Sylvia's Lovers Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

  ‘Yes! I tell mother that wi' so many as she has, she ought to be thankful to t' one as gets off quickest.’

  ‘Who? which is it?’ asked Sylvia, a little eagerly, seeing that there was news of a wedding behind the talk.

  ‘Why! who should it be but me?’ said Molly, laughing a good deal, and reddening a little. ‘I've not gone fra' home for nought; I'se picked up a measter on my travels, leastways one as is to be.’

  ‘Charley Kinraid,’ said Sylvia smiling, as she found that now she might reveal Molly's secret, which hitherto she had kept sacred.

  ‘Charley Kinraid be hung!’ said Molly, with a toss of her head. ‘Whatten good's a husband who's at sea half t' year? Ha, ha, my master is a canny Newcassel shopkeeper, on t' Side.5 A reckon a've done pretty well for mysel’, and a'll wish yo' as good luck, Sylvia. For yo' see,’ (turning to Bell Robson, who, perhaps, she thought would more appreciate the substantial advantages of her engagement than Sylvia,) ‘though Measter Brunton is near upon forty if he's a day, yet he turns over a matter of two hundred pound every year; an' he's a good-looking man of his years too, an' a kind, good-tempered feller int' bargain. He's been married once, to be sure; but his childer are dead a' 'cept one; an' I don't mislike childer either; an' a'll feed ‘em well, an' get ‘em to bed early, out o' t' road.’

  Mrs Robson gave her her grave good wishes; but Sylvia was silent. She was disappointed; it was a coming down from the romance with the specksioneer for its hero. Molly laughed awkwardly, understanding Sylvia's thoughts better than the latter imagined.

  ‘Sylvia's noane so well pleased. Why, lass! it's a' t' better for thee. There's Charley to t' fore now, which if a'd married him, he'd not ha' been; and he's said more nor once what a pretty lass yo'd grow into by-and-by.’

  Molly's prosperity was giving her an independence and fearlessness of talk such as had seldom appeared hitherto; and certainly never before Mrs Robson. Sylvia was annoyed at Molly's whole tone and manner, which were loud, laughing, and boisterous; but to her mother they were positively repugnant. She said shortly and gravely,—

  ‘Sylvia's none so set upo' matrimony; she's content to bide wi' me and her father. Let a be such talking, it's not i' my way.’

  Molly was a little subdued; but still her elation at the prospect of being so well married kept cropping out of all the other subjects which were introduced; and when she went away, Mrs Robson broke out in an unwonted strain of depreciation.

  ‘That's the way wi' some lasses. They're like a cock on a dunghill, when they've teased a silly chap into wedding ‘em. It's cock-a-doodle-do, I've cotched a husband, cock-a-doodle-doo, wi' ‘em. I've no patience wi' such like; I beg, Sylvie, thou'lt not get too thick wi' Molly. She's not pretty behaved, making such an ado about men-kind, as if they were two-headed calves to be run after.’

  ‘But Molly's a good-hearted lass, mother. Only I never dreamt but what she was troth-plighted wi' Charley Kinraid,’ said Sylvia, meditatively.

  ‘That wench 'll be troth-plight to th' first man as 'll wed her and keep her i' plenty; that's a' she thinks about,’ replied Bell, scornfully.

  CHAPTER XI

  Visions of the Future

  Before May was out, Molly Corney was married and had left the neighbourhood for Newcastle. Although Charley Kinraid was not the bridegroom, Sylvia's promise to be bridesmaid was claimed. But the friendship brought on by the circumstances of neighbourhood and parity of age had become very much weakened in the time that elapsed between Molly's engagement and wedding. In the first place, she herself was so absorbed in her preparations, so elated by her good fortune in getting married, and married, too, before her elder sister, that all her faults blossomed out full and strong. Sylvia felt her to be selfish; Mrs Robson thought her not maidenly. A year before she would have been far more missed and regretted by Sylvia; now it was almost a relief to the latter to be freed from the perpetual calls upon her sympathy, from the constant demands upon her congratulations, made by one who had no thought or feeling to bestow on others; at least, not in these weeks of ‘cock-a-doodle-dooing’, as Mrs Robson persisted in calling it. It was seldom that Bell was taken with a humorous idea; but this once having hatched a solitary joke, she was always clucking it into notice—to go on with her own poultry simile.

