Sybil, or the Two Nations Part 17

"Is that Harriet?" said his wife moving in her bed.

The Hand-Loom weaver was recalled from his reverie to the urgent misery that surrounded him.

"No!" he replied in a quick hoa.r.s.e voice, "it is not Harriet."

"Why does not Harriet come?"

"She will come no more!" replied the weaver; "I told you so last night: she can bear this place no longer; and I am not surprised."

"How are we to get food then?" rejoined his wife; "you ought not to have let her leave us. You do nothing, Warner. You get no wages yourself; and you have let the girl escape."

"I will escape myself if you say that again," said the weaver: "I have been up these three hours finis.h.i.+ng this piece which ought to have been taken home on Sat.u.r.day night."

"But you have been paid for it beforehand. You get nothing for your work. A penny an hour! What sort of work is it, that brings a penny an hour?"

"Work that you have often admired, Mary; and has before this gained a prize. But if you don't like the work," said the man quitting his loom, "let it alone. There was enough yet owing on this piece to have allowed us to break our fast. However, no matter; we must starve sooner or later. Let us begin at once."

"No, no, Philip! work. Let us break our fast come what may."

"Twit me no more then," said the weaver resuming his seat, "or I throw the shuttle for the last time."

"I will not taunt you," said his wife in a kinder tone. "I was wrong; I am sorry; but I am very ill. It is not for myself I speak; I want not to eat; I have no appet.i.te; my lips are so very parched. But the children, the children went supperless to bed, and they will wake soon."

"Mother, we ayn't asleep," said the elder girl.

"No, we aynt asleep, mother," said her sister; "we heard all that you said to father."

"And baby?"

"He sleeps still."

"I s.h.i.+ver 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 G.o.d, 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 s.h.i.+vers! 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 burthen 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."