HOLLOW'S COTTAGE.
Moore's good spirits were still with him when he rose next morning. He
and Joe Scott had both spent the night in the mill, availing themselves
of certain sleeping accommodations producible from recesses in the front
and back counting-houses. The master, always an early riser, was up
somewhat sooner even than usual. He awoke his man by singing a French
song as he made his toilet.
"Ye're not custen dahn, then, maister?" cried Joe.
"Not a stiver, mon garçon--which means, my lad. Get up, and we'll take a
turn through the mill before the hands come in, and I'll explain my
future plans. We'll have the machinery yet, Joseph. You never heard of
Bruce, perhaps?"
"And th' arrand (spider)? Yes, but I hev. I've read th' history o'
Scotland, and happen knaw as mich on't as ye; and I understand ye to
mean to say ye'll persevere."
"I do."
"Is there mony o' your mak' i' your country?" inquired Joe, as he folded
up his temporary bed, and put it away.
"In my country! Which is my country?"
"Why, France--isn't it?"
"Not it, indeed! The circumstance of the French having seized Antwerp,
where I was born, does not make me a Frenchman."
"Holland, then?"
"I am not a Dutchman. Now you are confounding Antwerp with Amsterdam."
"Flanders?"
"I scorn the insinuation, Joe! I a Flamand! Have I a Flemish face--the
clumsy nose standing out, the mean forehead falling back, the pale blue
eyes 'à fleur de tête'? Am I all body and no legs, like a Flamand? But
you don't know what they are like, those Netherlanders. Joe, I'm an
Anversois. My mother was an Anversoise, though she came of French
lineage, which is the reason I speak French."
"But your father war Yorkshire, which maks ye a bit Yorkshire too; and
onybody may see ye're akin to us, ye're so keen o' making brass, and
getting forrards."
"Joe, you're an impudent dog; but I've always been accustomed to a
boorish sort of insolence from my youth up. The 'classe ouvrière'--that
is, the working people in Belgium--bear themselves brutally towards
their employers; and by _brutally_, Joe, I mean _brutalement_--which,
perhaps, when properly translated, should be _roughly_."
"We allus speak our minds i' this country; and them young parsons and
grand folk fro' London is shocked at wer 'incivility;' and we like weel
enough to gi'e 'em summat to be shocked at, 'cause it's sport to us to
watch 'em turn up the whites o' their een, and spreed out their bits o'
hands, like as they're flayed wi' bogards, and then to hear 'em say,
nipping off their words short like, 'Dear! dear! Whet seveges! How very
corse!'"
"You _are_ savages, Joe. You don't suppose you're civilized, do you?"
"Middling, middling, maister. I reckon 'at us manufacturing lads i' th'
north is a deal more intelligent, and knaws a deal more nor th' farming
folk i' th' south. Trade sharpens wer wits; and them that's mechanics
like me is forced to think. Ye know, what wi' looking after machinery
and sich like, I've getten into that way that when I see an effect, I
look straight out for a cause, and I oft lig hold on't to purpose; and
then I like reading, and I'm curious to knaw what them that reckons to
govern us aims to do for us and wi' us. And there's many 'cuter nor me;
there's many a one amang them greasy chaps 'at smells o' oil, and amang
them dyers wi' blue and black skins, that has a long head, and that can
tell what a fooil of a law is, as well as ye or old Yorke, and a deal
better nor soft uns like Christopher Sykes o' Whinbury, and greet
hectoring nowts like yond' Irish Peter, Helstone's curate."
"You think yourself a clever fellow, I know, Scott."
"Ay! I'm fairish. I can tell cheese fro' chalk, and I'm varry weel aware
that I've improved sich opportunities as I have had, a deal better nor
some 'at reckons to be aboon me; but there's thousands i' Yorkshire
that's as good as me, and a two-three that's better."