  Every time during that summer that Philip saw his cousin, he thought her prettier than she had ever been before; some new touch of colour, some fresh sweet charm, seemed to have been added, just as every summer day calls out new beauty in the flowers. And this was not the addition of Philip's fancy. Hester Rose, who met Sylvia on rare occasions, came back each time with a candid, sad acknowledgment in her heart that it was no wonder that Sylvia was so much admired and loved.

  One day Hester had seen her sitting near her mother in the market-place; there was a basket by her, and over the clean cloth that covered the yellow pounds of butter, she had laid the hedge-roses and honeysuckles she had gathered on the way into Monkshaven; her straw hat was on her knee, and she was busy placing some of the flowers in the ribbon that went round it. Then she held it on her hand, and turned it round about, putting her head on one side, the better to view the effect; and all this time, Hester, peeping at her through the folds of the stuffs displayed in Foster's windows, saw her with admiring, wistful eyes; wondering, too, if Philip, at the other counter, were aware of his cousin's being there, so near to him. Then Sylvia put on her hat, and, looking up at Foster's windows, caught Hester's face of interest, and smiled and blushed at the consciousness of having been watched over her little vanities, and Hester smiled back, but rather sadly. Then a customer came in, and she had to attend to her business, which, on this as on all market days, was great. In the midst she was aware of Philip rushing bare-headed out of the shop, eager and delighted at something he saw outside. There was a little looking-glass hung against the wall on Hester's side, placed in that retired corner, in order that the good women who came to purchase head-gear of any kind might see the effect thereof before they concluded their bargain. In a pause of custom, Hester, half-ashamed, stole into this corner, and looked at herself in the glass. What did she see? a colourless face, dark soft hair with no light gleams in it, eyes that were melancholy instead of smiling, a mouth compressed with a sense of dissatisfaction. This was what she had to compare with the bright bonny face in the sunlight outside. She gave a gulp to check the sigh that was rising, and came back, even more patient than she had been before this disheartening peep, to serve all the whims and fancies of purchasers.

  Sylvia herself had been rather put out by Philip's way of coming to her. ‘It made her look so silly,’ she thought; and ‘what for must he make a sight of himself, coming among the market folk in that-a-way‘; and when he took to admiring her hat, she pulled out the flowers in a pet, and threw them down, and trampled them under foot.

  ‘What for art thou doing that, Sylvie?’ said her mother. ‘The flowers is well enough, though may-be thy hat might ha' been stained.’

  ‘I don't like Philip to speak to me so,’ said Sylvia, pouting.

  ‘How?’ asked her mother.

  But Sylvia could not repeat his words. She hung her head, and looked red and pre-occupied, anything but pleased. Philip had addressed his first expression of personal admiration at an unfortunate time.

  It just shows what different views different men and women take of their fellow-creatures, when I say that Hester looked upon Philip as the best and most agreeable man she had ever known. He was not one to speak of himself without being questioned on the subject, so his Haytersbank relations, only come into the neighbourhood in the last year or two, knew nothing of the trials he had surmounted, or the difficult duties he had performed. His aunt, indeed, had strong faith in him, both from partial knowledge of his character, and because he was of her own tribe and kin; but she had never learnt the small details of his past life. Sylvia respected him as her mother's friend, and treated him tolerably well as long as he preserved his usual self-restraint of demeanour, but hardl
y ever thought of him when he was absent.

  Now Hester, who had watched him daily for all the years since he had first come as an errand-boy into Foster's shop—watching with quiet, modest, yet observant eyes—had seen how devoted he was to his master's interests, had known of his careful and punctual ministration to his absent mother's comforts, as long as she was living to benefit by his silent, frugal self-denial.

  His methodical appropriation of the few hours he could call his own was not without its charms to the equally methodical Hester; the way in which he reproduced any lately acquired piece of knowledge—knowledge so wearisome to Sylvia—was delightfully instructive to Hester—although, as she was habitually silent, it would have required an observer more interested in discovering her feelings than Philip was to have perceived the little flush on the pale cheek, and the brightness in the half-veiled eyes whenever he was talking. She had not thought of love on either side. Love was a vanity, a worldliness not to be spoken about, or even thought about. Once or twice before the Robsons came into the neighbourhood, an idea had crossed her mind that possibly the quiet, habitual way in which she and Philip lived together, might drift them into matrimony at some distant period; and she could not bear the humble advances which Coulson, Philip's fellow-lodger, sometimes made. They seemed to disgust her with him.

