Sylvia's Lovers — Complete

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  AN APPARITION

  Mrs. Robson was very poorly all night long. Uneasy thoughts seemedto haunt and perplex her brain, and she neither slept nor woke, butwas restless and uneasy in her talk and movements.

  Sylvia lay down by her, but got so little sleep, that at length shepreferred sitting in the easy-chair by the bedside. Here she droppedoff to slumber in spite of herself; the scene of the evening beforeseemed to be repeated; the cries of the many people, the heavy roarand dash of the threatening waves, were repeated in her ears; andsomething was said to her through all the conflicting noises,--whatit was she could not catch, though she strained to hear the hoarsemurmur that, in her dream, she believed to convey a meaning of theutmost importance to her.

  This dream, that mysterious, only half-intelligible sound, recurredwhenever she dozed, and her inability to hear the words uttereddistressed her so much, that at length she sate bolt upright,resolved to sleep no more. Her mother was talking in ahalf-conscious way; Philip's speech of the evening before wasevidently running in her mind.

  'Sylvie, if thou're not a good wife to him, it'll just break myheart outright. A woman should obey her husband, and not go her owngait. I never leave the house wi'out telling father, and getting hisleave.'

  And then she began to cry pitifully, and to say unconnected things,till Sylvia, to soothe her, took her hand, and promised never toleave the house without asking her husband's permission, though inmaking this promise, she felt as if she were sacrificing her lastpleasure to her mother's wish; for she knew well enough that Philipwould always raise objections to the rambles which reminded her ofher old free open-air life.

  But to comfort and cherish her mother she would have done anything;yet this very morning that was dawning, she must go and ask hispermission for a simple errand, or break her word.

  She knew from experience that nothing quieted her mother so well asbalm-tea; it might be that the herb really possessed some sedativepower; it might be only early faith, and often repeated experience,but it had always had a tranquillizing effect; and more than once,during the restless hours of the night, Mrs. Robson had asked for it;but Sylvia's stock of last year's dead leaves was exhausted. Stillshe knew where a plant of balm grew in the sheltered corner ofHaytersbank Farm garden; she knew that the tenants who had succeededthem in the occupation of the farm had had to leave it inconsequence of a death, and that the place was unoccupied; and inthe darkness she had planned that if she could leave her motherafter the dawn came, and she had attended to her baby, she wouldwalk quickly to the old garden, and gather the tender sprigs whichshe was sure to find there.

  Now she must go and ask Philip; and till she held her baby to herbreast, she bitterly wished that she were free from the duties andchains of matrimony. But the touch of its waxen fingers, the hold ofits little mouth, made her relax into docility and gentleness. Shegave it back to Nancy to be dressed, and softly opened the door ofPhilip's bed-room.

  'Philip!' said she, gently. 'Philip!'

  He started up from dreams of her; of her, angry. He saw her there,rather pale with her night's watch and anxiety, but looking meek,and a little beseeching.

  'Mother has had such a bad night! she fancied once as some balm-teawould do her good--it allays used to: but my dried balm is all gone,and I thought there'd be sure to be some in t' old garden atHaytersbank. Feyther planted a bush just for mother, wheere itallays came up early, nigh t' old elder-tree; and if yo'd not mind,I could run theere while she sleeps, and be back again in an hour,and it's not seven now.'

  'Thou's not wear thyself out with running, Sylvie,' said Philip,eagerly; 'I'll get up and go myself, or, perhaps,' continued he,catching the shadow that was coming over her face, 'thou'd rather gothyself: it's only that I'm so afraid of thy tiring thyself.'

  'It'll not tire me,' said Sylvia. 'Afore I was married, I was outoften far farther than that, afield to fetch up t' kine, before mybreakfast.'

  'Well, go if thou will,' said Philip. 'But get somewhat to eatfirst, and don't hurry; there's no need for that.'

  She had got her hat and shawl, and was off before he had finishedhis last words.

  The long High Street was almost empty of people at that early hour;one side was entirely covered by the cool morning shadow which layon the pavement, and crept up the opposite houses till only thetopmost story caught the rosy sunlight. Up the hill-road, throughthe gap in the stone wall, across the dewy fields, Sylvia went bythe very shortest path she knew.