"You're a great man--you're a sublime fellow; but you're a prig, a
conceited noodle with it all, Joe! You need not to think that because
you've picked up a little knowledge of practical mathematics, and
because you have found some scantling of the elements of chemistry at
the bottom of a dyeing vat, that therefore you're a neglected man of
science; and you need not to suppose that because the course of trade
does not always run smooth, and you, and such as you, are sometimes
short of work and of bread, that therefore your class are martyrs, and
that the whole form of government under which you live is wrong. And,
moreover, you need not for a moment to insinuate that the virtues have
taken refuge in cottages and wholly abandoned slated houses. Let me tell
you, I particularly abominate that sort of trash, because I know so well
that human nature is human nature everywhere, whether under tile or
thatch, and that in every specimen of human nature that breathes, vice
and virtue are ever found blended, in smaller or greater proportions,
and that the proportion is not determined by station. I have seen
villains who were rich, and I have seen villains who were poor, and I
have seen villains who were neither rich nor poor, but who had realized
Agar's wish, and lived in fair and modest competency. The clock is going
to strike six. Away with you, Joe, and ring the mill bell."
It was now the middle of the month of February; by six o'clock therefore
dawn was just beginning to steal on night, to penetrate with a pale ray
its brown obscurity, and give a demi-translucence to its opaque shadows.
Pale enough that ray was on this particular morning: no colour tinged
the east, no flush warmed it. To see what a heavy lid day slowly lifted,
what a wan glance she flung along the hills, you would have thought the
sun's fire quenched in last night's floods. The breath of this morning
was chill as its aspect; a raw wind stirred the mass of night-cloud, and
showed, as it slowly rose, leaving a colourless, silver-gleaming ring
all round the horizon, not blue sky, but a stratum of paler vapour
beyond. It had ceased to rain, but the earth was sodden, and the pools
and rivulets were full.
The mill-windows were alight, the bell still rung loud, and now the
little children came running in, in too great a hurry, let us hope, to
feel very much nipped by the inclement air; and indeed, by contrast,
perhaps the morning appeared rather favourable to them than otherwise,
for they had often come to their work that winter through snow-storms,
through heavy rain, through hard frost.
Mr. Moore stood at the entrance to watch them pass. He counted them as
they went by. To those who came rather late he said a word of reprimand,
which was a little more sharply repeated by Joe Scott when the lingerers
reached the work-rooms. Neither master nor overlooker spoke savagely.
They were not savage men either of them, though it appeared both were
rigid, for they fined a delinquent who came considerably too late. Mr.
Moore made him pay his penny down ere he entered, and informed him that
the next repetition of the fault would cost him twopence.
Rules, no doubt, are necessary in such cases, and coarse and cruel
masters will make coarse and cruel rules, which, at the time we treat of
at least, they used sometimes to enforce tyrannically; but though I
describe imperfect characters (every character in this book will be
found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in
the model line), I have not undertaken to handle degraded or utterly
infamous ones. Child-torturers, slave masters and drivers, I consign to
the hands of jailers. The novelist may be excused from sullying his page
with the record of their deeds.
Instead, then, of harrowing up my reader's soul and delighting his organ
of wonder with effective descriptions of stripes and scourgings, I am
happy to be able to inform him that neither Mr. Moore nor his overlooker
ever struck a child in their mill. Joe had, indeed, once very severely
flogged a son of his own for telling a lie and persisting in it; but,
like his employer, he was too phlegmatic, too calm, as well as too
reasonable a man, to make corporal chastisement other than the exception
to his treatment of the young.
Mr. Moore haunted his mill, his mill-yard, his dye-house, and his
warehouse till the sickly dawn strengthened into day. The sun even
rose--at least a white disc, clear, tintless, and almost chill-looking
as ice, peeped over the dark crest of a hill, changed to silver the
livid edge of the cloud above it, and looked solemnly down the whole
length of the den, or narrow dale, to whose strait bounds we are at
present limited. It was eight o'clock; the mill lights were all
extinguished; the signal was given for breakfast; the children, released
for half an hour from toil, betook themselves to the little tin cans
which held their coffee, and to the small baskets which contained their
allowance of bread. Let us hope they have enough to eat; it would be a
pity were it otherwise.
And now at last Mr. Moore quitted the mill-yard, and bent his steps to
his dwelling-house. It was only a short distance from the factory, but
the hedge and high bank on each side of the lane which conducted to it
seemed to give it something of the appearance and feeling of seclusion.
It was a small, whitewashed place, with a green porch over the door;
scanty brown stalks showed in the garden soil near this porch, and
likewise beneath the windows--stalks budless and flowerless now, but
giving dim prediction of trained and blooming creepers for summer days.
