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Shirley

by Charlotte Brontë · English · Gutenberg #30486 · 1,247,866 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Shirley

Author: Charlotte Brontë


        
Release date: November 16, 2009 [eBook #30486]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30486

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHIRLEY ***

[Illustration: Moore placed his hand on his cousin's shoulder, stooped,
and left a kiss on her forehead.]




SHIRLEY

BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË

T. Nelson & Sons




CONTENTS.


         I. LEVITICAL                                                  3

        II. THE WAGONS                                                16

       III. MR. YORKE                                                 31

        IV. MR. YORKE (CONTINUED)                                     40

         V. HOLLOW'S COTTAGE                                          51

        VI. CORIOLANUS                                                66

       VII. THE CURATES AT TEA                                        85

      VIII. NOAH AND MOSES                                           110

        IX. BRIARMAINS                                               125

         X. OLD MAIDS                                                147

        XI. FIELDHEAD                                                164

       XII. SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE                                     181

      XIII. FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS                       201

       XIV. SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS                       226

        XV. MR. DONNE'S EXODUS                                       239

       XVI. WHITSUNTIDE                                              253

      XVII. THE SCHOOL FEAST                                         264

     XVIII. WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW
            PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED                            279

       XIX. A SUMMER NIGHT                                           290

        XX. TO-MORROW                                                306

       XXI. MRS. PRYOR                                               319

      XXII. TWO LIVES                                                336

     XXIII. AN EVENING OUT                                           346

      XXIV. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH                        365

       XXV. THE WEST WIND BLOWS                                      384

      XXVI. OLD COPY-BOOKS                                           392

     XXVII. THE FIRST BLUESTOCKING                                   410

    XXVIII. PHŒBE                                                   433

      XXIX. LOUIS MOORE                                              453

       XXX. RUSHEDGE--A CONFESSIONAL                                 461

      XXXI. UNCLE AND NIECE                                          475

     XXXII. THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH                         491

    XXXIII. MARTIN'S TACTICS                                         502

     XXXIV. CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION--REMARKABLE INSTANCE
            OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELIGIOUS
            DUTIES                                                   513

      XXXV. WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT MUCH         521

     XXXVI. WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM                                534

    XXXVII. THE WINDING-UP                                           555




SHIRLEY.


CHAPTER I.

LEVITICAL.


Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of
England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more
of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing
a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we
are going back to the beginning of this century: late years--present
years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it
in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.

If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is
preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you
anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion,
and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a
lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you;
something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with
the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It
is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the
exciting, perhaps towards the middle and close of the meal, but it is
resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a
Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in
Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall
be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.

Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the
north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent
rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral
Aid--no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to
worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to
pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present
successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the
Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or
undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You
could not have guessed by looking at any one of them that the
Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a
preordained, specially-sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or
St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long
night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to
exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its
old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like
raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk.

Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious
plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain favoured district in
the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron blossoming
within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into
this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the
little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to
you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield;
Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being
the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne has kindly
invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party,
see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present,
however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.

These gentlemen are in the bloom of youth; they possess all the activity
of that interesting age--an activity which their moping old vicars would
fain turn into the channel of their pastoral duties, often expressing a
wish to see it expended in a diligent superintendence of the schools,
and in frequent visits to the sick of their respective parishes. But the
youthful Levites feel this to be dull work; they prefer lavishing their
energies on a course of proceeding which, though to other eyes it appear
more heavy with _ennui_, more cursed with monotony, than the toil of
the weaver at his loom, seems to yield them an unfailing supply of
enjoyment and occupation.

I allude to a rushing backwards and forwards, amongst themselves, to and
from their respective lodgings--not a round, but a triangle of visits,
which they keep up all the year through, in winter, spring, summer, and
autumn. Season and weather make no difference; with unintelligible zeal
they dare snow and hail, wind and rain, mire and dust, to go and dine,
or drink tea, or sup with each other. What attracts them it would be
difficult to say. It is not friendship, for whenever they meet they
quarrel. It is not religion--the thing is never named amongst them;
theology they may discuss occasionally, but piety--never. It is not the
love of eating and drinking: each might have as good a joint and
pudding, tea as potent, and toast as succulent, at his own lodgings, as
is served to him at his brother's. Mrs. Gale, Mrs. Hogg, and Mrs.
Whipp--their respective landladies--affirm that "it is just for naught
else but to give folk trouble." By "folk" the good ladies of course mean
themselves, for indeed they are kept in a continual "fry" by this system
of mutual invasion.

Mr. Donne and his guests, as I have said, are at dinner; Mrs. Gale waits
on them, but a spark of the hot kitchen fire is in her eye. She
considers that the privilege of inviting a friend to a meal
occasionally, without additional charge (a privilege included in the
terms on which she lets her lodgings), has been quite sufficiently
exercised of late. The present week is yet but at Thursday, and on
Monday Mr. Malone, the curate of Briarfield, came to breakfast and
stayed dinner; on Tuesday Mr. Malone and Mr. Sweeting of Nunnely came to
tea, remained to supper, occupied the spare bed, and favoured her with
their company to breakfast on Wednesday morning; now, on Thursday, they
are both here at dinner, and she is almost certain they will stay all
night. "C'en est trop," she would say, if she could speak French.

Mr. Sweeting is mincing the slice of roast beef on his plate, and
complaining that it is very tough; Mr. Donne says the beer is flat. Ay,
that is the worst of it: if they would only be civil Mrs. Gale wouldn't
mind it so much, if they would only seem satisfied with what they get
she wouldn't care; but "these young parsons is so high and so scornful,
they set everybody beneath their 'fit.' They treat her with less than
civility, just because she doesn't keep a servant, but does the work of
the house herself, as her mother did afore her; then they are always
speaking against Yorkshire ways and Yorkshire folk," and by that very
token Mrs. Gale does not believe one of them to be a real gentleman, or
come of gentle kin. "The old parsons is worth the whole lump of college
lads; they know what belongs to good manners, and is kind to high and
low."

"More bread!" cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, though prolonged but to
utter two syllables, proclaims him at once a native of the land of
shamrocks and potatoes. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of
the other two; but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built
personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely
national--not the Milesian face, not Daniel O'Connell's style, but the
high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a
certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look,
better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves than to the landlord
of a free peasantry. Mr. Malone's father termed himself a gentleman: he
was poor and in debt, and besottedly arrogant; and his son was like him.

Mrs. Gale offered the loaf.

"Cut it, woman," said her guest; and the "woman" cut it accordingly. Had
she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the parson also; her
Yorkshire soul revolted absolutely from his manner of command.

The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was "tough," they
ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of
the "flat beer," while a dish of Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of
vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too,
received distinguished marks of their attention; and a "spice-cake,"
which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no
more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's
son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion
thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted
up his voice and wept sore.

The curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine, a liquor of
unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much
rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep
the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on
philosophy, nor on literature--these topics were now, as ever, totally
without interest for them--not even on theology, practical or doctrinal,
but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which
seemed empty as bubbles to all save themselves. Mr. Malone, who
contrived to secure two glasses of wine, when his brethren contented
themselves with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion; that
is, he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring tone, and
laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy.

Each of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone had a stock of
jokes at their service, which he was accustomed to serve out regularly
on convivial occasions like the present, seldom varying his wit; for
which, indeed, there was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider
himself monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought. Mr.
Donne he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to
his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate
surtout which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained
or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney
phrases and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own property, and
certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they
communicated to his style.

Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere
boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on
his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a
seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as "the
ladies' pet;" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr.
Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough
now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose
anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.

The victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a
stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his
otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference
of a light, easy disposition, which never professed to have any dignity
to maintain.

When Malone's raillery became rather too offensive, which it soon did,
they joined, in an attempt to turn the tables on him by asking him how
many boys had shouted "Irish Peter!" after him as he came along the road
that day (Malone's name was Peter--the Rev. Peter Augustus Malone);
requesting to be informed whether it was the mode in Ireland for
clergymen to carry loaded pistols in their pockets, and a shillelah in
their hands, when they made pastoral visits; inquiring the signification
of such words as vele, firrum, hellum, storrum (so Mr. Malone invariably
pronounced veil, firm, helm, storm), and employing such other methods of
retaliation as the innate refinement of their minds suggested.

This, of course, would not do. Malone, being neither good-natured nor
phlegmatic, was presently in a towering passion. He vociferated,
gesticulated; Donne and Sweeting laughed. He reviled them as Saxons and
snobs at the very top pitch of his high Celtic voice; they taunted him
with being the native of a conquered land. He menaced rebellion in the
name of his "counthry," vented bitter hatred against English rule; they
spoke of rags, beggary, and pestilence. The little parlour was in an
uproar; you would have thought a duel must follow such virulent abuse;
it seemed a wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Gale did not take alarm at the
noise, and send for a constable to keep the peace. But they were
accustomed to such demonstrations; they well knew that the curates never
dined or took tea together without a little exercise of the sort, and
were quite easy as to consequences, knowing that these clerical quarrels
were as harmless as they were noisy, that they resulted in nothing, and
that, on whatever terms the curates might part to-night, they would be
sure to meet the best friends in the world to-morrow morning.

As the worthy pair were sitting by their kitchen fire, listening to the
repeated and sonorous contact of Malone's fist with the mahogany plane
of the parlour table, and to the consequent start and jingle of
decanters and glasses following each assault, to the mocking laughter of
the allied English disputants, and the stuttering declamation of the
isolated Hibernian--as they thus sat, a foot was heard on the outer
door-step, and the knocker quivered to a sharp appeal.

Mr. Gale went and opened.

"Whom have you upstairs in the parlour?" asked a voice--a rather
remarkable voice, nasal in tone, abrupt in utterance.

"O Mr. Helstone, is it you, sir? I could hardly see you for the
darkness; it is so soon dark now. Will you walk in, sir?"

"I want to know first whether it is worth my while walking in. Whom have
you upstairs?"

"The curates, sir."

"What! all of them?"

"Yes, sir."

"Been dining here?"

"Yes, sir."

"That will do."

With these words a person entered--a middle-aged man, in black. He
walked straight across the kitchen to an inner door, opened it, inclined
his head forward, and stood listening. There was something to listen to,
for the noise above was just then louder than ever.

"Hey!" he ejaculated to himself; then turning to Mr. Gale--"Have you
often this sort of work?"

Mr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent to the clergy.

"They're young, you know, sir--they're young," said he deprecatingly.

"Young! They want caning. Bad boys--bad boys! And if you were a
Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good Churchman, they'd do the
like--they'd expose themselves; but I'll----"

By way of finish to this sentence, he passed through the inner door,
drew it after him, and mounted the stair. Again he listened a few
minutes when he arrived at the upper room. Making entrance without
warning, he stood before the curates.

And they were silent; they were transfixed; and so was the invader.
He--a personage short of stature, but straight of port, and bearing on
broad shoulders a hawk's head, beak, and eye, the whole surmounted by a
Rehoboam, or shovel hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to
lift or remove before the presence in which he then stood--_he_ folded
his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends, if friends they
were, much at his leisure.

"What!" he began, delivering his words in a voice no longer nasal, but
deep--more than deep--a voice made purposely hollow and
cavernous--"what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the
cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the
whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action:
Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in
Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in
Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews
and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; every one of these must have had
its representative in this room two minutes since."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone," began Mr. Donne; "take a seat, pray,
sir. Have a glass of wine?"

His civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat
proceeded,--

"What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the
chapter, and book, and Testament--gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the
city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the
confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. _You_,
apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish
masons--neither more nor less!"

"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a
glass of wine after a friendly dinner--settling the Dissenters!"

"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the
Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles.
You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise--you three
alone--as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers
are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the
thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is.--It is yours, Malone."

"Mine, sir?"

"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be
quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had
left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here.
The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain
district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace
on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred
institution of which they are merely the humble appendages."

There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman's manner of
rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity
most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a
ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat,
black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his
subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith.
Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed
their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the
features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.

"I met Supplehough," he continued, "plodding through the mud this wet
night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I
heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a
possessed bull; and I find _you_, gentlemen, tarrying over your
half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No
wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a
day--which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and
hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers
and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden
brim of his tub; as little wonder that _you_, when you are left to
yourselves, without your rectors--myself, and Hall, and Boultby--to back
you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare
walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the
organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see
Malone.--I have an errand unto thee, O captain!"

"What is it?" inquired Malone discontentedly. "There can be no funeral
to take at this time of day."

"Have you any arms about you?"

"Arms, sir?--yes, and legs." And he advanced the mighty members.

"Bah! weapons I mean."

"I have the pistols you gave me yourself. I never part with them. I lay
them ready cocked on a chair by my bedside at night. I have my
blackthorn."

"Very good. Will you go to Hollow's Mill?"

"What is stirring at Hollow's Mill?"

"Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has
sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro'; there are only two women
left about the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his
well-wishers to pay him a visit, if they knew how straight the path was
made before them."

"I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don't care for him."

"Soh! Malone, you are afraid."

"You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance
of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never
pretend to understand; and for the sake of his sweet company only I
would not stir a step."

"But there _is_ a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take
place--of which, indeed, I see no signs--yet it is unlikely this night
will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moore has resolved to have new
machinery, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from
Stilbro' this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men are
gone to fetch them."

"They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir."

"Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must
have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I
call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters
unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the
hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were
the darling of the neighbourhood, or--being, as he is, its
detestation--bore a 'charmed life,' as they say in tale-books. He takes
no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage--shot,
one in his own house and the other on the moor."

"But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too," interposed
Mr. Sweeting; "and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other
day."

"What did you hear, Davy?"

"You know Mike Hartley, sir?"

"The Antinomian weaver? Yes."

"When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally
winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his
mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his
doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting
in outer darkness."

"Well, that has nothing to do with Moore."

"Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller,
sir."

"I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide.
Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going
over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, 'the revenger of blood has
obtained satisfaction.' The fellow exults strangely in murder done on
crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already
heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is
that what you allude to, Sweeting?"

"You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal
hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after
him, but he has a _hankering_ that Moore should be made an example of.
He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with
the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore
should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike
Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?" inquired Sweeting simply.

"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or
perhaps a little of both."

"He talks of seeing visions, sir."

"Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was
going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to
him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon."

"Tell it, sir. What was it?" urged Sweeting.

"Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Malone, you
see, has none. Neither murders nor visions interest him. See what a big
vacant Saph he looks at this moment."

"Saph! Who was Saph, sir?"

"I thought you would not know. You may find it out. It is biblical. I
know nothing more of him than his name and race; but from a boy upwards
I have always attached a personality to Saph. Depend on it he was
honest, heavy, and luckless. He met his end at Gob by the hand of
Sibbechai."

"But the vision, sir?"

"Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and Malone yawning,
so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out of work, like many others,
unfortunately. Mr. Grame, Sir Philip Nunnely's steward, gave him a job
about the priory. According to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather
late in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he thought
was a band at a distance--bugles, fifes, and the sound of a trumpet; it
came from the forest, and he wondered that there should be music there.
He looked up. All amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red, like
poppies, or white, like may-blossom. The wood was full of them; they
poured out and filled the park. He then perceived they were
soldiers--thousands and tens of thousands; but they made no more noise
than a swarm of midges on a summer evening. They formed in order, he
affirmed, and marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He
followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and
distant. On the common he watched them go through a number of
evolutions. A man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and directed
them. They extended, he declared, over fifty acres. They were in sight
half an hour; then they marched away quite silently. The whole time he
heard neither voice nor tread--nothing but the faint music playing a
solemn march."

"Where did they go, sir?"

"Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them. They seemed passing Fieldhead,
when a column of smoke, such as might be vomited by a park of artillery,
spread noiseless over the fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he
said, blue and dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again
for the soldiers, but they were vanished; he saw them no more. Mike,
like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed the vision but gave the
interpretation thereof. It signifies, he intimated, bloodshed and civil
conflict."

"Do you credit it, sir?" asked Sweeting.

"Do you, Davy?--But come, Malone; why are you not off?"

"I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore yourself. You
like this kind of thing."

"So I should have done, had I not unfortunately happened to engage
Boultby to sup with me on his way home from the Bible Society meeting at
Nunnely. I promised to send you as my substitute; for which, by-the-bye,
he did not thank me. He would much rather have had me than you, Peter.
Should there be any real need of help I shall join you. The mill-bell
will give warning. Meantime, go--unless (turning suddenly to Messrs.
Sweeting and Donne)--unless Davy Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers
going.--What do you say, gentlemen? The commission is an honourable one,
not without the seasoning of a little real peril; for the country is in
a queer state, as you all know, and Moore and his mill and his machinery
are held in sufficient odium. There are chivalric sentiments, there is
high-beating courage, under those waistcoats of yours, I doubt not.
Perhaps I am too partial to my favourite Peter. Little David shall be
the champion, or spotless Joseph.--Malone, you are but a great
floundering Saul after all, good only to lend your armour. Out with your
firearms; fetch your shillelah. It is there--in the corner."

With a significant grin Malone produced his pistols, offering one to
each of his brethren. They were not readily seized on. With graceful
modesty each gentleman retired a step from the presented weapon.

"I never touch them. I never did touch anything of the kind," said Mr.
Donne.

"I am almost a stranger to Mr. Moore," murmured Sweeting.

"If you never touched a pistol, try the feel of it now, great satrap of
Egypt. As to the little minstrel, he probably prefers encountering the
Philistines with no other weapon than his flute.--Get their hats, Peter.
They'll both of 'em go."

"No, sir; no, Mr. Helstone. My mother wouldn't like it," pleaded
Sweeting.

"And I make it a rule never to get mixed up in affairs of the kind,"
observed Donne.

Helstone smiled sardonically; Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He then
replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, and saying that "he never
felt more in tune for a shindy in his life, and that he wished a score
of greasy cloth-dressers might beat up Moore's quarters that night," he
made his exit, clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the
house shake with the bang of the front-door behind him.




CHAPTER II.

THE WAGONS.


The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in gray
rain-clouds--gray they would have been by day; by night they looked
sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her
changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles
on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of
earth and heaven--never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, making
them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding
their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He
did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared--a
muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the
furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the
horizon--with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not
trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were
gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which
those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser
element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his
way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the
back of his head, as his Irish manner was. "Tramp, tramp," he went along
the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an
accommodation; "splash, splash," through the mire-filled cart ruts,
where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain
landmarks--the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of
Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire
through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table,
and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate
from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water.
In a strange place he would instantly have realized the dream; but the
company assembled in that kitchen were Mr. Helstone's own parishioners;
they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.

The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to
Hollow's Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across
fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct
course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building
here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could
see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick,
lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark;
not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; the rain
running from the eaves, and the rather wild but very low whistle of the
wind round the chimneys and through the boughs were the sole sounds in
its neighbourhood.

This building passed, the fields, hitherto flat, declined in a rapid
descent. Evidently a vale lay below, through which you could hear the
water run. One light glimmered in the depth. For that beacon Malone
steered.

He came to a little white house--you could see it was white even through
this dense darkness--and knocked at the door. A fresh-faced servant
opened it. By the candle she held was revealed a narrow passage,
terminating in a narrow stair. Two doors covered with crimson baize, a
strip of crimson carpet down the steps, contrasted with light-coloured
walls and white floor, made the little interior look clean and fresh.

"Mr. Moore is at home, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir, but he is not in."

"Not in! Where is he then?"

"At the mill--in the counting-house."

Here one of the crimson doors opened.

"Are the wagons come, Sarah?" asked a female voice, and a female head at
the same time was apparent. It might not be the head of a
goddess--indeed a screw of curl-paper on each side the temples quite
forbade that supposition--but neither was it the head of a Gorgon; yet
Malone seemed to take it in the latter light. Big as he was, he shrank
bashfully back into the rain at the view thereof, and saying, "I'll go
to him," hurried in seeming trepidation down a short lane, across an
obscure yard, towards a huge black mill.

The work-hours were over; the "hands" were gone. The machinery was at
rest, the mill shut up. Malone walked round it. Somewhere in its great
sooty flank he found another chink of light; he knocked at another
door, using for the purpose the thick end of his shillelah, with which
he beat a rousing tattoo. A key turned; the door unclosed.

"Is it Joe Scott? What news of the wagons, Joe?"

"No; it's myself. Mr. Helstone would send me."

"Oh! Mr. Malone." The voice in uttering this name had the slightest
possible cadence of disappointment. After a moment's pause it continued,
politely but a little formally,--

"I beg you will come in, Mr. Malone. I regret extremely Mr. Helstone
should have thought it necessary to trouble you so far. There was no
necessity--I told him so--and on such a night; but walk forwards."

Through a dark apartment, of aspect undistinguishable, Malone followed
the speaker into a light and bright room within--very light and bright
indeed it seemed to eyes which, for the last hour, had been striving to
penetrate the double darkness of night and fog; but except for its
excellent fire, and for a lamp of elegant design and vivid lustre
burning on a table, it was a very plain place. The boarded floor was
carpetless; the three or four stiff-backed, green-painted chairs seemed
once to have furnished the kitchen of some farm-house; a desk of strong,
solid formation, the table aforesaid, and some framed sheets on the
stone-coloured walls, bearing plans for building, for gardening, designs
of machinery, etc., completed the furniture of the place.

Plain as it was, it seemed to satisfy Malone, who, when he had removed
and hung up his wet surtout and hat, drew one of the rheumatic-looking
chairs to the hearth, and set his knees almost within the bars of the
red grate.

"Comfortable quarters you have here, Mr. Moore; and all snug to
yourself."

"Yes, but my sister would be glad to see you, if you would prefer
stepping into the house."

"Oh no! The ladies are best alone, I never was a lady's man. You don't
mistake me for my friend Sweeting, do you, Mr. Moore?"

"Sweeting! Which of them is that? The gentleman in the chocolate
overcoat, or the little gentleman?"

"The little one--he of Nunnely; the cavalier of the Misses Sykes, with
the whole six of whom he is in love, ha! ha!"

"Better be generally in love with all than specially with one, I should
think, in that quarter."

"But he is specially in love with one besides, for when I and Donne
urged him to make a choice amongst the fair bevy, he named--which do you
think?"

With a queer, quiet smile Mr. Moore replied, "Dora, of course, or
Harriet."

"Ha! ha! you've an excellent guess. But what made you hit on those two?"

"Because they are the tallest, the handsomest, and Dora, at least, is
the stoutest; and as your friend Mr. Sweeting is but a little slight
figure, I concluded that, according to a frequent rule in such cases, he
preferred his contrast."

"You are right; Dora it is. But he has no chance, has he, Moore?"

"What has Mr. Sweeting besides his curacy?"

This question seemed to tickle Malone amazingly. He laughed for full
three minutes before he answered it.

"What has Sweeting? Why, David has his harp, or flute, which comes to
the same thing. He has a sort of pinchbeck watch; ditto, ring; ditto,
eyeglass. That's what he has."

"How would he propose to keep Miss Sykes in gowns only?"

"Ha! ha! Excellent! I'll ask him that next time I see him. I'll roast
him for his presumption. But no doubt he expects old Christopher Sykes
would do something handsome. He is rich, is he not? They live in a large
house."

"Sykes carries on an extensive concern."

"Therefore he must be wealthy, eh?"

"Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth, and in these times
would be about as likely to think of drawing money from the business to
give dowries to his daughters as I should be to dream of pulling down
the cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large as
Fieldhead."

"Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day?"

"No. Perhaps that I _was_ about to effect some such change. Your
Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that or sillier things."

"That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease (I thought it looked a
dismal place, by-the-bye, to-night, as I passed it), and that it was
your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress--to be married,
in short, ha! ha! Now, which is it? Dora, I am sure. You said she was
the handsomest."

"I wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be married since I
came to Briarfield. They have assigned me every marriageable single
woman by turns in the district. Now it was the two Misses Wynns--first
the dark, then the light one; now the red-haired Miss Armitage; then the
mature Ann Pearson. At present you throw on my shoulders all the tribe
of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests God knows. I
visit nowhere; I seek female society about as assiduously as you do, Mr.
Malone. If ever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a
call in their counting-house, where our discussions run on other topics
than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than
courtships, establishments, dowries. The cloth we can't sell, the hands
we can't employ, the mills we can't run, the perverse course of events
generally, which we cannot alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty
well at present, to the tolerably complete exclusion of such figments as
love-making, etc."

"I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one notion I hate
more than another, it is that of marriage--I mean marriage in the vulgar
weak sense, as a mere matter of sentiment--two beggarly fools agreeing
to unite their indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling. Humbug! But
an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in consonance with
dignity of views and permanency of solid interests, is not so bad--eh?"

"No," responded Moore, in an absent manner. The subject seemed to have
no interest for him; he did not pursue it. After sitting for some time
gazing at the fire with a preoccupied air, he suddenly turned his head.

"Hark!" said he. "Did you hear wheels?"

Rising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. He soon closed
it. "It is only the sound of the wind rising," he remarked, "and the
rivulet a little swollen, rushing down the hollow. I expected those
wagons at six; it is near nine now."

"Seriously, do you suppose that the putting up of this new machinery
will bring you into danger?" inquired Malone. "Helstone seems to think
it will."

"I only wish the machines--the frames--were safe here, and lodged within
the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy the frame-breakers. Let them
only pay me a visit and take the consequences. My mill is my castle."

"One despises such low scoundrels," observed Malone, in a profound vein
of reflection. "I almost wish a party would call upon you to-night; but
the road seemed extremely quiet as I came along. I saw nothing astir."

"You came by the Redhouse?"

"Yes."

"There would be nothing on that road. It is in the direction of Stilbro'
the risk lies."

"And you think there is risk?"

"What these fellows have done to others they may do to me. There is only
this difference: most of the manufacturers seem paralyzed when they are
attacked. Sykes, for instance, when his dressing-shop was set on fire
and burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his tenters and
left in shreds in the field, took no steps to discover or punish the
miscreants: he gave up as tamely as a rabbit under the jaws of a ferret.
Now I, if I know myself, should stand by my trade, my mill, and my
machinery."

"Helstone says these three are your gods; that the 'Orders in Council'
are with you another name for the seven deadly sins; that Castlereagh is
your Antichrist, and the war-party his legions."

"Yes; I abhor all these things because they ruin me. They stand in my
way. I cannot get on. I cannot execute my plans because of them. I see
myself baffled at every turn by their untoward effects."

"But you are rich and thriving, Moore?"

"I am very rich in cloth I cannot sell. You should step into my
warehouse yonder, and observe how it is piled to the roof with pieces.
Roakes and Pearson are in the same condition. America used to be their
market, but the Orders in Council have cut that off."

Malone did not seem prepared to carry on briskly a conversation of this
sort. He began to knock the heels of his boots together, and to yawn.

"And then to think," continued Mr. Moore who seemed too much taken up
with the current of his own thoughts to note the symptoms of his guest's
_ennui_--"to think that these ridiculous gossips of Whinbury and
Briarfield will keep pestering one about being married! As if there was
nothing to be done in life but to 'pay attention,' as they say, to some
young lady, and then to go to church with her, and then to start on a
bridal tour, and then to run through a round of visits, and then, I
suppose, to be 'having a family.' Oh, que le diable emporte!" He broke
off the aspiration into which he was launching with a certain energy,
and added, more calmly, "I believe women talk and think only of these
things, and they naturally fancy men's minds similarly occupied."

"Of course--of course," assented Malone; "but never mind them." And he
whistled, looked impatiently round, and seemed to feel a great want of
something. This time Moore caught and, it appeared, comprehended his
demonstrations.

"Mr. Malone," said he, "you must require refreshment after your wet
walk. I forget hospitality."

"Not at all," rejoined Malone; but he looked as if the right nail was at
last hit on the head, nevertheless. Moore rose and opened a cupboard.

"It is my fancy," said he, "to have every convenience within myself, and
not to be dependent on the feminity in the cottage yonder for every
mouthful I eat or every drop I drink. I often spend the evening and sup
here alone, and sleep with Joe Scott in the mill. Sometimes I am my own
watchman. I require little sleep, and it pleases me on a fine night to
wander for an hour or two with my musket about the hollow. Mr. Malone,
can you cook a mutton chop?"

"Try me. I've done it hundreds of times at college."

"There's a dishful, then, and there's the gridiron. Turn them quickly.
You know the secret of keeping the juices in?"

"Never fear me; you shall see. Hand a knife and fork, please."

The curate turned up his coat-cuffs, and applied himself to the cookery
with vigour. The manufacturer placed on the table plates, a loaf of
bread, a black bottle, and two tumblers. He then produced a small copper
kettle--still from the same well-stored recess, his cupboard--filled it
with water from a large stone jar in a corner, set it on the fire beside
the hissing gridiron, got lemons, sugar, and a small china punch-bowl;
but while he was brewing the punch a tap at the door called him away.

"Is it you, Sarah?"

"Yes, sir. Will you come to supper, please, sir?"

"No; I shall not be in to-night; I shall sleep in the mill. So lock the
doors, and tell your mistress to go to bed."

He returned.

"You have your household in proper order," observed Malone approvingly,
as, with his fine face ruddy as the embers over which he bent, he
assiduously turned the mutton chops. "You are not under petticoat
government, like poor Sweeting, a man--whew! how the fat spits! it has
burnt my hand--destined to be ruled by women. Now you and I,
Moore--there's a fine brown one for you, and full of gravy--you and I
will have no gray mares in our stables when we marry."

"I don't know; I never think about it. If the gray mare is handsome and
tractable, why not?"

"The chops are done. Is the punch brewed?"

"There is a glassful. Taste it. When Joe Scott and his minions return
they shall have a share of this, provided they bring home the frames
intact."

Malone waxed very exultant over the supper. He laughed aloud at trifles,
made bad jokes and applauded them himself, and, in short, grew
unmeaningly noisy. His host, on the contrary, remained quiet as before.
It is time, reader, that you should have some idea of the appearance of
this same host. I must endeavour to sketch him as he sits at table.

He is what you would probably call, at first view, rather a
strange-looking man; for he is thin, dark, sallow, very foreign of
aspect, with shadowy hair carelessly streaking his forehead. It appears
that he spends but little time at his toilet, or he would arrange it
with more taste. He seems unconscious that his features are fine, that
they have a southern symmetry, clearness, regularity in their
chiselling; nor does a spectator become aware of this advantage till he
has examined him well, for an anxious countenance and a hollow, somewhat
haggard, outline of face disturb the idea of beauty with one of care.
His eyes are large, and grave, and gray; their expression is intent and
meditative, rather searching than soft, rather thoughtful than genial.
When he parts his lips in a smile, his physiognomy is agreeable--not
that it is frank or cheerful even then, but you feel the influence of a
certain sedate charm, suggestive, whether truly or delusively, of a
considerate, perhaps a kind nature, of feelings that may wear well at
home--patient, forbearing, possibly faithful feelings. He is still
young--not more than thirty; his stature is tall, his figure slender.
His manner of speaking displeases. He has an outlandish accent, which,
notwithstanding a studied carelessness of pronunciation and diction,
grates on a British, and especially on a Yorkshire, ear.

