Book 5 Chapter 1
“Terrible news from Birmingham,” said Mr Egerton at Brookes’. “They have
massacred the police, beat off the military, and sacked the town. News
just arrived.”
“I have known it these two hours,” said a grey-headed gentleman,
speaking without taking his eyes off the newspaper. “There is a cabinet
sitting now.”
“Well I always said so,” said Mr Egerton, “our fellows ought to have put
down that Convention.”
“It is deuced lucky,” said Mr Berners, “that the Bedchamber business
is over, and we are all right. This affair in the midst of the Jamaica
hitch would have been fatal to us.”
“These chartists evidently act upon a system,” said Mr Egerton. “You see
they were perfectly quiet till the National Petition was presented and
debated; and now, almost simultaneously with our refusing to consider
their petition, we have news of this outbreak.”
“I hope they will not spread,” said the grey-headed gentleman. “There
are not troops enough in the country if there be anything like a general
movement. I hear they have sent the guards down by a special train, and
a hundred more of the police. London is not over-garrisoned.”
“They are always ready for a riot at Birmingham,” said a Warwickshire
peer. “Trade is very bad there and they suffer a good deal. But I should
think it would not go farther.”
“I am told,” said the grey-headed gentleman, “that business is getting
slack in all the districts.”
“It might be better,” said Mr Egerton, “but they have got work.” Here
several gentlemen entered, enquiring whether the evening papers were in
and what was the news from Birmingham.
“I am told,” said one of them, “that the police were regularly smashed.”
“Is it true that the military were really beat off?”
“Quite untrue: the fact is there were no proper preparations; the town
was taken by surprise, the magistrates lost their heads; the people were
masters of the place; and when the police did act, they were met by a
triumphant populace, who two hours before would have fled before them.
They say they have burnt down above forty houses.”
“It is a bad thing--this beating the police,” said the grey-headed
gentleman.
“But what is the present state of affairs?” enquired Mr Berners. “Are
the rioters put down?”
“Not in the least,” said Mr Egerton, “as I hear. They are encamped in
the Bull Ring amid smoking ruins, and breathe nothing but havoc.”
“Well, I voted for taking the National Petition into consideration,”
said Mr Berners. “It could do us no harm, and would have kept things
quiet.”
“So did every fellow on our side,” said Mr Egerton, “who was not in
office or about to be. Well, Heaven knows what may come next. The
Charter may some day be as popular in this club as the Reform Act.”
“The oddest thing in that debate,” said Mr Berners, “was Egremont’s
move.”
“I saw Marney last night at Lady St Julians,” said Mr Egerton, “and
congratulated him on his brother’s speech. He looked daggers, and
grinned like a ghoul.”
“It was a very remarkable speech--that of Egremont,” said the
grey-headed gentleman. “I wonder what he wants.”
“I think he must be going to turn radical,” said the Warwickshire peer.
“Why the whole speech was against radicalism,” said Mr Egerton.
“Ah, then he is going to turn whig, I suppose.”
“He is ultra anti-whig,” said Egerton.
“Then what the deuce is he?” said Mr Berners.
“Not a conservative certainly, for Lady St Julians does nothing but
abuse him.”
“I suppose he is crotchetty,” suggested the Warwickshire noble.
“That speech of Egremont was the most really democratic speech that I
ever read,” said the grey-headed gentleman. “How was it listened to?”
“Oh capitally,” said Mr Egerton. “He has very seldom spoken before and
always slightly though well. He was listened to with mute attention;
never was a better house. I should say made a great impression, though
no one knew exactly what he was after.”
“What does he mean by obtaining the results of the charter without
the intervention of its machinery?” enquired Lord Loraine, a mild,
middle-aged, lounging, languid man, who passed his life in crossing
from Brookes’ to Boodle’s and from Boodle’s to Brookes’, and testing the
comparative intelligence of these two celebrated bodies; himself gifted
with no ordinary abilities cultivated with no ordinary care, but the
victim of sauntering, his sultana queen, as it was, according to Lord
Halifax, of the second Charles Stuart.
“He spoke throughout in an exoteric vein,” said the grey-headed
gentleman, “and I apprehend was not very sure of his audience; but I
took him to mean, indeed it was the gist of the speech, that if you
wished for a time to retain your political power, you could only effect
your purpose by securing for the people greater social felicity.”
“Well, that is sheer radicalism,” said the Warwickshire peer,
“pretending that the People can be better off than they are, is
radicalism and nothing else.”
“I fear, if that be radicalism,” said Lord Loraine, “we must all take a
leaf out of the same book. Sloane was saying at Boodle’s just now that
he looked forward to the winter in his country with horror.”
“And they have no manufactures there,” said Mr Egerton.
“Sloane was always a croaker,” said the Warwickshire peer. “He always
said the New Poor Law would not act, and there is no part of the country
where it works so well as his own.”
“They say at Boodle’s there is to be an increase to the army,” said Lord
Loraine, “ten thousand men immediately; decided on by the cabinet this
afternoon.”
“It could hardly have leaked out by this time,” said the grey-headed
gentleman. “The cabinet were sitting less than an hour ago.”
“They have been up a good hour,” said Lord Loraine, “quite long enough
for their decisions to be known in St James’s Street. In the good old
times, George Farnley used always to walk from Downing Street to this
place the moment the council was up and tell us everything.”
“Ah! those were the good old gentleman-like times,” said Mr Berners,
“when members of Parliament had nobody to please and ministers of State
nothing to do.”
The riots of Birmingham occurred two months after the events that closed
our last volume. That period, as far as the obvious movements of the
chartists were concerned, had been passed in preparations for the
presentation and discussion of the National Petition, which the
parliamentary embroilments of the spring of that year had hitherto
procrastinated and prevented. The petition was ultimately carried down
to Westminster on a triumphal car accompanied by all the delegates of
the Convention in solemn procession. It was necessary to construct a
machine in order to introduce the huge bulk of parchment signed by
a million and a half of persons, into the House of Commons, and thus
supported, its vast form remained on the floor of the House during the
discussion. The House after a debate which was not deemed by the people
commensurate with the importance of the occasion, decided on rejecting
the prayer of the Petition, and from that moment the party in the
Convention who advocated a recourse to physical force in order to obtain
their purpose, was in the ascendant. The National Petition and the
belief that although its objects would not at present be obtained, still
that a solemn and prolonged debate on its prayer would at least hold out
to the working classes the hope that their rights might from that date
rank among the acknowledged subjects of parliamentary discussion and
ultimately by the force of discussion be recognized, as other rights of
other portions of the people once equally disputed, had been the means
by which the party in the Convention who upheld on all occasions
the supremacy of moral power had been able to curb the energetic and
reckless minority, who derided from the first all other methods but
terror and violence as effective of their end. The hopes of all,
the vanity of many, were frustrated and shocked by finding that the
exertions and expenditure of long months were not only fruitless,
but had not even attracted as numerous an assembly or excited as
much interest, as an ordinary party struggle on some petty point of
factitious interest forgotten as soon as fought. The attention of the
working classes was especially called by their leaders to the contrast
between the interest occasioned by the endangered constitution of
Jamaica, a petty and exhausted colony, and the claims for the same
constitutional rights by the working millions of England. In the first
instance, not a member was absent from his place; men were brought
indeed from distant capitals to participate in the struggle and to
decide it; the debate lasted for days, almost for weeks; not a public
man of light and leading in the country withheld the expression of
his opinion; the fate of governments was involved in it; cabinets were
overthrown and reconstructed in the throes and tumult of the strife, and
for the first time for a long period the Sovereign personally interposed
in public transactions with a significance of character, which made the
working classes almost believe that the privileged had at last found
a master, and the unfranchished regained their natural chief. The mean
position which the Saxon multitude occupied as distinguished from the
Jamaica planters sunk deep into their hearts. From that moment all
hope of relief from the demonstration of a high moral conduct in the
millions, and the exhibition of that well-regulated order of public life
which would intimate their fitness for the possession and fulfilment of
public rights, vanished. The party of violence, a small minority as
is usually the case, but consisting of men of determined character,
triumphed; and the outbreak at Birmingham was the first consequence of
those reckless councils that were destined in the course of the
ensuing years to inflict on the working classes of this country so much
suffering and disaster.
