Egremont had recognized Sybil as she entered the garden. He was himself crossing the park to attend a committee of the House of Commons which had sat for the first time that morning. The meeting had been formal and brief, the committee soon adjourned, and Egremont repaired to the spot where he was in the hope of still finding Sybil.
He approached her not without some restraint; with reserve and yet with tenderness. “This is a great, an unexpected pleasure indeed.” he said in a faltering tone. She had looked up; the expression of an agitation, not distressful, on her beautiful countenance could not be concealed. She smiled through a gushing vision: and with a flushed cheek, impelled perhaps by her native frankness, perhaps by some softer and irresistible feeling of gratitude, respect, regard, she said in a low voice, “I was reading your beautiful speech.”
“Indeed,” said Egremont much moved, “that is an honour,—a pleasure,—a reward, I never could have even hoped to have attained.”
“By all,” continued Sybil with more self-possession, “it must be read with pleasure, with advantage, but by me—oh! with what deep interest.”
“If anything that I said finds an echo in your breast,” and here he hesitated, “—it will give me confidence for the future,” he hurriedly added.
“Ah! why do not others feel like you!” said Sybil, “all would not then be hopeless.”
“But you are not hopeless,” said Egremont, and he seated himself on the bench, but at some distance from her.
Sybil shook her head.
“But when we spoke last,” said Egremont, “you were full of confidence—in your cause, and in your means.”
“It is not very long ago,” said Sybil, “since we thus spoke, and yet time in the interval has taught me some bitter truths.”
“Truth is very precious,” said Egremont, “to us all; and yet I fear I could not sufficiently appreciate the cause that deprived you of your sanguine faith.”
“Alas!” said Sybil mournfully, “I was but a dreamer of dreams: I wake from my hallucination as others have done I suppose before me. Like them too I feel the glory of life has gone; but my content at least,” and she bent her head meekly, “has never rested I hope too much on this world.”
“You are depressed, dear Sybil?”
“I am unhappy. I am anxious about my father. I fear that he is surrounded by men unworthy of his confidence. These scenes of violence alarm me. Under any circumstances I should shrink from them, but I am impressed with the conviction that they can bring us nothing but disaster and disgrace.”
“I honor your father,” said Egremont, “I know no man whose character I esteem so truly noble; such a just compound of intelligence and courage, and gentle and generous impulse. I should deeply grieve were he to compromise himself. But you have influence over him, the greatest, as you have over all. Counsel him to return to Mowbray.”
“Can I give counsel?” said Sybil, “I who have been wrong in all my judgments? I came up to this city with him, to be his guide, his guardian. What arrogance! What short-sighted pride! I thought the People all felt as I feel; that I had nothing to do but to sustain and animate him; to encourage him when he flagged, to uphold him when he wavered. I thought that moral power must govern the world, and that moral power was embodied in an assembly whose annals will be a series of petty intrigues, or, what is worse, of violent machinations.”
“Exert every energy,” said Egremont, “that your father should leave London, immediately; to-morrow, to-night if possible. After this business at Birmingham, the government must act. I hear that they will immediately increase the army and the police; and that there is a circular from the Secretary of State to the Lords Lieutenant of counties. But the government will strike at the Convention. The members who remain will be the victims. If your father return to Mowbray and be quiet, he has a chance of not being disturbed.”
“An ignoble end of many lofty hopes,” said Sybil.
“Let us retain our hopes,” said Egremont, “and cherish them.”
“I have none,” she replied.
“And I am sanguine,” said Egremont.
“Ah! because you have made a beautiful speech. But they will listen to you, they will cheer you, but they will never follow you. The dove and the eagle will not mate; the lion and the lamb will not lie down together; and the conquerors will never rescue the conquered.”
Egremont shook his head. “You still will cherish these phantoms, dear Sybil! and why? They are not visions of delight. Believe me they are as vain as they are distressing. The mind of England is the mind ever of the rising race. Trust me it is with the People. And not the less so, because this feeling is one of which even in a great degree it is unconscious. Those opinions which you have been educated to dread and mistrust are opinions that are dying away. Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. Let an accident, which speculation could not foresee, the balanced state at this moment of parliamentary parties cease, and in a few years, more or less, cease it must, and you will witness a development of the new mind of England, which will make up by its rapid progress for its retarded action. I live among these men; I know their inmost souls; I watch their instincts and their impulses; I know the principles which they have imbibed, and I know, however hindered by circumstances for the moment, those principles must bear their fruit. It will be a produce hostile to the oligarchical system. The future principle of English politics will not be a levelling principle; not a principle adverse to privileges, but favourable to their extension. It will seek to ensure equality, not by levelling the Few but by elevating the Many.”
