BRIARMAINS.
Messrs. Helstone and Sykes began to be extremely jocose and
congratulatory with Mr. Moore when he returned to them after dismissing
the deputation. He was so quiet, however, under their compliments upon
his firmness, etc., and wore a countenance so like a still, dark day,
equally beamless and breezeless, that the rector, after glancing
shrewdly into his eyes, buttoned up his felicitations with his coat, and
said to Sykes, whose senses were not acute enough to enable him to
discover unassisted where his presence and conversation were a nuisance,
"Come, sir; your road and mine lie partly together. Had we not better
bear each other company? We'll bid Moore good-morning, and leave him to
the happy fancies he seems disposed to indulge."
"And where is Sugden?" demanded Moore, looking up.
"Ah, ha!" cried Helstone. "I've not been quite idle while you were busy.
I've been helping you a little; I flatter myself not injudiciously. I
thought it better not to lose time; so, while you were parleying with
that down-looking gentleman--Farren I think his name is--I opened this
back window, shouted to Murgatroyd, who was in the stable, to bring Mr.
Sykes's gig round; then I smuggled Sugden and brother Moses--wooden leg
and all--through the aperture, and saw them mount the gig (always with
our good friend Sykes's permission, of course). Sugden took the
reins--he drives like Jehu--and in another quarter of an hour
Barraclough will be safe in Stilbro' jail."
"Very good; thank you," said Moore; "and good-morning, gentlemen," he
added, and so politely conducted them to the door, and saw them clear of
his premises.
He was a taciturn, serious man the rest of the day. He did not even
bandy a repartee with Joe Scott, who, for his part, said to his master
only just what was absolutely necessary to the progress of business,
but looked at him a good deal out of the corners of his eyes, frequently
came to poke the counting-house fire for him, and once, as he was
locking up for the day (the mill was then working short time, owing to
the slackness of trade), observed that it was a grand evening, and he
"could wish Mr. Moore to take a bit of a walk up th' Hollow. It would do
him good."
At this recommendation Mr. Moore burst into a short laugh, and after
demanding of Joe what all this solicitude meant, and whether he took him
for a woman or a child, seized the keys from his hand, and shoved him by
the shoulders out of his presence. He called him back, however, ere he
had reached the yard-gate.
"Joe, do you know those Farrens? They are not well off, I suppose?"
"They cannot be well off, sir, when they've not had work as a three
month. Ye'd see yoursel' 'at William's sorely changed--fair paired.
They've selled most o' t' stuff out o' th' house."
"He was not a bad workman?"
"Ye never had a better, sir, sin' ye began trade."
"And decent people--the whole family?"
"Niver dacenter. Th' wife's a raight cant body, and as clean--ye mught
eat your porridge off th' house floor. They're sorely comed down. I wish
William could get a job as gardener or summat i' that way; he
understands gardening weel. He once lived wi' a Scotchman that tached
him the mysteries o' that craft, as they say."
"Now, then, you can go, Joe. You need not stand there staring at me."
"Ye've no orders to give, sir?"
"None, but for you to take yourself off."
Which Joe did accordingly.
* * * * *
Spring evenings are often cold and raw, and though this had been a fine
day, warm even in the morning and meridian sunshine, the air chilled at
sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk a hoar frost was insidiously
stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud. It whitened the pavement
in front of Briarmains (Mr. Yorke's residence), and made silent havoc
among the tender plants in his garden, and on the mossy level of his
lawn. As to that great tree, strong-trunked and broad-armed, which
guarded the gable nearest the road, it seemed to defy a spring-night
frost to harm its still bare boughs; and so did the leafless grove of
walnut-trees rising tall behind the house.
In the dusk of the moonless if starry night, lights from windows shone
vividly. This was no dark or lonely scene, nor even a silent one.
Briarmains stood near the highway. It was rather an old place, and had
been built ere that highway was cut, and when a lane winding up through
fields was the only path conducting to it. Briarfield lay scarce a mile
off; its hum was heard, its glare distinctly seen. Briar Chapel, a
large, new, raw Wesleyan place of worship, rose but a hundred yards
distant; and as there was even now a prayer-meeting being held within
its walls, the illumination of its windows cast a bright reflection on
the road, while a hymn of a most extraordinary description, such as a
very Quaker might feel himself moved by the Spirit to dance to, roused
cheerily all the echoes of the vicinage. The words were distinctly
audible by snatches. Here is a quotation or two from different strains;
for the singers passed jauntily from hymn to hymn and from tune to tune,
with an ease and buoyancy all their own:--
"Oh! who can explain
This struggle for life,
This travail and pain,
This trembling and strife?
Plague, earthquake, and famine,
And tumult and war,
The wonderful coming
Of Jesus declare!
"For every fight
Is dreadful and loud:
The warrior's delight
Is slaughter and blood,
His foes overturning,
Till all shall expire:
And this is with burning,
And fuel, and fire!"