It was about this time, a balmy morning of July, that Sybil, tempted by
the soft sunshine, and a longing for the sight of flowers and turf and
the spread of winding waters, went forth from her gloomy domicile to
those beautiful gardens that bloom in that once melancholy region of
marsh, celebrated in old days only for its Dutch canal and its Chinese
bridge, and now not unworthy of the royal park that incloses them..
Except here and there a pretty nursery-maid with her interesting charge;
some beautiful child with nodding plume, immense bow, and gorgeous sash;
the gardens were vacant. Indeed it was only at this early hour, that
Sybil found from experience, that it was agreeable in London for a woman
unaccompanied to venture abroad. There is no European city where our
fair sisters are so little independent as in our metropolis; to our
shame.
Something of the renovating influence of a beautiful nature was
needed by the daughter of Gerard. She was at this moment anxious
and dispirited. The outbreak at Birmingham, the conviction that such
proceedings must ultimately prove fatal to the cause to which she
was devoted, the dark apprehension that her father was in some manner
implicated in this movement, that had commenced with so much public
disaster, and which menaced consequences still more awful, all these
events, and fears, and sad forebodings, acted with immense influence
on a temperament which, though gifted with even a sublime courage,
was singularly sensitive. The quick and teeming imagination of Sybil
conjured up a thousand fears which were in some degree unfounded, in a
great degree exaggerated, but this is the inevitable lot of the creative
mind practising on the inexperienced.
The shock too had been sudden. The two months that had elapsed since she
had parted, as she supposed for ever, from Egremont, while they had not
less abounded than the preceding time in that pleasing public excitement
which her father’s career, in her estimation alike useful, honourable,
and distinguished, occasioned her, had been fruitful in some sources of
satisfaction of a softer and more domestic character. The acquaintance
of Hatton, of whom they saw a great deal, had very much contributed to
the increased amenity of her life. He was a most agreeable, instructive,
and obliging companion; who seemed peculiarly to possess the art of
making life pleasant by the adroit management of unobtrusive resources.
He lent Sybil books; and all that he recommended to her notice, were of
a kind that harmonized with her sentiment and taste. He furnished her
from his library with splendid works of art, illustrative of those
periods of our history and those choice and costly edifices which were
associated with her fondest thought and fancy. He placed in her room the
best periodical literature of the day, which for her was a new world;
he furnished her with newspapers whose columns of discussion taught her,
that the opinions she had embraced were not unquestioned: as she had
never seen a journal in her life before, except a stray number of the
“Mowbray Phalanx,” or the metropolitan publication which was devoted
to the cause of the National Convention, and reported her father’s
speeches, the effect of this reading on her intelligence was, to say the
least, suggestive.
Many a morning too when Gerard was disengaged, Hatton would propose that
they should show Sybil something of the splendour or the rarities of the
metropolis; its public buildings, museums, and galleries of art. Sybil,
though uninstructed in painting, had that native taste which requires
only observation to arrive at true results. She was much interested with
all she saw and all that occurred, and her gratification was heightened
by the society of an individual who not only sympathised with all
she felt, but who, if she made an inquiry, was ever ready with an
instructive reply. Hatton poured forth the taste and treasures of a
well-stored and refined intelligence. And then too, always easy, bland,
and considerate; and though with luxuries and conveniences at his
command, to participate in which, under any other circumstances, might
have been embarrassing to his companions, with so much tact, that
either by an allusion to early days, happy days when he owed so much
to Gerard’s father, or some other mode equally felicitous, he contrived
completely to maintain among them the spirit of social equality. In
the evening, Hatton generally looked in when Gerard was at home, and
on Sundays they were always together. Their common faith was a bond
of union which led them to the same altar, and on that day Hatton
had obtained their promise always to dine with him. He was careful to
ascertain each holy day at what chapel the music was most exquisite,
that the most passionate taste of Sybil might be gratified. Indeed,
during this residence in London, the opportunity it afforded of making
her acquainted with some of the great masters of the human voice was
perhaps to Sybil a source of pleasure not the least important. For
though it was not deemed consistent with the future discipline which
she contemplated to enter a theatre, there were yet occasions which
permitted her, under every advantage, to listen to the performance of
the master-pieces of sacred melody. Alone, with Hatton and her father,
she often poured forth those tones of celestial sweetness and etherial
power that had melted the soul of Egremont amid the ruins of Marney
Abbey.
More intimately acquainted with Sybil Gerard, Hatton had shrunk from
the project that he had at first so crudely formed. There was something
about her that awed, while it fascinated him. He did not relinquish
his purpose, for it was a rule of his life never to do that; but he
postponed the plans of its fulfilment. Hatton was not, what is commonly
understood by the phrase, in love with Sybil: certainly not passionately
in love with her. With all his daring and talents and fine taste, there
was in Hatton such a vein of thorough good sense, that it was impossible
for him to act or even to think anything that was ridiculous. He wished
still to marry Sybil for the great object that we have stated; he had a
mind quite equal to appreciate her admirable qualities, but sense enough
to wish that she were a less dazzling creature, because then he would
have a better chance of accomplishing his end. He perceived when he had
had a due opportunity to study her character, that the cloister was the
natural catastrophe impending over a woman who, with an exalted mind,
great abilities, a fine and profound education and almost supernatural
charms, found herself born and rooted in the ranks of a degraded
population. All this Hatton understood; it was a conclusion he had
gradually arrived at by a gradual process of induction and by a vigilant
observation that in its study of character had rarely been deceived;
and when one evening with an art that could not be suspected, he sounded
Gerard on the future of his daughter, he found that the clear intellect
and straight-forward sagacity of the father had arrived at the same
result. “She wishes,” said Gerard, “to take the veil, and I only oppose
it for a time, that she may have some knowledge of life and a clear
conception of what she is about to do. I wish not that she should
hereafter reproach her father. But, to my mind, Sybil is right. She
cannot look to marriage: no man that she could marry would be worthy of
her.”
During these two months, and especially during the last, Morley was
rarely in London, though ever much with Gerard, and often with his
daughter during his visits. The necessary impulse had been given to the
affairs of the Convention, the delegates had visited the members, the
preparations for the presentation of the National Petition had been
completed; the overthrow of the whig government, the abortive effort
of Sir Robert Peel, the return of the whig administration, and the
consequent measures, had occasioned a delay of two months in the
presentation of the great document: it was well for Gerard to remain,
who was a leader in debate, and whose absence for a week would have
endangered his position as the head of a party, but these considerations
did not influence Morley, who had already found great inconvenience in
managing his journal at a distance; so, about the middle of May, he had
returned to Mowbray, coming up occasionally by the train if anything
important were stirring, or his vote could be of service to his friend
and colleague. The affair of Birmingham however had alarmed Morley and
he had written up to Gerard that he should instantly repair to town.