Indulging for some little time in the mutual reflections, which the tone of the conversation suggested, Sybil at length rose, and saying that she hoped by this time her father might have returned, bade farewell to Egremont, but he also rising would for a time accompany her. At the gate of the gardens however she paused, and said with a soft sad smile, “Here we must part,” and extended to him her hand.
“Heaven will guard over you!” said Egremont, “for you are a celestial charge.”
As Sybil approached her home, she recognized her father in the court before their house, accompanied by several men, with whom he seemed on the point of going forth. She was so anxious to speak to Gerard, that she did not hesitate at once to advance. There was a stir as she entered the gate; the men ceased talking, some stood aloof, all welcomed her with silent respect. With one or two Sybil was not entirely unacquainted; at least by name or person. To them, as she passed, she bent her head; and then going up to her father, who was about to welcome her, she said, in a tone of calmness and with a semblance of composure, “If you are going out, dear father, I should like to see you for one moment first.”
“A moment, friends,” said Gerard, “with your leave;” and he accompanied his daughter into the house. He would have stopped in the hall, but she walked on to their room, and Gerard, though pressed for time, was compelled to follow her. When they had entered their chamber. Sybil closed the door with care, and then, Gerard sitting, or rather leaning carelessly, on the edge of the table, she said, “We are once more together, dear father; we will never again he separated.”
Gerard sprang quickly on his legs, his eye kindled, his cheek flushed. “Something has happened to you, Sybil!”
“No,” she said, shaking her head mournfully, “not that; but something may happen to you.”
“How so, my child?” said her father, relapsing into his customary good-tempered placidity, and speaking in an easy, measured, almost drawling tone that was habitual to him.
“You are in danger,” said Sybil, “great and immediate. No matter at this moment how I am persuaded of this I wish no mysteries, but there is no time for details. The government will strike at the Convention; they are resolved. This outbreak at Birmingham has brought affairs to a crisis. They have already arrested the leaders there; they will seize those who remain here in avowed correspondence with them.”
“If they arrest all who are in correspondence with the Convention,” said Gerard, “they will have enough to do.”
“Yes; but you take a leading part,” said Sybil; “you are the individual they would select.”
“Would you have me hide myself?” said Gerard, “just because something is going on besides talk.”
“Besides talk!” exclaimed Sybil. “O! my father, what thoughts are these! It may be that words are vain to save us; but feeble deeds are vainer far than words.”
“I do not see that the deeds, though I have nothing to do with them, are so feeble,” said Gerard; “their boasted police are beaten, and by the isolated movement of an unorganized mass. What if the outbreak had not been a solitary one? What if the people had been disciplined?”
“What if everything were changed, if everything were contrary to what it is?” said Sybil. “The people are not disciplined; their action will not be, cannot be, coherent and uniform; these are riots in which you are involved, not revolutions; and you will be a victim, and not a sacrifice.”
Gerard looked thoughtful, but not anxious: after a momentary pause, he said, “We must not be scared at a few arrests, Sybil. These are hap-hazard pranks of a government that wants to terrify, but is itself frightened. I have not counselled, none of us have counselled, this stir at Birmingham. It is a casualty. We were none of us prepared for it. But great things spring from casualties. I say the police were beaten and the troops alarmed; and I say this was done without organization and in a single spot. I am as much against feeble deeds as you can be, Sybil; and to prove this to you, our conversation at the moment you arrived, was to take care for the future that there shall be none. Neither vain words nor feeble deeds for the future,” added Gerard, and he moved to depart.
Sybil approached him with gentleness; she took his hand as if to bid him farewell; she retained it for a moment, and looked at him steadfastly in the face, with a glance at the same time serious and soft. Then throwing her arms round his neck and leaning her cheek upon his breast, she murmured, “Oh! my father, your child is most unhappy.”
“Sybil,” exclaimed Gerard in a tone of tender reproach, “this is womanish weakness; I love, but must not share it.”
“It may be womanish,” said Sybil, “but it is wise: for what should make us unhappy if not the sense of impending, yet unknown, danger?”
“And why danger?” said Gerard.
“Why mystery?” said Sybil. “Why are you ever pre-occupied and involved in dark thoughts, my father? It is not the pressure of business, as you will perhaps tell me, that occasions this change in a disposition so frank and even careless. The pressure of affairs is not nearly as great, cannot he nearly as great, as in the early period of your assembling, when the eyes of the whole country were on you, and you were in communication with all parts of it. How often have you told me that there was no degree of business which you found irksome? Now you are all dispersed and scattered: no discussions, no committees, little correspondence—and you yourself are ever brooding and ever in conclave, with persons too who I know, for Stephen has told me so, are the preachers of violence: violence perhaps that some of them may preach, yet will not practise: both bad; traitors it may be, or, at the best, hare-brained men.”
