EVIL OMENS
The first step in Philip's declension happened in this way. Sylvia
had made rapid progress in her recovery; but now she seemed at a
stationary point of weakness; wakeful nights succeeding to languid
days. Occasionally she caught a little sleep in the afternoons, but
she usually awoke startled and feverish.
One afternoon Philip had stolen upstairs to look at her and his
child; but the efforts he made at careful noiselessness made the
door creak on its hinges as he opened it. The woman employed to
nurse her had taken the baby into another room that no sound might
rouse her from her slumber; and Philip would probably have been
warned against entering the chamber where his wife lay sleeping had
he been perceived by the nurse. As it was, he opened the door, made
a noise, and Sylvia started up, her face all one flush, her eyes
wild and uncertain; she looked about her as if she did not know
where she was; pushed the hair off her hot forehead; all which
actions Philip saw, dismayed and regretful. But he kept still,
hoping that she would lie down and compose herself. Instead she
stretched out her arms imploringly, and said, in a voice full of
yearning and tears,--
'Oh! Charley! come to me--come to me!' and then as she more fully
became aware of the place where she was, her actual situation, she
sank back and feebly began to cry. Philip's heart boiled within him;
any man's would under the circumstances, but he had the sense of
guilty concealment to aggravate the intensity of his feelings. Her
weak cry after another man, too, irritated him, partly through his
anxious love, which made him wise to know how much physical harm she
was doing herself. At this moment he stirred, or unintentionally
made some sound: she started up afresh, and called out,--
'Oh, who's theere? Do, for God's sake, tell me who yo' are!'
'It's me,' said Philip, coming forwards, striving to keep down the
miserable complication of love and jealousy, and remorse and anger,
that made his heart beat so wildly, and almost took him out of
himself. Indeed, he must have been quite beside himself for the
time, or he could never have gone on to utter the unwise, cruel
words he did. But she spoke first, in a distressed and plaintive
tone of voice.
'Oh, Philip, I've been asleep, and yet I think I was awake! And I
saw Charley Kinraid as plain as iver I see thee now, and he wasn't
drowned at all. I'm sure he's alive somewheere; he were so clear and
life-like. Oh! what shall I do? what shall I do?'
She wrung her hands in feverish distress. Urged by passionate
feelings of various kinds, and also by his desire to quench the
agitation which was doing her harm, Philip spoke, hardly knowing
what he said.
'Kinraid's dead, I tell yo', Sylvie! And what kind of a woman are
yo' to go dreaming of another man i' this way, and taking on so
about him, when yo're a wedded wife, with a child as yo've borne to
another man?'
In a moment he could have bitten out his tongue. She looked at him
with the mute reproach which some of us see (God help us!) in the
eyes of the dead, as they come before our sad memories in the
night-season; looked at him with such a solemn, searching look,
never saying a word of reply or defence. Then she lay down,
motionless and silent. He had been instantly stung with remorse for
his speech; the words were not beyond his lips when an agony had
entered his heart; but her steady, dilated eyes had kept him dumb
and motionless as if by a spell.
Now he rushed to the bed on which she lay, and half knelt, half
threw himself upon it, imploring her to forgive him; regardless for
the time of any evil consequences to her, it seemed as if he must
have her pardon--her relenting--at any price, even if they both died
in the act of reconciliation. But she lay speechless, and, as far as
she could be, motionless, the bed trembling under her with the
quivering she could not still.
Philip's wild tones caught the nurse's ears, and she entered full of
the dignified indignation of wisdom.
'Are yo' for killing yo'r wife, measter?' she asked. 'She's noane so
strong as she can bear flytin' and scoldin', nor will she be for
many a week to come. Go down wi' ye, and leave her i' peace if yo're
a man as can be called a man!'
Her anger was rising as she caught sight of Sylvia's averted face.
It was flushed crimson, her eyes full of intense emotion of some
kind, her lips compressed; but an involuntary twitching
overmastering her resolute stillness from time to time. Philip, who
did not see the averted face, nor understand the real danger in
which he was placing his wife, felt as though he must have one word,
one responsive touch of the hand which lay passive in his, which was
not even drawn away from the kisses with which he covered it, any
more than if it had been an impassive stone. The nurse had fairly to
take him by the shoulders, and turn him out of the room.
In half an hour the doctor had to be summoned. Of course, the nurse
gave him her version of the events of the afternoon, with much
_animus_ against Philip; and the doctor thought it his duty to have
some very serious conversation with him.
'I do assure you, Mr. Hepburn, that, in the state your wife has been
in for some days, it was little less than madness on your part to
speak to her about anything that could give rise to strong emotion.'
'It was madness, sir!' replied Philip, in a low, miserable tone of
voice. The doctor's heart was touched, in spite of the nurse's
accusations against the scolding husband. Yet the danger was now too
serious for him to mince matters.
'I must tell you that I cannot answer for her life, unless the
greatest precautions are taken on your part, and unless the measures
I shall use have the effect I wish for in the next twenty-four
hours. She is on the verge of a brain fever. Any allusion to the
subject which has been the final cause of the state in which she now
is must be most cautiously avoided, even to a chance word which may
bring it to her memory.'
And so on; but Philip seemed to hear only this: then he might not
express contrition, or sue for pardon, he must go on unforgiven
through all this stress of anxiety; and even if she recovered the
doctor warned him of the undesirableness of recurring to what had
passed!
Heavy miserable times of endurance and waiting have to be passed
through by all during the course of their lives; and Philip had had
his share of such seasons, when the heart, and the will, and the
speech, and the limbs, must be bound down with strong resolution to
patience.
