiving words;
and shun all recurrence to the subject on the rare occasion when
Hester had tried to bring it back, with a hope of softening the
heart which to her appeared altogether hardened on this one point.
Now, on this bright summer evening, while Hester had gone down to
the quay-side, Sylvia stood with her out-of-door things on in the
parlour, rather impatiently watching the sky, full of hurrying
clouds, and flushing with the warm tints of the approaching sunset.
She could not leave Alice: the old woman had grown so infirm that
she was never left by her daughter and Sylvia at the same time; yet
Sylvia had to fetch her little girl from the New Town, where she had
been to her supper at Jeremiah Foster's. Hester had said that she
should not be away more than a quarter of an hour; and Hester was
generally so punctual that any failure of hers, in this respect,
appeared almost in the light of an injury on those who had learnt to
rely upon her. Sylvia wanted to go and see widow Dobson, and learn
when Kester might be expected home. His two months were long past;
and Sylvia had heard through the Fosters of some suitable and
profitable employment for him, of which she thought he would be glad
to know as soon as possible. It was now some time since she had been
able to get so far as across the bridge; and, for aught she knew,
Kester might already be come back from his expedition to the
Cheviots. Kester was come back. Scarce five minutes had elapsed
after these thoughts had passed through her mind before his hasty
hand lifted the latch of the kitchen-door, his hurried steps brought
him face to face with her. The smile of greeting was arrested on her
lips by one look at him: his eyes staring wide, the expression on
his face wild, and yet pitiful.
'That's reet,' said he, seeing that her things were already on.
'Thou're wanted sore. Come along.'
'Oh! dear God! my child!' cried Sylvia, clutching at the chair near
her; but recovering her eddying senses with the strong fact before
her that whatever the terror was, she was needed to combat it.
'Ay; thy child!' said Kester, taking her almost roughly by the arm,
and drawing her away with him out through the open doors on to the
quay-side.
'Tell me!' said Sylvia, faintly, 'is she dead?'
'She's safe now,' said Kester. 'It's not her--it's him as saved her
as needs yo', if iver husband needed a wife.'
'He?--who? O Philip! Philip! is it yo' at last?'
Unheeding what spectators might see her movements, she threw up her
arms and staggered against the parapet of the bridge they were then
crossing.
'He!--Philip!--saved Bella? Bella, our little Bella, as got her
dinner by my side, and went out wi' Jeremiah, as well as could be. I
cannot take it in; tell me, Kester.' She kept trembling so much in
voice and in body, that he saw she could not stir without danger of
falling until she was calmed; as it was, her eyes became filmy from
time to time, and she drew her breath in great heavy pants, leaning
all the while against the wall of the bridge.
'It were no illness,' Kester began. 'T' little un had gone for a
walk wi' Jeremiah Foster, an' he were drawn for to go round t' edge
o' t' cliff, wheere they's makin' t' new walk reet o'er t' sea. But
it's but a bit on a pathway now; an' t' one was too oud, an' t'
other too young for t' see t' water comin' along wi' great leaps;
it's allays for comin' high up again' t' cliff, an' this spring-tide
it's comin' in i' terrible big waves. Some one said as they passed
t' man a-sittin' on a bit on a rock up above--a dunnot know, a only
know as a heared a great fearful screech i' t' air. A were just
a-restin' me at after a'd comed in, not half an hour i' t' place.
A've walked better nor a dozen mile to-day; an' a ran out, an' a
looked, an' just on t' walk, at t' turn, was t' swish of a wave
runnin' back as quick as t' mischief int' t' sea, an' oud Jeremiah
standin' like one crazy, lookin' o'er int' t' watter; an' like a
stroke o' leeghtnin' comes a man, an' int' t' very midst o' t' great
waves like a shot; an' then a knowed summut were in t' watter as
were nearer death than life; an' a seemed to misdoubt me that it
were our Bella; an' a shouts an' a cries for help, an' a goes mysel'
to t' very edge o' t' cliff, an' a bids oud Jeremiah, as was like
one beside hissel', houd tight on me, for he were good for nought
else; an' a bides my time, an' when a sees two arms houdin' out a
little drippin' streamin' child, a clutches her by her waist-band,
an' hauls her to land. She's noane t' worse for her bath, a'll be
bound.'
'I mun go--let me,' said Sylvia, struggling with his detaining hand,
which he had laid upon her in the fear that she would slip down to
the ground in a faint, so ashen-gray was her face. 'Let me,--Bella,
I mun go see her.'
He let go, and she stood still, suddenly feeling herself too weak to
stir.
'Now, if you'll try a bit to be quiet, a'll lead yo' along; but yo'
mun be a steady and brave lass.'
