Shirley. Charlotte Bronte
– would spend his last penny in law before he would be beaten; he’d settle them, or he’d see.
“Take another glass,” urged Moore.
Mr. Sykes didn’t mind if he did. This was a cold morning (Sugden had found it a warm one); it was necessary to be careful at this season of the year – it was proper to take something to keep the damp out; he had a little cough already (here he coughed in attestation of the fact); something of this sort (lifting the black bottle) was excellent, taken medicinally (he poured the physic into his tumbler); he didn’t make a practice of drinking spirits in a morning, but occasionally it really was prudent to take precautions.
“Quite prudent, and take them by all means,” urged the host.
Mr. Sykes now addressed Mr. Helstone, who stood on the hearth, his shovel hat on his head, watching him significantly with his little, keen eyes.
“You, sir, as a clergyman,” said he, “may feel it disagreeable to be present amidst scenes of hurry and flurry, and, I may say, peril. I dare say your nerves won’t stand it. You’re a man of peace, sir; but we manufacturers, living in the world, and always in turmoil, get quite belligerent. Really, there’s an ardour excited by the thoughts of danger that makes my heart pant. When Mrs. Sykes is afraid of the house being attacked and broke open – as she is every night – I get quite excited. I couldn’t describe to you, sir, my feelings. Really, if anybody was to come – thieves or anything – I believe I should enjoy it, such is my spirit.”
The hardest of laughs, though brief and low, and by no means insulting, was the response of the rector. Moore would have pressed upon the heroic mill owner a third tumbler, but the clergyman, who never transgressed, nor would suffer others in his presence to transgress, the bounds of decorum, checked him.
“Enough is as good as a feast, is it not, Mr. Sykes?” he said; and Mr. Sykes assented, and then sat and watched Joe Scott remove the bottle at a sign from Helstone, with a self-satisfied simper on his lips and a regretful glisten in his eye. Moore looked as if he should have liked to fool him to the top of his bent. What would a certain young kinswoman of his have said could she have seen her dear, good, great Robert – her Coriolanus – just now? Would she have acknowledged in that mischievous, sardonic visage the same face to which she had looked up with such love, which had bent over her with such gentleness last night? Was that the man who had spent so quiet an evening with his sister and his cousin – so suave to one, so tender to the other – reading Shakespeare and listening to Chénier?
Yes, it was the same man, only seen on a different side – a side Caroline had not yet fairly beheld, though perhaps she had enough sagacity faintly to suspect its existence. Well, Caroline had, doubtless, her defective side too. She was human. She must, then, have been very imperfect; and had she seen Moore on his very worst side, she would probably have said this to herself and excused him. Love can excuse anything except meanness; but meanness kills love, cripples even natural affection; without esteem true love cannot exist. Moore, with all his faults, might be esteemed; for he had no moral scrofula in his mind, no hopeless polluting taint – such, for instance, as that of falsehood; neither was he the slave of his appetites. The active life to which he had been born and bred had given him something else to do than to join the futile chase of the pleasure-hunter. He was a man undegraded, the disciple of reason, not the votary of sense. The same might be said of old Helstone. Neither of these two would look, think, or speak a lie; for neither of them had the wretched black bottle, which had just been put away, any charms. Both might boast a valid claim to the proud title of “lord of the creation,” for no animal vice was lord of them; they looked and were superior beings to poor Sykes.
A sort of gathering and trampling sound was heard in the yard, and then a pause. Moore walked to the window; Helstone followed. Both stood on one side, the tall junior behind the under-sized senior, looking forth carefully, so that they might not be visible from without. Their sole comment on what they saw was a cynical smile flashed into each other’s stern eyes.
A flourishing oratorical cough was now heard, followed by the interjection “Whisht!” designed, as it seemed, to still the hum of several voices. Moore opened his casement an inch or two to admit sound more freely.
“Joseph Scott,” began a snuffling voice – Scott was standing sentinel at the counting house door—“might we inquire if your master be within, and is to be spoken to?”
“He’s within, ay,” said Joe nonchalantly.
“Would you then, if you please” (emphasis on “you”), “have the goodness to tell him that twelve gentlemen wants to see him.”
“He’d happen ax what for,” suggested Joe. “I mught as weel tell him that at t’ same time.”
“For a purpose,” was the answer. Joe entered.
“Please, sir, there’s twelve gentlemen wants to see ye, ‘for a purpose.’”
“Good, Joe; I’m their man. – Sugden, come when I whistle.”
Moore went out, chuckling dryly. He advanced into the yard, one hand in his pocket, the other in his waistcoat, his cap brim over his eyes, shading in some measure their deep dancing ray of scorn. Twelve men waited in the yard, some in their shirt-sleeves, some in blue aprons. Two figured conspicuously in the van of the party. One, a little dapper strutting man with a turned-up nose; the other a broad-shouldered fellow, distinguished no less by his demure face and cat like, trustless eyes than by a wooden leg and stout crutch. There was a kind of leer about his lips; he seemed laughing in his sleeve at some person or thing; his whole air was anything but that of a true man.
“Good morning, Mr. Barraclough,” said Moore debonairly, for him.
“Peace be unto you!” was the answer, Mr. Barraclough entirely closing his naturally half-shut eyes as he delivered it.
“I’m obliged to you. Peace is an excellent thing; there’s nothing I more wish for myself. But that is not all you have to say to me, I suppose? I imagine peace is not your purpose?”
“As to our purpose,” began Barraclough, “it’s one that may sound strange and perhaps foolish to ears like yours, for the childer of this world is wiser in their generation than the childer of light.”
“To the point, if you please, and let me hear what it is.”
“Ye’se hear, sir. If I cannot get it off, there’s eleven behint can help me. It is a grand purpose, and” (changing his voice from a half-sneer to a whine) “it’s the Looard’s own purpose, and that’s better.”
“Do you want a subscription to a new Ranter’s chapel, Mr. Barraclough? Unless your errand be something of that sort, I cannot see what you have to do with it.”
“I hadn’t that duty on my mind, sir; but as Providence has led ye to mention the subject, I’ll make it i’ my way to tak ony trifle ye may have to spare; the smallest contribution will be acceptable.”
With that he doffed his hat, and held it out as a begging box, a brazen grin at the same time crossing his countenance.
“If I gave you sixpence you would drink it.”
Barraclough uplifted the palms of his hands and the whites of his eyes, evincing in the gesture a mere burlesque of hypocrisy.
“You seem a fine fellow,” said Moore, quite coolly and dryly; “you don’t care for showing me that you are a double-dyed hypocrite, that your trade is fraud. You expect indeed to make me laugh at the cleverness with which you play your coarsely farcical part, while at the same time you think you are deceiving the men behind you.”
Moses’ countenance lowered. He saw he had gone too far. He was going to answer, when the second leader, impatient of being hitherto kept in the background, stepped forward. This man did not look like a traitor, though he had an exceedingly self-confident and conceited air.
“Mr. Moore,” commenced he, speaking also in his throat and nose, and enunciating each word very slowly, as if with a view to giving his audience time to appreciate fully the uncommon elegance of the phraseology, “it might, perhaps, justly be said that reason rather than peace is our purpose. We come,