Felix Holt, The Radical
By
George Eliot
Introduction
FIVE-AND-THIRTY years ago the glory had not yet departed from the
old coach-roads; the great roadside inns were still brilliant with well-
polished tankards, the smiling glances of pretty barmaids, and the
repartees of jocose ostlers; the mail still announced itself by the merry
notes of the horn; the hedge-cutter or the rick-thatcher might still
know the exact hour by the unfailing yet otherwise meteoric
apparition of the peagreen Tally-ho or the yellow Independent; and
elderly gentlemen in pony-chaises, quartering nervously to make way
for the rolling swinging swiftness, had not ceased to remark that times
were finely changed since they used to see the pack-horses and hear
the tinkling of their bells on their very highway.
In those days there were pocket boroughs, a Birmingham
unrepresented in parliament and compelled to make strong
representations out of it, unrepealed corn laws, three-and-sixpenny
letters, a brawny and many-breedin g pauperism, and other departed
evils; but there were some pleasant things too, which have also
departed. Non omnia grandior aetas quae fugiamus habet, says the
wise goddess: you have not the best of it in all things, O youngsters!
the elderly man has his enviable memories, and not the least of them
is the memory of a long journey in mid-spring or autumn on the
outside of a stage-coach. Posterity may be shot, like a bullet through a
tube, by atmospheric pressure from Winchester to Newcastle: that is a
fine result to have among our hopes; but the slow old-fashioned way
of getting from one end of our country to the other is the better thing
to have in the memory. The tube-journey can never lend much to
picture and narrative; it is as ba rren as an exclamatory O! Whereas
the happy outside passenger seated on the box from the dawn to the
gloaming gathered enough stories of English life, enough of English
labours in town and country, enough aspects of earth and sky, to
make episodes for a modern Odyssey. Suppose only that his journey
took him through that central plain, watered at one extremity by the
Avon, at the other by the Trent. As the morning silvered the meadows
with their long lines of bushy willows marking the watercourses, or
burnished the golden com-ricks clustered near the long roofs of some
midland homestead, he saw the full -uddered cows driven from their
pasture to the early milking. Perhaps it was the shepherd, head-
servant of the farm, who drove them, his sheep-dog following with a
heedless unofficial air of a beadle in undress. The shepherd with a
slow and slouching walk, timed by the walk of grazing beasts, moved
aside, as if unwillingly, throwing out a monosyllabic hint to his cattle;
his glance, accustomed to rest on things very near the earth, seemed
to lift itself with difficulty to the coachman. Mail or stage coach for
him belonged to that mysterious distant system of things called
'Goverment', which, whatever it might be, was no business of his, any
more than the most out-lying nebula or the coal-sacks of the southern
hemisphere: his solar system was the parish; the master's temper and
the casualties of lambing-time were his region of storms. He cut his
bread and bacon with his pocket-knife, and felt no bittemess except in
the matter of pauper labourers and the bad-luck that sent contrarious
seasons and the sheep-rot. He and his cows were soon left behind,
and the homestead too, with its pond overhung by elder-trees, its
untidy kitchen-garden and cone -shaped yew-tree arbour. But
everywhere the bushy hedgerows wasted the land with their straggling
beauty, shrouded the grassy borders of the pastures with cat-kined
hazels, and tossed their long blackb erry branches on the cornfields.
Perhaps they were white with May, or starred with pale pink dogroses;
perhaps the urchins were already nutting amongst them, or gathering
the plenteous crabs. It was worth the journey only to see those
hedgerows, the liberal homes of unmarketable beauty - of the purple-
blossomed ruby-berried nightshade, of the wild convulvulus climbing
and spreading in tendrilled strength till it made a great curtain of
pale-green hearts and white trumpets, of the many-tubed honeysuckle
which, in its most delicate fragrance, hid a charm more subtle and
penetrating than beauty. Even if it were winter the hedgerows showed
their coral, the scarlet haws, the deep-crimson hips, with lingering
brown leaves to make a resting-place for the jewels of the hoar-frost.
Such hedgerows were often as tall as the labourers' cottages dotted
along the lanes, or clustered into a small hamlet, their little dingy
windows telling, like thick-filmed eyes, of nothing but the darkness
within. The passenger on the coach-box, bowled along above such a
hamlet, saw chiefly the roofs of it: pr obably it turned its back on the
road, and seemed to lie away from everything but its own patch of
earth and sky, away from the parish church by long fields and green
lanes, away from all intercourse except that of tramps. If its face could
be seen, it was most likely dirty; but the dirt was Protestant dirt, and
the big, bold, gin-breathing tramps were Protestant tramps. There was
no sign of superstition near, no crucifix or image to indicate a
misguided reverence: the inhabitants were probably so free from
superstition that they were in much less awe of the parson than of the
overseer. Yet they were saved from the excesses of Protestantism by
not knowing how to read, and by the absence of handlooms and mines
to be the pioneers of Dissent: they were kept safely in the via media of
indifference, and could have registcred themsclves in the census by a
big black mark as members of the Church of England.
But there were trim cheerful villag es too, with a neat or handsome
parsonage and grey church set in the midst; there was the pleasant
tinkle of the blacksmith's anvil, th e patient cart-horses waiting at his
door; the basket-maker peeling his willow wands in the sunshine; the
wheelwright putting the last touch to a blue cart with red wheels; here
and there a cottage with bright transparent windows showing pots of
blooming balsams or geraniums, and little gardens in front all double
daisies or dark wallflowers; at the well, clean and comely women
carrying yoked buckets, and toward s the free school small Britons
dawdling on, and handling their marb les in the pockets of unpatched
corduroys adorned with brass buttons. The land around was rich and
marly, great corn-stacks stood in th e rickyards - for the rick-burners
had not found their way hither; the homesteads were those of rich
fammers who paid no rent, or had the rare advantage of a lease, and
could afford to keep their corn till prices had risen. The coach would
be sure to overtake some of them on their way to their outlying fields
or to the market-town, sitting heavily on their well-groomed horses, or
weighing down one side of an olive-green gig. They probably thought of
the coach with some contempt, as an accommodation for people who
had not their own gigs, or who, wanting to travel to London and such
distant places, belonged to the tr ading and less solid part of the
nation. The passenger on the box could see that this was the district
of protuberant optimists, sure that old England was the best of all
possible countries, and that if there were any facts which had not
fallen under their own observation, they were facts not worth
observing: the district of clea n little market-towns without
manufactures, of fat livings, an aristocratic clergy, and low poor-rates.
But as the day wore on the scene would change: the land would begin
to be blackened with coal-pits, the rattle of handlooms to be heard in
hamlets and villages. Here were powerful men walking queerly with
knees bent outward from squatting in the mine, going home to throw
themselves down in their blackened flannel and sleep through the
daylight, then rise and spend much of their high wages at the ale-
house with their fellows of the Benefit Club; here the pale eager faces
of handloom-weavers, men and women, haggard from sitting up late
at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till the Wednesday.
Everywhere the cottages and the small children were dirty, for the
languid mothers gave their strength to the loom; pious Dissenting
women, perhaps, who took life patiently, and thought that salvation
depended chiefly on predestination, and not at all on cleanliness. The
gables of Dissenting chapels now made a visible sign of religion, and
of a meeting-place to counterbal ance the ale-house, even in the
hamlets; but if a couple of old termagants were seen tearing each
other's caps, it was a safe conclusion that, if they had not received the
sacraments of the Church, they had not at least given in to schismatic
rites, and were free from the errors of Voluntaryism. The breath of the
manufacturing town, which made a cloudy day and a red gloom by
night on the horizon, diffused itself over all the surrounding country,
filling the air with eager unrest. He re was a population not convinced
that old England was as good as possible; here were multitudinous
men and women aware that their religion was not exactly the religion
of their rulers, who might therefore be better than they were, and who,
if better, might alter many things which now made the world perhaps
more painful than it need be, and certainly more sinful. Yet there were
the grey steeples too, and the churchyards, with their grassy mounds
and venerable head-stones, sleeping in the sunlight; there were broad
fields and homesteads, and fine old woods covering a rising ground, or
stretching far by the roadside, allowing only peeps at the park and
mansion which they shut in from the working-day world. In these
midland districts the traveller pa ssed rapidly from one phase of
English life to another: after looking down on a village dingy with coal-
dust, noisy with the shaking of loom s, he might skirt a parish all of
fields, high hedges, and deep-rutted lanes; after the coach had rattled
over the pavement of a manufacturing town, the scene of riots and
trades-union meetings, it would take him in another ten minutes into
a rural region, where the neighbourhoo d of the town was only felt in
the advantages of a near market for corn, cheese, and hay, and where
men with a considerable banking account were accustomed to say
that 'they never meddled with politics themselves'. The busy scenes of
the shuttle and the wheel, of the roaring furnace, of the shaft and the
pulley, seemed to make but crowde d nests in the midst of the large-
spaced, slow-moving life of homest eads and far-away cottages and
oak-sheltered parks. Looking at the dwellings scattered amongst the
woody flats and the ploughed upland s, under the low grey sky which
overhung them with an unchanging stillness as if Time itself were
pausing, it was easy for the traveller to conceive that town and
country had no pulse in common, except where the handlooms made
a far-reaching straggling frin ge about the great centres of
manufacture; that till the agitation about the Catholics in '29, rural
Englishmen had hardly known more of Catholics than of the fossil
mammals; and that their notion of Reform was a confused
combination of rick-burners, trades-union, Nottingham riots, and in
general whatever required the calling-out of the yeomanry. It was still
easier to see that, for the most part, they resisted the rotation of crops
and stood by their fallows: and the coachman would perhaps tell how
in one parish an innovating farmer, who talked of Sir Humphrey Davy,
had been fairly driven out by popu lar dislike, as if he had been a
confounded Radical; and how, the parson having one Sunday
preached from the words, 'Plough up the fallow-ground of your
hearts', the people thought he had made the text out of his own head,
otherwise it would never have come 'so pat' on a matter of business;
but when they found it in the Bible at home, some said it was an
argument for fallows (else why should the Bible mention fallows?), but
a few of the weaker sort were shaken, and thought it was an argument
that fallows should be done away with, else the Bible would have said,
'Let your hearts lie fallow;' and the next morning the parson had a
stroke of apoplexy, which, as coincident with a dispute about fallows,
so set the parish against the innova ting farmer and the rotation of
crops, that he could stand his ground no longer, and transferred his
lease.
The coachman was an excellen t travelling companion and
commentator on the landscape; he could tell the names of sites and
persons, and explained the meaning of groups, as well as the shade of
Virgil in a more memorable journe y; he had as many stories about
parishes, and the men and women in them, as the Wanderer in the
'Excursion', only his style was differen t. His view of life had originally
been genial, and such as became a man who was well warmed within
and without, and held a position of easy, undisputed authority; but
the recent initiation of railways had embittered him: he now, as in a
perpetual vision, saw the ruined country strewn with shattered limbs,
and regarded Mr Huskisson's death as a proof of God's anger against
Stephenson. 'Why, every inn on the road would be shut up!' and at
that word the coachman looked before him with the blank gaze of one
who had driven his coach to the outermost edge of the universe, and
saw his leaders plunging into the ab yss. Still he would soon relapse
from the high prophetic strain to the familiar one of narrative. He
knew whose the land was wherever he drove; what noblemen had half-
ruined themselves by gambling; who made handsome returns of rent;
and who was at daggers-drawn with his eldest son. He perhaps
remembered the fathers of actual baronets, and knew stories of their
extravagant or stingy housekeeping ; whom they had married, whom
they had horsewhipped, whether they were particular about
preserving their game, and whether they had had much to do with
canal companies. About any actual landed proprietor he could also
tell whether he was a Reformer or an anti-Reformer. That was a
distinction which had 'turned up' in latter times, and along with it the
paradox, very puzzling to the coachman's mind, that there were men
of old family and large estate who voted for the Bill. He did not grapple
with the paradox; he let it pass, with all the discreetness of an
experienced theologian or learned scholiast, preferring to point his
whip at some object which could raise no questions.
No such paradox troubled our coachman when, leaving the town of
Treby Magna behind him, he drove between the hedges for a mile or
so, crossed the queer long bridge over the river Lapp, and then put his
horses to a swift gallop up the hill by the low-nestled village of Little
Treby, till they were on the fine level road, skirted on one side by
grand larches, oaks, and wych elms, which sometimes opened so far
as to let the traveller see that there was a park behind them.
How many times in the year, as the coach rolled past the neglected-
looking lodges which interrupted the screen of trees, and showed the
river winding through a finely-timbered park, had the coachman
answered the same questions, or told the same things without being
questioned! That? - oh, that was Transome Court, a place there had
been a fine sight of lawsuits about. Generations back, the heir of the
Transome name had somehow bargained away the estate'ø and it fell
to the Durfeys, very distant conne ctions, who only called themselves
Transomes because they had got the estate. But the Durfeys' claim
had been disputed over and over ag ain; and the coachman, if he had
been asked, would have said, though he might have to fall down dead
the next minute, that property didn't always get into the right hands.
However, the lawyers had found their luck in it; and people who
inherited estates that were lawed about often lived in them as poorly
as a mouse in a hollow cheese; and, by what he could make out, that
had been the way with these present Durfeys, or Transomes, as they
called themselves. As for Mr Transome, he was as poor, half-witted a
fellow as you'd wish to see; but she was master, had come of a high
family, and had a spirit - you might see it in her eye and the way she
sat her horse. Forty years ago, when she came into this country, they
said she was a pictur'; but her fami ly was poor, and so she took up
with a hatchet-faced fellow like this Transome. And the eldest son had
been just such another as his father , only worse - a wild sort of half-
natural, who got into bad company. They said his mother hated him
andwished him dead; for she'd got another son, quite of a different
cut, who had gone to foreign parts when he was a youngster, and she
wanted her favourite to be heir. But heir or no heir, Lawyer Jermyn
had had his picking out of the estate. Not a door in his big house but
what was the finest polished oak, all got off the Transome estate. If
anybody liked to believe he paid for it, they were welcome. However,
Lawyer Jermyn had sat on that box-seat many and many a time. He
had made the wills of most people thereabout. The coachman would
not say that Lawyer Jermyn was not the man he would choose to
make his own will some day. It was no t so well for a lawyer to be over-
honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks. And as for the
Transome business, there had been ins and outs in time gone by, so
that you couldn't look into it straight backward. At this Mr Sampson
(everybody in North Loamshire knew Sampson's coach) would screw
his features into a grimace expressive of entire neutrality, and appear
to aim his whip at a particular sp ot on the horse's flank. If the
passenger was curious for furt her knowledge concerning the
Transome affairs, Sampson would shake his head and say there had
been fine stories in his time; but he never condescended to state what
the stories were. Some attributed this reticence to a wise incredulity,
others to a want of memory, others to simple ignorance. But at least
Sampson was right in saying that there had been fine stories -
meaning, ironically, stories not altogether creditable to the parties
concerned.
And such stories often come to be fine in a sense that is not ironical.
For there is seldom any wrong-doin g which does not carry along with
it some downfall of blindly-climbi ng hopes, some hard entail of
suffering, some quicklys atiated desire that survives, with the life in
death of old paralytic vice, to see it self cursed by its woeful progeny -
some tragic mark of kinship in one br ief life to the far-stretching life
that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has
raised the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern
between will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the
world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations
that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of
hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no
cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of
peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer - committed to no sound
except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that
made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early
morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has
been breathed into no human ear.
The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under
world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have
human histories hidden in them; the power of unuttered cries dwells
in the passionless-seeming branches, and the red warm blood is
darkly feeding the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory that
watches through all dreams. These things are a parable.
Chapter 1
He left me when the down upon his lip Lay like the shadow of a
hovering kiss. 'Beautiful mother, do not grieve,' he said; 'I will be
great, and build our fortunes high , And you shall wear the longest
train at court, And look so queenly, all the lords shall say, ‘She is a
royal changeling: there's some crown Lacks the right head, since hers
wears nought but braids.’ ' O, he is coming now - but I am grey; And
he -
ON the 1st of September, in the memorable year 1832, some one was
expected at Transome Court. As early as two o'clock in the afternoon
the aged lodge-keeper had opened the heavy gate, green as the tree
trunks were green with nature's powdery paint, deposited year after
year. Already in the village of Little Treby, which lay on the side of a
steep hill not far off the lodge gates, the elder matrons sat in their best
gowns at the few cottage doors bordering the road, that they might be
ready to get up and make their curtsy when a travelling carriage
should come in sight; and beyond the village several small boys were
stationed on the lookout, intending to run a race to the barn-like old
church, where the sexton waited in the belfry ready to set the one bell
in joyful agitation just at the right moment.
The old lodge-keeper had opened the gate and left it in the charge of
his lame wife, because he was wanted at the Court to sweep away the
leaves, and perhaps to help in the stables. For though Transome
Court was a large mansion, built in the fashion of Queen Anne's time,
with a park and grounds as fine as any to be seen in Loamshire, there
were very few servants about it. Especially, it seemed, there must be a
lack of gardeners; for, except on the terrace surrounded with a stone
parapet in front of the house, where there was a parterre kept with
some neatness, grass had spread itself over the gravel walks, and over
all the low mounds once carefully cut as black beds for the shrubs
and larger plants. Many of the windows had the shutters closed, and
under the grand Scotch fir that stooped towards one corner, the
brown fir-needles of many years lay in a small stone balcony in front
of two such darkened windows. All round, both near and far, there
were grand trees, motionless in the still sunshine, and, like all large
motionless things, seeming to add to the stillness. Here and there a
leaf fluttered down; petals fell in a silent shower; a heavy moth floated
by, and, when it settled, seemed to fall wearily; the tiny birds alighted
on the walks, and hopped about in perfect tranquillity; even a stray
rabbit sat nibbling a leaf that was to its liking, in the middle of a
grassy space, with an air that see med quite impudent in so timid a
creature. No sound was to be heard louder than a sleepy hum, and
the soft monotony of running water hurrying on to the river that
divided the park. Standing on the south or east side of the house, you
would never have guessed that an arrival was expected.
But on the west side, where the carriage entrance was, the gates
under the stone archway were thrown open; and so was the double
door of the entrance-hall, letting in the warm light on the scagliola
pillars, the marble statues, and th e broad stone staircase, with its
matting worn into large holes. And, stronger sign of expectation than
all, from one of the doors which surrounded the entrance-hall, there
came forth from time to time a lady, who walked lightly over the
polished stone floor, and stood on the doorsteps and watched and
listened. She walked lightly, for her figure was slim and finely formed,
though she was between fifty and si xty. She was a tall, proud-looking
woman, with abundant grey hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, and a
somewhat eagle-like yet not unfeminine face. Her tight-fitting black
dress was much worn; the fine lace of her cuffs and collar, and of the
small veil which fell backwards over her high comb, was visibly
mended; but rare jewels flashed on her hands, which lay on her folded
black-clad arms like finely cut onyx cameos.
Many times Mrs Transome went to the doorsteps, watching and
listening in vain. Each time she re turned to the same room: it was a
moderate-sized comfortable room, with low ebony bookshelves round
it, and it formed an anteroom to a large library, of which a glimpse
could be seen through an open doorway, partly obstructed by a heavy
tapestry curtain drawn on one side. There was a great deal of
tarnished gilding and dinginess on the walls and furniture of this
smaller room, but the pictures above the bookcases were all of a
cheerful kind: portraits in pastel of pearly-skinned ladies with hair-
powder; blue ribbons, and low-bodices; a splendid portrait in oils of a
Transome in the gorgeous dress of the Restoration; another of a
Transome in his boyhood, with his ha nd on the neck of a small pony;
and a large Flemish battle-piece, where war seemed only a
picturesque blue-and-red accident in a vast sunny expanse of plain
and sky. Probably such cheerful pictures had been chosen because
this was Mrs Transome's usual sitting -room: it was certainly for this
reason that, near the chair in which she seated herself each time she
re-entered, there hung a picture of a youthful face which bore a strong
resemblance to her own: a beardless but masculine face, with rich
brown hair hanging low on the forehead, and undulating beside each
cheek down to the loose white cravat . Near this same chair were her
writing-table, with vellum-covered account-books on it, the cabinet in
which she kept her neatly-arranged drugs, her basket for her
embroidery, a folio volume of architectural engravings from which she
took her embroidery patterns, a number of the North Loamshire
Herald, and the cushion for her fat Blenheim, which was too old and
sleepy to notice its mistress's re stlessness. For, just now, Mrs
Transome could not abridge the sunny tedium of the day by the feeble
interest of her usual indoor occupations. Her consciousness was
absorbed by memories and prospects, and except when she walked to
the entrance-door to look out, she sat motionless with folded arms,
involuntarily from time to time turning towards the portrait close by
her, and as often, when its young brown eyes met hers, turning away
again with self-checking resolution.
At last, prompted by some sudden thought or by some sound, she
rose and went hastily beyond the tapestry curtain into the library. She
paused near the door without speaking: apparently she only wished to
see that no harm was being done. A man nearer seventy than sixty
was in the act of ranging on a large library-table a series of shallow
drawers, some of them containing dried insects, others mineralogical
specimens. His pale mild eyes, rece ding lower jaw, and slight frame,
could never have expressed much vigour, either bodily or mental; but
he had now the unevenness of gait and feebleness of gesture which
tell of a past paralytic seizure. His threadbare clothes were thoroughly
brushed; his soft white hair was carefully parted and arranged: he
was not a neglected-looking old man; and at his side a fine black
retriever, also old, sat on its haunches, and watched him as he went
to and fro. But when Mrs Transome appeared within the doorway, her
husband paused in his work and shrank like a timid animal looked at
in a cage where flight is impossible. He was conscious of a
troublesome intention, for which he had been rebuked before - that of
disturbing all his specimens with a view to a new arrangement.