“Stephen is prejudiced,” said Gerard. “He is a visionary, indulging in impossible dreams, and if possible, little desirable. He knows nothing of the feeling of the country or the character of his countrymen. Englishmen want none of his joint-stock felicity; they want their rights,—rights consistent with the rights of other classes, but without which the rights of other classes cannot, and ought not, to be secure.”
“Stephen is at least your friend, my father; and once you honoured him.”
“And do so now; and love him very dearly. I honour him for his great abilities and knowledge. Stephen is a scholar; I have no pretensions that way; but I can feel the pulse of a people, and can comprehend the signs of the times, Sybil. Stephen was all very well talking in our cottage and garden at Mowbray, when we had nothing to do; but now we must act, or others will act for us. Stephen is not a practical man; he is crotchety, Sybil, and that’s just it.”
“But violence and action,” said Sybil, “are they identical, my father?”
“I did not speak of violence.”
“No; but you looked it. I know the language of your countenance, even to the quiver of your lip. Action, as you and Stephen once taught me, and I think wisely, was to prove to our rulers by an agitation, orderly and intellectual, that we were sensible of our degradation; and that it was neither Christianlike nor prudent, neither good nor wise, to let us remain so. That you did, and you did it well; the respect of the world, even of those who differed from you in interest or opinion, was not withheld from you; and can be withheld from none who exercise the moral power that springs from great talents and a good cause. You have let this great moral power, this pearl of price,” said Sybil with emotion,—“we cannot conceal it from ourselves, my father,—you have let it escape from your hands.”
Gerard looked at her as she spoke with an earnestness unusual with him. As she ceased, he cast his eyes down, and seemed for a moment deep in thought; then looking up, he said, “The season for words is past. I must be gone, dear Sybil.” And he moved towards the door.
“You shall not leave me,” said Sybil, springing forward, and seizing his arm.
“What would you, what would you?” said Gerard, distressed.
“That we should quit this city to-night.”
“What, quit my post?”
“Why yours? Have not your colleagues dispersed? Is not your assembly formally adjourned to another town? Is it not known that the great majority of the delegates have returned to their homes? And why not you to yours?”
“I have no home,” said Gerard, almost in a voice of harshness. “I came here to do the business that was wanting, and, by the blessing of God, I will do it. I am no changeling, nor can I refine and split straws, like your philosophers and Morleys: but if the people will struggle, I will struggle with them; and die, if need be, in the front. Nor will I be deterred from my purpose by the tears of a girl,” and he released himself from the hand of his daughter with abruptness.
Sybil looked up to heaven with streaming eyes, and clasped her hands in unutterable woe. Gerard moved again towards the door, but before he reached it, his step faltered, and he turned again and looked at his daughter with tenderness and anxiety. She remained in the same position, save that her arms that had fallen were crossed before her, and her downward glance seemed fixed in deep abstraction. Her father approached her unnoticed; he took her hand; she started, and looking round with a cold and distressed expression, said, in a smothered tone, “I thought you had gone.”
“Not in anger, my sweet child,” and Gerard pressed her to his heart.
“But you go,” murmured Sybil.
“These men await me,” said Gerard. “Our council is of importance. We must take some immediate steps for the aid of our brethren in distress at Birmingham, and to discountenance similar scenes of outbreak as this affair: but the moment this is over, I will come back to you; and for the rest, it shall be as you desire; to-morrow we will return to Mowbray.”
Sybil returned her father’s embrace with a warmth which expressed her sense of his kindness and her own soothed feelings, but she said nothing; and bidding her now to be of good cheer, Gerard quitted the apartment.
The clock of St John’s church struck three, and the clock of St John’s church struck four; and the fifth hour sounded from St John’s church; and the clock of St John’s was sounding six. And Gerard had not yet returned.
The time for a while after his departure had been comparatively light-hearted and agreeable. Easier in her mind and for a time busied with the preparations for their journey, Sybil sate by the open window more serene and cheerful than for a long period had been her wont. Sometimes she ceased for a moment from her volume and fell into a reverie of the morrow and of Mowbray. Viewed through the magic haze of time and distance, the scene of her youth assumed a character of tenderness and even of peaceful bliss. She sighed for the days of their cottage and their garden, when the discontent of her father was only theoretical, and their political conclaves were limited to a discussion between him and Morley on the rights of the people or the principles of society. The bright waters of the Mowe and its wooded hills; her matin walks to the convent to visit Ursula Trafford—a pilgrimage of piety and charity and love; the faithful Harold, so devoted and so intelligent; even the crowded haunts of labour and suffering among which she glided like an angel, blessing and blessed; they rose before her—those touching images of the past—and her eyes were suffused with tears, of tenderness, not of gloom.
