The workhours were over; the "hands" were gone. The machinery was at rest, the mill shut up. Malone walked round it. Somewhere in its great sooty flank he found another chink of light; he knocked at another door, using for the purpose the thick end of his shillelah, with which he beat a rousing tattoo. A key turned; the door unclosed.
"Is it Joe Scott? What news of the wagons, Joe?"
"No; it's myself. Mr. Helstone would send me."
"Oh! Mr. Malone." The voice in uttering this name had the slightest possible cadence of disappointment. After a moment's pause it continued, politely but a little formally,
"I beg you will come in, Mr. Malone. I regret extremely Mr. Helstone should have thought it necessary to trouble you so far. There was no necessityI told him soand on such a night; but walk forwards."
Through a dark apartment, of aspect undistinguishable, Malone followed the speaker into a light and bright room withinvery light and bright indeed it seemed to eyes which, for the last hour, had been striving to penetrate the double darkness of night and fog; but except for its excellent fire, and for a lamp of elegant design and vivid lustre burning on a table, it was a very plain place. The boarded floor was carpetless; the three or four stiffbacked, greenpainted chairs seemed once to have furnished the kitchen of some farmhouse; a desk of strong, solid formation, the table aforesaid, and some framed sheets on the stonecoloured walls, bearing plans for building, for gardening, designs of machinery, etc., completed the furniture of the place.
Plain as it was, it seemed to satisfy Malone, who, when he had removed and hung up his wet surtout and hat, drew one of the rheumaticlooking chairs to the hearth, and set his knees almost within the bars of the red grate.
"Comfortable quarters you have here, Mr. Moore; and all snug to yourself."
"Yes, but my sister would be glad to see you, if you would prefer stepping into the house."
"Oh no! The ladies are best alone, I never was a lady's man. You don't mistake me for my friend Sweeting, do you, Mr. Moore?"
"Sweeting! Which of them is that? The gentleman in the chocolate overcoat, or the little gentleman?"
"The little onehe of Nunnely; the cavalier of the Misses Sykes, with the whole six of whom he is in love, ha! ha!"
"Better be generally in love with all than specially with one, I should think, in that quarter."
"But he is specially in love with one besides, for when I and Donne urged him to make a choice amongst the fair bevy, he namedwhich do you think?"
With a queer, quiet smile Mr. Moore replied, "Dora, of course, or Harriet."
"Ha! ha! you've an excellent guess. But what made you hit on those two?"
"Because they are the tallest, the handsomest, and Dora, at least, is the stoutest; and as your friend Mr. Sweeting is but a little slight figure, I concluded that, according to a frequent rule in such cases, he preferred his contrast."
"You are right; Dora it is. But he has no chance, has he, Moore?"
"What has Mr. Sweeting besides his curacy?"
This question seemed to tickle Malone amazingly. He laughed for full three minutes before he answered it.
"What has Sweeting? Why, David has his harp, or flute, which comes to the same thing. He has a sort of pinchbeck watch; ditto, ring; ditto, eyeglass. That's what he has."
"How would he propose to keep Miss Sykes in gowns only?"
"Ha! ha! Excellent! I'll ask him that next time I see him. I'll roast him for his presumption. But no doubt he expects old Christopher Sykes would do something handsome. He is rich, is he not? They live in a large house."
"Sykes carries on an extensive concern."
"Therefore he must be wealthy, eh?"
"Therefore he must have plenty to do with his wealth, and in these times would be about as likely to think of drawing money from the business to give dowries to his daughters as I should be to dream of pulling down the cottage there, and constructing on its ruins a house as large as Fieldhead."
"Do you know what I heard, Moore, the other day?"
"No. Perhaps that I was about to effect some such change. Your Briarfield gossips are capable of saying that or sillier things."
"That you were going to take Fieldhead on a lease (I thought it looked a dismal place, bythebye, tonight, as I passed it), and that it was your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistressto be married, in short, ha! ha! Now, which is it? Dora, I am sure. You said she was the handsomest."
"I wonder how often it has been settled that I was to be married since I came to Briarfield. They have assigned me every marriageable single woman by turns in the district. Now it was the two Misses Wynnsfirst the dark, then the light one; now the redhaired Miss Armitage; then the mature Ann Pearson. At present you throw on my shoulders all the tribe of the Misses Sykes. On what grounds this gossip rests God knows. I visit nowhere; I seek female society about as assiduously as you do, Mr. Malone. If ever I go to Whinbury, it is only to give Sykes or Pearson a call in their countinghouse, where our discussions run on other topics than matrimony, and our thoughts are occupied with other things than courtships, establishments, dowries. The cloth we can't sell, the hands we can't employ, the mills we can't run, the perverse course of events generally, which we cannot alter, fill our hearts, I take it, pretty well at present, to the tolerably complete exclusion of such figments as lovemaking, etc."