Mr. Moore, indeed, was but half a Briton, and scarcely that. He came of
a foreign ancestry by the mother's side, and was himself born and partly
reared on a foreign soil. A hybrid in nature, it is probable he had a
hybrid's feeling on many points--patriotism for one; it is likely that
he was unapt to attach himself to parties, to sects, even to climes and
customs; it is not impossible that he had a tendency to isolate his
individual person from any community amidst which his lot might
temporarily happen to be thrown, and that he felt it to be his best
wisdom to push the interests of Robert Gérard Moore, to the exclusion of
philanthropic consideration for general interests, with which he
regarded the said Gérard Moore as in a great measure disconnected. Trade
was Mr. Moore's hereditary calling: the Gérards of Antwerp had been
merchants for two centuries back. Once they had been wealthy merchants;
but the uncertainties, the involvements, of business had come upon them;
disastrous speculations had loosened by degrees the foundations of their
credit. The house had stood on a tottering base for a dozen years; and
at last, in the shock of the French Revolution, it had rushed down a
total ruin. In its fall was involved the English and Yorkshire firm of
Moore, closely connected with the Antwerp house, and of which one of the
partners, resident in Antwerp, Robert Moore, had married Hortense
Gérard, with the prospect of his bride inheriting her father Constantine
Gérard's share in the business. She inherited, as we have seen, but his
share in the liabilities of the firm; and these liabilities, though duly
set aside by a composition with creditors, some said her son Robert
accepted, in his turn, as a legacy, and that he aspired one day to
discharge them, and to rebuild the fallen house of Gérard and Moore on a
scale at least equal to its former greatness. It was even supposed that
he took by-past circumstances much to heart; and if a childhood passed
at the side of a saturnine mother, under foreboding of coming evil, and
a manhood drenched and blighted by the pitiless descent of the storm,
could painfully impress the mind, _his_ probably was impressed in no
golden characters.

If, however, he had a great end of restoration in view, it was not in
his power to employ great means for its attainment. He was obliged to be
content with the day of small things. When he came to Yorkshire,
he--whose ancestors had owned warehouses in this seaport, and factories
in that inland town, had possessed their town-house and their
country-seat--saw no way open to him but to rent a cloth-mill in an
out-of-the-way nook of an out-of-the-way district; to take a cottage
adjoining it for his residence, and to add to his possessions, as
pasture for his horse, and space for his cloth-tenters, a few acres of
the steep, rugged land that lined the hollow through which his
mill-stream brawled. All this he held at a somewhat high rent (for these
war times were hard, and everything was dear) of the trustees of the
Fieldhead estate, then the property of a minor.

At the time this history commences, Robert Moore had lived but two years
in the district, during which period he had at least proved himself
possessed of the quality of activity. The dingy cottage was converted
into a neat, tasteful residence. Of part of the rough land he had made
garden-ground, which he cultivated with singular, even with Flemish,
exactness and care. As to the mill, which was an old structure, and
fitted up with old machinery, now become inefficient and out of date, he
had from the first evinced the strongest contempt for all its
arrangements and appointments. His aim had been to effect a radical
reform, which he had executed as fast as his very limited capital would
allow; and the narrowness of that capital, and consequent check on his
progress, was a restraint which galled his spirit sorely. Moore ever
wanted to push on. "Forward" was the device stamped upon his soul; but
poverty curbed him. Sometimes (figuratively) he foamed at the mouth when
the reins were drawn very tight.

In this state of feeling, it is not to be expected that he would
deliberate much as to whether his advance was or was not prejudicial to
others. Not being a native, nor for any length of time a resident of the
neighbourhood, he did not sufficiently care when the new inventions
threw the old workpeople out of employ. He never asked himself where
those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread; and in
this negligence he only resembled thousands besides, on whom the
starving poor of Yorkshire seemed to have a closer claim.

The period of which I write was an overshadowed one in British history,
and especially in the history of the northern provinces. War was then
at its height. Europe was all involved therein. England, if not weary,
was worn with long resistance--yes, and half her people were weary too,
and cried out for peace on any terms. National honour was become a mere
empty name, of no value in the eyes of many, because their sight was dim
with famine; and for a morsel of meat they would have sold their
birthright.

The "Orders in Council," provoked by Napoleon's Milan and Berlin
decrees, and forbidding neutral powers to trade with France, had, by
offending America, cut off the principal market of the Yorkshire woollen
trade, and brought it consequently to the verge of ruin. Minor foreign
markets were glutted, and would receive no more. The Brazils, Portugal,
Sicily, were all overstocked by nearly two years' consumption. At this
crisis certain inventions in machinery were introduced into the staple
manufactures of the north, which, greatly reducing the number of hands
necessary to be employed, threw thousands out of work, and left them
without legitimate means of sustaining life. A bad harvest supervened.
Distress reached its climax. Endurance, overgoaded, stretched the hand
of fraternity to sedition. The throes of a sort of moral earthquake were
felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual
in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a
manufacturing town, when a gig-mill was burnt to the ground, or a
manufacturer's house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the
streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local
measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader
was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper
paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As
to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost
that inheritance--who could not get work, and consequently could not get
wages, and consequently could not get bread--they were left to suffer
on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of
invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war
could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was
no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny--ate the bread
and drank the waters of affliction.

Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they
believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which
contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those
buildings. In the parish of Briarfield, with which we have at present to
do, Hollow's Mill was the place held most abominable; Gérard Moore, in
his double character of semi-foreigner and thorough-going progressist,
the man most abominated. And it perhaps rather agreed with Moore's
temperament than otherwise to be generally hated, especially when he
believed the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient
thing; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on this night,
sat in his counting-house waiting the arrival of his frame-laden wagons.
Malone's coming and company were, it may be, most unwelcome to him. He
would have preferred sitting alone; for he liked a silent, sombre,
unsafe solitude. His watchman's musket would have been company enough
for him; the full-flowing beck in the den would have delivered
continuously the discourse most genial to his ear.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the queerest look in the world had the manufacturer for some ten
minutes been watching the Irish curate, as the latter made free with the
punch, when suddenly that steady gray eye changed, as if another vision
came between it and Malone. Moore raised his hand.

"Chut!" he said in his French fashion, as Malone made a noise with his
glass. He listened a moment, then rose, put his hat on, and went out at
the counting-house door.

The night was still, dark, and stagnant: the water yet rushed on full
and fast; its flow almost seemed a flood in the utter silence. Moore's
ear, however, caught another sound, very distant but yet dissimilar,
broken and rugged--in short, a sound of heavy wheels crunching a stony
road. He returned to the counting-house and lit a lantern, with which he
walked down the mill-yard, and proceeded to open the gates. The big
wagons were coming on; the dray-horses' huge hoofs were heard splashing
in the mud and water. Moore hailed them.

"Hey, Joe Scott! Is all right?"

Probably Joe Scott was yet at too great a distance to hear the inquiry.
He did not answer it.

"Is all right, I say?" again asked Moore, when the elephant-like
leader's nose almost touched his.

Some one jumped out from the foremost wagon into the road; a voice cried
aloud, "Ay, ay, divil; all's raight! We've smashed 'em."

And there was a run. The wagons stood still; they were now deserted.

"Joe Scott!" No Joe Scott answered. "Murgatroyd! Pighills! Sykes!" No
reply. Mr. Moore lifted his lantern and looked into the vehicles. There
was neither man nor machinery; they were empty and abandoned.

Now Mr. Moore loved his machinery. He had risked the last of his capital
on the purchase of these frames and shears which to-night had been
expected. Speculations most important to his interests depended on the
results to be wrought by them. Where were they?

The words "we've smashed 'em" rang in his ears. How did the catastrophe
affect him? By the light of the lantern he held were his features
visible, relaxing to a singular smile--the smile the man of determined
spirit wears when he reaches a juncture in his life where this
determined spirit is to feel a demand on its strength, when the strain
is to be made, and the faculty must bear or break. Yet he remained
silent, and even motionless; for at the instant he neither knew what to
say nor what to do. He placed the lantern on the ground, and stood with
his arms folded, gazing down and reflecting.

An impatient trampling of one of the horses made him presently look up.
His eye in the moment caught the gleam of something white attached to a
part of the harness. Examined by the light of the lantern this proved to
be a folded paper--a billet. It bore no address without; within was the
superscription:--

"To the Divil of Hollow's Miln."

We will not copy the rest of the orthography, which was very peculiar,
but translate it into legible English. It ran thus:--

"Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on Stilbro' Moor, and your
men are lying bound hand and foot in a ditch by the roadside. Take this
as a warning from men that are starving, and have starving wives and
children to go home to when they have done this deed. If you get new
machines, or if you otherwise go on as you have done, you shall hear
from us again. Beware!"

"Hear from you again? Yes, I'll hear from you again, and you shall hear
from me. I'll speak to you directly. On Stilbro' Moor you shall hear
from me in a moment."

Having led the wagons within the gates, he hastened towards the cottage.
Opening the door, he spoke a few words quickly but quietly to two
females who ran to meet him in the passage. He calmed the seeming alarm
of one by a brief palliative account of what had taken place; to the
other he said, "Go into the mill, Sarah--there is the key--and ring the
mill-bell as loud as you can. Afterwards you will get another lantern
and help me to light up the front."

Returning to his horses, he unharnessed, fed, and stabled them with
equal speed and care, pausing occasionally, while so occupied, as if to
listen for the mill-bell. It clanged out presently, with irregular but
loud and alarming din. The hurried, agitated peal seemed more urgent
than if the summons had been steadily given by a practised hand. On that
still night, at that unusual hour, it was heard a long way round. The
guests in the kitchen of the Redhouse were startled by the clamour, and
declaring that "there must be summat more nor common to do at Hollow's
Miln," they called for lanterns, and hurried to the spot in a body. And
scarcely had they thronged into the yard with their gleaming lights,
when the tramp of horses was heard, and a little man in a shovel hat,
sitting erect on the back of a shaggy pony, "rode lightly in," followed
by an aide-de-camp mounted on a larger steed.

Mr. Moore, meantime, after stabling his dray-horses, had saddled his
hackney, and with the aid of Sarah, the servant, lit up his mill, whose
wide and long front now glared one great illumination, throwing a
sufficient light on the yard to obviate all fear of confusion arising
from obscurity. Already a deep hum of voices became audible. Mr. Malone
had at length issued from the counting-house, previously taking the
precaution to dip his head and face in the stone water-jug; and this
precaution, together with the sudden alarm, had nearly restored to him
the possession of those senses which the punch had partially scattered.
He stood with his hat on the back of his head, and his shillelah grasped
in his dexter fist, answering much at random the questions of the
newly-arrived party from the Redhouse. Mr. Moore now appeared, and was
immediately confronted by the shovel hat and the shaggy pony.

"Well, Moore, what is your business with us? I thought you would want us
to-night--me and the hetman here (patting his pony's neck), and Tom and
his charger. When I heard your mill-bell I could sit still no longer, so
I left Boultby to finish his supper alone. But where is the enemy? I do
not see a mask or a smutted face present; and there is not a pane of
glass broken in your windows. Have you had an attack, or do you expect
one?"

"Oh, not at all! I have neither had one nor expect one," answered Moore
coolly. "I only ordered the bell to be rung because I want two or three
neighbours to stay here in the Hollow while I and a couple or so more go
over to Stilbro' Moor."

"To Stilbro' Moor! What to do? To meet the wagons?"

"The wagons are come home an hour ago."

"Then all's right. What more would you have?"

"They came home empty; and Joe Scott and company are left on the moor,
and so are the frames. Read that scrawl."

Mr. Helstone received and perused the document of which the contents
have before been given.

"Hum! They've only served you as they serve others. But, however, the
poor fellows in the ditch will be expecting help with some impatience.
This is a wet night for such a berth. I and Tom will go with you. Malone
may stay behind and take care of the mill. What is the matter with him?
His eyes seem starting out of his head."

"He has been eating a mutton chop."

"Indeed!--Peter Augustus, be on your guard. Eat no more mutton chops
to-night. You are left here in command of these premises--an honourable
post!"

"Is anybody to stay with me?"

"As many of the present assemblage as choose.--My lads, how many of you
will remain here, and how many will go a little way with me and Mr.
Moore on the Stilbro' road, to meet some men who have been waylaid and
assaulted by frame-breakers?"

The small number of three volunteered to go; the rest preferred staying
behind. As Mr. Moore mounted his horse, the rector asked him in a low
voice whether he had locked up the mutton chops, so that Peter Augustus
could not get at them? The manufacturer nodded an affirmative, and the
rescue-party set out.




CHAPTER III.

MR. YORKE.


Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much
on the state of things within as on the state of things without and
around us. I make this trite remark, because I happen to know that
Messrs. Helstone and Moore trotted forth from the mill-yard gates, at
the head of their very small company, in the best possible spirits. When
a ray from a lantern (the three pedestrians of the party carried each
one) fell on Mr. Moore's face, you could see an unusual, because a
lively, spark dancing in his eyes, and a new-found vivacity mantling on
his dark physiognomy; and when the rector's visage was illuminated, his
hard features were revealed all agrin and ashine with glee. Yet a
drizzling night, a somewhat perilous expedition, you would think were
not circumstances calculated to enliven those exposed to the wet and
engaged in the adventure. If any member or members of the crew who had
been at work on Stilbro' Moor had caught a view of this party, they
would have had great pleasure in shooting either of the leaders from
behind a wall: and the leaders knew this; and the fact is, being both
men of steely nerves and steady-beating hearts, were elate with the
knowledge.

I am aware, reader, and you need not remind me, that it is a dreadful
thing for a parson to be warlike; I am aware that he should be a man of
peace. I have some faint outline of an idea of what a clergyman's
mission is amongst mankind, and I remember distinctly whose servant he
is, whose message he delivers, whose example he should follow; yet, with
all this, if you are a parson-hater, you need not expect me to go along
with you every step of your dismal, downward-tending, unchristian road;
you need not expect me to join in your deep anathemas, at once so narrow
and so sweeping, in your poisonous rancour, so intense and so absurd,
against "the cloth;" to lift up my eyes and hands with a Supplehough,
or to inflate my lungs with a Barraclough, in horror and denunciation of
the diabolical rector of Briarfield.

He was not diabolical at all. The evil simply was--he had missed his
vocation. He should have been a soldier, and circumstances had made him
a priest. For the rest, he was a conscientious, hard-headed,
hard-handed, brave, stern, implacable, faithful little man; a man almost
without sympathy, ungentle, prejudiced, and rigid, but a man true to
principle, honourable, sagacious, and sincere. It seems to me, reader,
that you cannot always cut out men to fit their profession, and that you
ought not to curse them because their profession sometimes hangs on them
ungracefully. Nor will I curse Helstone, clerical Cossack as he was. Yet
he _was_ cursed, and by many of his own parishioners, as by others he
was adored--which is the frequent fate of men who show partiality in
friendship and bitterness in enmity, who are equally attached to
principles and adherent to prejudices.

Helstone and Moore being both in excellent spirits, and united for the
present in one cause, you would expect that, as they rode side by side,
they would converse amicably. Oh no! These two men, of hard, bilious
natures both, rarely came into contact but they chafed each other's
moods. Their frequent bone of contention was the war. Helstone was a
high Tory (there were Tories in those days), and Moore was a bitter
Whig--a Whig, at least, as far as opposition to the war-party was
concerned, that being the question which affected his own interest; and
only on that question did he profess any British politics at all. He
liked to infuriate Helstone by declaring his belief in the invincibility
of Bonaparte, by taunting England and Europe with the impotence of their
efforts to withstand him, and by coolly advancing the opinion that it
was as well to yield to him soon as late, since he must in the end crush
every antagonist, and reign supreme.