And blended with them the thought of one who had been for a season the kind and gentle companion of her girlhood—that Mr Franklin whom she had never quite forgotten, and who, alas! was not Mr Franklin after all. Ah! that was a wonderful history; a somewhat thrilling chapter in the memory of one so innocent and so young! His voice even now lingered in her ear. She recalled without an effort those tones of the morning, tones of tenderness and yet of wisdom and considerate thought, that had sounded only for her welfare. Never had Egremont appeared to her in a light so subduing. He was what man should be to woman ever-gentle, and yet a guide. A thousand images dazzling and wild rose in her mind; a thousand thoughts, beautiful and quivering as the twilight, clustered round her heart; for a moment she indulged in impossible dreams, and seemed to have entered a newly-discovered world. The horizon of her experience expanded like the glittering heaven of a fairy tale. Her eye was fixed in lustrous contemplation, the flush on her cheek was a messenger from her heart, the movement of her mouth would have in an instant become a smile, when the clock of St John’s struck four, and Sybil started from her reverie.
The clock of St John’s struck four, and Sybil became anxious; the clock of St John’s struck five, and Sybil became disquieted; restless and perturbed, she was walking up and down the chamber, her books long since thrown aside, when the clock of St John’s struck six.
She clasped her hands and looked up to heaven. There was a knock at the street door; she herself sprang out to open it. It was not Gerard. It was Morley.
“Ah! Stephen,” said Sybil, with a countenance of undisguised disappointment, “I thought it was my father.”
“I should have been glad to have found him here,” said Morley. “However with your permission I will enter.”
“And he will soon arrive,” said Sybil; “I am sure he will soon arrive. I have been expecting him every minute—”
“For hours,” added Morley, finishing her sentence, as they entered the room. “The business that he is on,” he continued, throwing himself into a chair with a recklessness very unlike his usual composure and even precision, “The business that he is on is engrossing.”
“Thank Heaven,” said Sybil, “we leave this place to-morrow.”
“Hah!” said Morley starting, “who told you so?”
“My father has so settled it; has indeed promised me that we shall depart.”
“And you were anxious to do so.”
“Most anxious; my mind is prophetic only of mischief to him if we remain.”
“Mine too. Otherwise I should not have come up today.” “You have seen him I hope?” said Sybil.
“I have; I have been hours with him.”
“I am glad. At this conference he talked of?”
“Yes; at this headstrong council; and I have seen him since; alone. Whatever hap to him, my conscience is assoiled.”
“You terrify me, Stephen,” said Sybil rising from her seat. “What can happen to him? What would he do, what would you resist? Tell me—tell me, dear friend.”
“Oh! yes,” said Morley, pale and with a slight yet bitter smile. “Oh! yes; dear friend!”
“I said dear friend for so I deemed you.” said Sybil; “and so we have ever found you. Why do you stare at me so strangely, Stephen?”
“So you deem me, and so you have ever found me,” said Morley in a slow and measured tone, repeating her words. “Well; what more would you have? What more should any of us want?” he asked abruptly.
“I want no more,” said Sybil innocently.
“I warrant me, you do not. Well, well, nothing matters. And so,” he added in his ordinary tone, “you are waiting for your father?”
“Whom you have not long since seen,” said Sybil, “and whom you expected to find here?”
“No;” said Morley, shaking his head with the same bitter smile; “no, no. I didn’t. I came to find you.”
“You have something to tell me,” said Sybil earnestly. “Something has happened to my father. Do not break it to me; tell me at once,” and she advanced and laid her hand upon his arm.
Morley trembled; and then in a hurried and agitated voice, said, “No, no, no; nothing has happened. Much may happen, but nothing has happened. And we may prevent it.”
“We! Tell me what may happen; tell me what to do.”
“Your father,” said Morley, slowly, rising from his seat and pacing the room, and speaking in a low calm voice, “Your father—and my friend—is in this position Sybil: he is conspiring against the State.”
“Yes, yes,” said Sybil very pale, speaking almost in a whisper and with her gaze fixed intently on her companion. “Tell me all.”
“I will. He is conspiring, I say, against the State. Tonight they meet in secret to give the last finish to their plans; and tonight they will be arrested.”
“O God!” said Sybil clasping her hands. “He told me truth.”
“Who told you truth?” said Morley, springing to her side, in a hoarse voice and with an eye of fire.
“A friend,” said Sybil, dropping her arms and bending her head in woe; “a kind good friend. I met him but this morn, and he warned me of all this.”