'I'll be aught if yo' only let me see Bella,' said Sylvia, humbly.
'An' yo' niver ax at after him as saved her,' said Kester,
reproachfully.
'I know it's Philip,' she whispered, 'and yo' said he wanted me; so
I know he's safe; and, Kester, I think I'm 'feared on him, and I'd
like to gather courage afore seeing him, and a look at Bella would
give me courage. It were a terrible time when I saw him last, and I
did say--'
'Niver think on what thou did say; think on what thou will say to
him now, for he lies a-dyin'! He were dashed again t' cliff an'
bruised sore in his innards afore t' men as come wi' a boat could
pick him up.'
She did not speak; she did not even tremble now; she set her teeth
together, and, holding tight by Kester, she urged him on; but when
they came to the end of the bridge, she seemed uncertain which way
to turn.
'This way,' said Kester. 'He's been lodgin' wi' Sally this nine
week, an' niver a one about t' place as knowed him; he's been i' t'
wars an' getten his face brunt.'
'And he was short o' food,' moaned Sylvia, 'and we had plenty, and I
tried to make yo'r sister turn him out, and send him away. Oh! will
God iver forgive me?'
Muttering to herself, breaking her mutterings with sharp cries of
pain, Sylvia, with Kester's help, reached widow Dobson's house. It
was no longer a quiet, lonely dwelling. Several sailors stood about
the door, awaiting, in silent anxiety, for the verdict of the
doctor, who was even now examining Philip's injuries. Two or three
women stood talking eagerly, in low voices, in the doorway.
But when Sylvia drew near the men fell back; and the women moved
aside as though to allow her to pass, all looking upon her with a
certain amount of sympathy, but perhaps with rather more of
antagonistic wonder as to how she was taking it--she who had been
living in ease and comfort while her husband's shelter was little
better than a hovel, her husband's daily life a struggle with
starvation; for so much of the lodger at widow Dobson's was
popularly known; and any distrust of him as a stranger and a tramp
was quite forgotten now.
Sylvia felt the hardness of their looks, the hardness of their
silence; but it was as nothing to her. If such things could have
touched her at this moment, she would not have stood still right in
the midst of their averted hearts, and murmured something to Kester.
He could not hear the words uttered by that hoarse choked voice,
until he had stooped down and brought his ear to the level of her
mouth.
'We'd better wait for t' doctors to come out,' she said again. She
stood by the door, shivering all over, almost facing the people in
the road, but with her face turned a little to the right, so that
they thought she was looking at the pathway on the cliff-side, a
hundred yards or so distant, below which the hungry waves still
lashed themselves into high ascending spray; while nearer to the
cottage, where their force was broken by the bar at the entrance to
the river, they came softly lapping up the shelving shore.
Sylvia saw nothing of all this, though it was straight before her
eyes. She only saw a blurred mist; she heard no sound of waters,
though it filled the ears of those around. Instead she heard low
whispers pronouncing Philip's earthly doom.
For the doctors were both agreed; his internal injury was of a
mortal kind, although, as the spine was severely injured above the
seat of the fatal bruise, he had no pain in the lower half of his
body.
They had spoken in so low a tone that John Foster, standing only a
foot or so away, had not been able to hear their words. But Sylvia
heard each syllable there where she stood outside, shivering all
over in the sultry summer evening. She turned round to Kester.
'I mun go to him, Kester; thou'll see that noane come in to us, when
t' doctors come out.'
She spoke in a soft, calm voice; and he, not knowing what she had
heard, made some easy conditional promise. Then those opposite to
the cottage door fell back, for they could see the grave doctors
coming out, and John Foster, graver, sadder still, following them.
Without a word to them,--without a word even of inquiry--which many
outside thought and spoke of as strange--white-faced, dry-eyed
Sylvia slipped into the house out of their sight.
And the waves kept lapping on the shelving shore.
The room inside was dark, all except the little halo or circle of
light made by a dip candle. Widow Dobson had her back to the
bed--her bed--on to which Philip had been borne in the hurry of
terror as to whether he was alive or whether he was dead. She was
crying--crying quietly, but the tears down-falling fast, as, with
her back to the lowly bed, she was gathering up the dripping clothes
cut off from the poor maimed body by the doctors' orders. She only
shook her head as she saw Sylvia, spirit-like, steal in--white,
noiseless, and upborne from earth.
But noiseless as her step might be, he heard, he recognized, and
with a sigh he turned his poor disfigured face to the wall, hiding
it in the shadow.
He knew that she was by him; that she had knelt down by his bed;
that she was kissing his hand, over which the languor of approaching
death was stealing. But no one spoke.