Here followed an interval of clamorous prayer, accompanied by fearful
groans. A shout of "I've found liberty!" "Doad o' Bill's has fun'
liberty!" rang from the chapel, and out all the assembly broke again.
"What a mercy is this!
What a heaven of bliss!
How unspeakably happy am I!
Gathered into the fold,
With Thy people enrolled,
With Thy people to live and to die!
"Oh, the goodness of God
In employing a clod
His tribute of glory to raise;
His standard to bear,
And with triumph declare
His unspeakable riches of grace!
"Oh, the fathomless love
That has deigned to approve
And prosper the work of my hands.
With my pastoral crook
I went over the brook,
And behold I am spread into bands!
"Who, I ask in amaze,
Hath begotten me these?
And inquire from what quarter they came.
My full heart it replies,
They are born from the skies,
And gives glory to God and the Lamb!"
The stanza which followed this, after another and longer interregnum of
shouts, yells, ejaculations, frantic cries, agonized groans, seemed to
cap the climax of noise and zeal.
"Sleeping on the brink of sin,
Tophet gaped to take us in;
Mercy to our rescue flew,
Broke the snare, and brought us through.
"Here, as in a lion's den,
Undevoured we still remain,
Pass secure the watery flood,
Hanging on the arm of God.
"Here----"
(Terrible, most distracting to the ear, was the strained shout in which
the last stanza was given.)
"Here we raise our voices higher,
Shout in the refiner's fire,
Clap our hands amidst the flame,
Glory give to Jesus' name!"
The roof of the chapel did _not_ fly off, which speaks volumes in praise
of its solid slating.
But if Briar Chapel seemed alive, so also did Briarmains, though
certainly the mansion appeared to enjoy a quieter phase of existence
than the temple. Some of its windows too were aglow; the lower casements
opened upon the lawn; curtains concealed the interior, and partly
obscured the ray of the candles which lit it, but they did not entirely
muffle the sound of voice and laughter. We are privileged to enter that
front door, and to penetrate to the domestic sanctum.
It is not the presence of company which makes Mr. Yorke's habitation
lively, for there is none within it save his own family, and they are
assembled in that farthest room to the right, the back parlour.
This is the usual sitting-room of an evening. Those windows would be
seen by daylight to be of brilliantly-stained glass, purple and amber
the predominant hues, glittering round a gravely-tinted medallion in the
centre of each, representing the suave head of William Shakespeare, and
the serene one of John Milton. Some Canadian views hung on the
walls--green forest and blue water scenery--and in the midst of them
blazes a night-eruption of Vesuvius; very ardently it glows, contrasted
with the cool foam and azure of cataracts, and the dusky depths of
woods.
The fire illuminating this room, reader, is such as, if you be a
southern, you do not often see burning on the hearth of a private
apartment. It is a clear, hot coal fire, heaped high in the ample
chimney. Mr. Yorke _will_ have such fires even in warm summer weather.
He sits beside it with a book in his hand, a little round stand at his
elbow supporting a candle; but he is not reading--he is watching his
children. Opposite to him sits his lady--a personage whom I might
describe minutely, but I feel no vocation to the task. I see her,
though, very plainly before me--a large woman of the gravest aspect,
care on her front and on her shoulders, but not overwhelming, inevitable
care, rather the sort of voluntary, exemplary cloud and burden people
ever carry who deem it their duty to be gloomy. Ah, well-a-day! Mrs.
Yorke had that notion, and grave as Saturn she was, morning, noon, and,
night; and hard things she thought if any unhappy wight--especially of
the female sex--who dared in her presence to show the light of a gay
heart on a sunny countenance. In her estimation, to be mirthful was to
be profane, to be cheerful was to be frivolous. She drew no
distinctions. Yet she was a very good wife, a very careful mother,
looked after her children unceasingly, was sincerely attached to her
husband; only the worst of it was, if she could have had her will, she
would not have permitted him to have any friend in the world beside
herself. All his relations were insupportable to her, and she kept them
at arm's length.
Mr. Yorke and she agreed perfectly well, yet he was naturally a social,
hospitable man, an advocate for family unity; and in his youth, as has
been said, he liked none but lively, cheerful women. Why he chose her,
how they contrived to suit each other, is a problem puzzling enough, but
which might soon be solved if one had time to go into the analysis of
the case. Suffice it here to say that Yorke had a shadowy side as well
as a sunny side to his character, and that his shadowy side found
sympathy and affinity in the whole of his wife's uniformly overcast
nature. For the rest, she was a strong-minded woman; never said a weak
or a trite thing; took stern, democratic views of society, and rather
cynical ones of human nature; considered herself perfect and safe, and
the rest of the world all wrong. Her main fault was a brooding, eternal,
immitigable suspicion of all men, things, creeds, and parties; this
suspicion was a mist before her eyes, a false guide in her path,
wherever she looked, wherever she turned.