Indeed he was expected the very morning that Sybil, her father having
gone to the Convention where there were at this very moment very fiery
debates, went forth to take the morning air of summer in the gardens of
St James’ Park.
It was a real summer day; large, round, glossy, fleecy clouds, as white
and shining as glaciers, studded with their immense and immoveable forms
the deep blue sky. There was not even a summer breeze, though the air
was mellow, balmy, and exhilarating. There was a bloom upon the trees,
the waters glittered, the prismatic wild-fowl dived, breathed again, and
again disappeared. Beautiful children, fresh and sweet as the new-born
rose, glanced about with the gestures and sometimes the voices of
Paradise. And in the distance rose the sacred towers of the great
Western Minster.
How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence! A curse
upon those who vulgarize and desecrate these holy haunts; breaking the
hearts of nursery maids, and smoking tobacco in the palace of the rose!
The mental clouds dispelled as Sybil felt the freshness and fragrance
of nature. The colour came to her cheek; the deep brightness returned to
her eye; her step that at first had been languid and if not melancholy,
at least contemplative, became active and animated. She forgot the cares
of life and was touched by all the sense of its enjoyment. To move, to
breathe, to feel the sunbeam, were sensible and surpassing pleasures.
Cheerful by nature, notwithstanding her stately thoughts and solemn
life, a brilliant smile played on her seraphic face, as she marked the
wild passage of the daring birds, or watched the thoughtless grace of
infancy.
She rested herself on a bench beneath a branching elm, and her eye, that
for some time had followed the various objects that had attracted it,
was now fixed in abstraction on the sunny waters. The visions of past
life rose before her. It was one of those reveries when the incidents
of our existence are mapped before us, when each is considered with
relation to the rest, and assumes in our knowledge its distinct and
absolute position; when, as it were, we take stock of our experience,
and ascertain how rich sorrow and pleasure, feeling and thought,
intercourse with our fellow creatures and the fortuitous mysteries of
life,--have made us in wisdom.
The quick intelligence and the ardent imagination of Sybil had made
her comprehend with fervor the two ideas that had been impressed on
her young mind; the oppression of her church and the degradation of
her people. Educated in solitude and exchanging thoughts only with
individuals of the same sympathies, these impressions had resolved
themselves into one profound and gloomy conviction, that the world was
divided only between the oppressors and the oppressed. With her, to
be one of the people, was to be miserable and innocent; one of the
privileged, a luxurious tyrant. In the cloister, in her garden, amid the
scenes of suffering which she often visited and always solaced, she had
raised up two phantoms which with her represented human nature.
But the experience of the last few months had operated a great change in
these impressions. She had seen enough to suspect that the world was a
more complicated system than she had preconceived. There was not that
strong and rude simplicity in its organization she had supposed. The
characters were more various, the motives more mixed, the classes more
blended, the elements of each more subtle and diversified, than she had
imagined. The People she found was not that pure embodiment of unity
of feeling, of interest, and of purpose, which she had pictured in
her abstractions. The people had enemies among the people: their own
passions; which made them often sympathize, often combine, with the
privileged. Her father, with all his virtues, all his abilities,
singleness of purpose and simplicity of aim, encountered rivals in their
own Convention, and was beset by open or, still worse, secret foes.
Sybil, whose mind had been nurtured with great thoughts, and with
whom success or failure alike partook of the heroic, who had hoped for
triumph, but who was prepared for sacrifice, found to her surprise that
great thoughts have very little to do with the business of the world;
that human affairs, even in an age of revolution, are the subject
of compromise; and that the essence of compromise is littleness. She
thought that the People, calm and collected, conscious at last of their
strength and confident in their holy cause, had but to express their
pure and noble convictions by the delegates of their choice, and that
an antique and decrepit authority must bow before the irresistible
influence of their moral power. These delegates of their choice turned
out to be a plebeian senate of wild ambitions and sinister and selfish
ends, while the decrepit authority that she had been taught existed only
by the sufferance of the millions was compact and organized, with
every element of physical power at its command, and supported by the
interests, the sympathies, the honest convictions, and the strong
prejudices of classes influential not merely from their wealth but even
by their numbers.
Nor could she resist the belief that the feeling of the rich towards
the poor was not that sentiment of unmingled hate and scorn which she
associated with Norman conquerors and feudal laws. She would ascribe
rather the want of sympathy that unquestionably exists between Wealth
and Work in England, to mutual ignorance between the classes which
possess these two great elements of national prosperity; and though the
source of that ignorance was to be sought in antecedent circumstances
of violence and oppression, the consequences perhaps had outlived the
causes, as customs survive opinions.
Sybil looked towards Westminster, to those proud and passionate halls
where assembles the Parliament of England; that rapacious, violent, and
haughty body, that had brought kings and prelates to the block; spoiled
churches and then seized the sacred manors for their personal prey;
invested their own possessions with infinite privileges, and
then mortgaged for their state and empire the labour of countless
generations. Could the voice of solace sound from such a quarter?
Sybil unfolded a journal which she had brought; not now to be read
for the first time; but now for the first time to be read alone,
undisturbed, in a scene of softness and serenity. It contained a
report of the debate in the House of Commons on the presentation of the
National Petition; that important document which had been the means of
drawing forth Sybil from her solitude, and of teaching her something
of that world of which she had often pondered, and yet which she had so
inaccurately preconceived.
Yes! there was one voice that had sounded in that proud Parliament, that
free from the slang of faction, had dared to express immortal truths:
the voice of a noble, who without being a demagogue, had upheld the
popular cause; had pronounced his conviction that the rights of labour
were as sacred as those of property; that if a difference were to be
established, the interests of the living wealth ought to be preferred;
who had declared that the social happiness of the millions should be the
first object of a statesman, and that if that were not achieved, thrones
and dominions, the pomp and power of courts and empires, were alike
worthless.
With a heart not without emotion; with a kindling cheek, and eyes
suffused with tears, Sybil read the speech of Egremont. She ceased;
still holding the paper with one hand, she laid on it the other with
tenderness, and looked up to breathe as it were for relief. Before her
stood the orator himself.
Book 5 Chapter 2
Egremont had recognized Sybil as she entered the garden. He was himself
crossing the park to attend a committee of the House of Commons which
had sat for the first time that morning. The meeting had been formal and
brief, the committee soon adjourned, and Egremont repaired to the spot
where he was in the hope of still finding Sybil.
He approached her not without some restraint; with reserve and yet with
tenderness. “This is a great, an unexpected pleasure indeed.” he said in
a faltering tone. She had looked up; the expression of an agitation, not
distressful, on her beautiful countenance could not be concealed. She
smiled through a gushing vision: and with a flushed cheek, impelled
perhaps by her native frankness, perhaps by some softer and irresistible
feeling of gratitude, respect, regard, she said in a low voice, “I was
reading your beautiful speech.”
“Indeed,” said Egremont much moved, “that is an honour,--a pleasure,--a
reward, I never could have even hoped to have attained.”
“By all,” continued Sybil with more self-possession, “it must be read
with pleasure, with advantage, but by me--oh! with what deep interest.”
“If anything that I said finds an echo in your breast,” and here he
hesitated, “--it will give me confidence for the future,” he hurriedly
added.
