Sylvia's Lovers

But before Coulson was married, many small events happened--small

events to all but Philip. To him they were as the sun and moon. The

days when he went up to Haytersbank and Sylvia spoke to him, the

days when he went up and she had apparently no heart to speak to any

one, but left the room as soon as he came, or never entered it at

all, although she must have known that he was there--these were his

alternations from happiness to sorrow.

From her parents he always had a welcome. Oppressed by their

daughter's depression of spirits, they hailed the coming of any

visitor as a change for her as well as for themselves. The former

intimacy with the Corneys was in abeyance for all parties, owing to

Bessy Corney's out-spoken grief for the loss of her cousin, as if

she had had reason to look upon him as her lover, whereas Sylvia's

parents felt this as a slur upon their daughter's cause of grief.

But although at this time the members of the two families ceased to

seek after each other's society, nothing was said. The thread of

friendship might be joined afresh at any time, only just now it was

broken; and Philip was glad of it. Before going to Haytersbank he

sought each time for some little present with which to make his

coming welcome. And now he wished even more than ever that Sylvia

had cared for learning; if she had he could have taken her many a

pretty ballad, or story-book, such as were then in vogue. He did try

her with the translation of the Sorrows of Werther, so popular at

the time that it had a place in all pedlars' baskets, with Law's

Serious Call, the Pilgrim's Progress, Klopstock's Messiah, and

Paradise Lost. But she could not read it for herself; and after

turning the leaves languidly over, and smiling a little at the

picture of Charlotte cutting bread and butter in a left-handed

manner, she put it aside on the shelf by the Complete Farrier; and

there Philip saw it, upside down and untouched, the next time he

came to the farm.

Many a time during that summer did he turn to the few verses in

Genesis in which Jacob's twice seven years' service for Rachel is

related, and try and take fresh heart from the reward which came to

the patriarch's constancy at last. After trying books, nosegays,

small presents of pretty articles of dress, such as suited the

notions of those days, and finding them all received with the same

languid gratitude, he set himself to endeavour to please her in some

other way. It was time that he should change his tactics; for the

girl was becoming weary of the necessity for thanking him, every

time he came, for some little favour or other. She wished he would

let her alone and not watch her continually with such sad eyes. Her

father and mother hailed her first signs of impatient petulance

towards him as a return to the old state of things before Kinraid

had come to disturb the tenour of their lives; for even Daniel had

turned against the specksioneer, irritated by the Corneys' loud

moans over the loss of the man to whom their daughter said that she

was attached. If Daniel wished for him to be alive again, it was

mainly that the Corneys might be convinced that his last visit to

the neighbourhood of Monkshaven was for the sake of the pale and

silent Sylvia, and not for that of Bessy, who complained of

Kinraid's untimely death rather as if by it she had been cheated of

a husband than for any overwhelming personal love towards the

deceased.