It may be supposed that the children of such a pair were not likely to
turn out quite ordinary, commonplace beings; and they were not. You see
six of them, reader. The youngest is a baby on the mother's knee. It is
all her own yet, and that one she has not yet begun to doubt, suspect,
condemn; it derives its sustenance from her, it hangs on her, it clings
to her, it loves her above everything else in the world. She is sure of
that, because, as it lives by her, it cannot be otherwise, therefore she
loves it.
The two next are girls, Rose and Jessy; they are both now at their
father's knee; they seldom go near their mother, except when obliged to
do so. Rose, the elder, is twelve years old; she is like her father--the
most like him of the whole group--but it is a granite head copied in
ivory; all is softened in colour and line. Yorke himself has a harsh
face--his daughter's is not harsh, neither is it quite pretty; it is
simple, childlike in feature; the round cheeks bloom: as to the gray
eyes, they are otherwise than childlike; a serious soul lights them--a
young soul yet, but it will mature, if the body lives; and neither
father nor mother have a spirit to compare with it. Partaking of the
essence of each, it will one day be better than either--stronger, much
purer, more aspiring. Rose is a still, sometimes a stubborn, girl now.
Her mother wants to make of her such a woman as she is herself--a woman
of dark and dreary duties; and Rose has a mind full-set, thick-sown with
the germs of ideas her mother never knew. It is agony to her often to
have these ideas trampled on and repressed. She has never rebelled yet;
but if hard driven, she will rebel one day, and then it will be once for
all. Rose loves her father: her father does not rule her with a rod of
iron; he is good to her. He sometimes fears she will not live, so bright
are the sparks of intelligence which, at moments, flash from her glance
and gleam in her language. This idea makes him often sadly tender to
her.
He has no idea that little Jessy will die young, she is so gay and
chattering, arch, original even now; passionate when provoked, but most
affectionate if caressed; by turns gentle and rattling; exacting, yet
generous; fearless--of her mother, for instance, whose irrationally hard
and strict rule she has often defied--yet reliant on any who will help
her. Jessy, with her little piquant face, engaging prattle, and winning
ways, is made to be a pet, and her father's pet she accordingly is. It
is odd that the doll should resemble her mother feature by feature, as
Rose resembles her father, and yet the physiognomy--how different!
Mr. Yorke, if a magic mirror were now held before you, and if therein
were shown you your two daughters as they will be twenty years from this
night, what would you think? The magic mirror is here: you shall learn
their destinies--and first that of your little life, Jessy.
Do you know this place? No, you never saw it; but you recognize the
nature of these trees, this foliage--the cypress, the willow, the yew.
Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim
garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place--green sod and a gray
marble headstone. Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an April day;
much loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief life, shed
tears, she had frequent sorrows; she smiled between, gladdening whatever
saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in Rose's guardian arms, for
Rose had been her stay and defence through many trials. The dying and
the watching English girls were at that hour alone in a foreign
country, and the soil of that country gave Jessy a grave.
Now, behold Rose two years later. The crosses and garlands looked
strange, but the hills and woods of this landscape look still stranger.
This, indeed, is far from England; remote must be the shores which wear
that wild, luxuriant aspect. This is some virgin solitude. Unknown birds
flutter round the skirts of that forest; no European river this, on
whose banks Rose sits thinking. The little quiet Yorkshire girl is a
lonely emigrant in some region of the southern hemisphere. Will she ever
come back?
The three eldest of the family are all boys--Matthew, Mark, and Martin.
They are seated together in that corner, engaged in some game. Observe
their three heads: much alike at a first glance; at a second, different;
at a third, contrasted. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, red-cheeked are the
whole trio; small English features they all possess; all own a blended
resemblance to sire and mother; and yet a distinctive physiognomy, mark
of a separate character, belongs to each.
I shall not say much about Matthew, the first-born of the house, though
it is impossible to avoid gazing at him long, and conjecturing what
qualities that visage hides or indicates. He is no plain-looking boy:
that jet-black hair, white brow, high-coloured cheek, those quick, dark
eyes, are good points in their way. How is it that, look as long as you
will, there is but one object in the room, and that the most sinister,
to which Matthew's face seems to bear an affinity, and of which, ever
and anon, it reminds you strangely--the eruption of Vesuvius? Flame and
shadow seem the component parts of that lad's soul--no daylight in it,
and no sunshine, and no pure, cool moonbeam ever shone there. He has an
English frame, but, apparently, not an English mind--you would say, an
Italian stiletto in a sheath of British workmanship. He is crossed in
the game--look at his scowl. Mr. Yorke sees it, and what does he say? In
a low voice he pleads, "Mark and Martin, don't anger your brother." And
this is ever the tone adopted by both parents. Theoretically, they decry
partiality--no rights of primogeniture are to be allowed in that house;
but Matthew is never to be vexed, never to be opposed; they avert
provocation from him as assiduously as they would avert fire from a
barrel of gunpowder. "Concede, conciliate," is their motto wherever he
is concerned. The republicans are fast making a tyrant of their own
flesh and blood. This the younger scions know and feel, and at heart
they all rebel against the injustice. They cannot read their parents'
motives; they only see the difference of treatment. The dragon's teeth
are already sown amongst Mr. Yorke's young olive-branches; discord will
one day be the harvest.
