“Settle about Farren at once,” urged Mr. Moore. “You have large fruit-gardens at Yorke Mills. He is a good gardener. Give him work there.”
“Well, so be it. I’ll send for him tomorrow, and we’ll see. And now, my lad, you’re concerned about the condition of your affairs?”
“Yes, a second failure—which I may delay, but which, at this moment, I see no way finally to avert—would blight the name of Moore completely; and you are aware I had fine intentions of paying off every debt and reestablishing the old firm on its former basis.”
“You want capital—that’s all you want.”
“Yes; but you might as well say that breath is all a dead man wants to live.”
“I know—I know capital is not to be had for the asking; and if you were a married man, and had a family, like me, I should think your case pretty nigh desperate; but the young and unencumbered have chances peculiar to themselves. I hear gossip now and then about your being on the eve of marriage with this miss and that; but I suppose it is none of it true?”
“You may well suppose that. I think I am not in a position to be dreaming of marriage. Marriage! I cannot bear the word; it sounds so silly and utopian. I have settled it decidedly that marriage and love are superfluities, intended only for the rich, who live at ease, and have no need to take thought for the morrow; or desperations—the last and reckless joy of the deeply wretched, who never hope to rise out of the slough of their utter poverty.”
“I should not think so if I were circumstanced as you are. I should think I could very likely get a wife with a few thousands, who would suit both me and my affairs.”
“I wonder where?”
“Would you try if you had a chance?”
“I don’t know. It depends on—in short, it depends on many things.”
“Would you take an old woman?”
“I’d rather break stones on the road.”
“So would I. Would you take an ugly one?”
“Bah! I hate ugliness and delight in beauty. My eyes and heart, Yorke, take pleasure in a sweet, young, fair face, as they are repelled by a grim, rugged, meagre one. Soft delicate lines and hues please, harsh ones prejudice me. I won’t have an ugly wife.”
“Not if she were rich?”
“Not if she were dressed in gems. I could not love—I could not fancy—I could not endure her. My taste must have satisfaction, or disgust would break out in despotism, or worse—freeze to utter iciness.”
“What! Bob, if you married an honest, good-natured, and wealthy lass, though a little hard-favoured, couldn’t you put up with the high cheekbones, the rather wide mouth, and reddish hair?”
“I’ll never try, I tell you. Grace at least I will have, and youth and symmetry—yes, and what I call beauty.”
“And poverty, and a nursery full of bairns you can neither clothe nor feed, and very soon an anxious, faded mother; and then bankruptcy, discredit—a lifelong struggle.”
“Let me alone, Yorke.”
“If you are romantic, Robert, and especially if you are already in love, it is of no use talking.”
“I am not romantic. I am stripped of romance as bare as the white tenters in that field are of cloth.”
“Always use such figures of speech, lad; I can understand them. And there is no love affair to disturb your judgment?”
“I thought I had said enough on that subject before. Love for me? Stuff!”
“Well, then, if you are sound both in heart and head, there is no reason why you should not profit by a good chance if it offers; therefore, wait and see.”
“You are quite oracular, Yorke.”
“I think I am a bit i’ that line. I promise ye naught and I advise ye naught; but I bid ye keep your heart up, and be guided by circumstances.”
“My namesake the physician’s almanac could not speak more guardedly.”
“In the meantime, I care naught about ye, Robert Moore: ye are nothing akin to me or mine, and whether ye lose or find a fortune it maks no difference to me. Go home, now. It has stricken ten. Miss Hortense will be wondering where ye are.”
X
Old Maids
Time wore on, and spring matured. The surface of England began to look pleasant: her fields grew 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
