The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Bronte

  “And who contradicted her, Rosy?” inquired Moore.

  “A lady whom I don’t know, because she never visits here, though I see her every Sunday at church. She sits in the pew near the pulpit. I generally look at her, instead of looking at my prayer-book, for she is like a picture in our dining-room, that woman with the dove in her hand — at least she has eyes like it, and a nose too, a straight nose, that makes all her face look, somehow, what I call clear.”

  “And you don’t know her!” exclaimed Jessy, in a tone of exceeding surprise. “That’s so like Rose. Mr. Moore, I often wonder in what sort of a world my sister lives. I am sure she does not live all her time in this. One is continually finding out that she is quite ignorant of some little matter which everybody else knows. To think of her going solemnly to church every Sunday, and looking all service-time at one particular person, and never so much as asking that person’s name. She means Caroline Helstone, the rector’s niece. I remember all about it. Miss Helstone was quite angry with Anne Pearson. She said, ‘Robert Moore is neither affected nor sentimental; you mistake his character utterly, or rather not one of you here knows anything about it.’ Now, shall I tell you what she is like? I can tell what people are like, and how they are dressed, better than Rose can.”

  “Let us hear.”

  “She is nice; she is fair; she has a pretty white slender throat; she has long curls, not stiff ones — they hang loose and soft, their colour is brown but not dark; she speaks quietly, with a clear tone; she never makes a bustle in moving; she often wears a gray silk dress; she is neat all over — her gowns, and her shoes, and her gloves always fit her. She is what I call a lady, and when I am as tall as she is, I mean to be like her. Shall I suit you if I am? Will you really marry me?”

  Moore stroked Jessy’s hair. For a minute he seemed as if he would draw her nearer to him, but instead he put her a little farther off.

  “Oh! you won’t have me? You push me away.”

  “Why, Jessy, you care nothing about me. You never come to see me now at the Hollow.”

  “Because you don’t ask me.”

  Hereupon Mr. Moore gave both the little girls an invitation to pay him a visit next day, promising that, as he was going to Stilbro’ in the morning, he would buy them each a present, of what nature he would not then declare, but they must come and see. Jessy was about to reply, when one of the boys unexpectedly broke in, —

  “I know that Miss Helstone you have all been palavering about. She’s an ugly girl. I hate her. I hate all womenites. I wonder what they were made for.”

  “Martin!” said his father, for Martin it was. The lad only answered by turning his cynical young face, half-arch, half-truculent, towards the paternal chair. “Martin, my lad, thou’rt a swaggering whelp now; thou wilt some day be an outrageous puppy. But stick to those sentiments of thine. See, I’ll write down the words now i’ my pocket-book.” (The senior took out a morocco-covered book, and deliberately wrote therein.) “Ten years hence, Martin, if thou and I be both alive at that day, I’ll remind thee of that speech.”

  “I’ll say the same then. I mean always to hate women. They’re such dolls; they do nothing but dress themselves finely, and go swimming about to be admired. I’ll never marry. I’ll be a bachelor.”

  “Stick to it! stick to it! — Hesther” (addressing his wife), “I was like him when I was his age — a regular misogamist; and, behold! by the time I was three-and-twenty — being then a tourist in France and Italy, and the Lord knows where — I curled my hair every night before I went to bed, and wore a ring i’ my ear, and would have worn one i’ my nose if it had been the fashion, and all that I might make myself pleasing and charming to the ladies. Martin will do the like.”

  “Will I? Never! I’ve more sense. What a guy you were, father! As to dressing, I make this vow: I’ll never dress more finely than as you see me at present. — Mr. Moore, I’m clad in blue cloth from top to toe, and they laugh at me, and call me sailor at the grammar-school. I laugh louder at them, and say they are all magpies and parrots, with their coats one colour, and their waistcoats another, and their trousers a third. I’ll always wear blue cloth, and nothing but blue cloth. It is beneath a human being’s dignity to dress himself in parti-coloured garments.”

  “Ten years hence, Martin, no tailor’s shop will have choice of colours varied enough for thy exacting taste; no perfumer’s stores essences exquisite enough for thy fastidious senses.”

  Martin looked disdain, but vouchsafed no further reply. Meantime Mark, who for some minutes had been rummaging amongst a pile of books on a side-table, took the word. He spoke in a peculiarly slow, quiet voice, and with an expression of still irony in his face not easy to describe.

  “Mr. Moore,” said he, “you think perhaps it was a compliment on Miss Caroline Helstone’s part to say you were not sentimental. I thought you appeared confused when my sisters told you the words, as if you felt flattered. You turned red, just like a certain vain little lad at our school, who always thinks proper to blush when he gets a rise in the class. For your benefit, Mr. Moore, I’ve been looking up the word ‘sentimental’ in the dictionary, and I find it to mean ‘tinctured with sentiment.’ On examining further, ‘sentiment’ is explained to be thought, idea, notion. A sentimental man, then, is one who has thoughts, ideas, notions; an unsentimental man is one destitute of thought, idea, or notion.”