Mark is a bonny-looking boy, the most regular-featured of the family. He
is exceedingly calm; his smile is shrewd; he can say the driest, most
cutting things in the quietest of tones. Despite his tranquillity, a
somewhat heavy brow speaks temper, and reminds you that the smoothest
waters are not always the safest. Besides, he is too still, unmoved,
phlegmatic, to be happy. Life will never have much joy in it for Mark.
By the time he is five-and-twenty he will wonder why people ever laugh,
and think all fools who seem merry. Poetry will not exist for Mark,
either in literature or in life; its best effusions will sound to him
mere rant and jargon. Enthusiasm will be his aversion and contempt. Mark
will have no youth; while he looks juvenile and blooming, he will be
already middle-aged in mind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but
his soul is already thirty.
Martin, the youngest of the three, owns another nature. Life may, or may
not, be brief for him, but it will certainly be brilliant. He will pass
through all its illusions, half believe in them, wholly enjoy them, then
outlive them. That boy is not handsome--not so handsome as either of his
brothers. He is plain; there is a husk upon him, a dry shell, and he
will wear it till he is near twenty, then he will put it off. About that
period he will make himself handsome. He will wear uncouth manners till
that age, perhaps homely garments; but the chrysalis will retain the
power of transfiguring itself into the butterfly, and such
transfiguration will, in due season, take place. For a space he will be
vain, probably a downright puppy, eager for pleasure and desirous of
admiration, athirst, too, for knowledge. He will want all that the world
can give him, both of enjoyment and lore; he will, perhaps, take deep
draughts at each fount. That thirst satisfied, what next? I know not.
Martin might be a remarkable man. Whether he will or not, the seer is
powerless to predict: on that subject there has been no open vision.
Take Mr. Yorke's family in the aggregate: there is as much mental power
in those six young heads, as much originality, as much activity and
vigour of brain, as--divided amongst half a dozen commonplace
broods--would give to each rather more than an average amount of sense
and capacity. Mr. Yorke knows this, and is proud of his race. Yorkshire
has such families here and there amongst her hills and wolds--peculiar,
racy, vigorous; of good blood and strong brain; turbulent somewhat in
the pride of their strength, and intractable in the force of their
native powers; wanting polish, wanting consideration, wanting docility,
but sound, spirited, and true-bred as the eagle on the cliff or the
steed in the steppe.
A low tap is heard at the parlour door; the boys have been making such a
noise over their game, and little Jessy, besides, has been singing so
sweet a Scotch song to her father--who delights in Scotch and Italian
songs, and has taught his musical little daughter some of the best--that
the ring at the outer door was not observed.
"Come in," says Mrs. Yorke, in that conscientiously constrained and
solemnized voice of hers, which ever modulates itself to a funereal
dreariness of tone, though the subject it is exercised upon be but to
give orders for the making of a pudding in the kitchen, to bid the boys
hang up their caps in the hall, or to call the girls to their
sewing--"come in!" And in came Robert Moore.
Moore's habitual gravity, as well as his abstemiousness (for the case of
spirit decanters is never ordered up when he pays an evening visit), has
so far recommended him to Mrs. Yorke that she has not yet made him the
subject of private animadversions with her husband; she has not yet
found out that he is hampered by a secret intrigue which prevents him
from marrying, or that he is a wolf in sheep's clothing--discoveries
which she made at an early date after marriage concerning most of her
husband's bachelor friends, and excluded them from her board
accordingly; which part of her conduct, indeed, might be said to have
its just and sensible as well as its harsh side.
"Well, is it you?" she says to Mr. Moore, as he comes up to her and
gives his hand. "What are you roving about at this time of night for?
You should be at home."
"Can a single man be said to have a home, madam?" he asks.
"Pooh!" says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional smoothness quite as
much as her husband does, and practises it as little, and whose plain
speaking on all occasions is carried to a point calculated, sometimes,
to awaken admiration, but oftener alarm--"pooh! you need not talk
nonsense to me; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, does not
your sister make a home for you?"
"Not she," joined in Mr. Yorke. "Hortense is an honest lass. But when I
was Robert's age I had five or six sisters, all as decent and proper as
she is; but you see, Hesther, for all that it did not hinder me from
looking out for a wife."
"And sorely he has repented marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked
occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it
should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and
ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his
punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who would burden
themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could
help it? It is not only bringing them into the world, though that is bad
enough, but they are all to feed, to clothe, to rear, to settle in life.
Young sir, when you feel tempted to marry, think of our four sons and
two daughters, and look twice before you leap."
"I am not tempted now, at any rate. I think these are not times for
marrying or giving in marriage."
A lugubrious sentiment of this sort was sure to obtain Mrs. Yorke's
approbation. She nodded and groaned acquiescence; but in a minute she
said, "I make little account of the wisdom of a Solomon of your age; it
will be upset by the first fancy that crosses you. Meantime, sit down,
sir. You can talk, I suppose, as well sitting as standing?"