“Ah! why do not others feel like you!” said Sybil, “all would not then
be hopeless.”
“But you are not hopeless,” said Egremont, and he seated himself on the
bench, but at some distance from her.
Sybil shook her head.
“But when we spoke last,” said Egremont, “you were full of
confidence--in your cause, and in your means.”
“It is not very long ago,” said Sybil, “since we thus spoke, and yet
time in the interval has taught me some bitter truths.”
“Truth is very precious,” said Egremont, “to us all; and yet I fear I
could not sufficiently appreciate the cause that deprived you of your
sanguine faith.”
“Alas!” said Sybil mournfully, “I was but a dreamer of dreams: I wake
from my hallucination as others have done I suppose before me. Like them
too I feel the glory of life has gone; but my content at least,” and she
bent her head meekly, “has never rested I hope too much on this world.”
“You are depressed, dear Sybil?”
“I am unhappy. I am anxious about my father. I fear that he is
surrounded by men unworthy of his confidence. These scenes of violence
alarm me. Under any circumstances I should shrink from them, but I
am impressed with the conviction that they can bring us nothing but
disaster and disgrace.”
“I honor your father,” said Egremont, “I know no man whose character I
esteem so truly noble; such a just compound of intelligence and courage,
and gentle and generous impulse. I should deeply grieve were he to
compromise himself. But you have influence over him, the greatest, as
you have over all. Counsel him to return to Mowbray.”
“Can I give counsel?” said Sybil, “I who have been wrong in all my
judgments? I came up to this city with him, to be his guide, his
guardian. What arrogance! What short-sighted pride! I thought the People
all felt as I feel; that I had nothing to do but to sustain and animate
him; to encourage him when he flagged, to uphold him when he wavered. I
thought that moral power must govern the world, and that moral power
was embodied in an assembly whose annals will be a series of petty
intrigues, or, what is worse, of violent machinations.”
“Exert every energy,” said Egremont, “that your father should leave
London, immediately; to-morrow, to-night if possible. After this
business at Birmingham, the government must act. I hear that they
will immediately increase the army and the police; and that there is
a circular from the Secretary of State to the Lords Lieutenant of
counties. But the government will strike at the Convention. The members
who remain will be the victims. If your father return to Mowbray and be
quiet, he has a chance of not being disturbed.”
“An ignoble end of many lofty hopes,” said Sybil.
“Let us retain our hopes,” said Egremont, “and cherish them.”
“I have none,” she replied.
“And I am sanguine,” said Egremont.
“Ah! because you have made a beautiful speech. But they will listen to
you, they will cheer you, but they will never follow you. The dove
and the eagle will not mate; the lion and the lamb will not lie down
together; and the conquerors will never rescue the conquered.”
Egremont shook his head. “You still will cherish these phantoms, dear
Sybil! and why? They are not visions of delight. Believe me they are as
vain as they are distressing. The mind of England is the mind ever of
the rising race. Trust me it is with the People. And not the less
so, because this feeling is one of which even in a great degree it is
unconscious. Those opinions which you have been educated to dread and
mistrust are opinions that are dying away. Predominant opinions are
generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. Let an
accident, which speculation could not foresee, the balanced state at
this moment of parliamentary parties cease, and in a few years, more or
less, cease it must, and you will witness a development of the new mind
of England, which will make up by its rapid progress for its retarded
action. I live among these men; I know their inmost souls; I watch their
instincts and their impulses; I know the principles which they have
imbibed, and I know, however hindered by circumstances for the moment,
those principles must bear their fruit. It will be a produce hostile to
the oligarchical system. The future principle of English politics will
not be a levelling principle; not a principle adverse to privileges, but
favourable to their extension. It will seek to ensure equality, not by
levelling the Few but by elevating the Many.”
Indulging for some little time in the mutual reflections, which the tone
of the conversation suggested, Sybil at length rose, and saying that
she hoped by this time her father might have returned, bade farewell to
Egremont, but he also rising would for a time accompany her. At the gate
of the gardens however she paused, and said with a soft sad smile, “Here
we must part,” and extended to him her hand.
“Heaven will guard over you!” said Egremont, “for you are a celestial
charge.”
Book 5 Chapter 3
As Sybil approached her home, she recognized her father in the court
before their house, accompanied by several men, with whom he seemed on
the point of going forth. She was so anxious to speak to Gerard, that
she did not hesitate at once to advance. There was a stir as she entered
the gate; the men ceased talking, some stood aloof, all welcomed
her with silent respect. With one or two Sybil was not entirely
unacquainted; at least by name or person. To them, as she passed, she
bent her head; and then going up to her father, who was about to welcome
her, she said, in a tone of calmness and with a semblance of composure,
“If you are going out, dear father, I should like to see you for one
moment first.”
“A moment, friends,” said Gerard, “with your leave;” and he accompanied
his daughter into the house. He would have stopped in the hall, but
she walked on to their room, and Gerard, though pressed for time, was
compelled to follow her. When they had entered their chamber. Sybil
closed the door with care, and then, Gerard sitting, or rather leaning
carelessly, on the edge of the table, she said, “We are once more
together, dear father; we will never again he separated.”
Gerard sprang quickly on his legs, his eye kindled, his cheek flushed.
“Something has happened to you, Sybil!”
“No,” she said, shaking her head mournfully, “not that; but something
may happen to you.”
“How so, my child?” said her father, relapsing into his customary
good-tempered placidity, and speaking in an easy, measured, almost
drawling tone that was habitual to him.
“You are in danger,” said Sybil, “great and immediate. No matter at this
moment how I am persuaded of this I wish no mysteries, but there is no
time for details. The government will strike at the Convention; they are
resolved. This outbreak at Birmingham has brought affairs to a crisis.
They have already arrested the leaders there; they will seize those who
remain here in avowed correspondence with them.”
“If they arrest all who are in correspondence with the Convention,” said
Gerard, “they will have enough to do.”
“Yes; but you take a leading part,” said Sybil; “you are the individual
they would select.”
“Would you have me hide myself?” said Gerard, “just because something is
going on besides talk.”
“Besides talk!” exclaimed Sybil. “O! my father, what thoughts are these!
It may be that words are vain to save us; but feeble deeds are vainer
far than words.”
“I do not see that the deeds, though I have nothing to do with them, are
so feeble,” said Gerard; “their boasted police are beaten, and by the
isolated movement of an unorganized mass. What if the outbreak had not
been a solitary one? What if the people had been disciplined?”
“What if everything were changed, if everything were contrary to what it
is?” said Sybil. “The people are not disciplined; their action will not
be, cannot be, coherent and uniform; these are riots in which you
are involved, not revolutions; and you will be a victim, and not a
sacrifice.”
Gerard looked thoughtful, but not anxious: after a momentary pause,
he said, “We must not be scared at a few arrests, Sybil. These are
hap-hazard pranks of a government that wants to terrify, but is itself
frightened. I have not counselled, none of us have counselled, this stir
at Birmingham. It is a casualty. We were none of us prepared for it. But
great things spring from casualties. I say the police were beaten and
the troops alarmed; and I say this was done without organization and in
a single spot. I am as much against feeble deeds as you can be, Sybil;
and to prove this to you, our conversation at the moment you arrived,
was to take care for the future that there shall be none. Neither vain
words nor feeble deeds for the future,” added Gerard, and he moved to
depart.