  She had only once been at Haytersbank since her wedding-day. On thatoccasion the place had seemed strangely and dissonantly changed bythe numerous children who were diverting themselves before the opendoor, and whose playthings and clothes strewed the house-place, andmade it one busy scene of confusion and untidiness, more like theCorneys' kitchen in former times, than her mother's orderly andquiet abode. Those little children were fatherless now; and thehouse was shut up, awaiting the entry of some new tenant. There wereno shutters to shut; the long low window was blinking in the rays ofthe morning sun; the house and cow-house doors were closed, and nopoultry wandered about the field in search of stray grains of corn,or early worms. It was a strange and unfamiliar silence, and strucksolemnly on Sylvia's mind. Only a thrush in the old orchard down inthe hollow, out of sight, whistled and gurgled with continual shrillmelody.

  Sylvia went slowly past the house and down the path leading to thewild, deserted bit of garden. She saw that the last tenants had hada pump sunk for them, and resented the innovation, as though thewell she was passing could feel the insult. Over it grew twohawthorn trees; on the bent trunk of one of them she used to sit,long ago: the charm of the position being enhanced by the possibledanger of falling into the well and being drowned. The rusty unusedchain was wound round the windlass; the bucket was falling to piecesfrom dryness. A lean cat came from some outhouse, and mewedpitifully with hunger; accompanying Sylvia to the garden, as if gladof some human companionship, yet refusing to allow itself to betouched. Primroses grew in the sheltered places, just as theyformerly did; and made the uncultivated ground seem less desertedthan the garden, where the last year's weeds were rotting away, andcumbering the ground.

  Sylvia forced her way through the berry bushes to the herb-plot, andplucked the tender leaves she had come to seek; sighing a little allthe time. Then she retraced her steps; paused softly before thehouse-door, and entered the porch and kissed the senseless wood.

  She tried to tempt the poor gaunt cat into her arms, meaning tocarry it home and befriend it; but it was scared by her endeavourand ran back to its home in the outhouse, making a green path acrossthe white dew of the meadow. Then Sylvia began to hasten home,thinking, and remembering--at the stile that led into the road shewas brought short up.

  Some one stood in the lane just on the other side of the gap; hisback was to the morning sun; all she saw at first was the uniform ofa naval officer, so well known in Monkshaven in those days.

  Sylvia went hurrying past him, not looking again, although herclothes almost brushed his, as he stood there still. She had notgone a yard--no, not half a yard--when her heart leaped up and fellagain dead within her, as if she had been shot.

  'Sylvia!' he said, in a voice tremulous with joy and passionatelove. 'Sylvia!'

  She looked round; he had turned a little, so that the light fellstraight on his face. It was bronzed, and the lines werestrengthened; but it was the same face she had last seen inHaytersbank Gully three long years ago, and had never thought to seein life again.

  He was close to her and held out his fond arms; she went flutteringtowards their embrace, as if drawn by the old fascination; but whenshe felt them close round her, she started away, and cried out witha great pitiful shriek, and put her hands up to her forehead as iftrying to clear away some bewildering mist.

  Then she looked at him once more, a terrible story in her eyes, ifhe could but have read it.

  Twice she opened her stiff lips to speak, and twice the words wereoverwhelmed by the su
rges of her misery, which bore them back intothe depths of her heart.

  He thought that he had come upon her too suddenly, and he attemptedto soothe her with soft murmurs of love, and to woo her to hisoutstretched hungry arms once more. But when she saw this motion ofhis, she made a gesture as though pushing him away; and with aninarticulate moan of agony she put her hands to her head once more,and turning away began to run blindly towards the town forprotection.

  For a minute or so he was stunned with surprise at her behaviour;and then he thought it accounted for by the shock of his accost, andthat she needed time to understand the unexpected joy. So hefollowed her swiftly, ever keeping her in view, but not trying toovertake her too speedily.

  'I have frightened my poor love,' he kept thinking. And by thisthought he tried to repress his impatience and check the speed helonged to use; yet he was always so near behind that her quickenedsense heard his well-known footsteps following, and a mad notionflashed across her brain that she would go to the wide full river,and end the hopeless misery she felt enshrouding her. There was asure hiding-place from all human reproach and heavy mortal woebeneath the rushing waters borne landwards by the morning tide.

  No one can tell what changed her course; perhaps the thought of hersucking child; perhaps her mother; perhaps an angel of God; no oneon earth knows, but as she ran along the quay-side she all at onceturned up an entry, and through an open door.

