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

hilly moors we have noticed, and finally entering the plain, lost itself in the waters of the greater stream.

Good sport had not awaited Egremont. Truth to say, his rod had played in a very careless hand. He had taken it, though an adept in the craft when in the mood, rather as an excuse to be alone, than a means to be amused. There are seasons in life when solitude is a necessity; and such a one had now descended on the spirit of the brother of Lord Marney.

The form of Sybil Gerard was stamped upon his brain. It blended with all thoughts; it haunted every object. Who was this girl, unlike all women whom he had yet encountered, who spoke with such sweet seriousness of things of such vast import, but which had never crossed his mind, and with a kind of mournful majesty bewailed the degradation of her race? The daughter of the lowly, yet proud of her birth. Not a noble lady in the land who could boast a mien more complete, and none of them thus gifted, who possessed withal the fascinating simplicity that pervaded every gesture and accent of the daughter of Gerard.

Yes! the daughter of Gerard; the daughter of a workman at a manufactory. It had not been difficult, after the departure of Sybil, to extract this information from the garrulous wife of the weaver. And that father,--he was not unknown to Egremont. His proud form and generous countenance were still fresh in the mind's eye of our friend. Not less so his thoughtful speech; full of knowledge and meditation and earnest feeling! How much that he had spoken still echoed in the heart, and rung in the brooding ear of Egremont. And his friend, too, that pale man with those glittering eyes, who without affectation, without pedantry, with artlessness on the contrary and a degree of earnest singleness, had glanced like a master of philosophy at the loftiest principles of political science,--was he too a workman? And are these then THE PEOPLE? If so, thought Egremont, would that I lived more among them! Compared with their converse, the tattle of our saloons has in it something humiliating. It is not merely that it is deficient in warmth, and depth, and breadth; that it is always discussing persons instead of principles, and cloaking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas and its want of feeling in superficial raillery; it is not merely that it has neither imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor feeling, nor knowledge to recommend it; but it appears to me, even as regards manner and expression, inferior in refinement and phraseology; in short, trivial, uninteresting, stupid, really vulgar.

It seemed to Egremont that, from the day he met these persons in the Abbey ruins, the horizon of his experience had insensibly expanded; more than that, there were streaks of light breaking in the distance, which already gave a new aspect to much that was known, and which perhaps was ultimately destined to reveal much that was now utterly obscure. He could not resist the conviction that from the time in question, his sympathies had become more lively and more extended; that a masculine impulse had been given to his mind; that he was inclined to view public questions in a tone very different to that in which he had surveyed them a few weeks back, when on the hustings of his borough.

Revolving these things, he emerged, as we have stated, into the plain of the Mowe, and guiding his path by the course of the river, he arrived at the bridge which a fancy tempted him to cross. In its centre, was a man gazing on the waters below and leaning over the parapet. His footstep roused the loiterer, who looked round; and Egremont saw that it was Walter Gerard.

Gerard returned his salute, and said, "Early hours on Saturday afternoon make us all saunterers;" and then, as their way was the same, they walked on together. It seemed that Gerard's cottage was near at hand, and having inquired after Egremont's sport, and receiving for a reply a present of a brace of trout,--the only one, by the bye, that was in Egremont's basket,--he could scarcely do less than invite his companion to rest himself.

"There is my home," said Gerard, pointing to a cottage recently built, and in a pleasing style. Its materials were of a fawn-coloured stone, common in the Mowbray quarries. A scarlet creeper clustered round one side of its ample porch; its windows were large, mullioned, and neatly latticed; it stood in the midst of a garden of no mean dimensions but every bed and nook of which teemed with cultivation; flowers and vegetables both abounded, while an orchard rich with promise of many fruits; ripe pears and famous pippins of the north and plums of every shape and hue; screened the dwelling from that wind against which the woods that formed its back-ground were no protection.

"And you are well lodged! Your garden does you honour."

"I'll be honest enough to own I have no claim to the credit," said Gerard. "I am but a lazy chiel."

They entered the cottage, where a hale old woman greeted them.

"She is too old to be my wife, and too young to be my mother," said Gerard smiling; "but she is a good creature, and has looked after me many a long day. Come, dame," he said, "thou'lt bring us a cup of tea; 'tis a good evening beverage," he added, turning to Egremont. "and what I ever take at this time. And if you care to light a pipe, you will find a companion."