  But after the Robsons settled at Haytersbank, Philip's evenings were so often spent there that any unconscious hopes Hester might, unawares, have entertained, died away. At first she had felt a pang akin to jealousy when she heard of Sylvia, the little cousin, who was passing out of childhood into womanhood. Once—early in those days—she had ventured to ask Philip what Sylvia was like. Philip had not warmed up at the question, and had given rather a dry catalogue of her features, hair, and height, but Hester, almost to her own surprise, persevered, and jerked out the final question.

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  Philip's sallow cheek grew deeper by two or three shades; but he answered with a tone of indifference,—

  ‘I believe some folks think her so.’

  ‘But do you?’ persevered Hester, in spite of her being aware that he somehow disliked the question.

  ‘There's no need for talking o' such things,’ he answered, with abrupt displeasure.

  Hester silenced her curiosity from that time. But her heart was not quite at ease, and she kept on wondering whether Philip thought his little cousin pretty until she saw her and him together, on that occasion of which we have spoken, when Sylvia came to the shop to buy her new cloak; and after that Hester never wondered whether Philip thought his cousin pretty or no, for she knew quite well. Bell Robson had her own anxieties on the subject of her daughter's increasing attractions. She apprehended the dangers consequent upon certain facts, by a mental process more akin to intuition than reason. She was uncomfortable, even while her motherly vanity was flattered, at the admiration Sylvia received from the other sex. This admiration was made evident to her mother in many ways. When Sylvia was with her at market, it might have been thought that the doctors had prescribed a diet of butter and eggs to all the men under forty in Monkshaven. At first it seemed to Mrs Robson but a natural tribute to the superior merit of her farm produce; but by degrees she perceived that if Sylvia remained at home, she stood no better chance than her neighbours of an early sale. There were more customers than formerly for the fleeces stored in the wool-loft; comely young butchers came after the calf almost before it had been decided to sell it; in short, excuses were seldom wanting to those who wished to see the beauty of Haytersbank Farm. All this made Bell uncomfortable, though she could hardly have told what she dreaded. Sylvia herself seemed unspoilt by it as far as her home relations were concerned. A little thoughtless she had always been, and thoughtless she was still; but, as her mother had often said, ‘Yo' canna put old heads on young shoulders;’ and if blamed for her carelessness by her parents, Sylvia was always as penitent as she could be for the time being. To be sure, it was only to her father and mother that she remained the same as she had been when an awkward lassie of thirteen. Out of the house there were the most contradictory opinions of her, especially if the voices of women were to be listened to. She was ‘an ill-favoured, overgrown thing‘; ‘just as bonny as the first rose i' June, and as sweet i' her nature as t' honeysuckle a-climbing round it‘; she was ‘a vixen, with a tongue sharp enough to make yer very heart bleed‘; she was ‘just a bit o' sunshine wheriver she went‘; she was sulky, lively, witty, silent, affectionate, or cold-hearted, according to the person who spoke about her. In fact, her peculiarity seemed to be this—that every one who knew her talked about her either in praise or blame; in church, or in market, she unconsciously attracted attention; they could not forget her presence, as they could that of other girls perhaps more personally attractive. Now all this was a cause of anxiety to her mother, who began to feel as if she would rather have had her child passed by in silence than so much noticed. Bell's opinion was, that it was creditable to a woman to go through life in the shadow of obscurity,—never named except in connexion with good house-wifery, husband, or children. Too much talking about a girl, even in the way of praise, disturbed Mrs Robson's opinion of her; and when her neighbours told her how her own daughter was admired, she would reply coldly, ‘She's just well enough,’ and change the subject of conversation. But it was quite different with her husband. To his looser, less-restrained mind, it was agreeable to hear of, and still more to see, the attention which his daughter's beauty received. He felt it as reflecting consequence on himself. He had never troubled his mind with speculations as to whether he himself was popular, still less whether he was respected. He was pretty welcome wherever he went, as a jovial good-natured man, who had done adventurous and illegal things in his youth, which in some measure entitled him to speak out his opinions on life in general in the authoritative manner he generally used; but, of the two, he preferred consorting with younger men, to taking a sober stand of respectability with the elders of the place; and he perceived, without reasoning upon it, that the gay daring spirits were more desirous of his company when Sylvia was by his side than at any other time. One or two of these would saunter up to Haytersbank on a Sunday afternoon, and lounge round his fields with the old farmer. Bell kept herself from the nap which had been her weekly solace for years, in order to look after Sylvia, and on such occasions she always turned as cold a shoulder to the visitors as her sense of hospitality and of duty to her husband would permit. But if they did not enter the house, old Robson would always have Sylvia with him when he went the round of his land. Bell could see them from the upper window: the young men standing in the attitudes of listeners, while Daniel laid down the law on some point, enforcing his words by pantomimic actions with his thick stick; and Sylvia, half turning away as if from some too admiring gaze, was possibly picking flowers out of the hedge-bank. These Sunday afternoon strolls were the plague of Bell's life that whole summer. Then it took as much of artifice as was in the simple woman's nature to keep Daniel from insisting on having Sylvia's company every time he went down to Monkshaven. And here, again, came a perplexity, the acknowledgment of which in distinct thought would have been an act of disloyalty, according to Bell's conscience. If Sylvia went with her father, he never drank to excess; and that was a good gain to health at any rate (drinking was hardly a sin against morals in those days, and in that place); so, occasionally, she was allowed to accompany him to Monkshaven as a check upon his folly; for he was too fond and proud of his daughter to disgrace her by any open excess. But one Sunday afternoon early in November, Philip came up before the time at which he usually paid his visits. He looked grave and pale; and his aunt began,—

