Shirley

by Charlotte Bronte

  CHAPTER IV.

  MR. YORKE (_continued_).

  A Yorkshire gentleman he was, _par excellence_, in every point; aboutfifty-five years old, but looking at first sight still older, for hishair was silver white. His forehead was broad, not high; his face freshand hale; the harshness of the north was seen in his features, as it washeard in his voice; every trait was thoroughly English--not a Normanline anywhere; it was an inelegant, unclassic, unaristocratic mould ofvisage. Fine people would perhaps have called it vulgar; sensible peoplewould have termed it characteristic; shrewd people would have delightedin it for the pith, sagacity, intelligence, the rude yet realoriginality marked in every lineament, latent in every furrow. But itwas an indocile, a scornful, and a sarcastic face--the face of a mandifficult to lead, and impossible to drive. His stature was rather tall,and he was well made and wiry, and had a stately integrity of port;there was not a suspicion of the clown about him anywhere.

  I did not find it easy to sketch Mr. Yorke's person, but it is moredifficult to indicate his mind. If you expect to be treated to aPerfection, reader, or even to a benevolent, philanthropic old gentlemanin him, you are mistaken. He has spoken with some sense and with somegood feeling to Mr. Moore, but you are not thence to conclude that healways spoke and thought justly and kindly.

  Mr. Yorke, in the first place, was without the organ of veneration--agreat want, and which throws a man wrong on every point where venerationis required. Secondly, he was without the organ of comparison--adeficiency which strips a man of sympathy; and thirdly, he had toolittle of the organs of benevolence and ideality, which took the gloryand softness from his nature, and for him diminished those divinequalities throughout the universe.

  The want of veneration made him intolerant to those above him--kings andnobles and priests, dynasties and parliaments and establishments, withall their doings, most of their enactments, their forms, their rights,their claims, were to him an abomination, all rubbish; he found no useor pleasure in them, and believed it would be clear gain, and no damageto the world, if its high places were razed, and their occupants crushedin the fall. The want of veneration, too, made him dead at heart to theelectric delight of admiring what is admirable; it dried up a thousandpure sources of enjoyment; it withered a thousand vivid pleasures. Hewas not irreligious, though a member of no sect; but his religion couldnot be that of one who knows how to venerate. He believed in God andheaven; but his God and heaven were those of a man in whom awe,imagination, and tenderness lack.

  The weakness of his powers of comparison made him inconsistent; while heprofessed some excellent general doctrines of mutual toleration andforbearance, he cherished towards certain classes a bigoted antipathy.He spoke of "parsons" and all who belonged to parsons, of "lords" andthe appendages of lords, with a harshness, sometimes an insolence, asunjust as it was insufferable. He could not place himself in theposition of those he vituperated; he could not compare their errors withtheir temptations, their defects with their disadvantages; he could notrealize the effect of such and such circumstances on himself similarlysituated, and he would often express the most ferocious and tyrannicalwishes regarding those who had acted, as he thought, ferociously andtyrannically. To judge by his threats, he would have employed arbitrary,even cruel, means to advance the cause of freedom and equality.Equality! yes, Mr. Yorke talked about equality, but at heart he was aproud man--very friendly to his workpeople, very good to all who werebeneath him, and submitted quietly to be beneath him, but haughty asBeelzebub to whomsoever the world deemed (for he deemed no man) hissuperior. Revolt was in his blood: he could not bear control; hisfather, his grandfather before him, could not bear it, and his childrenafter him never could.

  The want of general benevolence made him very impatient of imbecility,and of all faults which grated on his strong, shrewd nature; it left nocheck to his cutting sarcasm. As he was not merciful, he would sometimeswound and wound again, without noticing how much he hurt, or caring howdeep he thrust.

  As to the paucity of ideality in his mind, that can scarcely be called afault: a fine ear for music, a correct eye for colour and form, left himthe quality of taste; and who cares for imagination? Who does not thinkit a rather dangerous, senseless attribute, akin to weakness, perhapspartaking of frenzy--a disease rather than a gift of the mind?