Helstone could not bear these sentiments. It was only on the
consideration of Moore being a sort of outcast and alien, and having but
half measure of British blood to temper the foreign gall which corroded
his veins, that he brought himself to listen to them without indulging
the wish he felt to cane the speaker. Another thing, too, somewhat
allayed his disgust--namely, a fellow-feeling for the dogged tone with
which these opinions were asserted, and a respect for the consistency
of Moore's crabbed contumacy.

As the party turned into the Stilbro' road, they met what little wind
there was; the rain dashed in their faces. Moore had been fretting his
companion previously, and now, braced up by the raw breeze, and perhaps
irritated by the sharp drizzle, he began to goad him.

"Does your Peninsular news please you still?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" was the surly demand of the rector.

"I mean, have you still faith in that Baal of a Lord Wellington?"

"And what do you mean now?"

"Do you still believe that this wooden-faced and pebble-hearted idol of
England has power to send fire down from heaven to consume the French
holocaust you want to offer up?"

"I believe Wellington will flog Bonaparte's marshals into the sea the
day it pleases him to lift his arm."

"But, my dear sir, you can't be serious in what you say. Bonaparte's
marshals are great men, who act under the guidance of an omnipotent
master-spirit. Your Wellington is the most humdrum of commonplace
martinets, whose slow, mechanical movements are further cramped by an
ignorant home government."

"Wellington is the soul of England. Wellington is the right champion of
a good cause, the fit representative of a powerful, a resolute, a
sensible, and an honest nation."

"Your good cause, as far as I understand it, is simply the restoration
of that filthy, feeble Ferdinand to a throne which he disgraced. Your
fit representative of an honest people is a dull-witted drover, acting
for a duller-witted farmer; and against these are arrayed victorious
supremacy and invincible genius."

"Against legitimacy is arrayed usurpation; against modest,
single-minded, righteous, and brave resistance to encroachment is
arrayed boastful, double-tongued, selfish, and treacherous ambition to
possess. God defend the right!"

"God often defends the powerful."

"What! I suppose the handful of Israelites standing dryshod on the
Asiatic side of the Red Sea was more powerful than the host of the
Egyptians drawn up on the African side? Were they more numerous? Were
they better appointed? Were they more mighty, in a word--eh? Don't
speak, or you'll tell a lie, Moore; you know you will. They were a poor,
overwrought band of bondsmen. Tyrants had oppressed them through four
hundred years; a feeble mixture of women and children diluted their thin
ranks; their masters, who roared to follow them through the divided
flood, were a set of pampered Ethiops, about as strong and brutal as the
lions of Libya. They were armed, horsed, and charioted; the poor Hebrew
wanderers were afoot. Few of them, it is likely, had better weapons than
their shepherds' crooks or their masons' building-tools; their meek and
mighty leader himself had only his rod. But bethink you, Robert Moore,
right was with them; the God of battles was on their side. Crime and the
lost archangel generalled the ranks of Pharaoh, and which triumphed? We
know that well. 'The Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the
Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore'--yea,
'the depths covered them, they sank to the bottom as a stone.' The right
hand of the Lord became glorious in power; the right hand of the Lord
dashed in pieces the enemy!"

"You are all right; only you forget the true parallel. France is Israel,
and Napoleon is Moses. Europe, with her old overgorged empires and
rotten dynasties, is corrupt Egypt; gallant France is the Twelve Tribes,
and her fresh and vigorous Usurper the Shepherd of Horeb."

"I scorn to answer you."

Moore accordingly answered himself--at least, he subjoined to what he
had just said an additional observation in a lower voice.

"Oh, in Italy he was as great as any Moses! He was the right thing
there, fit to head and organize measures for the regeneration of
nations. It puzzles me to this day how the conqueror of Lodi should have
condescended to become an emperor, a vulgar, a stupid humbug; and still
more how a people who had once called themselves republicans should have
sunk again to the grade of mere slaves. I despise France! If England had
gone as far on the march of civilization as France did, she would hardly
have retreated so shamelessly."

"You don't mean to say that besotted imperial France is any worse than
bloody republican France?" demanded Helstone fiercely.

"I mean to say nothing, but I can think what I please, you know, Mr.
Helstone, both about France and England; and about revolutions, and
regicides, and restorations in general; and about the divine right of
kings, which you often stickle for in your sermons, and the duty of
non-resistance, and the sanity of war, and----"

Mr. Moore's sentence was here cut short by the rapid rolling up of a
gig, and its sudden stoppage in the middle of the road. Both he and the
rector had been too much occupied with their discourse to notice its
approach till it was close upon them.

"Nah, maister; did th' wagons hit home?" demanded a voice from the
vehicle.

"Can that be Joe Scott?"

"Ay, ay!" returned another voice; for the gig contained two persons, as
was seen by the glimmer of its lamp. The men with the lanterns had now
fallen into the rear, or rather, the equestrians of the rescue-party had
outridden the pedestrians. "Ay, Mr. Moore, it's Joe Scott. I'm bringing
him back to you in a bonny pickle. I fand him on the top of the moor
yonder, him and three others. What will you give me for restoring him to
you?"

"Why, my thanks, I believe; for I could better have afforded to lose a
better man. That is you, I suppose, Mr. Yorke, by your voice?"

"Ay, lad, it's me. I was coming home from Stilbro' market, and just as I
got to the middle of the moor, and was whipping on as swift as the wind
(for these, they say, are not safe times, thanks to a bad government!),
I heard a groan. I pulled up. Some would have whipt on faster; but I've
naught to fear that I know of. I don't believe there's a lad in these
parts would harm me--at least, I'd give them as good as I got if they
offered to do it. I said, 'Is there aught wrong anywhere?' ''Deed is
there,' somebody says, speaking out of the ground, like. 'What's to do?
Be sharp and tell me,' I ordered. 'Nobbut four on us ligging in a
ditch,' says Joe, as quiet as could be. I telled 'em more shame to 'em,
and bid them get up and move on, or I'd lend them a lick of the
gig-whip; for my notion was they were all fresh. 'We'd ha' done that an
hour sin', but we're teed wi' a bit o' band,' says Joe. So in a while I
got down and loosed 'em wi' my penknife; and Scott would ride wi' me, to
tell me all how it happened; and t' others are coming on as fast as
their feet will bring them."

"Well, I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Yorke."

"Are you, my lad? You know you're not. However, here are the rest
approaching. And here, by the Lord, is another set with lights in their
pitchers, like the army of Gideon; and as we've th' parson wi',
us--good-evening, Mr. Helstone--we'se do."

Mr. Helstone returned the salutation of the individual in the gig very
stiffly indeed. That individual proceeded,--

"We're eleven strong men, and there's both horses and chariots amang us.
If we could only fall in wi' some of these starved ragamuffins of
frame-breakers we could win a grand victory. We could iv'ry one be a
Wellington--that would please ye, Mr. Helstone--and sich paragraphs as
we could contrive for t' papers! Briarfield suld be famous. But we'se
hev a column and a half i' th' _Stilbro' Courier_ ower this job, as it
is, I dare say. I'se expect no less."

"And I'll promise you no less, Mr. Yorke, for I'll write the article
myself," returned the rector.

"To be sure--sartainly! And mind ye recommend weel that them 'at brake
t' bits o' frames, and teed Joe Scott's legs wi' band, suld be hung
without benefit o' clergy. It's a hanging matter, or suld be. No doubt
o' that."

"If I judged them I'd give them short shrift!" cried Moore. "But I mean
to let them quite alone this bout, to give them rope enough, certain
that in the end they will hang themselves."

"Let them alone, will ye, Moore? Do you promise that?"

"Promise! No. All I mean to say is, I shall give myself no particular
trouble to catch them; but if one falls in my way----"

"You'll snap him up, of course. Only you would rather they would do
something worse than merely stop a wagon before you reckon with them.
Well, we'll say no more on the subject at present. Here we are at my
door, gentlemen, and I hope you and the men will step in. You will none
of you be the worse of a little refreshment."

Moore and Helstone opposed this proposition as unnecessary. It was,
however, pressed on them so courteously, and the night, besides, was so
inclement, and the gleam from the muslin-curtained windows of the house
before which they had halted looked so inviting, that at length they
yielded. Mr. Yorke, after having alighted from his gig, which he left in
charge of a man who issued from an outbuilding on his arrival, led the
way in.

It will have been remarked that Mr. Yorke varied a little in his
phraseology. Now he spoke broad Yorkshire, and anon he expressed himself
in very pure English. His manner seemed liable to equal alternations. He
could be polite and affable, and he could be blunt and rough. His
station then you could not easily determine by his speech and demeanour.
Perhaps the appearance of his residence may decide it.

The men he recommended to take the kitchen way, saying that he would
"see them served wi' summat to taste presently." The gentlemen were
ushered in at the front entrance. They found themselves in a matted
hall, lined almost to the ceiling with pictures. Through this they were
conducted to a large parlour, with a magnificent fire in the grate--the
most cheerful of rooms it appeared as a whole, and when you came to
examine details, the enlivening effect was not diminished. There was no
splendour, but there was taste everywhere, unusual taste--the taste, you
would have said, of a travelled man, a scholar, and a gentleman. A
series of Italian views decked the walls. Each of these was a specimen
of true art. A connoisseur had selected them; they were genuine and
valuable. Even by candle-light the bright clear skies, the soft
distances, with blue air quivering between the eye and the hills, the
fresh tints, and well-massed lights and shadows, charmed the view. The
subjects were all pastoral, the scenes were all sunny. There was a
guitar and some music on a sofa; there were cameos, beautiful
miniatures; a set of Grecian-looking vases on the mantelpiece; there
were books well arranged in two elegant bookcases.

Mr. Yorke bade his guests be seated. He then rang for wine. To the
servant who brought it he gave hospitable orders for the refreshment of
the men in the kitchen. The rector remained standing; he seemed not to
like his quarters; he would not touch the wine his host offered him.

"E'en as you will," remarked Mr. Yorke. "I reckon you're thinking of
Eastern customs, Mr. Helstone, and you'll not eat nor drink under my
roof, feared we suld be forced to be friends; but I am not so particular
or superstitious. You might sup the contents of that decanter, and you
might give me a bottle of the best in your own cellar, and I'd hold
myself free to oppose you at every turn still--in every vestry-meeting
and justice-meeting where we encountered one another."

"It is just what I should expect of you, Mr. Yorke."

"Does it agree wi' ye now, Mr. Helstone, to be riding out after rioters,
of a wet night, at your age?"

"It always agrees with me to be doing my duty; and in this case my duty
is a thorough pleasure. To hunt down vermin is a noble occupation, fit
for an archbishop."

"Fit for ye, at ony rate. But where's t' curate? He's happen gone to
visit some poor body in a sick gird, or he's happen hunting down vermin
in another direction."

"He is doing garrison-duty at Hollow's Mill."

"You left him a sup o' wine, I hope, Bob" (turning to Mr. Moore), "to
keep his courage up?"

He did not pause for an answer, but continued, quickly, still addressing
Moore, who had thrown himself into an old-fashioned chair by the
fireside--"Move it, Robert! Get up, my lad! That place is mine. Take the
sofa, or three other chairs, if you will, but not this. It belangs to
me, and nob'dy else."

"Why are you so particular to that chair, Mr. Yorke?" asked Moore,
lazily vacating the place in obedience to orders.

"My father war afore me, and that's all t' answer I sall gie thee; and
it's as good a reason as Mr. Helstone can give for the main feck o' his
notions."

"Moore, are you ready to go?" inquired the rector.

"Nay; Robert's not ready, or rather, I'm not ready to part wi' him. He's
an ill lad, and wants correcting."

"Why, sir? What have I done?"

"Made thyself enemies on every hand."

"What do I care for that? What difference does it make to me whether
your Yorkshire louts hate me or like me?"

"Ay, there it is. The lad is a mak' of an alien amang us. His father
would never have talked i' that way.--Go back to Antwerp, where you were
born and bred, mauvaise tête!"

"Mauvaise tête vous-même; je ne fais que mon devoir; quant à vos
lourdauds de paysans, je m'en moque!"

"En ravanche, mon garçon, nos lourdauds de paysans se moqueront de toi;
sois en certain," replied Yorke, speaking with nearly as pure a French
accent as Gérard Moore.

"C'est bon! c'est bon! Et puisque cela m'est égal, que mes amis ne s'en
inquiètent pas."

"Tes amis! Où sont-ils, tes amis?"

"Je fais écho, où sont-ils? et je suis fort aise que l'écho seul y
répond. Au diable les amis! Je me souviens encore du moment où mon père
et mes oncles Gérard appellèrent autour d'eux leurs amis, et Dieu sait
si les amis se sont empressés d'accourir à leur secours! Tenez, M.
Yorke, ce mot, ami, m'irrite trop; ne m'en parlez plus."

"Comme tu voudras."

And here Mr. Yorke held his peace; and while he sits leaning back in his
three-cornered carved oak chair, I will snatch my opportunity to sketch
the portrait of this French-speaking Yorkshire gentleman.




CHAPTER IV.

MR. YORKE (_continued_).


A Yorkshire gentleman he was, _par excellence_, in every point; about
fifty-five years old, but looking at first sight still older, for his
hair was silver white. His forehead was broad, not high; his face fresh
and hale; the harshness of the north was seen in his features, as it was
heard in his voice; every trait was thoroughly English--not a Norman
line anywhere; it was an inelegant, unclassic, unaristocratic mould of
visage. Fine people would perhaps have called it vulgar; sensible people
would have termed it characteristic; shrewd people would have delighted
in it for the pith, sagacity, intelligence, the rude yet real
originality marked in every lineament, latent in every furrow. But it
was an indocile, a scornful, and a sarcastic face--the face of a man
difficult to lead, and impossible to drive. His stature was rather tall,
and he was well made and wiry, and had a stately integrity of port;
there was not a suspicion of the clown about him anywhere.

I did not find it easy to sketch Mr. Yorke's person, but it is more
difficult to indicate his mind. If you expect to be treated to a
Perfection, reader, or even to a benevolent, philanthropic old gentleman
in him, you are mistaken. He has spoken with some sense and with some
good feeling to Mr. Moore, but you are not thence to conclude that he
always spoke and thought justly and kindly.

Mr. Yorke, in the first place, was without the organ of veneration--a
great want, and which throws a man wrong on every point where veneration
is required. Secondly, he was without the organ of comparison--a
deficiency which strips a man of sympathy; and thirdly, he had too
little of the organs of benevolence and ideality, which took the glory
and softness from his nature, and for him diminished those divine
qualities throughout the universe.

The want of veneration made him intolerant to those above him--kings and
nobles and priests, dynasties and parliaments and establishments, with
all their doings, most of their enactments, their forms, their rights,
their claims, were to him an abomination, all rubbish; he found no use
or pleasure in them, and believed it would be clear gain, and no damage
to the world, if its high places were razed, and their occupants crushed
in the fall. The want of veneration, too, made him dead at heart to the
electric delight of admiring what is admirable; it dried up a thousand
pure sources of enjoyment; it withered a thousand vivid pleasures. He
was not irreligious, though a member of no sect; but his religion could
not be that of one who knows how to venerate. He believed in God and
heaven; but his God and heaven were those of a man in whom awe,
imagination, and tenderness lack.