  And Mark stopped. He did not smile, he did not look round for admiration. He had said his say, and was silent.

  “Ma foi! mon ami,” observed Mr. Moore to Yorke, “ce sont vraiment des enfants terribles, que les vôtres!”

  Rose, who had been listening attentively to Mark’s speech, replied to him, “There are different kinds of thoughts, ideas, and notions,” said she, “good and bad. Sentimental must refer to the bad, or Miss Helstone must have taken it in that sense, for she was not blaming Mr. Moore; she was defending him.”

  “That’s my kind little advocate!” said Moore, taking Rose’s hand.

  “She was defending him,” repeated Rose, “as I should have done had I been in her place, for the other ladies seemed to speak spitefully.”

  “Ladies always do speak spitefully,” observed Martin. “It is the nature of womenites to be spiteful.”

  Matthew now, for the first time, opened his lips. “What a fool Martin is, to be always gabbling about what he does not understand!”

  “It is my privilege, as a freeman, to gabble on whatever subject I like,” responded Martin.

  “You use it, or rather abuse it, to such an extent,” rejoined the elder brother, “that you prove you ought to have been a slave.”

  “A slave! a slave! That to a Yorke, and from a Yorke! This fellow,” he added, standing up at the table, and pointing across it to Matthew — “this fellow forgets, what every cottier in Briarfield knows, that all born of our house have that arched instep under which water can flow — proof that there has not been a slave of the blood for three hundred years.”

  “Mountebank!” said Matthew.

  “Lads, be silent!” exclaimed Mr. Yorke. — “Martin, you are a mischief-maker. There would have been no disturbance but for you.”

  “Indeed! Is that correct? Did I begin, or did Matthew? Had I spoken to him when he accused me of gabbling like a fool?”

  “A presumptuous fool!” repeated Matthew.

  Here Mrs. Yorke commenced rocking herself — rather a portentous movement with her, as it was occasionally followed, especially when Matthew was worsted in a conflict, by a fit of hysterics.

  “I don’t see why I should bear insolence from Matthew Yorke, or what right he has to use bad language to me,” observed Martin.

  “He has no right, my lad; but forgive your brother until seventy-and-seven times,” said Mr. Yorke soothingly.

  “Always alike, and theory and practice always adverse!” murmured Martin as he turned to leave the room.

  “Where art thou going, my son?” asked the father.

  “Some
where where I shall be safe from insult, if in this house I can find any such place.”

  Matthew laughed very insolently. Martin threw a strange look at him, and trembled through all his slight lad’s frame; but he restrained himself.

  “I suppose there is no objection to my withdrawing?” he inquired.

  “No. Go, my lad; but remember not to bear malice.”

  Martin went, and Matthew sent another insolent laugh after him. Rose, lifting her fair head from Moore’s shoulder, against which, for a moment, it had been resting, said, as she directed a steady gaze to Matthew, “Martin is grieved, and you are glad; but I would rather be Martin than you. I dislike your nature.”

  Here Mr. Moore, by way of averting, or at least escaping, a scene — which a sob from Mrs. Yorke warned him was likely to come on — rose, and putting Jessy off his knee, he kissed her and Rose, reminding them, at the same time, to be sure and come to the Hollow in good time tomorrow afternoon; then, having taken leave of his hostess, he said to Mr. Yorke, “May I speak a word with you?” and was followed by him from the room. Their brief conference took place in the hall.

  “Have you employment for a good workman?” asked Moore.

  “A nonsense question in these times, when you know that every master has many good workmen to whom he cannot give full employment.”

  “You must oblige me by taking on this man, if possible.”

  “My lad, I can take on no more hands to oblige all England.”

  “It does not signify; I must find him a place somewhere.”

  “Who is he?”

  “William Farren.”

  “I know William. A right-down honest man is William.”

  “He has been out of work three months. He has a large family. We are sure they cannot live without wages. He was one of the deputation of cloth-dressers who came to me this morning to complain and threaten. William did not threaten. He only asked me to give them rather more time — to make my changes more slowly. You know I cannot do that: straitened on all sides as I am, I have nothing for it but to push on. I thought it would be idle to palaver long with them. I sent them away, after arresting a rascal amongst them, whom I hope to transport — a fellow who preaches at the chapel yonder sometimes.”

  “Not Moses Barraclough?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah! you’ve arrested him? Good! Then out of a scoundrel you’re going to make a martyr. You’ve done a wise thing.”

  “I’ve done a right thing. Well, the short and the long of it is, I’m determined to get Farren a place, and I reckon on you to give him one.”

  “This is cool, however!” exclaimed Mr. Yorke. “What right have you to reckon on me to provide for your dismissed workmen? What do I know about your Farrens and your Williams? I’ve heard he’s an honest man, but am I to support all the honest men in Yorkshire? You may say that would be no great charge to undertake; but great or little, I’ll none of it.”