  Probably all think it so but those who possess, or fancy they possess,it. To hear them speak, you would believe that their hearts would becold if that elixir did not flow about them, that their eyes would bedim if that flame did not refine their vision, that they would be lonelyif this strange companion abandoned them. You would suppose that itimparted some glad hope to spring, some fine charm to summer, sometranquil joy to autumn, some consolation to winter, which you do notfeel. An illusion, of course; but the fanatics cling to their dream, andwould not give it for gold.

  As Mr. Yorke did not possess poetic imagination himself, he consideredit a most superfluous quality in others. Painters and musicians he couldtolerate, and even encourage, because he could relish the results oftheir art; he could see the charm of a fine picture, and feel thepleasure of good music; but a quiet poet--whatever force struggled,whatever fire glowed, in his breast--if he could not have played the manin the counting-house, of the tradesman in the Piece Hall, might havelived despised, and died scorned, under the eyes of Hiram Yorke.

  And as there are many Hiram Yorkes in the world, it is well that thetrue poet, quiet externally though he may be, has often a truculentspirit under his placidity, and is full of shrewdness in his meekness,and can measure the whole stature of those who look down on him, andcorrectly ascertain the weight and value of the pursuits they disdainhim for not having followed. It is happy that he can have his own bliss,his own society with his great friend and goddess Nature, quiteindependent of those who find little pleasure in him, and in whom hefinds no pleasure at all. It is just that while the world andcircumstances often turn a dark, cold side to him--and properly, too,because he first turns a dark, cold, careless side to them--he should beable to maintain a festal brightness and cherishing glow in his bosom,which makes all bright and genial for him; while strangers, perhaps,deem his existence a Polar winter never gladdened by a sun. The truepoet is not one whit to be pitied, and he is apt to laugh in his sleevewhen any misguided sympathizer whines over his wrongs. Even whenutilitarians sit in judgment on him, and pronounce him and his artuseless, he hears the sentence with such a hard derision, such a broad,deep, comprehensive, and merciless contempt of the unhappy Pharisees whopronounce it, that he is rather to be chidden than condoled with. These,however, are not Mr. Yorke's reflections, and it is with Mr. Yorke wehave at present to do.

  I have told you some of his faults, reader: as to his good points, hewas one of the most honourable and capable men in Yorkshire; even thosewho disliked him were forced to respect him. He was much beloved by thepoor, because he was thoroughly kind and very fatherly to them. To hisworkmen he was considerate and cordial. When he dismissed them from anoccupation, he would try to set them on to something else, or, if thatwas impossible, help them to remove with their families to a districtwhere work might possibly be had. It must also be remarked that if, assometimes chanced, any individual amongst his "hands" showed signs ofinsubordination, Yorke--who, like many who abhor being controlled, knewhow to control with vigour--had the secret of crushing rebellion in thegerm, of eradicating it like a bad weed, so that it never spread ordeveloped within the sphere of his authority. Such being the happy stateof his own affairs, he felt himself at liberty to speak with the utmostseverity of those who were differently situated, to ascribe whatever wasunpleasant in their position entirely to their own fault, to severhimself from the masters, and advocate freely the cause of theoperatives.

  Mr. Yorke's family was the first and oldest in the district; and he,though not the wealthiest, was one of the most influential men. Hiseducation had been good. In his youth, before the French Revolution, hehad travelled on the Continent. He was an adept in the French andItalian lang
uages. During a two years' sojourn in Italy he had collectedmany good paintings and tasteful rarities, with which his residence wasnow adorned. His manners, when he liked, were those of a finishedgentleman of the old school; his conversation, when he was disposed toplease, was singularly interesting and original; and if he usuallyexpressed himself in the Yorkshire dialect, it was because he chose todo so, preferring his native Doric to a more refined vocabulary, "AYorkshire burr," he affirmed, "was as much better than a cockney's lispas a bull's bellow than a raton's squeak."

