Sylvia's Lovers

Heavily and hopelessly did they all meet in the morning. No news of

Philip, no change in Sylvia; an unceasing flow of angling and

conjecture and gossip radiating from the shop into the town.

Hester could have entreated Coulson on her knees to cease from

repeating the details of a story of which every word touched on a

raw place in her sensitive heart; moreover, when they talked

together so eagerly, she could not hear the coming footsteps on the

pavement without.

Once some one hit very near the truth in a chance remark.

'It seems strange,' she said, 'how as one man turns up, another just

disappears. Why, it were but upo' Tuesday as Kinraid come back, as

all his own folk had thought to be dead; and next day here's Measter

Hepburn as is gone no one knows wheere!' 'That's t' way i' this world,' replied Coulson, a little

sententiously. 'This life is full o' changes o' one kind or another;

them that's dead is alive; and as for poor Philip, though he was

alive, he looked fitter to be dead when he came into t' shop o'

Wednesday morning.' 'And how does she take it?' nodding to where Sylvia was supposed to

be.

'Oh! she's not herself, so to say. She were just stunned by finding

her mother was dying in her very arms when she thought as she were

only sleeping; yet she's never been able to cry a drop; so that t'

sorrow's gone inwards on her brain, and from all I can hear, she

doesn't rightly understand as her husband is missing. T' doctor says

if she could but cry, she'd come to a juster comprehension of

things.' 'And what do John and Jeremiah Foster say to it all?' 'They're down here many a time in t' day to ask if he's come back,

or how she is; for they made a deal on 'em both. They're going t'

attend t' funeral to-morrow, and have given orders as t' shop is to

be shut up in t' morning.' To the surprise of every one, Sylvia, who had never left her room

since the night of her mother's death, and was supposed to be almost

unconscious of all that was going on in the house, declared her

intention of following her mother to the grave. No one could do more

than remonstrate: no one had sufficient authority to interfere with

her. Dr Morgan even thought that she might possibly be roused to

tears by the occasion; only he begged Hester to go with her, that

she might have the solace of some woman's company.

She went through the greater part of the ceremony in the same hard,

unmoved manner in which she had received everything for days past.