‘I’ve done a right thing. Well, the short and the long of it is, I’m determined to get Farren a place, and I reckon on you to give him one.’
‘This is cool, however!’ exclaimed Mr. Yorke. ‘What right have you to reckon on me to provide for your dismissed workmen? What do I know about your Farrens and your Williams? I’ve heard he’s an honest man; but am I to support all the honest men in Yorkshire? You may say that would be no great charge to undertake; but, great or little, I’ll none of it.’
‘Come, Mr. Yorke, what can you find for him to do?’
‘I find! You’ll make me use language I’m not accustomed to use. I wish you would go home—here is the door—set off.’
Moore sat down on one of the hall chairs.
‘You can’t give him work in your mill—good—but you have land: find him some occupation on your land, Mr. Yorke.’
‘Bob, I thought you cared nothing about our “lourdauds de paysans”: I don’t understand this change.’
‘I do: the fellow spoke to me nothing but truth and sense. I answered him just as roughly as I did the rest, who jabbered mere gibberish. I couldn’t make distinctions there and then: his appearance told what he had gone through lately clearer than his words; but where is the use of explaining? Let him have work.’
‘Let him have it yourself. If you are so very much in earnest, strain a point.’
‘If there was a point left in my affairs to strain, I would strain it till it cracked again; but I received letters this morning which show me pretty nearly where I stand, and it is not far off the end of the plank. My foreign market, at any rate, is gorged. If there is no change—if there dawns no prospect of peace—if the Orders in Council are not, at least, suspended, so as to open our way in the West—I do not know where I am to turn. I see no more light than if I were sealed in a rock; so that for me to pretend to offer a man a livelihood would be to do a dishonest thing.’
‘Come, let us take a turn on the front: it is a starlight night,’ said Mr. Yorke.
They passed out, closing the front-door after them, and, side by side, paced the frost-white pavement to and fro.
‘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 to-morrow, 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 re-establishing 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