Sylvia's Lovers - Page 247/290

Now she was married, this weekly church-going which Philip seemed to

expect from her, became a tie and a small hardship, which connected

itself with her life of respectability and prosperity. 'A crust of

bread and liberty' was much more accordant to Sylvia's nature than

plenty of creature comforts and many restraints. Another wish of

Philip's, against which she said no word, but constantly rebelled in

thought and deed, was his desire that the servant he had engaged

during the time of her illness to take charge of the baby, should

always carry it whenever it was taken out for a walk. Sylvia often

felt, now she was strong, as if she would far rather have been

without the responsibility of having this nursemaid, of whom she

was, in reality, rather afraid. The good side of it was that it set

her at liberty to attend to her mother at times when she would have

been otherwise occupied with her baby; but Bell required very little

from any one: she was easily pleased, unexacting, and methodical

even in her dotage; preserving the quiet, undemonstrative habits of

her earlier life now that the faculty of reason, which had been at

the basis of the formation of such habits, was gone. She took great

delight in watching the baby, and was pleased to have it in her care

for a short time; but she dozed so much that it prevented her having

any strong wish on the subject.

So Sylvia contrived to get her baby as much as possible to herself,

in spite of the nursemaid; and, above all, she would carry it out,

softly cradled in her arms, warm pillowed on her breast, and bear it

to the freedom and solitude of the sea-shore on the west side of the

town where the cliffs were not so high, and there was a good space

of sand and shingle at all low tides.

Once here, she was as happy as she ever expected to be in this

world. The fresh sea-breeze restored something of the colour of

former days to her cheeks, the old buoyancy to her spirits; here she

might talk her heart-full of loving nonsense to her baby; here it

was all her own; no father to share in it, no nursemaid to dispute

the wisdom of anything she did with it. She sang to it, she tossed

it; it crowed and it laughed back again, till both were weary; and

then she would sit down on a broken piece of rock, and fall to

gazing on the advancing waves catching the sunlight on their crests,

advancing, receding, for ever and for ever, as they had done all her

life long--as they did when she had walked with them that once by

the side of Kinraid; those cruel waves that, forgetful of the happy

lovers' talk by the side of their waters, had carried one away, and

drowned him deep till he was dead. Every time she sate down to look

at the sea, this process of thought was gone through up to this

point; the next step would, she knew, bring her to the question she

dared not, must not ask. He was dead; he must be dead; for was she

not Philip's wife? Then came up the recollection of Philip's speech,

never forgotten, only buried out of sight: 'What kind of a woman are

yo' to go on dreaming of another man, and yo' a wedded wife?' She

used to shudder as if cold steel had been plunged into her warm,

living body as she remembered these words; cruel words, harmlessly

provoked. They were too much associated with physical pains to be

dwelt upon; only their memory was always there. She paid for these

happy rambles with her baby by the depression which awaited her on

her re-entrance into the dark, confined house that was her home; its

very fulness of comfort was an oppression. Then, when her husband

saw her pale and fatigued, he was annoyed, and sometimes upbraided

her for doing what was so unnecessary as to load herself with her

child. She knew full well it was not that that caused her weariness.

By-and-by, when he inquired and discovered that all these walks were

taken in one direction, out towards the sea, he grew jealous of her

love for the inanimate ocean. Was it connected in her mind with the

thought of Kinraid? Why did she so perseveringly, in wind or cold,

go out to the sea-shore; the western side, too, where, if she went

but far enough, she would come upon the mouth of the Haytersbank

gully, the point at which she had last seen Kinraid? Such fancies

haunted Philip's mind for hours after she had acknowledged the

direction of her walks. But he never said a word that could

distinctly tell her he disliked her going to the sea, otherwise she

would have obeyed him in this, as in everything else; for absolute

obedience to her husband seemed to be her rule of life at this

period--obedience to him who would so gladly have obeyed her

smallest wish had she but expressed it! She never knew that Philip

had any painful association with the particular point on the

sea-shore that she instinctively avoided, both from a consciousness

of wifely duty, and also because the sight of it brought up so much

sharp pain.