  Mr. Yorke knew every one, and was known by every one, for miles round;yet his intimate acquaintances were very few. Himself thoroughlyoriginal, he had no taste for what was ordinary: a racy, roughcharacter, high or low, ever found acceptance with him; a refined,insipid personage, however exalted in station, was his aversion. Hewould spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd workman ofhis own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his cottagers,when he would have grudged a moment to a commonplace fine gentleman orto the most fashionable and elegant, if frivolous, lady. His preferenceson these points he carried to an extreme, forgetting that there may beamiable and even admirable characters amongst those who cannot beoriginal. Yet he made exceptions to his own rule. There was a certainorder of mind, plain, ingenuous, neglecting refinement, almost devoid ofintellectuality, and quite incapable of appreciating what wasintellectual in him, but which, at the same time, never felt disgust athis rudeness, was not easily wounded by his sarcasm, did not closelyanalyze his sayings, doings, or opinions, with which he was peculiarlyat ease, and, consequently, which he peculiarly preferred. He was lordamongst such characters. They, while submitting implicitly to hisinfluence, never acknowledged, because they never reflected on, hissuperiority; they were quite tractable, therefore, without running thesmallest danger of being servile; and their unthinking, easy, artlessinsensibility was as acceptable, because as convenient, to Mr. Yorke asthat of the chair he sat on, or of the floor he trod.

  It will have been observed that he was not quite uncordial with Mr.Moore. He had two or three reasons for entertaining a faint partialityto that gentleman. It may sound odd, but the first of these was thatMoore spoke English with a foreign, and French with a perfectly pure,accent; and that his dark, thin face, with its fine though rather wastedlines, had a most anti-British and anti-Yorkshire look. These pointsseem frivolous, unlikely to influence a character like Yorke's; but thefact is they recalled old, perhaps pleasurable, associations--theybrought back his travelling, his youthful days. He had seen, amidstItalian cities and scenes, faces like Moore's; he had heard, in Parisiancafes and theatres, voices like his. He was young then, and when helooked at and listened to the alien, he seemed young again.

  Secondly, he had known Moore's father, and had had dealings with him.That was a more substantial, though by no means a more agreeable tie;for as his firm had been connected with Moore's in business, it hadalso, in some measure, been implicated in its losses.

  Thirdly, he had found Robert himself a sharp man of business. He sawreason to anticipate that he would, in the end, by one means or another,make money; and he respected both his resolution and acuteness--perhaps,also, his hardness. A fourth circumstance which drew them together wasthat of Mr. Yorke being one of the guardians of the minor on whoseestate Hollow's Mill was situated; consequently Moore, in the course ofhis alterations and improvements, had frequent occasion to consult him.

  As to the other guest now present in Mr. Yorke's parlour, Mr. Helstone,between him and his host there existed a double antipathy--the antipathyof nature and that of circumstances. The free-thinker hated theformalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. Besides, itwas said that in former years they had been rival suitors of the samelady.

  Mr. Yorke, as a general rule, was, when young, noted for his preferenceof sprightly and dashing women: a showy shape and air, a lively wit, aready tongue, chiefly seemed to attract him. He never, however, proposedto any of these brilliant belles whose society he sought; and all atonce he seriously fell in love with and eagerly wooed a girl whopresented a complete contrast to those he had hitherto noticed--a girlwith the face of a Madonna; a girl of living marble--stillnesspersonified. No matter that, when he spoke to her, she only answered himin monosyllables; no matter that his sighs seemed unheard, that hisglances were unreturned, that she never responded to his opinions,rarely smiled at his jests, paid him no respect and no attention; nomatter that she seemed the opposite of everything feminine he had everin his whole life been known to admire. For him Mary Cave was perfect,because somehow, for some reason--no doubt he had a reason--he lovedher.

  Mr. Helstone, at that time curate of Briarfield, loved Mary too--or, atany rate, he fancied her. Several others admired her, for she wasbeautiful as a monumental angel; but the clergyman was preferred for hisoffice's sake--that office probably investing him with some of theillusion necessary to allure to the commission of matrimony, and whichMiss Cave did not find in any of the young wool-staplers, her otheradorers. Mr. Helstone neither had, nor professed to have, Mr. Yorke'sabsorbing passion for her. He had none of the humble reverence whichseemed to subdue most of her suitors; he saw her more as she really wasthan the rest did. He was, consequently, more master of her and himself.She accepted him at the first offer, and they were married.