This was her way of inviting her guest to take a chair. He had no sooner
obeyed her than little Jessy jumped from her father's knee and ran into
Mr. Moore's arms, which were very promptly held out to receive her.
"You talk of marrying him," said she to her mother, quite indignantly,
as she was lifted lightly to his knee, "and he is married now, or as
good. He promised that I should be his wife last summer, the first time
he saw me in my new white frock and blue sash. Didn't he, father?"
(These children were not accustomed to say papa and mamma; their mother
would allow no such "namby-pamby.")
"Ay, my little lassie, he promised; I'll bear witness. But make him say
it over again now, Jessy. Such as he are only false loons."
"He is not false. He is too bonny to be false," said Jessy, looking up
to her tall sweetheart with the fullest confidence in his faith.
"Bonny!" cried Mr. Yorke. "That's the reason that he should be, and
proof that he is, a scoundrel."
"But he looks too sorrowful to be false," here interposed a quiet voice
from behind the father's chair. "If he was always laughing, I should
think he forgot promises soon, but Mr. Moore never laughs."
"Your sentimental buck is the greatest cheat of all, Rose," remarked Mr.
Yorke.
"He's not sentimental," said Rose.
Mr. Moore turned to her with a little surprise, smiling at the same
time.
"How do you know I am not sentimental, Rose?"
"Because I heard a lady say you were not."
"Voilà, qui devient intéressant!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke, hitching his
chair nearer the fire. "A lady! That has quite a romantic twang. We must
guess who it is.--Rosy, whisper the name low to your father. Don't let
_him_ hear."
"Rose, don't be too forward to talk," here interrupted Mrs. Yorke, in
her usual kill-joy fashion, "nor Jessy either. It becomes all children,
especially girls, to be silent in the presence of their elders."
"Why have we tongues, then?" asked Jessy pertly; while Rose only looked
at her mother with an expression that seemed to say she should take that
maxim in and think it over at her leisure. After two minutes' grave
deliberation, she asked, "And why especially girls, mother?"
"Firstly, because I say so; and secondly, because discretion and reserve
are a girl's best wisdom."
"My dear madam," observed Moore, "what you say is excellent--it reminds
me, indeed, of my dear sister's observations; but really it is not
applicable to these little ones. Let Rose and Jessy talk to me freely,
or my chief pleasure in coming here is gone. I like their prattle; it
does me good."
"Does it not?" asked Jessy. "More good than if the rough lads came round
you.--You call them rough, mother, yourself."
"Yes, mignonne, a thousand times more good. I have rough lads enough
about me all day long, poulet."
"There are plenty of people," continued she, "who take notice of the
boys. All my uncles and aunts seem to think their nephews better than
their nieces, and when gentlemen come here to dine, it is always
Matthew, and Mark, and Martin that are talked to, and never Rose and me.
Mr. Moore is _our_ friend, and we'll keep him.--But mind, Rose, he's not
so much your friend as he is mine. He is my _particular acquaintance_;
remember that!" And she held up her small hand with an admonitory
gesture.
Rose was quite accustomed to be admonished by that small hand. Her will
daily bent itself to that of the impetuous little Jessy. She was guided,
overruled by Jessy in a thousand things. On all occasions of show and
pleasure Jessy took the lead, and Rose fell quietly into the background;
whereas, when the disagreeables of life--its work and privations--were
in question, Rose instinctively took upon her, in addition to her own
share, what she could of her sister's. Jessy had already settled it in
her mind that she, when she was old enough, was to be married; Rose, she
decided, must be an old maid, to live with her, look after her children,
keep her house. This state of things is not uncommon between two
sisters, where one is plain and the other pretty; but in this case, if
there _was_ a difference in external appearance, Rose had the advantage:
her face was more regular-featured than that of the piquant little
Jessy. Jessy, however, was destined to possess, along with sprightly
intelligence and vivacious feeling, the gift of fascination, the power
to charm when, where, and whom she would. Rose was to have a fine,
generous soul, a noble intellect profoundly cultivated, a heart as true
as steel, but the manner to attract was not to be hers.
"Now, Rose, tell me the name of this lady who denied that I was
sentimental," urged Mr. Moore.
Rose had no idea of tantalization, or she would have held him a while in
doubt. She answered briefly, "I can't. I don't know her name."
"Describe her to me. What was she like? Where did you see her?"
"When Jessy and I went to spend the day at Whinbury with Kate and Susan
Pearson, who were just come home from school, there was a party at Mrs.
Pearson's, and some grown-up ladies were sitting in a corner of the
drawing-room talking about you."
"Did you know none of them?"
"Hannah, and Harriet, and Dora, and Mary Sykes."
"Good. Were they abusing me, Rosy?"
"Some of them were. They called you a misanthrope. I remember the word.
I looked for it in the dictionary when I came home. It means a
man-hater."
"What besides?"
"Hannah Sykes said you were a solemn puppy."
