Sybil's Repentance

About the Book

Sybil Agmere, an orphan, is taken in by a loving mother with four children and a strict grandfather. The mother's brother left the family home in disgrace many years before, never to be mentioned again. Sybil calls the mother her aunt, and is concerned when the brother reappears. The grandfather changes the inheritance in his will, but Sybil, at the age of eleven, reasons that if she can destroy the latest will, justice will be done. Her aunt will inherit, and all will be well. As the years go on, as Sybil sits in the family home, she sees that destroying the will is bringing nothing but trouble, yet she cannot admit to what she did. And even if she did admit it, the past could never be changed. After being persuaded into an engagement with a most unsuitable man, Sybil sees any hope of happiness fade away. Surely it is too late to undo the years of injustice and of wrong. There are wrongs no repentance can set right.

Sybil's Repentance

Margaret S. Haycraft

1855-1936

White Tree Publishing

Abridged Edition

Original book first published 1892

This abridged edition ©Chris Wright 2018

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-04-9

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

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Sybil's Repentance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

Author Biography

Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

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About White Tree Publishing

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Books for Younger Readers

Author Biography

Margaret Scott Haycraft was born Margaret Scott MacRitchie at Newport Pagnell, England in 1855. She married William Parnell Haycraft in 1883 and wrote mostly under her married name. In 1891 she was living in Brighton, on the south coast of England, and died in Bournemouth, also on the south coast, in 1936. She also wrote under her maiden name of Margaret MacRitchie. Margaret Haycraft is currently our most popular author of fiction.

Margaret was a contemporary of the much better-known Christian writer Mrs. O. F. Walton. Both ladies wrote Christian stories for children that were very much for the time in which they lived, with little children often preparing for an early death. Mrs. Walton wrote three romances for adults (with no suffering children, and now published by White Tree in abridged versions). Margaret Haycraft concentrated mainly on books for children. However, she later wrote several romances for older readers. Unusually for Victorian writers, the majority of Margaret Haycraft's stories are told in the present tense.

Both Mrs. Walton's and Margaret Haycraft's books for all ages can be over-sentimental, referring throughout, for example, to a mother as the dear, sweet mother, and a child as the darling little child. In our abridged editions overindulgent descriptions of people have been shortened to make a more robust story, but the characters and storyline are always unchanged. Eliza Kerr is another Victorian writer whose stories deserve to be republished, and White Tree Publishing is releasing several of her books in abridged form.

A problem of Victorian writers is the tendency to insert intrusive comments concerning what is going to happen later in the story. Today we call them spoilers. They are usually along the lines of: Little did he/she know that.... I have removed these when appropriate.

£100 in 1892 may not sound much, but in income value it is worth £12,000 pounds today (about US$15,000). I mention this in case the sums of money in this book sound insignificant!

Chris Wright

Editor

NOTE

There are 16 chapters in this book. In the last third are advertisements for our other books, so the story may end earlier than expected! The last chapter is marked as such. We aim to make our eBooks free or for a nominal cost, and cannot invest in other forms of advertising. However, word of mouth by satisfied readers will also help get our books more widely known. When the story ends, please take a look at what we publish: Christian non-fiction, Christian fiction, and books for younger readers.

For God hath pardoned all her much,

Her iron bands hath burst;

Her love could never have been such

Had not His love been first.

Jesus, by whose forgiveness sweet

Her love grew so intense,

We, sinners all, come round Thy feet:

Lord, make no difference!

From The Woman That Was a Sinner

George MacDonald (1824–1905

Chapter 1

The Squire's Bible Class

A FOGGY, sunless Sunday afternoon. In many Sunday schools the gas has already been kindled; in many a domestic circle heads nod cosily over improving book or magazine, in others walnuts and grapes are in process of demolition, and in several households boys and girls, tired of the dreary hours, are secretly wishing the day that should be brightest at an end.

Why can't we go to Sunday school? the children at Beech Glen often ask their mother. Not that they care about Bible study, but they would like the pleasant walk to and fro, instead of surveying nature only through the high wire blind of the dining room; and the girl who comes from the village to help on Saturdays says, There's lots of fun when teacher ain't looking. My, I wouldn't miss Sunday school for anything. There's Polly Finch at the sweet-stuff shop brings peppermint cushions every week for all our class.

