“It capped her beyond expression, and me too, to find that, instead of thundering home in a breakneck gallop and laying your assize laurels at her feet, you coolly took coach up to London. What you have done there Satan knows; nothing in this world, I believe, but sat and sulked. Your face was never lily fair, but it is olive green now. You’re not as bonny as you were, man.”
“And who is to have this prize you talk so much about?”
“Only a baronet; that is all. I have not a doubt in my own mind you’ve lost her. She will be Lady Nunnely before Christmas.”
“Hem! Quite probable.”
“But she need not to have been. Fool of a lad! I swear you might have had her.”
“By what token, Mr. Yorke?”
“By every token – by the light of her eyes, the red of her cheeks. Red they grew when your name was mentioned, though of custom they are pale.”
“My chance is quite over, I suppose?”
“It ought to be. But try; it is worth trying. I call this Sir Philip milk and water. And then he writes verses, they say – tags rhymes. You are above that, Bob, at all events.”
“Would you advise me to propose, late as it is, Mr. Yorke – at the eleventh hour?”
“You can but make the experiment, Robert. If she has a fancy for you – and, on my conscience, I believe she has or had – she will forgive much. But, my lad, you are laughing. Is it at me? You had better grin at your own perverseness. I see, however, you laugh at the wrong side of your mouth. You have as sour a look at this moment as one need wish to see.”
“I have so quarrelled with myself, Yorke. I have so kicked against the pricks, and struggled in a strait waistcoat, and dislocated my wrists with wrenching them in handcuffs, and battered my hard head by driving it against a harder wall.”
“Ha! I’m glad to hear that. Sharp exercise yon! I hope it has done you good – ta’en some of the self-conceit out of you?”
“Self-conceit? What is it? Self-respect, self-tolerance even, what are they? Do you sell the articles? Do you know anybody who does? Give an indication. They would find in me a liberal chapman. I would part with my last guinea this minute to buy.”
“Is it so with you, Robert? I find that spicy. I like a man to speak his mind. What has gone wrong?”
“The machinery of all my nature; the whole enginery of this human mill; the boiler, which I take to be the heart, is fit to burst.”
“That suld be putten i’ print; it’s striking. It’s almost blank verse. Ye’ll be jingling into poetry just e’now. If the afflatus comes, give way, Robert. Never heed me; I’ll bear it this whet (time).”
“Hideous, abhorrent, base blunder! You may commit in a moment what you will rue for years – what life cannot cancel.”
“Lad, go on. I call it pie, nuts, sugar candy. I like the taste uncommonly. Go on. It will do you good to talk. The moor is before us now, and there is no life for many a mile round.”
“I will talk. I am not ashamed to tell. There is a sort of wild cat in my breast, and I choose that you shall hear how it can yell.”
“To me it is music. What grand voices you and Louis have! When Louis sings – tones off like a soft, deep bell – I’ve felt myself tremble again. The night is still. It listens. It is just leaning down to you, like a black priest to a blacker penitent. Confess, lad. Smooth naught down. Be candid as a convicted, justified, sanctified Methody at an experience meeting. Make yourself as wicked as Beelzebub. It will ease your mind.”
“As mean as Mammon, you would say. Yorke, if I got off horseback and laid myself down across the road, would you have the goodness to gallop over me, backwards and forwards, about twenty times?”
“Wi’ all the pleasure in life, if there were no such thing as a coroner’s inquest.”
“Hiram Yorke, I certainly believed she loved me. I have seen her eyes sparkle radiantly when she has found me out in a crowd; she has flushed up crimson when she has offered me her hand, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr. Moore?’
“My name had a magical influence over her. When others uttered it she changed countenance – I know she did. She pronounced it herself in the most musical of her many musical tones. She was cordial to me; she took an interest in me; she was anxious about me; she wished me well; she sought, she seized every opportunity to benefit me. I considered, paused, watched, weighed, wondered. I could come to but one conclusion – this is love.
“I looked at her, Yorke. I saw in her youth and a species of beauty. I saw power in her. Her wealth offered me the redemption of my honour and my standing. I owed her gratitude. She had aided me substantially and effectually by a loan of five thousand pounds. Could I remember these things? Could I believe she loved me? Could I hear wisdom urge me to marry her, and disregard every dear advantage, disbelieve every flattering suggestion, disdain every well-weighed counsel, turn and leave her? Young, graceful, gracious – my benefactress, attached to me, enamoured of me. I used to say so to myself; dwell on the word; mouth it over and over again; swell over it with a pleasant, pompous complacency, with an admiration dedicated entirely to myself, and unimpaired even by esteem for her; indeed I smiled in deep secrecy at her naïveté and simplicity in being the first to love, and to show it. That whip of yours seems to have a good heavy handle, Yorke; you can swing it about your head and knock me out of the saddle, if you choose. I should rather relish a loundering whack.”
“Tak patience, Robert, till the moon rises and I can see you. Speak plain out – did you love her or not? I could like to know. I feel curious.”
“Sir – sir – I say – she is very pretty, in her own style, and very attractive. She has a look, at times, of a thing made out of fire and air, at which I stand and marvel, without a thought of clasping and kissing it. I felt in her a powerful magnet to my interest and vanity. I never felt as if nature meant her to be my other and better self. When a question on that head rushed upon me, I flung it off, saying brutally I should be rich with her and ruined without her – vowing I would be practical, and not romantic.”
“A very sensible resolve. What mischief came of it, Bob?”
“With this sensible resolve I walked up to Fieldhead one night last August. It was the very eve of my departure for Birmingham; for, you see, I wanted to secure Fortune’s splendid prize. I had previously dispatched a note requesting a private interview. I found her at home, and alone.
“She received me without embarrassment, for she thought I came on business. I was embarrassed enough, but determined. I hardly know how I got the operation over; but I went to work in a hard, firm fashion – frightful enough, I dare say. I sternly offered myself – my fine person – with my debts, of course, as a settlement.
“It vexed me, it kindled my ire, to find that she neither blushed, trembled, nor looked down. She responded, ‘I doubt whether I have understood you, Mr. Moore.’
“And I had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly as A B C, before she would fully take it in. And then, what did she do? Instead of faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused silence (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice fast through the room, in the way that she only does, and no other woman, and ejaculated, ‘God bless me!’
“Yorke, I stood on the hearth, backed by the mantelpiece; against it I leaned, and prepared for anything – everything. I knew my doom, and I knew myself. There was no misunderstanding her aspect and voice. She stopped and looked at me.