Shirley (24 page)

green, her hills fresh, her gardens blooming; but at heart she was no better. Still her poor were wretched, still their employers were harassed. Commerce, in some of its branches, seemed threatened

with paralysis, for the war continued; England's blood was shed and her wealth lavished—all, it seemed, to attain most inadequate ends. Some tidings there were indeed occasionally of successes in

the Peninsula, but these came in slowly; long intervals occurred between, in which no note was heard

but the insolent self-felicitations of Bonaparte on his continued triumphs. Those who suffered from

the results of the war felt this tedious, and, as they thought, hopeless struggle against what their fears or their interests taught them to regard as an invincible power, most insufferable. They demanded peace on any terms. Men like Yorke and Moore—and there were thousands whom the war placed where it placed them, shuddering on the verge of bankruptcy—insisted on peace with the energy of

desperation.

They held meetings, they made speeches, they got up petitions to extort this boon; on what terms it

was made they cared not.

All men, taken singly, are more or less selfish; and taken in bodies, they are intensely so. The British merchant is no exception to this rule: the mercantile classes illustrate it strikingly. These classes certainly think too exclusively of making money; they are too oblivious of every national consideration but that of extending England's—that is, their own—commerce. Chivalrous feeling, disinterestedness, pride in honour, is too dead in their hearts. A land ruled by them alone would too

often make ignominious submission—not at all from the motives Christ teaches, but rather from those Mammon instils. During the late war, the tradesmen of England would have endured buffets from the French on the right cheek and on the left; their cloak they would have given to Napoleon,

and then have politely offered him their coat also, nor would they have withheld their waistcoat if urged; they would have prayed permission only to retain their one other garment, for the sake of the

purse in its pocket. Not one spark of spirit, not one symptom of resistance, would they have shown till

the hand of the Corsican bandit had grasped that beloved purse;
then
, perhaps, transfigured at once into British bulldogs, they would have sprung at the robber's throat, and there they would have fastened, and there hung, inveterate, insatiable, till the treasure had been restored. Tradesmen, when they speak against war, always profess to hate it because it is a bloody and barbarous proceeding. You

would think, to hear them talk, that they are peculiarly civilized—especially gentle and kindly of disposition to their fellow-men. This is not the case. Many of them are extremely narrow and cold-hearted; have no good feeling for any class but their own; are distant, even hostile, to all others; call them useless; seem to question their right to exist; seem to grudge them the very air they breathe, and

to think the circumstance of their eating, drinking, and living in decent houses quite unjustifiable.

They do not know what others do in the way of helping, pleasing, or teaching their race; they will not

trouble themselves to inquire. Whoever is not in trade is accused of eating the bread of idleness, of

passing a useless existence. Long may it be ere England really becomes a nation of shop-keepers!

We have already said that Moore was no self-sacrificing patriot, and we have also explained what

circumstances rendered him specially prone to confine his attention and efforts to the furtherance of

his individual interest; accordingly, when he felt himself urged a second time to the brink of ruin, none struggled harder than he against the influences which would have thrust him over. What he
could
do towards stirring agitation in the north against the war he did, and he instigated others whose money and connections gave them more power than he possessed. Sometimes, by flashes, he felt there

was little reason in the demands his party made on Government. When he heard of all Europe threatened by Bonaparte, and of all Europe arming to resist him; when he saw Russia menaced, and

beheld Russia rising, incensed and stern, to defend her frozen soil, her wild provinces of serfs, her

dark native despotism, from the tread, the yoke, the tyranny of a foreign victor—he knew that England, a free realm, could not
then
depute her sons to make concessions and propose terms to the unjust, grasping French leader. When news came from time to time of the movements of that man then representing England in the Peninsula, of his advance from success to success—that advance so

deliberate but so unswerving, so circumspect but so certain, so "unhasting" but so "unresting;" when he read Lord Wellington's own dispatches in the columns of the newspapers, documents written by modesty to the dictation of truth—Moore confessed at heart that a power was with the troops of Britain, of that vigilant, enduring, genuine, unostentatious sort, which must win victory to the side it led, in the end. In the end! But that end, he thought, was yet far off; and meantime he, Moore, as an

individual, would be crushed, his hopes ground to dust. It was himself he had to care for, his hopes he

had to pursue; and he would fulfil his destiny.

He fulfilled it so vigorously that ere long he came to a decisive rupture with his old Tory friend the

rector. They quarrelled at a public meeting, and afterwards exchanged some pungent letters in the newspapers. Mr. Helstone denounced Moore as a Jacobin, ceased to see him, would not even speak to

him when they met. He intimated also to his niece, very distinctly, that her communications with Hollow's Cottage must for the present cease; she must give up taking French lessons. The language,

he observed, was a bad and frivolous one at the best, and most of the works it boasted were bad and

frivolous, highly injurious in their tendency to weak female minds. He wondered (he remarked parenthetically) what noodle first made it the fashion to teach women French. Nothing was more improper for them. It was like feeding a rickety child on chalk and water gruel. Caroline must give it

up, and give up her cousins too. They were dangerous people.

Mr. Helstone quite expected opposition to this order; he expected tears. Seldom did he trouble himself about Caroline's movements, but a vague idea possessed him that she was fond of going to

Hollow's Cottage; also he suspected that she liked Robert Moore's occasional presence at the rectory.