“Hah, hah!” said Morley with a sort of stifled laugh; “Hah, hah; he told you did he; the kind good friend whom you met this morning? Did I not warn you, Sybil, of the traitor? Did I not tell you to beware of taking this false aristocrat to your hearth; to worm out all the secrets of that home that he once polluted by his espionage, and now would desolate by his treason.”
“Of whom and what do you speak?” said Sybil, throwing herself into a chair.
“I speak of that base spy Egremont.”
“You slander an honourable man,” said Sybil with dignity. “Mr Egremont has never entered this house since you met him here for the first time; save once.”
“He needed no entrance to this house to worm out its secrets,” said Morley maliciously. “That could be more adroitly done by one who had assignations at command with the most charming of its inmates.”
“Unmannerly churl!” exclaimed Sybil starting in her chair, her eye flashing lightning, her distended nostril quivering with scorn.
“Oh! yes. I am a churl,” said Morley; “I know I am a churl. Were I a noble the daughter of the people would perhaps condescend to treat me with less contempt.”
“The daughter of the people loves truth and manly bearing, Stephen Morley; and will treat with contempt all those who slander women, whether they be nobles or serfs.”
“And where is the slanderer?”
“Ask him who told you I held assignations with Mr Egremont or with any one.”
“Mine eyes—mine own eyes—were my informant,” said Morley. “This morn, the very morn I arrived in London, I learnt how your matins were now spent. Yes!” he added in a tone of mournful anguish, “I passed the gate of the gardens; I witnessed your adieus.”
“We met by hazard,” said Sybil, in a calm tone, and with an expression that denoted she was thinking of other things, “and in all probability we shall never meet again. Talk not of these trifles. Stephen; my father, how can we save him?”
“Are they trifles?” said Morley, slowly and earnestly, walking to her side, and looking her intently in the face. “Are they indeed trifles, Sybil? Oh! make me credit that, and then—” he paused.
Sybil returned his gaze: the deep lustre of her dark orb rested on his peering vision; his eye fled from the unequal contest: his heart throbbed, his limbs trembled; he fell upon his knee.
“Pardon me, pardon me,” he said, and he took her hand. “Pardon the most miserable and the most devoted of men!”
“What need of pardon, dear Stephen?” said Sybil in a soothing tone. “In the agitated hour wild words escape. If I have used them, I regret; if you, I have forgotten.”
The clock of St John’s told that the sixth hour was more than half-past.
“Ah!” said Sybil, withdrawing her hand, “you told me how precious was time. What can we do?”
Morley rose from his kneeling position, and again paced the chamber, lost for some moments in deep meditation. Suddenly he seized her arm, and said, “I can endure no longer the anguish of my life: I love you, and if you will not be mine, I care for no one’s fate.”
“I am not born for love,” said Sybil, frightened, yet endeavouring to conceal her alarm.
“We are all born for love,” said Morley. “It is the principle of existence, and its only end. And love of you, Sybil,” he continued, in a tone of impassioned pathos, “has been to me for years the hoarded treasure of my life. For this I have haunted your hearth and hovered round your home; for this I have served your father like a slave, and embarked in a cause with which I have little sympathy, and which can meet with no success. It is your image that has stimulated my ambition, developed my powers, sustained me in the hour of humiliation, and secured me that material prosperity which I can now command. Oh! deign to share it; share it with the impassioned heart and the devoted life that now bow before you; and do not shrink from them, because they are the feelings and the fortunes of the People.”
“You astound, you overwhelm me,” said Sybil, agitated. “You came for another purpose, we were speaking of other feelings; it is the hour of exigency you choose for these strange, these startling words.”
“I also have my hour of exigency,” said Morley, “and its minutes are now numbering. Upon it all depends.”
“Another time,” said Sybil, in a low and deprecatory voice; “speak of these things another time!”
“The caverns of my mind are open,” said Morley, “and they will not close.”
“Stephen,” said Sybil, “dear Stephen, I am grateful for your kind feelings: but indeed this is not the time for such passages: cease, my friend!”
“I came to know my fate,” said Morley, doggedly.
“It is a sacrilege of sentiment,” said Sybil, unable any longer to restrain her emotion, “to obtrude its expression on a daughter at such a moment.”
“You would not deem it so if you loved, or if you could love me, Sybil,” said Morley, mournfully. “Why it’s a moment of deep feeling, and suited for the expression of deep feeling. You would not have answered thus, if he who had been kneeling here had been named Egremont.”
“He would not have adopted a course,” said Sybil, unable any longer to restrain her displeasure, “so selfish, so indecent.”
