Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 3Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
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Sylvia's Lovers — Volume 3
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Historical fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Women -- England -- Fiction; Yorkshire (England) -- Fiction
'Why do yo' cry, Hester?' she said. 'Yo' niver said that yo'
wouldn't forgive him as long as yo' lived. Yo' niver broke the heart
of him that loved yo', and let him almost starve at yo'r very door.
Oh, Philip! my Philip, tender and true.'
Then Hester came round and closed the sad half-open eyes; kissing
the calm brow with a long farewell kiss. As she did so, her eye fell
on a black ribbon round his neck. She partly lifted it out; to it
was hung a half-crown piece.
'This is the piece he left at William Darley's to be bored,' said
she, 'not many days ago.'
Bella had crept to her mother's arms as a known haven in this
strange place; and the touch of his child loosened the fountains of
her tears. She stretched out her hand for the black ribbon, put it
round her own neck; after a while she said,
'If I live very long, and try hard to be very good all that time, do
yo' think, Hester, as God will let me to him where he is?'
* * * * *
Monkshaven is altered now into a rising bathing place. Yet, standing
near the site of widow Dobson's house on a summer's night, at the
ebb of a spring-tide, you may hear the waves come lapping up the
shelving shore with the same ceaseless, ever-recurrent sound as that
which Philip listened to in the pauses between life and death.
And so it will be until 'there shall be no more sea'.
But the memory of man fades away. A few old people can still tell
you the tradition of the man who died in a cottage somewhere about
this spot,--died of starvation while his wife lived in hard-hearted
plenty not two good stone-throws away. This is the form into which
popular feeling, and ignorance of the real facts, have moulded the
story. Not long since a lady went to the 'Public Baths', a handsome
stone building erected on the very site of widow Dobson's cottage,
and finding all the rooms engaged she sat down and had some talk
with the bathing woman; and, as it chanced, the conversation fell on
Philip Hepburn and the legend of his fate.
'I knew an old man when I was a girl,' said the bathing woman, 'as
could niver abide to hear t' wife blamed. He would say nothing
again' th' husband; he used to say as it were not fit for men to be
judging; that she had had her sore trial, as well as Hepburn
hisself.'
The lady asked, 'What became of the wife?'
'She was a pale, sad woman, allays dressed in black. I can just
remember her when I was a little child, but she died before her
daughter was well grown up; and Miss Rose took t' lassie, as had
always been like her own.'
'Miss Rose?'
'Hester Rose! have yo' niver heared of Hester Rose, she as founded
t' alms-houses for poor disabled sailors and soldiers on t'
Horncastle road? There's a piece o' stone in front to say that "This
building is erected in memory of P. H."--and some folk will have it
P. H. stands for t' name o' th' man as was starved to death.'
'And the daughter?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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