  He, following all the time, came into a quiet dark parlour, with acloth and tea-things on the table ready for breakfast; the changefrom the bright sunny air out of doors to the deep shadow of thisroom made him think for the first moment that she had passed on, andthat no one was there, and he stood for an instant baffled, andhearing no sound but the beating of his own heart; but anirrepressible sobbing gasp made him look round, and there he saw hercowered behind the door, her face covered tight up, and sharpshudders going through her whole frame.

  'My love, my darling!' said he, going up to her, and trying to raiseher, and to loosen her hands away from her face. 'I've been toosudden for thee: it was thoughtless in me; but I have so lookedforward to this time, and seeing thee come along the field, and gopast me, but I should ha' been more tender and careful of thee. Nay!let me have another look of thy sweet face.'

  All this he whispered in the old tones of manoeuvring love, in thatvoice she had yearned and hungered to hear in life, and had notheard, for all her longing, save in her dreams.

  She tried to crouch more and more into the corner, into the hiddenshadow--to sink into the ground out of sight.

  Once more he spoke, beseeching her to lift up her face, to let himhear her speak.

  But she only moaned.

  'Sylvia!' said he, thinking he could change his tactics, and piqueher into speaking, that he would make a pretence of suspicion andoffence.

  'Sylvia! one would think you weren't glad to see me back again atlength. I only came in late last night, and my first thought onwakening was of you; it has been ever since I left you.'

  Sylvia took her hands away from her face; it was gray as the face ofdeath; her awful eyes were passionless in her despair.

  'Where have yo' been?' she asked, in slow, hoarse tones, as if hervoice were half strangled within her.

  'Been!' said he, a red light coming into his eyes, as he bent hislooks upon her; now, indeed, a true and not an assumed suspicionentering his mind.

  'Been!' he repeated; then, coming a step nearer to her, and takingher hand, not tenderly this time, but with a resolution to besatisfied.

  'Did not your cousin--Hepburn, I mean--did not he tell you?--he sawthe press-gang seize me,--I gave him a message to you--I bade youkeep true to me as I would be to you.'

  Between every clause of this speech he paused and gasped for heranswer; but none came. Her eyes dilated and held his steady gazeprisoner as with a magical charm--neither could look away from theother's wild, searching gaze. When he had ended, she was silent fora moment, then she cried out, shrill and fierce,--

  'Philip!' No answer.

  Wilder and shriller still, 'Philip!' she cried.

  He was in the distant ware-room completing the last night's workbefore the regular shop hours began; before breakfast, also, thathis wife might not find him waiting and impatient.

  He heard her cry; it cut through doors, and still air, and greatbales of woollen stuff; he thought that she had hurt herself, thather mother was worse, that her baby was ill, and he hastened to thespot whence the cry proceeded.

  On opening the door that separated the shop from the sitting-room,he saw the back of a naval officer, and his wife on the ground,huddled up in a heap; when she perceived him come in, she draggedherself up by means of a chair, groping like a blind person, andcame and stood facing him.

  The officer turned fiercely round, and would have come towardsPhilip, who was so bewildered by the scene that even yet he did notunderstand who the stranger was, did not perceive for an instantthat he saw the realization of his greatest dread.

  But Sylvia laid her hand on Kinraid's arm, and assumed to herselfthe right of speech. Philip did not know her voice, it was sochanged.

  'Philip,' she said, 'this is Kinraid come back again to wed me. Heis alive; he has niver been dead, only taken by t' press-gang. Andhe says yo' saw it, and knew it all t' time. Speak, was it so?'

  Philip knew not what to say, whither to turn, under what refuge ofwords or acts to shelter.

  Sylvia's influence was keeping Kinraid silent, but he was rapidlypassing beyond it.

  'Speak!' he cried, loosening himself from Sylvia's light grasp, andcoming towards Philip, with a threatening gesture. 'Did I not bidyou tell her how it was? Did I not bid you say how I would befaithful to her, and she was to be faithful to me? Oh! you damnedscoundrel! have you kept it from her all that time, and let herthink me dead, or false? Take that!'

  His closed fist was up to strike the man, who hung his head withbitterest shame and miserable self-reproach; but Sylvia came swiftbetween the blow and its victim.

  'Charley, thou shan't strike him,' she said. 'He is a damnedscoundrel' (this was said in the hardest, quietest tone) 'but he ismy husband.'

  'Oh! thou false heart!' exclaimed Kinraid, turning sharp on her. 'Ifever I trusted woman, I trusted you, Sylvia Robson.'

  He made as though throwing her from him, with a gesture of contemptthat stung her to life.

