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
Sylvia looked perplexed at these strange words, and Mrs. Kinraid
caught the look.
'St Jean d'Acre, you know--though it's fine saying "you know", when
I didn't know a bit about it myself till the captain's ship was
ordered there, though I was the head girl at Miss Dobbin's in the
geography class--Acre is a seaport town, not far from Jaffa, which
is the modern name for Joppa, where St Paul went to long ago; you've
read of that, I'm sure, and Mount Carmel, where the prophet Elijah
was once, all in Palestine, you know, only the Turks have got it
now?'
'But I don't understand yet,' said Sylvia, plaintively; 'I daresay
it's all very true about St Paul, but please, ma'am, will yo' tell
me about yo'r husband and mine--have they met again?'
'Yes, at Acre, I tell you,' said Mrs. Kinraid, with pretty petulance.
'The Turks held the town, and the French wanted to take it; and we,
that is the British Fleet, wouldn't let them. So Sir Sidney Smith, a
commodore and a great friend of the captain's, landed in order to
fight the French; and the captain and many of the sailors landed
with him; and it was burning hot; and the poor captain was wounded,
and lay a-dying of pain and thirst within the enemy's--that is the
French--fire; so that they were ready to shoot any one of his own
side who came near him. They thought he was dead himself, you see,
as he was very near; and would have been too, if your husband had
not come out of shelter, and taken him up in his arms or on his back
(I couldn't make out which), and carried him safe within the walls.'
'It couldn't have been Philip,' said Sylvia, dubiously.
'But it was. The captain says so; and he's not a man to be mistaken.
I thought I'd got his letter with me; and I would have read you a
part of it, but I left it at Mrs. Dawson's in my desk; and I can't
send it to you,' blushing as she remembered certain passages in
which 'the captain' wrote very much like a lover, 'or else I would.
But you may be quite sure it was your husband that ventured into all
that danger to save his old friend's life, or the captain would not
have said so.'
'But they weren't--they weren't--not to call great friends.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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