Shirley
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