'And, Hester,' said he, 'Sylvie has given me a message for thee--
she says thou must be her bridesmaid--she'll have none other.' 'I cannot,' said Hester, with sudden sharpness.
'Oh, yes, but yo' must. It wouldn't be like my wedding if thou
wasn't there: why I've looked upon thee as a sister iver since I
came to lodge with thy mother.' Hester shook her head. Did her duty require her not to turn away
from this asking, too? Philip saw her reluctance, and, by intuition
rather than reason, he knew that what she would not do for gaiety or
pleasure she would consent to, if by so doing she could render any
service to another. So he went on.
'Besides, Sylvie and me has planned to go for our wedding jaunt to
Robin Hood's Bay. I ha' been to engage a shandry this very morn,
before t' shop was opened; and there's no one to leave wi' my aunt.
Th' poor old body is sore crushed with sorrow; and is, as one may
say, childish at times; she's to come down here, that we may find
her when we come back at night; and there's niver a one she'll come
with so willing and so happy as with thee, Hester. Sylvie and me has
both said so.' Hester looked up in his face with her grave honest eyes.
'I cannot go to church wi' thee, Philip; and thou must not ask me
any further. But I'll go betimes to Haytersbank Farm, and I'll do my
best to make the old lady happy, and to follow out thy directions in
bringing her here before nightfall.' Philip was on the point of urging her afresh to go with them to
church; but something in her eyes brought a thought across his mind,
as transitory as a breath passes over a looking-glass, and he
desisted from his entreaty, and put away his thought as a piece of
vain coxcombry, insulting to Hester. He passed rapidly on to all the
careful directions rendered necessary by her compliance with the
latter part of his request, coupling Sylvia's name with his
perpetually; so that Hester looked upon her as a happy girl, as
eager in planning all the details of her marriage as though no heavy
shameful sorrow had passed over her head not many months ago.
Hester did not see Sylvia's white, dreamy, resolute face, that
answered the solemn questions of the marriage service in a voice
that did not seem her own. Hester was not with them to notice the
heavy abstraction that made the bride as if unconscious of her
husband's loving words, and then start and smile, and reply with a
sad gentleness of tone. No! Hester's duty lay in conveying the poor
widow and mother down from Haytersbank to the new home in
Monkshaven; and for all Hester's assistance and thoughtfulness, it
was a dreary, painful piece of work--the poor old woman crying like
a child, with bewilderment at the confused bustle which, in spite of
all Sylvia's careful forethought, could not be avoided on this final
day, when her mother had to be carried away from the homestead over
which she had so long presided. But all this was as nothing to the
distress which overwhelmed poor Bell Robson when she entered
Philip's house; the parlour--the whole place so associated with the
keen agony she had undergone there, that the stab of memory
penetrated through her deadened senses, and brought her back to
misery. In vain Hester tried to console her by telling her the fact
of Sylvia's marriage with Philip in every form of words that
occurred to her. Bell only remembered her husband's fate, which
filled up her poor wandering mind, and coloured everything; insomuch
that Sylvia not being at hand to reply to her mother's cry for her,
the latter imagined that her child, as well as her husband, was in
danger of trial and death, and refused to be comforted by any
endeavour of the patient sympathizing Hester. In a pause of Mrs
Robson's sobs, Hester heard the welcome sound of the wheels of the
returning shandry, bearing the bride and bridegroom home. It stopped
at the door--an instant, and Sylvia, white as a sheet at the sound
of her mother's wailings, which she had caught while yet at a
distance, with the quick ears of love, came running in; her mother
feebly rose and tottered towards her, and fell into her arms,
saying, 'Oh! Sylvie, Sylvie, take me home, and away from this cruel
place!' Hester could not but be touched with the young girl's manner to her
mother--as tender, as protecting as if their relation to each other
had been reversed, and she was lulling and tenderly soothing a
wayward, frightened child. She had neither eyes nor ears for any one
till her mother was sitting in trembling peace, holding her
daughter's hand tight in both of hers, as if afraid of losing sight
of her: then Sylvia turned to Hester, and, with the sweet grace
which is a natural gift to some happy people, thanked her; in common
words enough she thanked her, but in that nameless manner, and with
that strange, rare charm which made Hester feel as if she had never
been thanked in all her life before; and from that time forth she
understood, if she did not always yield to, the unconscious
fascination which Sylvia could exercise over others at times.