A grass plat and borders fronted the cottage. The borders presented only
black mould yet, except where, in sheltered nooks, the first shoots of
snowdrop or crocus peeped, green as emerald, from the earth. The spring
was late; it had been a severe and prolonged winter; the last deep snow
had but just disappeared before yesterday's rains; on the hills, indeed,
white remnants of it yet gleamed, flecking the hollows and crowning the
peaks; the lawn was not verdant, but bleached, as was the grass on the
bank, and under the hedge in the lane. Three trees, gracefully grouped,
rose beside the cottage. They were not lofty, but having no rivals near,
they looked well and imposing where they grew. Such was Mr. Moore's
home--a snug nest for content and contemplation, but one within which
the wings of action and ambition could not long lie folded.
Its air of modest comfort seemed to possess no particular attraction for
its owner. Instead of entering the house at once he fetched a spade from
a little shed and began to work in the garden. For about a quarter of an
hour he dug on uninterrupted. At length, however, a window opened, and a
female voice called to him,--
"Eh, bien! Tu ne déjeûnes pas ce matin?"
The answer, and the rest of the conversation, was in French; but as this
is an English book, I shall translate it into English.
"Is breakfast ready, Hortense?"
"Certainly; it has been ready half an hour."
"Then I am ready too. I have a canine hunger."
He threw down his spade, and entered the house. The narrow passage
conducted him to a small parlour, where a breakfast of coffee and bread
and butter, with the somewhat un-English accompaniment of stewed pears,
was spread on the table. Over these viands presided the lady who had
spoken from the window. I must describe her before I go any farther.
She seemed a little older than Mr. Moore--perhaps she was thirty-five,
tall, and proportionately stout; she had very black hair, for the
present twisted up in curl-papers, a high colour in her cheeks, a small
nose, a pair of little black eyes. The lower part of her face was large
in proportion to the upper; her forehead was small and rather
corrugated; she had a fretful though not an ill-natured expression of
countenance; there was something in her whole appearance one felt
inclined to be half provoked with and half amused at. The strangest
point was her dress--a stuff petticoat and a striped cotton camisole.
The petticoat was short, displaying well a pair of feet and ankles which
left much to be desired in the article of symmetry.
You will think I have depicted a remarkable slattern, reader. Not at
all. Hortense Moore (she was Mr. Moore's sister) was a very orderly,
economical person. The petticoat, camisole, and curl-papers were her
morning costume, in which, of forenoons, she had always been accustomed
to "go her household ways" in her own country. She did not choose to
adopt English fashions because she was obliged to live in England; she
adhered to her old Belgian modes, quite satisfied that there was a merit
in so doing.
Mademoiselle had an excellent opinion of herself--an opinion not wholly
undeserved, for she possessed some good and sterling qualities; but she
rather over-estimated the kind and degree of these qualities, and quite
left out of the account sundry little defects which accompanied them.
You could never have persuaded her that she was a prejudiced and
narrow-minded person, that she was too susceptible on the subject of her
own dignity and importance, and too apt to take offence about trifles;
yet all this was true. However, where her claims to distinction were not
opposed, and where her prejudices were not offended, she could be kind
and friendly enough. To her two brothers (for there was another Gérard
Moore besides Robert) she was very much attached. As the sole remaining
representatives of their decayed family, the persons of both were almost
sacred in her eyes. Of Louis, however, she knew less than of Robert. He
had been sent to England when a mere boy, and had received his education
at an English school. His education not being such as to adapt him for
trade, perhaps, too, his natural bent not inclining him to mercantile
pursuits, he had, when the blight of hereditary prospects rendered it
necessary for him to push his own fortune, adopted the very arduous and
very modest career of a teacher. He had been usher in a school, and was
said now to be tutor in a private family. Hortense, when she mentioned
Louis, described him as having what she called "des moyens," but as
being too backward and quiet. Her praise of Robert was in a different
strain, less qualified: she was very proud of him; she regarded him as
the greatest man in Europe; all he said and did was remarkable in her
eyes, and she expected others to behold him from the same point of view;
nothing could be more irrational, monstrous, and infamous than
opposition from any quarter to Robert, unless it were opposition to
herself.