  “Come, Mr. Yorke, what can you find for him to do?”

  “I find! You’ll make me use language I’m not accustomed to use. I wish you would go home. Here is the door; set off.”

  Moore sat down on one of the hall chairs.

  “You can’t give him work in your mill — good; but you have land. Find him some occupation on your land, Mr. Yorke.”

  “Bob, I thought you cared nothing about our lourdauds de paysans. I don’t understand this change.”

  “I do. The fellow spoke to me nothing but truth and sense. I answered him just as roughly as I did the rest, who jabbered mere gibberish. I couldn’t make distinctions there and then. His appearance told what he had gone through lately clearer than his words; but where is the use of explaining? Let him have work.”

  “Let him have it yourself. If you are so very much in earnest, strain a point.”

  “If there was a point left in my affairs to strain, I would strain it till it cracked again; but I received letters this morning which showed me pretty clearly where I stand, and it is not far off the end of the plank. My foreign market, at any rate, is gorged. If there is no change — if there dawns no prospect of peace — if the Orders in Council are not, at least, suspended, so as to open our way in the West — I do not know where I am to turn. I see no more light than if I were sealed in a rock, so that for me to pretend to offer a man a livelihood would be to do a dishonest thing.”

  “Come, let us take a turn on the front. It is a starlight night,” said Mr. Yorke.

  They passed out, closing the front door after them, and side by side paced the frost-white pavement to and fro.

  “Settle about Farren at once,” urged Mr. Moore. “You have large fruit-gardens at Yorke Mills. He is a good gardener. Give him work there.”

  “Well, so be it. I’ll send for him tomorrow, and we’ll see. And now, my lad, you’re concerned about the condition of your affairs?”

  “Yes, a second failure — which I may delay, but which, at this moment, I see no way finally to avert — would blight the name of Moore completely; and you are aware I had fine intentions of paying off every debt and re-establishing the old firm on its former basis.”

  “You want capital — that’s all you want.”

  “Yes; but you might as well say that breath is all a dead man wants to live.”

  “I know — I know capital is not to be had for the asking; and if you were a married man, and had a family, like me, I should think your case pretty nigh desperate; but the young and unencumbered have chances peculiar to themselves. I hear gossip now and then about your being on the eve of marriage with this miss and that; but I suppose it is none of it true?”

  “You may well suppose that. I think I am not in a position to be dreaming of marriage. Marriage! I cannot bear the word; it sounds so silly and utopian. I have settled it decidedly that marriage and love are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations — the last and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of the slough of their utter poverty.”

  “I should not think so if I were circumstanced as you are. I should think I could very likely get a wife with a few thousands, who would suit both me and my affairs.”

  “I wonder where?”

  “Would you try if you had a chance?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on — in short, it depends on many things.”

  “Would you take an old woman?”

  “I’d rather break stones on the road.”

  “So would I. Would you take an ugly one?”

  “Bah! I hate ugliness and delight in beauty. My eyes and heart, Yorke, take pleasure in a sweet, young, fair face, as they are repelled by a grim, rugged, meagre one. Soft delicate lines and hues please, harsh ones prejudice me. I won’t have an ugly wife.”

  “Not if she were rich?”

  “Not if she were dressed in gems. I could not love — I could not fancy — I could not endure her. My taste must have satisfaction, or disgust would break out in despotism, or worse — freeze to utter iciness.”

  “What! Bob, if you married an honest, good-natured, and wealthy lass, though a little hard-favoured, couldn’t you put up with the high cheekbones, the rather wide mouth, and reddish hair?”

  “I’ll never try, I tell you. Grace at least I will have, and youth and symmetry — yes, and what I call beauty.”

  “And poverty, and a nursery full of bairns you can neither clothe nor feed, and very soon an anxious, faded mother; and then bankruptcy, discredit — a lifelong struggle.”

  “Let me alone, Yorke.”

  “If you are romantic, Robert, and especially if you are already in love, it is of no use talking.”

  “I am not romantic. I am stripped of romance as bare as the white tenters in that field are of cloth.”

  “Always use such figures of speech, lad; I can understand them. And there is no love affair to disturb your judgment?”

  “I thought I had said enough on that subject before. Love fo
r me? Stuff!”

  “Well, then, if you are sound both in heart and head, there is no reason why you should not profit by a good chance if it offers; therefore, wait and see.”

  “You are quite oracular, Yorke.”

  “I think I am a bit i’ that line. I promise ye naught and I advise ye naught; but I bid ye keep your heart up, and be guided by circumstances.”

  “My namesake the physician’s almanac could not speak more guardedly.”

  “In the meantime, I care naught about ye, Robert Moore: ye are nothing akin to me or mine, and whether ye lose or find a fortune it maks no difference to me. Go home, now. It has stricken ten. Miss Hortense will be wondering where ye are.”

  CHAPTER X.