Sybil approached him with gentleness; she took his hand as if to bid him
farewell; she retained it for a moment, and looked at him steadfastly in
the face, with a glance at the same time serious and soft. Then throwing
her arms round his neck and leaning her cheek upon his breast, she
murmured, “Oh! my father, your child is most unhappy.”
“Sybil,” exclaimed Gerard in a tone of tender reproach, “this is
womanish weakness; I love, but must not share it.”
“It may be womanish,” said Sybil, “but it is wise: for what should make
us unhappy if not the sense of impending, yet unknown, danger?”
“And why danger?” said Gerard.
“Why mystery?” said Sybil. “Why are you ever pre-occupied and involved
in dark thoughts, my father? It is not the pressure of business, as you
will perhaps tell me, that occasions this change in a disposition so
frank and even careless. The pressure of affairs is not nearly as great,
cannot he nearly as great, as in the early period of your assembling,
when the eyes of the whole country were on you, and you were in
communication with all parts of it. How often have you told me that
there was no degree of business which you found irksome? Now you are
all dispersed and scattered: no discussions, no committees, little
correspondence--and you yourself are ever brooding and ever in conclave,
with persons too who I know, for Stephen has told me so, are the
preachers of violence: violence perhaps that some of them may preach,
yet will not practise: both bad; traitors it may be, or, at the best,
hare-brained men.”
“Stephen is prejudiced,” said Gerard. “He is a visionary, indulging in
impossible dreams, and if possible, little desirable. He knows nothing
of the feeling of the country or the character of his countrymen.
Englishmen want none of his joint-stock felicity; they want their
rights,--rights consistent with the rights of other classes, but without
which the rights of other classes cannot, and ought not, to be secure.”
“Stephen is at least your friend, my father; and once you honoured him.”
“And do so now; and love him very dearly. I honour him for his great
abilities and knowledge. Stephen is a scholar; I have no pretensions
that way; but I can feel the pulse of a people, and can comprehend the
signs of the times, Sybil. Stephen was all very well talking in our
cottage and garden at Mowbray, when we had nothing to do; but now we
must act, or others will act for us. Stephen is not a practical man; he
is crotchety, Sybil, and that’s just it.”
“But violence and action,” said Sybil, “are they identical, my father?”
“I did not speak of violence.”
“No; but you looked it. I know the language of your countenance, even to
the quiver of your lip. Action, as you and Stephen once taught me, and
I think wisely, was to prove to our rulers by an agitation, orderly and
intellectual, that we were sensible of our degradation; and that it
was neither Christianlike nor prudent, neither good nor wise, to let us
remain so. That you did, and you did it well; the respect of the world,
even of those who differed from you in interest or opinion, was not
withheld from you; and can be withheld from none who exercise the moral
power that springs from great talents and a good cause. You have
let this great moral power, this pearl of price,” said Sybil with
emotion,--“we cannot conceal it from ourselves, my father,--you have let
it escape from your hands.”
Gerard looked at her as she spoke with an earnestness unusual with him.
As she ceased, he cast his eyes down, and seemed for a moment deep in
thought; then looking up, he said, “The season for words is past. I must
be gone, dear Sybil.” And he moved towards the door.
“You shall not leave me,” said Sybil, springing forward, and seizing his
arm.
“What would you, what would you?” said Gerard, distressed.
“That we should quit this city to-night.”
“What, quit my post?”
“Why yours? Have not your colleagues dispersed? Is not your assembly
formally adjourned to another town? Is it not known that the great
majority of the delegates have returned to their homes? And why not you
to yours?”
“I have no home,” said Gerard, almost in a voice of harshness. “I came
here to do the business that was wanting, and, by the blessing of God, I
will do it. I am no changeling, nor can I refine and split straws, like
your philosophers and Morleys: but if the people will struggle, I will
struggle with them; and die, if need be, in the front. Nor will I
be deterred from my purpose by the tears of a girl,” and he released
himself from the hand of his daughter with abruptness.
Sybil looked up to heaven with streaming eyes, and clasped her hands
in unutterable woe. Gerard moved again towards the door, but before he
reached it, his step faltered, and he turned again and looked at his
daughter with tenderness and anxiety. She remained in the same position,
save that her arms that had fallen were crossed before her, and her
downward glance seemed fixed in deep abstraction. Her father approached
her unnoticed; he took her hand; she started, and looking round with a
cold and distressed expression, said, in a smothered tone, “I thought
you had gone.”
“Not in anger, my sweet child,” and Gerard pressed her to his heart.
“But you go,” murmured Sybil.
“These men await me,” said Gerard. “Our council is of importance. We
must take some immediate steps for the aid of our brethren in distress
at Birmingham, and to discountenance similar scenes of outbreak as this
affair: but the moment this is over, I will come back to you; and
for the rest, it shall be as you desire; to-morrow we will return to
Mowbray.”
Sybil returned her father’s embrace with a warmth which expressed
her sense of his kindness and her own soothed feelings, but she said
nothing; and bidding her now to be of good cheer, Gerard quitted the
apartment.
Book 5 Chapter 4
The clock of St John’s church struck three, and the clock of St John’s
church struck four; and the fifth hour sounded from St John’s church;
and the clock of St John’s was sounding six. And Gerard had not yet
returned.
The time for a while after his departure had been comparatively
light-hearted and agreeable. Easier in her mind and for a time busied
with the preparations for their journey, Sybil sate by the open window
more serene and cheerful than for a long period had been her wont.
Sometimes she ceased for a moment from her volume and fell into a
reverie of the morrow and of Mowbray. Viewed through the magic haze
of time and distance, the scene of her youth assumed a character of
tenderness and even of peaceful bliss. She sighed for the days of their
cottage and their garden, when the discontent of her father was only
theoretical, and their political conclaves were limited to a discussion
between him and Morley on the rights of the people or the principles of
society. The bright waters of the Mowe and its wooded hills; her matin
walks to the convent to visit Ursula Trafford--a pilgrimage of piety and
charity and love; the faithful Harold, so devoted and so intelligent;
even the crowded haunts of labour and suffering among which she glided
like an angel, blessing and blessed; they rose before her--those
touching images of the past--and her eyes were suffused with tears, of
tenderness, not of gloom.
And blended with them the thought of one who had been for a season the
kind and gentle companion of her girlhood--that Mr Franklin whom she had
never quite forgotten, and who, alas! was not Mr Franklin after all. Ah!
that was a wonderful history; a somewhat thrilling chapter in the memory
of one so innocent and so young! His voice even now lingered in her
ear. She recalled without an effort those tones of the morning, tones of
tenderness and yet of wisdom and considerate thought, that had sounded
only for her welfare. Never had Egremont appeared to her in a light
so subduing. He was what man should be to woman ever-gentle, and yet a
guide. A thousand images dazzling and wild rose in her mind; a thousand
thoughts, beautiful and quivering as the twilight, clustered round her
heart; for a moment she indulged in impossible dreams, and seemed to
have entered a newly-discovered world. The horizon of her experience
expanded like the glittering heaven of a fairy tale. Her eye was fixed
in lustrous contemplation, the flush on her cheek was a messenger from
her heart, the movement of her mouth would have in an instant become a
smile, when the clock of St John’s struck four, and Sybil started from
her reverie.
The clock of St John’s struck four, and Sybil became anxious; the clock
of St John’s struck five, and Sybil became disquieted; restless and
perturbed, she was walking up and down the chamber, her books long since
thrown aside, when the clock of St John’s struck six.