At length he said, his face still averted, speaking with an effort.
'Little lassie, forgive me now! I cannot live to see the morn!'
There was no answer, only a long miserable sigh, and he felt her
soft cheek laid upon his hand, and the quiver that ran through her
whole body.
'I did thee a cruel wrong,' he said, at length. 'I see it now. But
I'm a dying man. I think that God will forgive me--and I've sinned
against Him; try, lassie--try, my Sylvie--will not thou forgive me?'
He listened intently for a moment. He heard through the open window
the waves lapping on the shelving shore. But there came no word from
her; only that same long shivering, miserable sigh broke from her
lips at length.
'Child,' said he, once more. 'I ha' made thee my idol; and if I
could live my life o'er again I would love my God more, and thee
less; and then I shouldn't ha' sinned this sin against thee. But
speak one word of love to me--one little word, that I may know I
have thy pardon.'
'Oh, Philip! Philip!' she moaned, thus adjured.
Then she lifted her head, and said,
'Them were wicked, wicked words, as I said; and a wicked vow as I
vowed; and Lord God Almighty has ta'en me at my word. I'm sorely
punished, Philip, I am indeed.'
He pressed her hand, he stroked her cheek. But he asked for yet
another word.
'I did thee a wrong. In my lying heart I forgot to do to thee as I
would have had thee to do to me. And I judged Kinraid in my heart.'
'Thou thought as he was faithless and fickle,' she answered quickly;
'and so he were. He were married to another woman not so many weeks
at after thou went away. Oh, Philip, Philip! and now I have thee
back, and--'
'Dying' was the word she would have said, but first the dread of
telling him what she believed he did not know, and next her
passionate sobs, choked her.
'I know,' said he, once more stroking her cheek, and soothing her
with gentle, caressing hand. 'Little lassie!' he said, after a while
when she was quiet from very exhaustion, 'I niver thought to be so
happy again. God is very merciful.'
She lifted up her head, and asked wildly, 'Will He iver forgive me,
think yo'? I drove yo' out fra' yo'r home, and sent yo' away to t'
wars, wheere yo' might ha' getten yo'r death; and when yo' come
back, poor and lone, and weary, I told her for t' turn yo' out, for
a' I knew yo' must be starving in these famine times. I think I
shall go about among them as gnash their teeth for iver, while yo'
are wheere all tears are wiped away.'
'No!' said Philip, turning round his face, forgetful of himself in
his desire to comfort her. 'God pities us as a father pities his
poor wandering children; the nearer I come to death the clearer I
see Him. But you and me have done wrong to each other; yet we can
see now how we were led to it; we can pity and forgive one another.
I'm getting low and faint, lassie; but thou must remember this: God
knows more, and is more forgiving than either you to me, or me to
you. I think and do believe as we shall meet together before His
face; but then I shall ha' learnt to love thee second to Him; not
first, as I have done here upon the earth.'
Then he was silent--very still. Sylvia knew--widow Dobson had
brought it in--that there was some kind of medicine, sent by the
hopeless doctors, lying upon the table hard by, and she softly rose
and poured it out and dropped it into the half-open mouth. Then she
knelt down again, holding the hand feebly stretched out to her, and
watching the faint light in the wistful loving eyes. And in the
stillness she heard the ceaseless waves lapping against the shelving
shore.
Something like an hour before this time, which was the deepest
midnight of the summer's night, Hester Rose had come hurrying up the
road to where Kester and his sister sate outside the open door,
keeping their watch under the star-lit sky, all others having gone
away, one by one, even John and Jeremiah Foster having returned to
their own house, where the little Bella lay, sleeping a sound and
healthy slumber after her perilous adventure.
Hester had heard but little from William Darley as to the owner of
the watch and the half-crown; but he was chagrined at the failure of
all his skilful interrogations to elicit the truth, and promised her
further information in a few days, with all the more vehemence
because he was unaccustomed to be baffled. And Hester had again
whispered to herself 'Patience! Patience!' and had slowly returned
back to her home to find that Sylvia had left it, why she did not at
once discover. But, growing uneasy as the advancing hours neither
brought Sylvia nor little Bella to their home, she had set out for
Jeremiah Foster's as soon as she had seen her mother comfortably
asleep in her bed; and then she had learnt the whole story, bit by
bit, as each person who spoke broke in upon the previous narration
with some new particular. But from no one did she clearly learn
whether Sylvia was with her husband, or not; and so she came
speeding along the road, breathless, to where Kester sate in
wakeful, mournful silence, his sister's sleeping head lying on his
shoulder, the cottage door open, both for air and that there might
be help within call if needed; and the dim slanting oblong of the
interior light lying across the road.