"Better!" cried Mr. Yorke, laughing. "Oh, excellent! Hannah! that's the
one with the red hair--a fine girl, but half-witted."
"She has wit enough for me, it appears," said Moore. "A solemn puppy,
indeed! Well, Rose, go on."
"Miss Pearson said she believed there was a good deal of affectation
about you, and that with your dark hair and pale face you looked to her
like some sort of a sentimental noodle."
Again Mr. Yorke laughed. Mrs. Yorke even joined in this time. "You see
in what esteem you are held behind your back," said she; "yet I believe
_that_ Miss Pearson would like to catch you. She set her cap at you when
you first came into the country, old as she is."
"And who contradicted her, Rosy?" inquired Moore.
"A lady whom I don't know, because she never visits here, though I see
her every Sunday at church. She sits in the pew near the pulpit. I
generally look at her, instead of looking at my prayer-book, for she is
like a picture in our dining-room, that woman with the dove in her
hand--at least she has eyes like it, and a nose too, a straight nose,
that makes all her face look, somehow, what I call clear."
"And you don't know her!" exclaimed Jessy, in a tone of exceeding
surprise. "That's so like Rose. Mr. Moore, I often wonder in what sort
of a world my sister lives. I am sure she does not live all her time in
this. One is continually finding out that she is quite ignorant of some
little matter which everybody else knows. To think of her going solemnly
to church every Sunday, and looking all service-time at one particular
person, and never so much as asking that person's name. She means
Caroline Helstone, the rector's niece. I remember all about it. Miss
Helstone was quite angry with Anne Pearson. She said, 'Robert Moore is
neither affected nor sentimental; you mistake his character utterly, or
rather not one of you here knows anything about it.' Now, shall I tell
you what she is like? I can tell what people are like, and how they are
dressed, better than Rose can."
"Let us hear."
"She is nice; she is fair; she has a pretty white slender throat; she
has long curls, not stiff ones--they hang loose and soft, their colour
is brown but not dark; she speaks quietly, with a clear tone; she never
makes a bustle in moving; she often wears a gray silk dress; she is neat
all over--her gowns, and her shoes, and her gloves always fit her. She
is what I call a lady, and when I am as tall as she is, I mean to be
like her. Shall I suit you if I am? Will you really marry me?"
Moore stroked Jessy's hair. For a minute he seemed as if he would draw
her nearer to him, but instead he put her a little farther off.
"Oh! you won't have me? You push me away."
"Why, Jessy, you care nothing about me. You never come to see me now at
the Hollow."
"Because you don't ask me."
Hereupon Mr. Moore gave both the little girls an invitation to pay him a
visit next day, promising that, as he was going to Stilbro' in the
morning, he would buy them each a present, of what nature he would not
then declare, but they must come and see. Jessy was about to reply, when
one of the boys unexpectedly broke in,--
"I know that Miss Helstone you have all been palavering about. She's an
ugly girl. I hate her. I hate all womenites. I wonder what they were
made for."
"Martin!" said his father, for Martin it was. The lad only answered by
turning his cynical young face, half-arch, half-truculent, towards the
paternal chair. "Martin, my lad, thou'rt a swaggering whelp now; thou
wilt some day be an outrageous puppy. But stick to those sentiments of
thine. See, I'll write down the words now i' my pocket-book." (The
senior took out a morocco-covered book, and deliberately wrote therein.)
"Ten years hence, Martin, if thou and I be both alive at that day, I'll
remind thee of that speech."
"I'll say the same then. I mean always to hate women. They're such
dolls; they do nothing but dress themselves finely, and go swimming
about to be admired. I'll never marry. I'll be a bachelor."
"Stick to it! stick to it!--Hesther" (addressing his wife), "I was like
him when I was his age--a regular misogamist; and, behold! by the time I
was three-and-twenty--being then a tourist in France and Italy, and the
Lord knows where--I curled my hair every night before I went to bed, and
wore a ring i' my ear, and would have worn one i' my nose if it had been
the fashion, and all that I might make myself pleasing and charming to
the ladies. Martin will do the like."
"Will I? Never! I've more sense. What a guy you were, father! As to
dressing, I make this vow: I'll never dress more finely than as you see
me at present.--Mr. Moore, I'm clad in blue cloth from top to toe, and
they laugh at me, and call me sailor at the grammar-school. I laugh
louder at them, and say they are all magpies and parrots, with their
coats one colour, and their waistcoats another, and their trousers a
third. I'll always wear blue cloth, and nothing but blue cloth. It is
beneath a human being's dignity to dress himself in parti-coloured
garments."
"Ten years hence, Martin, no tailor's shop will have choice of colours
varied enough for thy exacting taste; no perfumer's stores essences
exquisite enough for thy fastidious senses."
Martin looked disdain, but vouchsafed no further reply. Meantime Mark,
who for some minutes had been rummaging amongst a pile of books on a
side-table, took the word. He spoke in a peculiarly slow, quiet voice,
and with an expression of still irony in his face not easy to describe.