After an interval, in which his wife stood perfectly still, observing him,
he began to put back the drawers in their places in the row of cabinets
which extended under the bookshelves at one end of the library. When
they were all put back and closed, Mrs Transome turned away, and
the frightened old man seated himself with Nimrod the retriever on an
ottoman. Peeping at him again, a few minutes after, she saw that he
had his arm round Nimrod's neck, an d was uttering his thoughts to
the dog in a loud whisper, as little children do to any object near them
when they believe themselves unwatched.
At last the sound of the church-bell reached Mrs Transome's ear, and
she knew that before long the sound of wheels must be within
hearing; but she did not at once start up and walk to the entrance-
door. She sat still, quivering and li stening; her lips became pale, her
hands were cold and trembling. Was her son really coming? She was
far beyond fifty; and since her earl y gladness in this best-loved boy,
the harvest of her life had been scanty. Could it be that now - when
her hair was grey, when sight had become one of the day's fatigues,
when her young accomplishments seem ed almost ludicrous, like the
tone of her first harpsichord and the words of the songs long browned
with age - she was going to reap an assured joy? - to feel that the
doubtful deeds of her life were ju stified by the result, since a kind
Providence had sanctioned them? - to be no longer tacitly pitied by her
neighbours for her lack of money, her imbecile husband, her graceless
eldest-bom, and the loneliness of her life; but to have at her side a
rich, clever, possibly a tender, son? Yes; but there were the fifteen
years of separation, and all that had happened in that long time to
throw her into the background in her son's memory and affection. And
yet - did not men sometimes become mo re filial in their feeling when
experience had mellowed them, and they had themselves become
fathers? Still, if Mrs Transome ha d expected only her son, she would
have trembled less; she expected a little grandson also: and there were
reasons why she had not been enraptured when her son had written
to her only when he was on the e ve of returning that he already had
an heir born to him.
But the facts must be accepted as they stood, and, after all, the chief
thing was to have her son back agai n. Such pride, such affection,
such hopes as she cherished in this fifty-sixth year of her life, must
find their gratification in him - or nowhere. Once more she glanced at
the portrait. The young brown eyes seemed to dwell on her pleasantly;
but, turning from it with a sort of impatience, and saying aloud, 'Of
course he will be altered!' she rose almost with difficulty, and walked
more slowly than before across the hall to the entrance-door.
Already the sound of wheels wa s loud upon the gravel. The
momentary surprise of seeing that it was only a post-chaise, without a
servant or much luggage, that was passing under the stone archway
and then wheeling round against the flight of stone steps, was at once
merged in the sense that there was a dark face under a red travelling-
cap looking at her from the window. She saw nothing else: she was
not even conscious that the small group of her own servants had
mustered, or that old Hickes the butler had come forward to open the
chaise door. She heard herself called 'Mother ! ' and felt a light kiss on
each cheek; but stronger than all that sensation was the
consciousness which no previous thought could prepare her for, that
this son who had come back to her was a stranger. Three minutes
before, she had fancied that, in spite of all changes wrought by fifteen
years of separation, she should clasp her son again as she had done
at their parting; but in the moment when their eyes met, the scnse of
strangeness came upon her like a terror. It was not hard to
understand that she was agitated, and the son led her across the hall
to the sitting-room, closing the door behind them. Then he turned
towards her and said, smiling - 'You would not have known me, eh,
mother?'
It was perhaps the truth. If she ha d seen him in a crowd, she might
have looked at him without recognition - not, however, without
startled wonder; for though the likeness to herself was no longer
striking, the years had overlaid it with another likeness which would
have arrested her. Before she answ ered him, his eyes, with a keen
restlessness, as unlike as possihle to the lingering gaze of the portrait,
had travelled quickly over the room, alighting on her again as she said
-
'Everything is changed, Harold. I am an old woman, you see.'
'But straighter and more upright than some of the young ones!' said
Harold; inwardly, however, feeling that age had made his mother's
face very anxious and eager. 'The old women at Smyrna are like sacks.
You've not got clumsy and shapeless. How is it I have the trick of
getting fat?' (Here Harold lifted his arm and spread out his plump
hand.) 'I remember my father was as thin as a herring. How is my
father? Where is he?'
Mrs Transome just pointed to the curtained doorway, and let her son
pass through it alone. She was not given to tears; but now, under the
pressure of emotion that could find no other vent, they burst forth.
She took care that they should be silent tears, and before Harold came
out of the library again they were dried. Mrs Transome had not the
ferninine tendency to seek influence through pathos; she had been
used to rule in virtue of acknowle dged superiority. The consciousness
that she had to make her son's acquaintance, and that her knowledge
of the youth of nineteen might help her little in interpreting the man of
thirty-four, had fallen like lead on her soul; but in this new
acquaintance of theirs she cared especially that her son, who had
seen a strange world, should feel that he was come home to a mother
who was to be consulted on all things, and who could supply his lack
of the local experience necessary to an English land-holder. Her part
in life had been that of the clever sinner, and she was equipped with
the views, the reasons, and the habits which belonged to that
character: life would have little meaning for her if she were to be
gently thrust aside as a harmless elderly woman. And besides, there
were secrets which her son must never know. So, by the time Harold
came from the library again, the trac es of tears were not discernible,
except to a very careful observer. And he did not observe his mother
carefully; his eyes only glanced at her on their way to the North
Loamshire Herald, lying on the table near her, which he took up with
his left hand, as he said -
'Gad ! what a wreck poor father is ! Paralysis, eh? Terribly shrunk and
shaken - crawls about among his books and beetles as usual, though.
Well, it's a slow and easy death. Bu t he's not much over sixty-five, is
he?'
'Sixty-seven, counting by birthdays; but your father was born old, I
think,' said Mrs Transome, a little flushed with the determination not
to show any unasked-for feeling.
Her son did not notice her. All the time he had been speaking his eyes
had been running down the columns of the newspaper.
'But your little boy, Harold - where is he? How is it he has not come
with you?'
'O, I left him behind, in town,' said Harold, still looking at the paper.
'My man Dominic will bring him, with the rest of the luggage. Ah, I see
it is young Debarry, and not my old friend Sir Maximus, who is
offering himself as candidate for North Loamshire.'
'Yes. You did not answer me when I wrote to you to London about
your standing. There is no other Tory candidate spoken of, and you
would have all the Debarry interest.'
'I hardly think that,' said Harold, significantly.
'Why? Jermyn says a Tory candidate can never be got in without it.'
'But I shall not be a Tory candidate.'
Mrs Transome felt something like an electric shock.
'What then?' she said, almost sharpl y. 'You will not call yourself a
Whig?'
'God forbid ! I'm a Radical.'
Mrs Transome's limbs tottered; she sank into a chair. Here was a
distinct confirmation of the vague but strong feeling that her son was
a stranger to her. Here was a revelation to which it seemed almost as
impossible to adjust her hopes and no tions of a dignified life as if her
son had said that he had been converted to Mahometanism at
Smyrna, and had four wives, instead of one son, shortly to arrive
under the care of Dominic. For the moment she had a sickening
feeling that it was all of no use that the long-delayed good fortune had
come at last - all of no use though the unloved Durfey was dead and
buried, and though Harold had come home with plenty of money.
There were rich Radicals, she was aware, as there were rich Jews and
Dissenters, but she had never thought of them as county people. Sir
Francis Burdett had been generally regarded as a madman. It was
better to ask no questions, but silently to prepare herself for anything
else there might be to come.
'Will you go to your rooms, Harold, and see if there is anything you
would like to have altered?'
'Yes, let us go,' said Harold, throwing down the newspaper, in which
he had been rapidly reading almost every advertisement while his
mother had been going through he r sharp inward struggle. 'Uncle
Lingon is on the bench still, I see,' he went on, as he followed her
across the hall; 'is he at home - will he be here this evening?'
'He says you must go to the rectory when you want to see him. You
must remember you have come back to a family who have old-
fashioned notions. Your uncle thought I ought to have you to myself in
the first hour or two. He remembered that I had not seen my son for
fifteen years.'
'Ah, by Jove ! fifteen years - so it is I ' said Harold, taking his mother's
hand and drawing it under his arm; for he had perceived that her
words were charged with an intention. 'And you are as straight as an
arrow still; you will carry the shawls I have brought you as well as
ever.'
They walked up the broad stone steps together in silence. Under the
shock of discovering her son's Radicalism, Mrs Transome had no
impulse to say one thing rather th an another; as in a man who had
just been branded on the forehead all wonted motives would be
uprooted. Harold, on his side, had no wish opposed to filial kindness,
but his busy thoughts were imperi ously determined by habits which
had no reference to any woman's feeling; and even if he could have
conceived what his mother's feel ing was, his mind, after that
momentary arrest, would have darted forward on its usual course.
'I have given you the south rooms, Harold,' said Mrs Transome, as
they passed along a corridor lit from above, and lined with old family
pictures 'I thought they would suit you best, as they all open into each
other, and this middle one will make a pleasant sitting-room for you.'
'Gad ! the furniture is in a bad state,' said Harold, glancing round at
the middle room which they had just entered; 'the moths seem to have
got into the carpets and hangings.'
'I had no choice except moths or tenants who would pay rent,' said
Mrs Transome. 'We have been too poor to keep servants for
uninhabited rooms.'
'What ! you've been rather pinched, eh?'
'You find us living as we have been living these twelve years.'
'Ah, you've had Durfey's debts as well as the lawsuits - confound them
! It will make a hole in sixty thousand pounds to pay off the
mortgages. However, he's gone now, poor fellow; and I suppose I
should have spent more in buying an English estate some time or
other. I always meant to be an Englishman, and thrash a lord or two
who thrashed me at Eton.'
'I hardly thought you could have meant that, Harold, when I found
you had married a foreign wife.'
'Would you have had me wait fo r a consumptive lackadaisical
Englishwoman, who would have hung all her relations round my
neck? I hate English wives; they want to give their opinion about
everything. They interfere with a man's life. I shall not marry again.'
Mrs Transome bit her lip, and turned away to draw up a blind. She
would not reply to words whic h showed how completely any
conception of herself and her feelings was excluded from her son's
inward world.
As she turned round again she said, 'I suppose you have been used to
great luxury; these rooms look miser able to you, but you can soon
make any alteration you like.'
'O, I must have a private sitting-room fitted up for myself down-stairs.
And the rest are bedrooms, I suppose,' he went on, opening a side-
door. 'Ah, I can sleep here a night or two. But there's a bedroom
down-stairs, with an anteroom, I remember, that would do for my
man Dominic and the little boy. I should like to have that.'
'Your father has slept there for years. He will be like a distracted
insect, and never know where to go, if you alter the track he has to
walk in.' 'That's a pity. I hate going up-stairs.'
'There is the steward's room: it is not used, and might be turned into a
bedroom. I can't offer you my ro om, for I sleep up-stairs.' (Mrs
Transome's tongue could be a whip upon occasion, but the lash had
not fallen on a sensitive spot.)
'No; I'm determined not to sleep up-stairs. We'll see about the
steward's room to-morrow, and I dare say I shall find a closet of some
sort for Dominic. It's a nuisance he had to stay behind, for I shall have
nobody to cook for me. Ah, there's the old river I used to fish in. I
often thought, when I was at Smyrna, that I would buy a park with a
river through it as much like the Lapp as possible. Gad, what fine
oaks those are opposite ! Some of them must come down, though.'
'I've held every tree sacred on the demesne, as I told you, Harold. I
trusted to your getting the estate some time, and releasing it; and I
determined to keep it worth releasing. A park without fine timber is no
better than a beauty without teeth and hair.'
'Bravo, mother!' said Harold, putting his hand on her shoulder. 'Ah,
you've had to worry yourself about things that don't properly belong to
a woman - my father being weakly. We'll set all that right. You shall
have nothing to do now but to be grandmamma on satin cushions.'
'You must excuse me from the satin cushions. That is a part of the old
woman's duty I am not prepared for. I am used to be chief bailiff, and
to sit in the saddle two or three hours every day. There are two farms
on our hands besides the Home Farm.'
'Phew-ew ! Jermyn manages the estate badly, then. That will not last
under my reign,' said Harold, turnin g on his heel and feeling in his
pockets for the keys of his portmanteaus, which had been brought up.
'Perhaps when you've been in England a little longer,' said Mrs
Transome, colouring as if she had b een a girl, 'you will understand
better the difficulties there is in letting farms in these times.'
'I understand the difficulty perfectly, mother. To let farms, a man
must have the sense to see what will make them inviting to farmers,
and to get sense supplied on demand is just the most difficult
transaction I know of. I suppose if I ring there's some fellow who can
act as valet and learn to attend to my hookah?'
'There is Hickes the butler, and there is Jabez the footman; those are
all the men in the house. They were here when you left.'
'O, I remember Jabez - he was a dolt. I'll have old Hickes. He was a
neat little machine of a butler; his words used to come like the clicks
of an engine. He must be an old machine now, though.'
'You seem to remember some things about home wonderfully well,
Harold.
'Never forget places and people - how they look and what can be done
with them. All the country round here lies like a map in my brain. A
deuced pretty country too; but the people were a stupid set of old
Whigs and Tories. I suppose they are much as they were.'
'I am, at least, Harold. YOU are the first of your family that ever talked
of being a Radical. I did not think I was taking care of our old oaks for
that. I always thought Radicals' houses stood staring above poor
sticks of young trees and iron hurdles.'
'Yes. but the Radical sticks are growing, mother, and half the Tory
oaks are rotting,' said Harold, with gay carelessness. 'You've arranged
for Jermyn to be early to-morrow?'
'He will be here to breakfast at nine. But I leave you to Hickes now; we
dine in an hour.'
Mrs Transome went away and shut herself in her own dressing-room.
It had come to pass now - this meeting with the son who had been the
object of so much longing; whom she had longed for before he was
born, for whom she had sinned, from whom she had wrenched herself
with pain at their parting, and whose coming again had been the one
great hope of her years. The moment was gone by; there had been no
ecstasy, no gladness even; hardly half an hour had passed, and few
words had been spoken, yet with that quickness in weaving new
futures which belongs to women whose actions have kept them in
habitual fear of consequences, Mrs Transome thought she saw with all
the clearness of demonstration that her son's return had not been a
good for her in the sense of making her any happier.
She stood before a tall mirror, going close to it and looking at her face
with hard scrutiny, as if it were unreIated to herself. No elderly face
can be handsome, looked at in th at way; every little detail is
startlingly prominent, and the effect of the whole is lost. She saw the
dried-up complexion, and the deep lines of bitter discontent about the
mouth.
'I am a hag!' she said to herself (she was accustomed to give her
thoughts a very sharp outline), 'an ugly old woman who happens to be
his mother. That is what he sees in me, as I see a stranger in him. I
shall count for nothing. I was foolish to expect anything else.'
She turned away from the mirror and walked up and down her room.
'What a likeness!' she said, in a loud whisper; 'yet, perhaps, no one
will see it besides me.'
She threw herself into a chair, and sat with a fixed look, seeing
nothing that was actually present, but inwardly seeing with painful
vividness what had been present with her a little more than thirty
years ago - the little round-limbed creature that had been leaning
against her knees, and stamping tiny feet, and looking up at her with
gurgling laughter. She had thought that the possession of this child
would give unity to her life, and make some gladness through the
changing years that would grow up as fruit out of these early maternal
caresses. But nothing had come just as she had wished. The mother's
early raptures had lasted but a short time, and even while they lasted
there had grown up in the midst of them a hungry desire, like a black
poisonous plant feeding in the sunlig ht, - the desire that her first,
rickety, ugly, imbecile child should die, and leave room for her darling,
of whom she could be proud. Such desires make life a hideous lottery,
where every day may turn up a blank; where men and women who
have the softest beds and the most delicate eating, who have a very
large share of that sky and earth which some are born to have no
more of than the fraction to be got in a crowded entry, yet grow
haggard, fevered, and restless, like those who watch in other lotteries.
Day after day, year after year, had yielded blanks; new cares had
come, bringing other desires for results quite beyond her grasp, which
must also be watched for in the lottery; and all the while the round-
limbed pet had been growing into a strong youth, who liked many
things better than his mother's caresses, and who had a much keener
consciousness of his independent existence than of his relation to her:
the lizard's egg, that white rounded passive prettiness, had become a
brown, darting, determined lizard. The mother's love is at first an
absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of
the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move
in: but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms
as other long-lived love - that is, by much suppression of self, and
power of living in the experience of another. Mrs Transome had darkly
felt the pressure of that unchange able fact. Yet she had clung to the
belief that somehow the possession of this son was the best thing she
lived for; to believe otherwise would have made her memory too
ghastly a companion. Some time or other, by some means, the estate
she was struggling to save from the grasp of the law would be
Harold's. Somehow the hated Durfey, the imbecile eldest, who seemed
to have become tenacious of a despicable squandering life, would be
got rid of; vice might kill him. Meanwhile the estate was burthened:
there was no good prospect for any heir. Harold must go and make a
career for himself: and this was what he was bent on, with a
precocious clearness of perception as to the conditions on which he
could hope for any advantages in life. Like most energetic natures, he
had a strong faith in his luck; he had been gay at their parting, and
had promised to make his fortune; and in spite of past
disappointments, Harold's possible fortune still made some ground for
his mother to plant her hopes in. His luck had not failed him; yet
nothing had turned out according to her expectations. Her life had
been like a spoiled shabby pleasure-day, in which the music and the
processions are all missed, and nothing is left at evening but the
weariness of striving after what has been failed of. Harold had gone
with the Embassy to Constantinople, under the patronage of a high
relative, his mother's cousin; he was to be a diplomatist, and work his
way upward in public life. But his luck had taken another shape: he
had saved the life of an Armenian banker, who in gratitude had
offered him a prospect which his practical mind had preferred to the
problematic promises of diplomacy and high born cousinship. Harold
had become a merchant and banker at Smyrna; had let the years pass
without caring to find the possibilit y of visiting his early home, and
had shown no eagerness to make his li fe at all familiar to his mother,
asking for letters about England, but writing scantily about himself.
Mrs Transome had kept up the habit of writing to her son, but
gradually the unfruitful years had dulled her hopes and yearnings;
increasing anxieties about money had worried her, and she was more
sure of being fretted by bad news about her dissolute eldest son than
of hearing anything to cheer her from Harold. She had begun to live
merely in small immediate cares and occupations, and, like all eager-
minded women who advance in life without any activity of tenderness
or any large sympathy, she had co ntracted small rigid habits of
thinking and acting, she had her 'w ays' which must not be crossed,
and had learned to fill up the great void of life with giving small orders
to tenants, insisting on medicines for infirm cottagers, winning small
triumphs in bargains and personal economies, and parrying ill-
natured remarks of Lady Debarry's by lancet-edged epigrams. So her
life had gone on till more than a year ago, when the desire which had
been so hungry while she was a blooming young mother, was at last
fulfilled - at last, when her hair was grey, and her face looked bitter,
resdess, and unenjoying, like her life. The news came from Jersey that
Durfey, the imbecile son, was dead. Now Harold was heir to the estate;
now the wealth he had gained could release the land from its
burthens; now he would think it worth while to return home. A
change had at last come over her life, and the sunlight breaking the
clouds at evening was pleasant, though the sun must sink before
long. Hopes, affections, the sweeter part of her memories, started from
their wintry sleep, and it once more seemed a great good to have had a
second son who in some ways had cost her dearly. But again there
were conditions she had not reckoned on. When the good tidings had
been sent to Harold, and he had announced that he would return so
soon as he could wind up his af Eairs, he had for the first time
informed his mother that he had been married, that his Greek wife
was no longer living, but that he should bring home a litde boy, the
finest and most desirable of heirs and grandsons. Harold, seated in
his distant Smyrna home, considered that he was taking a rational
view of what tbings must have become by this time at the old place in
England, when he figured his moth er as a good elderly lady, who
would necessarily be delighted with the possession on any terms of a
healthy grandchild, and would not mind much about the particulars
of the long-concealed marriage.
Mrs Transome had tom up that lett er in a rage. But in the months
which had elapsed before Harold could actually arrive, she had
prepared herself as well as she could to suppress all reproaches or
queries which her son might resent, and to acquiesce in his evident
wishes. The return was still looked for with longing; affection and
satisfied pride would again warm her later years. She was ignorant
what sort of man Harold had become now, and of course he must be
changed in many ways; but though she told herself this, still the
image that she knew, the image fondness clung to, necessarily
prevailed over the negatives insisted on by her reason.
And so it was, that when she had mo ved to the door to meet him, she
had been sure that she should clas p her son again, and feel that he
was the same who had been her boy, her little one, the loved child of
her passionate youth. An hour seemed to have changed everything for
her. A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates
them. The shadow which had fallen over Mrs Transome in this first
interview with her son was the presentiment of her powerlessness. If
things went wrong, if Harold got unpleasantly disposed in a certain
direction where her chief dread had always lain, she seemed to foresee
that her words would be of no avail. The keenness of her anxiety in
this matter had served as insight; and Harold's rapidity, decision, and
indifference to any impressions in others which did not further or
impede his own purposes, had made themselves felt by her as much
as she would have felt the unmanageable strength of a great bird
which had alighted near her, and allowed her to stroke its wing for a
moment because food lay near her.
Under the cold weight of these thoughts Mrs Transome shivered. That
physical reaction roused her from her reverie, and she could now hear
the gende knocking at the door to which she had been deaf before.