Hester came panting up, too agitated and breathless to ask how much
was truth of the fatal, hopeless tale which she had heard. Kester
looked at her without a word. Through this solemn momentary silence
the lapping of the ceaseless waves was heard, as they came up close
on the shelving shore.
'He? Philip?' said she. Kester shook his head sadly.
'And his wife--Sylvia?' said Hester.
'In there with him, alone,' whispered Kester.
Hester turned away, and wrung her hands together.
'Oh, Lord God Almighty!' said she, 'was I not even worthy to bring
them together at last?' And she went away slowly and heavily back to
the side of her sleeping mother. But 'Thy will be done' was on her
quivering lips before she lay down to her rest.
The soft gray dawn lightens the darkness of a midsummer night soon
after two o'clock. Philip watched it come, knowing that it was his
last sight of day,--as we reckon days on earth.
He had been often near death as a soldier; once or twice, as when he
rushed into fire to save Kinraid, his chances of life had been as
one to a hundred; but yet he had had a chance. But now there was the
new feeling--the last new feeling which we shall any of us
experience in this world--that death was not only close at hand,
but inevitable.
He felt its numbness stealing up him--stealing up him. But the head
was clear, the brain more than commonly active in producing vivid
impressions.
It seemed but yesterday since he was a little boy at his mother's
knee, wishing with all the earnestness of his childish heart to be
like Abraham, who was called the friend of God, or David, who was
said to be the man after God's own heart, or St John, who was called
'the Beloved.' As very present seemed the day on which he made
resolutions of trying to be like them; it was in the spring, and
some one had brought in cowslips; and the scent of those flowers was
in his nostrils now, as he lay a-dying--his life ended, his battles
fought, his time for 'being good' over and gone--the opportunity,
once given in all eternity, past.
All the temptations that had beset him rose clearly before him; the
scenes themselves stood up in their solid materialism--he could have
touched the places; the people, the thoughts, the arguments that
Satan had urged in behalf of sin, were reproduced with the vividness
of a present time. And he knew that the thoughts were illusions, the
arguments false and hollow; for in that hour came the perfect vision
of the perfect truth: he saw the 'way to escape' which had come
along with the temptation; now, the strong resolve of an ardent
boyhood, with all a life before it to show the world 'what a
Christian might be'; and then the swift, terrible now, when his
naked, guilty soul shrank into the shadow of God's mercy-seat, out
of the blaze of His anger against all those who act a lie.
His mind was wandering, and he plucked it back. Was this death in
very deed? He tried to grasp at the present, the earthly present,
fading quick away. He lay there on the bed--on Sally Dobson's bed in
the house-place, not on his accustomed pallet in the lean-to. He
knew that much. And the door was open into the still, dusk night;
and through the open casement he could hear the lapping of the waves
on the shelving shore, could see the soft gray dawn over the sea--he
knew it was over the sea--he saw what lay unseen behind the poor
walls of the cottage. And it was Sylvia who held his hand tight in
her warm, living grasp; it was his wife whose arm was thrown around
him, whose sobbing sighs shook his numbed frame from time to time.
'God bless and comfort my darling,' he said to himself. 'She knows
me now. All will be right in heaven--in the light of God's mercy.'
And then he tried to remember all that he had ever read about, God,
and all that the blessed Christ--that bringeth glad tidings of great
joy unto all people, had said of the Father, from whom He came.
Those sayings dropped like balm down upon his troubled heart and
brain. He remembered his mother, and how she had loved him; and he
was going to a love wiser, tenderer, deeper than hers.
As he thought this, he moved his hands as if to pray; but Sylvia
clenched her hold, and he lay still, praying all the same for her,
for his child, and for himself. Then he saw the sky redden with the
first flush of dawn; he heard Kester's long-drawn sigh of weariness
outside the open door.
He had seen widow Dobson pass through long before to keep the
remainder of her watch on the bed in the lean-to, which had been his
for many and many a sleepless and tearful night. Those nights were
over--he should never see that poor chamber again, though it was
scarce two feet distant. He began to lose all sense of the
comparative duration of time: it seemed as long since kind Sally
Dobson had bent over him with soft, lingering look, before going
into the humble sleeping-room--as long as it was since his boyhood,
when he stood by his mother dreaming of the life that should be his,
with the scent of the cowslips tempting him to be off to the
woodlands where they grew. Then there came a rush and an eddying
through his brain--his soul trying her wings for the long flight.
Again he was in the present: he heard the waves lapping against the
shelving shore once again.
