Sylvia's Lovers

Hester was alone with the shop-boy; few people came in during the

universal Monkshaven dinner-hour. She was resting her head on her

hand, and puzzled and distressed about many things--all that was

implied by the proceedings of the evening before between Philip and

Sylvia; and that was confirmed by Philip's miserable looks and

strange abstracted ways to-day. Oh! how easy Hester would have found

it to make him happy! not merely how easy, but what happiness it

would have been to her to merge her every wish into the one great

object of fulfiling his will. To her, an on-looker, the course of

married life, which should lead to perfect happiness, seemed to

plain! Alas! it is often so! and the resisting forces which make all

such harmony and delight impossible are not recognized by the

bystanders, hardly by the actors. But if these resisting forces are

only superficial, or constitutional, they are but the necessary

discipline here, and do not radically affect the love which will

make all things right in heaven.

Some glimmering of this latter comforting truth shed its light on

Hester's troubled thoughts from time to time. But again, how easy

would it have been to her to tread the maze that led to Philip's

happiness; and how difficult it seemed to the wife he had chosen!

She was aroused by Dr Morgan's voice.

'So both Coulson and Hepburn have left the shop to your care,

Hester. I want Hepburn, though; his wife is in a very anxious state.

Where is he? can you tell me?' 'Sylvia in an anxious state! I've not seen her to-day, but last

night she looked as well as could be.' 'Ay, ay; but many a thing happens in four-and-twenty hours. Her

mother is dying, may be dead by this time; and her husband should be

there with her. Can't you send for him?' 'I don't know where he is,' said Hester. 'He went off from here all

on a sudden, when there was all the market-folks in t' shop; I

thought he'd maybe gone to John Foster's about th' money, for they

was paying a deal in. I'll send there and inquire.' No! the messenger brought back word that he had not been seen at

their bank all morning. Further inquiries were made by the anxious

Hester, by the doctor, by Coulson; all they could learn was that

Phoebe had seen him pass the kitchen window about eleven o'clock,

when she was peeling the potatoes for dinner; and two lads playing

on the quay-side thought they had seen him among a group of sailors;

but these latter, as far as they could be identified, had no

knowledge of his appearance among them.

Before night the whole town was excited about his disappearance.

Before night Bell Robson had gone to her long home. And Sylvia still

lay quiet and tearless, apparently more unmoved than any other

creature by the events of the day, and the strange vanishing of her

husband.