  'Oh, Charley!' she cried, springing to him, 'dunnot cut me to thequick; have pity on me, though he had none. I did so love thee; itwas my very heart-strings as gave way when they told me thou wasdrowned--feyther, and th' Corneys, and all, iverybody. Thy hat andt' bit o' ribbon I gave thee were found drenched and dripping wi'sea-water; and I went mourning for thee all the day long--dunnotturn away from me; only hearken this once, and then kill me dead,and I'll bless yo',--and have niver been mysel' since; niver ceasedto feel t' sun grow dark and th' air chill and dreary when I thoughton t' time when thou was alive. I did, my Charley, my own love! AndI thought thou was dead for iver, and I wished I were lying besidethee. Oh, Charley! Philip, theere, where he stands, could tell yo'this was true. Philip, wasn't it so?'

  'Would God I were dead!' moaned forth the unhappy, guilty man. Butshe had turned to Kinraid, and was speaking again to him, andneither of them heard or heeded him--they were drawing closer andcloser together--she, with her cheeks and eyes aflame, talkingeagerly.

  'And feyther was taken up, and all for setting some free as t'press-gang had gotten by a foul trick; and he were put i' Yorkprison, and tried, and hung!--hung! Charley!--good kind feyther washung on a gallows; and mother lost her sense and grew silly ingrief, and we were like to be turned out on t' wide world, and poormother dateless--and I thought yo' were dead--oh! I thought yo' weredead, I did--oh, Charley, Charley!'

  By this time they were in each other's arms, she with her head onhis shoulder, crying as if her heart would break.

  Philip came forwards and took hold of her to pull her away; butCharley held her tight, mutely defying Philip. Un
consciously she wasPhilip's protection, in that hour of danger, from a blow which mighthave been his death if strong will could have aided it to kill.

  'Sylvie!' said he, grasping her tight. 'Listen to me. He didn't loveyo' as I did. He had loved other women. I, yo'--yo' alone. He lovedother girls before yo', and had left off loving 'em. I--I wish Godwould free my heart from the pang; but it will go on till I die,whether yo' love me or not. And then--where was I? Oh! that verynight that he was taken, I was a-thinking on yo' and on him; and Imight ha' given yo' his message, but I heard them speaking of him asknew him well; talking of his false fickle ways. How was I to knowhe would keep true to thee? It might be a sin in me, I cannot say;my heart and my sense are gone dead within me. I know this, I'veloved yo' as no man but me ever loved before. Have some pity andforgiveness on me, if it's only because I've been so tormented withmy love.'

  He looked at her with feverish eager wistfulness; it faded away intodespair as she made no sign of having even heard his words. He letgo his hold of her, and his arm fell loosely by his side.

  'I may die,' he said, 'for my life is ended!'

  'Sylvia!' spoke out Kinraid, bold and fervent, 'your marriage is nomarriage. You were tricked into it. You are my wife, not his. I amyour husband; we plighted each other our troth. See! here is my halfof the sixpence.'

  He pulled it out from his bosom, tied by a black ribbon round hisneck.

  'When they stripped me and searched me in th' French prison, Imanaged to keep this. No lies can break the oath we swore to eachother. I can get your pretence of a marriage set aside. I'm infavour with my admiral, and he'll do a deal for me, and back me out.Come with me; your marriage shall be set aside, and we'll be marriedagain, all square and above-board. Come away. Leave that damnedfellow to repent of the trick he played an honest sailor; we'll betrue, whatever has come and gone. Come, Sylvia.'

  His arm was round her waist, and he was drawing her towards thedoor, his face all crimson with eagerness and hope. Just then thebaby cried.

  'Hark!' said she, starting away from Kinraid, 'baby's crying for me.His child--yes, it is his child--I'd forgotten that--forgotten all.I'll make my vow now, lest I lose mysel' again. I'll never forgiveyon man, nor live with him as his wife again. All that's done andended. He's spoilt my life,--he's spoilt it for as long as iver Ilive on this earth; but neither yo' nor him shall spoil my soul. Itgoes hard wi' me, Charley, it does indeed. I'll just give yo' onekiss--one little kiss--and then, so help me God, I'll niver see norhear till--no, not that, not that is needed--I'll niver see--surethat's enough--I'll never see yo' again on this side heaven, so helpme God! I'm bound and tied, but I've sworn my oath to him as well asyo': there's things I will do, and there's things I won't. Kiss meonce more. God help me, he's gone!'