The Cossack had perceived that whereas if Malone stepped in of an evening to make himself sociable

and charming, by pinching the ears of an aged black cat, which usually shared with Miss Helstone's

feet the accommodation of her footstool, or by borrowing a fowling-piece, and banging away at a tool shed door in the garden while enough of daylight remained to show that conspicuous mark, keeping the passage and sitting-room doors meantime uncomfortably open for the convenience of running in and out to announce his failures and successes with noisy
brusquerie
—he had observed that under such entertaining circumstances Caroline had a trick of disappearing, tripping noiselessly

upstairs, and remaining invisible till called down to supper. On the other hand, when Robert Moore

was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still

Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and the knitting of missionary-basket socks.

She was very quiet, and Robert paid her little attention, scarcely ever addressing his discourse to

her; but Mr. Helstone, not being one of those elderly gentlemen who are easily blinded—on the contrary, finding himself on all occasions extremely wide-awake—had watched them when they bade

each other good-night. He had just seen their eyes meet once—only once. Some natures would have

taken pleasure in the glance then surprised, because there was no harm and some delight in it. It was

by no means a glance of mutual intelligence, for mutual love secrets existed not between them. There

was nothing then of craft and concealment to offend: only Mr. Moore's eyes, looking into Caroline's,

felt they were clear and gentle; and Caroline's eyes, encountering Mr. Moore's, confessed they were

manly and searching. Each acknowledged the charm in his or her own way. Moore smiled slightly, and Caroline coloured as slightly. Mr. Helstone could, on the spot, have rated them both. They annoyed him. Why? Impossible to say. If you had asked him what Moore merited at that moment, he

would have said a "horsewhip;" if you had inquired into Caroline's deserts, he would have adjudged her a box on the ear; if you had further demanded the reason of such chastisements, he would have

stormed against flirtation and love-making, and vowed he would have no such folly going on under

his roof.

These private considerations, combined with political reasons, fixed his resolution of separating the cousins. He announced his will to Caroline one evening as she was sitting at work near the drawing-room window. Her face was turned towards him, and the light fell full upon it. It had struck

him a few minutes before that she was looking paler and quieter than she used to look. It had not escaped him either that Robert Moore's name had never, for some three weeks past, dropped from her

lips; nor during the same space of time had that personage made his appearance at the rectory. Some

suspicion of clandestine meetings haunted his mind. Having but an indifferent opinion of women, he

always suspected them. He thought they needed constant watching. It was in a tone dryly significant he

desired her to cease her daily visits to the Hollow. He expected a start, a look of depreciation. The start he saw, but it was a very slight one; no look whatever was directed to him.

"Do you hear me?" he asked.

"Yes, uncle."

"Of course you mean to attend to what I say?"

"Yes, certainly."

"And there must be no letter-scribbling to your cousin Hortense—no intercourse whatever. I do not

approve of the principles of the family. They are Jacobinical."

"Very well," said Caroline quietly. She acquiesced then. There was no vexed flushing of the face, no gathering tears; the shadowy thoughtfulness which had covered her features ere Mr. Helstone spoke

remained undisturbed; she was obedient.

Yes, perfectly; because the mandate coincided with her own previous judgment; because it was now

become pain to her to go to Hollow's Cottage; nothing met her there but disappointment. Hope and

love had quitted that little tenement, for Robert seemed to have deserted its precincts. Whenever she

asked after him—which she very seldom did, since the mere utterance of his name made her face grow hot—the answer was, he was from home, or he was quite taken up with business. Hortense feared he was killing himself by application. He scarcely ever took a meal in the house; he lived in the counting-house.

At church only Caroline had the chance of seeing him, and there she rarely looked at him. It was

both too much pain and too much pleasure to look—it excited too much emotion; and that it was all

wasted emotion she had learned well to comprehend.

Once, on a dark, wet Sunday, when there were few people at church, and when especially certain ladies were absent, of whose observant faculties and tomahawk tongues Caroline stood in awe, she had allowed her eye to seek Robert's pew, and to rest awhile on its occupant. He was there alone.

Hortense had been kept at home by prudent considerations relative to the rain and a new spring
chapeau
. During the sermon he sat with folded arms and eyes cast down, looking very sad and abstracted. When depressed, the very hue of his face seemed more dusk than when he smiled, and to-day cheek and forehead wore their most tintless and sober olive. By instinct Caroline knew, as she examined that clouded countenance, that his thoughts were running in no familiar or kindly channel;

that they were far away, not merely from her, but from all which she could comprehend, or in which

she could sympathize. Nothing that they had ever talked of together was now in his mind: he was wrapt from her by interests and responsibilities in which it was deemed such as she could have no part.

Caroline meditated in her own way on the subject; speculated on his feelings, on his life, on his fears, on his fate; mused over the mystery of "business," tried to comprehend more about it than had ever been told her—to understand its perplexities, liabilities, duties, exactions; endeavoured to realize the state of mind of a "man of business," to enter into it, feel what he would feel, aspire to what he would aspire. Her earnest wish was to see things as they were, and not to be romantic. By dint of effort she contrived to get a glimpse of the light of truth here and there, and hoped that scant ray might suffice to guide her.

"Different, indeed," she concluded, "is Robert's mental condition to mine. I think only of him; he has no room, no leisure, to think of me. The feeling called love is and has been for two years the predominant emotion of my heart—always there, always awake, always astir. Quite other feelings absorb his reflections and govern his faculties. He is rising now, going to leave the church, for service is over. Will he turn his head towards this pew? No, not once. He has not one look for me.

That is hard. A kind glance would have made me happy till to-morrow. I have not got it; he would not

give it; he is gone. Strange that grief should now almost choke me, because another human being's