Heavily and hopelessly did they all meet in the morning. No news of
Philip, no change in Sylvia; an unceasing flow of angling and
conjecture and gossip radiating from the shop into the town.
Hester could have entreated Coulson on her knees to cease from
repeating the details of a story of which every word touched on a
raw place in her sensitive heart; moreover, when they talked
together so eagerly, she could not hear the coming footsteps on the
pavement without.
Once some one hit very near the truth in a chance remark.
'It seems strange,' she said, 'how as one man turns up, another just
disappears. Why, it were but upo' Tuesday as Kinraid come back, as
all his own folk had thought to be dead; and next day here's Measter
Hepburn as is gone no one knows wheere!' 'That's t' way i' this world,' replied Coulson, a little
sententiously. 'This life is full o' changes o' one kind or another;
them that's dead is alive; and as for poor Philip, though he was
alive, he looked fitter to be dead when he came into t' shop o'
Wednesday morning.' 'And how does she take it?' nodding to where Sylvia was supposed to
be.
'Oh! she's not herself, so to say. She were just stunned by finding
her mother was dying in her very arms when she thought as she were
only sleeping; yet she's never been able to cry a drop; so that t'
sorrow's gone inwards on her brain, and from all I can hear, she
doesn't rightly understand as her husband is missing. T' doctor says
if she could but cry, she'd come to a juster comprehension of
things.' 'And what do John and Jeremiah Foster say to it all?' 'They're down here many a time in t' day to ask if he's come back,
or how she is; for they made a deal on 'em both. They're going t'
attend t' funeral to-morrow, and have given orders as t' shop is to
be shut up in t' morning.' To the surprise of every one, Sylvia, who had never left her room
since the night of her mother's death, and was supposed to be almost
unconscious of all that was going on in the house, declared her
intention of following her mother to the grave. No one could do more
than remonstrate: no one had sufficient authority to interfere with
her. Dr Morgan even thought that she might possibly be roused to
tears by the occasion; only he begged Hester to go with her, that
she might have the solace of some woman's company.
She went through the greater part of the ceremony in the same hard,
unmoved manner in which she had received everything for days past.