The three eldest of the family are all boys — Matthew, Mark, and Martin. They are seated together in that corner, engaged in some game. Observe their three heads: much alike at a first glance; at a second, different; at a third, contrasted. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, red-cheeked are the whole trio; small English features they all possess; all own a blended resemblance to sire and mother; and yet a distinctive physiognomy, mark of a separate character, belongs to each.
I shall not say much about Matthew, the first-born of the house, though it is impossible to avoid gazing at him long, and conjecturing what qualities that visage hides or indicates. He is no plain-looking boy: that jet-black hair, white brow, high-coloured cheek, those quick, dark eyes, are good points in their way. How is it that, look as long as you will, there is but one object in the room, and that the most sinister, to which Matthew’s face seems to bear an affinity, and of which, ever and anon, it reminds you strangely — the eruption of Vesuvius? Flame and shadow seem the component parts of that lad’s soul — no daylight in it, and no sunshine, and no pure, cool moonbeam ever shone there. He has an English frame, but, apparently, not an English mind — you would say, an Italian stiletto in a sheath of British workmanship. He is crossed in the game — look at his scowl. Mr. Yorke sees it, and what does he say? In a low voice he pleads, “Mark and Martin, don’t anger your brother.” And this is ever the tone adopted by both parents. Theoretically, they decry partiality — no rights of primogeniture are to be allowed in that house; but Matthew is never to be vexed, never to be opposed; they avert provocation from him as assiduously as they would avert fire from a barrel of gunpowder. “Concede, conciliate,” is their motto wherever he is concerned. The republicans are fast making a tyrant of their own flesh and blood. This the younger scions know and feel, and at heart they all rebel against the injustice. They cannot read their parents’ motives; they only see the difference of treatment. The dragon’s teeth are already sown amongst Mr. Yorke’s young olive-branches; discord will one day be the harvest.
Mark is a bonny-looking boy, the most regular-featured of the family. He is exceedingly calm; his smile is shrewd; he can say the driest, most cutting things in the quietest of tones. Despite his tranquillity, a somewhat heavy brow speaks temper, and reminds you that the smoothest waters are not always the safest. Besides, he is too still, unmoved, phlegmatic, to be happy. Life will never have much joy in it for Mark. By the time he is five-and-twenty he will wonder why people ever laugh, and think all fools who seem merry. Poetry will not exist for Mark, either in literature or in life; its best effusions will sound to him mere rant and jargon. Enthusiasm will be his aversion and contempt. Mark will have no youth; while he looks juvenile and blooming, he will be already middle-aged in mind. His body is now fourteen years of age, but his soul is already thirty.
Martin, the youngest of the three, owns another nature. Life may, or may not, be brief for him, but it will certainly be brilliant. He will pass through all its illusions, half believe in them, wholly enjoy them, then outlive them. That boy is not handsome — not so handsome as either of his brothers. He is plain; there is a husk upon him, a dry shell, and he will wear it till he is near twenty, then he will put it off. About that period he will make himself handsome. He will wear uncouth manners till that age, perhaps homely garments; but the chrysalis will retain the power of transfiguring itself into the butterfly, and such transfiguration will, in due season, take place. For a space he will be vain, probably a downright puppy, eager for pleasure and desirous of admiration, athirst, too, for knowledge. He will want all that the world can give him, both of enjoyment and lore; he will, perhaps, take deep draughts at each fount. That thirst satisfied, what next? I know not. Martin might be a remarkable man. Whether he will or not, the seer is powerless to predict: on that subject there has been no open vision.
Take Mr. Yorke’s family in the aggregate: there is as much mental power in those six young heads, as much originality, as much activity and vigour of brain, as — divided amongst half a dozen commonplace broods — would give to each rather more than an average amount of sense and capacity. Mr. Yorke knows this, and is proud of his race. Yorkshire has such families here and there amongst her hills and wolds — peculiar, racy, vigorous; of good blood and strong brain; turbulent somewhat in the pride of their strength, and intractable in the force of their native powers; wanting polish, wanting consideration, wanting docility, but sound, spirited, and true-bred as the eagle on the cliff or the steed in the steppe.
A low tap is heard at the parlour door; the boys have been making such a noise over their game, and little Jessy, besides, has been singing so sweet a Scotch song to her father — who delights in Scotch and Italian songs, and has taught his musical little daughter some of the best — that the ring at the outer door was not observed.
“Come in,” says Mrs. Yorke, in that conscientiously constrained and solemnized voice of hers, which ever modulates itself to a funereal dreariness of tone, though the subject it is exercised upon be but to give orders for the making of a pudding in the kitchen, to bid the boys hang up their caps in the hall, or to call the girls to their sewing — “come in!” And in came Robert Moore.
Moore’s habitual gravity, as well as his abstemiousness (for the case of spirit decanters is never ordered up when he pays an evening visit), has so far recommended him to Mrs. Yorke that she has not yet made him the subject of private animadversions with her husband; she has not yet found out that he is hampered by a secret intrigue which prevents him from marrying, or that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing — discoveries which she made at an early date after marriage concerning most of her husband’s bachelor friends, and excluded them from her board accordingly; which part of her conduct, indeed, might be said to have its just and sensible as well as its harsh side.
“Well, is it you?” she says to Mr. Moore, as he comes up to her and gives his hand. “What are you roving about at this time of night for? You should be at home.”
“Can a single man be said to have a home, madam?” he asks.
“Pooh!” says Mrs. Yorke, who despises conventional smoothness quite as much as her husband does, and practises it as little, and whose plain speaking on all occasions is carried to a point calculated, sometimes, to awaken admiration, but oftener alarm — “pooh! you need not talk nonsense to me; a single man can have a home if he likes. Pray, does not your sister make a home for you?”
“Not she,” joined in Mr. Yorke. “Hortense is an honest lass. But when I was Robert’s age I had five or six sisters, all as decent and proper as she is; but you see, Hesther, for all that it did not hinder me from looking out for a wife.”
“And sorely he has repented marrying me,” added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. “He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment” (here she pointed to her children). “Who would burden themselves with such a set of great, rough lads as those, if they could help it? It is not only bringing them into the world, though that is bad enough, but they are all to feed, to clothe, to rear, to settle in life. Young sir, when you feel tempted to marry, think of our four sons and two daughters, and look twice before you leap.”
“I am not tempted now, at any rate. I think these are not times for marrying or giving in marriage.”
A lugubrious sentiment of this sort was sure to obtain Mrs. Yorke’s approbation. She nodded and groaned acquiescence; but in a minute she said, “I make little account of the wisdom of a Solomon of your age; it will be upset by the first fancy that crosses you. Meantime, sit down, sir. You can talk, I suppose, as well sitting as standing?”
This was her way of inviting her guest to take a chair. He had no sooner obeyed her than little Jessy jumped from her father’s knee and ran into Mr. Moore’s arms, which were very promptly held out to receive her.
“You talk of marrying him,” said she to her mother, quite indignantly, as she was lifted lightly to his knee, “and he is married now, or as good. He promised that I should be his wife last summer, the first time he saw me in my new white frock and blue sash. Didn’t he, father?” (These children were not accustomed to say papa and mamma; their mother would allow no such “namby-pamby.”)
“Ay, my little