For many days, nay, for weeks, he was forbidden to see Sylvia, as
the very sound of his footstep brought on a recurrence of the fever
and convulsive movement. Yet she seemed, from questions she feebly
asked the nurse, to have forgotten all that had happened on the day
of her attack from the time when she dropped off to sleep. But how
much she remembered of after occurrences no one could ascertain. She
was quiet enough when, at length, Philip was allowed to see her. But
he was half jealous of his child, when he watched how she could
smile at it, while she never changed a muscle of her face at all he
could do or say.
And of a piece with this extreme quietude and reserve was her
behaviour to him when at length she had fully recovered, and was
able to go about the house again. Philip thought many a time of the
words she had used long before--before their marriage. Ominous words
they were.
'It's not in me to forgive; I sometimes think it's not in me to
forget.'
Philip was tender even to humility in his conduct towards her. But
nothing stirred her from her fortress of reserve. And he knew she
was so different; he knew how loving, nay, passionate, was her
nature--vehement, demonstrative--oh! how could he stir her once more
into expression, even if the first show or speech she made was of
anger? Then he tried being angry with her himself; he was sometimes
unjust to her consciously and of a purpose, in order to provoke her
into defending herself, and appealing against his unkindness. He
only seemed to drive her love away still more.
If any one had known all that was passing in that household, while
yet the story of it was not ended, nor, indeed, come to its crisis,
their hearts would have been sorry for the man who lingered long at
the door of the room in which his wife sate cooing and talking to
her baby, and sometimes laughing back to it, or who was soothing the
querulousness of failing age with every possible patience of love;
sorry for the poor listener who was hungering for the profusion of
tenderness thus scattered on the senseless air, yet only by stealth
caught the echoes of what ought to have been his.
It was so difficult to complain, too; impossible, in fact.
Everything that a wife could do from duty she did; but the love
seemed to have fled, and, in such cases, no reproaches or complaints
can avail to bring it back. So reason outsiders, and are convinced
of the result before the experiment is made. But Philip could not
reason, or could not yield to reason; and so he complained and
reproached. She did not much answer him; but he thought that her
eyes expressed the old words,--
'It's not in me to forgive; I sometimes think it's not in me to
forget.'
However, it is an old story, an ascertained fact, that, even in the
most tender and stable masculine natures, at the supremest season of
their lives, there is room for other thoughts and passions than such
as are connected with love. Even with the most domestic and
affectionate men, their emotions seem to be kept in a cell distinct
and away from their actual lives. Philip had other thoughts and
other occupations than those connected with his wife during all this
time.
An uncle of his mother's, a Cumberland 'statesman', of whose
existence he was barely conscious, died about this time, leaving to
his unknown great-nephew four or five hundred pounds, which put him
at once in a different position with regard to his business.
Henceforward his ambition was roused,--such humble ambition as
befitted a shop-keeper in a country town sixty or seventy years ago.
To be respected by the men around him had always been an object with
him, and was, perhaps, becoming more so than ever now, as a sort of
refuge from his deep, sorrowful mortification in other directions.
He was greatly pleased at being made a sidesman; and, in preparation
for the further honour of being churchwarden, he went regularly
twice a day to church on Sundays. There was enough religious feeling
in him to make him disguise the worldly reason for such conduct from
himself. He believed that he went because he thought it right to
attend public worship in the parish church whenever it was offered
up; but it may be questioned of him, as of many others, how far he
would have been as regular in attendance in a place where he was not
known. With this, however, we have nothing to do. The fact was that
he went regularly to church, and he wished his wife to accompany him
to the pew, newly painted, with his name on the door, where he sate
in full sight of the clergyman and congregation.
Sylvia had never been in the habit of such regular church-going, and
she felt it as a hardship, and slipped out of the duty as often as
ever she could. In her unmarried days, she and her parents had gone
annually to the mother-church of the parish in which Haytersbank was
situated: on the Monday succeeding the Sunday next after the Romish
Saint's Day, to whom the church was dedicated, there was a great
feast or wake held; and, on the Sunday, all the parishioners came to
church from far and near. Frequently, too, in the course of the
year, Sylvia would accompany one or other of her parents to Scarby
Moorside afternoon service,--when the hay was got in, and the corn
not ready for cutting, or the cows were dry and there was no
afternoon milking. Many clergymen were languid in those days, and
did not too curiously inquire into the reasons which gave them such
small congregations in country parishes.
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.
Philip used to wonder if the dream that preceded her illness was the
suggestive cause that drew her so often to the shore. Her illness
consequent upon that dream had filled his mind, so that for many
months he himself had had no haunting vision of Kinraid to disturb
his slumbers. But now the old dream of Kinraid's actual presence by
Philip's bedside began to return with fearful vividness. Night after
night it recurred; each time with some new touch of reality, and
close approach; till it was as if the fate that overtakes all men
were then, even then, knocking at his door.
In his business Philip prospered. Men praised him because he did
well to himself. He had the perseverance, the capability for
head-work and calculation, the steadiness and general forethought
which might have made him a great merchant if he had lived in a
large city. Without any effort of his own, almost, too, without
Coulson's being aware of it, Philip was now in the position of
superior partner; the one to suggest and arrange, while Coulson only
carried out the plans that emanated from Philip. The whole work of
life was suited to the man: he did not aspire to any different
position, only to the full development of the capabilities of that
which he already held. He had originated several fresh schemes with
regard to the traffic of the shop; and his old masters, with all
their love of tried ways, and distrust of everything new, had been
candid enough to confess that their successors' plans had resulted
in success. 'Their successors.' Philip was content with having the
power when the exercise of it was required, and never named his own
important share in the new improvements. Possibly, if he had,
Coulson's vanity might have taken the alarm, and he might not have
been so acquiescent for the future. As it was, he forgot his own
subordinate share, and always used the imperial 'we', 'we thought',
'it struck us,' &c.