“Ah! she loves him!” exclaimed Morley, springing on his legs, and with a demoniac laugh.
There was a pause. Under ordinary circumstances Sybil would have left the room and terminated a distressing interview, but in the present instance that was impossible; for on the continuance of that interview any hope of assisting her father depended. Morley had thrown himself into a chair opposite her, leaning back in silence with his face covered; Sybil was disinclined to revive the conversation about her father, because she had already perceived that Morley was only too much aware of the command which the subject gave him over her feelings and even conduct. Yet time, time now full of terror, time was stealing on. It was evident that Morley would not break the silence. At length, unable any longer to repress her tortured heart, Sybil said, “Stephen, be generous; speak to me of your friend.”
“I have no friend,” said Morley, without taking his hands from his face.
“The Saints in heaven have mercy on me,” said Sybil, “for I am very wretched.”
“No, no, no,” said Morley, rising rapidly from his seat, and again kneeling at her side, “not wretched; not that tone of anguish! What can I do? what say? Sybil, dearest Sybil, I love you so much, so fervently, so devotedly; none can love you as I do: say not you are wretched!”
“Alas! alas!” said Sybil.
“What shall I do? what say?” said Morley.
“You know what I would have you say,” said Sybil. “Speak of one who is my father, if no longer your friend: you know what I would have you do—save him: save him from death and me from despair.”
“I am ready,” said Morley; “I came for that. Listen. There is a meeting to-night at half-past eight o’clock; they meet to arrange a general rising in the country: their intention is known to the government; they will be arrested. Now it is in my power, which it was not when I saw your father this morning, to convince him of the truth of this, and were I to see him before eight o’clock, which I could easily do, I could prevent his attendance, certainly prevent his attendance, and he would be saved; for the government depend much upon the papers, some proclamations, and things of that kind, which will be signed this evening, for their proofs. Well, I am ready to save Gerard, my friend, for so I’ll call him as you wish it; one I have served before and long; one whom I came up from Mowbray this day to serve and save; I am ready to do that which you require; you yourself admit it is no light deed; and coming from one you have known so long, and, as you confess, so much regarded, should be doubly cherished; I am ready to do this great service; to save the father from death and the daughter from despair. —if she would but only say to me, ‘I have but one reward, and it is yours.’”
“I have read of something of this sort,” said Sybil, speaking in a murmuring tone, and looking round her with a wild expression, “this bargaining of blood, and shall I call it love? But that was ever between the oppressors and the oppressed. This is the first time that a child of the people has been so assailed by one of her own class, and who exercises his power from the confidence which the sympathy of their sorrows alone caused. It is bitter; bitter for me and mine—but for you, pollution.”
“Am I answered?” said Morley.
“Yes,” said Sybil, “in the name of the holy Virgin.”
“Good night, then,” said Morley, and he approached the door. His hand was on it. The voice of Sybil made him turn his head.
“Where do they meet to-night?” she inquired, in a smothered tone.
“I am bound to secrecy,” said Morley.
“There is no softness in your spirit,” said Sybil.
“I am met with none.”
“We have ever been your friends.”
“A blossom that has brought no fruit.”
“This hour will be remembered at the judgment-seat,” said Sybil.
“The holy Virgin will perhaps interpose for me,” said Morley, with a sneer.
“We have merited this,” said Sybil, “who have taken an infidel to our hearts.”
“If he had only been a heretic, like Egremont!” said Morley. Sybil burst into tears. Morley sprang to her. “Swear by the holy Virgin, swear by all the saints, swear by your hope of heaven and by your own sweet name; without equivocation, without reserve, with fulness and with truth, that you will never give your heart or hand to Egremont;—and I will save your father.”
As in a low voice, but with a terrible earnestness, Morley dictated this oath, Sybil, already pale, became white as the marble saint of some sacred niche. Her large dark eyes seemed fixed; a fleet expression of agony flitted over her beautiful brow like a cloud; and she said, “I swear that I will never give my hand to—”
“And your heart, your heart,” said Morley eagerly. “Omit not that. Swear by the holy oaths again you do not love him. She falters! Ah! she blushes!” For a burning brightness now suffused the cheek of Sybil. “She loves him,” exclaimed Morley, wildly, and he rushed franticly from the room.
Agitated and overcome by these unexpected and passionate appeals, and these outrageous ebullitions acting on her at a time when she herself was labouring under no ordinary excitement, and was distracted with disturbing thoughts, the mind of Sybil seemed for a moment to desert her; neither by sound nor gesture did she signify her sense of Morley’s last words and departure; and it was not until the loud closing of the street door echoing through the long passage recalled her to herself, that she was aware how much was at stake in that incident. She darted out of the room to recall him; to make one more effort for her father; but in vain. By the side of their house was an intricate passage leading into a labyrinth of small streets. Through this Morley had disappeared; and his name, more than once sounded in a voice of anguish in that silent and most obsolete Smith’s Square, received no echo.