  ‘Why, lad! what's been ado? Thou'rt looking as peaked and pined as a Methody preacher after a love-feast,1 when he's talked hisself to Death's door. Thee dost na' get good milk enow, that's what it is,—such stuff as Monkshaven folks put up wi‘!’

  ‘No, aunt; I'm quite well. Only I'm a bit put out—vexed like at what I've he
erd about Sylvie.’

  His aunt's face changed immediately.

  ‘And whatten folk say of her, next thing?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Philip, struck by the difference of look and manner in his aunt, and subdued by seeing how instantly she took alarm. ‘It were only my uncle;—he should na' take a girl like her to a public. She were wi' him at t' “Admiral's Head” upo' All Souls' Day—that were all. There were many a one there beside,—it were statute fair; but such a one as our Sylvie ought not to be cheapened wi' t' rest.’

  ‘And he took her there, did he?’ said Bell, in severe meditation. ‘I had never no opinion o' th' wenches as 'll set theirselves to be hired for servants i' th' fair; they're a bad lot, as cannot find places for theirselves—'bout going and stannin' to be stared at by folk, and grin-nin' wi' th' plough-lads when no one's looking; it's a bad look-out for t' missus as takes one o' these wenches for a servant; and dost ta mean to say as my Sylvie went and demeaned hersel' to dance and marlock2 wi' a' th' fair-folk at th' “Admiral's Head”?’

  ‘No, no, she did na' dance; she barely set foot i' th' room; but it were her own pride as saved her; uncle would niver ha' kept her from it, for he had fallen in wi' Hayley o' Seaburn and one or two others, and they were having a glass i' t' bar, and Mrs Lawson, t' landlady, knew how there was them who would come and dance among parish ‘prentices if need were, just to get a word or a look wi' Sylvie! So she tempts her in, saying that the room were all smartened and fine wi' flags; and there was them in the room as told me that they never were so startled as when they saw our Sylvie's face peeping in among all t' flustered maids and men, rough and red wi' weather and drink; and Jem Macbean, he said she were just like a bit o' apple-blossom among peonies; and some man, he didn't know who, went up and spoke to her; an' either at that, or at some o' t' words she heard—for they'd got a good way on afore that time—she went quite white and mad, as if fire were coming out of her eyes, and then she turned red and left the room, for all t' landlady tried to laugh it off and keep her in.’