Mr. Helstone’s own parishioners; they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.
The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to Hollow’s Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick, lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark; not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; the rain running from the eaves, and the rather wild but very low whistle of the wind round the chimneys and through the boughs were the sole sounds in its neighbourhood.
This building passed, the fields, hitherto flat, declined in a rapid descent. Evidently a vale lay below, through which you could hear the water run. One light glimmered in the depth. For that beacon Malone steered.
He came to a little white house — you could see it was white even through this dense darkness — and knocked at the door. A fresh-faced servant opened it. By the candle she held was revealed a narrow passage, terminating in a narrow stair. Two doors covered with crimson baize, a strip of crimson carpet down the steps, contrasted with light-coloured walls and white floor, made the little interior look clean and fresh.
“Mr. Moore is at home, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir, but he is not in.”
“Not in! Where is he then?”
“At the mill — in the counting-house.”
Here one of the crimson doors opened.
“Are the wagons come, Sarah?” asked a female voice, and a female head at the same time was apparent. It might not be the head of a goddess — indeed a screw of curl-paper on each side the temples quite forbade that supposition — but neither was it the head of a Gorgon; yet Malone seemed to take it in the latter light. Big as he was, he shrank bashfully back into the rain at the view thereof, and saying, “I’ll go to him,” hurried in seeming trepidation down a short lane, across an obscure yard, towards a huge black mill.
The work-hours 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 necessity — I told him so — and on such a night; but walk forwards.”
Through a dark apartment, of aspect undistinguishable, Malone followed the speaker into a light and bright room within — very 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 stiff-backed, green-painted 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 stone-coloured 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 rheumatic-looking 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 one — he 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 named — which 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, by-the-bye, tonight, as I passed it), and that it was your intention to settle a Miss Sykes there as mistress — to 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 Wynns — first the dark, then the light one; now the red-haired Miss Armitage; then the
