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.