And now his thoughts came back to Sylvia. Once more he spoke aloud,
in a strange and terrible voice, which was not his. Every sound came
with efforts that were new to him.
'My wife! Sylvie! Once more--forgive me all.'
She sprang up, she kissed his poor burnt lips; she held him in her
arms, she moaned, and said,
'Oh, wicked me! forgive me--me--Philip!'
Then he spoke, and said, 'Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive each other!' And after that the power of speech was
conquered by the coming death. He lay very still, his consciousness
fast fading away, yet coming back in throbs, so that he knew it was
Sylvia who touched his lips with cordial, and that it was Sylvia who
murmured words of love in his ear. He seemed to sleep at last, and
so he did--a kind of sleep, but the light of the red morning sun
fell on his eyes, and with one strong effort he rose up, and turned
so as once more to see his wife's pale face of misery.
'In heaven,' he cried, and a bright smile came on his face, as he
fell back on his pillow.
Not long after Hester came, the little Bella scarce awake in her
arms, with the purpose of bringing his child to see him ere yet he
passed away. Hester had watched and prayed through the livelong
night. And now she found him dead, and Sylvia, tearless and almost
unconscious, lying by him, her hand holding his, her other thrown
around him.
Kester, poor old man, was sobbing bitterly; but she not at all.
Then Hester bore her child to her, and Sylvia opened wide her
miserable eyes, and only stared, as if all sense was gone from her.
But Bella suddenly rousing up at the sight of the poor, scarred,
peaceful face, cried out,--
'Poor man who was so hungry. Is he not hungry now?'
'No,' said Hester, softly. 'The former things are passed away--and
he is gone where there is no more sorrow, and no more pain.'
But then she broke down into weeping and crying. Sylvia sat up and
looked at her.
'Why do yo' cry, Hester?' she said. 'Yo' niver said that yo'
wouldn't forgive him as long as yo' lived. Yo' niver broke the heart
of him that loved yo', and let him almost starve at yo'r very door.
Oh, Philip! my Philip, tender and true.'
Then Hester came round and closed the sad half-open eyes; kissing
the calm brow with a long farewell kiss. As she did so, her eye fell
on a black ribbon round his neck. She partly lifted it out; to it
was hung a half-crown piece.
'This is the piece he left at William Darley's to be bored,' said
she, 'not many days ago.'
Bella had crept to her mother's arms as a known haven in this
strange place; and the touch of his child loosened the fountains of
her tears. She stretched out her hand for the black ribbon, put it
round her own neck; after a while she said,
'If I live very long, and try hard to be very good all that time, do
yo' think, Hester, as God will let me to him where he is?'
* * * * * * *
Monkshaven is altered now into a rising bathing place. Yet, standing
near the site of widow Dobson's house on a summer's night, at the
ebb of a spring-tide, you may hear the waves come lapping up the
shelving shore with the same ceaseless, ever-recurrent sound as that
which Philip listened to in the pauses between life and death.
And so it will be until 'there shall be no more sea'.
But the memory of man fades away. A few old people can still tell
you the tradition of the man who died in a cottage somewhere about
this spot,--died of starvation while his wife lived in hard-hearted
plenty not two good stone-throws away. This is the form into which
popular feeling, and ignorance of the real facts, have moulded the
story. Not long since a lady went to the 'Public Baths', a handsome
stone building erected on the very site of widow Dobson's cottage,
and finding all the rooms engaged she sat down and had some talk
with the bathing woman; and, as it chanced, the conversation fell on
Philip Hepburn and the legend of his fate.
'I knew an old man when I was a girl,' said the bathing woman, 'as
could niver abide to hear t' wife blamed. He would say nothing
again' th' husband; he used to say as it were not fit for men to be
judging; that she had had her sore trial, as well as Hepburn
hisself.'
The lady asked, 'What became of the wife?'
'She was a pale, sad woman, allays dressed in black. I can just
remember her when I was a little child, but she died before her
daughter was well grown up; and Miss Rose took t' lassie, as had
always been like her own.'
'Miss Rose?'
'Hester Rose! have yo' niver heared of Hester Rose, she as founded
t' alms-houses for poor disabled sailors and soldiers on t'
Horncastle road? There's a piece o' stone in front to say that "This
building is erected in memory of P. H."--and some folk will have it
P. H. stands for t' name o' th' man as was starved to death.'
'And the daughter?'
'One o' th' Fosters, them as founded t' Old Bank, left her a vast o'
money; and she were married to distant cousin of theirs, and went
off to settle in America many and many a year ago.'
THE END.
Sylvia's Lovers, by Elizabeth Gaskell. _
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