But before Coulson was married, many small events happened--small
events to all but Philip. To him they were as the sun and moon. The
days when he went up to Haytersbank and Sylvia spoke to him, the
days when he went up and she had apparently no heart to speak to any
one, but left the room as soon as he came, or never entered it at
all, although she must have known that he was there--these were his
alternations from happiness to sorrow.
From her parents he always had a welcome. Oppressed by their
daughter's depression of spirits, they hailed the coming of any
visitor as a change for her as well as for themselves. The former
intimacy with the Corneys was in abeyance for all parties, owing to
Bessy Corney's out-spoken grief for the loss of her cousin, as if
she had had reason to look upon him as her lover, whereas Sylvia's
parents felt this as a slur upon their daughter's cause of grief.
But although at this time the members of the two families ceased to
seek after each other's society, nothing was said. The thread of
friendship might be joined afresh at any time, only just now it was
broken; and Philip was glad of it. Before going to Haytersbank he
sought each time for some little present with which to make his
coming welcome. And now he wished even more than ever that Sylvia
had cared for learning; if she had he could have taken her many a
pretty ballad, or story-book, such as were then in vogue. He did try
her with the translation of the Sorrows of Werther, so popular at
the time that it had a place in all pedlars' baskets, with Law's
Serious Call, the Pilgrim's Progress, Klopstock's Messiah, and
Paradise Lost. But she could not read it for herself; and after
turning the leaves languidly over, and smiling a little at the
picture of Charlotte cutting bread and butter in a left-handed
manner, she put it aside on the shelf by the Complete Farrier; and
there Philip saw it, upside down and untouched, the next time he
came to the farm.
Many a time during that summer did he turn to the few verses in
Genesis in which Jacob's twice seven years' service for Rachel is
related, and try and take fresh heart from the reward which came to
the patriarch's constancy at last. After trying books, nosegays,
small presents of pretty articles of dress, such as suited the
notions of those days, and finding them all received with the same
languid gratitude, he set himself to endeavour to please her in some
other way. It was time that he should change his tactics; for the
girl was becoming weary of the necessity for thanking him, every
time he came, for some little favour or other. She wished he would
let her alone and not watch her continually with such sad eyes. Her
father and mother hailed her first signs of impatient petulance
towards him as a return to the old state of things before Kinraid
had come to disturb the tenour of their lives; for even Daniel had
turned against the specksioneer, irritated by the Corneys' loud
moans over the loss of the man to whom their daughter said that she
was attached. If Daniel wished for him to be alive again, it was
mainly that the Corneys might be convinced that his last visit to
the neighbourhood of Monkshaven was for the sake of the pale and
silent Sylvia, and not for that of Bessy, who complained of
Kinraid's untimely death rather as if by it she had been cheated of
a husband than for any overwhelming personal love towards the
deceased.