"Mr. Moore," said he, "you think perhaps it was a compliment on Miss
Caroline Helstone's part to say you were not sentimental. I thought you
appeared confused when my sisters told you the words, as if you felt
flattered. You turned red, just like a certain vain little lad at our
school, who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in the
class. For your benefit, Mr. Moore, I've been looking up the word
'sentimental' in the dictionary, and I find it to mean 'tinctured with
sentiment.' On examining further, 'sentiment' is explained to be
thought, idea, notion. A sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts,
ideas, notions; an unsentimental man is one destitute of thought, idea,
or notion."
And Mark stopped. He did not smile, he did not look round for
admiration. He had said his say, and was silent.
"Ma foi! mon ami," observed Mr. Moore to Yorke, "ce sont vraiment des
enfants terribles, que les vôtres!"
Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark's speech, replied to
him, "There are different kinds of thoughts, ideas, and notions," said
she, "good and bad. Sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone
must have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. Moore; she
was defending him."
"That's my kind little advocate!" said Moore, taking Rose's hand.
"She was defending him," repeated Rose, "as I should have done had I
been in her place, for the other ladies seemed to speak spitefully."
"Ladies always do speak spitefully," observed Martin. "It is the nature
of womenites to be spiteful."
Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips. "What a fool Martin
is, to be always gabbling about what he does not understand!"
"It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever subject I
like," responded Martin.
"You use it, or rather abuse it, to such an extent," rejoined the elder
brother, "that you prove you ought to have been a slave."
"A slave! a slave! That to a Yorke, and from a Yorke! This fellow," he
added, standing up at the table, and pointing across it to
Matthew--"this fellow forgets, what every cottier in Briarfield knows,
that all born of our house have that arched instep under which water can
flow--proof that there has not been a slave of the blood for three
hundred years."
"Mountebank!" said Matthew.
"Lads, be silent!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke.--"Martin, you are a
mischief-maker. There would have been no disturbance but for you."
"Indeed! Is that correct? Did I begin, or did Matthew? Had I spoken to
him when he accused me of gabbling like a fool?"
"A presumptuous fool!" repeated Matthew.
Here Mrs. Yorke commenced rocking herself--rather a portentous movement
with her, as it was occasionally followed, especially when Matthew was
worsted in a conflict, by a fit of hysterics.
"I don't see why I should bear insolence from Matthew Yorke, or what
right he has to use bad language to me," observed Martin.
"He has no right, my lad; but forgive your brother until
seventy-and-seven times," said Mr. Yorke soothingly.
"Always alike, and theory and practice always adverse!" murmured Martin
as he turned to leave the room.
"Where art thou going, my son?" asked the father.
"Somewhere where I shall be safe from insult, if in this house I can
find any such place."
Matthew laughed very insolently. Martin threw a strange look at him, and
trembled through all his slight lad's frame; but he restrained himself.
"I suppose there is no objection to my withdrawing?" he inquired.
"No. Go, my lad; but remember not to bear malice."
Martin went, and Matthew sent another insolent laugh after him. Rose,
lifting her fair head from Moore's shoulder, against which, for a
moment, it had been resting, said, as she directed a steady gaze to
Matthew, "Martin is grieved, and you are glad; but I would rather be
Martin than you. I dislike your nature."
Here Mr. Moore, by way of averting, or at least escaping, a scene--which
a sob from Mrs. Yorke warned him was likely to come on--rose, and
putting Jessy off his knee, he kissed her and Rose, reminding them, at
the same time, to be sure and come to the Hollow in good time to-morrow
afternoon; then, having taken leave of his hostess, he said to Mr.
Yorke, "May I speak a word with you?" and was followed by him from the
room. Their brief conference took place in the hall.
"Have you employment for a good workman?" asked Moore.
"A nonsense question in these times, when you know that every master has
many good workmen to whom he cannot give full employment."
"You must oblige me by taking on this man, if possible."
"My lad, I can take on no more hands to oblige all England."
"It does not signify; I must find him a place somewhere."
"Who is he?"
"William Farren."
"I know William. A right-down honest man is William."
"He has been out of work three months. He has a large family. We are
sure they cannot live without wages. He was one of the deputation of
cloth-dressers who came to me this morning to complain and threaten.
William did not threaten. He only asked me to give them rather more
time--to make my changes more slowly. You know I cannot do that:
straitened on all sides as I am, I have nothing for it but to push on. I
thought it would be idle to palaver long with them. I sent them away,
after arresting a rascal amongst them, whom I hope to transport--a
fellow who preaches at the chapel yonder sometimes."
"Not Moses Barraclough?"
"Yes."
"Ah! you've arrested him? Good! Then out of a scoundrel you're going to
make a martyr. You've done a wise thing."
"I've done a right thing. Well, the short and the long of it is, I'm
determined to get Farren a place, and I reckon on you to give him one."