The weakness of his powers of comparison made him inconsistent; while he
professed some excellent general doctrines of mutual toleration and
forbearance, he cherished towards certain classes a bigoted antipathy.
He spoke of "parsons" and all who belonged to parsons, of "lords" and
the appendages of lords, with a harshness, sometimes an insolence, as
unjust as it was insufferable. He could not place himself in the
position of those he vituperated; he could not compare their errors with
their temptations, their defects with their disadvantages; he could not
realize the effect of such and such circumstances on himself similarly
situated, and he would often express the most ferocious and tyrannical
wishes regarding those who had acted, as he thought, ferociously and
tyrannically. To judge by his threats, he would have employed arbitrary,
even cruel, means to advance the cause of freedom and equality.
Equality! yes, Mr. Yorke talked about equality, but at heart he was a
proud man--very friendly to his workpeople, very good to all who were
beneath him, and submitted quietly to be beneath him, but haughty as
Beelzebub to whomsoever the world deemed (for he deemed no man) his
superior. Revolt was in his blood: he could not bear control; his
father, his grandfather before him, could not bear it, and his children
after him never could.

The want of general benevolence made him very impatient of imbecility,
and of all faults which grated on his strong, shrewd nature; it left no
check to his cutting sarcasm. As he was not merciful, he would sometimes
wound and wound again, without noticing how much he hurt, or caring how
deep he thrust.

As to the paucity of ideality in his mind, that can scarcely be called a
fault: a fine ear for music, a correct eye for colour and form, left him
the quality of taste; and who cares for imagination? Who does not think
it a rather dangerous, senseless attribute, akin to weakness, perhaps
partaking of frenzy--a disease rather than a gift of the mind?

Probably all think it so but those who possess, or fancy they possess,
it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would be
cold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would be
dim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonely
if this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that it
imparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, some
tranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do not
feel. An illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, and
would not give it for gold.

As Mr. Yorke did not possess poetic imagination himself, he considered
it a most superfluous quality in others. Painters and musicians he could
tolerate, and even encourage, because he could relish the results of
their art; he could see the charm of a fine picture, and feel the
pleasure of good music; but a quiet poet--whatever force struggled,
whatever fire glowed, in his breast--if he could not have played the man
in the counting-house, of the tradesman in the Piece Hall, might have
lived despised, and died scorned, under the eyes of Hiram Yorke.

And as there are many Hiram Yorkes in the world, it is well that the
true poet, quiet externally though he may be, has often a truculent
spirit under his placidity, and is full of shrewdness in his meekness,
and can measure the whole stature of those who look down on him, and
correctly ascertain the weight and value of the pursuits they disdain
him for not having followed. It is happy that he can have his own bliss,
his own society with his great friend and goddess Nature, quite
independent of those who find little pleasure in him, and in whom he
finds no pleasure at all. It is just that while the world and
circumstances often turn a dark, cold side to him--and properly, too,
because he first turns a dark, cold, careless side to them--he should be
able to maintain a festal brightness and cherishing glow in his bosom,
which makes all bright and genial for him; while strangers, perhaps,
deem his existence a Polar winter never gladdened by a sun. The true
poet is not one whit to be pitied, and he is apt to laugh in his sleeve
when any misguided sympathizer whines over his wrongs. Even when
utilitarians sit in judgment on him, and pronounce him and his art
useless, he hears the sentence with such a hard derision, such a broad,
deep, comprehensive, and merciless contempt of the unhappy Pharisees who
pronounce it, that he is rather to be chidden than condoled with. These,
however, are not Mr. Yorke's reflections, and it is with Mr. Yorke we
have at present to do.

I have told you some of his faults, reader: as to his good points, he
was one of the most honourable and capable men in Yorkshire; even those
who disliked him were forced to respect him. He was much beloved by the
poor, because he was thoroughly kind and very fatherly to them. To his
workmen he was considerate and cordial. When he dismissed them from an
occupation, he would try to set them on to something else, or, if that
was impossible, help them to remove with their families to a district
where work might possibly be had. It must also be remarked that if, as
sometimes chanced, any individual amongst his "hands" showed signs of
insubordination, Yorke--who, like many who abhor being controlled, knew
how to control with vigour--had the secret of crushing rebellion in the
germ, of eradicating it like a bad weed, so that it never spread or
developed within the sphere of his authority. Such being the happy state
of his own affairs, he felt himself at liberty to speak with the utmost
severity of those who were differently situated, to ascribe whatever was
unpleasant in their position entirely to their own fault, to sever
himself from the masters, and advocate freely the cause of the
operatives.

Mr. Yorke's family was the first and oldest in the district; and he,
though not the wealthiest, was one of the most influential men. His
education had been good. In his youth, before the French Revolution, he
had travelled on the Continent. He was an adept in the French and
Italian languages. During a two years' sojourn in Italy he had collected
many good paintings and tasteful rarities, with which his residence was
now adorned. His manners, when he liked, were those of a finished
gentleman of the old school; his conversation, when he was disposed to
please, was singularly interesting and original; and if he usually
expressed himself in the Yorkshire dialect, it was because he chose to
do so, preferring his native Doric to a more refined vocabulary, "A
Yorkshire burr," he affirmed, "was as much better than a cockney's lisp
as a bull's bellow than a raton's squeak."

Mr. Yorke knew every one, and was known by every one, for miles round;
yet his intimate acquaintances were very few. Himself thoroughly
original, he had no taste for what was ordinary: a racy, rough
character, high or low, ever found acceptance with him; a refined,
insipid personage, however exalted in station, was his aversion. He
would spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd workman of
his own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his cottagers,
when he would have grudged a moment to a commonplace fine gentleman or
to the most fashionable and elegant, if frivolous, lady. His preferences
on these points he carried to an extreme, forgetting that there may be
amiable and even admirable characters amongst those who cannot be
original. Yet he made exceptions to his own rule. There was a certain
order of mind, plain, ingenuous, neglecting refinement, almost devoid of
intellectuality, and quite incapable of appreciating what was
intellectual in him, but which, at the same time, never felt disgust at
his rudeness, was not easily wounded by his sarcasm, did not closely
analyze his sayings, doings, or opinions, with which he was peculiarly
at ease, and, consequently, which he peculiarly preferred. He was lord
amongst such characters. They, while submitting implicitly to his
influence, never acknowledged, because they never reflected on, his
superiority; they were quite tractable, therefore, without running the
smallest danger of being servile; and their unthinking, easy, artless
insensibility was as acceptable, because as convenient, to Mr. Yorke as
that of the chair he sat on, or of the floor he trod.

It will have been observed that he was not quite uncordial with Mr.
Moore. He had two or three reasons for entertaining a faint partiality
to that gentleman. It may sound odd, but the first of these was that
Moore spoke English with a foreign, and French with a perfectly pure,
accent; and that his dark, thin face, with its fine though rather wasted
lines, had a most anti-British and anti-Yorkshire look. These points
seem frivolous, unlikely to influence a character like Yorke's; but the
fact is they recalled old, perhaps pleasurable, associations--they
brought back his travelling, his youthful days. He had seen, amidst
Italian cities and scenes, faces like Moore's; he had heard, in Parisian
cafés and theatres, voices like his. He was young then, and when he
looked at and listened to the alien, he seemed young again.

Secondly, he had known Moore's father, and had had dealings with him.
That was a more substantial, though by no means a more agreeable tie;
for as his firm had been connected with Moore's in business, it had
also, in some measure, been implicated in its losses.

Thirdly, he had found Robert himself a sharp man of business. He saw
reason to anticipate that he would, in the end, by one means or another,
make money; and he respected both his resolution and acuteness--perhaps,
also, his hardness. A fourth circumstance which drew them together was
that of Mr. Yorke being one of the guardians of the minor on whose
estate Hollow's Mill was situated; consequently Moore, in the course of
his alterations and improvements, had frequent occasion to consult him.

As to the other guest now present in Mr. Yorke's parlour, Mr. Helstone,
between him and his host there existed a double antipathy--the antipathy
of nature and that of circumstances. The free-thinker hated the
formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. Besides, it
was said that in former years they had been rival suitors of the same
lady.

Mr. Yorke, as a general rule, was, when young, noted for his preference
of sprightly and dashing women: a showy shape and air, a lively wit, a
ready tongue, chiefly seemed to attract him. He never, however, proposed
to any of these brilliant belles whose society he sought; and all at
once he seriously fell in love with and eagerly wooed a girl who
presented a complete contrast to those he had hitherto noticed--a girl
with the face of a Madonna; a girl of living marble--stillness
personified. No matter that, when he spoke to her, she only answered him
in monosyllables; no matter that his sighs seemed unheard, that his
glances were unreturned, that she never responded to his opinions,
rarely smiled at his jests, paid him no respect and no attention; no
matter that she seemed the opposite of everything feminine he had ever
in his whole life been known to admire. For him Mary Cave was perfect,
because somehow, for some reason--no doubt he had a reason--he loved
her.

Mr. Helstone, at that time curate of Briarfield, loved Mary too--or, at
any rate, he fancied her. Several others admired her, for she was
beautiful as a monumental angel; but the clergyman was preferred for his
office's sake--that office probably investing him with some of the
illusion necessary to allure to the commission of matrimony, and which
Miss Cave did not find in any of the young wool-staplers, her other
adorers. Mr. Helstone neither had, nor professed to have, Mr. Yorke's
absorbing passion for her. He had none of the humble reverence which
seemed to subdue most of her suitors; he saw her more as she really was
than the rest did. He was, consequently, more master of her and himself.
She accepted him at the first offer, and they were married.

Nature never intended Mr. Helstone to make a very good husband,
especially to a quiet wife. He thought so long as a woman was silent
nothing ailed her, and she wanted nothing. If she did not complain of
solitude, solitude, however continued, could not be irksome to her. If
she did not talk and put herself forward, express a partiality for this,
an aversion to that, she had no partialities or aversions, and it was
useless to consult her tastes. He made no pretence of comprehending
women, or comparing them with men. They were a different, probably a
very inferior, order of existence. A wife could not be her husband's
companion, much less his confidante, much less his stay. _His_ wife,
after a year or two, was of no great importance to him in any shape; and
when she one day, as he thought, suddenly--for he had scarcely noticed
her decline--but, as others thought, gradually, took her leave of him
and of life, and there was only a still, beautiful-featured mould of
clay left, cold and white, in the conjugal couch, he felt his
bereavement--who shall say how little? Yet, perhaps, more than he seemed
to feel it; for he was not a man from whom grief easily wrung tears.

His dry-eyed and sober mourning scandalized an old housekeeper, and
likewise a female attendant, who had waited upon Mrs. Helstone in her
sickness, and who, perhaps, had had opportunities of learning more of
the deceased lady's nature, of her capacity for feeling and loving, than
her husband knew. They gossiped together over the corpse, related
anecdotes, with embellishments of her lingering decline, and its real or
supposed cause. In short, they worked each other up to some indignation
against the austere little man, who sat examining papers in an adjoining
room, unconscious of what opprobrium he was the object.

Mrs. Helstone was hardly under the sod when rumours began to be rife in
the neighbourhood that she had died of a broken heart. These magnified
quickly into reports of hard usage, and, finally, details of harsh
treatment on the part of her husband--reports grossly untrue, but not
the less eagerly received on that account. Mr. Yorke heard them, partly
believed them. Already, of course, he had no friendly feeling to his
successful rival. Though himself a married man now, and united to a
woman who seemed a complete contrast to Mary Cave in all respects, he
could not forget the great disappointment of his life; and when he heard
that what would have been so precious to him had been neglected, perhaps
abused, by another, he conceived for that other a rooted and bitter
animosity.

Of the nature and strength of this animosity Mr. Helstone was but half
aware. He neither knew how much Yorke had loved Mary Cave, what he had
felt on losing her, nor was he conscious of the calumnies concerning his
treatment of her, familiar to every ear in the neighbourhood but his
own. He believed political and religious differences alone separated him
and Mr. Yorke. Had he known how the case really stood, he would hardly
have been induced by any persuasion to cross his former rival's
threshold.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Yorke did not resume his lecture of Robert Moore. The conversation
ere long recommenced in a more general form, though still in a somewhat
disputative tone. The unquiet state of the country, the various
depredations lately committed on mill-property in the district, supplied
abundant matter for disagreement, especially as each of the three
gentlemen present differed more or less in his views on these subjects.
Mr. Helstone thought the masters aggrieved, the workpeople unreasonable;
he condemned sweepingly the widespread spirit of disaffection against
constituted authorities, the growing indisposition to bear with patience
evils he regarded as inevitable. The cures he prescribed were vigorous
government interference, strict magisterial vigilance; when necessary,
prompt military coercion.

Mr. Yorke wished to know whether this interference, vigilance, and
coercion would feed those who were hungry, give work to those who wanted
work, and whom no man would hire. He scouted the idea of inevitable
evils. He said public patience was a camel, on whose back the last atom
that could be borne had already been laid, and that resistance was now a
duty; the widespread spirit of disaffection against constituted
authorities he regarded as the most promising sign of the times; the
masters, he allowed, were truly aggrieved, but their main grievances had
been heaped on them by a "corrupt, base, and bloody" government (these
were Mr. Yorke's epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh,
mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of the
country, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuated
perseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which had
brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously
oppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"--the
originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever
public men did--that hung a millstone about England's neck.

"But where was the use of talking?" he demanded. "What chance was there
of reason being heard in a land that was king-ridden, priest-ridden,
peer-ridden; where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled
debauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common sense as
hereditary legislators was tolerated; where such a humbug as a bench of
bishops, such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting established
church was endured and venerated; where a standing army was maintained,
and a host of lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on the
fat of the land?"

Mr. Helstone, rising up and putting on his shovel-hat, observed in
reply, "that in the course of his life he had met with two or three
instances where sentiments of this sort had been very bravely maintained
so long as health, strength, and worldly prosperity had been the allies
of him who professed them; but there came a time," he said, "to all men,
'when the keepers of the house should tremble; when they should be
afraid of that which is high, and fear should be in the way;' and that
time was the test of the advocate of anarchy and rebellion, the enemy of
religion and order. Ere now," he affirmed, "he had been called upon to
read those prayers our church has provided for the sick by the miserable
dying-bed of one of her most rancorous foes; he had seen such a one
stricken with remorse, solicitous to discover a place for repentance,
and unable to find any, though he sought it carefully with tears. He
must forewarn Mr. Yorke that blasphemy against God and the king was a
deadly sin, and that there was such a thing as 'judgment to come.'"

Mr. Yorke "believed fully that there was such a thing as judgment to
come. If it were otherwise, it would be difficult to imagine how all the
scoundrels who seemed triumphant in this world, who broke innocent
hearts with impunity, abused unmerited privileges, were a scandal to
honourable callings, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor,
browbeat the humble, and truckled meanly to the rich and proud, were to
be properly paid off in such coin as they had earned. But," he added,
"whenever he got low-spirited about such-like goings-on, and their
seeming success in this mucky lump of a planet, he just reached down t'
owd book" (pointing to a great Bible in the bookcase), "opened it like
at a chance, and he was sure to light of a verse blazing wi' a blue
brimstone low that set all straight. He knew," he said, "where some folk
war bound for, just as weel as if an angel wi' great white wings had
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
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.




CHAPTER VI.

CORIOLANUS.


Mademoiselle Moore had that morning a somewhat absent-minded pupil.
Caroline forgot, again and again, the explanations which were given to
her. However, she still bore with unclouded mood the chidings her
inattention brought upon her. Sitting in the sunshine near the window,
she seemed to receive with its warmth a kind influence, which made her
both happy and good. Thus disposed, she looked her best, and her best
was a pleasing vision.

