Sylvia's Lovers

He sighed heavily; but he went away, down-stairs, and away for ever.

Only as he entered the parlour his eyes caught on two silhouettes,

one of himself, one of Sylvia, done in the first month of their

marriage, by some wandering artist, if so he could be called. They

were hanging against the wall in little oval wooden frames; black

profiles, with the lights done in gold; about as poor semblances of

humanity as could be conceived; but Philip went up, and after

looking for a minute or so at Sylvia's, he took it down, and

buttoned his waistcoat over it.

It was the only thing he took away from his home.

He went down the entry on to the quay. The river was there, and

waters, they say, have a luring power, and a weird promise of rest

in their perpetual monotony of sound. But many people were there, if

such a temptation presented itself to Philip's mind; the sight of

his fellow-townsmen, perhaps of his acquaintances, drove him up

another entry--the town is burrowed with such--back into the High

Street, which he straightway crossed into a well-known court, out of

which rough steps led to the summit of the hill, and on to the fells

and moors beyond.

He plunged and panted up this rough ascent. From the top he could

look down on the whole town lying below, severed by the bright

shining river into two parts. To the right lay the sea, shimmering

and heaving; there were the cluster of masts rising out of the

little port; the irregular roofs of the houses; which of them,

thought he, as he carried his eye along the quay-side to the

market-place, which of them was his? and he singled it out in its

unfamiliar aspect, and saw the thin blue smoke rising from the

kitchen chimney, where even now Phoebe was cooking the household

meal that he never more must share.

Up at that thought and away, he knew not nor cared not whither. He

went through the ploughed fields where the corn was newly springing;

he came down upon the vast sunny sea, and turned his back upon it

with loathing; he made his way inland to the high green pastures;

the short upland turf above which the larks hung poised 'at heaven's

gate'. He strode along, so straight and heedless of briar and bush,

that the wild black cattle ceased from grazing, and looked after him

with their great blank puzzled eyes.

He had passed all enclosures and stone fences now, and was fairly on

the desolate brown moors; through the withered last year's ling and

fern, through the prickly gorse, he tramped, crushing down the

tender shoots of this year's growth, and heedless of the startled

plover's cry, goaded by the furies. His only relief from thought,

from the remembrance of Sylvia's looks and words, was in violent

bodily action.