Notwithstanding her activity and the fewness of her servants, she had
never dressed herself without aid; nor would that small, neat,
exquisitely clean old woman who now presented herself have wished
that her labour should be saved at the expense of such a sacrifice on
her lady's part. The small old woman was Mrs Hickes, the butler's
wife, who acted as housekeeper, lady's-maid, and superintendent of
the kitchen - the large stony scene of inconsiderable cooking. Forty
years ago she had entered Mrs Transome's service, when that lady
was beautiful Miss Lingon, and her mistress still called her Denner, as
she had done in the old days.
'The bell has rung, then, Denner, without my hearing it?' said Mrs
Transome, rising.
'Yes, madame,' said Denner, reachi ng from a wardrobe an old black
velvet dress trimmed with much mended point, in which Mrs
Transome was wont to look queenly of an evening.
Denner had still strong eyes of that shortsighted kind which sees
through the narrowest chink between the eye-lashes. The physical
contrast between the tall, eagle-face d, dark-eyed lady, and the little
peering waidng-woman, who had been round-featured and of pale
mealy complexion from her youth up, had doubdess had a strong
influence in determining Denner's feeling towards her mistress, which
was of that worshipful sort paid to a goddess in ages when it was not
thought necessary or likely that a goddess should be very moral.
There were different orders of beings - so ran Denner's creed - and she
belonged to another order than th at to which her mistress belonged.
She had a mind as sharp as a ne edle, and would have seen through
and through the ridiculous pretensi ons of a born servant who did not
submissively accept the rigid fate which had given her born superiors.
She would have called such pretensions the wrigglings of a worm that
tried to walk on its tail. There was a tacit understanding that Denner
knew all her mistress's secrets, and her speech was plain and
unflattering; yet with wonderful subtlety of instinct she never said
anything which Mrs Transome coul d feel humiliated by, as by a
familiarity from a servant who knew too much. Denner idendfied her
own dignity with that of her mistress. She was a hard-headed godless
little woman, but with a character to be reckoned on as you reckon on
the qualities of iron.
Peering into Mrs Transome's face, she saw clearly that the meeting
with the son had been a disappointment in some way. She spoke with
a refined accent, in a low, quick, monotonous tone -
'Mr Harold is drest; he shook me by the hand in the corridor, and was
very pleasant.' 'What an alteration, Denner! No likeness to me now.'
'Handsome, though, spite of his being so browned and stout. There's a
fine presence about Mr Harold. I remember you used to say, madam,
there were some people you would always know were in the room
though they stood round a corner, and others you might never see till
you ran against them. That's as true as truth. And as for likenesses,
thirty-five and sixty are not much alike, only to people's memories.'
Mrs Transome knew perfectly that Denner had divined her thoughts.
'I don't know how things will go on now; but it seems something too
good to happen that they will go on well. I am afraid of ever expecting
anything good again.'
'That's weakness, madam. Things don't happen because they're bad or
good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it is
but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and
nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.'
'What a woman you are, Denner I You talk like a French infidel. It
seems to me you are afraid of nothing. I have been full of fears all my
life - always seeing something or other hanging over me that I couldn't
bear to happen.'
'Well, madam, put a good face on it, and don't seem to be on the look-
out for crows, else you'll set the other people watching. Here you have
a rich son come home, and the debts will all be paid, and you have
your health and can ride about, and you've such a face and figure,
and will have if you live to be eighty, that everybody is cap in hand to
you before they know who you are - let me fasten up your veil a little
higher: there's a good deal of pleasure in life for you yet.'
'Nonsense I there's no pleasure for old women, unless they get it out of
tormenting other people. What are your pleasures, Denner - besides
being a slave to me?'
'Oh, there's pleasure in knowing one' s not a fool, like half the people
one sees about. And managing one's husband is some pleasure; and
doing all one's business well Why, if I've only got some orange flowers
to candy, I shouldn't like to die till I see them all right. Then there's
the sunshine now and then; I like that, as the cats do. I look upon it,
life is like our game at whist, when Banks and his wife come to the
still-room of an evening. I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to
play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it; and I want to
see you make the best of your hand , madam, for your luck has been
mine these forty years now. But I must go and see how Kitty dishes up
the dinner, unless you have any more commands.' 'No, Denner; I am
going down immediately.'
As Mrs Transome descended the stone staircase in her old black velvet
and point, her appearance justified Denner's personal compliment.
She had that high-born imperious air which would have marked her
as an object of hatred and reviling by a revolutionary mob. Her person
was too typical of social distinctions to be passed by with indifference
by any one; it would have fitted an empress in her own right, who had
had to rule in spite of faction, to dare the violation of treaties and
dread retributive invasions, to grasp after new territories, to be defiant
in desperate circumstances, and to feel a woman's hunger of the heart
for ever unsatisfied. Yet Mrs Transome's cares and occupations had
not been at all of an imperial sort. For thirty years she had led the
monotonous narrowing life which used to be the lot of our poorer
gentry, who never went to town, and were probably not on speaking
terms with two out of the five families whose parks lay within the
distance of a drive. When she was young she had been thought
wonderfully clever and accomplished, and had been rather ambitious
of intellectual superiority - had secretly picked out for private reading
the lighter parts of dangerous Fren ch authors - and in company had
been able to talk of Mr Burke's st yle, or of Chateaubriand's eloquence
- had laughed at the Lyrical Ballads and admired Mr Southey's
'Thalaba'. She always thought that the dangerous French writers were
wicked, and that her reading of them was a sin; but many sinful
things were highly agreeable to her, and many things which she did
not doubt to be good and true were dull and meaningless. She found
ridicule of Biblical characters very amusing, and she was interested in
stories of illicit passion: but she believed all the while that truth and
safety lay in due attendance on prayers and sermons, in the
admirable doctrines and ritual of the Church of England, equally
remote from Puritanism and Popery; in fact, in such a view of this
world and the next as would preserve the existing arrangements of
English society quite unshaken, keeping down the obtrusiveness of
the vulgar and the discontent of the poor. The history of the Jews, she
knew, ought to be preferred to any profane history; the Pagans, of
course, were vicious, and their religions quite nonsensical, considered
as religions - but classical learning came from the Pagans; the Greeks
were famous for sculpture; the Ital ians for painting; the middle ages
were dark and papistical; but now Christianity went hand in hand
with civilization, and the providential government of the world, though
a little confused and entangled in foreign countries, in our favoured
land was clearly seen to be carrie d forward on Tory and Church of
England principles, sustained by the succession of the House of
Brunswick, and by sound English divines. For Miss Lingon had had a
superior governess, who held that a woman should be able to write a
good letter, and to express herself with propriety on general subjects.
And it is astonishing how effective this education appeared in a
handsome girl, who sat supremely well on horseback, sang and played
a little, painted small figures in water-colours, had a naughty sparkle
in her eyes when she made a daring quotation, and an air of serious
dignity when she recited something from her store of correct opinions.
But however such a stock of ideas may be made to tell in elegant
society, and during a few seasons in town, no amount of bloom and
beauty can make them a perennial source of interest in things not
personal; and the notion that what is true and, in general, good for
mankind, is stupid and drug-like, is not a safe theoretic basis in
circumstances of temptation and difficulty. Mrs Transome had been in
her bloom before this century began, and in the long painful years
since then, what she had once regarded as her knowledge and
accomplishments had become as valueless as old-fashioned stucco
ornaments, of which the substance was never worth anything, while
the form is no longer to the taste of any living mortal. Crosses,
mortifications, money-cares, conscious blameworthiness, had
changed the aspect of the world for her: there was anxiety in the
morning sunlight; there was unkind triumph or disapproving pity in
the glances of greeting neighbours ; there was advancing age, and a
contracting prospect in the changing seasons as they came and went.
And what could then sweeten the days to a hungry much-exacting self
like Mrs Transome's? Under protracted ill every living creature will
find something that makes a comparative ease, and even when life
seems woven of pain, will convert the fainter pang into a desire. Mrs
Transome, whose imperious will had availed little to ward off the great
evils of her life, found the opiate for her discontent in the exertion of
her will about smaller things. She was not cruel, and could not enjoy
thoroughly what she called the old woman's pleasure of tormenting;
but she liked every little sign of po wer her lot had left her. She liked
that a tenant should stand bareheaded below her as she sat on
horseback. She liked to insist th at work done without her orders
should be undone from beginning to end. She liked to be curtsied and
bowed to by all the congregation as she walked up the little barn of a
church. She liked to change a labourer's medicine fetched from the
doctor, and substitute a prescription of her own. If she had only been
more haggard and less majestic, those who had glimpses of her
outward life might have said she wa s a tyrannical, griping harridan,
with a tongue like a razor. No one said exactly that; but they never
said anything like the full truth about her, or divined what was hidden
under that outward life - a woman's keen sensibility and dread, which
lay screened behind all her petty habits and narrow notions, as some
quivering thing with eyes and throbbing heart may lie crouching
behind withered rubbish. The sensib ility and dread had palpitated all
the faster in the prospect of her son's return; and now that she had
seen him, she said to herself, in her bitter way, 'It is a lucky eel that
escapes skinning. The best happiness I shall ever know, will be to
escape the worst misery.'
Chapter 2
A jolly parson of the good old stock, By birth a gentleman, yet homely
too, Suiting his phrase to Hodge and Margery Whom he once
christened, and has married since. A li ttle lax in doctrine and in life,
Not thinking God was captious in such things As what a man might
drink on holidays, But holding true religion was to do As you'd be
done by - which could never mean That he should preach three
sermons in a week.
HAROLD TRANSOME did not choose to spend the whole evening with
his mother. It was his habit to compress a great deal of effective
conversation into a short space of time, asking rapidly all the
questions he wanted to get answered, and diluting no subject with
irrelevancies, paraphrase, or repetitions. He volunteered no
information about himself and his pa st life at Smyrna, but answered
pleasantly enough, though briefly, whenever his mother asked for any
detail. He was evidently ill-satisfied as to his palate, trying red pepper
to everything, then asking if there were any relishing sauces in the
house, and when Hickes brought va rious home-filled bottles, trying
several, finding them failures, and finally falling back from his plate in
despair. Yet he remained good-hum oured, saying something to his
father now and then for the sake of being kind, and looking on with a
pitying shrug as he saw him watch Hickes cutting his food. Mrs
Transome thought with some bitterness that Harold showed more
feeling for her feeble husband who had never cared in the least about
him, than for her, who had given him more than the usual share of
mother's love. An hour after dinner, Harold, who had already been
turning over the leaves of his mother's account-books, said -
'I shall just cross the park to the parsonage to see my uncle Lingon.'
'Very well. He can answer more questions for you.'
'Yes,' said Harold, quite deaf to the innuendo, and accepting the words
as a simple statement of the fact. 'I want to hear all about the game
and the North Loamshire Hunt. I'm fond of sport; we had a great deal
of it at Smyrna, and it keeps down my fat.'
The Reverend John Lingon became very talkative over his second
bottle of port, which was opened on his nephew's arrival. He was not
curious about the manners of Smyrna, or about Harold's experience,
but he unbosomed himself very freely as to what he himself liked and
disliked, which of the farmers he su spected of killing the foxes, what
game he had bagged that very morning, what spot he would
recommend as a new cover, and the comparative flatness of all
existing sport compared with cock-fighting, under which Old England
had been prosperous and glorious, while, so far as he could see, it had
gained little by the abolition of a practice which sharpened the
faculties of men, gratified the instincts of the fowl, and carried out the
designs of heaven in its admirable device of spurs. From these main
topics which made his points of departure and return, he rambled
easily enough at any new suggestion or query; so that when Harold
got home at a late hour, he was co nscious of having gathered from
amidst the pompous full-toned triviality of his uncle's chat some
impressions which were of practical importance. Among the rector's
dislikes, it appeared, was Mr Matthew Jermyn.
'A fat-handed, glib-tongued fe llow, with a scented cambric
handkerchief; one of your educated low-bred fellows; a foundling who
got his Latin for nothing at Christ's Hospital; one of your middle-class
upstarts who want to rank with gentlemen, and think they'll do it with
kid gloves and new furniture.'
But since Harold meant to stand for the county, Mr Lingon was
equally emphatic as to the necessity of his not quarrelling with
Jermyn till the election was over. Jermyn must be his agent; Harold
must wink hard till he found himself safely returned; and even then it
might be well to let Jermyn drop gently and raise no scandal. He
himself had no quarrel with the fe llow: a clergyman should have no
quarrels, and he made it a point to be able to take wine with any man
he met at table. And as to the estate, and his sister's going too much
by Jermyn's advice, he never meddled with business: it was not his
duty as a clergyman. That, he considered, was the meaning of
Melchisedec and the tithe, a subject into which he had gone to some
depth thirty years ago, when he preached the Visitation sermon.
The discovery that Harold meant to stand on the Liberal side - nay,
that he boldly declared himself a Radical - was rather startling; but to
his uncle's good-humour, beatifie d by the sipping of port-wine,
nothing could seem highly objectionable, provided it did not disturb
that operation. In the course of half an hour he had brought himself
to see that anything really worthy to be called British Toryism had
been entirely extinct since the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel
had passed the Catholic Emancipation Bill; that Whiggery, with its
rights of man stopping short at ten-pound householders, and its
policy of pacifying a wild beas t with a bite, was a ridiculous
monstrosity; that therefore, since an honest man could not call
himself a Tory, which it was, in fa ct, as impossible to be now as to
fight for the old Pretender, and coul d still less become that execrable
monstrosity a Whig, there remained but one course open to him.
'Why, lad, if the world was turned into a swamp, I suppose we should
leave off shoes and stockings, and walk about like cranes' - whence it
followed plainly enough that, in these hopeless times, nothing was left
to men of sense and good family but to retard the national ruin by
declaring themselves Radical, and take the inevitable process of
changing everything out of the hands of beggarly demagogues and
purse-proud tradesmen. It is true the rector was helped to this chain
of reasoning by Harold's remarks; but he soon became quite ardent in
asserting the conclusion.
'If the mob can't be turned back, a man of family must try and head
the mob, and save a few homes and hearths, and keep the country up
on its last legs as long as he can. And you're a man of family, my lad -
dash it! You're a Lingon, whatever else you may be, and I'll stand by
you. I've no great interest; I'm a poor parson. I've been forced to give
up hunting; my pointers and a glass of good wine are the only
decencies becoming my station that I can allow myself. But I'll give
you my countenance - I'll stick to you as my nephew. There's no need
for me to change sides exactly. I was born a Tory, and I shall never be
a bishop. But if anybody says you're in the wrong, I shall say, ‘My
nephew is in the right; he has turned Radical to save his country.’ If
William Pitt had been living now, he'd have done the same; for what
did he say when he was dying? Not ‘O save my party!’ but ‘O save my
country, heaven !’ That was what they dinned in our ears about Peel
and the duke; and now I'll turn it round upon them. They shall be
hoist with their own petard. Yes, yes, I'll stand by you.'
Harold did not feel sure that his uncle would thoroughly retain this
satisfactory thread of argument in the uninspired hours of the
morning; but the old gentleman was su re to take the facts easily in
the end, and there was no fear of family coolness or quarrelling on
this side. Harold was glad of it. He was not to be turned aside from
any course he had chosen; but he disliked all quarrelling as an
unpleasant expenditure of energy th at could have no good practical
result. He was at once active and luxurious; fond of mastery, and
good-natured enough to wish that every one about him should like his
mastery; not caring greatly to know other people's thoughts, and
ready to despise them as blockheads if their thoughts differed from
his, and yet solicitous that they sh ould have no colourable reason for
slight thoughts about him. The blockheads must be forced to respect
him. Hence, in proportion as he foresaw that his equals in the
neighbourhood would be indignant wi th him for his political choice,
he cared keenly about making a good figure before them in every other
way. His conduct as a landholder was to be judicious, his
establishment was to be kept up generously, his imbecile father
treated with careful regard, his family relations entirely without
scandal. He knew that affairs had been unpleasant in his youth - that
there had been ugly lawsuits - and that his scapegrace brother Durfey
had helped to lower still farther the depressed condition of the family.
All this must be retrieved, now that events had made Harold the head
of the Transome name.
Jermyn must be used for the election, and after that, if he must be got
rid of, it would be well to shak e him loose quietly: his uncle was
probably right on both those points. But Harold's expectation that he
should want to get rid of Jermyn was founded on other reasons than
his scented handkerchief and his charity-school Latin.
If the lawyer had been presuming on Mrs Transome's ignorance as a
woman, and on the stupid rakishness of the original heir, the new heir
would prove to him that he had calc ulated rashly. Otherwise, Harold
had no prejudice against him. In his boyhood and youth he had seen
Jermyn frequenting Transome Court, but had regarded him with that
total indifference with which youngsters are apt to view those who
neither deny them pleasures nor give them any. Jermyn used to smile
at him, and speak to him affably; but Harold, half proud, half shy, got
away from such patronage as soon as possible: he knew Jermyn was a
man of business; his father, his uncle, and Sir Maximus Debarry did
not regard him as a gentleman and their equal. He had known no evil
of the man; but he saw now that if he were really a covetous upstart,
there had been a temptation for him in the management of the
Transome affairs; and it was clear that the estate was in a bad
condition.
When Mr Jermyn was ushered into the breakfast-room the next
morning, Harold found him surprisi ngly little altered by the fifteen
years. He was grey, but still re markably handsome; fat, but tall
enough to bear that trial to man's dignity. There was as strong a
suggestion of toilette about him as if he had been five-and-twenty
instead of nearly sixty. He chose always to dress in black, and was
especially addicted to black satin waistcoats, which carried out the
general sleekness of his appearance; and this, together with his white,
fat, but beautifully-shaped hands, which he was in the habit of
rubbing gently on his entrance into a room, gave him very much the
air of a lady's physician. Harold remembered with some amusement
his uncle's dislike of those conspicuous hands; but as his own were
soft and dimpled, and as he too was given to the innocent practice of
rubbing those members, his suspicions were not yet deepened.
'I congratulate you, Mrs Transome ,' said Jermyn, with a soft and
deferential smile, 'all the more,' he added, turning towards Harold,
'now I have the pleasure of actually seeing your son. I am glad to
perceive that an Eastern climate has not been unfavourable to him.'
'No,' said Harold, shaking Jermyn's hand carelessly, and speaking
with more than his usual rapid brusqueness, 'the question is, whether
the English climate will agree with me. It's deuced shifting and damp:
and as for the food, it would be the finest thing in the world for this
country if the southern cooks wo uld change their religion, get
persecuted, and fly to England, as the old silk-weavers did.'
'There are plenty of foreign cooks for those who are rich enough to pay
for them, I suppose,' said Mrs Transome, 'but they are unpleasant
people to have about one's house.'
'Gad! I don't think so,' said Harold.
'The old servants are sure to quarrel with them.'
'That's no concern of mine. The old servants will have to put up with
my man Dominic, who will show them how to cook and do everything
else, in a way that will rather astonish them.'
'Old people are not so easily taught to change all their ways, Harold.'
'Well, they can give up and watch the young ones,' said Harold,
thinking only at that moment of old Mrs Hickes and Dominic. But his
mother was not thinking of them only.
'You have a valuable servant, it seems,' said Jermyn, who understood
Mrs Transome better than her son did, and wished to smoothen the
current of their dialogue.
'O! one of those wonderful southern fellows that make one's life easy.
He's of no country in particular. I don't know whether he's most of a
Jew, a Greek, an Italian, or a Spaniard. He speaks five or six
languages, one as well as another. He's cook, valet, major-domo, and
secretary all in one; and what's more , he's an affectionate fellow - I
can trust to his attachment. That's a sort of human specimen that
doesn't grow here in England, I fancy. I should have been badly off if I
could not have brought Dominic.'
They sat down to breakfast with such slight talk as this going on.
Each of the party was preoccupied and uneasy. Harold's mind was
busy constructing probabilities about what he should discover of
Jermyn's mismanagement or dubious application of funds, and the
sort of self-command he must in the worst case exercise in order to
use the man as long as he wanted him. Jermyn was closely observing
Harold with an unpleasant sense that there was an expression of
acuteness and determination about him which would make him
formidable. He would certainly have preferred at that moment that
there had been no second heir of the Transome name to come back
upon him from the East. Mrs Transome was not observing the two
men; rather, her hands were cold, and her whole person shaken by
their presence; she seemed to hear and see what they said and did
with preternatural acuteness, and yet she was also seeing and hearing
what had been said and done many years before, and feeling a dim
terror about the future. There were piteous sensibilities in this faded
woman, who thirty-four years ago, in the splendour of her bloom, had
been imperious to one of these men, and had rapturously pressed the
other as an infant to her bosom, and now knew that she was of little
consequence to either of them.
'Well, what are the prospects about the election?' said Harold, as the
breakfast was advancing. 'There are two Whigs and one Conservative
likely to be in the field, I know. What is your opinion of the chances?'
Mr Jermyn had a copious supply of words, which often led him into
periphrase, but he cultivated a hesitating stammer, which, with a
handsome impassiveness of face, except when he was smiling at a
woman, or when the latent savageness of his nature was thoroughly
roused, he had found useful in many relations, especially in business.
No one could have found out that he was not at his ease. 'My opinion,'
he replied, 'is in a state of balan ce at present. This division of the
county, you are aware, contains one manufacturing town of the first
magnitude, and several smaller ones. The manufacturing interest is
widely dispersed. So far - a - there is a presumption - a - in favour of
the two Liberal candidates. Still with a careful canvass of the
agricultural districts, such as those we have round us at Treby
Magna, I think - a - the auguries - a - would not be unfavourable to
the return of a Conservative. A fourth candidate of good position, who
should coalesce with Mr Debarry. - a -'
Here Mr Jermyn hesitated for the third time, and Harold broke in.
'That will not be my line of action, so we need not discuss it. If I put
up it will be as a Radical; and I fancy, in any county that would return
Whigs there would be plenty of voters to be combed off by a Radical
who offered himself with good pretensions.'