Accordingly, as soon as the said Robert was seated at the
breakfast-table, and she had helped him to a portion of stewed pears,
and cut him a good-sized Belgian tartine, she began to pour out a flood
of amazement and horror at the transaction of last night, the
destruction of the frames.
"Quelle idée! to destroy them. Quelle action honteuse! On voyait bien
que les ouvriers de ce pays étaient à la fois betes et méchants. C'était
absolument comme les domestiques anglais, les servantes surtout: rien
d'insupportable comme cette Sara, par exemple!"
"She looks clean and industrious," Mr. Moore remarked.
"Looks! I don't know how she looks, and I do not say that she is
altogether dirty or idle, mais elle est d'une insolence! She disputed
with me a quarter of an hour yesterday about the cooking of the beef;
she said I boiled it to rags, that English people would never be able to
eat such a dish as our bouilli, that the bouillon was no better than
greasy warm water, and as to the choucroute, she affirms she cannot
touch it! That barrel we have in the cellar--delightfully prepared by my
own hands--she termed a tub of hog-wash, which means food for pigs. I am
harassed with the girl, and yet I cannot part with her lest I should get
a worse. You are in the same position with your workmen, pauvre cher
frère!"
"I am afraid you are not very happy in England, Hortense."
"It is my duty to be happy where you are, brother; but otherwise there
are certainly a thousand things which make me regret our native town.
All the world here appears to me ill-bred (mal-élevé). I find my habits
considered ridiculous. If a girl out of your mill chances to come into
the kitchen and find me in my jupon and camisole preparing dinner (for
you know I cannot trust Sarah to cook a single dish), she sneers. If I
accept an invitation out to tea, which I have done once or twice, I
perceive I am put quite into the background; I have not that attention
paid me which decidedly is my due. Of what an excellent family are the
Gérards, as we know, and the Moores also! They have a right to claim a
certain respect, and to feel wounded when it is withheld from them. In
Antwerp I was always treated with distinction; here, one would think
that when I open my lips in company I speak English with a ridiculous
accent, whereas I am quite assured that I pronounce it perfectly."
"Hortense, in Antwerp we were known rich; in England we were never known
but poor."
"Precisely, and thus mercenary are mankind. Again, dear brother, last
Sunday, if you recollect, was very wet; accordingly I went to church in
my neat black sabots, objects one would not indeed wear in a fashionable
city, but which in the country I have ever been accustomed to use for
walking in dirty roads. Believe me, as I paced up the aisle, composed
and tranquil, as I am always, four ladies, and as many gentlemen,
laughed and hid their faces behind their prayer-books."
"Well, well! don't put on the sabots again. I told you before I thought
they were not quite the thing for this country."
"But, brother, they are not common sabots, such as the peasantry wear. I
tell you, they are sabots noirs, très propres, très convenables. At Mons
and Leuze--cities not very far removed from the elegant capital of
Brussels--it is very seldom that the respectable people wear anything
else for walking in winter. Let any one try to wade the mud of the
Flemish chaussées in a pair of Paris brodequins, on m'en dirait des
nouvelles!"
"Never mind Mons and Leuze and the Flemish chaussées; do at Rome as the
Romans do. And as to the camisole and jupon, I am not quite sure about
them either. I never see an English lady dressed in such garments. Ask
Caroline Helstone."
"Caroline! _I_ ask Caroline? _I_ consult her about my dress? It is _she_
who on all points should consult _me_. She is a child."
"She is eighteen, or at least seventeen--old enough to know all about
gowns, petticoats, and chaussures."
"Do not spoil Caroline, I entreat you, brother. Do not make her of more
consequence than she ought to be. At present she is modest and
unassuming: let us keep her so."
"With all my heart. Is she coming this morning?"
"She will come at ten, as usual, to take her French lesson."
"You don't find that she sneers at you, do you?"
"She does not. She appreciates me better than any one else here; but
then she has more intimate opportunities of knowing me. She sees that I
have education, intelligence, manner, principles--all, in short, which
belongs to a person well born and well bred."
"Are you at all fond of her?"
"For _fond_ I cannot say. I am not one who is prone to take violent
fancies, and, consequently, my friendship is the more to be depended on.