To her had not been denied the gift of beauty. It was not absolutely
necessary to know her in order to like her; she was fair enough to
please, even at the first view. Her shape suited her age: it was
girlish, light, and pliant; every curve was neat, every limb
proportionate; her face was expressive and gentle; her eyes were
handsome, and gifted at times with a winning beam that stole into the
heart, with a language that spoke softly to the affections. Her mouth
was very pretty; she had a delicate skin, and a fine flow of brown hair,
which she knew how to arrange with taste; curls became her, and she
possessed them in picturesque profusion. Her style of dress announced
taste in the wearer--very unobtrusive in fashion, far from costly in
material, but suitable in colour to the fair complexion with which it
contrasted, and in make to the slight form which it draped. Her present
winter garb was of merino--the same soft shade of brown as her hair; the
little collar round her neck lay over a pink ribbon, and was fastened
with a pink knot. She wore no other decoration.

So much for Caroline Helstone's appearance. As to her character or
intellect, if she had any, they must speak for themselves in due time.

Her connections are soon explained. She was the child of parents
separated soon after her birth, in consequence of disagreement of
disposition. Her mother was the half-sister of Mr. Moore's father; thus,
though there was no mixture of blood, she was, in a distant sense, the
cousin of Robert, Louis, and Hortense. Her father was the brother of Mr.
Helstone--a man of the character friends desire not to recall, after
death has once settled all earthly accounts. He had rendered his wife
unhappy. The reports which were known to be true concerning him had
given an air of probability to those which were falsely circulated
respecting his better-principled brother. Caroline had never known her
mother, as she was taken from her in infancy, and had not since seen
her; her father died comparatively young, and her uncle, the rector, had
for some years been her sole guardian. He was not, as we are aware, much
adapted, either by nature or habits, to have the charge of a young girl.
He had taken little trouble about her education; probably he would have
taken none if she, finding herself neglected, had not grown anxious on
her own account, and asked, every now and then, for a little attention,
and for the means of acquiring such amount of knowledge as could not be
dispensed with. Still, she had a depressing feeling that she was
inferior, that her attainments were fewer than were usually possessed by
girls of her age and station; and very glad was she to avail herself of
the kind offer made by her cousin Hortense, soon after the arrival of
the latter at Hollow's Mill, to teach her French and fine needle-work.
Mdlle. Moore, for her part, delighted in the task, because it gave her
importance; she liked to lord it a little over a docile yet quick pupil.
She took Caroline precisely at her own estimate, as an
irregularly-taught, even ignorant girl; and when she found that she made
rapid and eager progress, it was to no talent, no application, in the
scholar she ascribed the improvement, but entirely to her own superior
method of teaching. When she found that Caroline, unskilled in routine,
had a knowledge of her own, desultory but varied, the discovery caused
her no surprise, for she still imagined that from her conversation had
the girl unawares gleaned these treasures. She thought it even when
forced to feel that her pupil knew much on subjects whereof she knew
little. The idea was not logical, but Hortense had perfect faith in it.

Mademoiselle, who prided herself on possessing "un esprit positif," and
on entertaining a decided preference for dry studies, kept her young
cousin to the same as closely as she could. She worked her unrelentingly
at the grammar of the French language, assigning her, as the most
improving exercise she could devise, interminable "analyses logiques."
These "analyses" were by no means a source of particular pleasure to
Caroline; she thought she could have learned French just as well without
them, and grudged excessively the time spent in pondering over
"propositions, principales, et incidents;" in deciding the "incidente
determinative," and the "incidente applicative;" in examining whether
the proposition was "pleine," "elliptique," or "implicite." Sometimes
she lost herself in the maze, and when so lost she would, now and then
(while Hortense was rummaging her drawers upstairs--an unaccountable
occupation in which she spent a large portion of each day, arranging,
disarranging, rearranging, and counter-arranging), carry her book to
Robert in the counting-house, and get the rough place made smooth by his
aid. Mr. Moore possessed a clear, tranquil brain of his own. Almost as
soon as he looked at Caroline's little difficulties they seemed to
dissolve beneath his eye. In two minutes he would explain all, in two
words give the key to the puzzle. She thought if Hortense could only
teach like him, how much faster she might learn! Repaying him by an
admiring and grateful smile, rather shed at his feet than lifted to his
face, she would leave the mill reluctantly to go back to the cottage,
and then, while she completed the exercise, or worked out the sum (for
Mdlle. Moore taught her arithmetic too), she would wish nature had made
her a boy instead of a girl, that she might ask Robert to let her be his
clerk, and sit with him in the counting-house, instead of sitting with
Hortense in the parlour.

Occasionally--but this happened very rarely--she spent the evening at
Hollow's Cottage. Sometimes during these visits Moore was away attending
a market; sometimes he was gone to Mr. Yorke's; often he was engaged
with a male visitor in another room; but sometimes, too, he was at home,
disengaged, free to talk with Caroline. When this was the case, the
evening hours passed on wings of light; they were gone before they were
counted. There was no room in England so pleasant as that small parlour
when the three cousins occupied it. Hortense, when she was not teaching,
or scolding, or cooking, was far from ill-humoured; it was her custom to
relax towards evening, and to be kind to her young English kinswoman.
There was a means, too, of rendering her delightful, by inducing her to
take her guitar and sing and play. She then became quite good-natured.
And as she played with skill, and had a well-toned voice, it was not
disagreeable to listen to her. It would have been absolutely agreeable,
except that her formal and self-important character modulated her
strains, as it impressed her manners and moulded her countenance.

Mr. Moore, released from the business yoke, was, if not lively himself,
a willing spectator of Caroline's liveliness, a complacent listener to
her talk, a ready respondent to her questions. He was something
agreeable to sit near, to hover round, to address and look at. Sometimes
he was better than this--almost animated, quite gentle and friendly.

The drawback was that by the next morning he was sure to be frozen up
again; and however much he seemed, in his quiet way, to enjoy these
social evenings, he rarely contrived their recurrence. This circumstance
puzzled the inexperienced head of his cousin. "If I had a means of
happiness at my command," she thought, "I would employ that means often.
I would keep it bright with use, and not let it lie for weeks aside,
till it gets rusty."

Yet she was careful not to put in practice her own theory. Much as she
liked an evening visit to the cottage, she never paid one unasked.
Often, indeed, when pressed by Hortense to come, she would refuse,
because Robert did not second, or but slightly seconded the request.
This morning was the first time he had ever, of his own unprompted will,
given her an invitation; and then he had spoken so kindly that in
hearing him she had received a sense of happiness sufficient to keep her
glad for the whole day.

The morning passed as usual. Mademoiselle, ever breathlessly busy, spent
it in bustling from kitchen to parlour, now scolding Sarah, now looking
over Caroline's exercise or hearing her repetition-lesson. However
faultlessly these tasks were achieved, she never commended: it was a
maxim with her that praise is inconsistent with a teacher's dignity, and
that blame, in more or less unqualified measure, is indispensable to it.
She thought incessant reprimand, severe or slight, quite necessary to
the maintenance of her authority; and if no possible error was to be
found in the lesson, it was the pupil's carriage, or air, or dress, or
mien, which required correction.

The usual affray took place about the dinner, which meal, when Sarah at
last brought it into the room, she almost flung upon the table, with a
look that expressed quite plainly, "I never dished such stuff i' my life
afore; it's not fit for dogs." Notwithstanding Sarah's scorn, it was a
savoury repast enough. The soup was a sort of purée of dried peas, which
mademoiselle had prepared amidst bitter lamentations that in this
desolate country of England no haricot beans were to be had. Then came a
dish of meat--nature unknown, but supposed to be
miscellaneous--singularly chopped up with crumbs of bread, seasoned
uniquely though not unpleasantly, and baked in a mould--a queer but by
no means unpalatable dish. Greens, oddly bruised, formed the
accompanying vegetable; and a pâté of fruit, conserved after a recipe
devised by Madame Gérard Moore's "grand'mère," and from the taste of
which it appeared probable that "mélasse" had been substituted for
sugar, completed the dinner.

Caroline had no objection to this Belgian cookery--indeed she rather
liked it for a change; and it was well she did so, for had she evinced
any disrelish thereof, such manifestation would have injured her in
mademoiselle's good graces for ever; a positive crime might have been
more easily pardoned than a symptom of distaste for the foreign
comestibles.

Soon after dinner Caroline coaxed her governess-cousin upstairs to
dress. This manœuvre required management. To have hinted that the
jupon, camisole, and curl-papers were odious objects, or indeed other
than quite meritorious points, would have been a felony. Any premature
attempt to urge their disappearance was therefore unwise, and would be
likely to issue in the persevering wear of them during the whole day.
Carefully avoiding rocks and quicksands, however, the pupil, on pretence
of requiring a change of scene, contrived to get the teacher aloft; and,
once in the bedroom, she persuaded her that it was not worth while
returning thither, and that she might as well make her toilet now; and
while mademoiselle delivered a solemn homily on her own surpassing merit
in disregarding all frivolities of fashion, Caroline denuded her of the
camisole, invested her with a decent gown, arranged her collar, hair,
etc., and made her quite presentable. But Hortense would put the
finishing touches herself, and these finishing touches consisted in a
thick handkerchief tied round the throat, and a large, servant-like
black apron, which spoiled everything. On no account would mademoiselle
have appeared in her own house without the thick handkerchief and the
voluminous apron. The first was a positive matter of morality--it was
quite improper not to wear a fichu; the second was the ensign of a good
housewife--she appeared to think that by means of it she somehow
effected a large saving in her brother's income. She had, with her own
hands, made and presented to Caroline similar equipments; and the only
serious quarrel they had ever had, and which still left a soreness in
the elder cousin's soul, had arisen from the refusal of the younger one
to accept of and profit by these elegant presents.

"I wear a high dress and a collar," said Caroline, "and I should feel
suffocated with a handkerchief in addition; and my short aprons do quite
as well as that very long one. I would rather make no change."

Yet Hortense, by dint of perseverance, would probably have compelled her
to make a change, had not Mr. Moore chanced to overhear a dispute on the
subject, and decided that Caroline's little aprons would suffice, and
that, in his opinion, as she was still but a child, she might for the
present dispense with the fichu, especially as her curls were long, and
almost touched her shoulders.

There was no appeal against Robert's opinion, therefore his sister was
compelled to yield; but she disapproved entirely of the piquant neatness
of Caroline's costume, and the ladylike grace of her appearance.
Something more solid and homely she would have considered "beaucoup plus
convenable."

The afternoon was devoted to sewing. Mademoiselle, like most Belgian
ladies, was specially skilful with her needle. She by no means thought
it waste of time to devote unnumbered hours to fine embroidery,
sight-destroying lace-work, marvellous netting and knitting, and, above
all, to most elaborate stocking-mending. She would give a day to the
mending of two holes in a stocking any time, and think her "mission"
nobly fulfilled when she had accomplished it. It was another of
Caroline's troubles to be condemned to learn this foreign style of
darning, which was done stitch by stitch, so as exactly to imitate the
fabric of the stocking itself--a wearifu' process, but considered by
Hortense Gérard, and by her ancestresses before her for long generations
back, as one of the first "duties of a woman." She herself had had a
needle, cotton, and a fearfully torn stocking put into her hand while
she yet wore a child's coif on her little black head; her "hauts faits"
in the darning line had been exhibited to company ere she was six years
old; and when she first discovered that Caroline was profoundly ignorant
of this most essential of attainments, she could have wept with pity
over her miserably-neglected youth.

No time did she lose in seeking up a hopeless pair of hose, of which the
heels were entirely gone, and in setting the ignorant English girl to
repair the deficiency. This task had been commenced two years ago, and
Caroline had the stockings in her work-bag yet. She did a few rows every
day, by way of penance for the expiation of her sins. They were a
grievous burden to her; she would much have liked to put them in the
fire; and once Mr. Moore, who had observed her sitting and sighing over
them, had proposed a private incremation in the counting-house; but to
this proposal Caroline knew it would have been impolitic to accede--the
result could only be a fresh pair of hose, probably in worse condition.
She adhered, therefore, to the ills she knew.

All the afternoon the two ladies sat and sewed, till the eyes and
fingers, and even the spirits of one of them, were weary. The sky since
dinner had darkened; it had begun to rain again, to pour fast. Secret
fears began to steal on Caroline that Robert would be persuaded by Mr.
Sykes or Mr. Yorke to remain at Whinbury till it cleared, and of that
there appeared no present chance. Five o'clock struck, and time stole
on; still the clouds streamed. A sighing wind whispered in the
roof-trees of the cottage; day seemed already closing; the parlour fire
shed on the clear hearth a glow ruddy as at twilight.

"It will not be fair till the moon rises," pronounced Mademoiselle
Moore, "consequently I feel assured that my brother will not return till
then. Indeed I should be sorry if he did. We will have coffee. It would
be vain to wait for him."

"I am tired. May I leave my work now, cousin?"

"You may, since it grows too dark to see to do it well. Fold it up; put
it carefully in your bag; then step into the kitchen and desire Sarah to
bring in the goûter, or tea, as you call it."

"But it has not yet struck six. He may still come."

"He will not, I tell you. I can calculate his movements. I understand my
brother."

Suspense is irksome, disappointment bitter. All the world has, some
time or other, felt that. Caroline, obedient to orders, passed into the
kitchen. Sarah was making a dress for herself at the table.

"You are to bring in coffee," said the young lady in a spiritless tone;
and then she leaned her arm and head against the kitchen mantelpiece,
and hung listlessly over the fire.

"How low you seem, miss! But it's all because your cousin keeps you so
close to work. It's a shame!"

"Nothing of the kind, Sarah," was the brief reply.

"Oh! but I know it is. You're fit to cry just this minute, for nothing
else but because you've sat still the whole day. It would make a kitten
dull to be mewed up so."

"Sarah, does your master often come home early from market when it is
wet?"

"Never, hardly; but just to-day, for some reason, he has made a
difference."

"What do you mean?"

"He is come. I am certain I saw Murgatroyd lead his horse into the yard
by the back-way, when I went to get some water at the pump five minutes
since. He was in the counting-house with Joe Scott, I believe."

"You are mistaken."

"What should I be mistaken for? I know his horse surely?"

"But you did not see himself?"

"I heard him speak, though. He was saying something to Joe Scott about
having settled all concerning ways and means, and that there would be a
new set of frames in the mill before another week passed, and that this
time he would get four soldiers from Stilbro' barracks to guard the
wagon."

"Sarah, are you making a gown?"

"Yes. Is it a handsome one?"

"Beautiful! Get the coffee ready. I'll finish cutting out that sleeve
for you, and I'll give you some trimming for it. I have some narrow
satin ribbon of a colour that will just match it."

"You're very kind, miss."

"Be quick; there's a good girl. But first put your master's shoes on the
hearth: he will take his boots off when he comes in. I hear him; he is
coming."

"Miss, you are cutting the stuff wrong."

"So I am; but it is only a snip. There is no harm done."

The kitchen door opened; Mr. Moore entered, very wet and cold. Caroline
half turned from her dressmaking occupation, but renewed it for a
moment, as if to gain a minute's time for some purpose. Bent over the
dress, her face was hidden; there was an attempt to settle her features
and veil their expression, which failed. When she at last met Mr. Moore,
her countenance beamed.

"We had ceased to expect you. They asserted you would not come," she
said.

"But I promised to return soon. _You_ expected me, I suppose?"

"No, Robert; I dared not when it rained so fast. And you are wet and
chilled. Change everything. If you took cold, I should--we should blame
ourselves in some measure."

"I am not wet through: my riding-coat is waterproof. Dry shoes are all I
require. There--the fire is pleasant after facing the cold wind and rain
for a few miles."

