Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

“And baby?”

“He sleeps still.”

“I shiver very much!” said the mother. “It’s a cold day. Pray shut the window, Warner. I see the drops upon the pane; it is raining. I wonder if the persons below would lend us one block of coal.”

“We have borrowed too often,” said Warner.

“I wish there were no such thing as coal in the land,” said his wife, “and then the engines would not be able to work; and we should have our rights again.”

“Amen!” said Warner.

“Don’t you think, Warner,” said his wife, “that you could sell that piece to some other person, and owe Barber for the money he advanced?”

“No!” said her husband shaking his head. “I’ll go straight.”

“And let your children starve,” said his wife, “when you could get five or six shillings at once. But so it always was with you! Why did not you go to the machines years ago like other men and so get used to them?”

“I should have been supplanted by this time,” said Warner, “by a girl or a woman! It would have been just as bad!”

“Why there was your friend Walter Gerard; he was the same as you, and yet now he gets two pound a-week; at least I have often heard you say so.”

“Walter Gerard is a man of great parts,” said Warner, “and might have been a master himself by this time had he cared.”

“And why did he not?”

“He had no wife and children,” said Warner; “he was not so blessed.”

The baby woke and began to cry.

“Ah! my child!” exclaimed the mother. “That wicked Harriet! Here Amelia, I have a morsel of crust here. I saved it yesterday for baby; moisten it in water, and tie it up in this piece of calico: he will suck it; it will keep him quiet; I can bear anything but his cry.”

“I shall have finished my job by noon,” said Warner; “and then, please God, we shall break our fast.”

“It is yet two hours to noon,” said his wife. “And Barber always keeps you so long! I cannot bear that Barber: I dare say he will not advance you money again as you did not bring the job home on Saturday night. If I were you, Philip, I would go and sell the piece unfinished at once to one of the cheap shops.”

“I have gone straight all my life,” said Warner.

“And much good it has done you,” said his wife. “My poor Amelia! How she shivers! I think the sun never touches this house. It is indeed a most wretched place!”

“It will not annoy you long, Mary,” said her husband: “I can pay no more rent; and I only wonder they have not been here already to take the week.”

“And where are we to go?” said the wife.

“To a place which certainly the sun never touches,” said her husband, with a kind of malice in his misery⁠—“to a cellar!”

“Oh! why was I ever born!” exclaimed his wife. “And yet I was so happy once! And it is not our fault. I cannot make it out, Warner, why you should not get two pounds a-week like Walter Gerard?”

“Bah!” said the husband.

“You said he had no family,” continued his wife. “I thought he had a daughter.”

“But she is no burden to him. The sister of Mr. Trafford is the Superior of the convent here, and she took Sybil when her mother died, and brought her up.”

“Oh! then she is a nun?”

“Not yet; but I dare say it will end in it.”

“Well, I think I would even sooner starve,” said his wife, “than my children should be nuns.”

At this moment there was a knocking at the door. Warner descended from his loom and opened it.

“Lives Philip Warner here?” enquired a clear voice of peculiar sweetness.

“My name is Warner.”

“I come from Walter Gerard,” continued the voice. “Your letter reached him only last night. The girl at whose house your daughter left it has quitted this week past Mr. Trafford’s factory.”

“Pray enter.”

And there entered Sybil.

“Your wife is ill?” said Sybil.

“Very!” replied Warner’s wife. “Our daughter has behaved infamously to us. She has quitted us without saying by your leave or with your leave. And her wages were almost the only thing left to us; for Philip is not like Walter Gerard you see: he cannot earn two pounds a-week, though why he cannot I never could understand.”

“Hush, hush, wife!” said Warner. “I speak I apprehend to Gerard’s daughter?”

“Just so.”

“Ah! this is good and kind; this is like old times, for Walter Gerard was my friend, when I was not exactly as I am now.”

“He tells me so: he sent a messenger to me last night to visit you this morning. Your letter reached him only yesterday.”

“Harriet was to give it to Caroline,” said the wife. “That’s the girl who has done all the mischief and inveigled her away. And she has left Trafford’s works, has she? Then I will be bound she and Harriet are keeping house together.”

“You suffer?” said Sybil, moving to the bedside of the woman; “give me your hand,” she added in a soft sweet tone. “ ’Tis hot.”

“I feel very cold,” said the woman. “Warner would have the window open, till the rain came in.”

“And you, I fear, are wet,” said Warner, addressing Sybil, and interrupting his wife.

“Very slightly. And you have no fire. Ah! I have brought some things for you, but not fuel.”

“If he would only ask the person downstairs,” said his wife, “for a block of coal; I tell him, neighbours could hardly refuse; but he never will do anything; he says he has asked too often.”

“I will ask,” said Sybil. “But first, I have a companion without,” she added, “who bears a basket for you. Come in, Harold.”

The baby began to cry the moment a large dog entered the room; a young bloodhound of the ancient breed, such as are now found but in a few old halls and granges in the north of England. Sybil untied