She clasped her hands and looked up to heaven. There was a knock at the
street door; she herself sprang out to open it. It was not Gerard. It
was Morley.
“Ah! Stephen,” said Sybil, with a countenance of undisguised
disappointment, “I thought it was my father.”
“I should have been glad to have found him here,” said Morley. “However
with your permission I will enter.”
“And he will soon arrive,” said Sybil; “I am sure he will soon arrive. I
have been expecting him every minute--”
“For hours,” added Morley, finishing her sentence, as they entered the
room. “The business that he is on,” he continued, throwing himself into
a chair with a recklessness very unlike his usual composure and even
precision, “The business that he is on is engrossing.”
“Thank Heaven,” said Sybil, “we leave this place to-morrow.”
“Hah!” said Morley starting, “who told you so?”
“My father has so settled it; has indeed promised me that we shall
depart.”
“And you were anxious to do so.”
“Most anxious; my mind is prophetic only of mischief to him if we
remain.”
“Mine too. Otherwise I should not have come up today.” “You have seen
him I hope?” said Sybil.
“I have; I have been hours with him.”
“I am glad. At this conference he talked of?”
“Yes; at this headstrong council; and I have seen him since; alone.
Whatever hap to him, my conscience is assoiled.”
“You terrify me, Stephen,” said Sybil rising from her seat. “What can
happen to him? What would he do, what would you resist? Tell me--tell
me, dear friend.”
“Oh! yes,” said Morley, pale and with a slight yet bitter smile. “Oh!
yes; dear friend!”
“I said dear friend for so I deemed you.” said Sybil; “and so we have
ever found you. Why do you stare at me so strangely, Stephen?”
“So you deem me, and so you have ever found me,” said Morley in a slow
and measured tone, repeating her words. “Well; what more would you have?
What more should any of us want?” he asked abruptly.
“I want no more,” said Sybil innocently.
“I warrant me, you do not. Well, well, nothing matters. And so,” he
added in his ordinary tone, “you are waiting for your father?”
“Whom you have not long since seen,” said Sybil, “and whom you expected
to find here?”
“No;” said Morley, shaking his head with the same bitter smile; “no, no.
I didn’t. I came to find you.”
“You have something to tell me,” said Sybil earnestly. “Something has
happened to my father. Do not break it to me; tell me at once,” and she
advanced and laid her hand upon his arm.
Morley trembled; and then in a hurried and agitated voice, said, “No,
no, no; nothing has happened. Much may happen, but nothing has happened.
And we may prevent it.”
“We! Tell me what may happen; tell me what to do.”
“Your father,” said Morley, slowly, rising from his seat and pacing the
room, and speaking in a low calm voice, “Your father--and my friend--is
in this position Sybil: he is conspiring against the State.”
“Yes, yes,” said Sybil very pale, speaking almost in a whisper and with
her gaze fixed intently on her companion. “Tell me all.”
“I will. He is conspiring, I say, against the State. Tonight they meet
in secret to give the last finish to their plans; and tonight they will
be arrested.”
“O God!” said Sybil clasping her hands. “He told me truth.”
“Who told you truth?” said Morley, springing to her side, in a hoarse
voice and with an eye of fire.
“A friend,” said Sybil, dropping her arms and bending her head in woe;
“a kind good friend. I met him but this morn, and he warned me of all
this.”
“Hah, hah!” said Morley with a sort of stifled laugh; “Hah, hah; he told
you did he; the kind good friend whom you met this morning? Did I not
warn you, Sybil, of the traitor? Did I not tell you to beware of taking
this false aristocrat to your hearth; to worm out all the secrets of
that home that he once polluted by his espionage, and now would desolate
by his treason.”
“Of whom and what do you speak?” said Sybil, throwing herself into a
chair.
“I speak of that base spy Egremont.”
“You slander an honourable man,” said Sybil with dignity. “Mr Egremont
has never entered this house since you met him here for the first time;
save once.”
“He needed no entrance to this house to worm out its secrets,” said
Morley maliciously. “That could be more adroitly done by one who had
assignations at command with the most charming of its inmates.”
“Unmannerly churl!” exclaimed Sybil starting in her chair, her eye
flashing lightning, her distended nostril quivering with scorn.
“Oh! yes. I am a churl,” said Morley; “I know I am a churl. Were I a
noble the daughter of the people would perhaps condescend to treat me
with less contempt.”
“The daughter of the people loves truth and manly bearing, Stephen
Morley; and will treat with contempt all those who slander women,
whether they be nobles or serfs.”
“And where is the slanderer?”
“Ask him who told you I held assignations with Mr Egremont or with any
one.”
“Mine eyes--mine own eyes--were my informant,” said Morley. “This morn,
the very morn I arrived in London, I learnt how your matins were now
spent. Yes!” he added in a tone of mournful anguish, “I passed the gate
of the gardens; I witnessed your adieus.”
“We met by hazard,” said Sybil, in a calm tone, and with an expression
that denoted she was thinking of other things, “and in all probability
we shall never meet again. Talk not of these trifles. Stephen; my
father, how can we save him?”
“Are they trifles?” said Morley, slowly and earnestly, walking to her
side, and looking her intently in the face. “Are they indeed trifles,
Sybil? Oh! make me credit that, and then--” he paused.
Sybil returned his gaze: the deep lustre of her dark orb rested on
his peering vision; his eye fled from the unequal contest: his heart
throbbed, his limbs trembled; he fell upon his knee.
“Pardon me, pardon me,” he said, and he took her hand. “Pardon the most
miserable and the most devoted of men!”
“What need of pardon, dear Stephen?” said Sybil in a soothing tone. “In
the agitated hour wild words escape. If I have used them, I regret; if
you, I have forgotten.”
The clock of St John’s told that the sixth hour was more than half-past.
“Ah!” said Sybil, withdrawing her hand, “you told me how precious was
time. What can we do?”
Morley rose from his kneeling position, and again paced the chamber,
lost for some moments in deep meditation. Suddenly he seized her arm,
and said, “I can endure no longer the anguish of my life: I love you,
and if you will not be mine, I care for no one’s fate.”
“I am not born for love,” said Sybil, frightened, yet endeavouring to
conceal her alarm.
“We are all born for love,” said Morley. “It is the principle of
existence, and its only end. And love of you, Sybil,” he continued, in
a tone of impassioned pathos, “has been to me for years the hoarded
treasure of my life. For this I have haunted your hearth and hovered
round your home; for this I have served your father like a slave, and
embarked in a cause with which I have little sympathy, and which can
meet with no success. It is your image that has stimulated my ambition,
developed my powers, sustained me in the hour of humiliation, and
secured me that material prosperity which I can now command. Oh! deign
to share it; share it with the impassioned heart and the devoted life
that now bow before you; and do not shrink from them, because they are
the feelings and the fortunes of the People.”
“You astound, you overwhelm me,” said Sybil, agitated. “You came for
another purpose, we were speaking of other feelings; it is the hour of
exigency you choose for these strange, these startling words.”
“I also have my hour of exigency,” said Morley, “and its minutes are now
numbering. Upon it all depends.”
“Another time,” said Sybil, in a low and deprecatory voice; “speak of
these things another time!”
“The caverns of my mind are open,” said Morley, “and they will not
close.”
“Stephen,” said Sybil, “dear Stephen, I am grateful for your kind
feelings: but indeed this is not the time for such passages: cease, my
friend!”
“I came to know my fate,” said Morley, doggedly.