"I go along with you completely, Moore. If there is one notion I hate more than another, it is that of marriageI mean marriage in the vulgar weak sense, as a mere matter of sentimenttwo beggarly fools agreeing to unite their indigence by some fantastic tie of feeling. Humbug! But an advantageous connection, such as can be formed in consonance with dignity of views and permanency of solid interests, is not so badeh?"
"No," responded Moore, in an absent manner. The subject seemed to have no interest for him; he did not pursue it. After sitting for some time gazing at the fire with a preoccupied air, he suddenly turned his head.
"Hark!" said he. "Did you hear wheels?"
Rising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. He soon closed it. "It is only the sound of the wind rising," he remarked, "and the rivulet a little swollen, rushing down the hollow. I expected those wagons at six; it is near nine now."
Rising, he went to the window, opened it, and listened. He soon closed it. "It is only the sound of the wind rising," he remarked, "and the rivulet a little swollen, rushing down the hollow. I expected those wagons at six; it is near nine now."
"Seriously, do you suppose that the putting up of this new machinery will bring you into danger?" inquired Malone. "Helstone seems to think it will."
"I only wish the machinesthe frameswere safe here, and lodged within the walls of this mill. Once put up, I defy the framebreakers. Let them only pay me a visit and take the consequences. My mill is my castle."
"One despises such low scoundrels," observed Malone, in a profound vein of reflection. "I almost wish a party would call upon you tonight; but the road seemed extremely quiet as I came along. I saw nothing astir."
"You came by the Redhouse?"
"Yes."
"There would be nothing on that road. It is in the direction of Stilbro' the risk lies."
"And you think there is risk?"
"What these fellows have done to others they may do to me. There is only this difference: most of the manufacturers seem paralyzed when they are attacked. Sykes, for instance, when his dressingshop was set on fire and burned to the ground, when the cloth was torn from his tenters and left in shreds in the field, took no steps to discover or punish the miscreants: he gave up as tamely as a rabbit under the jaws of a ferret. Now I, if I know myself, should stand by my trade, my mill, and my machinery."
"Helstone says these three are your gods; that the 'Orders in Council' are with you another name for the seven deadly sins; that Castlereagh is your Antichrist, and the warparty his legions."
"Yes; I abhor all these things because they ruin me. They stand in my way. I cannot get on. I cannot execute my plans because of them. I see myself baffled at every turn by their untoward effects."
"But you are rich and thriving, Moore?"
"I am very rich in cloth I cannot sell. You should step into my warehouse yonder, and observe how it is piled to the roof with pieces. Roakes and Pearson are in the same condition. America used to be their market, but the Orders in Council have cut that off."
Malone did not seem prepared to carry on briskly a conversation of this sort. He began to knock the heels of his boots together, and to yawn.
"And then to think," continued Mr. Moore who seemed too much taken up with the current of his own thoughts to note the symptoms of his guest's ennui"to think that these ridiculous gossips of Whinbury and Briarfield will keep pestering one about being married! As if there was nothing to be done in life but to 'pay attention,' as they say, to some young lady, and then to go to church with her, and then to start on a bridal tour, and then to run through a round of visits, and then, I suppose, to be 'having a family.' Oh, que le diable emporte!" He broke off the aspiration into which he was launching with a certain energy, and added, more calmly, "I believe women talk and think only of these things, and they naturally fancy men's minds similarly occupied."
"Of courseof course," assented Malone; "but never mind them." And he whistled, looked impatiently round, and seemed to feel a great want of something. This time Moore caught and, it appeared, comprehended his demonstrations.
"Mr. Malone," said he, "you must require refreshment after your wet walk. I forget hospitality."
"Not at all," rejoined Malone; but he looked as if the right nail was at last hit on the head, nevertheless. Moore rose and opened a cupboard.
"It is my fancy," said he, "to have every convenience within myself, and not to be dependent on the feminity in the cottage yonder for every mouthful I eat or every drop I drink. I often spend the evening and sup here alone, and sleep with Joe Scott in the mill. Sometimes I am my own watchman. I require little sleep, and it pleases me on a fine night to wander for an hour or two with my musket about the hollow. Mr. Malone, can you cook a mutton chop?"
"Try me. I've done it hundreds of times at college."
"There's a dishful, then, and there's the gridiron. Turn them quickly. You know the secret of keeping the juices in?"