Sylvia's Lovers - Page 232/290

'And, Hester,' said he, 'Sylvie has given me a message for thee--

she says thou must be her bridesmaid--she'll have none other.' 'I cannot,' said Hester, with sudden sharpness.

'Oh, yes, but yo' must. It wouldn't be like my wedding if thou

wasn't there: why I've looked upon thee as a sister iver since I

came to lodge with thy mother.' Hester shook her head. Did her duty require her not to turn away

from this asking, too? Philip saw her reluctance, and, by intuition

rather than reason, he knew that what she would not do for gaiety or

pleasure she would consent to, if by so doing she could render any

service to another. So he went on.

'Besides, Sylvie and me has planned to go for our wedding jaunt to

Robin Hood's Bay. I ha' been to engage a shandry this very morn,

before t' shop was opened; and there's no one to leave wi' my aunt.

Th' poor old body is sore crushed with sorrow; and is, as one may

say, childish at times; she's to come down here, that we may find

her when we come back at night; and there's niver a one she'll come

with so willing and so happy as with thee, Hester. Sylvie and me has

both said so.' Hester looked up in his face with her grave honest eyes.

'I cannot go to church wi' thee, Philip; and thou must not ask me

any further. But I'll go betimes to Haytersbank Farm, and I'll do my

best to make the old lady happy, and to follow out thy directions in

bringing her here before nightfall.' Philip was on the point of urging her afresh to go with them to

church; but something in her eyes brought a thought across his mind,

as transitory as a breath passes over a looking-glass, and he

desisted from his entreaty, and put away his thought as a piece of

vain coxcombry, insulting to Hester. He passed rapidly on to all the

careful directions rendered necessary by her compliance with the

latter part of his request, coupling Sylvia's name with his

perpetually; so that Hester looked upon her as a happy girl, as

eager in planning all the details of her marriage as though no heavy

shameful sorrow had passed over her head not many months ago.

Hester did not see Sylvia's white, dreamy, resolute face, that

answered the solemn questions of the marriage service in a voice

that did not seem her own. Hester was not with them to notice the

heavy abstraction that made the bride as if unconscious of her

husband's loving words, and then start and smile, and reply with a

sad gentleness of tone. No! Hester's duty lay in conveying the poor

widow and mother down from Haytersbank to the new home in

Monkshaven; and for all Hester's assistance and thoughtfulness, it

was a dreary, painful piece of work--the poor old woman crying like

a child, with bewilderment at the confused bustle which, in spite of

all Sylvia's careful forethought, could not be avoided on this final

day, when her mother had to be carried away from the homestead over

which she had so long presided. But all this was as nothing to the

distress which overwhelmed poor Bell Robson when she entered

Philip's house; the parlour--the whole place so associated with the

keen agony she had undergone there, that the stab of memory

penetrated through her deadened senses, and brought her back to

misery. In vain Hester tried to console her by telling her the fact

of Sylvia's marriage with Philip in every form of words that

occurred to her. Bell only remembered her husband's fate, which

filled up her poor wandering mind, and coloured everything; insomuch

that Sylvia not being at hand to reply to her mother's cry for her,

the latter imagined that her child, as well as her husband, was in

danger of trial and death, and refused to be comforted by any

endeavour of the patient sympathizing Hester. In a pause of Mrs

Robson's sobs, Hester heard the welcome sound of the wheels of the

returning shandry, bearing the bride and bridegroom home. It stopped

at the door--an instant, and Sylvia, white as a sheet at the sound

of her mother's wailings, which she had caught while yet at a

distance, with the quick ears of love, came running in; her mother

feebly rose and tottered towards her, and fell into her arms,

saying, 'Oh! Sylvie, Sylvie, take me home, and away from this cruel

place!' Hester could not but be touched with the young girl's manner to her

mother--as tender, as protecting as if their relation to each other

had been reversed, and she was lulling and tenderly soothing a

wayward, frightened child. She had neither eyes nor ears for any one

till her mother was sitting in trembling peace, holding her

daughter's hand tight in both of hers, as if afraid of losing sight

of her: then Sylvia turned to Hester, and, with the sweet grace

which is a natural gift to some happy people, thanked her; in common

words enough she thanked her, but in that nameless manner, and with

that strange, rare charm which made Hester feel as if she had never

been thanked in all her life before; and from that time forth she

understood, if she did not always yield to, the unconscious

fascination which Sylvia could exercise over others at times.