He stood on the kitchen hearth; Caroline stood beside him. Mr. Moore,
while enjoying the genial glow, kept his eyes directed towards the
glittering brasses on the shelf above. Chancing for an instant to look
down, his glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy,
shaded with silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Sarah was gone into the
parlour with the tray; a lecture from her mistress detained her there.
Moore placed his hand a moment on his young cousin's shoulder, stooped,
and left a kiss on her forehead.

"Oh!" said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips, "I was miserable
when I thought you would not come. I am almost too happy now. Are you
happy, Robert? Do you like to come home?"

"I think I do--to-night, at least."

"Are you certain you are not fretting about your frames, and your
business, and the war?"

"Not just now."

"Are you positive you don't feel Hollow's Cottage too small for you, and
narrow, and dismal?"

"At this moment, no."

"Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great
people forget you?"

"No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I am anxious to curry
favour with rich and great people. I only want means--a position--a
career."

"Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. You were made to be
great; you _shall_ be great."

"I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, what recipe you
would give me for acquiring this same greatness; but I know it--better
than you know it yourself. Would it be efficacious? Would it work?
Yes--poverty, misery, bankruptcy. Oh, life is not what you think it,
Lina!"

"But you are what I think you."

"I am not."

"You are better, then?"

"Far worse."

"No; far better. I know you are good."

"How do you know it?"

"You look so, and I feel you _are_ so."

"Where do you feel it?"

"In my heart."

"Ah! You judge me with your heart, Lina: you should judge me with your
head."

"I do; and then I am quite proud of you. Robert, you cannot tell all my
thoughts about you."

Mr. Moore's dark face mustered colour; his lips smiled, and yet were
compressed; his eyes laughed, and yet he resolutely knit his brow.

"Think meanly of me, Lina," said he. "Men, in general, are a sort of
scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea. I make no
pretension to be better than my fellows."

"If you did, I should not esteem you so much. It is because you are
modest that I have such confidence in your merit."

"Are you flattering me?" he demanded, turning sharply upon her, and
searching her face with an eye of acute penetration.

"No," she said softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. She seemed to
think it unnecessary to proffer any eager disavowal of the charge.

"You don't care whether I think you flatter me or not?"

"No."

"You are so secure of your own intentions?"

"I suppose so."

"What are they, Caroline?"

"Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think, and
then to make you better satisfied with yourself."

"By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere friend?"

"Just so. I am your sincere friend, Robert."

"And I am--what chance and change shall make me, Lina."

"Not my enemy, however?"

The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress entering the kitchen
together in some commotion. They had been improving the time which Mr.
Moore and Miss Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the
subject of "café au lait," which Sarah said was the queerest mess she
ever saw, and a waste of God's good gifts, as it was "the nature of
coffee to be boiled in water," and which mademoiselle affirmed to be "un
breuvage royal," a thousand times too good for the mean person who
objected to it.

The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into the parlour.
Before Hortense followed them thither, Caroline had only time again to
question, "Not my enemy, Robert?" And Moore, Quaker-like, had replied
with another query, "Could I be?" And then, seating himself at the
table, had settled Caroline at his side.

Caroline scarcely heard mademoiselle's explosion of wrath when she
rejoined them; the long declamation about the "conduite indigne de cette
méchante créature" sounded in her ear as confusedly as the agitated
rattling of the china. Robert laughed a little at it, in very subdued
sort, and then, politely and calmly entreating his sister to be
tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she
should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his
mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of
them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert
and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the
majority of the women of her class.

Mademoiselle admitted the truth of this conjecture: according to her,
"ces paysannes anglaises étaient tout insupportables." What would she
not give for some "bonne cuisinière anversoise," with the high cap,
short petticoat, and decent sabots proper to her class--something
better, indeed, than an insolent coquette in a flounced gown, and
absolutely without cap! (For Sarah, it appears, did not partake the
opinion of St. Paul that "it is a shame for a woman to go with her head
uncovered;" but, holding rather a contrary doctrine, resolutely refused
to imprison in linen or muslin the plentiful tresses of her yellow hair,
which it was her wont to fasten up smartly with a comb behind, and on
Sundays to wear curled in front.)

"Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl?" asked Mr. Moore, who, stern
in public, was on the whole very kind in private.

"Merci du cadeau!" was the answer. "An Antwerp girl would not stay here
ten days, sneered at as she would be by all the young coquines in your
factory;" then softening, "You are very good, dear brother--excuse my
petulance--but truly my domestic trials are severe, yet they are
probably my destiny; for I recollect that our revered mother experienced
similar sufferings, though she had the choice of all the best servants
in Antwerp. Domestics are in all countries a spoiled and unruly set."

Mr. Moore had also certain reminiscences about the trials of his revered
mother. A good mother she had been to him, and he honoured her memory;
but he recollected that she kept a hot kitchen of it in Antwerp, just as
his faithful sister did here in England. Thus, therefore, he let the
subject drop, and when the coffee-service was removed, proceeded to
console Hortense by fetching her music-book and guitar; and having
arranged the ribbon of the instrument round her neck with a quiet
fraternal kindness he knew to be all-powerful in soothing her most
ruffled moods, he asked her to give him some of their mother's favourite
songs.

Nothing refines like affection. Family jarring vulgarizes; family union
elevates. Hortense, pleased with her brother, and grateful to him,
looked, as she touched her guitar, almost graceful, almost handsome; her
everyday fretful look was gone for a moment, and was replaced by a
"sourire plein de bonté." She sang the songs he asked for, with feeling;
they reminded her of a parent to whom she had been truly attached; they
reminded her of her young days. She observed, too, that Caroline
listened with naïve interest; this augmented her good-humour; and the
exclamation at the close of the song, "I wish I could sing and play like
Hortense!" achieved the business, and rendered her charming for the
evening.

It is true a little lecture to Caroline followed, on the vanity of
_wishing_ and the duty of _trying_. "As Rome," it was suggested, "had
not been built in a day, so neither had Mademoiselle Gérard Moore's
education been completed in a week, or by merely _wishing_ to be clever.
It was effort that had accomplished that great work. She was ever
remarkable for her perseverance, for her industry. Her masters had
remarked that it was as delightful as it was uncommon to find so much
talent united with so much solidity, and so on." Once on the theme of
her own merits, mademoiselle was fluent.

Cradled at last in blissful self-complacency, she took her knitting, and
sat down tranquil. Drawn curtains, a clear fire, a softly-shining lamp,
gave now to the little parlour its best, its evening charm. It is
probable that the three there present felt this charm. They all looked
happy.

"What shall we do now, Caroline?" asked Mr. Moore, returning to his seat
beside his cousin.

"What shall we do, Robert?" repeated she playfully. "You decide."

"Not play at chess?"

"No."

"Nor draughts, nor backgammon?"

"No, no; we both hate silent games that only keep one's hands employed,
don't we?"

"I believe we do. Then shall we talk scandal?"

"About whom? Are we sufficiently interested in anybody to take a
pleasure in pulling their character to pieces?"

"A question that comes to the point. For my part, unamiable as it
sounds, I must say no."

"And I too. But it is strange, though we want no third--fourth, I mean
(she hastily and with contrition glanced at Hortense), living person
among us--so selfish we are in our happiness--though we don't want to
think of the present existing world, it would be pleasant to go back to
the past, to hear people that have slept for generations in graves that
are perhaps no longer graves now, but gardens and fields, speak to us
and tell us their thoughts, and impart their ideas."

"Who shall be the speaker? What language shall he utter? French?"

"Your French forefathers don't speak so sweetly, nor so solemnly, nor so
impressively as your English ancestors, Robert. To-night you shall be
entirely English. You shall read an English book."

"An old English book?"

"Yes, an old English book--one that you like; and I will choose a part
of it that is toned quite in harmony with something in you. It shall
waken your nature, fill your mind with music; it shall pass like a
skilful hand over your heart, and make its strings sound. Your heart is
a lyre, Robert; but the lot of your life has not been a minstrel to
sweep it, and it is often silent. Let glorious William come near and
touch it. You will see how he will draw the English power and melody out
of its chords."

"I must read Shakespeare?"

"You must have his spirit before you; you must hear his voice with your
mind's ear; you must take some of his soul into yours."

"With a view to making me better? Is it to operate like a sermon?"

"It is to stir you, to give you new sensations. It is to make you feel
your life strongly--not only your virtues, but your vicious, perverse
points."

"Dieu! que dit-elle?" cried Hortense, who hitherto had been counting
stitches in her knitting, and had not much attended to what was said,
but whose ear these two strong words caught with a tweak.

"Never mind her, sister; let her talk. Now just let her say anything she
pleases to-night. She likes to come down hard upon your brother
sometimes. It amuses me, so let her alone."

Caroline, who, mounted on a chair, had been rummaging the bookcase,
returned with a book.

"Here's Shakespeare," she said, "and there's 'Coriolanus.' Now, read,
and discover by the feelings the reading will give you at once how low
and how high you are."

"Come, then, sit near me, and correct when I mispronounce."

"I am to be the teacher then, and you my pupil?"

"Ainsi, soit-il!"

"And Shakespeare is our science, since we are going to study?"

"It appears so."

"And you are not going to be French, and sceptical, and sneering? You
are not going to think it a sign of wisdom to refuse to admire?"

"I don't know."

"If you do, Robert, I'll take Shakespeare away; and I'll shrivel up
within myself, and put on my bonnet and go home."

"Sit down. Here I begin."

"One minute, if you please, brother," interrupted mademoiselle. "When
the gentleman of a family reads, the ladies should always
sew.--Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery. You may get three
sprigs done to-night."

Caroline looked dismayed. "I can't see by lamp-light; my eyes are tired,
and I can't do two things well at once. If I sew, I cannot listen; if I
listen, I cannot sew."

"Fi, donc! Quel enfantillage!" began Hortense. Mr. Moore, as usual,
suavely interposed.

"Permit her to neglect the embroidery for this evening. I wish her whole
attention to be fixed on my accent; and to ensure this, she must follow
the reading with her eyes--she must look at the book."

He placed it between them, reposed his arm on the back of Caroline's
chair, and thus began to read.

The very first scene in "Coriolanus" came with smart relish to his
intellectual palate, and still as he read he warmed. He delivered the
haughty speech of Caius Marcius to the starving citizens with unction;
he did not say he thought his irrational pride right, but he seemed to
feel it so. Caroline looked up at him with a singular smile.

"There's a vicious point hit already," she said. "You sympathize with
that proud patrician who does not sympathize with his famished
fellow-men, and insults them. There, go on." He proceeded. The warlike
portions did not rouse him much; he said all that was out of date, or
should be; the spirit displayed was barbarous; yet the encounter
single-handed between Marcius and Tullus Aufidius he delighted in. As he
advanced, he forgot to criticise; it was evident he appreciated the
power, the truth of each portion; and, stepping out of the narrow line
of private prejudices, began to revel in the large picture of human
nature, to feel the reality stamped upon the characters who were
speaking from that page before him.

He did not read the comic scenes well; and Caroline, taking the book out
of his hand, read these parts for him. From her he seemed to enjoy them,
and indeed she gave them with a spirit no one could have expected of
her, with a pithy expression with which she seemed gifted on the spot,
and for that brief moment only. It may be remarked, in passing, that the
general character of her conversation that evening, whether serious or
sprightly, grave or gay, was as of something untaught, unstudied,
intuitive, fitful--when once gone, no more to be reproduced as it had
been than the glancing ray of the meteor, than the tints of the dew-gem,
than the colour or form of the sunset cloud, than the fleeting and
glittering ripple varying the flow of a rivulet.

Coriolanus in glory, Coriolanus in disaster, Coriolanus banished,
followed like giant shades one after the other. Before the vision of the
banished man Moore's spirit seemed to pause. He stood on the hearth of
Aufidius's hall, facing the image of greatness fallen, but greater than
ever in that low estate. He saw "the grim appearance," the dark face
"bearing command in it," "the noble vessel with its tackle torn." With
the revenge of Caius Marcius, Moore perfectly sympathized; he was not
scandalized by it; and again Caroline whispered, "There I see another
glimpse of brotherhood in error."

The march on Rome, the mother's supplication, the long resistance, the
final yielding of bad passions to good, which ever must be the case in a
nature worthy the epithet of noble, the rage of Aufidius at what he
considered his ally's weakness, the death of Coriolanus, the final
sorrow of his great enemy--all scenes made of condensed truth and
strength--came on in succession and carried with them in their deep,
fast flow the heart and mind of reader and listener.

"Now, have you felt Shakespeare?" asked Caroline, some ten minutes after
her cousin had closed the book.

"I think so."

"And have you felt anything in Coriolanus like you?"

"Perhaps I have."

"Was he not faulty as well as great?"

Moore nodded.

"And what was his fault? What made him hated by the citizens? What
caused him to be banished by his countrymen?"

"What do you think it was?"

"I ask again--

                      'Whether was it pride,
    Which out of daily fortune ever taints
    The happy man? whether defect of judgment,
    To fail in the disposing of those chances
    Which he was lord of? or whether nature,
    Not to be other than one thing, not moving
    From the casque to the cushion, but commanding peace
    Even with the same austerity and garb
    As he controlled the war?'"

"Well, answer yourself, Sphinx."

"It was a spice of all; and you must not be proud to your workpeople;
you must not neglect chances of soothing them; and you must not be of an
inflexible nature, uttering a request as austerely as if it were a
command."

"That is the moral you tack to the play. What puts such notions into
your head?"

"A wish for your good, a care for your safety, dear Robert, and a fear,
caused by many things which I have heard lately, that you will come to
harm."

"Who tells you these things?"

"I hear my uncle talk about you. He praises your hard spirit, your
determined cast of mind, your scorn of low enemies, your resolution not
'to truckle to the mob,' as he says."

"And would you have me truckle to them?"

"No, not for the world. I never wish you to lower yourself; but somehow
I cannot help thinking it unjust to include all poor working-people
under the general and insulting name of 'the mob,' and continually to
think of them and treat them haughtily."

"You are a little democrat, Caroline. If your uncle knew, what would he
say?"

"I rarely talk to my uncle, as you know, and never about such things. He
thinks everything but sewing and cooking above women's comprehension,
and out of their line."

"And do you fancy you comprehend the subjects on which you advise me?"

"As far as they concern you, I comprehend them. I know it would be
better for you to be loved by your workpeople than to be hated by them,
and I am sure that kindness is more likely to win their regard than
pride. If you were proud and cold to me and Hortense, should we love
you? When you are cold to me, as you _are_ sometimes, can I venture to
be affectionate in return?"

"Now, Lina, I've had my lesson both in languages and ethics, with a
touch on politics; it is your turn. Hortense tells me you were much
taken by a little piece of poetry you learned the other day, a piece by
poor André Chénier--'La Jeune Captive.' Do you remember it still?"

"I think so."

"Repeat it, then. Take your time and mind your accent; especially let us
have no English _u_'s."

Caroline, beginning in a low, rather tremulous voice, but gaining
courage as she proceeded, repeated the sweet verses of Chénier. The last
three stanzas she rehearsed well.

    "Mon beau voyage encore est si loin de sa fin!
     Je pars, et des ormeaux qui bordent le chemin
       J'ai passé le premiers à peine.
     Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé,
     Un instant seulement mes lèvres ont pressé
       La coupe en mes mains encore pleine.

    "Je ne suis qu'au printemps--je veux voir la moisson;
     Et comme le soleil, de saison en saison,
       Je veux achever mon année,
     Brillante sur ma tige, et l'honneur du jardin
     Je n'ai vu luire encore que les feux du matin,
       Je veux achever ma journée!"