I have a regard for her as my relative; her position also inspires
interest, and her conduct as my pupil has hitherto been such as rather
to enhance than diminish the attachment that springs from other causes."
"She behaves pretty well at lessons?"
"To _me_ she behaves very well; but you are conscious, brother, that I
have a manner calculated to repel over-familiarity, to win esteem, and
to command respect. Yet, possessed of penetration, I perceive clearly
that Caroline is not perfect, that there is much to be desired in her."
"Give me a last cup of coffee, and while I am drinking it amuse me with
an account of her faults."
"Dear brother, I am happy to see you eat your breakfast with relish,
after the fatiguing night you have passed. Caroline, then, is defective;
but with my forming hand and almost motherly care she may improve. There
is about her an occasional something--a reserve, I think--which I do not
quite like, because it is not sufficiently girlish and submissive; and
there are glimpses of an unsettled hurry in her nature, which put me
out. Yet she is usually most tranquil, too dejected and thoughtful
indeed sometimes. In time, I doubt not, I shall make her uniformly
sedate and decorous, without being unaccountably pensive. I ever
disapprove what is not intelligible."
"I don't understand your account in the least. What do you mean by
'unsettled hurries,' for instance?"
"An example will, perhaps, be the most satisfactory explanation. I
sometimes, you are aware, make her read French poetry by way of
practice in pronunciation. She has in the course of her lessons gone
through much of Corneille and Racine, in a very steady, sober spirit,
such as I approve. Occasionally she showed, indeed, a degree of languor
in the perusal of those esteemed authors, partaking rather of apathy
than sobriety; and apathy is what I cannot tolerate in those who have
the benefit of my instructions--besides, one should not be apathetic in
studying standard works. The other day I put into her hands a volume of
short fugitive pieces. I sent her to the window to learn one by heart,
and when I looked up I saw her turning the leaves over impatiently, and
curling her lip, absolutely with scorn, as she surveyed the little poems
cursorily. I chid her. 'Ma cousine,' said she, 'tout cela m'ennuie à la
mort.' I told her this was improper language. 'Dieu!' she exclaimed, 'il
n'y a donc pas deux lignes de poësie dans toute la littérature
française?' I inquired what she meant. She begged my pardon with proper
submission. Ere long she was still. I saw her smiling to herself over
the book. She began to learn assiduously. In half an hour she came and
stood before me, presented the volume, folded her hands, as I always
require her to do, and commenced the repetition of that short thing by
Chénier, 'La Jeune Captive.' If you had heard the manner in which she
went through this, and in which she uttered a few incoherent comments
when she had done, you would have known what I meant by the phrase
'unsettled hurry.' One would have thought Chénier was more moving than
all Racine and all Corneille. You, brother, who have so much sagacity,
will discern that this disproportionate preference argues an
ill-regulated mind; but she is fortunate in her preceptress. I will give
her a system, a method of thought, a set of opinions; I will give her
the perfect control and guidance of her feelings."
"Be sure you do, Hortense. Here she comes. That was her shadow passed
the window, I believe."
"Ah! truly. She is too early--half an hour before her time.--My child,
what brings you here before I have breakfasted?"
This question was addressed to an individual who now entered the room, a
young girl, wrapped in a winter mantle, the folds of which were gathered
with some grace round an apparently slender figure.
"I came in haste to see how you were, Hortense, and how Robert was too.
I was sure you would be both grieved by what happened last night. I did
not hear till this morning. My uncle told me at breakfast."
"Ah! it is unspeakable. You sympathize with us? Your uncle sympathizes
with us?"
"My uncle is very angry--but he was with Robert, I believe, was he
not?--Did he not go with you to Stilbro' Moor?"
"Yes, we set out in very martial style, Caroline; but the prisoners we
went to rescue met us half-way."
"Of course nobody was hurt?"
"Why, no; only Joe Scott's wrists were a little galled with being
pinioned too tightly behind his back."
"You were not there? You were not with the wagons when they were
attacked?"
"No. One seldom has the fortune to be present at occurrences at which
one would particularly wish to assist."
"Where are you going this morning? I saw Murgatroyd saddling your horse
in the yard."
