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

shut her out from the body of the church, looked wistfully down the long dim perspective of the beautiful southern aisle. And thus motionless she remained in contemplation, or it might be prayer, while the solemn peals of the organ and the sweet voices of the choir enjoyed that holy liberty for which she sighed, and seemed to wander at their will in every sacred recess and consecrated corner.

The sounds—those mystical and thrilling sounds that at once elevate the soul and touch the heart—ceased, the chaunting of the service recommenced; the motionless form moved; and as she moved Egremont came forth from the choir, and his eye was at once caught by the symmetry of her shape and the picturesque position which she gracefully occupied; still gazing through that grate, while the light pouring through the western window, suffused the body of the church with a soft radiance, just touching the head of the unknown with a kind of halo. Egremont approached the transept door with a lingering pace, so that the stranger, who he observed was preparing to leave the church, might overtake him. As he reached the door, anxious to assure himself that he was not mistaken, he turned round and his eye at once caught the face of Sybil. He started, he trembled; she was not two yards distant, she evidently recognised him; he held open the swinging postern of the Abbey that she might pass, which she did and then stopped on the outside, and said “Mr Franklin!”

It was therefore clear that her father had not thought fit, or had not yet had an opportunity, to communicate to Sybil the interview of yesterday. Egremont was still Mr Franklin. This was perplexing. Egremont would like to have been saved the pain and awkwardness of the avowal, yet it must be made, though not with unnecessary crudeness. And so at present he only expressed his delight, the unexpected delight he experienced at their meeting. And then he walked on by her side.

“Indeed,” said Sybil, “I can easily imagine you must have been surprised at seeing me in this great city. But many things, strange and unforeseen, have happened to us since you were at Mowedale. You know, of course you with your pursuits must know, that the People have at length resolved to summon their own parliament in Westminster. The people of Mowbray had to send up two delegates to the Convention, and they chose my father for one of them. For so great is their confidence in him none other would content them.”

“He must have made a great sacrifice in coming?” said Egremont.

“Oh! what are sacrifices in such a cause!” said Sybil. “Yes; he made great sacrifices,” she continued earnestly; “great sacrifices, and I am proud of them. Our home, which was a happy home, is gone; he has quitted the Traffords to whom we were knit by many, many ties,” and her voice faltered—“and for whom, I know well he would have perilled his life. And now we are parted,” said Sybil, with a sigh, “perhaps for ever. They offered to receive me under their roof,” she continued, with emotion. “Had I needed shelter there was another roof which has long awaited me: but I could not leave my father at such a moment. He appealed to me: and I am here. All I desire, all I live for, is to soothe and support him in his great struggle; and I should die content if the People were only free, and a Gerard had freed them.”

Egremont mused: he must disclose all, yet how embarrassing to enter into such explanations in a public thoroughfare! Should he bid her after a-while farewell, and then make his confession in writing? Should he at once accompany her home, and there offer his perplexing explanations? Or should he acknowledge his interview of yesterday with Gerard, and then leave the rest to the natural consequences of that acknowledgment when Sybil met her father! Thus pondering, Egremont and Sybil, quitting the court of the Abbey, entered Abingdon Street.

“Let me walk home with you,” said Egremont, as Sybil seemed to intimate her intention here to separate.

“My father is not there,” said Sybil; “but I will not fail to tell him that I have met his old companion.”

“Would he had been as frank!” thought Egremont. And must he quit her in this way. Never! “You must indeed let me attend you!” he said aloud.

“It is not far,” said Sybil. “We live almost in the Precinct—in an old house with some kind old people, the brother of one of the nuns of Mowbray. The nearest way to it is straight along this street, but that is too bustling for me. I have discovered,” she added with a smile, “a more tranquil path.” And guided by her they turned up College Street.

“And how long have you been in London?”

“A fortnight. ‘Tis a great prison. How strange it is that, in a vast city like this, one can scarcely walk alone?”

“You want Harold,” said Egremont. “How is that most faithful of friends?”

“Poor Harold! To part with him too was a pang.”

“I fear your hours must be heavy,” said Egremont.

“Oh! no,” said Sybil, “there is so much at stake; so much to hear the moment my father returns. I take so much interest too in their discussions; and sometimes I go to hear him speak. None of them can compare with him. It seems to me that it would be impossible to resist our claims if our rulers only heard them from his lips.”

Egremont smiled. “Your Convention is in its bloom, or rather its bud,” he said; “all is fresh and pure now; but a little while and it will find the fate of all popular assemblies. You will have factions.”

“But why?” said Sybil. “They are the real representatives of the people, and all that the people want is justice; that Labour should be as much respected by law and society as Property.”

While they thus conversed they passed through several clean, still streets, that had rather the appearance of streets in a very quiet country town than of abodes in the greatest city in the world, and in the vicinity of palaces and parliaments. Rarely was a shop to be remarked among the neat little tenements, many of them built of curious old brick, and all of them raised without any regard to symmetry or proportion. Not the sound of a single wheel was heard; sometimes not a single individual was visible or stirring. Making a circuitous course through this tranquil and orderly district, they at last found themselves in an open place in the centre of which rose a church of vast proportions, and built of hewn stone in that stately, not to say ponderous, style which Vanburgh introduced. The area round it, which was sufficiently ample, was formed by buildings, generally of a very mean character: the long back premises of a carpenter, the straggling yard of a hackney-man: sometimes a small, narrow isolated private residence, like a waterspout in which a rat might reside: sometimes a group of houses of more pretension. In the extreme corner of this area, which was dignified by the name of Smith’s Square, instead of taking a more appropriate title from the church of St John which it encircled, was a large old house, that had been masked at the beginning of the century with a modern front of pale-coloured bricks, but which still stood in its courtyard surrounded by its iron railings, withdrawn as it were from the vulgar gaze like an individual who had known higher fortunes, and blending with his humility something of the reserve which is