Moore listened at first with his eyes cast down, but soon he furtively
raised them. Leaning back in his chair he could watch Caroline without
her perceiving where his gaze was fixed. Her cheek had a colour, her
eyes a light, her countenance an expression this evening which would
have made even plain features striking; but there was not the grievous
defect of plainness to pardon in her case. The sunshine was not shed on
rough barrenness; it fell on soft bloom. Each lineament was turned with
grace; the whole aspect was pleasing. At the present moment--animated,
interested, touched--she might be called beautiful. Such a face was
calculated to awaken not only the calm sentiment of esteem, the distant
one of admiration, but some feeling more tender, genial,
intimate--friendship, perhaps, affection, interest. When she had
finished, she turned to Moore, and met his eye.

"Is that pretty well repeated?" she inquired, smiling like any happy,
docile child.

"I really don't know."

"Why don't you know? Have you not listened?"

"Yes--and looked. You are fond of poetry, Lina?"

"When I meet with _real_ poetry, I cannot rest till I have learned it by
heart, and so made it partly mine."

Mr. Moore now sat silent for several minutes. It struck nine o'clock.
Sarah entered, and said that Mr. Helstone's servant was come for Miss
Caroline.

"Then the evening is gone already," she observed, "and it will be long,
I suppose, before I pass another here."

Hortense had been for some time nodding over her knitting; fallen into a
doze now, she made no response to the remark.

"You would have no objection to come here oftener of an evening?"
inquired Robert, as he took her folded mantle from the side-table, where
it still lay, and carefully wrapped it round her.

"I like to come here; but I have no desire to be intrusive. I am not
hinting to be asked; you must understand that."

"Oh! I understand thee, child. You sometimes lecture me for wishing to
be rich, Lina; but if I _were_ rich, you should live here always--at any
rate, you should live with me wherever my habitation might be."

"That would be pleasant; and if you were poor--ever so poor--it would
still be pleasant. Good-night, Robert."

"I promised to walk with you up to the rectory."

"I know you did; but I thought you had forgotten, and I hardly knew how
to remind you, though I wished to do it. But would you like to go? It is
a cold night, and as Fanny is come, there is no necessity----"

"Here is your muff; don't wake Hortense--come."

The half mile to the rectory was soon traversed. They parted in the
garden without kiss, scarcely with a pressure of hands; yet Robert sent
his cousin in excited and joyously troubled. He had been singularly kind
to her that day--not in phrase, compliment, profession, but in manner,
in look, and in soft and friendly tones.

For himself, he came home grave, almost morose. As he stood leaning on
his own yard-gate, musing in the watery moonlight all alone, the hushed,
dark mill before him, the hill-environed hollow round, he exclaimed,
abruptly,--

"This won't do! There's weakness--there's downright ruin in all this.
However," he added, dropping his voice, "the frenzy is quite temporary.
I know it very well; I have had it before. It will be gone to-morrow."




CHAPTER VII.

The Curates at Tea.


Caroline Helstone was just eighteen years old, and at eighteen the true
narrative of life is yet to be commenced. Before that time we sit
listening to a tale, a marvellous fiction, delightful sometimes, and sad
sometimes, almost always unreal. Before that time our world is heroic,
its inhabitants half-divine or semi-demon; its scenes are dream-scenes;
darker woods and stranger hills, brighter skies, more dangerous waters,
sweeter flowers, more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts,
sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe.
What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts
at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty! As to our sun, it
is a burning heaven--the world of gods.

At that time, at eighteen, drawing near the confines of illusive, void
dreams, Elf-land lies behind us, the shores of Reality rise in front.
These shores are yet distant; they look so blue, soft, gentle, we long
to reach them. In sunshine we see a greenness beneath the azure, as of
spring meadows; we catch glimpses of silver lines, and imagine the roll
of living waters. Could we but reach this land, we think to hunger and
thirst no more; whereas many a wilderness, and often the flood of death,
or some stream of sorrow as cold and almost as black as death, is to be
crossed ere true bliss can be tasted. Every joy that life gives must be
earned ere it is secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who
have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red
beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles
over it.

At eighteen we are not aware of this. Hope, when she smiles on us, and
promises happiness to-morrow, is implicitly believed; Love, when he
comes wandering like a lost angel to our door, is at once admitted,
welcomed, embraced. His quiver is not seen; if his arrows penetrate,
their wound is like a thrill of new life. There are no fears of poison,
none of the barb which no leech's hand can extract. That perilous
passion--an agony ever in some of its phases; with many, an agony
throughout--is believed to be an unqualified good. In short, at eighteen
the school of experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing,
grinding, but yet purifying and invigorating lessons are yet to be
learned.

Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as
yours, none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with
hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces
him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your
instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through
life's wilds; without it, how they stumble, how they stray! On what
forbidden grounds do they intrude, down what dread declivities are they
hurled!

Caroline, having been convoyed home by Robert, had no wish to pass what
remained of the evening with her uncle. The room in which he sat was
very sacred ground to her; she seldom intruded on it; and to-night she
kept aloof till the bell rang for prayers. Part of the evening church
service was the form of worship observed in Mr. Helstone's household. He
read it in his usual nasal voice, clear, loud, and monotonous. The rite
over, his niece, according to her wont, stepped up to him.

"Good-night, uncle."

"Hey! You've been gadding abroad all day--visiting, dining out, and what
not!"

"Only at the cottage."

"And have you learned your lessons?"

"Yes."

"And made a shirt?"

"Only part of one."

"Well, that will do. Stick to the needle, learn shirt-making and
gown-making and piecrust-making, and you'll be a clever woman some day.
Go to bed now. I'm busy with a pamphlet here."

Presently the niece was enclosed in her small bedroom, the door bolted,
her white dressing-gown assumed, her long hair loosened and falling
thick, soft, and wavy to her waist; and as, resting from the task of
combing it out, she leaned her check on her hand and fixed her eyes on
the carpet, before her rose, and close around her drew, the visions we
see at eighteen years.

Her thoughts were speaking with her, speaking pleasantly, as it seemed,
for she smiled as she listened. She looked pretty meditating thus; but a
brighter thing than she was in that apartment--the spirit of youthful
Hope. According to this flattering prophet, she was to know
disappointment, to feel chill no more; she had entered on the dawn of a
summer day--no false dawn, but the true spring of morning--and her sun
would quickly rise. Impossible for her now to suspect that she was the
sport of delusion; her expectations seemed warranted, the foundation on
which they rested appeared solid.

"When people love, the next step is they marry," was her argument. "Now,
I love Robert, and I feel sure that Robert loves me. I have thought so
many a time before; to-day I _felt_ it. When I looked up at him after
repeating Chénier's poem, his eyes (what handsome eyes he has!) sent the
truth through my heart. Sometimes I am afraid to speak to him, lest I
should be too frank, lest I should seem forward--for I have more than
once regretted bitterly overflowing, superfluous words, and feared I had
said more than he expected me to say, and that he would disapprove what
he might deem my indiscretion; now, to-night I could have ventured to
express any thought, he was so indulgent. How kind he was as we walked
up the lane! He does not flatter or say foolish things; his love-making
(friendship, I mean; of course I don't yet account him my lover, but I
hope he will be so some day) is not like what we read of in books,--it
is far better--original, quiet, manly, sincere. I _do_ like him; I would
be an excellent wife to him if he did marry me; I would tell him of his
faults (for he has a few faults), but I would study his comfort, and
cherish him, and do my best to make him happy. Now, I am sure he will
not be cold to-morrow. I feel almost certain that to-morrow evening he
will either come here, or ask me to go there."

She recommenced combing her hair, long as a mermaid's. Turning her head
as she arranged it she saw her own face and form in the glass. Such
reflections are soberizing to plain people: their own eyes are not
enchanted with the image; they are confident then that the eyes of
others can see in it no fascination. But the fair must naturally draw
other conclusions: the picture is charming, and must charm. Caroline saw
a shape, a head, that, daguerreotyped in that attitude and with that
expression, would have been lovely. She could not choose but derive
from the spectacle confirmation to her hopes. It was then in
undiminished gladness she sought her couch.

And in undiminished gladness she rose the next day. As she entered her
uncle's breakfast-room, and with soft cheerfulness wished him
good-morning, even that little man of bronze himself thought, for an
instant, his niece was growing "a fine girl." Generally she was quiet
and timid with him--very docile, but not communicative; this morning,
however, she found many things to say. Slight topics alone might be
discussed between them; for with a woman--a girl--Mr. Helstone would
touch on no other. She had taken an early walk in the garden, and she
told him what flowers were beginning to spring there; she inquired when
the gardener was to come and trim the borders; she informed him that
certain starlings were beginning to build their nests in the
church-tower (Briarfield church was close to Briarfield rectory); she
wondered the tolling of the bells in the belfry did not scare them.

Mr. Helstone opined that "they were like other fools who had just
paired--insensible to inconvenience just for the moment." Caroline, made
perhaps a little too courageous by her temporary good spirits, here
hazarded a remark of a kind she had never before ventured to make on
observations dropped by her revered relative.

"Uncle," said she, "whenever you speak of marriage you speak of it
scornfully. Do you think people shouldn't marry?"

"It is decidedly the wisest plan to remain single, especially for
women."

"Are all marriages unhappy?"

"Millions of marriages are unhappy. If everybody confessed the truth,
perhaps all are more or less so."

"You are always vexed when you are asked to come and marry a couple.
Why?"

"Because one does not like to act as accessory to the commission of a
piece of pure folly."

Mr. Helstone spoke so readily, he seemed rather glad of the opportunity
to give his niece a piece of his mind on this point. Emboldened by the
impunity which had hitherto attended her questions, she went a little
further.

"But why," said she, "should it be pure folly? If two people like each
other, why shouldn't they consent to live together?"

"They tire of each other--they tire of each other in a month. A
yokefellow is not a companion; he or she is a fellow-sufferer."

It was by no means naïve simplicity which inspired Caroline's next
remark; it was a sense of antipathy to such opinions, and of displeasure
at him who held them.

"One would think you had never been married, uncle. One would think you
were an old bachelor."

"Practically, I am so."

"But you have been married. Why were you so inconsistent as to marry?"

"Every man is mad once or twice in his life."

"So you tired of my aunt, and my aunt of you, and you were miserable
together?"

Mr. Helstone pushed out his cynical lip, wrinkled his brown forehead,
and gave an inarticulate grunt.

"Did she not suit you? Was she not good-tempered? Did you not get used
to her? Were you not sorry when she died?"

"Caroline," said Mr. Helstone, bringing his hand slowly down to within
an inch or two of the table, and then smiting it suddenly on the
mahogany, "understand this: it is vulgar and puerile to confound
generals with particulars. In every case there is the rule and there are
the exceptions. Your questions are stupid and babyish. Ring the bell, if
you have done breakfast."

The breakfast was taken away, and that meal over, it was the general
custom of uncle and niece to separate, and not to meet again till
dinner; but to-day the niece, instead of quitting the room, went to the
window-seat, and sat down there. Mr. Helstone looked round uneasily once
or twice, as if he wished her away; but she was gazing from the window,
and did not seem to mind him: so he continued the perusal of his morning
paper--a particularly interesting one it chanced to be, as new movements
had just taken place in the Peninsula, and certain columns of the
journal were rich in long dispatches from General Lord Wellington. He
little knew, meantime, what thoughts were busy in his niece's
mind--thoughts the conversation of the past half-hour had revived but
not generated; tumultuous were they now, as disturbed bees in a hive,
but it was years since they had first made their cells in her brain.

She was reviewing his character, his disposition, repeating his
sentiments on marriage. Many a time had she reviewed them before, and
sounded the gulf between her own mind and his; and then, on the other
side of the wide and deep chasm, she had seen, and she now saw, another
figure standing beside her uncle's--a strange shape, dim, sinister,
scarcely earthly--the half-remembered image of her own father, James
Helstone, Matthewson Helstone's brother.

Rumours had reached her ear of what that father's character was; old
servants had dropped hints; she knew, too, that he was not a good man,
and that he was never kind to her. She recollected--a dark recollection
it was--some weeks that she had spent with him in a great town
somewhere, when she had had no maid to dress her or take care of her;
when she had been shut up, day and night, in a high garret-room, without
a carpet, with a bare uncurtained bed, and scarcely any other furniture;
when he went out early every morning, and often forgot to return and
give her her dinner during the day, and at night, when he came back, was
like a madman, furious, terrible, or--still more painful--like an idiot,
imbecile, senseless. She knew she had fallen ill in this place, and that
one night, when she was very sick he had come raving into the room, and
said he would kill her, for she was a burden to him. Her screams had
brought aid; and from the moment she was then rescued from him she had
never seen him, except as a dead man in his coffin.

That was her father. Also she had a mother, though Mr. Helstone never
spoke to her of that mother, though she could not remember having seen
her; but that she was alive she knew. This mother was then the
drunkard's wife. What had _their_ marriage been? Caroline, turning from
the lattice, whence she had been watching the starlings (though without
seeing them), in a low voice, and with a sad, bitter tone, thus broke
the silence of the room,--

"You term marriage miserable, I suppose, from what you saw of my father
and mother's. If my mother suffered what I suffered when I was with
papa, she must have had a dreadful life."

Mr. Helstone, thus addressed, wheeled about in his chair, and looked
over his spectacles at his niece. He was taken aback.

Her father and mother! What had put it into her head to mention her
father and mother, of whom he had never, during the twelve years she had
lived with him, spoken to her? That the thoughts were self-matured, that
she had any recollections or speculations about her parents, he could
not fancy.

"Your father and mother? Who has been talking to you about them?"

"Nobody; but I remember something of what papa was, and I pity mamma.
Where is she?"

This "Where is she?" had been on Caroline's lips hundreds of times
before, but till now she had never uttered it.

"I hardly know," returned Mr. Helstone; "I was little acquainted with
her. I have not heard from her for years: but wherever she is, she
thinks nothing of you; she never inquires about you. I have reason to
believe she does not wish to see you. Come, it is school-time. You go to
your cousin at ten, don't you? The clock has struck."

Perhaps Caroline would have said more; but Fanny, coming in, informed
her master that the churchwardens wanted to speak to him in the vestry.
He hastened to join them, and his niece presently set out for the
cottage.

The road from the rectory to Hollow's Mill inclined downwards; she ran,
therefore, almost all the way. Exercise, the fresh air, the thought of
seeing Robert, at least of being on his premises, in his vicinage,
revived her somewhat depressed spirits quickly. Arriving in sight of the
white house, and within hearing of the thundering mill and its rushing
watercourse, the first thing she saw was Moore at his garden gate. There
he stood, in his belted Holland blouse, a light cap covering his head,
which undress costume suited him. He was looking down the lane, not in
the direction of his cousin's approach. She stopped, withdrawing a
little behind a willow, and studied his appearance.

"He has not his peer," she thought. "He is as handsome as he is
intelligent. What a keen eye he has! What clearly-cut, spirited
features--thin and serious, but graceful! I do like his face, I do like
his aspect, I do like him so much--better than any of those shuffling
curates, for instance--better than anybody; bonny Robert!"

She sought "bonny Robert's" presence speedily. For his part, when she
challenged his sight, I believe he would have passed from before her
eyes like a phantom, if he could; but being a tall fact, and no fiction,
he was obliged to stand the greeting. He made it brief. It was
cousin-like, brother-like, friend-like, anything but lover-like. The
nameless charm of last night had left his manner: he was no longer the
same man: or, at any rate, the same heart did not beat in his breast.
Rude disappointment, sharp cross! At first the eager girl would not
believe in the change, though she saw and felt it. It was difficult to
withdraw her hand from his, till he had bestowed at least something like
a kind pressure; it was difficult to turn her eyes from his eyes, till
his looks had expressed something more and fonder than that cool
welcome.

A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation, a
lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame
and anguish

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