"To Whinbury. It is market day."
"Mr. Yorke is going too. I met him in his gig. Come home with him."
"Why?"
"Two are better than one, and nobody dislikes Mr. Yorke--at least, poor
people do not dislike him."
"Therefore he would be a protection to me, who am hated?"
"Who are _misunderstood_. That, probably, is the word. Shall you be
late?--Will he be late, Cousin Hortense?"
"It is too probable. He has often much business to transact at Whinbury.
Have you brought your exercise-book, child?"
"Yes.--What time will you return, Robert?"
"I generally return at seven. Do you wish me to be at home earlier?"
"Try rather to be back by six. It is not absolutely dark at six now, but
by seven daylight is quite gone."
"And what danger is to be apprehended, Caroline, when daylight _is_
gone? What peril do you conceive comes as the companion of darkness for
me?"
"I am not sure that I can define my fears, but we all have a certain
anxiety at present about our friends. My uncle calls these times
dangerous. He says, too, that mill-owners are unpopular."
"And I am one of the most unpopular? Is not that the fact? You are
reluctant to speak out plainly, but at heart you think me liable to
Pearson's fate, who was shot at--not, indeed, from behind a hedge, but
in his own house, through his staircase window, as he was going to bed."
"Anne Pearson showed me the bullet in the chamber-door," remarked
Caroline gravely, as she folded her mantle and arranged it and her muff
on a side-table. "You know," she continued, "there is a hedge all the
way along the road from here to Whinbury, and there are the Fieldhead
plantations to pass; but you will be back by six--or before?"
"Certainly he will," affirmed Hortense. "And now, my child, prepare your
lessons for repetition, while I put the peas to soak for the purée at
dinner."
With this direction she left the room.
"You suspect I have many enemies, then, Caroline," said Mr. Moore, "and
doubtless you know me to be destitute of friends?"
"Not destitute, Robert. There is your sister, your brother Louis, whom I
have never seen; there is Mr. Yorke, and there is my uncle--besides, of
course, many more."
Robert smiled. "You would be puzzled to name your 'many more,'" said he.
"But show me your exercise-book. What extreme pains you take with the
writing! My sister, I suppose, exacts this care. She wants to form you
in all things after the model of a Flemish school-girl. What life are
you destined for, Caroline? What will you do with your French, drawing,
and other accomplishments, when they are acquired?"
"You may well say, when they are acquired; for, as you are aware, till
Hortense began to teach me, I knew precious little. As to the life I am
destined for, I cannot tell. I suppose to keep my uncle's house
till----" She hesitated.
"Till what? Till he dies?"
"No. How harsh to say that! I never think of his dying. He is only
fifty-five. But till--in short, till events offer other occupations for
me."
"A remarkably vague prospect! Are you content with it?"
"I used to be, formerly. Children, you know, have little reflection, or
rather their reflections run on ideal themes. There are moments _now_
when I am not quite satisfied."
"Why?"
"I am making no money--earning nothing."
"You come to the point, Lina. You too, then, wish to make money?"
"I do. I should like an occupation; and if I were a boy, it would not be
so difficult to find one. I see such an easy, pleasant way of learning a
business, and making my way in life."
"Go on. Let us hear what way."
"I could be apprenticed to your trade--the cloth-trade. I could learn it
of you, as we are distant relations. I would do the counting-house work,
keep the books, and write the letters, while you went to market. I know
you greatly desire to be rich, in order to pay your father's debts;
perhaps I could help you to get rich."
"Help _me_? You should think of yourself."
"I do think of myself; but must one for ever think only of oneself?"
"Of whom else do I think? Of whom else _dare_ I think? The poor ought to
have no large sympathies; it is their duty to be narrow."
"No, Robert----"
"Yes, Caroline. Poverty is necessarily selfish, contracted, grovelling,
anxious. Now and then a poor man's heart, when certain beams and dews
visit it, may smell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this
spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage, perhaps blossom; but he
must not encourage the pleasant impulse; he must invoke Prudence to
check it, with that frosty breath of hers, which is as nipping as any
north wind."
"No cottage would be happy then."
"When I speak of poverty, I do not so much mean the natural, habitual
poverty of the working-man, as the embarrassed penury of the man in
debt. My grub-worm is always a straitened, struggling, care-worn
tradesman."