"This is cool, however!" exclaimed Mr. Yorke. "What right have you to
reckon on me to provide for your dismissed workmen? What do I know about
your Farrens and your Williams? I've heard he's an honest man, but am I
to support all the honest men in Yorkshire? You may say that would be no
great charge to undertake; but great or little, I'll none of it."
"Come, Mr. Yorke, what can you find for him to do?"
"_I_ find! You'll make me use language I'm not accustomed to use. I wish
you would go home. Here is the door; set off."
Moore sat down on one of the hall chairs.
"You can't give him work in your mill--good; but you have land. Find him
some occupation on your land, Mr. Yorke."
"Bob, I thought you cared nothing about our _lourdauds de paysans_. I
don't understand this change."
"I do. The fellow spoke to me nothing but truth and sense. I answered
him just as roughly as I did the rest, who jabbered mere gibberish. I
couldn't make distinctions there and then. His appearance told what he
had gone through lately clearer than his words; but where is the use of
explaining? Let him have work."
"Let him have it yourself. If you are so very much in earnest, strain a
point."
"If there was a point left in my affairs to strain, I would strain it
till it cracked again; but I received letters this morning which showed
me pretty clearly where I stand, and it is not far off the end of the
plank. My foreign market, at any rate, is gorged. If there is no
change--if there dawns no prospect of peace--if the Orders in Council
are not, at least, suspended, so as to open our way in the West--I do
not know where I am to turn. I see no more light than if I were sealed
in a rock, so that for me to pretend to offer a man a livelihood would
be to do a dishonest thing."
"Come, let us take a turn on the front. It is a starlight night," said
Mr. Yorke.
They passed out, closing the front door after them, and side by side
paced the frost-white pavement to and fro.
"Settle about Farren at once," urged Mr. Moore. "You have large
fruit-gardens at Yorke Mills. He is a good gardener. Give him work
there."
"Well, so be it. I'll send for him to-morrow, and we'll see. And now, my
lad, you're concerned about the condition of your affairs?"
"Yes, a second failure--which I may delay, but which, at this moment, I
see no way finally to avert--would blight the name of Moore completely;
and you are aware I had fine intentions of paying off every debt and
re-establishing the old firm on its former basis."
"You want capital--that's all you want."
"Yes; but you might as well say that breath is all a dead man wants to
live."
"I know--I know capital is not to be had for the asking; and if you were
a married man, and had a family, like me, I should think your case
pretty nigh desperate; but the young and unencumbered have chances
peculiar to themselves. I hear gossip now and then about your being on
the eve of marriage with this miss and that; but I suppose it is none of
it true?"
"You may well suppose that. I think I am not in a position to be
dreaming of marriage. Marriage! I cannot bear the word; it sounds so
silly and utopian. I have settled it decidedly that marriage and love
are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and
have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations--the last
and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of
the slough of their utter poverty."
"I should not think so if I were circumstanced as you are. I should
think I could very likely get a wife with a few thousands, who would
suit both me and my affairs."
"I wonder where?"
"Would you try if you had a chance?"
"I don't know. It depends on--in short, it depends on many things."
"Would you take an old woman?"
"I'd rather break stones on the road."
"So would I. Would you take an ugly one?"
"Bah! I hate ugliness and delight in beauty. My eyes and heart, Yorke,
take pleasure in a sweet, young, fair face, as they are repelled by a
grim, rugged, meagre one. Soft delicate lines and hues please, harsh
ones prejudice me. I won't have an ugly wife."
"Not if she were rich?"
"Not if she were dressed in gems. I could not love--I could not fancy--I
could not endure her. My taste must have satisfaction, or disgust would
break out in despotism, or worse--freeze to utter iciness."
"What! Bob, if you married an honest, good-natured, and wealthy lass,
though a little hard-favoured, couldn't you put up with the high
cheek-bones, the rather wide mouth, and reddish hair?"
"I'll never try, I tell you. Grace at least I _will_ have, and youth and
symmetry--yes, and what I call beauty."
"And poverty, and a nursery full of bairns you can neither clothe nor
feed, and very soon an anxious, faded mother; and then bankruptcy,
discredit--a life-long struggle."
"Let me alone, Yorke."
"If you are romantic, Robert, and especially if you are already in love,
it is of no use talking."
"I am not romantic. I am stripped of romance as bare as the white
tenters in that field are of cloth."
"Always use such figures of speech, lad; I can understand them. And
there is no love affair to disturb your judgment?"
"I thought I had said enough on that subject before. Love for me?
Stuff!"
"Well, then, if you are sound both in heart and head, there is no
reason why you should not profit by a good chance if it offers;
therefore, wait and see."
"You are quite oracular, Yorke."
"I think I am a bit i' that line. I promise ye naught and I advise ye
naught; but I bid ye keep your heart up, and be guided by
circumstances."
"My namesake the physician's almanac could not speak more guardedly."
"In the meantime, I care naught about ye, Robert Moore: ye are nothing
akin to me or mine, and whether ye lose or find a fortune it maks no
difference to me. Go home, now. It has stricken ten. Miss Hortense will
be wondering where ye are."