Darkness and terror came over the spirit of Sybil; a sense of confounding and confusing woe, with which it was in vain to cope. The conviction of her helplessness prostrated her. She sate her down upon the steps before the door of that dreary house, within the railings of that gloomy court, and buried her face in her hands: a wild vision of the past and the future, without thought or feeling, coherence or consequence: sunset gleams of vanished bliss, and stormy gusts of impending doom.
The clock of St John’s struck seven.
It was the only thing that spoke in that still and dreary square; it was the only voice that there seemed ever to sound; but it was a voice from heaven; it was the voice of St John.
Sybil looked up: she looked up at the holy building. Sybil listened: she listened to the holy sounds. St John told her that the danger of her father was yet so much advanced. Oh! why are there saints in heaven if they cannot aid the saintly! The oath that Morley would have enforced came whispering in the ear of Sybil—“Swear by the holy Virgin and by all the saints.”
And shall she not pray to the holy Virgin and all the saints? Sybil prayed: she prayed to the holy Virgin and all the saints; and especially to the beloved St John: most favoured among Hebrew men, on whose breast reposed the divine Friend.
Brightness and courage returned to the spirit of Sybil: a sense of animating and exalting faith that could move mountains, and combat without fear a thousand perils. The conviction of celestial aid inspired her. She rose from her sad resting-place and re-entered the house: only, however, to provide herself with her walking attire, and then alone and without a guide, the shades of evening already descending, this child of innocence and divine thoughts, born in a cottage and bred in a cloister, she went forth, on a great enterprise of duty and devotion, into the busiest and the wildest haunts of the greatest of modern cities.
Sybil knew well her way to Palace Yard. This point was soon reached: she desired the cabman to drive her to a Street in the Strand in which was a coffee-house, where during the last weeks of their stay in London the scanty remnants of the National Convention had held their sittings. It was by a mere accident that Sybil had learnt this circumstance, for when she had attended the meetings of the Convention in order to hear her father’s speeches, it was in the prime of their gathering and when their numbers were great, and when they met in audacious rivalry opposite that St Stephen’s which they wished to supersede. This accidental recollection however was her only clue in the urgent adventure on which she had embarked.
She cast an anxious glance at the clock of St Martin’s as she passed that church: the hand was approaching the half hour of seven. She urged on the driver; they were in the Strand; there was an agitating stoppage; she was about to descend when the obstacle was removed; and in a few minutes they turned down the street which she sought.
“What number. Ma’am?” asked the cabman.
“‘Tis a coffee-house; I know not the number nor the name of him who keeps it. ‘Tis a coffee-house. Can you see one? Look, look, I pray you! I am much pressed.”
“Here’s a coffee-house, Ma’am,” said the man in a hoarse voice.
“How good you are! Yes; I will get out. You will wait for me, I am sure?”
“All right,” said the cabman, as Sybil entered the illumined door. “Poor young thing! she’s wery anxious about summut.”
Sybil at once stepped into a rather capacious room, fitted up in the old-fashioned style of coffee-rooms, with mahogany boxes, in several of which were men drinking coffee and reading newspapers by a painful glare of gas. There was a waiter in the middle of the room who was throwing some fresh sand upon the floor, but who stared immensely when looking up he beheld Sybil.
“Now, Ma’am, if you please,” said the waiter inquiringly.
“Is Mr Gerard here?” said Sybil.
“No. Ma’am; Mr Gerard has not been here to-day, nor yesterday neither”—and he went on throwing the sand.
“I should like to see the master of the house,” said Sybil very humbly.
“Should you, Ma’am?” said the waiter, but he gave no indication of assisting her in the fulfilment of her wish.
Sybil repeated that wish, and this time the waiter said nothing. This vulgar and insolent neglect to which she was so little accustomed depressed her spirit. She could have encountered tyranny and oppression, and she would have tried to struggle with them; but this insolence of the insignificant made her feel her insignificance; and the absorption all this time of the guests in their newspapers aggravated her nervous sense of her utter helplessness. All her feminine reserve and modesty came over her; alone in this room among men, she felt overpowered, and she was about to make a precipitate retreat when the clock of the coffee-room sounded the half hour. In a paroxysm of nervous excitement she exclaimed, “Is there not one among you who will assist me?”
All the newspaper readers put down their journals and stared.
“Hoity-toity,” said the waiter, and he left off throwing the sand.
“Well, what’s the matter now?” said one of the guests.