"I have renounced tobacco," said Egremont; "tobacco is the tomb of love," and they entered a neatly-furnished chamber, that had that habitable look which the best room of a farmhouse too often wants. Instead of the cast-off furniture of other establishments, at the same time dingy and tawdry, mock rosewood chairs and tarnished mahogany tables, there was an oaken table, some cottage chairs made of beech wood, and a Dutch clock. But what surprised Egremont was the appearance of several shelves well lined with volumes. Their contents too on closer inspection were very remarkable. They indicated a student of a high order. Egremont read the titles of works which he only knew by fame, but which treated of the loftiest and most subtle questions of social and political philosophy. As he was throwing his eye over them, his companion said, "Ah! I see you think me as great a scholar as I am a gardener: but with as little justice; these hooks are not mine."

"To whomsoever they belong," said Egremont, "if we are to judge from his collection, he has a tolerably strong head."

"Ay, ay," said Gerard, "the world will hear of him yet, though he was only a workman, and the son of a workman. He has not been at your schools and your colleges, but he can write his mother tongue, as Shakespeare and Cobbett wrote it; and you must do that, if you wish to influence the people."

"And might I ask his name," said Egremont.

"Stephen Morley, my friend."

"The person I saw with you at Marney Abbey?"

"The same."

"And he lives with you?"

"Why, we kept house together, if you could call it so. Stephen does not give much trouble in that way. He only drinks water and only eats herbs and fruits. He is the gardener," added Gerard, smiling. "I don't know how we shall fare when he leaves me."

"And is he going to leave you?"

"Why in a manner he has gone. He has taken a cottage about a quarter of a mile up the dale; and only left his books here, because he is going into --shire in a day or two, on some business, that may be will take him a week or so. The books are safer here you see for the present, for Stephen lives alone, and is a good deal away, for he edits a paper at Mowbray, and that must be looked after. He is to be my gardener still. I promised him that. Well done, dame," said Gerard, as the old woman entered; "I hope for the honour of the house a good brew. Now comrade sit down: it will do you good after your long stroll. You should eat your own trout if you would wait?"

"By no means. You will miss your friend, I should think?"

"We shall see a good deal of him, I doubt not, what with the garden and neighbourhood and so on; besides, in a manner, he is master of his own time. His work is not like ours; and though the pull on the brain is sometimes great, I have often wished I had a talent that way. It's a drear life to do the same thing every day at the same hour. But I never could express my ideas except with my tongue; and there I feel tolerably at home."

"It will be a pity to see this room without these books," said Egremont, encouraging conversation on domestic subjects.

"So it will," said Gerard. "I have got very few of my own. But my daughter will be able to fill the shelves in time, I warrant."

"Your daughter--she is coming to live with you?"

"Yes; that is the reason why Stephen quits us. He only remained here until Sybil could keep my house, and that happy day is at hand."

"That is a great compensation for the loss of your friend," said Egremont.

"And yet she talks of flitting," said Gerard, in a rather melancholy tone. "She hankers after the cloister. She has passed a still, sweet life in the convent here; the Superior is the sister of my employer and a very saint on earth; and Sybil knows nothing of the real world except its sufferings. No matter," he added more cheerfully; "I would not have her take the veil rashly, but if I lose her it may be for the best. For the married life of a woman of our class in the present condition of our country is a lease of woe," he added shaking his head, "slaves, and the slaves of slaves? Even woman's spirit cannot stand against it; and it can bear against more than we can, master."

"Your daughter is not made for the common cares of life," said Egremont.

"We'll not talk of them," said Gerard. "Sybil has an English heart, and that's not easily broken. And you, comrade, you are a traveller in these parts, eh?"

"A kind of traveller; something in the way of your friend Morley--connected with the press."

"Indeed! a reporter, eh? I thought you had something about you a little more knowing than we provincials."

"Yes; a reporter; they want information in London as to the real state of the country, and this time of the year, Parliament not sitting--Ah; I understand, a flying commission and a summer tour. Well, I often wish I were a penman; but I never could do it. I'll read any day as long as you like, but that writing, I could never manage. My friend Morley is a powerful hand at it. His journal circulates a good deal about here; and if as I often tell him he would only sink his high-flying philosophy and stick to old English politics, he might make a property of it. You'll like to know him?"

"Much."

"And what first took you to the press, if I may ask!"

"Why--my father was a gentleman--", said Egremont in a hesitating tone, "and I was a younger son."

"Ah!" said Gerard, "that