But when Sunday school is suggested, Mrs. Agmere always replies decisively, Oh, no, my dears, I could not think of such a thing. There is always such a mixture at the school, and there is no knowing what you might get.

Perhaps Dora is the only one who understands the meaning of the mixture alluded to. She is quite aware that she is Miss Agmere, of Beech Glen, and she realizes that gentility has its drawbacks as well as its privileges. So the little group this particular Sunday are committing to memory hymns and verses, and a portion of a juvenile catechism, while waiting for grandpa's Bible Class, held every Sunday afternoon. They betray great anxiety to recite their hymns to Mrs. Agmere, as mamma never finds out when they repeat old ones; but none of them would dream of reciting to grandpa as new, hymns which they have got off before.

Grandpa, old as he is (and the children vaguely associate the squire with Martin Luther, and Cromwell, and Fox) has a quickness of discernment, and a sternness of aspect, before which the conscious evil-doer tearfully succumbs. Sybil, aged eleven, endeavouring with hot cheeks, and a sick headache, to learn without a misplaced word the moral poem descriptive of the sluggard, flashes indignation in the direction of Dora and Jasper, who are about to carry a recitation to indulgent Mrs. Agmere for the seventh time.

It's as bad as telling a lie! she exclaims, gazing with horror in her dark eyes at her cousin, dainty in velvet and lace. "We Agmeres ought to remember the motto of our family over there on the bowls and cups, 'Trust my truth.' How can you deceive Aunt Phyllis so? Look, Jasper, it would not take you long to learn this one with the picture of the children robbing the orchard."

What's it like? asks Jasper lazily.

"Why should I deprive my neighbour

Of his goods against his will?

Hands were made for honest labour,

Not to pilfer or to steal."

"Why, that isn't poetry at all -- it doesn't even rhyme. Steal and will don't rhyme, now do they, Sybil?"

"Aunt Phyllis told me all poetry does not rhyme, says Sybil, faithfully championing Dr. Watts. There is some kind of poetry called blank verse. I dare say this verse is that sort. And whether it rhymes or not, you ought not to repeat an old piece, pretending it is new. If I couldn't learn a new one, I'd tell Aunt Phyllis truthfully, and I know she would let me off."

"She would, says Dora, wiping her eyes, but grandpa has made a rule there is to be no excusing now, because mamma always was excusing us. Whatever is left over from Sunday's lessons must be repeated to him on Monday, he says."

I say, Twinnies, do stop that noise! Girls' tongues are always on the wag, I declare, cries Jasper, pushing back his blond hair impatiently, as he flings a pellet of paper in the direction of the eight-year-old lassies, May and Lilias, who are learning their catechism aloud. What do we learn all this stuff for? I'm going into the army as soon as I can, and there won't be any exams about hymns and catechisms. What's the good of it all?

Why, to make us converted, says Sybil. I don't know how we get converted, but I'm sure it has something to do with our lessons.

What is it to be converted, Sybil? asks young Lilias, leaning her head against her cousin.

Sybil looks puzzled for a moment, but hers is an active brain and she soon settles the question. Why, poacher Jim Blake was converted, she answers. Cook told me so, and he was in agony days and nights; but now he always comes to chapel. It's when you feel like him and like Martha Matthews.

"Martha Matthews died in the storybook, says Lilias uncomfortably. She had consumption, and she was always coughing; but she said pages and pages of beautiful things. I'd never be able to talk like she did, Sybil."

This kind of conversation is not uncommon amid the juveniles of Beech Glen. The little Agmeres have been bred and trained in an atmosphere of religion presenting a dark and severe side alone. Argumentative tracts, many of them written by the squire himself, are everywhere about Beech Glen, and the children devour everything in the way of reading they can find. They possess no other literature except a few missionary records, and The Life of Martha Matthews, an eloquent and marvellous child who died young.