“I wish to see the master of the house on business of urgency,” said Sybil, “to himself and to one of his friends, and his servant here will not even reply to my inquiries.”
“I say, Saul, why don’t you answer the young lady?” said another guest.
“So I did,” said Saul. “Did you call for coffee, Ma’am?”
“Here’s Mr Tanner, if you want him, my dear.” said the first guest, as a lean black-looking individual, with grizzled hair and a red nose, entered the coffee-room from the interior. “Tanner, here’s a lady wants you.”
“And a very pretty girl too,” whispered one to another.
“What’s your pleasure?” said Mr Tanner abruptly.
“I wish to speak to you alone,” said Sybil: and advancing towards him she said in a low voice, “‘Tis about Walter Gerard I would speak to you.”
“Well, you can step in here if you like,” said Tanner very discourteously; “there’s only my wife:” and he led the way to the inner room, a small close parlour adorned with portraits of Tom Paine, Cobbett, Thistlewood, and General Jackson; with a fire, though it was a hot July, and a very fat woman affording still more heat, and who was drinking shrub and water and reading the police reports. She stared rudely at Sybil as she entered following Tanner, who himself when the door was closed said, “Well, now what have you got to say?”
“I wish to see Walter Gerard.”
“Do you indeed!”
“And,” continued Sybil notwithstanding his sneering remark, “I come here that you may tell me where I may find him.”
“I believe he lives somewhere in Westminster,” said Tanner, “that’s all I know about him; and if this be all you had to say it might have been said in the coffee-room.”
“It is not all that I have to say,” said Sybil; “and I beseech you, sir, listen to me. I know where Gerard lives: I am his daughter, and the same roof covers our heads. But I wish to know where they meet to-night—you understand me;” and she looked at his wife, who had resumed her police reports; “‘tis urgent.
“I don’t know nothing about Gerard,” said Tanner, “except that he comes here and goes away again.”
“The matter on which I would see him,” said Sybil, “is as urgent as the imagination can conceive, and it concerns you as well as himself; but if you know not where I can find him”—and she moved as if about to retire—“‘tis of no use.”
“Stop.” said Tanner, “you can tell it to me.”
“Why so? You know not where he is; you cannot tell it to him.”
“I don’t know that,” said Tanner. “Come, let’s have it out; and if it will do him any good. I’ll see if we can’t manage to find him.”
“I can impart my news to him and no one else,” said Sybil. “I am solemnly bound.”
“You can’t have a better counseller than Tanner,” urged his wife, getting curious; “you had better tell us.”
“I want no counsel; I want that which you can give me if you choose—information. My father instructed me that if certain circumstances occurred it was a matter of the last urgency that I should see him this evening and before nine o’clock, I was to call here and obtain from you the direction where to find him; the direction,” she added in a lowered tone, and looking Tanner full in the face, “where they hold their secret council to-night.”
“Hem!” said Tanner: “I see you’re on the free-list. And pray how am I to know youareGerard’s daughter?”
“You do not doubt I am his daughter!” said Sybil proudly.
“Hem!” said Tanner: “I do not know that I do very much,” and he whispered to his wife. Sybil removed from them as far as she was able.
“And this news is very urgent,” resumed Tanner; “and concerns me you say?”
“Concerns you all,” said Sybil; “and every minute is of the last importance.”
“I should like to have gone with you myself, and then there could have been no mistake,” said Tanner; “but that can’t be; we have a meeting here at half-past eight in our great room. I don’t much like breaking rules, especially in such a business; and yet, concerning all of us, as you say, and so very urgent, I don’t see how it could do harm; and I might—I wish I was quite sure you were the party.
“How can I satisfy you?” said Sybil, distressed.
“Perhaps the young person have got her mark on her linen,” suggested the wife. “Have you got a handkerchief Ma’am?” and she took Sybil’s handkerchief and looked at it, and examined it at every corner. It had no mark. And this unforeseen circumstance of great suspicion might have destroyed everything, had not the production of the handkerchief by Sybil also brought forth a letter addressed to her from Hatton.
“It seems to be the party,” said the wife.
“Well,” said Tanner, “you know St Martin’s Lane I suppose? Well, you go up St Martin’s Lane to a certain point, and then you will get into Seven Dials; and then you’ll go on. However it is impossible to direct you; you must find your way. Hunt Street, going out of Silver Street, No. 22. ‘Tis what you call a blind street, with no thoroughfare, and then you go down an alley. Can you recollect that?”
“Fear not.”
“No. 22 Hunt Street, going out of Silver Street. Remember the alley. It’s an ugly neighbourhood; but you go of your own accord.”
“Yes, yes. Good night.”