There was the slightest possible quiver discernible across Jermyn's
face. Otherwise he sat as he had done before, with his eyes fixed
abstractedly on the frill of a ham before him, and his hand trifling
with his fork. He did not answer im mediately, but when he did, he
looked round steadily at Harold.
'I'm delighted to perceive that you have kept yourself so thoroughly
acquainted with English politics.'
'O, of course,' said Harold, impatiently. 'I'm aware how things have
been going on in England. I always meant to come back ultimately. I
suppose I know the state of Europe as well as if I'd been stationary at
Little Treby for the last fifteen years. If a man goes to the East, people
seem to think he gets turned into something like the one-eyed
calender in the Arabian Nights.’
'Yet I should think there are some things which people who have been
stationary at Little Treby could tell you, Harold,' said Mrs Transome.
'It did not signify about your holding Radical opinions at Smyma; but
you seem not to imagine how your putt ing up as a Radical will affect
your position here, and the position of your family. No one will visit
you. And then - the sort of people who will support you ! You really
have no idea what an impression it conveys when you say you are a
Radical. There are none of our equals who will not feel that you have
disgraced yourself. 'Pooh!' said Ha rold, rising and walking along the
room.
But Mrs Transome went on with growing anger in her voice - 'It seems
to me that a man owes something to his birth and station, and has no
right to take up this notion or the other, just as it suits his fancy; still
less to work at the overthrow of his class. That was what everyone
said of Lord Grey, and my family at least is as good as Lord Grey's.
You have wealth now, and might distinguish yourself in the county;
and if you had been true to your colours as a gentleman, you would
have had all the greater opportunity because the times are so bad.
The Debarrys and Lord Wyvem would have set all the more store by
you. For my part, I can't conceive what good you propose to yourself. I
only entreat you to think again before you take any decided step.'
'Mother,' said Harold, not angrily or with any raising of his voice, but
in a quick, impatient manner, as if the scene must be got through as
quickly as possible; 'it is natural that you should think in this way.
Women, very properly, don't change their views, but keep to the
notions in which they have been brought up. It doesn't signify what
they think - they are not called upon to judge or to act. You must
really leave me to take my own course in these matters, which
properly belong to men. Beyond that, I will gratify any wish you
choose to mention. You shall have a new carriage and a pair of bays
all to yourself; you shall have the ho use done up in first-rate style,
and I am not thinking of marrying. But let us understand that there
shall be no further collision between us on subjects in which I must
be master of my own actions.'
'And you will put the crown to the mortifications of my life, Harold. I
don't know who would be a mother if she could foresee what a slight
thing she will be to her son when she is old.'
Mrs Transome here walked out of the room by the nearest way - the
glass door open towards the terrace. Mr Jermyn had risen too, and his
hands were on the back of his chair. He looked quite impassive: it was
not the first time he had seen Mrs Transome angry; but now, for the
first time, he thought the outburst of her temper would be useful for
him. She, poor woman, knew quite well that she had been unwise,
and that she had been making herself disagreeable to Harold to no
purpose. But half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could
repress the speech they know to be useless; nay, the speech they have
resolved not to utter. Harold continued his walking a moment longer,
and then said to Jermyn -
'You smoke?'
'No, I always defer to the ladies. Mrs Jermyn is peculiarly sensitive on
such matters, and doesn't like tobacco.'
Harold, who, underneath all the tendencies which had made him a
Liberal, had intense personal pride, thought, 'Confound the fellow -
with his Mrs Jermyn! Does he think we are on a footing for me to
know anytlung about his wife?'
'Well, I took my hookah before breakfast,' he said aloud; 'so, if you
like, we'll go into the library. My father never gets up till mid-day, I
find.'
'Sit down, sit down,' said Harold, as they entered the handsome,
spacious library. But he himself continued to stand before a map of
the county which he had opened from a series of rollers occupying a
compartment among the bookshelves. 'The first question, Mr Jermyn,
now you know my intentions, is, whether you will undertake to be my
agent in this election, and help me through? There's no time to be
lost, and I don't want to lose my chance, as I may not have another for
seven years. I understand,' he went on, flashing a look straight at
Jermyn, 'that you have not taken any conspicuous course in politics;
and I know that Labron is agent for the Debarrys.'
'O - a - my dear sir - a man necessarily has his political convictions,
but of what use is it for a professional man - a - of some education, to
talk of them in a little country town? There really is no comprehension
of public questions in such places. Party feeling, indeed, was quite
asleep here before the agitation about the Catholic Relief Bill. It is true
that I concurred with our incumbent in getting up a petition against
the Reform Bill, but I did not state my reasons. The weak points in
that Bill are - a - too palpable, and I fancy you and I should not differ
much on that head. The fact is, when I knew that you were to come
back to us, I kept myself in reserve, though I was much pressed by
the friends of Sir James Clement, the Ministerial candidate, who is - '
'However, you will act for me - that's settled?' said Harold.
'Certainly,' said Jermyn, inwardly irritated by Harold's rapid manner
of cutting him short.
'Which of the Liberal candidates, as they call themselves, has the
better chance, eh?'
'I was going to observe that Sir James Clement has not so good a
chance as Mr Garstin, supposing that a third Liberal candidate
presents himself. There are two senses in which a politician can be
liberal' - here Mr Jermyn smiled - 'Sir James Clement is a poor
baronet, hoping for an appointmen t, and can't be expected to be
liberal in that wider sense which commands majorities.'
'I wish this man were not so much of a talker,' thought Harold; 'he'll
bore me. We shall see,' he said aloud, 'what can be done in the way of
combination. I'll come down to your office after one o'clock, if it will
suit you?'
'Perfectly.'
'Ah, and you'll have all the lists and papers and necessary information
ready for me there. I must get up a dinner for the tenants, and we can
invite whom we like besides the tenants. Just now, I'm going over one
of the farms on hand with the bailif f. By the way, that's a desperately
bad business, having three farms unlet - how comes that about, eh?'
'That is precisely what I wanted to say a few words about to you. You
have observed already how strongly Mrs Transome takes certain
things to heart. You can imagine th at she has been severely tried in
many ways. Mr Transome's want of health; Mr Durfey's habits - a -'
'Yes, yes.'
'She is a woman for whom I natura lly entertain the highest respect,
and she has had hardly any gratific ation for many years, except the
sense of having affairs to a certain extent in her own hands. She
objects to changes; she will not ha ve a new style of tenants; she likes
the old stock of farmers who milk their own cows, and send their
younger daughters out to service: all this makes it difficult to do the
best with the estate. I am aware things are not as they ought to be,
for, in point of fact, an improved agricultural management is a matter
in which I take considerable interest, and the farm which I myself hold
on the estate you will see, I think, to be in a superior condition. But
Mrs Transome is a woman of strong feeling, and I would urge you, my
dear sir, to make the changes which you have, but which I had not,
the right to insist on, as little painful to her as possible.'
'I shall know what to do, sir, never fear,' said Harold, much offended.
'You will pardon, I hope, a perhaps undue freedom of suggestion from
a man of my age, who has been so long in a close connection with the
family affairs - a - I have never considered that connection simply in
the light of a business - a -'
'Damn him, I'll soon let him know that I do,' thought Harold. But in
proportion as he found Jermyn's manners annoying, he felt the
necessity of controlling himself. He despised all persons who defeated
their own projects by the indulgence of momentary impulses.
'I understand, I understand,' he said aloud. 'You've had more
awkward business on your hands than usually falls to the share of
the family lawyer. We shall set everything right by degrees. But now as
to the canvassing. I've made arrangements with a first-rate man in
London, who understands these matters thoroughly - a solicitor of
course - he has carried no end of men into parliament. I'll engage him
to meet us at Duffield - say when?'
The conversation after this was driven carefully clear of all angles, and
ended with determined amicableness. When Harold, in his ride an
hour or two afterwards, encountered his uncle shouldering a gun, and
followed by one black and one live r-spotted pointer, his muscular
person with its red eagle face set off by a velveteen jacket and leather
leggings, Mr Lingon's first question was -
'Well, lad, how have you got on with Jermyn?'
'O, I don't think I shall like the fellow. He's a sort of amateur
gentleman. But I must make use of him. I expect whatever I get out of
him will only be something short of fair pay for what he has got out of
us. But I shall see.'
'Ay, ay, use his gun to bring down your game, and after that beat the
thief with the butt-end. That's wisdom and justice and pleasure all in
one - talking between ourselves, as uncle and nephew. But I say,
Harold, I was going to tell you, now I come to think of it, this is rather
a nasty business, your calling yourself a Radical. I've been turning it
over in after-dinner speeches, but it looks awkward - it's not what
people are used to - it wants a good deal of Latin to make it go down. I
shall be worried about it at the se ssions, and I can think of nothing
neat enough to carry about in my pocket by way of answer.'
'Nonsense, uncle; I remember wh at a good speechifier you always
were: you'll never be at a loss. You only want a few more evenings to
think of it.'
'But you'll not be attacking the church and the institutions of the
country - you'll not be going to th ose lengths; you'll keep up the
bulwarks, and so on, eh?'
'No, I shan't attack the church - only the incomes of the bishops,
perhaps, to make them eke out the incomes of the poor clergy.'
'Well, well, I have no objection to that. Nobody likes our bishop: he's
all Greek and greediness; too proud to dine with his own father. You
may pepper the bishops a little. But you'll respect the constitution
handed down, etc. - and you'll rall y round the throne - and the king,
God bless him, and the usual toasts, eh?'
'Of course, of course. I am a Radical only in rooting out abuses.'
'That's the word I wanted, my lad!' said the vicar, slapping Harold's
knee. 'That's a spool to wind a speech on. Abuses is the very word;
and if anybody shows himself offended, he'll put the cap on for
himself.'
'I remove the rotten timbers,' said Harold, inwardly amused, 'and
substitute fresh oak, that's all.'
'Well done, my boy ! By George, you'll be a speaker. But, I say, Harold,
I hope you've got a little Lati n left. This young Debarry is a
tremendous fellow at the classics, and walks on stilts to any length.
He's one of the new Conservatives. Old Sir Maximus doesn't
understand him at all.'
'That won't do at the hustings,' said Harold. 'He'll get knocked off his
stilts pretty quickly there.'
'Bless me ! it's astonishing how well you're up in the affairs of the
country, my boy. But rub up a fe w quotations - ‘Quod turpe bonis
decebat Crispinum’ - and that sort of thing - just to show Debarry
what you could do if you liked. But you want to ride on?' 'Yes; I have
an appointment at Treby. Good-bye.'
'He's a cleverish chap,' muttered the vicar, as Harold rode away.
'When he's had plenty of Englis h exercise, and brought out his
knuckle a bit, he'll be a Lingon agai n as he used to be. I must go and
see how Arabella takes his being a Radical. It's a little awkward; but a
clergyman must keep peace in a family. Confound it ! I'm not bound to
love Toryism better than my own flesh and blood, and the manor I
shoot over. That's a heathenish, Brutus-like sort of thing, as if
Providence couldn't take care of the country without my quarrelling
with my own sister's son!'
Chapter 3
'Twas town, yet country too; you felt the warmth Of clustering houses
in the wintry time; Supped with a friend, and went by lantern home.
Yet from your chamber window you could hear The tiny bleat of new-
yeaned lambs, or see The children bend beside the hedgerow banks To
pluck the primroses.
TREBY MAGNA, on which the Reform Bill had thrust the new honour
of being a polling-place, had been, at the beginning of the century,
quite a typical old market-town, lying in pleasant sleepiness among
green pastures, with a rush-fringed river meandering through them.
Its principal street had various handsome and tall-windowed brick
houses with walled gardens behind them; and at the end, where it
widened into the market-place, there was the cheerful rough-stuccoed
front of that excellent inn, the Marquis of Granby, where the farmers
put up their gigs, not only on fair and market days, but on exceptional
Sundays when they came to church. And the church was one of those
fine old English structures worth travelling to see, standing in a broad
churchyard with a line of solemn yew-trees beside it, and lifting a
majestic tower and spire far above the red-and-purple roofs of the
town. It was not large enough to hold all the parishioners of a parish
which stretched over distant villages and hamlets; but then they were
never so unreasonable as to wish to be all in at once, and had never
complained that the space of a large side-chapel was taken up by the
tombs of the Debarrys, and shut in by a handsome iron screen. For
when the black Benedictines ceased to pray and chant in this church,
when the Blessed Virgin and St Gregory were expelled, the Debarrys,
as lords of the manor, naturally came next to Providence and took the
place of the saints. Long before that time, indeed, there had been a Sir
Maximus Debarry who had been at th e fortifying of the old castle,
which now stood in ruins in the midst of the green pastures, and with
its sheltering wall towards the north made an excellent strawyard for
the pigs of Wace & Co., brewers of the celebrated Treby beer. Wace &
Co. did not stand alone in the town as prosperous traders on a large
scale, to say nothing of those who had retired from business; and in
no country town of the same small size as Treby was there a larger
proportion of families who had handsome sets of china without
handles, hereditary punchbowls, and large silver ladles with a Queen
Anne's guinea in the centre. Such people naturally took tea and
supped together frequently; and as there was no professional man or
tradesman in Treby who was not connected by business, if not by
blood, with the farmers of the distri ct, the richer sort of these were
much invited, and gave invitations in their turn. They played at whist,
ate and drank generously, praised Mr Pitt and the war as keeping up
prices and religion, and were ve ry humorous about each other's
property, having much the same co y pleasure in allusions to their
secret ability to purchase, as blushing lasses sometimes have in jokes
about their secret preferences. The rector was always of the Debarry
family, associated only with coun ty people, and was much respected
for his affability; a clergyman wh o would have taken tea with the
townspeople would have given a dangerous shock to the mind of a
Treby church-man.
Such was the old-fashioned, grazin g, brewing, woolpacking, cheese-
loading life of Treby Magna, until there befell new conditions,
complicating its relating with the rest of the world, and gradually
awakening in it that higher con sciousness which is known to bring
higher pains. First came the canal; next, the working of the coal-
mines at Sproxton, two miles off the town; and, thirdly, the discovery
of a saline spring, wh ich suggested to a too constructive brain the
possibility of turning Treby Magna in to a fashionable watering-place.
So daring an idea was not originat ed by a native Trebian, but by a
young lawyer who came from a distance, knew the dictionary by heart,
and was probably an illegitimate son of somebody or other. The idea,
although it promised an increase of wealth to the town, was not well
received at first; ladies objected to seeing 'objects' drawn about in
hand-carriages, the doctor fo resaw the advent of unsound
practitioners, and most retail tradesmen concurred with him that new
doings were usually for the adva ntage of new people. The more
unanswerable reasons urged that Treby had prospered without baths,
and it was yet to be seen how it would prosper with them; while a
report that the proposed name for them was Bethesda Spa, threatened
to give the whole affair a blasphemous aspect. Even Sir Maximus
Debarry, who was to have an unprecedented return for the thousands
he would lay out on a pump-room and hotel, regarded the thing as a
little too new, and held back for some time. But the persuasive powers
of the young lawyer, Mr Matthew Jermyn, together with the opportune
opening of a stone-quarry, triumphed at last; the handsome buildings
were erected, an excellent guide-book and descriptive cards,
surmounted by vignettes, were printed, and Treby Magna became
conscious of certain facts in its own history, of which it had previously
been in contented ignorance.
But it was all in vain. The Spa, fo r some mysterious reason, did not
succeed. Some attributed the failure to the coal-mines and the canal,
others to the peace, which had had ruinous effects on the country,
and others, who disliked Jermyn, to the original folly of the plan.
Among these last was Sir Maximus himself, who never forgave the too
persuasive attorney: it was Jermyn's fault not only that a useless
hotel had been built, but that he, Sir Maximus, being straitened for
money, had at last let the building, with the adjacent land lying on the
river, on a long lease, on the supposition that it was to be turned into
a benevolent college, and had seen himself subsequently powerless to
prevent its being turned into a tape manufactory - a bitter thing to
any gentleman, and especially to the representative of one of the
oldest families in England.
In this way it happened that Treby Magna gradually passed from
being simply a respectable market-town - the heart of a great rural
district, where the trade was only such as had close relations with the
local landed interest - and took on the more complex life brought by
mines and manufactures, which belong more directly to the great
circulating system of the nation than to the local system to which they
have been superadded; and in this way it was that Trebian Dissent
gradually altered its character. Formerly it had been of a quiescent,
well-to-do kind, represented archit ecturally by a small, venerable,
dark-pewed chapel, built by Presbyterians, but long occupied by a
sparse congregation of Independents , who were as li ttle moved by
doctrinal zeal as their church-going neighbours, and did not feel
themselves deficient in religious liberty, inasmuch as they were not
hindered from occasionally slumbering in their pews, and were not
obliged to go regularly to the weekly prayer-meeting. But when stone-
pits and coal-pits made new hamlets that threatened to spread up to
the very town, when the tape-weavers came with their news-reading
inspectors and book-keepers, the Independent chapel began to be
filled with eager men and women, to whom the exceptional possession
of religious truth was the condition which reconciled them to a meagre
existence, and made them feel in secure alliance with the unseen but
supreme rule of a world in which their own visible part was small.
There were Dissenters in Treby now who could not be regarded by the
church people in the light of old neighbours to whom the habit of
going to chapel was an innocent, un enviable inheritance along with a
particular house and garden, a ta nyard, or a grocery business -
Dissenters who, in their turn, without meaning to be in the least
abusive, spoke of the high-bred rector as a blind leader of the blind.
And Dissent was not the only thing that the times had altered; prices
had fallen, poor-rates had risen, rent and tithe were not elastic
enough, and the farmer's fat sorrow had become lean; he began to
speculate on causes, and to trace things back to that causeless
mystery, the cessation of one-poun d notes. Thus, when political
agitation swept in a great current through the country, Treby Magna
was prepared to vibrate. The Catholic Emancipation Bill opened the
eyes of neighbours, and made them aware how very injurious they
were to each other and to the welfare of mankind generally. Mr Tiliot,
the church spirit-merchant, knew now that Mr Nuttwood, the obliging
grocer, was one of those Dissenters, Deists, Socinians, Papists and
Radicals, who were in league to d estroy the constitution. A retired old
London tradesman, who was believed to understand politics, said that
thinking people must wish George the Third alive again in all his early
vigour of mind; and even the farmers became less materialistic in their
view of causes, and referred much to the agency of the devil and the
Irish Romans. The rector, the Rev. Augustus Debarry, really a fine
specimen of the old-fashioned aristocratic clergyman, preaching short
sermons, understanding business, and acting liberally about his tithe,
had never before found himself in collision with Dissenters; but now
he began to feel that these people were a nuisance in the parish, that
his brother Sir Maximus must take care lest they should get land to
build more chapels, and that it might not have been a bad thing if the
law had furnished him as a magistrate with a power of putting a stop
to the political sermons of the Independent preacher, which, in their
way, were as pernicious sources of intoxication as the beerhouses.
The Dissenters, on their side, were not disposed to sacrifice the cause
of truth and freedom to a temporizing mildness of language; but they
defended themselves from the charge of religious indifference, and
solemnly disclaimed any lax expectations that Catholics were likely to
be saved - urging, on the contrary, that they were not too hopeful
about Protestants, who adhered to a bloated and worldly prelacy.
Thus Treby Magna, which had lived quietly through the great
earthquakes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which
had remained unmoved by the Rights of Man, and saw little in Mr
Cobbett's Weekly Register ' except that he held eccentric views about
potatoes, began at last to know th e higher pains of a dim political
consciousness; and the development had been greatly helped by the
recent agitation about the Reform Bill. Tory, Whig, and Radical did not
perhaps become clearer in their definition of each other; but the
names seemed to acquire so strong a stamp of honour or infamy, that
definitions would only have weakened the impression. As to the short
and easy method of judging opinions by the personal character of
those who held them, it was liable to be much frustrated in Treby. It
so happened in that particular town that the Reformers were not all of
them large-hearted patriots or ardent lovers of justice; indeed, one of
them, in the very midst of the agitation, was detected in using
unequal scales - a fact to which many Tories pointed with disgust as
showing plainly enough, without furt her argument, that the cry for a
change in the representative system was hollow trickery. Again, the
Tories were far from being all oppressors, disposed to grind down the
working classes into serfdom; and it was undeniable that the
inspector at the tape manufactory, who spoke with much eloquence
on the extension of the suffrage, was a more tyrannical personage
than open-handed Mr Wace, whose chief political tenet was, that it
was all nonsense giving men votes when they had no stake in the
country. On the other hand, there were some Tories who gave
themselves a great deal of leisure to abuse hypocrites, Radicals,
Dissenters, and atheism generally, but whose inflamed faces, theistic
swearing, and frankness in expressing a wish to borrow, certainly did
not mark them out strongly as holding opinions likely to save society.
The Reformers had triumphed: it was clear that the wheels were going
whither they were pulling, and they were in fine spirits for exertion.
But if they were pulling towards the country's ruin, there was the
more need for others to hang on behind and get the wheels to stick if
possible. In Treby, as elsewhere, people were told they must 'rally' at
the coming election; but there was now a large number of waverers -
men of flexible, practical minds, who were not such bigots as to cling
to any views when a good tangible reason could be urged against
them; while some regarded it as the most neighbourly thing to hold a
little with both sides, and were not sure that they should rally or vote
at all. It seemed an invidious thing to vote for one gentleman rather
than another.
These social changes in Treby parish are comparatively public
matters, and this history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a
few men and women; but there is no private life which has not been
determined by a wider public life , from the time when the primeval
milkmaid had to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the
cow she milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare.
