Shirley. Charlotte Bronte
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a minute for a little quiet.”
There was something so diffident and downcast in the air and tone with which she said this, anyone might perceive that some saddening change had lately passed over her prospects, and that the faculty of cheerful self-possession had left her. Mr. Moore, probably, remembered how she had formerly been accustomed to meet him with gentle ardour and hopeful confidence. He must have seen how the check of this morning had operated. Here was an opportunity for carrying out his new system with effect, if he chose to improve it. Perhaps he found it easier to practise that system in broad daylight, in his mill yard, amidst busy occupations, than in a quiet parlour, disengaged, at the hour of eventide. Fanny lit the candles, which before had stood unlit on the table, brought writing materials, and left the room. Caroline was about to follow her. Moore, to act consistently, should have let her go; whereas he stood in the doorway, and, holding out his hand, gently kept her back. He did not ask her to stay, but he would not let her go.
“Shall I tell my uncle you are here?” asked she, still in the same subdued voice.
“No; I can say to you all I had to say to him. You will be my messenger?”
“Yes, Robert.”
“Then you may just inform him that I have got a clue to the identity of one, at least, of the men who broke my frames; that he belongs to the same gang who attacked Sykes and Pearson’s dressing shop, and that I hope to have him in custody tomorrow. You can remember that?”
“Oh yes!” These two monosyllables were uttered in a sadder tone than ever; and as she said them she shook her head slightly and sighed. “Will you prosecute him?”
“Doubtless.”
“No, Robert.”
“And why no, Caroline?”
“Because it will set all the neighbourhood against you more than ever.”
“That is no reason why I should not do my duty, and defend my property. This fellow is a great scoundrel, and ought to be incapacitated from perpetrating further mischief.”
“But his accomplices will take revenge on you. You do not know how the people of this country bear malice. It is the boast of some of them that they can keep a stone in their pocket seven years, turn it at the end of that time, keep it seven years longer, and hurl it and hit their mark ‘at last.’”
Moore laughed.
“A most pithy vaunt,” said he—“one that redounds vastly to the credit of your dear Yorkshire friends. But don’t fear for me, Lina. I am on my guard against these lamb-like compatriots of yours. Don’t make yourself uneasy about me.”
“How can I help it? You are my cousin. If anything happened” She stopped.
“Nothing will happen, Lina. To speak in your own language, there is a Providence above all – is there not?”
“Yes, dear Robert. May He guard you!”
“And if prayers have efficacy, yours will benefit me. You pray for me sometimes?”
“Not sometimes, Robert. You, and Louis, and Hortense are always remembered.”
“So I have often imagined. It has occurred to me when, weary and vexed, I have myself gone to bed like a heathen, that another had asked forgiveness for my day, and safety for my night. I don’t suppose such vicarial piety will avail much, but the petitions come out of a sincere breast, from innocent lips. They should be acceptable as Abel’s offering; and doubtless would be, if the object deserved them.”
“Annihilate that doubt. It is groundless.”
“When a man has been brought up only to make money, and lives to make it, and for nothing else, and scarcely breathes any other air than that of mills and markets, it seems odd to utter his name in a prayer, or to mix his idea with anything divine; and very strange it seems that a good, pure heart should take him in and harbour him, as if he had any claim to that sort of nest. If I could guide that benignant heart, I believe I should counsel it to exclude one who does not profess to have any higher aim in life than that of patching up his broken fortune, and wiping clean from his bourgeois scutcheon the foul stain of bankruptcy.”
The hint, though conveyed thus tenderly and modestly (as Caroline thought), was felt keenly and comprehended clearly.
“Indeed, I only think – or I will only think – of you as my cousin,” was the quick answer. “I am beginning to understand things better than I did, Robert, when you first came to England – better than I did a week, a day ago. I know it is your duty to try to get on, and that it won’t do for you to be romantic; but in future you must not misunderstand me if I seem friendly. You misunderstood me this morning, did you not?”
“What made you think so?”
“Your look – your manner.”
“But look at me now”
“Oh! you are different now. At present I dare speak to you.”
“Yet I am the same, except that I have left the tradesman behind me in the Hollow. Your kinsman alone stands before you.”
“My cousin Robert – not Mr. Moore.”
“Not a bit of Mr. Moore. Caroline”
Here the company was heard rising in the other room. The door was opened; the pony-carriage was ordered; shawls and bonnets were demanded; Mr. Helstone called for his niece.
“I must go, Robert.”
“Yes, you must go, or they will come in and find us here; and I, rather than meet all that host in the passage, will take my departure through the window. Luckily it opens like a door. One minute only – put down the candle an instant – good night. I kiss you because we are cousins, and, being cousins, one – two – three kisses are allowable. Caroline, good night.”
Chapter VIII
Noah and Moses
The next day Moore had risen before the sun, and had taken a ride to Whinbury and back ere his sister had made the café au lait or cut the tartines for his breakfast. What business he transacted there he kept to himself. Hortense asked no questions: it was not her wont to comment on his movements, nor his to render an account of them. The secrets of business – complicated and often dismal mysteries – were buried in his breast, and never came out of their sepulchre save now and then to scare Joe Scott, or give a start to some foreign correspondent. Indeed, a general habit of reserve on whatever was important seemed bred in his mercantile blood.
Breakfast over, he went to his counting house. Henry, Joe Scott’s boy, brought in the letters and the daily papers; Moore seated himself at his desk, broke the seals of the documents, and glanced them over. They were all short, but not, it seemed, sweet – probably rather sour, on the contrary, for as Moore laid down the last, his nostrils emitted a derisive and defiant snuff, and though he burst into no soliloquy, there was a glance in his eye which seemed to invoke the devil, and lay charges on him to sweep the whole concern to Gehenna. However, having chosen a pen and stripped away the feathered top in a brief spasm of finger-fury (only finger-fury – his face was placid), he dashed off a batch of answers, sealed them, and then went out and walked through the mill. On coming back he sat down to read his newspaper.
The contents seemed not absorbingly interesting; he more than once laid it across his knee, folded his arms, and gazed into the fire; he occasionally turned his head towards the window; he looked at intervals at his watch; in short, his mind appeared preoccupied. Perhaps he was thinking of the beauty of the weather – for it was a fine and mild morning for the season – and wishing to be out in the fields enjoying it. The door of his counting house stood wide open. The breeze and sunshine entered freely; but the first visitant brought no spring perfume on its wings, only an occasional sulphur-puff from the soot-thick column of smoke rushing sable from the gaunt mill chimney.
A dark-blue apparition (that of Joe Scott, fresh from a dyeing vat) appeared momentarily at the open door, uttered the words “He’s comed, sir,” and vanished.
Mr. Moore raised not his eyes from the paper. A large man,