Shirley
come in ower t' door-stone and told him."
"Sir," said Mr. Helstone, collecting all his dignity--"sir, the great
knowledge of man is to know himself, and the bourne whither his own
steps tend."
"Ay, ay. You'll recollect, Mr. Helstone, that Ignorance was carried away
from the very gates of heaven, borne through the air, and thrust in at a
door in the side of the hill which led down to hell."
"Nor have I forgotten, Mr. Yorke, that Vain-Confidence, not seeing the
way before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made by
the prince of the grounds, to catch vainglorious fools withal, and was
dashed to pieces with his fall."
"Now," interposed Mr. Moore, who had hitherto sat a silent but amused
spectator of this worldly combat, and whose indifference to the party
politics of the day, as well as to the gossip of the neighbourhood, made
him an impartial, if apathetic, judge of the merits of such an
encounter, "you have both sufficiently blackballed each other, and
proved how cordially you detest each other, and how wicked you think
each other. For my part, my hate is still running in such a strong
current against the fellows who have broken my frames that I have none
to spare for my private acquaintance, and still less for such a vague
thing as a sect or a government. But really, gentlemen, you both seem
very bad by your own showing--worse than ever I suspected you to be.--I
dare not stay all night with a rebel and blasphemer like you, Yorke; and
I hardly dare ride home with a cruel and tyrannical ecclesiastic like
Mr. Helstone."
"I am going, however, Mr. Moore," said the rector sternly. "Come with me
or not, as you please."
"Nay, he shall not have the choice; he _shall_ go with you," responded
Yorke. "It's midnight, and past; and I'll have nob'dy staying up i' my
house any longer. Ye mun all go."
He rang the bell.
"Deb," said he to the servant who answered it, "clear them folk out o'
t' kitchen, and lock t' doors, and be off to bed.--Here is your way,
gentlemen," he continued to his guests; and, lighting them through the
passage, he fairly put them out at his front door.
They met their party hurrying out pell-mell by the back way. Their
horses stood at the gate; they mounted, and rode off, Moore laughing at
their abrupt dismissal, Helstone deeply indignant thereat.
CHAPTER V.
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