Even in that conservatory existence where the fair Camelia is sighed
for by the noble young Pineapple, neither of them needing to care
about the frost or rain outside, there is a nether apparatus of hot-
water pipes liable to cool down on a strike of the gardeners or a
scarcity of coal. And the lives we are about to look back upon do not
belong to those conservatory species; they are rooted in the common
earth, having to endure all the ordinary chances of past and present
weather. As to the weather of 1832, the Zadkiel of that time had
predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the political
hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic
existence, and he would perhaps have seen a fulfilment of his
remarkable prophecy in that mutual influence of dissimilar destinies
which we shall see gradually unfolding itself. For if the mixed political
conditions of Treby Magna had not been acted on by the passing of
the Reform Bill, Mr Harold Transome would not have presented
himself as a candidate for North Loamshire, Treby would not have
been a polling-place, Mr Matthew Jermyn would not have been on
affable terms with a Dissenting preacher and his flock, and the
venerable town would not have been placarded with handbills, more
or less complimentary and retrospective - conditions in this case
essential to the 'where', and the 'what', without which, as the learned
know, there can be no event whatever.
For example, it was through these conditions that a young man
named Felix Holt made a considerable difference in the life of Harold
Transome, though nature and fortune seemed to have done what they
could to keep the lots of the two men quite aloof from each other. Felix
was heir to nothing better than a quack medicine; his mother lived up
a back street in Treby Magna, and her sitting-room was ornamented
with her best tea-tray and several framed testimonials to the virtues of
Holt's Cathartic Lozenges and Holt's Restorative Elixir. There could
hardly have been a lot less like Harold Transome's than this of the
quack doctor's son, except in the superficial facts that he called
himself a Radical, that he was the only son of his mother, and that he
had lately returned to his home with ideas and resolves not a little
disturbing to that mother's mind.
But Mrs Holt, unlike Mrs Transome, was much disposed to reveal her
troubles, and was not without a counsellor into whose ear she could
pour them. On this 2nd of September, when Mr Harold Transome had
had his first interview with Jermyn, and when the attorney went back
to his office with new views of canv assing in his mind, Mrs Holt had
put on her bonnet as early as nine o'clock in the morning, and had
gone to see the Rev. Rufus Lyon, minister of the Independent Chapel
usually spoken of as 'Malthouse Yard.'
Chapter 4
'A pious and painful preacher.' - FULLER.
MR LYON lived in a small house, not quite so good as the parish
clerk's, adjoining the entry which led to the Chapel Yard. The new
prosperity of Dissent at Treby had led to an enlargement of the chapel,
which absorbed all extra funds and left none for the enlargement of
the minister's income. He sat this morning, as usual, in a low up-
stairs room, called his study, which, by means of a closet capable of
holding his bed, served also as a sleeping-room. The bookshelves did
not suffice for his store of old book s, which lay about him in piles so
arranged as to leave narrow lanes between them; for the minister was
much given to walking about during his hours of meditation, and very
narrow passages would serve for his small legs, unencumbered by any
other drapery than his black silk stockings and the flexible, though
prominent, bows of black ribbon th at tied his knee-breeches. He was
walking about now, with his hands clasped behind him, an attitude in
which his body seemed to bear about the same proportion to his head
as the lower part of a stone Hermes bears to the carven image that
crowns it. His face looked old and worn, yet the curtain of hair that
fell from his bald crown and hung about his neck retained much of its
original auburn tint, and his large, brown, shortsighted eyes were still
clear and bright. At the first glance, every one thought him a very odd-
looking rusty old man; the freeschool boys often hooted after him, and
called him 'Revelations'; and to many respectable church people, old
Lyon's little legs and large head seemed to make Dissent additionally
preposterous. But he was too shortsighted to notice those who tittered
at him - too absent from the world of small facts and petty impulses in
which titterers live. With Satan to argue against on matters of vital
experience as well as of church government, with great texts to
meditate on, which seemed to get deeper as he tried to fathom them, it
had never occurred to him to reflec t what sort of image his small
person made on the retina of a light-minded beholder. The good Rufus
had his ire and his egoism; but they existed only as the red heat
which gave force to his belief and his teaching. He was susceptible
concerning the true office of deac ons in the primitive church, and his
small nervous body was jarred from head to foot by the concussion of
an argument to which he saw no answer. In fact, the only moments
when he could be said to be really conscious of his body, were when
he trembled under the pressure of some agitating thought.
He was meditating on the text for his Sunday morning sermon: 'And
all the people said, Amen' - a mere mustard-seed of a text, which had
split at first only into two divisions, 'What was said', and 'Who said it';
but these were growing into a many-branched discourse, and the
preacher's eyes dilated, and a smile played about his mouth till, as his
manner was, when he felt happily inspired, he had begun to utter his
thoughts aloud in the varied measure and cadence habitual to him,
changing from a rapid but distinct undertone to a loud emphatic
rallentando.
'My brethren, do you think that great shout was raised in Israel by
each man's waiting to say ‘amen’ ti ll his neighbours had said amen?
Do you think there will ever be a great shout for the right - the shout
of a nation as of one man, rounde d and whole, like the voice of the
archangel that bound together all the listeners of earth and heaven - if
every Christian of you peeps round to see what his neighbours in good
coats are doing, or else puts his hat before his face that he may shout
and never be heard? But this is what you do: when the servant of God
stands up to deliver his message, do you lay your souls beneath the
Word as you set out your plants beneath the falling rain? No; one of
you sends his eyes to all corners, he smothers his soul with small
questions, ‘What does brother Y. think?’ ‘Is this doctrine high enough
for brother Z?’ ‘Will the church members be pleased?’ And another -'
Here the door was opened, and old Lyddy, the minister's servant, put
in her head to say, in a tone of despondency, finishing with a groan,
'Here is Mrs Holt wanting to speak to you; she says she comes out of
season, but she's in trouble.'
'Lyddy,' said Mr Lyon, falling at on ce into a quiet conversational tone,
'if you are wrestling with the enemy, let me refer you to Ezekiel the
thirteenth and twenty-second, and beg of you not to groan. It is a
stumbling-block and offence to my daughter; she would take no broth
yesterday, because she said you had cried into it. Thus you cause the
truth to be lightly spoken of, and make the enemy rejoice. If your face-
ache gives him an advantage, take a little warm ale with your meat - I
do not grudge the money.'
'If I thought my drinking warm ale would hinder poor dear Miss
Esther from speaking light - but she hates the smell of it.'
'Answer not again, Lyddy, but send up Mistress Holt to me.'
Lyddy closed the door immediately.
'I lack grace to deal with these weak sisters,' said the minister, again
thinking aloud, and walking. 'Their needs lie too much out of the track
of my meditations, and take me often unawares. Mistress Holt is
another who darkens counsel by words without knowledge, and
angers the reason of the natural man. Lord, give me patience. My sins
were heavier to bear than this woman's folly. Come in, Mistress Holt,
come in.'
He hastened to disencumber a chair of Matthew Henry's Commentary,
and begged his visitor to be seated. She was a tall elderly woman,
dressed in black, with a light-brow n front and a black band over her
forehead. She moved the chair a littl e and seated herself in it with
some emphasis, looking fixedly at th e opposite wall with a hurt and
argumentative expression. Mr Lyon had placed himself in the chair
against his desk, and waited with the resolute resignation of a patient
who is about to undergo an operation. But his visitor did not speak.
'You have something on your mind, Mistress Holt?' he said, at last.
'Indeed I have, sir, else I shouldn't be here.'
'Speak freely.'
'It's well known to you, Mr Lyon, that my husband, Mr Holt, came
from the north, and was a member in Malthouse Yard long before you
began to be pastor of it, which wa s seven year ago last Michaelmas.
It's the truth, Mr Lyon, and I'm not that woman to sit here and say it if
it wasn't true.'
'Certainly, it is true.'
'And if my husband had been alive when you'd come to preach upon
trial, he'd have been as good a judge of your gifts as Mr Nuttwood and
Mr Muscat, though whether he'd have agreed with some that your
doctrine wasn't high enough, I can' t say. For myself, I've my opinion
about high doctrine.'
'Was it my preaching you came to speak about?' said the minister,
hurrying in the question.
'No, Mr Lyon, I'm not that woman. But this I will say, for my husband
died before your time, that he had a wonderful gift in prayer, as the
old members well know, if anybody likes to ask 'em, not believing my
words; and he believed himself that the receipt for the Cancer Cure,
which I've sent out in bottles till th is very last April before September
as now is, and have bottles standing by me, - he believed it was sent
him in answer to prayer; and nobody can deny it, for he prayed most
regular, and read out of the green baize Bible.'
Mrs Holt paused, appearing to think that Mr Lyon had been
successfully confuted, and should show himself convinced.
'Has any one been aspersing your husband's character?' said Mr
Lyon, with a slight initiative towards that relief of groaning for which
he had reproved Lyddy.
'Sir, they daredn't. For though he was a man of prayer, he didn't want
skill and knowledge to find things out for himself; and that was what I
used to say to my friends when they wondered at my marrying a man
from Lancashire, with no trade or fortune but what he'd got in his
head. But my husband's tongue 'ud have been a fortune to anybody,
and there was many a one said it was as good as a dose of physic to
hear him talk; not but what that got him into trouble in Lancashire,
but he always said, if the worst came to the worst, he could go and
preach to the blacks. But he did better than that, Mr Lyon, for he
married me; and this I will say, that for age, and conduct, and
managing -'
'Mistress Holt,' interrupted the minister, 'these are not the things
whereby we may edify one another. Let me beg of you to be as brief as
you can. My time is not my own.'
'Well, Mr Lyon, I've a right to speak to my own character; and I'm one
of your congregation, though I'm not a church member, for I was born
in the general Baptist connection: and as for being saved without
works, there's a many, I daresay, can't do without that doctrine; but I
thank the Lord I never needed to put myself on a level with the thief
on the cross. I've done my duty, and more, if anybody comes to that;
for I've gone without my bit of meat to make broth for a sick
neighbour: and if there's any of the church members say they've done
the same, I'd ask them if they had the sinking at the stomach as I
have; for I've ever strove to do the right thing, and more, for good-
natured I always was; and I little thought, after being respected by
everybody, I should come to be reproached by my own son. And my
husband said, when he was a-dying - ‘Mary,’ he said, ‘the elixir, and
the pills, and the cure will support you, for they've a great name in all
the country round, and you'll pray fo r a blessing on them.’ And so I
have done, Mr Lyon; and to say th ey're not good medicines, when
they've been taken for fifty miles round by high and low, and rich and
poor, and nobody speaking against 'em but Dr Lukin, it seems to me
it's a flying in the face of Heaven; for if it was wrong to take medicine,
couldn't the blessed Lord have stopped it?'
Mrs Holt was not given to tears; she was much sustained by
conscious unimpeachableness, and by an argumentative tendency
which usually checks the too great activity of the lachrymal gland;
nevertheless her eyes had become moist, her fingers played on her
knee in an agitated manner, and she finally plucked a bit of her gown
and held it with great nicety between her thumb and finger. Mr Lyon,
however, by listening attentively, had begun partly to divine the
source of her trouble.
'Am I wrong in gathering from what you say, Mistress Holt, that your
son has objected in some way to your sale of your late husband's
medicines?'
'Mr Lyon, he's masterful beyond ev erything, and he talks more than
his father did. I've got my reason, Mr Lyon, and if anybody talks sense
I can follow him; but Felix talks so wild, and contradicts his mother.
And what do you think he says, after giving up his 'prenticeship, and
going off to study at Glasgow, and getting through all the bit of money
his father saved for his bringing-up - what has all his learning come
to? He says I'd better never open my Bible, for it's as bad poison to me
as the pills are to half the people as swallow 'em. You'll not speak of
this again, Mr Lyon - I don't think ill enough of you to believe that. For
I suppose a Christian can understand the word o' God without going
to Glasgow, and there's texts upon texts about ointment and
medicine, and there's one as might have been made for a receipt of my
husband's - it's just as if it was a riddle, and Holt's Elixir was the
answer.'
'Your son uses rash words, Mistress Ho lt,' said the minister, 'but it is
quite true that we may err in giving a too private interpretation to the
Scripture. The word of God has to satisfy the larger needs of His
people, like the rain and the sunshine - which no man must think to
be meant for his own patch of seed-g round solely. Will it not be well
that I should see your son, and talk with him on these matters? He
was at chapel, I observed, and I suppose I am to be his pastor.'
'That was what I wanted to ask you, Mr Lyon. For perhaps he'll listen
to you, and not talk you down as he does his poor mother. For after
we'd been to chapel, he spoke better of you than he does of most: he
said you was a fine old fellow, and an old-fashioned Puritan - he uses
dreadful language, Mr Lyon; but I saw he didn't mean you ill, for all
that. He calls most folks' religion rottenness; and yet another time
he'll tell me I ought to feel myself a sinner, and do God's will and not
my own. But it's my belief he says first one thing and then another
only to abuse his mother. Or else he's going off his head, and must be
sent to a 'sylum. But if he writes to the North Loamshire Herald first,
to tell everybody the medicines are good for nothing, how can I ever
keep him and myself?'
'Tell him I shall feel favoured if he will come and see me this evening,'
said Mr Lyon, not without a little prejudice in favour of the young
man, whose language about the prea cher in Malthouse Yard did not
seem to him to be altogether dreadful. 'Meanwhile, my friend, I
counsel you to send up a supplication, which I shall not fail to offer
also, that you may receive a spirit of humility and submission, so that
you may not be hindered from se eing and following the divine
guidance in this matter by any false lights of pride and obstinacy. Of
this more when I have spoken with your son.'
'I'm not proud or obstinate, Mr Lyon. I never did say I was everything
that was bad, and I never will. And why this trouble should be sent on
me above everybody else - for I haven't told you all. He's made himself
a journeyman to Mr Prowd the watchmaker - after all this learning -
and he says he'll go with patche s on his knees, and he shall like
himself the better. And as for his having little boys to teach, they'll
come in all weathers with dirty shoes. If it's madness, Mr Lyon, it's no
use your talking to him.'
'We shall see. Perhaps it may even be the disguised working of grace
within him. We must not judge rashly. Many eminent servants of God
have been led by ways as strange.'
'Then I'm sorry for their mothers, that's all, Mr Lyon; and all the more
if they'd been well-spoken-on women. For not my biggest enemy,
whether it's he or she, if they'll speak the truth, can turn round and
say I've deserved this trouble. And when everybody gets their due, and
people's doings are spoke of on the house-tops, as the Bible says they
will be, it'll be known what I've gone through with those medicines -
the pounding, and the pouring, and the letting stand, and the
weighing - up early and down late - there's nobody knows yet but One
that's worthy to know; and the pasting o' the printed labels right side
upwards. There's few women would have gone through with it; and it's
reasonable to think it'll be made up to me; for if there's promised and
purchased blessings, I should think this trouble is purchasing 'em.
For if my son Felix doesn't have a strait-waistcoat put on him, he'll
have his way. But I say no more. I wish you good-morning, Mr Lyon,
and thank you, though I well know it's your duty to act as you're
doing. And I never troubled you ab out my own soul, as some do who
look down on me for not being a church member.'
'Farewell, Mistress Holt, farewell. I pray that a more powerful teacher
than I am may instruct you.'
The door was closed, and the much-t ried Rufus walked about again,
saying aloud, groaningly -
'This woman has sat under the gospel all her life, and she is as blind
as a heathen, and as proud and stif f-necked as a Pharisee; yet she is
one of the souls I watch for. 'Tis true that even Sara, the chosen
mother of God's people, showed a spirit of unbelief, and perhaps of
selfish anger; and it is a passage that bears the unmistakable signet,
‘doing honour to the wife or woman, as unto the weaker vessel’. For
therein is the greatest check put on the ready scorn of the natural
man.'
Chapter 5
1ST CITIZEN Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth That makes a
vice of virtue by excess. 2ND CITIZEN What if the coolness of our
tardier veins Be loss of virtue? 1ST CITIZEN All things cool with time
- The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find A general level, nowhere
in excess. 2ND CITIZEN 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought,
That future middlingness.
IN the evening, when Mr Lyon was expecting the knock at the door
that would announce Felix Holt, he occupied his cushionless arm-
chair in the sitting-room, and was skimming rapidly, in his short-
sighted way, by the light of one candle, the pages of a missionary
report, emitting occasionally a slig ht 'Hm-m' that appeared to be
expressive of criticism rather than of approbation. The room was
dismally furnished, the only objects indicating an intention of
ornament being a bookcase, a map of the Holy Land, an engraved
portrait of Dr Doddridge, and a black bust with a coloured face, which
for some reason or other was covered with green gauze. Yet any one
whose attention was quite awake must have been aware, even on
entering, of certain things that were incongruous with the general air
of sombreness and privation. There was a delicate scent of dried rose-
leaves; the light by which the mini ster was reading was a wax-candle
in a white earthenware candlestick, and the table on the opposite side
of the fireplace held a dainty work-basket frilled with blue satin.
Felix Holt, when he entered, was not in an observant mood; and when,
after seating himself, at the minister's invitation, near the little table
which held the work-basket, he star ed at the wax-candle opposite to
him, he did so without any wonder or consciousness that the candle
was not of tallow. But the minister's sensitiveness gave another
interpretation to the gaze which he divined rather than saw; and in
alarm lest this inconsistent ex travagance should obstruct his
usefulness, he hastened to say -
'You are doubtless amazed to see me with a wax-light, my young
friend; but this undue luxury is paid for with the earnings of my
daughter, who is so delicately framed that the smell of tallow is
loathsome to her.'
'I heeded not the candle, sir. I thank Heaven I am not a mouse to have
a nose that takes note of wax or tallow.'
The loud abrupt tones made the old man vibrate a little. He had been
stroking his chin gently before, with a sense that he must be very
quiet and deliberate in his treatment of the eccentric young man; but
now, quite unreflectingly, he drew forth a pair of spectacles, which he
was in the habit of using when he wanted to observe his interlocutor
more closely than usual.
'And I myself, in fact, am equally indifferent,' he said, as he opened
and adjusted his glasses, 'so that I have a sufficient light on my book.'
Here his large eyes looked discerningly through the spectacles.
'Tis the quality of the page you care about, not of the candle,' said
Felix, smiling pleasantly enough at his inspector. 'You're thinking that
you have a roughly-written page before you now.'
That was true. The minister, accustomed to the respectable air of
provincial townsmen, and especially to the sleek well-clipped gravity of
his own male congregation, felt a slight shock as his glasses made
perfectly clear to him the shaggy-headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed
person of this questionable young man, without waistcoat or cravat.
But the possibility, supported by some of Mrs Holt's words, that a
disguised work of grace might be going forward in the son of whom
she complained so bitterly, checked any hasty interpretations.
'I abstain from judging by the outward appearance only,' he answered,
with his usual simplicity. 'I myself have experienced that when the
spirit is much exercised it is difficult to remember neckbands and
strings and such small accidents of our vesture, which are
nevertheless decent and needful so long as we sojourn in the flesh.
And you too, my young friend, as I gather from your mother's troubled
and confused report, are undergoing some travail of mind. You will
not, I trust, object to open yourself fully to me, as to an aged pastor
who has himself had much inward wrestling, and has especially
known much temptation from doubt.'
'As to doubt,' said Felix, loudly and brusquely as before, 'if it is those
absurd medicines and gulling advertisements that my mother has
been talking of to you - and I suppos e it is - I've no more doubt about
them than I have about pocket-picking. I know there's a stage of
speculation in which a man may doubt whether a pickpocket is
blame-worthy - but I'm not one of your subtle fellows who keep
looking at the world through their own legs. If I allowed the sale of
those medicines to go on, and my mother to live out of the proceeds
when I can keep her by the honest labour of my hands, I've not the
least doubt that I should be a rascal.'
'I would fain inquire more particularly into your objection to these
medicines,' said Mr Lyon, gravely. Notwithstanding his
conscientiousness and a certain originality in his own mental
disposition, he was too little used to high principle quite dissociated
from sectarian phraseology to be as immediately in sympathy with it
as he would otherwise have been. 'I know they have been well reported
of, and many wise persons have tried remedies providentially
discovered by those who are not regular physicians, and have found a
blessing in the use of them. I may mention the eminent Mr Wesley,
who, though I hold not altogether with his Arminian doctrine, nor with
the usages of his institution, was nevertheless a man of God; and the
journals of various Christians who se names have left a sweet savour
might be cited in the same sense. Moreover, your father, who
originally concocted these medicines and left them as a provision for
your mother, was, as I understand, a man whose walk was not
unfaithful.'
'My father was ignorant,' said Feli x, bluntly. 'He knew neither the
complication of the human syst em, nor the way in which drugs
counteract each other. Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but
when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm. I know
something about these things. I was 'prentice for five miserable years
to a stupid brute of a country apothe cary - my poor father left money
for that - he thought nothing could be finer for me. No matter: I know
that the Cathartic Pills are a drastic compound which may be as bad
as poison to half the people who swallow them - that the Elixir is an
absurd farrago of a dozen incompat ible things; and that the Cancer
Cure might as well be bottled ditch-water.'
Mr Lyon rose and walked up and down the room. His simplicity was
strongly mixed with sagacity as well as sectarian prejudice, and he did
not rely at once on a loud-spoken integrity - Satan might have
flavoured it with ostentation. Presently he asked in a rapid low tone,
'How long have you known this, young man?'
'Well put, sir,' said Felix. 'I've known it a good deal longer than I've
acted on it, like plenty of other things. But you believe in conversion?'
'Yea, verily.'
'So do I. I was converted by six weeks' debauchery.'
The minister started. 'Young man,' he said, solemnly, going up close to
Felix and laying a hand on his sh oulder, 'speak not lightly of the
divine operations, and restrain unseemly words.'
