Sylvia's Lovers - Page 87/290

All this enlargement of interest in the shop occupied Philip fully

for some months after the period referred to in the preceding

chapter. Remembering his last conversation with his aunt, he might

have been uneasy at his inability to perform his promise and look

after his pretty cousin, but that about the middle of November Bell

Robson had fallen ill of a rheumatic fever, and that her daughter

had been entirely absorbed in nursing her. No thought of company or

gaiety was in Sylvia's mind as long as her mother's illness lasted;

vehement in all her feelings, she discovered in the dread of losing

her mother how passionately she was attached to her. Hitherto she

had supposed, as children so often do, that her parents would live

for ever; and now when it was a question of days, whether by that

time the following week her mother might not be buried out of her

sight for ever, she clung to every semblance of service to be

rendered, or affection shown, as if she hoped to condense the love

and care of years into the few days only that might remain. Mrs.

Robson lingered on, began slowly to recover, and before Christmas

was again sitting by the fireside in the house-place, wan and pulled

down, muffled up with shawls and blankets, but still there once

more, where not long before Sylvia had scarcely expected to see her

again. Philip came up that evening and found Sylvia in wild spirits.

She thought that everything was done, now that her mother had once

come downstairs again; she laughed with glee; she kissed her mother;

she shook hands with Philip, she almost submitted to a speech of

more than usual tenderness from him; but, in the midst of his words,

her mother's pillows wanted arranging and she went to her chair,

paying no more heed to his words than if they had been addressed to

the cat, that lying on the invalid's knee was purring out her

welcome to the weak hand feebly stroking her back. Robson himself

soon came in, looking older and more subdued since Philip had seen

him last. He was very urgent that his wife should have some spirits

and water; but on her refusal, almost as if she loathed the thought

of the smell, he contented himself with sharing her tea, though he

kept abusing the beverage as 'washing the heart out of a man,' and

attributing all the degeneracy of the world, growing up about him in

his old age, to the drinking of such slop. At the same time, his

little self-sacrifice put him in an unusually good temper; and,

mingled with his real gladness at having his wife once more on the

way to recovery, brought back some of the old charm of tenderness

combined with light-heartedness, which had won the sober Isabella

Preston long ago. He sat by her side, holding her hand, and talking

of old times to the young couple opposite; of his adventures and

escapes, and how he had won his wife. She, faintly smiling at the

remembrance of those days, yet half-ashamed at having the little

details of her courtship revealed, from time to time kept saying,-'For shame wi' thee, Dannel--I never did,' and faint denials of a

similar kind.