“It is a sacrilege of sentiment,” said Sybil, unable any longer to
restrain her emotion, “to obtrude its expression on a daughter at such a
moment.”
“You would not deem it so if you loved, or if you could love me, Sybil,”
said Morley, mournfully. “Why it’s a moment of deep feeling, and suited
for the expression of deep feeling. You would not have answered thus, if
he who had been kneeling here had been named Egremont.”
“He would not have adopted a course,” said Sybil, unable any longer to
restrain her displeasure, “so selfish, so indecent.”
“Ah! she loves him!” exclaimed Morley, springing on his legs, and with a
demoniac laugh.
There was a pause. Under ordinary circumstances Sybil would have left
the room and terminated a distressing interview, but in the present
instance that was impossible; for on the continuance of that interview
any hope of assisting her father depended. Morley had thrown himself
into a chair opposite her, leaning back in silence with his face
covered; Sybil was disinclined to revive the conversation about her
father, because she had already perceived that Morley was only too much
aware of the command which the subject gave him over her feelings and
even conduct. Yet time, time now full of terror, time was stealing
on. It was evident that Morley would not break the silence. At length,
unable any longer to repress her tortured heart, Sybil said, “Stephen,
be generous; speak to me of your friend.”
“I have no friend,” said Morley, without taking his hands from his face.
“The Saints in heaven have mercy on me,” said Sybil, “for I am very
wretched.”
“No, no, no,” said Morley, rising rapidly from his seat, and again
kneeling at her side, “not wretched; not that tone of anguish! What can
I do? what say? Sybil, dearest Sybil, I love you so much, so fervently,
so devotedly; none can love you as I do: say not you are wretched!”
“Alas! alas!” said Sybil.
“What shall I do? what say?” said Morley.
“You know what I would have you say,” said Sybil. “Speak of one who
is my father, if no longer your friend: you know what I would have you
do--save him: save him from death and me from despair.”
“I am ready,” said Morley; “I came for that. Listen. There is a meeting
to-night at half-past eight o’clock; they meet to arrange a general
rising in the country: their intention is known to the government; they
will be arrested. Now it is in my power, which it was not when I saw
your father this morning, to convince him of the truth of this, and
were I to see him before eight o’clock, which I could easily do, I could
prevent his attendance, certainly prevent his attendance, and he
would be saved; for the government depend much upon the papers, some
proclamations, and things of that kind, which will be signed this
evening, for their proofs. Well, I am ready to save Gerard, my friend,
for so I’ll call him as you wish it; one I have served before and long;
one whom I came up from Mowbray this day to serve and save; I am ready
to do that which you require; you yourself admit it is no light deed;
and coming from one you have known so long, and, as you confess, so
much regarded, should be doubly cherished; I am ready to do this great
service; to save the father from death and the daughter from despair.
--if she would but only say to me, ‘I have but one reward, and it is
yours.’”
“I have read of something of this sort,” said Sybil, speaking in a
murmuring tone, and looking round her with a wild expression, “this
bargaining of blood, and shall I call it love? But that was ever between
the oppressors and the oppressed. This is the first time that a child
of the people has been so assailed by one of her own class, and who
exercises his power from the confidence which the sympathy of their
sorrows alone caused. It is bitter; bitter for me and mine--but for you,
pollution.”
“Am I answered?” said Morley.
“Yes,” said Sybil, “in the name of the holy Virgin.”
“Good night, then,” said Morley, and he approached the door. His hand
was on it. The voice of Sybil made him turn his head.
“Where do they meet to-night?” she inquired, in a smothered tone.
“I am bound to secrecy,” said Morley.
“There is no softness in your spirit,” said Sybil.
“I am met with none.”
“We have ever been your friends.”
“A blossom that has brought no fruit.”
“This hour will be remembered at the judgment-seat,” said Sybil.
“The holy Virgin will perhaps interpose for me,” said Morley, with a
sneer.
“We have merited this,” said Sybil, “who have taken an infidel to our
hearts.”
“If he had only been a heretic, like Egremont!” said Morley. Sybil burst
into tears. Morley sprang to her. “Swear by the holy Virgin, swear by
all the saints, swear by your hope of heaven and by your own sweet name;
without equivocation, without reserve, with fulness and with truth, that
you will never give your heart or hand to Egremont;--and I will save
your father.”
As in a low voice, but with a terrible earnestness, Morley dictated
this oath, Sybil, already pale, became white as the marble saint of some
sacred niche. Her large dark eyes seemed fixed; a fleet expression of
agony flitted over her beautiful brow like a cloud; and she said, “I
swear that I will never give my hand to--”
“And your heart, your heart,” said Morley eagerly. “Omit not that.
Swear by the holy oaths again you do not love him. She falters! Ah! she
blushes!” For a burning brightness now suffused the cheek of Sybil. “She
loves him,” exclaimed Morley, wildly, and he rushed franticly from the
room.
Book 5 Chapter 5
Agitated and overcome by these unexpected and passionate appeals, and
these outrageous ebullitions acting on her at a time when she herself
was labouring under no ordinary excitement, and was distracted with
disturbing thoughts, the mind of Sybil seemed for a moment to desert
her; neither by sound nor gesture did she signify her sense of Morley’s
last words and departure; and it was not until the loud closing of the
street door echoing through the long passage recalled her to herself,
that she was aware how much was at stake in that incident. She darted
out of the room to recall him; to make one more effort for her father;
but in vain. By the side of their house was an intricate passage leading
into a labyrinth of small streets. Through this Morley had disappeared;
and his name, more than once sounded in a voice of anguish in that
silent and most obsolete Smith’s Square, received no echo.
Darkness and terror came over the spirit of Sybil; a sense of
confounding and confusing woe, with which it was in vain to cope. The
conviction of her helplessness prostrated her. She sate her down upon
the steps before the door of that dreary house, within the railings of
that gloomy court, and buried her face in her hands: a wild vision
of the past and the future, without thought or feeling, coherence
or consequence: sunset gleams of vanished bliss, and stormy gusts of
impending doom.
The clock of St John’s struck seven.
It was the only thing that spoke in that still and dreary square; it was
the only voice that there seemed ever to sound; but it was a voice from
heaven; it was the voice of St John.
Sybil looked up: she looked up at the holy building. Sybil listened:
she listened to the holy sounds. St John told her that the danger of her
father was yet so much advanced. Oh! why are there saints in heaven if
they cannot aid the saintly! The oath that Morley would have enforced
came whispering in the ear of Sybil--“Swear by the holy Virgin and by
all the saints.”
And shall she not pray to the holy Virgin and all the saints? Sybil
prayed: she prayed to the holy Virgin and all the saints; and especially
to the beloved St John: most favoured among Hebrew men, on whose breast
reposed the divine Friend.
Brightness and courage returned to the spirit of Sybil: a sense of
animating and exalting faith that could move mountains, and combat
without fear a thousand perils. The conviction of celestial aid inspired
her. She rose from her sad resting-place and re-entered the house: only,
however, to provide herself with her walking attire, and then alone and
without a guide, the shades of evening already descending, this child of
innocence and divine thoughts, born in a cottage and bred in a cloister,
she went forth, on a great enterprise of duty and devotion, into the
busiest and the wildest haunts of the greatest of modern cities.