The children are not unhappy. The beautiful grounds afford them the fairest of playgrounds. Jasper greatly admires his tutor, Mr. Drury, and the youngest girls are taught by the most kindly of instructresses -- the widowed Mrs. Agmere. Still, amid a constant round of religious meetings, and continually listening to the debate of pastors and deacons at their grandfather's table, it is natural that the children's ideas should be much occupied with matters of theology, and such points are often discussed by them, especially during the long hours of the Sabbath.

More than once they have improved the death of someone in Market Wickham by holding a schoolroom service, in which occasionally bitter feelings have been caused by Sybil's habit of extolling her dearly loved birthplace, India, in prayer or sermon, and depreciating Britain and British things at an opportunity when her cousins cannot well silence her.

I wonder, remarks Dora presently, putting aside her hymnbook with an air of weariness, if Uncle Dick was ever converted.

Oh, no, replies Jasper. Sarah told me he was frightfully wicked. He used to smoke and say bad words, and he spent grandpa's money like dirt, Sarah said. And he married somebody who used to act a fairy in a theatre. Grandpa cast him off, you know. Sarah said Uncle Dick wrote him a terrible letter, and nobody dares ever to mention his name. But Sarah Ann says she's sure Uncle Dick must be dead now. He hasn't been heard of for years.

I wonder if he was ever sorry he was wicked, says May softly.

I think, says Sybil, "he must be the young man grandpa wrote about in that tract, A Harvest of Transgression. Wasn't he grandpa's pet boy once, Jasper?"

Yes, Sarah Ann said grandpa was bound up in him. He used to come down to dessert when he was little, and say a lot of chapters out of the Bible, and everyone said he would be a clever man like grandpa, and a famous minister. But he went away to college, and he turned out quite wild, and cook says grandpa has got stricter and severer ever since. But cook says it has turned out all for the best for ma, that Uncle Dick offended grandpa, because he was the eldest son, and he would have had Beech Glen. Cook says grandpa's sure to give ma all his money now.

Oh, but poor Uncle Dick, I do wish he'd repented, says Lilias, with a quiver of her lips.

At this moment the heavy step of Mr. Agmere is heard in the passage, and the children sit straight up in prim, uncomfortable positions, ready for the class. The squire is rather out of humour today. He has been arguing a doctrinal point with a deacon, a stranger in Market Wickham, whom he invited home to dinner, and he is inclined to suspect his guest, who has just left for a visit to the Sunday school, of laxity in the matter of Church discipline. The gentleman in question has been urging pity and patience towards the feeble of the flock, with whom the squire would fain deal with summary judgment.

He looks sterner even than usual as he calls upon the children for their repetitions, and dismay is soon apparent upon every little face. Jasper becomes sulky, and Dora tearful, when, being found unready, they are sentenced to copy out before breakfast tomorrow the hymn:

Lo! on a narrow neck of land,

'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand,

Secure, insensible.

Sybil stumbles through the fate of the sluggard, but fails in her chapter of Proverbs, and is told to repeat it daily in playtime through the week. Lilias and May, by aid of brotherly whispers from Jasper, recite their catechism to the squire's content, and he rewards them by telling them he sees they are able now to manage a longer piece in future.

Then Mr. Agmere removes The Life of Martha Matthews from the table, seeing that Sybil is interested in the well-thumbed picture of the dying girl warning her playmates with uplifted finger. He commences, in sepulchral accents, to read a chronology in Genesis, together with copious notes upon each verse from a thick commentary, of which a heavy volume is always present at the class.

The squire has the help and well-being of these children at his heart, and he feeds upon such commentaries himself with unfading relish; but he has not the remotest idea how unsuited to young hearts and lives are his methods of instruction. Dora and the twins fall fast asleep; Jasper is busy with his penknife on the leg of the table; but Sybil is honestly listening, and trying to understand the explanations that only seem adapted to bewilder her.

Mr. Agmere is reading from the commentary, section 17, a paragraph that appears to the children interminable, when, greatly to their astonishment, the class is suddenly interrupted. A knock is heard at the dining room door, and the old butler hurries up to the squire, too agitated for his usual decorum of manner.