Shirley

“Can a single man be said to have a home, madam?” he asks.

“Pooh!” says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional smoothness quite as much as her husband does, and practises it as little, and whose plain speaking on all occasions is carried to a point calculated, sometimes, to awaken admiration, but oftener alarm—“pooh! you need not talk nonsense to me; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, does not your sister make a home for you?”

“Not she,” joined in Mr. Yorke. “Hortense is an honest lass. But when I was Robert’s age I had five or six sisters, all as decent and proper as she is; but you see, Hesther, for all that it did not hinder me from looking out for a wife.”

“And sorely he has repented marrying me,” added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. “He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment” (here she pointed to her children). “Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help it? It is not only bringing them into the world, though that is bad enough, but they are all to feed, to clothe, to rear, to settle in life. Young sir, when you feel tempted to marry, think of our four sons and two daughters, and look twice before you leap.”

“I am not tempted now, at any rate. I think these are not times for marrying or giving in marriage.”

A lugubrious sentiment of this sort was sure to obtain Mrs. Yorke’s approbation. She nodded and groaned acquiescence; but in a minute she said, “I make little account of the wisdom of a Solomon of your age; it will be upset by the first fancy that crosses you. Meantime, sit down, sir. You can talk, I suppose, as well sitting as standing?”

This was her way of inviting her guest to take a chair. He had no sooner obeyed her than little Jessy jumped from her father’s knee and ran into Mr. Moore’s arms, which were very promptly held out to receive her.

“You talk of marrying him,” said she to her mother, quite indignantly, as she was lifted lightly to his knee, “and he is married now, or as good. He promised that I should be his wife last summer, the first time he saw me in my new white frock and blue sash. Didn’t he, father?” (These children were not accustomed to say papa and mamma; their mother would allow no such “namby-pamby.”)

“Ay, my little lassie, he promised; I’ll bear witness. But make him say it over again now, Jessy. Such as he are only false loons.”

“He is not false. He is too bonny to be false,” said Jessy, looking up to her tall sweetheart with the fullest confidence in his faith.

“Bonny!” cried Mr. Yorke. “That’s the reason that he should be, and proof that he is, a scoundrel.”

“But he looks too sorrowful to be false,” here interposed a quiet voice from behind the father’s chair. “If he was always laughing, I should think he forgot promises soon, but Mr. Moore never laughs.”

“Your sentimental buck is the greatest cheat of all, Rose,” remarked Mr. Yorke.

“He’s not sentimental,” said Rose.

Mr. Moore turned to her with a little surprise, smiling at the same time.

“How do you know I am not sentimental, Rose?”

“Because I heard a lady say you were not.”

“Voila, qui devient interessant!” exclaimed Mr. Yorke, hitching his chair nearer the fire. “A lady! That has quite a romantic twang. We must guess who it is.—Rosy, whisper the name low to your father. Don’t let him hear.”

“Rose, don’t be too forward to talk,” here interrupted Mrs. Yorke, in her usual kill-joy fashion, “nor Jessy either. It becomes all children, especially girls, to be silent in the presence of their elders.”

“Why have we tongues, then?” asked Jessy pertly; while Rose only looked at her mother with an expression that seemed to say she should take that maxim in and think it over at her leisure. After two minutes’ grave deliberation, she asked, “And why especially girls, mother?”

“Firstly, because I say so; and secondly, because discretion and reserve are a girl’s best wisdom.”

“My dear madam,” observed Moore, “what you say is excellent—it reminds me, indeed, of my dear sister’s observations; but really it is not applicable to these little ones. Let Rose and Jessy talk to me freely, or my chief pleasure in coming here is gone. I like their prattle; it does me good.”

“Does it not?” asked Jessy. “More good than if the rough lads came round you.—You call them rough, mother, yourself.”

“Yes, mignonne, a thousand times more good. I have rough lads enough about me all day long, poulet.”

“There are plenty of people,” continued she, “who take notice of the boys. All my uncles and aunts seem to think their nephews better than their nieces, and when gentlemen come here to dine, it is always Matthew, and Mark, and Martin that are talked to, and never Rose and me. Mr. Moore is our friend, and we’ll keep him.—But mind, Rose, he’s not so much your friend as he is mine. He is my particular acquaintance; remember that!” And she held up her small hand with an admonitory gesture.

Rose was quite accustomed to be admonished by that small hand. Her will daily bent itself to that of the impetuous little Jessy. She was guided, overruled by Jessy in a thousand things. On all occasions of show and pleasure Jessy took the lead, and Rose fell quietly into the background; whereas, when the disagreeables of life—its work and privations—were in question, Rose instinctively took upon her, in addition to her own share, what she could of her sister’s. Jessy had already settled it in her mind that she, when she was old enough, was to be married; Rose, she decided, must be an old maid, to live with her, look after her children, keep her house. This state of things is not uncommon between two sisters, where one is plain and the other pretty; but in this case, if there was a difference in external appearance, Rose had the advantage: her face was more regular-featured than that of the piquant little Jessy. Jessy, however, was destined to possess, along with sprightly intelligence and vivacious feeling, the gift of fascination, the power to charm when, where, and whom she would. Rose was to have a fine, generous soul, a noble intellect profoundly cultivated, a heart as true as steel, but the manner to attract was not to be hers.

“Now, Rose, tell me the name of this lady who denied that I was sentimental,” urged Mr. Moore.

Rose had no idea of tantalization, or she would have held him a while in doubt. She answered briefly, “I can’t. I don’t know her name.”

“Describe her to me. What was she like? Where did you see her?”

“When Jessy and I went to spend the day at Whinbury with Kate and Susan Pearson, who were just come home from school, there was a party at Mrs. Pearson’s, and some grown-up ladies were sitting in a corner of the drawing-room talking about you.”

“Did you know none of them?”

“Hannah, and Harriet, and Dora, and Mary Sykes.”

“Good. Were they abusing me, Rosy?”

“Some of them were. They called you a misanthrope. I remember the word. I looked for it in the dictionary when I came home. It means a man-hater.”

“What besides?”

“Hannah Sykes said you were a solemn puppy.”

“Better!” cried Mr. Yorke, laughing. “Oh, excellent! Hannah! that’s the one with the red hair—a fine girl, but half-witted.”

“She has wit enough for me, it appears,” said Moore. “A solemn puppy, indeed! Well, Rose, go on.”

“Miss Pearson said she believed there was a good deal of affectation about you, and that with your dark hair and pale face you looked to her like some sort of a sentimental noodle.”

Again Mr. Yorke laughed. Mrs. Yorke even joined in this time. “You see in what esteem you are held behind your back,” said she; “yet I believe that Miss Pearson would like to catch you. She set her cap at you when you first came into the country, old as she is.”

“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 votres!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mountebank!” said Matthew.

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

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

“A presumptuous fool!” repeated Matthew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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