Sybil knew well her way to Palace Yard. This point was soon reached: she
desired the cabman to drive her to a Street in the Strand in which was
a coffee-house, where during the last weeks of their stay in London the
scanty remnants of the National Convention had held their sittings. It
was by a mere accident that Sybil had learnt this circumstance, for when
she had attended the meetings of the Convention in order to hear her
father’s speeches, it was in the prime of their gathering and when their
numbers were great, and when they met in audacious rivalry opposite
that St Stephen’s which they wished to supersede. This accidental
recollection however was her only clue in the urgent adventure on which
she had embarked.
She cast an anxious glance at the clock of St Martin’s as she passed
that church: the hand was approaching the half hour of seven. She urged
on the driver; they were in the Strand; there was an agitating stoppage;
she was about to descend when the obstacle was removed; and in a few
minutes they turned down the street which she sought.
“What number. Ma’am?” asked the cabman.
“‘Tis a coffee-house; I know not the number nor the name of him who
keeps it. ‘Tis a coffee-house. Can you see one? Look, look, I pray you!
I am much pressed.”
“Here’s a coffee-house, Ma’am,” said the man in a hoarse voice.
“How good you are! Yes; I will get out. You will wait for me, I am
sure?”
“All right,” said the cabman, as Sybil entered the illumined door. “Poor
young thing! she’s wery anxious about summut.”
Sybil at once stepped into a rather capacious room, fitted up in the
old-fashioned style of coffee-rooms, with mahogany boxes, in several of
which were men drinking coffee and reading newspapers by a painful glare
of gas. There was a waiter in the middle of the room who was throwing
some fresh sand upon the floor, but who stared immensely when looking up
he beheld Sybil.
“Now, Ma’am, if you please,” said the waiter inquiringly.
“Is Mr Gerard here?” said Sybil.
“No. Ma’am; Mr Gerard has not been here to-day, nor yesterday
neither”--and he went on throwing the sand.
“I should like to see the master of the house,” said Sybil very humbly.
“Should you, Ma’am?” said the waiter, but he gave no indication of
assisting her in the fulfilment of her wish.
Sybil repeated that wish, and this time the waiter said nothing. This
vulgar and insolent neglect to which she was so little accustomed
depressed her spirit. She could have encountered tyranny and oppression,
and she would have tried to struggle with them; but this insolence of
the insignificant made her feel her insignificance; and the absorption
all this time of the guests in their newspapers aggravated her nervous
sense of her utter helplessness. All her feminine reserve and modesty
came over her; alone in this room among men, she felt overpowered,
and she was about to make a precipitate retreat when the clock of the
coffee-room sounded the half hour. In a paroxysm of nervous excitement
she exclaimed, “Is there not one among you who will assist me?”
All the newspaper readers put down their journals and stared.
“Hoity-toity,” said the waiter, and he left off throwing the sand.
“Well, what’s the matter now?” said one of the guests.
“I wish to see the master of the house on business of urgency,” said
Sybil, “to himself and to one of his friends, and his servant here will
not even reply to my inquiries.”
“I say, Saul, why don’t you answer the young lady?” said another guest.
“So I did,” said Saul. “Did you call for coffee, Ma’am?”
“Here’s Mr Tanner, if you want him, my dear.” said the first guest, as
a lean black-looking individual, with grizzled hair and a red nose,
entered the coffee-room from the interior. “Tanner, here’s a lady wants
you.”
“And a very pretty girl too,” whispered one to another.
“What’s your pleasure?” said Mr Tanner abruptly.
“I wish to speak to you alone,” said Sybil: and advancing towards him
she said in a low voice, “‘Tis about Walter Gerard I would speak to
you.”
“Well, you can step in here if you like,” said Tanner very
discourteously; “there’s only my wife:” and he led the way to the
inner room, a small close parlour adorned with portraits of Tom Paine,
Cobbett, Thistlewood, and General Jackson; with a fire, though it was
a hot July, and a very fat woman affording still more heat, and who
was drinking shrub and water and reading the police reports. She stared
rudely at Sybil as she entered following Tanner, who himself when the
door was closed said, “Well, now what have you got to say?”
“I wish to see Walter Gerard.”
“Do you indeed!”
“And,” continued Sybil notwithstanding his sneering remark, “I come here
that you may tell me where I may find him.”
“I believe he lives somewhere in Westminster,” said Tanner, “that’s all
I know about him; and if this be all you had to say it might have been
said in the coffee-room.”
“It is not all that I have to say,” said Sybil; “and I beseech you, sir,
listen to me. I know where Gerard lives: I am his daughter, and the same
roof covers our heads. But I wish to know where they meet to-night--you
understand me;” and she looked at his wife, who had resumed her police
reports; “‘tis urgent.
“I don’t know nothing about Gerard,” said Tanner, “except that he comes
here and goes away again.”
“The matter on which I would see him,” said Sybil, “is as urgent as the
imagination can conceive, and it concerns you as well as himself; but
if you know not where I can find him”--and she moved as if about to
retire--“‘tis of no use.”
“Stop.” said Tanner, “you can tell it to me.”
“Why so? You know not where he is; you cannot tell it to him.”
“I don’t know that,” said Tanner. “Come, let’s have it out; and if it
will do him any good. I’ll see if we can’t manage to find him.”
“I can impart my news to him and no one else,” said Sybil. “I am
solemnly bound.”
“You can’t have a better counseller than Tanner,” urged his wife,
getting curious; “you had better tell us.”
“I want no counsel; I want that which you can give me if you
choose--information. My father instructed me that if certain
circumstances occurred it was a matter of the last urgency that I should
see him this evening and before nine o’clock, I was to call here and
obtain from you the direction where to find him; the direction,” she
added in a lowered tone, and looking Tanner full in the face, “where
they hold their secret council to-night.”
“Hem!” said Tanner: “I see you’re on the free-list. And pray how am I
to know you _are_ Gerard’s daughter?”
“You do not doubt I am his daughter!” said Sybil proudly.
“Hem!” said Tanner: “I do not know that I do very much,” and he
whispered to his wife. Sybil removed from them as far as she was able.
“And this news is very urgent,” resumed Tanner; “and concerns me you
say?”
“Concerns you all,” said Sybil; “and every minute is of the last
importance.”
“I should like to have gone with you myself, and then there could have
been no mistake,” said Tanner; “but that can’t be; we have a meeting
here at half-past eight in our great room. I don’t much like breaking
rules, especially in such a business; and yet, concerning all of us,
as you say, and so very urgent, I don’t see how it could do harm; and I
might--I wish I was quite sure you were the party.
“How can I satisfy you?” said Sybil, distressed.
“Perhaps the young person have got her mark on her linen,” suggested
the wife. “Have you got a handkerchief Ma’am?” and she took Sybil’s
handkerchief and looked at it, and examined it at every corner. It had
no mark. And this unforeseen circumstance of great suspicion might have
destroyed everything, had not the production of the handkerchief by
Sybil also brought forth a letter addressed to her from Hatton.
“It seems to be the party,” said the wife.
“Well,” said Tanner, “you know St Martin’s Lane I suppose? Well, you go
up St Martin’s Lane to a certain point, and then you will get into Seven
Dials; and then you’ll go on. However it is impossible to direct you;
you must find your way. Hunt Street, going out of Silver Street, No. 22.
‘Tis what you call a blind street, with no thoroughfare, and then you go
down an alley. Can you recollect that?”
“Fear not.”
“No. 22 Hunt Street, going out of Silver Street. Remember the alley.
It’s an ugly neighbourhood; but you go of your own accord.”
“Yes, yes. Good night.”