Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (snow like ashes series .txt) 📖

Yet we have lost our estates. Who raises a voice for us? Yet we are at least as innocent as the nobility of France. We sink among no sighs except our own. And if they give us sympathy--what then? Sympathy is the solace of the Poor; but for the Rich, there is Compensation."

"Is that Harriet?" said his wife moving in her bed.

The Hand-Loom weaver was recalled from his reverie to the urgent misery that surrounded him.

"No!" he replied in a quick hoarse voice, "it is not Harriet."

"Why does not Harriet come?"

"She will come no more!" replied the weaver; "I told you so last night: she can bear this place no longer; and I am not surprised."

"How are we to get food then?" rejoined his wife; "you ought not to have let her leave us. You do nothing, Warner. You get no wages yourself; and you have let the girl escape."

"I will escape myself if you say that again," said the weaver: "I have been up these three hours finishing this piece which ought to have been taken home on Saturday night."

"But you have been paid for it beforehand. You get nothing for your work. A penny an hour! What sort of work is it, that brings a penny an hour?"

"Work that you have often admired, Mary; and has before this gained a prize. But if you don't like the work," said the man quitting his loom, "let it alone. There was enough yet owing on this piece to have allowed us to break our fast. However, no matter; we must starve sooner or later. Let us begin at once."

"No, no, Philip! work. Let us break our fast come what may."

"Twit me no more then," said the weaver resuming his seat, "or I throw the shuttle for the last time."

"I will not taunt you," said his wife in a kinder tone. "I was wrong; I am sorry; but I am very ill. It is not for myself I speak; I want not to eat; I have no appetite; my lips are so very parched. But the children, the children went supperless to bed, and they will wake soon."

"Mother, we ayn't asleep," said the elder girl.

"No, we aynt asleep, mother," said her sister; "we heard all that you said to father."

"And baby?"

"He sleeps still."

"I shiver very much!" said the mother. "It's a cold day. Pray shut the window Warner. I see the drops upon the pane; it is raining. I wonder if the persons below would lend us one block of coal."

"We have borrowed too often," said Warner.

"I wish there were no such thing as coal in the land," said his wife, "and then the engines would not be able to work; and we should have our rights again."

"Amen!" said Warner.

"Don't you think Warner," said his wife, "that you could sell that piece to some other person, and owe Barber for the money he advanced?"

"No!" said her husband shaking his head. "I'll go straight."

"And let your children starve," said his wife, "when you could get five or six shillings at once. But so it always was with you! Why did not you go to the machines years ago like other men and so get used to them?"

"I should have been supplanted by this time," said Warner, "by a girl or a woman! It would have been just as bad!"

"Why there was your friend Walter Gerard; he was the same as you, and yet now he gets two pound a-week; at least I have often heard you say so."

"Walter Gerard is a man of great parts," said Warner, "and might have been a master himself by this time had he cared."

"And why did he not?"

"He had no wife and children," said Warner; "he was not so blessed."

The baby woke and began to cry.

"Ah! my child!" exclaimed the mother. "That wicked Harriet! Here Amelia, I have a morsel of crust here. I saved it yesterday for baby; moisten it in water, and tie it up in this piece of calico: he will suck it; it will keep him quiet; I can bear anything but his cry."

"I shall have finished my job by noon," said Warner; "and then, please God, we shall break our fast."

"It is yet two hours to noon," said his wife. "And Barber always keeps you so long! I cannot bear that Barber: I dare say he will not advance you money again as you did not bring the job home on Saturday night. If I were you, Philip, I would go and sell the piece unfinished at once to one of the cheap shops."

"I have gone straight all my life," said Warner.

"And much good it has done you," said his wife.

"My poor Amelia! How she shivers! I think the sun never touches this house. It is indeed a most wretched place!"

"It will not annoy you long, Mary," said her husband: "I can pay no more rent; and I only wonder they have not been here already to take the week."

"And where are we to go?" said the wife.

"To a place which certainly the sun never touches," said her husband, with a kind of malice in his misery,--"to a cellar!"

"Oh! why was I ever born!" exclaimed his wife. "And yet I was so happy once! And it is not our fault. I cannot make it out Warner, why you should not get two pounds a-week like Walter Gerard?"

"Bah!" said the husband.

"You said he had no family," continued his wife. "I thought he had a daughter."

"But she is no burthen to him. The sister of Mr Trafford is the Superior of the convent here, and she took Sybil when her mother died, and brought her up."