'I'm not speaking lightly,' said Fe lix. 'If I had not seen that I was
making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig wash, even if could have
got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have looked
life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I laughed out
loud at last to think of a poor devil like me, in a Scotch garret, with
my stockings out at heel and a shil ling or two to be dissipated upon,
with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and old women
breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs - wanting to turn my life
into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could be turned
into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place for a good
many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't be the
worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter the world -
that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, and
if I don't lie and filch somebody else will. Well, then, somebody else
shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion, Mr Lyon, if you
want to know it.'
Mr Lyon removed his hand from Felix's shoulder and walked about
again. 'Did you sit under any preacher at Glasgow, young man?'
'No: I heard most of the preachers once, but I never wanted to hear
them twice.'
The good Rufus was not without a slig ht rising of resentment at this
young man's want of reverence. It was not yet plain whether he
wanted to hear twice the preacher in Malthouse Yard. But the
resentful feeling was carefully repressed: a soul in so peculiar a
condition must be dealt with delicately.
'And now, may I ask,' he said, 'what course you mean to take, after
hindering your mother from making and selling these drugs? I speak
no more in their favour after what you have said. God forbid that I
should strive to hinder you from seeking whatsoever things are honest
and honourable. But your mother is advanced in years; she needs
comfortable sustenance; you have doubtless considered how you may
make her amends? ‘He that provideth not for his own -’ I trust you
respect the authority that so speaks. And I will not suppose that, after
being tender of conscience towards strangers, you will be careless
towards your mother. There be inde ed some who, taking a mighty
charge on their shoulders, must perforce leave their households to
Providence, and to the care of humbler brethren, but in such a case
the call must be clear.'
'I shall keep my mother as well - nay, better - than she has kept
herself. She has always been frugal. With my watch and clock
cleaning, and teaching one or two lit tle chaps that I've got to come to
me, I can earn enough. As for me, I can live on bran porridge. I have
the stomach of a rhinoceros.'
'But for a young man so well furnished as you, who can questionless
write a good hand and keep books, were it not well to seek some
higher situation as clerk or assistant? I could speak to Brother
Muscat, who is well acquainted with all such openings. Any place in
Pendrell's Bank, I fear, is now closed against such as are not
Churchmen. It used not to be so, but a year ago he discharged
Brother Bodkin, although he was a valuable servant. Still, something
might be found. There are ranks and degrees - and those who can
serve in the higher must not unadvisedly change what seems to be a
providential appointment. Your poor mother is not altogether -'
'Excuse me, Mr Lyon; I've had all that out with my mother, and I may
as well save you any trouble by te lling you that my mind has been
made up about that a long while ag o. I'll take no employment that
obliges me to prop up my chin with a high cravat, and wear straps,
and pass the live-long day with a se t of fellows who spend their spare
money on shirt-pins. That sort of work is really lower than many
handicrafts; it only happens to be paid out of proportion. That's why I
set myself to learn the watchmaking trade. My father was a weaver
first of all. It would have been better for him if he had remained a
weaver. I came home through Lancas hire and saw an uncle of mine
who is a weaver still. I mean to stic k to the class I belong to - people
who don't follow the fashions.'
Mr Lyon was silent a few moments. This dialogue was far from plain
sailing; he was not certain of his latitude and longitude. If the despiser
of Glasgow preachers had been arguing in favour of gin and Sabbath-
breaking, Mr Lyon's course would have been clearer. 'Well, well,' he
said, deliberately, 'it is true that St Paul exercised the trade of tent-
making, though he was learned in all the wisdom of the Rabbis.'
'St Paul was a wise man,' said Felix. 'Why should I want to get into the
middle class because I have some learning? The most of the middle
class are as ignorant as the work ing people about everything that
doesn't belong to their own Brumma gem life. That's how the working
men are left to foolish devices and keep worsening themselves: the
best heads among them forsake their born comrades, and go in for a
house with a high door-step and a brass knocker.'
Mr Lyon stroked his mouth and chin , perhaps because he felt some
disposition to smile; and it would not be well to smile too readily at
what seemed but a weedy resemblance of Christian unworldliness. On
the contrary, there might be a dangerous snare in an unsanctified
outstepping of average Christian practice.
'Nevertheless,' he observed, gravely, 'it is by such self-advancement
that many have been enabled to do good service to the cause of liberty
and to the public wellbeing. The ring and the robe of Joseph were no
objects for a good man's ambition, but they were the signs of that
credit which he won by his divinely-inspired skill, and which enabled
him to act as a saviour to his brethren.'
'O yes, your ringed and scented men of the people! - I won't be one of
them. Let a man once throttle himself with a satin stock, and he'll get
new wants and new motives. Metamorphosis will have begun at his
neck-joint, and it will go on till it has changed his likings first and
then his reasoning, which will follow his likings as the feet of a hungry
dog follow his nose. I'll have none of your clerkly gentility. I might end
by collecting greasy pence from po or men to buy myself a fine coat
and a glutton's dinner, on pretence of serving the poor men. I'd sooner
be Paley's fat pigeon than a de magogue all tongue and stomach,
though' - here Felix changed his voice a little - 'I should like well
enough to be another sort of demagogue, if I could.'
'Then you have a strong interest in the great political movements of
these times?' said Mr Lyon, with a perceptible flashing of the eyes.
'I should think so. I despise ever y man who has not - or, having it,
doesn't try to rouse it in other men.'
'Right, my young friend, right,' said the minister, in a deep cordial
tone. Inevitably his mind was drawn aside from the immediate
consideration of Felix Holt's spirit ual interest by the prospect of
political sympathy. In those days so many instruments of God's cause
in the fight for religious and political liberty held creeds that were
painfully wrong, and, indeed, irreconcilable with salvation ! 'That is
my own view, which I maintain in the face of some opposition from
brethren who contend that a share in public movements is a
hindrance to the closer walk, and that the pulpit is no place for
teaching men their duties as members of the common-wealth. I have
had much puerile blame cast upon me because I have uttered such
names as Brougham and Wellington in the pulpit. Why not Wellington
as well as Rabshakeh? and why not Brougham as well as Balaam?'
Does God know less of men than He did in the days of Hezekiah and
Moses? - is His arm shortened, and is the world become too wide for
His providence? But, they say, there are no politics in the New
Testament -'
'Well, they're right enough there,' said Felix, with his usual
unceremoniousness.
'What ! you are of those who hold that a Christian minister should not
meddle with public matters in the pulpit?' said Mr Lyon, colouring. 'I
am ready to join issue on that point.'
'Not I, sir,' said Felix; 'I should say, teach any truth you can, whether
it's in the Testament or out of it. It's little enough anybody can get
hold of, and still less what he can drive into the skulls of a pence-
counting, parcel-tying gcneration, such as mostly fill your chapels.'
'Young man,' said Mr Lyon, pausing in front of Felix. He spoke rapidly,
as he always did, except when his words were specially weighted with
emotion: he overflowed with matter, and in his mind matter was
always completely organised into words. 'I speak not on my own
behalf, for not only have I no desire that any man should think of me
above that which he seeth me to be, but I am aware of much that
should make me patient under a di sesteem resting even on too hasty
a construction. I speak not as clai ming reverence for my own age and
office - not to shame you, but to warn you. It is good that you should
use plainness of speech, and I am not of those who would enforce a
submissive silence on the young, that they themselves, being elders,
may be heard at large; for Elihu was the youngest of Job's friends, yet
was there a wise rebuke in his words; and the aged Eli was taught by
a revelation to the boy Samuel. I have to keep a special watch over
myself in this matter, inasmuch as I have a need of utterance which
makes the thought within me seem as a pent-up fire, until I have shot
it forth, as it were, in arrowy words, each one hitting its mark.
Therefore I pray for a listening spirit, which is a great mark of grace.
Nevertheless, my young friend, I am bound, as I said, to warn you.
The temptations that most beset those who have great natural gifts,
and are wise after the flesh, are pride and scorn, more particularly
towards those weak things of the world which have been chosen to
confound the things which are mi ghty. The scornful nostril and the
high head gather not the odours that lie on the track of truth The
mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is -'
Here the door opened, and Mr Lyon paused to look round, but seeing
only Lyddy with the tea-tray, he went on:
'Is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up
from receiving and holding ought that is precious - though it were
heaven-sent manna.'
'I understand you, sir,' said Feli x, good-humouredly, putting out his
hand to the little man, who had come close to him as he delivered the
last sentence with sudden emphasis and slowness. 'But I'm not
inclined to clench my fist at you.' 'Well, well,' said Mr Lyon, shaking
the proffered hand, 'we shall see more of each other, and I trust shall
have much profitable communing. You will stay and have a dish of tea
with us: we take the meal late on Thursdays, because my daughter is
detained by giving a lesson in the French tongue. But she is doubtless
returned now, and will presently come and pour out tea for us.'
'Thank you; I'll stay,' said Felix, not from any curiosity to see the
minister's daughter, but from a liking for the society of the minister
himself - for his quaint looks and ways, and th e transparency of his
talk, which gave a charm even to his weaknesses. The daughter was
probably some prim Miss, neat, sensible, pious, but all in a small
feminine way, in which Felix was no more interested than in Dorcas
meetings, biographies of devout women, and that amount of
ornamental knitting which was not inconsistent with Nonconforming
seriousness.
'I'm perhaps a little too fond of banging and smashing,' he went on; 'a
phrenologist at Glasgow told me I had large veneration; another man
there, who knew me, laughed out and said I was the most
blasphemous iconoclast living. ‘T hat,’ says my phrenologist, ‘is
because of his large Ideality, which prevents him from finding
anything perfect enough to be venerated.’ Of course I put my ears
down and wagged my tail at that stroking.'
'Yes, yes; I have had my own head explored with somewhat similar
results. It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept,
‘Know thyself’, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist
in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is
made evident. Nevertheless - Esther, my dear, this is Mr Holt, whose
acquaintance I have even now been making with more than ordinary
interest. He will take tea with us.'
Esther bowed slightly as she walked across the room to fetch the
candle and place it near her tray. Fe lix rose and bowed, also with an
air of indifference, which was perhaps exaggerated by the fact that he
was inwardly surprised. The minister's daughter was not the sort of
person he expected. She was quite incongruous with his notion of
ministers' daughters in general; and though he had expected
something nowise delightful, the in congruity repelled him. A very
delicate scent, the faint suggestion of a garden, was wafted as she
went. He would not observe her, but he had a sense of an elastic walk,
the tread of small feet, a long neck and a high crown of shining brown
plaits with curls that floated backward - things, in short, that
suggested a fine lady to him, and determined him to notice her as
little as possible. A fine lady was always a sort of spun-glass affair -
not natural, and with no beauty for him as art; but a fine lady as the
daughter of this rusty old Puritan was especially offensive.
'Nevertheless,' continued Mr Lyon, wh o rarely let drop any thread of
discourse, 'that phrenological science is not irreconcilable with the
revealed dispensations. And it is undeniable that we have our varying
native dispositions which even grace will not obliterate. I myself, from
my youth up, have been given to question too curiously concerning
the truth - to examine and sift the medicine of the soul rather than to
apply it.'
'If your truth happens to be such me dicine as Holt's Pills and Elixir,
the less you swallow of it the better,' said Felix. 'But truth-vendors
and medicine-vendors usually re commend swallowing. When a man
sees his livelihood in a pill or a proposition, he likes to have orders for
the dose, and not curious inquiries.'
This speech verged on rudeness, but it was delivered with a brusque
openness that implied the absence of any personal intention. The
minister's daughter was now for the first time startled into looking at
Felix. But her survey of this unusual speaker was soon made, and she
relieved her father from the need to reply by saying -
'The tea is poured out, father.'
That was the signal for Mr Lyon to advance towards the table, raise
his right hand, and ask a blessing at sufficient length for Esther to
glance at the visitor again. There seemed to be no danger of his
looking at her; he was observing her father. She had time to remark
that he was a peculiar-looking person, but not insignificant, which
was the quality that most hopelessly consigned a man to perdition. He
was massively built. The striking po ints in his face were large clear
grey eyes and full lips. 'Will you draw up to the table, Mr Holt?' said
the minister.
In the act of rising, Felix pushed back his chair too suddenly against
the rickety table close by him, and down went the blue-frilled work-
basket, flying open, and dispersing on the floor reels, thimble, muslin
work, a small sealed bottle of atta of rose, and something heavier than
these - a duodecimo volume which fell close to him between the table
and the fender.
'O my stars !' said Felix, 'I beg your pardon.' Esther had already
started up, and with wonderful qu ickness had picked up half the
small rolling things while Felix was lifting the basket and the book.
This last had opened, and had its leaves crushed in falling; and, with
the instinct of a bookish man, he saw nothing more pressing to be
done than to flatten the corners of the leaves.
'Byron's Poems!' he said, in a tone of disgust, while Esther was
recovering all the other articles. ' ‘T he Dream’ - he'd better have been
asleep and snoring. What! do you stuff your memory with Byron, Miss
Lyon?'
Felix, on his side, was led at last to look straight at Esther, but it was
with a strong denunciatory and pedagogic intention. Of course he saw
more clearly than ever that she was a fine lady.
She reddened, drew up her long neck, and said, as she retreated to
her chair again -
'I have a great admiration for Byron.'
Mr Lyon had paused in the act of drawing his chair to the tea-table,
and was looking on at this scene, wrinkling the corners of his eyes
with a perplexed smile. Esther would not have wished him to know
anything about the volume of Byron, but she was too proud to show
any concern.
'He is a worldly and vain writer, I fear,' said Mr Lyon. He knew
scarcely anything of the poet, whose books embodied the faith and
ritual of many young ladies and gentlemen.
'A misanthropic debauchee,' said Fe lix, lifting a chair with one hand,
and holding the book open in the other, 'whose notion of a hero was
that he should disorder his stomach and despise mankind. His
corsairs and renegades, his Alps and Manfreds, are the most paltry
puppets that were ever pulled by the strings of lust and pride.'
'Hand the book to me,' said Mr Lyon.
'Let me beg of you to put it aside till after tea, father,' said Esther.
'However objectionable Mr Holt may find its pages, they would
certainly be made worse by being greased with bread-and-butter.'
'That is true, my dear,' said Mr Lyon, laying down the book on the
small table behind him. He saw that his daughter was angry.
'Ho, ho!' thought Felix, 'her father is frightened at her. How came he to
have such a nice-stepping, long-necked peacock for his daughter? but
she shall see that I am not frightened .' Then he said aloud, 'I should
like to know how you will justify your admiration for such a writer,
Miss Lyon.'
'I should not attempt it with you, Mr Holt,' said Esther. 'You have
such strong words at command, that they make the smallest
argument seem formidable. If I ha d ever met the giant Cormoran, I
should have made a point of agr eeing with him in his literary
opinions.'
Esther had that excellent thing in woman, a soft voice with a clear
fluent utterance. Her sauciness was always charming, because it was
without emphasis, and was accompanied with graceful little turns of
the head.
Felix laughed at her thrust with young heartiness.
'My daughter is a critic of words, Mr Holt,' said the minister, smiling
complacently, 'and often corrects mine on the ground of niceties,
which I profess are as dark to me as if
they were the reports of a sixth sense which I possess not. I am an
eager seeker for precision, and wo uld fain find language subtle
enough to follow the utmost intricacies of the soul's pathways, but I
see not why a round word that means some object, made and blessed
by the Creator, should be branded and banished as a malefactor.'
'O, your niceties - I know what they are,' said Felix, in his usual
fortissimo. 'They all go on your system of make-believe. ‘Rottenness’
may suggest what is unpleasant, so you'd better say ‘sugar-plums’, or
something else such a long way off th e fact that nobody is obliged to
think of it. Those are your round-about euphuisms that dress up
swindling till it looks as well as honesty, and shoot with boiled pease
instead of bullets. I hate your gentlemanly speakers.'
'Then you would not like Mr Jermyn, I think,' said Esther. 'That
reminds me, father, that to-day, when I was giving Miss Louisa
Jermyn her lesson, Mr Jermyn came in and spoke to me with grand
politeness, and asked me at what times you were likely to be
disengaged, because he wished to make your better acquaintance, and
consult you on matters of importance. He never took the least notice
of me before. Can you guess the reason of his sudden
ceremoniousness?'
'Nay, child,' said the minister, ponderingly.
'Politics, of course,' said Felix. 'He's on some committee. An election is
coming. Universal peace is declar ed, and the foxes have a sincere
interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. Eh, Mr Lyon? Isn't that
it?'
'Nay, not so. He is the close ally of the Transome family, who are blind
hereditary Tories like the Debarrys, and will drive their tenants to the
poll as if they were sheep. And it has even been hinted that the heir
who is coming from the East may be another Tory candidate, and
coalesce with the younger Debarry. It is said that he has enormous
wealth, and could purchase every vote in the county that has a price.'
'He is come,' said Esther. 'I heard Miss Jermyn tell her sister that she
had seen him going out of her father's room.'
' 'Tis strange,' said Mr Lyon.
'Something extraordinary must have happened,' said Esther, 'for Mr
Jermyn to intend courting us. Miss Jermyn said to me only the other
day that she could not think how I came to be so well educated and
ladylike. She always thought Dissenters were ignorant, vulgar people.
I said, so they were, usually, and Ch urch people also in small towns.
She considers herself a judge of what is ladylike, and she is vulgarity
personified - with large feet, and the most odious scent on her
handkerchief, and a bonnet that looks like ‘The Fashion’ printed in
capital letters.'
'One sort of fine ladyism is as good as another,' said Felix.
'No, indeed. Pardon me,' said Esth er. 'A real fine-lady does not wear
clothes that flare in people's eyes, or use importunate scents, or make
a noise as she moves: she is something refined, and graceful, and
charming, and never obtrusive.'
'O yes,' said Felix, contemptuous ly. 'And she reads Byron also, and
admires Childe Harold - gentlemen of unspeakable woes, who employ
a hairdresser, and look seriously at themselves in the glass.'
Esther reddened, and gave a little toss. Felix went on triumphantly. 'A
fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions,
about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the
clearing of a forest. Ask your father what those old persecuted
emigrant Puritans would have done with fine-lady wives and
daughters.'
'O there is no danger of such misalliances,' said Esther. 'Men who are
unpleasant companions and make frights of themselves, are sure to
get wives tasteless enough to suit them.'
'Esther, my dear,' said Mr Lyon, 'let not your playfulness betray you
into disrespect towards those venerable pilgrims. They struggled and
endured in order to cherish and plant anew the seeds of scriptural
doctrine and of a pure discipline.'
'Yes, I know,' said Esther, hastily, dreading a discourse on the pilgrim
fathers.
'O they were an ugly lot!' Felix burst in, making Mr Lyon start. 'Miss
Medora wouldn't have minded if they had all been put into the pillory
and lost their ears. She would have said, ‘Their ears did stick out so.’ I
shouldn't wonder if that's a bust of one of them.' Here Felix, with
sudden keenness of observation, nodded at the black bust with the
gauze over its coloured face.
'No,' said Mr Lyon; 'that is the eminent George Whitfield, who, you well
know, had a gift of oratory as of one on whom the tongue of flame had
rested visibly. But Providence - doubtless for wise ends in relation to
the inner man, for I would not inquire too closely into minutiae which
carry too many plausible interpretations for any one of them to be
stable - Providence, I say, ordained that the good man should squint;
and my daughter has not yet learned to bear with this infirmity.'
'So she has put a veil over it. Suppose you had squinted yourself?'
said Felix, looking at Esther.
'Then, doubtless, you could have b een more polite to me, Mr Holt,'
said Esther, rising and placing hers elf at her worktable. 'You seem to
prefer what is unusual and ugly.'
'A peacock!' thought Felix. 'I should like to come and scold her every
day, and make her cry and cut her fine hair off.'
Felix rose to go, and said, 'I will not take up more of your valuable
time, Mr Lyon. I know that you have not many spare evenings.'
'That is true, my young friend; for I now go to Sproxton one evening in
the week. I do not despair that we may some day need a chapel there,
though the hearers do not multiply save among the women, and there
is no work as yet begun among the miners themselves. I shall be glad
of your company in my walk thither to-morrow at five o'clock, if you
would like to see how that population has grown of late years.'
'O, I've been to Sproxton already several times. I had a congregation of
my own there last Sunday evening.'
'What! do you preach?' said Mr Lyon, with a brightened glance
'Not exactly. I went to the ale-house.'
Mr Lyon started. 'I trust you are putting a riddle to me, young man,
even as Samson did to his companions. From what you said but
lately, it cannot be that you are given to tippling and to taverns.'
'O, I don't drink much. I order a pint of beer, and I get into talk with
the fellows over their pots and pi pes. Somebody must take a little
knowledge and common sense to them in this way, else how are they
to get it? I go for educating the non-electors, so I put myself in the way
of my pupils - my academy is the beer-house. I'll walk with you to-
morrow with great pleasure.'
'Do so, do so,' said Mr Lyon, shaking hands with his old acquaintance.
'We shall understand each other better by-and-by, I doubt not.'
'I wish you good-evening, Miss Lyon.'
Esther bowed very slightly, without speaking.
'That is a singular young man, Esther,' said the minister, walking
about after Felix was gone. 'I discern in him a love for whatsoever
things are honest and true, which I would fain believe to be an earnest
of further endowment with the wisdom that is from on high. It is true
that, as the traveller in the desert is often lured, by a false vision of
water and freshness, to turn aside from the track which leads to the
tried and established fountains, so the Evil One will take advantage of
a natural yearning towards the better, to delude the soul with a self-
flattering belief in a visionary virtue, higher than the ordinary fruits of
the Spirit. But I trust it is not so here. I feel a great enlargement in
this young man's presence, notwiths tanding a certain licence in his
language, which I shall use my efforts to correct.'
