Shirley (9 page)

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."