"Cherish hope, not anxiety. Certain ideas have become too fixed in your
mind. It may be presumptuous to say it, but I have the impression that
there is something wrong in your notions of the best means of attaining
happiness, as there is in----" Second hesitation.
"I am all ear, Caroline."
"In (courage! let me speak the truth)--in your manner--mind, I say only
_manner_--to these Yorkshire workpeople."
"You have often wanted to tell me that, have you not?"
"Yes; often--very often."
"The faults of my manner are, I think, only negative. I am not proud.
What has a man in my position to be proud of? I am only taciturn,
phlegmatic, and joyless."
"As if your living cloth-dressers were all machines like your frames and
shears. In your own house you seem different."
"To those of my own house I am no alien, which I am to these English
clowns. I might act the benevolent with them, but acting is not my
_forte_. I find them irrational, perverse; they hinder me when I long to
hurry forward. In treating them justly I fulfil my whole duty towards
them."
"You don't expect them to love you, of course?"
"Nor wish it."
"Ah!" said the monitress, shaking her head and heaving a deep sigh. With
this ejaculation, indicative that she perceived a screw to be loose
somewhere, but that it was out of her reach to set it right, she bent
over her grammar, and sought the rule and exercise for the day.
"I suppose I am not an affectionate man, Caroline. The attachment of a
very few suffices me."
"If you please, Robert, will you mend me a pen or two before you go?"
"First let me rule your book, for you always contrive to draw the lines
aslant. There now. And now for the pens. You like a fine one, I think?"
"Such as you generally make for me and Hortense; not your own broad
points."
"If I were of Louis's calling I might stay at home and dedicate this
morning to you and your studies, whereas I must spend it in Skyes's
wool-warehouse."
"You will be making money."
"More likely losing it."
As he finished mending the pens, a horse, saddled and bridled, was
brought up to the garden-gate.
"There, Fred is ready for me; I must go. I'll take one look to see what
the spring has done in the south border, too, first."
He quitted the room, and went out into the garden ground behind the
mill. A sweet fringe of young verdure and opening flowers--snowdrop,
crocus, even primrose--bloomed in the sunshine under the hot wall of the
factory. Moore plucked here and there a blossom and leaf, till he had
collected a little bouquet. He returned to the parlour, pilfered a
thread of silk from his sister's work-basket, tied the flowers, and laid
them on Caroline's desk.
"Now, good-morning."
"Thank you, Robert. It is pretty; it looks, as it lies there, like
sparkles of sunshine and blue sky. Good-morning."
He went to the door, stopped, opened his lips as if to speak, said
nothing, and moved on. He passed through the wicket, and mounted his
horse. In a second he had flung himself from his saddle again,
transferred the reins to Murgatroyd, and re-entered the cottage.
"I forgot my gloves," he said, appearing to take something from the
side-table; then, as an impromptu thought, he remarked, "You have no
binding engagement at home perhaps, Caroline?"
"I never have. Some children's socks, which Mrs. Ramsden has ordered, to
knit for the Jew's basket; but they will keep."
"Jew's basket be--sold! Never was utensil better named. Anything more
Jewish than it--its contents and their prices--cannot be conceived. But
I see something, a very tiny curl, at the corners of your lip, which
tells me that you know its merits as well as I do. Forget the Jew's
basket, then, and spend the day here as a change. Your uncle won't break
his heart at your absence?"
She smiled. "No."
"The old Cossack! I dare say not," muttered Moore.
"Then stay and dine with Hortense; she will be glad of your company. I
shall return in good time. We will have a little reading in the evening.
The moon rises at half-past eight, and I will walk up to the rectory
with you at nine. Do you agree?"
She nodded her head, and her eyes lit up.
Moore lingered yet two minutes. He bent over Caroline's desk and glanced
at her grammar, he fingered her pen, he lifted her bouquet and played
with it; his horse stamped impatient; Fred Murgatroyd hemmed and coughed
at the gate, as if he wondered what in the world his master was doing.
"Good-morning," again said Moore, and finally vanished.
Hortense, coming in ten minutes after, found, to her surprise, that
Caroline had not yet commenced her exercise.