'I think he is very coarse and rude,' said Esther, with a touch of
temper in her voice. 'But he speaks better English than most of our
visitors. What is his occupation?'
'Watch and clock making, by which, together with a little teaching, as
I understand, he hopes to maintain his mother, not thinking it right
that she should live by the sale of medicines whose virtues he
distrusts. It is no common scruple.'
'Dear me,' said Esther, 'I thought he was something higher than that.'
She was disappointed.
Felix, on his side, as he strolled out in the evening air, said to himself:
'Now by what fine meshes of circumstance did that queer devout old
man, with his awful creed, which makes this world a vestibule with
double doors to hell, and a narro w stair on one side whereby the
thinner sort may mount to heaven - by what subtle play of flesh and
spirit did he come to have a daughter so little in his own likeness?
Married foolishly, I suppose. I'll never marry, though I should have to
live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I'll never look back and say, ‘I
had a fine purpose once - I meant to keep my hands clean, and my
soul upright, and to look truth in the face; but pray excuse me, I have
a wife and children - I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve ! ‘
or, ‘My wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her
feelings will be hurt if she is not thought genteel.’ That is the lot Miss
Esther is preparing for some man or other. I could grind my teeth at
such self-satisfied minxes, who think they can tell everybody what is
the correct thing, and the utmost stretch of their ideas will not place
them on a level with the intelligent fleas. I should like to see if she
could be made ashamed of herself.'
Chapter 6
'Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives, And feed my mind,
that dies for want of her.' MARLOWE: Tamburlaine the Great.
HARDLY any one in Treby who thought at all of Mr Lyon and his
daughter had not felt the same sort of wonder about Esther as Felix
felt. She was not much liked by her father's church and congregation.
The less serious observed that she had too many airs and graces, and
held her head much too high; the stricter sort feared greatly that Mr
Lyon had not been sufficiently careful in placing his daughter among
God-fearing people, and that, bein g led astray by the melancholy
vanity of giving her exceptional accomplishments, he had sent her to a
French school, and allowed her to take situations where she had
contracted notions not only above her own rank, but of too worldly a
kind to be safe in any rank. But no one knew what sort of woman her
mother had been, for Mr Lyon never spoke of his past domesticities.
When he was chosen as pastor at Treby in 1825, it was understood
that he had been a widower many years, and he had no companion
but the tearful and much-exercised Lyddy, his daughter being still at
school. It was only two years ago th at Esther had come home to live
permanently with her father, and take pupils in the town. Within that
time she had excited a passion in two young Dissenting breasts that
were clad in the best style of Treby waistcoat - a garment which at
that period displayed much design both in the stuff and the wearer;
and she had secured an astonished admiration of her cleverness from
the girls of various ages who were her pupils; indeed, her knowledge of
French was generally held to give a distinction to Treby itself as
compared with other market-towns. But she had won little regard of
any other kind. Wise Dissenting ma trons were divided between fear
lest their sons should want to marry her and resentment that she
should treat those 'undeniable' young men with a distant scorn which
was hardly to be tolerated in a minister's daughter; not only because
that parentage appeared to entail an obligation to show an exceptional
degree of Christian humility, but because, looked at from a secular
point of view, a poor minister must be below the substantial
householders who kept him. For at that time the preacher who was
paid under the Voluntary system was regarded by his flock with
feelings not less mixed than the spiritual person who still took his
tithe-pig or his modus. His gifts we re admired, and tears were shed
under best bonnets at his sermons; but the weaker tea was thought
good enough for him; and even when he went to preach a charity
sermon in a strange town, he was treated with home-made wine and
the smaller bedroom. As the good churchman's reverence was often
mixed with growling, and was apt to be given chiefly to an abstract
parson who was what a parson ought to be, so the good Dissenter
sometimes mixed his approval of mi nisterial gifts with considerable
criticism and cheapening of the human vessel which contained these
treasures. Mrs Muscat and Mrs Nutt wood applied the principle of
Christian equality by remarking th at Mr Lyon had his oddities, and
that he ought not to allow his daughter to indulge in such
unbecoming expenditure on her gloves, shoes, and hosiery, even if she
did pay for them out of her earnings. As for the Church people who
engaged Miss Lyon to give lessons in their families, their imaginations
were altogether prostrated by the incongruity between
accomplishments and Dissent, between weekly prayer-meetings and a
conversance with so lively and altogether worldly a language as the
French. Esther's own mind was not free from a sense of
irreconcilableness between the objects of her taste and the conditions
of her lot. She knew that Dissenter s were looked down upon by those
whom she regarded as the most refined classes; her favourite
companions, both in France and at an English school where she had
been a junior teacher, had thought it quite ridiculous to have a father
who was a Dissenting preacher; an d when an ardently admiring
schoolfellow induced her parents to take Esther as a governess to the
younger children, all her native tendencies towards luxury,
fastidiousness, and scorn of mock gentility, were strengthened by
witnessing the habits of a well-born and wealthy family. Yet the
position of servitude was irksome to her, and she was glad at last to
live at home with her father; for though, throughout her girlhood, she
had wished to avoid this lot, a little experience had taught her to
prefer its comparative independence . But she was not contented with
her life: she seemed to herself to be surrounded with ignoble,
uninteresting conditions, from which there was no issue; for even if
she had been unamiable enough to give her father pain deliberately, it
would have been no satisfaction to her to go to Treby church, and
visibly turn her back on Dissent. It was not religious differences, but
social differences, that Esther was concerned about, and her
ambitious taste would have been no more gratified in the society of
the Waces than in that of the Muscats. The Waces spoke imperfect
English and played whist; the Mu scats spoke the same dialect and
took in the Evangelical Magazine. Esther liked neither of these
amusements. She had one of those exceptional organisations which
are quick and sensitive without being in the least morbid; she was
alive to the finest shades of manner, to the nicest distinctions of tone
and accent; she had a little code of her own about scents and colours,
textures and behaviour, by which she secretly condemned or
sanctioned all things and persons. And she was well satisfied with
herself for her fastidious taste, never doubting that hers was the
highest standard. She was proud that the best-born and handsomest
girls at school had always said that she might be taken for a born
lady. Her own pretty instep, clad in a silk stocking, her little heel, just
rising from a kid slipper, her irrepr oachable nails and delicate wrist,
were the objects of delighted consciousness to her; and she felt that it
was her superiority which made he r unable to use without disgust
any but the finest cambric handkerchiefs and freshest gloves. Her
money all went in the gratification of these nice tastes, and she saved
nothing from her earnings. I canno t say that she had any pangs of
conscience on this score; for she felt sure that she was generous: she
hated all meanness, would empty her purse impulsively on some
sudden appeal to her pity, and if she found out that her father had a
want, she would supply it with some pretty device of a surprise. But
then the good man so seldom had a want - except the perpetual
desire, which she could never gratify, of seeing her under convictions,
and fit to become a member of the church.
As for little Mr Lyon, he loved an d admired this unregenerate child
more, he feared, than was consistent with the due preponderance of
impersonal and minister ial regards: he prayed and pleaded for her
with tears, humbling himself for her spiritual deficiencies in the
privacy of his study; and then he ca me downstairs to find himself in
timorous subjection to her wishes, lest, as he inwardly said, he should
give his teaching an ill savour, by mingling it with outward crossing.
There will be queens in spite of Salic or other laws of later date than
Adam and Eve; and here, in this sm all dingy house of the minister in
Malthouse Yard, there was a light-footed, sweet-voiced Queen Esther.
The stronger will always rule, say some, with an air of confidence
which is like a lawyer's flourish, fo rbidding exceptions or additions.
But what is strength? Is it blind wilfulness that sees no terrors, no
many-linked consequences, no bruises and wounds of those whose
cords it tightens? Is it the narrowness of a brain that conceives no
needs differing from its own, and looks to no results beyond the
bargains of to-day; that tugs with emphasis for every small purpose,
and thinks it weakness to exercise the sublime power of resolved
renunciation? There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar
heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another
name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness
Esther had affection for her father: she recognised the purity of his
character, and a quickness of intellect in him which responded to her
own liveliness, in spite of what see med a dreary piety, which selected
everything that was least interesting and romantic in life and history.
But his old clothes had a smoky odour, and she did not like to walk
with him, because, when people spoke to him in the street, it was his
wont, instead of remarking on the weather and passing on, to pour
forth in an absent manner some reflections that were occupying his
mind about the traces of the divine government, or about a peculiar
incident narrated in the life of the eminent Mr Richard Baxter. Esther
had a horror of appearing ridiculous even in the eyes of vulgar
Trebians. She fancied that she should have loved her mother better
than she was able to love her father; and she wished she could have
remembered that mother more thoroughly.
But she had no more than a broken vision of the time before she was
five years old - the time when th e word oftenest on her lips was
'Mamma;' when a low voice spoke caressing French words to her, and
she in her turn repeated the words to her rag-doll; when a very small
white hand, different from any that came after, used to pat her, and
stroke her, and tie on her frock and pinafore, and when at last there
was nothing but sitting with a doll on a bed where mamma was lying,
till her father once carried her aw ay. Where distinct memory began,
there was no longer the low caressing voice and the small white hand.
She knew that her mother was a Frenchwoman, that she had been in
want and distress, and that her maiden name was Annette Ledru. Her
father had told her no more than this; and once, in her childhood,
when she had asked him some question, he had said, 'My Esther,
until you are a woman, we will only think of your mother: when you
are about to be married and leave me, we will speak of her, and I will
deliver to you her ring and all th at was hers; but, without a great
command laid upon me, I cannot pier ce my heart by speaking of that
which was and is lost.' Esther had never forgotten these words, and
the older she became, the more impossible she felt it that she should
urge her father with questions about the past.
His inability to speak of that pa st to her depended on manifold
causes. Partly it came from an initial concealment. He had not the
courage to tell Esther that he was not really her father: he had not the
courage to renounce that hold on her tenderness which the belief in
his natural fatherhood must help to give him, or to incur any
resentment that her quick spirit might feel at having been brought up
under a false supposition. But there were other things yet more
difficult for him to be quite open about - deep sorrows of his life as a
Christian minister that were hardly to be told to a girl.
Twenty-two years before, when Rufus Lyon was no more than thirty-
six years old, he was the admire d pastor of a large Independent
congregation in one of our southern seaport towns. He was
unmarried, and had met all exhortations of friends who represented to
him that a bishop - i.e., the overseer of an Independent church and
congregation - should be the husban d of one wife, by saying that St
Paul meant this particular as a limitation, and not as an injunction;
that a minister was permitted to have one wife, but that he, Rufus
Lyon, did not wish to avail himself of that permission, finding his
studies and other labours of his vo cation all-absorbing, and seeing
that mothers in Israel were sufficiently provided by those who had not
been set apart for a more special work. His church and congregation
were proud of him: he was put forward on platforms, was made a
'deputation,' and was requested to preach anniversary sermons in far-
off towns. Wherever noteworthy preachers were discussed, Rufus Lyon
was almost sure to be mentioned as one who did honour to the
Independent body; his sermons were said to be full of study yet full of
fire; and while he had more of human knowledge than many of his
brethren, he showed in an eminent degree the marks of a true
ministerial vocation. But on a sudd en this burning and shining light
seemed to be quenched: Mr Lyon voluntarily resigned his charge and
withdrew from the town.
A terrible crisis had come upon him; a moment in which religious
doubt and newly-awakened passion had rushed together in a common
flood, and had paralysed his minister ial gifts. His life of thirty-six
years had been a story of purely religious and studious fervour; his
passion had been for doctrines, fo r argumentative conquest on the
side of right; the sins he had had chiefly to pray against had been
those of personal ambition (under such forms as ambition takes in the
mind of a man who has chosen the career of an Independent
preacher), and those of a too restless intellect, ceaselessly urging
questions concerning the mystery of that which was assuredly
revealed, and thus hindering the due nourishment of the soul on the
substance of the truth delivered. Even at that time of comparative
youth, his unworldliness and simplici ty in small matters (for he was
keenly awake to the larger affairs of this world) gave a certain oddity
to his manners and appearance; and though his sensitive face had
much beauty, his person altogether seemed so irrelevant to a
fashionable view of things, that well-dressed ladies and gentlemen
usually laughed at him, as they prob ably did at Mr John Milton after
the Restoration and ribbons had come in, and still more at that
apostle, of weak bodily presence, who preached in the back streets of
Ephesus and elsewhere, a new view of a new religion that hardly
anybody believed in. Rufus Lyon wa s the singular-looking apostle of
the meeting in Skipper's Lane. Was it likely that any romance should
befall such a man? Perhaps not; but romance did befall him.
One winter's evening in 1812, Mr Lyon was returning from a village
preaching. He walked at his usua l rapid rate, with busy thoughts
undistracted by any sight more distinct than the bushes and
hedgerow trees, black beneath a faint moon-light, until something
suggested to him that he had perhaps omitted to bring away with him
a thin account-book in which he recorded certain subscriptions. He
paused, unfastened his outer coat and felt in all his pockets, then he
took off his hat and looked inside it. The book was not to be found,
and he was about to walk on, when he was startled by hearing a low,
sweet voice say, with a suong foreign accent - 'Have pity on me, sir.'
Searching with his short-sighted eyes, he perceived some one on a
side-bank; and approaching, he found a young woman with a baby on
her lap. She spoke again, more faintly than before -
'Sir, I die with hunger; in the name of God take the little one.'
There was no distrusting the pale face and the sweet low voice.
Without pause, Mr Lyon took the baby in his arms and said, 'Can you
walk by my side, young woman?'
She rose, but seemed tottering. 'Lean on me,' said Mr Lyon. And so
they walked slowly on, the minister for the first time in his life
carrying a baby.
Nothing better occurred to him than to take his charge to his own
house; it was the simplest way of relieving the woman's wants, and
finding out how she could be helped further; and he thought of no
other possibilities. She was too feeb le for more words to be spoken
between them till she was seated by his fireside. His elderly servant
was not easily amazed at anything her master did in the way of
charity, and at once took the ba by, while Mr Lyon unfastened the
mother's damp bonnet and shawl, and gave her something warm to
drink. Then, waiting by her till it was time to offer her more, he had
nothing to do but to notice the loveliness of her face, which seemed to
him as that of an angel, with a benignity in its repose that carried a
more assured sweetness than any smile. Gradually she revived, lifted
up her delicate hands between her face and the firelight, and looked at
the baby which lay opposite to her on the old servant's lap, taking in
spoonfuls with much content, and stretching out naked feet towards
the warmth. Then, as her consciousness of relief grew into contrasting
memory, she lifted up her eyes to Mr Lyon, who stood close by her,
and said, in her pretty broken way -
'I knew you had a good heart when you took your hat off. You seemed
to me as the image of the bien-aime Saint Jean.'
The grateful glance of those blue-grey eyes, with their long shadow-
making eyelashes, was a new kind of good to Rufus Lyon; it seemed to
him as if a woman had never really looked at him before. Yet this poor
thing was apparently a blind French Catholic - of delicate nurture,
surely, judging from her hands. He was in a tremor; he felt that it
would be rude to question her, an d he only urged her now to take a
little food. She accepted it with evident enjoyment, looking at the child
continually, and then, with a fresh burst of gratitude, leaning forward
to press the servant's hand, and say, 'O, you are good!' Then she
looked up at Mr Lyon again and said , 'Is there in the world a prettier
marmot?’
The evening passed; a bed was made up for the strange woman, and
Mr Lyon had not asked her so much as her name. He never went to
bed himself that night. He spent it in misery, enduring a horrible
assault of Satan. He thought a frenzy had seized him. Wild visions of
an impossible future thrust themselves upon him. He dreaded lest the
woman had a husband; he wished that he might call her his own, that
he might worship her beauty, that she might love and caress him. And
what to the mass of men would have been only one of many allowable
follies - a transient fascination, to be dispelled by daylight and contact
with those common facts of which common-sense is the reflex - was to
him a spiritual convulsion. He was as one who raved, and knew that
he raved. These mad wishes were irreconcilable with what he was, and
must be, as a Christian minister; na y, penetrating his soul as tropic
heat penetrates the frame, and changes for it all aspects and all
flavours, they were irreconcilable with that conception of the world
which made his faith. All the busy doubt which had before been mere
impish shadows flitting around a belief that was strong with the
strength of an unswerving moral bias, had now gathered blood and
substance. The questioning spirit had become suddenly bold and
blasphemous: it no longer insinuated scepticism - it prompted
defiance; it no longer expressed cool inquisitive thought, but was the
voice of a passionate mood. Yet he never ceased to regard it as the
voice of the tempter: the conviction which had been the law of his
better life remained within him as a conscience.
The struggle of that night was an ab ridgment of all the struggles that
came after. Quick souls have their intensest life in the first
anticipatory sketch of what may or will be, and the pursuit of their
wish is the pursuit of that paradisaic vision which only impelled them,
and is left farther and farther behind, vanishing for ever even out of
hope in the moment which is called success.
The next morning Mr Lyon heard his guest's history. She was the
daughter of a French officer of co nsiderable rank, who had fallen in
the Russian campaign. She had escaped from France to England with
much difficulty in order to rejoin her husband, a young Englishman,
to whom she had become attached during his detention as a prisoner
of war on parole at Vesoul, where she was living under the charge of
some relatives, and to whom she had been married without the
consent of her family. Her husband had served in the Hanoverian
army, had obtained his discharge in order to visit England on some
business, with the nature of which she was not acquainted, and had
been taken prisoner as a suspected spy. A short time after their
marriage he and his fellow-prisoners had been moved to a town nearer
the coast, and she had remained in wretched uncertainty about him,
until at last a letter had come from him telling her that an exchange of
prisoners had occurred, that he was in England, that she must use
her utmost effort to follow him, and that on arriving on English
ground she must send him word under a cover which he enclosed,
bearing an address in London. Fearing the opposition of her friends,
she started unknown to them, with a very small supply of money; and
after enduring much discomfort an d many fears in waiting for a
passage, which she at last got in a small trading smack, she arrived at
Southampton - ill. Before she was able to write her baby was born;
and before her husband's answer came, she had been obliged to pawn
some clothes and trinkets. He desired her to travel to London, where
he would meet her at the Belle Sauvage, adding that he was himself in
distress and unable to come to her: when once he was in London they
would take ship and quit the country. Arrived at the Belle Sauvage,
the poor thing waited three days in vain for her husband: on the
fourth a letter came in a strange hand, saying that in his last
moments he had desired this letter to be written to inform her of his
death, and recommend her to return to her friends. She could choose
no other course, but she had soon be en reduced to walking, that she
might save her pence to buy bread with; and on the evening when she
made her appeal to Mr Lyon, she had pawned the last thing, over and
above needful clothing, that she could persuade herself to part with.
The things she had not borne to part with were her marriage-ring and
a locket containing her husband' s hair, and bearing his baptismal
name. This locket, she said, exactly resembled one worn by her
husband on his watch-chain, only that his bore the name Annette,
and contained a lock of her hair. The precious trifle now hung round
her neck by a cord, for she had sold the small gold chain which
formerly held it.
The only guarantee of this story, besides the exquisite candour of her
face, was a small packet of papers which she carried in her pocket,
consisting of her husband's few letters, the letter which announced
his death, and her marriage certificate. It was not so probable a story
as that of many an inventive vagrant; but Mr Lyon did not doubt it for
a moment. It was impossible to him to suspect this angelic-faced
woman, but he had strong suspicions concerning her husband. He
could not help being glad that she had not retained the address he
had desired her to send to in London, as that removed any obvious
means of learning particulars abou t him. But inquiries might have
been made at Vesoul by letter, an d her friends there might have been
appealed to. A consciousness, not to be quite silenced, told Mr Lyon
that this was the course he ought to take, but it would have required
an energetic self-conquest, and he was excused from it by Annette's
own disinclination to return to her relatives if any other acceptable
possibility could be found.
He dreaded, with a violence of feeling which surmounted all struggles,
lest anything should take her away, and place such barriers between
them as would make it unlikely or impossible that she should ever
love him well enough to become his wife. Yet he saw with perfect
clearness that unless he tore up th is mad passion by the roots, his
ministerial usefulness would be frustrated, and the repose of his soul
would be destroyed. This woman was an unregenerate Catholic; ten
minutes' listening to her artless talk made that plain to him: even if
her position had been less equivocal, to unite himself to such a
woman was nothing less than a spiritual fall. It was already a fall that
he had wished there was no high purpose to which he owed an
allegiance - that he had longed to fly to some backwoods where there
was no church to reproach him, and where he might have this sweet
woman to wife, and know the joys of tenderness. Those sensibilities
which in most lives are diffused eq ually through the youthful years,
were aroused suddenly in Mr Lyon, as some men have their special
genius revealed to them by a tardy concurrence of conditions. His love
was the first love of a fresh young heart full of wonder and worship.
But what to one man is the virtue which he has sunk below the
possibility of aspiring to, is to an other the backsliding by which he
forfeits his spiritual crown.
The end was, that Annette remained in his house. He had striven
against himself so far as to represent her position to some chief
matrons in his congregations, praying and yet dreading that they
would so take her by the hand as to impose on him that denial of his
own longing not to let her go out of his sight, which he found it too
hard to impose on himself. But they regarded the case coldly: the
woman was, after all, a vagrant. Mr Lyon was observed to be
surprisingly weak on the subject - his eagerness seemed
disproportionate and unbecoming; and this young Frenchwoman,
unable to express herself very clea rly, was no more interesting to
those matrons and their husbands than other pretty young women
suspiciously circumstanced. They were willing to subscribe something
to carry her on her way, or if she took some lodgings they would give
her a little sewing, and endeavour to convert her from papistry. If,
however, she was a respectable person, as she said, the only proper
thing for her was to go back to her own country and friends. In spite
of himself, Mr Lyon exulted. There seemed a reason now that he
should keep Annette under his own eyes. He told himself that no real
object would be served by his providing food and lodging for her
elsewhere - an expense which he could ill afford. And she was
apparently so helpless, except as to the one task of attending to her
baby, that it would have been folly to think of her exerting herself for
her own support.
