Shirley
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.