Sybil, Or, The Two Nations, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

neither fuel, nor food. And we thought you had come for the rent which we cannot pay. If it had not been for a dish of tea which was charitably given me this morning by a person almost as poor as ourselves that is to say, they live by labour, though their wages are much higher, as high as two pounds a-week, though how that can be I never shall understand, when my husband is working twelve hours a day, and gaining only a penny an hour—if it had not been for this I should have been a corpse; and yet he says we were in straits, merely because Walter Gerard’s daughter, who I willingly grant is an angel from heaven for all the good she has done us, has stepped into our aid. But the poor supporting the poor, as she well says, what good can come from that!”

During this ebullition, Mr St Lys had surveyed the apartment and recognised Sybil.

“Sister,” he said when the wife of Warner had ceased, “this is not the first time we have met under the roof of sorrow.”

Sybil bent in silence, and moved as if she were about to retire: the wind and rain came dashing against the window. The companion of Mr St Lys, who was clad in a rough great coat, and was shaking the wet off an oilskin hat known by the name of a ‘south-wester,’ advanced and said to her, “It is but a squall, but a very severe one; I would recommend you to stay for a few minutes.”

She received this remark with courtesy but did not reply.

“I think,” continued the companion of Mr St Lys, “that this is not the first time also that we have met?”

“I cannot recall our meeting before,” said Sybil.

“And yet it was not many days past; though the sky was so very different, that it would almost make one believe it was in another land and another clime.”

Sybil looked at him as if for explanation.

“It was at Marney Abbey,” said the companion of Mr St Lys.

“I was there; and I remember, when about to rejoin my companions, they were not alone.”

“And you disappeared; very suddenly I thought: for I left the ruins almost at the same moment as your friends, yet I never saw any of you again.”

“We took our course; a very rugged one; you perhaps pursued a more even way.”

“Was it your first visit to Marney?”

“My first and my last. There was no place I more desired to see; no place of which the vision made me so sad.”

“The glory has departed,” said Egremont mournfully.

“It is not that,” said Sybil: “I was prepared for decay, but not for such absolute desecration. The Abbey seems a quarry for materials to repair farm-houses; and the nave a cattle gate. What people they must be—that family of sacrilege who hold these lands!”

“Hem!” said Egremont. “They certainly do not appear to have much feeling for ecclesiastical art.”

“And for little else, as we were told,” said Sybil. “There was a fire at the Abbey farm the day we were there, and from all that reached us, it would appear the people were as little tendered as the Abbey walls.”

“They have some difficulty perhaps in employing their population in those parts.”

“You know the country?”

“Not at all: I was travelling in the neighbourhood, and made a diversion for the sake of seeing an abbey of which I had heard so much.”

“Yes; it was the greatest of the Northern Houses. But they told me the people were most wretched round the Abbey; nor do I think there is any other cause for their misery, than the hard hearts of the family that have got the lands.”

“You feel deeply for the people!” said Egremont looking at her earnestly.

Sybil returned him a glance expressive of some astonishment, and then said, “And do not you? Your presence here assures me of it.”

“I humbly follow one who would comfort the unhappy.”

“The charity of Mr St Lys is known to all.”

“And you—you too are a ministering angel.”

“There is no merit in my conduct, for there is no sacrifice. When I remember what this English people once was; the truest, the freest, and the bravest, the best-natured and the best-looking, the happiest and most religious race upon the surface of this globe; and think of them now, with all their crimes and all their slavish sufferings, their soured spirits and their stunted forms; their lives without enjoyment and their deaths without hope; I may well feel for them, even if I were not the daughter of their blood.”

And that blood mantled to her cheek as she ceased to speak, and her dark eye gleamed with emotion, and an expression of pride and courage hovered on her brow. Egremont caught her glance and withdrew his own; his heart was troubled.

St Lys. who had been in conference with the weaver, left him and went to the bedside of his wife. Warner advanced to Sybil, and expressed his feelings for her father, his sense of her goodness. She, observing that the squall seemed to have ceased, bade him farewell, and calling Harold, quitted the chamber.