Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

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 undersized 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 countinghouse 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 shirtsleeves, 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