  Nature never intended Mr. Helstone to make a very good husband,especially to a quiet wife. He thought so long as a woman was silentnothing ailed her, and she wanted nothing. If she did not complain ofsolitude, solitude, however continued, could not be irksome to her. Ifshe did not talk and put herself forward, express a partiality for this,an aversion to that, she had no partialities or aversions, and it wasuseless to consult her tastes. He made no pretence of comprehendingwomen, or comparing them with men. They were a different, probably avery inferior, order of existence. A wife could not be her husband'scompanion, much less his confidante, much less his stay. _His_ wife,after a year or two, was of no great importance to him in any shape; andwhen she one day, as he thought, suddenly--for he had scarcely noticedher decline--but, as others thought, gradually, took her leave of himand of life, and there was only a still, beautiful-featured mould ofclay left, cold and white, in the conjugal couch, he felt hisbereavement--who shall say how little? Yet, perhaps, more than he seemedto feel it; for he was not a man from whom grief easily wrung tears.

  His dry-eyed and sober mourning scandalized an old housekeeper, andlikewise a female attendant, who had waited upon Mrs. Helstone in hersickness, and who, perhaps, had had opportunities of learning more ofthe deceased lady's nature, of her capacity for feeling and loving, thanher husband knew. They gossiped together over the corpse, relatedanecdotes, with embellishments of her lingering decline, and its real orsupposed cause. In short, they worked each other up to some indignationagainst the austere little man, who sat examining papers in an adjoiningroom, unconscious of what opprobrium he was the object.

  Mrs. Helstone was hardly under the sod when rumours began to be rife inthe neighbourhood that she had died of a broken heart. These magnifiedquickly into reports of hard usage, and, finally, details of harshtreatment on the part of her husband--reports grossly untrue, but notthe less eagerly received on that account. Mr. Yorke heard them, partlybelieved them. Already, of course, he had no friendly feeling to hissuccessful rival. Though himself a married man now, and united to awoman who seemed a complete contrast to Mary Cave in all respects, hecould not forget the great disappointment of his life; and when he heardthat what would have been so precious to him had been neglected, perhapsabused, by another, he conceived for that other a rooted and bitteranimosity.

  Of the nature and strength of this animosity Mr. Helstone was but halfaware. He neither knew how much Yorke had loved Mary Cave, what he hadfelt on losing her, nor was he conscious of the calumnies concerning histreatment of her, familiar to every ear in the neighbourhood but hisown. He believed political and religious differences alone separated himand Mr. Yorke. Had he known how the case really
stood, he would hardlyhave been induced by any persuasion to cross his former rival'sthreshold.

  * * * * *

  Mr. Yorke did not resume his lecture of Robert Moore. The conversationere long recommenced in a more general form, though still in a somewhatdisputative tone. The unquiet state of the country, the variousdepredations lately committed on mill-property in the district, suppliedabundant matter for disagreement, especially as each of the threegentlemen present differed more or less in his views on these subjects.Mr. Helstone thought the masters aggrieved, the workpeople unreasonable;he condemned sweepingly the widespread spirit of disaffection againstconstituted authorities, the growing indisposition to bear with patienceevils he regarded as inevitable. The cures he prescribed were vigorousgovernment interference, strict magisterial vigilance; when necessary,prompt military coercion.

  Mr. Yorke wished to know whether this interference, vigilance, andcoercion would feed those who were hungry, give work to those who wantedwork, and whom no man would hire. He scouted the idea of inevitableevils. He said public patience was a camel, on whose back the last atomthat could be borne had already been laid, and that resistance was now aduty; the widespread spirit of disaffection against constitutedauthorities he regarded as the most promising sign of the times; themasters, he allowed, were truly aggrieved, but their main grievances hadbeen heaped on them by a "corrupt, base, and bloody" government (thesewere Mr. Yorke's epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh,mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of thecountry, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuatedperseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which hadbrought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrouslyoppressive taxation, it was the infamous "Orders in Council"--theoriginators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if everpublic men did--that hung a millstone about England's neck.

