Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 1Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
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Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 1
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Historical fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Women -- England -- Fiction; Yorkshire (England) -- Fiction
Revolution, and to abuse the Stuarts for having entertained the same
doctrine, and tried to put it in practice. But such discrepancies
ran through good men's lives in those days. It is well for us that
we live at the present time, when everybody is logical and
consistent. This little discussion must be taken in place of Dr
Wilson's sermon, of which no one could remember more than the text
half an hour after it was delivered. Even the doctor himself had the
recollection of the words he had uttered swept out of his mind, as,
having doffed his gown and donned his surplice, he came out of the
dusk of his vestry and went to the church-door, looking into the
broad light which came upon the plain of the church-yard on the
cliffs; for the sun had not yet set, and the pale moon was slowly
rising through the silvery mist that obscured the distant moors.
There was a thick, dense crowd, all still and silent, looking away
from the church and the vicar, who awaited the bringing of the dead.
They were watching the slow black line winding up the long steps,
resting their heavy burden here and there, standing in silent groups
at each landing-place; now lost to sight as a piece of broken,
overhanging ground intervened, now emerging suddenly nearer; and
overhead the great church bell, with its mediaeval inscription,
familiar to the vicar, if to no one else who heard it, I to the
grave do summon all, kept on its heavy booming monotone, with which
no other sound from land or sea, near or distant, intermingled,
except the cackle of the geese on some far-away farm on the moors,
as they were coming home to roost; and that one noise from so great
a distance seemed only to deepen the stillness. Then there was a
little movement in the crowd; a little pushing from side to side, to
make a path for the corpse and its bearers--an aggregate of the
fragments of room.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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