"Oh! then she is a nun?"

"Not yet; but I dare say it will end in it."

"Well, I think I would even sooner starve," said his wife, "than my children should be nuns."

At this moment there was a knocking at the door. Warner descended from his loom and opened it.

"Lives Philip Warner here?" enquired a clear voice of peculiar sweetness.

"My name is Warner."

"I come from Walter Gerard," continued the voice. "Your letter reached him only last night. The girl at whose house your daughter left it has quitted this week past Mr Trafford's factory."

"Pray enter."

And there entered SYBIL.


Book 2 Chapter 14


"Your wife is ill?" said Sybil.

"Very!" replied Warner's wife. "Our daughter has behaved infamously to us. She has quitted us without saying by your leave or with your leave. And her wages were almost the only thing left to us; for Philip is not like Walter Gerard you see: he cannot earn two pounds a-week, though why he cannot I never could understand."

"Hush, hush, wife!" said Warner. "I speak I apprehend to Gerard's daughter?"

"Just so."

"Ah! this is good and kind; this is like old times, for Walter Gerard was my friend, when I was not exactly as I am now."

"He tells me so: he sent a messenger to me last night to visit you this morning. Your letter reached him only yesterday."

"Harriet was to give it to Caroline," said the wife. "That's the girl who has done all the mischief and inveigled her away. And she has left Trafford's works, has she? Then I will be bound she and Harriet are keeping house together."

"You suffer?" said Sybil, moving to the bed-side of the woman; "give me your hand," she added in a soft sweet tone. "'Tis hot."

"I feel very cold," said the woman. "Warner would have the window open, till the rain came in."

"And you, I fear, are wet," said Warner, addressing Sybil, and interrupting his wife.

"Very slightly. And you have no fire. Ah! I have brought some things for you, but not fuel."

"If he would only ask the person down stairs," said his wife, "for a block of coal; I tell him, neighbours could hardly refuse; but he never will do anything; he says he has asked too often."

"I will ask," said Sybil. "But first, I have a companion without," she added, "who bears a basket for you. Come in, Harold."

The baby began to cry the moment a large dog entered the room; a young bloodhound of the ancient breed, such as are now found but in a few old halls and granges in the north of England. Sybil untied the basket, and gave a piece of sugar to the screaming infant. Her glance was sweeter even than her remedy; the infant stared at her with his large blue eyes; for an instant astonished, and then he smiled.

"Oh! beautiful child!" exclaimed Sybil; and she took the babe up from the mattress and embraced it.

"You are an angel from heaven," exclaimed the mother, "and you may well say beautiful. And only to think of that infamous girl, Harriet, to desert us all in this way."

Sybil drew forth the contents of the convent basket, and called Warner's attention to them. "Now," she said, "arrange all this as I tell you, and I will go down stairs and speak to them below as you wish, Harold rest there;" and the dog laid himself down in the remotest corner.

"And is that Gerard's daughter?" said the weaver's wife. "Only think what it is to gain two pounds a-week, and bring up your daughters in that way--instead of such shameless husseys as our Harriet! But with such wages one can do anything. What have you there, Warner? Is that tea? Oh! I should like some tea. I do think tea would do me some good. I have quite a longing for it. Run down, Warner, and ask them to let us have a kettle of hot water. It is better than all the fire in the world. Amelia, my dear, do you see what they have sent us. Plenty to eat. Tell Maria all about it. You are good girls; you will never be like that infamous Harriet. When you earn wages you will give them to your poor mother and baby, won't you?"

"Yes, mother," said Amelia.

"And father, too," said Maria.

"And father, too," said the wife. "He has been a very good father to you all; and I never can understand why one who works so hard should earn so little; but I believe it is the fault of those machines. The police ought to put them down, and then every body would be comfortable."

Sybil and Warner re-entered; the fire was lit, the tea made, the meal partaken. An air of comfort, even of enjoyment, was diffused over this chamber, but a few minutes back so desolate and unhappy.

"Well," said the wife, raising herself a little up in her bed, "I feel as if that dish of tea had saved my life. Amelia, have you had any tea? And Maria? You see what it is to be good girls; the Lord will never desert you. The day is fast coming when that Harriet will know what the want of a dish of tea is, with all her fine wages. And I am sure," she added, addressing Sybil, "what we all owe to you is not to be told. Your father well deserves his good fortune, with such a daughter."

"My father's