  "But where was the use of talking?" he demanded. "What chance was thereof reason being heard in a land that was king-ridden, priest-ridden,peer-ridden; where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipleddebauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common sense ashereditary legislators was tolerated; where such a humbug as a bench ofbishops, such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting establishedchurch was endured and venerated; where a standing army was maintained,and a host of lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on thefat of the land?"

  Mr. Helstone, rising up and putting on his shovel-hat, observed inreply, "that in the course of his life he had met with two or threeinstances where sentiments of this sort had been very bravely maintainedso long as health, strength, and worldly prosperity had been the alliesof him who professed them; but there came a time," he said, "to all men,'when the keepers of the house should tremble; when they should beafraid of that which is high, and fear should be in the way;' and thattime was the test of the advocate of anarchy and rebellion, the enemy ofreligion and order. Ere now," he affirmed, "he had been called upon toread those prayers our church has provided for the sick by the miserabledying-bed of one of her most rancorous foes; he had seen such a onestricken with remorse, solicitous to discover a place for repentance,and unable to find any, though he sought it carefully with tears. Hemust forewarn Mr. Yorke that blasphemy against God and the king was adeadly sin, and that there was such a thing as 'judgment to come.'"

  Mr. Yorke "believed fully that there was such a thing as judgment tocome. If it were otherwise, it would be difficult to imagine how all thescoundrels who seemed triumphant in this world, who broke innocenthearts with impunity, abused unmerited privileges, were a scandal tohonourable callings, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor,browbeat the humble, and truckled meanly to the rich and proud, were tobe properly paid off in such coin as they had earned. But," he added,"whenever he got low-spirited about such-like goings-on, and theirseeming success in this mucky lump of a planet, he just reached down t'owd book" (pointing to a great Bible in the bookcase), "opened it likeat a chance, and he was sure to light of a verse blazing wi' a bluebrimstone low that set all straight. He knew," he said, "where some folkwar bound for, just as weel as if an angel wi' great white wings hadcome in ower t' door-stone and told him."

  "Sir," said Mr. Helstone, collecting all his dignity--"sir, the greatknowledge of man is to know himself, and the bourne whither his ownsteps tend."

  "Ay, ay. You'll recollect, Mr. Helstone, that Ignorance was carried awayfrom the very gates of heaven, borne through the air, and thrust in at adoor in the side of the hill which led down to hell."

  "Nor have I forgotten, Mr. Yorke, that Vain-Confidence, not seeing theway before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made bythe prince of the grounds, to catch vainglorious fools withal, and wasdashed to pieces with his fall."

  "Now," interposed Mr. Moore, who had hitherto sat a silent but amusedspectator of this worldly combat, and whose indifference to the partypolitics of the day, as well as to the gossip of the neighbourhood, madehim an impartial, if apathetic, judge of the merits of such anencounter, "you have both sufficiently blackballed each other, andproved how cordially you detest each other, and how wicked you thinkeach other. For my part, my hate is still running in such a strongcurrent against the fellows who have broken my frames that I have noneto spare for my private acquaintance, and still less for such a vaguething as a sect or a government. But really, gentlemen, you both seemvery bad by your own showing--worse than ever I suspected you to be.--Idare not stay all night with a rebel and blasphemer like you, Yorke; andI hardly dare ride home with a cruel and tyrannical ecclesiastic likeMr. Helstone."

  "I am going, however, Mr. Moore," said the rector sternly. "Come with meor not, as you please."

  "Nay, he shall not have the choice; he _shall_ go with you," respondedYorke. "It's midnight, and past; and I'll have nob'dy staying up i' myhouse any longer. Ye mun all go."

  He rang the bell.

  "Deb," said he to the servant who answered it, "clear them folk out o't' kitchen, and lock t' doors, and be off to bed.--Here is your way,gentlemen," he continued to his guests; and, lighting them through thepassage, he fairly put them out at his front door.

  They met their party hurrying out pell-mell by the back way. Theirhorses stood at the gate; they mounted, and rode off, Moore laughing attheir abrupt dismissal, Helstone deeply indignant thereat.