But this course of his was severel y disapproved by his church. There
were various signs that the minister was under some evil influence:
his preaching wanted its old fervour, he seemed to shun the
intercourse of his brethren, and very mournful suspicions were
entertained. A formal remonstrance was presented to him, but he met
it as if he had already determined to act in anticipation of it. He
admitted that external circumstances, conjoined with a peculiar state
of mind, were likely to hinder the fruitful exercise of his ministry, and
he resigned it. There was much sorrowing, much expostulation, but
he declared that for the present he was unable to unfold himself more
fully; he only wished to state solemnly that Annette Ledru, though
blind in spiritual things, was in a worldly sense a pure and virtuous
woman. No more was to be said, and he departed to a distant town.
Here he maintained himself, Annette, and the child, with the
remainder of his stipend, and with the wages he earned as a printer's
reader. Annette was one of those angelic-faced helpless women who
take all things as manna from heaven: the good image of the well-
beloved Saint John wished her to stay with him, and there was
nothing else that she wished for except the unattainable. Yet for a
whole year Mr Lyon never dared to tell Annette that he loved her: he
trembled before this woman; he sa w that the idea of his being her
lover was too remote from her mind for her to have any idea that she
ought not to live with him. She had never known, never asked the
reason why he gave up his ministry . She seemed to entertain as little
concern about the strange world in which she lived as a bird in its
nest: an avalanche had fallen over the past, but she sat warm and
uncrushed - there was food for many morrows, and her baby
flourished. She did not seem even to care about a priest, or about
having her child baptised; and on the subject of religion Mr Lyon was
as timid, and shrank as much from speaking to her, as on the subject
of his love. He dreaded anything that might cause her to feel a sudden
repulsion towards him. He dreaded disturbing her simple gratitude
and content. In these days his reli gious faith was not slumbering; it
was awake and achingly conscious of having fallen in a struggle. He
had had a great treasure committed to him, and had flung it away: he
held himself a backslider. His unbelieving thoughts never gained the
full ear and consent of his soul. His prayers had been stifled by the
sense that there was something he preferred to complete obedience:
they had ceased to be anything but intemmittent cries and
confessions, and a submissive presentiment, rising at times even to
an entreaty, that some great discipline might come, that the dulled
spiritual sense might be roused to full vision and hearing as of old,
and the supreme facts become again supreme in his soul. Mr Lyon
will perhaps seem a very simple pe rsonage, with pitiably narrow
theories; but none of our theories are quite large enough for all the
disclosures of time, and to the end of men's struggles a penalty will
remain for those who sink from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd
for whom the heroes fight and die.
One day, however, Annette learned Mr Lyon's secret. The baby had a
tooth coming, and being large and strong now, was noisily fretful. Mr
Lyon, though he had been working extra hours and was much in need
of repose, took the child from its mother immediately on entering the
house and walked about with it, patti ng and talking soothingly to it.
The stronger grasp, the new sensations, were a successful anodyne,
and baby went to sleep on his shoulder. But fearful lest any
movement should disturb it, he sat down, and endured the bondage of
holding it still against his shoulder.
'You do nurse baby well,' said An nette, approvingly. 'Yet you never
nursed before I came?'
'No,' said Mr Lyon. 'I had no brothers and sisters.'
'Why were you not married?' Annette had never thought of asking that
question before.
'Because I never loved any woman - till now. I thought I should never
marry. Now I wish to marry.'
Annette started. She did not see at once that she was the woman he
wanted to marry; what had flashed on her mind was, that there might
be a great change in Mr Lyon's life. It was as if the lightning had
entered into her dream, and half awakened her.
'Do you think it foolish, Annette, that I should wish to marry?'
'I did not expect it,' she said, doub tfully. 'I did not know you thought
about it.'
'You know the woman I should like to marry?'
'I know her?' she said, interrogatively, blushing deeply.
'It is you, Annette - you whom I have loved better than my duty. I
forsook everything for you.'
Mr Lyon paused: he was about to do what he felt would be ignoble - to
urge what seemed like a claim.
'Can you love me, Annette? Will you be my wife?' Annette trembled
and looked miserable.
'Do not speak - forget it,' said Mr Lyon, rising suddenly and speaking
with loud energy. 'No, no - I do not want it - I do not wish it.'
The baby awoke as he started up; he gave the child into Annette's
arms, and left her.
His work took him away early the next morning and the next again.
They did not need to speak much to each other. The third day Mr
Lyon was too ill to go to work. Hi s frame had been overwrought; he
had been too poor to have sufficien tly nourishing food, and under the
shattering of his long-deferred hope his health had given way. They
had no regular servant - only occasional help from an old woman, who
lit the fires and put on the kettles. Annette was forced to be the sick-
nurse, and this sudden demand on her shook away some of her
torpor. The illness was a serious one, and the medical man one day
hearing Mr Lyon in his delirium raving with an astonishing fluency in
Biblical language, suddenly looked round with increased curiosity at
Annette, and asked if she were the sick man's wife, or some other
relative.
'No - no relation,' said Annette, shaking her head. 'He has been good
to me.'
'How long have you lived with him?'
'More than a year.'
'Was he a preacher once?'
'Yes.'
'When did he leave off being a preacher?'
'Soon after he took care of me.'
'Is that his child?'
'Sir,' said Annette, colouring indignantly. 'I am a widow.'
The doctor, she thought, looked at her oddly, but he asked no more
questions.
When the sick man was getting better, and able to enjoy invalid's food,
he observed one day, while he was taking some broth, that Annette
was looking at him; he paused to look at her in return, and was
struck with a new expression in her face, quite distinct from the
merely passive sweetness which usually characterised it. She laid her
little hand on his, which was now transparently thin, and said, 'I am
getting very wise; I have sold some of the books to make money - the
doctor told me where; and I have looked into the shops where they sell
caps and bonnets and pretty things, and I can do all that, and get
more money to keep us. And when you are well enough to get up, we
will go out and be married - shall we not? See! and la petite (the baby
had never been named anything else) shall call you papa - and then
we shall never part.'
Mr Lyon trembled. This illness - something else, perhaps - had made a
great change in Annette. A fortnight after that they were married. The
day before, he had ventured to ask he r if she felt any difficulty about
her religion, and if she would consent to have la petite baptised and
brought up as a Protestant. She shook her head and said very simply
-
'No: in France, in other days, I would have minded; but all is changed.
I never was fond of religion, but I knew it was right. J'aimais les
fleurs, les bals, la musique, et mon mari qui etait beau. But all that is
gone away. There is nothing of my religion in this country. But the
good God must be here, for you are good; I leave all to you.'
It was clear that Annette regarded her present life as a sort of death to
the world - an existence on a remote island where she had been saved
from wreck. She was too indolent mentally, too little interested, to
acquaint herself with any secrets of the isle. The transient energy, the
more vivid consciousness and sympathy which had been stirred in her
during Mr Lyon's illness, had soon subsided into the old apathy to
everything except her child. She withered like a plant in strange air,
and the three years of life that remained were but a slow and gentle
death. Those three years were to Mr Lyon a period of such self-
suppression and life in another as few men know. Strange I that the
passion for this woman, which he fe lt to have drawn him aside from
the right as much as if he had broken the most solemn vows - for that
only was right to him which he held the best and highest - the passion
for a being who had no glimpse of his thoughts induced a more
thorough renunciation than he had ever known in the time of his
complete devotion to his ministeria l career. He had no flattery now,
either from himself or the world; he knew that he had fallen, and his
world had forgotten him, or shoo k their heads at his memory. The
only satisfaction he had was the satisfaction of his tenderness - which
meant untiring work, untiring patience, untiring wakefulness even to
the dumb signs of feeling in a creature whom he alone cared for.
The day of parting came, and he was left with little Esther as the one
visible sign of that four years' break in his life. A year afterwards he
entered the ministry again, and li ved with the utmost sparingness
that Esther might be so educated as to be able to get her own bread in
case of his death. Her probable facility in acquiring French naturally
suggested his sending her to a French school, which would give her a
special advantage as a teacher. It was a Protestant school, and French
Protestantism had the high recommendation of being non-prelatical. It
was understood that Esther wo uld contract no papistical
superstitions; and this was perfectly true; but she contracted, as we
see, a good deal of non-papistical vanity.
Mr Lyon's reputation as a teacher and devoted pastor had revived; but
some dissatisfaction beginning to be felt by his congregation at a
certain laxity detected by them in his views as to the limits of
salvation, which he had in one sermon even hinted might extend to
unconscious recipients of mercy, he had found it desirable seven
years ago to quit this ten years' pa storate and accept a call from the
less important church in Malthouse Yard, Treby Magna.
This was Rufus Lyon's history, at that time unknown in its fulness to
any human being besides himself. We can perhaps guess what
memories they were that relaxed the stringency of his doctrine on the
point of salvation. In the deepest of all senses his heart said - 'Though
she be dead, yet let me think she lives, And feed my mind, that dies
for want of her '
Chapter 7
M. It was but yesterday you spoke him well - You've changed your
mind so soon? N. Not I - 'tis he Th at, changing to my thought, has
changed my mind. No man puts rott en apples in his pouch Because
their upper side looked fair to him. Constancy in mistake is constant
folly.
THE news that the rich heir of the Transomes was actually come
back, and had been seen at Treby, was carried to some one else who
had more reasons for being interested in it than the Reverend Rufus
Lyon was yet conscious of having. It was owing to this that at three
o'clock, two days afterwards, a carriage and pair, with coachman and
footman in crimson and drab, pas sed through the lodge-gates of
Transome Court. Inside there was a hale good-natured-looking man of
sixty, whose hands rested on a knotted stick held between his knees;
and a blue-eyed, well-featured lady, fat and middle-aged - a mountain
of satin, lace, and exquisite muslin embroidery. They were not persons
of highly remarkable appearance, but to most Trebians they seemed
absolutely unique, and likely to be known anywhere. If you had looked
down on them from the box of Samp son's coach, he would have said,
after lifting his hat, 'Sir Maximus and his lady - did you see?' thinking
it needless to add the surname.
'We shall find her greatly elated, do ubtless,' Lady Debarry was saying.
'She has been in the shade so long.'
'Ah, poor thing!' said Sir Maximus. 'A fine woman she was in her
bloom. I remember the first county ball she attended we were all ready
to fight for the sake of dancing with her. I always liked her from that
time - I never swallowed the scandal about her myself.'
'If we are to be intimate with her,' said Lady Debarry, 'I wish you
would avoid making such allusions, Sir Maximus. I should not like
Selina and Harriet to hear them.'
'My dear, I should have forgotte n all about the scandal, only you
remind me of it sometimes,' retorted the baronet, smiling and taking
out his snuff-box.
'These sudden turns of fortune are often dangerous to an excitable
constitution,' said Lady Debarry, not choosing to notice her husband's
epigram. 'Poor Lady Alicia Methurst got heart-disease from a sudden
piece of luck - the death of her uncle, you know. If Mrs Transome were
wise she would go to town - she ca n afford it now - and consult Dr
Truncheon. I should say myself he would order her digitalis: I have
often guessed exactly what a prescrip tion would be. But it certainly
was always one of her weak points to think that she understood
medicine better than other people.'
'She's a healthy woman enough, surely: see how upright she is, and
she rides about like a girl of twenty.'
'She is so thin that she makes me shudder.'
'Pooh I she's slim and active; women are not bid for by the pound.'
'Pray don't be so coarse.'
Sir Maximus laughed and showed hi s good teeth, which made his
laughter very becoming . The carriage stopped, and they were soon
ushered into Mrs Transome's sitting-room, where she was working at
her worsted embroidery. A little daily embroidery had been a constant
element in Mrs Transome's life; that soothing occupation of taking
stitches to produce what neither she nor any one else wanted, was
then the resource of many a well-born and unhappy woman.
She received much warm congratulation and pressure of her hand
with perfect composure of manner; but she became paler than usual,
and her hands turned quite cold. The Debarrys did not yet know what
Harold's politics were.
'Well, our lucky youngster is come in the nick of time,' said Sir
Maximus: 'if he'll stand, he and Philip can run in harness together
and keep out both the Whigs.'
'It is really quite a providential thing - his returning just now,' said
Lady Debarry. 'I couldn't help thinking that something would occur to
prevent Philip from having such a man as Peter Garstin for his
colleague.'
'I call my friend Harold a youngster,' said Sir Maximus, 'for, you know,
I remember him only as he was when that portrait was taken.'
'That is a long while ago,' said Mrs Transome. 'My son is much
altered, as you may imagine.'
There was a confused sound of voices in the library while this talk was
going on. Mrs Transome chose to ignore that noise, but her face, from
being pale, began to flush a little.
'Yes, yes, on the outside, I daresay. But he was a fine fellow - I always
liked him. And if anybody had asked me what I should choose for the
good of the county, I couldn't have thought of anything better than
having a young Transome for a neighbour who will take an active part.
The Transomes and the Debarrys we re always on the right side
together in old days. Of course he'll stand - he has made up his mind
to it?'
The need for an answer to this embarrassing question was deferred by
the increase of inarticulate sounds accompanied by a bark from the
library, and the sudden appearance at the tapestry-hung doorway of
old Mr Transome with a cord roun d his waist, playing a very poor-
paced horse for a black-maned little boy about three years old, who
was urging him on with loud en couraging noises and occasional
thumps from a stick which he wiel ded with some difficulty. The old
man paused with a vague gentle smile at the doorway, while the
baronet got up to speak to him. Nimrod snuffed at his master's legs to
ascertain that he was not hurt, and the little boy, finding something
new to be looked at, let go the cord and came round in front of the
company, dragging his stick, and standing at a safe war-dancing
distance as he fixed his great black eyes on Lady Debarry.
'Dear me, what a splendid little boy, Mrs Transome I why - it cannot
be - can it be - that you have the happiness to be a grandmamma?'
'Yes; that is my son's little boy.'
'Indeed!' said Lady Debarry, really amazed. 'I never heard you speak of
his marriage. He has brought you home a daughter-in-law, then?'
'No,' said Mrs Transome, coldly; 'she is dead.'
'O - o - oh!' said Lady Debarry, in a tone ludicrously undecided
between condolence, satisfaction, and general mistiness. 'How very
singular - I mean that we should not have heard of Mr Harold's
marriage. But he's a charming little fellow: come to me, you round-
cheeked cherub.'
The black eyes continued fixed as if by a sort of fascination on Lady
Debarry's face, and her affable invitation was unheeded. At last,
putting his head forward and poutin g his lips, the cherub gave forth
with marked intention the sounds, 'Nau-o-oom,' many times repeated:
apparently they summed up his op inion of Lady Debarry, and may
perhaps have meant 'naughty ol d woman', but his speech was a
broken lisping polyglot of hazardous interpretation. Then he turned to
pull at the Blenheim spaniel, which, being old and peevish, gave a
little snap.
'Go, go, Harry; let poor Puff alone - he'll bite you,' said Mrs Transome,
stooping to release her aged pet.
Her words were too suggestive, for Ha rry immediately laid hold of her
arm with his teeth, and bit with all his might. Happily the stuffs upon
it were some protection, but the pain forced Mrs Transome to give a
low cry; and Sir Maximus, who had now turned to reseat himself,
shook the little rascal off, whereupon he burst away and trotted into
the library again.
'I fear you are hurt,' said Lady Debarry, with sincere concern. 'What a
little savage! Do have your arm attended to, my dear - I recommend
fomentation - don't think of me.'
'O thank you, it is nothing,' said Mrs Transome, biting her lip and
smiling alternately; 'it will soon go off. The pleasures of being a
grandmamma, you perceive. The chil d has taken a dislike to me; but
he makes quite a new life for Mr Transome; they were playfellows at
once.'
'Bless my heart!' said Sir Maximus, 'it is odd to think of
Harold having been a family man so long. I made up my mind he was
a young bachelor. What an old stager I am, to be sure! And whom has
he married? I hope we shall soon have the pleasure of seeing Mrs
Harold Transome.' Sir Maximus, occupied with old Mr Transome, had
not over heard the previous conversation on that subject.
'She is no longer living,' Lady Debarry hastily interposed: 'but now, my
dear Sir Maximus, we must not hi nder Mrs Transome from attending
to her arm. I am sure she is in pain. Don't say another word, my dear
- we shall see you again - you and Mr Harold will come and dine with
us on Thursday - say yes, only yes. Sir Maximus is longing to see him;
and Philip will be down.'
'Yes, yes!' said Sir Maximus; 'he must lose no time in making Philip's
acquaintance. Tell him Philip is a fine fellow - carried everything
before him at Oxford. And your son must be returned along with him
for North Loamshire. You said he meant to stand?'
'I will write and let you know if Harold has any engagement for
Thursday; he would of course be happy otherwise,' said Mrs
Transome, evading the question.
'If not Thursday, the next day - the very first day he can.'
The visitors left, and Mrs Transome was almost glad of the painful bite
which had saved her from being questioned further about Harold's
politics. 'This is the last visit I sh all receive from them,' she said to
herself as the door closed behind them, and she rang for Denner.
'That poor creature is not happy, Sir Maximus,' said Lady Debarry as
they drove along. 'Something annoys her about her son. I hope there
is nothing unpleasant in his character. Either he kept his marriage a
secret from her, or she was ashamed of it. He is thirty-four at least by
this time. After living in the East so long he may have become a sort of
person one would not care to be in timate with; and that savage boy -
he doesn't look like a lady's child.'
'Pooh, my dear,' said Sir Maximus, 'women think so much of those
minutiae. In the present state of the country it is our duty to look at a
man's position and politics. Philip and my brother are both of that
opinion, and I think they know what's right, if any man does. We are
bound to regard every man of our party as a public instrument, and to
pull all together. The Transomes have always been a good Tory family,
but it has been a cipher of late ye ars. This young fellow coming back
with a fortune to give the family a head and a position is a clear gain
to the county; and with Philip he'll get into the right hands - of course
he wants guiding, having been out of the country so long. All we have
to ask is, whether a man's a Tory, and will make a stand for the good
of the country? - that's the plain English of the matter. And I do beg of
you, my dear, to set aside all these gossiping niceties, and exert
yourself, like a woman of sense and spirit as you are, to bring the
right people together.'
Here Sir Maximus gave a deep coug h, took out his snuff-box, and
tapped it: he had made a serious marital speech, an exertion to which
he was rarely urged by anything sm aller than a matter of conscience.
And this outline of the whole duty of a Tory was matter of conscience
with him; though the Duffield Watchman had pointed expressly to Sir
Maximus Debarry amongst others, in branding the co-operation of the
Tories as a conscious selfishness and reckless immorality, which,
however, would be defeated by the co-operation of all the friends of
truth and liberty, who, the Watchm an trusted, would subordinate all
non-political differences in order to return representatives pledged to
support the present government.
'I am sure, Sir Maximus,' Lady Debarry answered, 'you could not have
observed that anything was wanting in my manners to Mrs Transome.'
'No, no, my dear; but I say this by way of caution. Never mind what
was done at Smyrna, or whether Tran some likes to sit with his heels
tucked up. We may surely wink at a few things for the sake of the
public interest, if God Almighty do es; and if He didn't, I don't know
what would have become of the country - government could never
have been carried on, and many a good battle would have been lost.
That's the philosophy of the matter, and the common sense too.'
Good Sir Maximus gave a deep cough and tapped his box again,
inwardly remarking, that if he had not been such a lazy fellow he
might have made as good a figure as his son Philip.
But at this point the carriage, which was rolling by a turn towards
Treby Magna, passed a well-dressed man, who raised his hat to Sir
Maximus, and called to the coachman to stop.
'Excuse me, Sir Maximus,' said this personage, standing uncovered at
the carriage-door, 'but I have just learned something of importance at
Treby, which I thought you would like to know as soon as possible.'
'Ah! what's that? Something about Garstin or Clement?' said Sir
Maximus, seeing the other draw a poster from his pocket.
'No; rather worse, I fear you will think. A new Radical candidate. I got
this by a stratagem from the printer's boy. They're not posted yet.'
'A Radical!' said Sir Maximus, in a tone of incredulous disgust, as he
took the folded bill. 'What fool is he? - he'll have no chance.'
'They say he's richer than Garstin.'
'Harold Transome!' shouted Sir Maximus, as he read the name in
three-inch letters. 'I don't believe it - it's a trick - it's a squib: why -
why - we've just been to his place - eh? do you know any more?
Speak, sir - speak; don't deal out your story like a damned
mountebank, who wants to keep people gaping.'
'Sir Maximus, pray don't give way so,' said Lady Debarry.
'I'm afraid there's no doubt about it, sir,' said Christian. 'After getting
the bill, I met Mr Labron's clerk, and he said he had just had the
whole story from Jermyn's clerk. The Ram Inn is engaged already, and
a committee is being made up. He says Jermyn goes like a steam-
engine, when he has a mind, although he makes such long-winded
speeches.'
'Jermyn be hanged for a two-faced rascal! Tell Mitchell to drive on. It's
of no use to stay chattering here. Jump up on the box and go home
with us. I may want you.'
'You see I was right, Sir Maximus,' said the baronet's wife, 'I had an
instinct that we should find him an unpleasant person.'
'Fudge! if you had such a fine instinct, why did you let us go to
Transome Court and make fools of ourselves?'
'Would you have listened to me? But of course you will not have him
to dine with you?'
'Dine with me? I should think not. I'd sooner he should dine off me. I
see how it is clearly enough. He has become a regular beast among
those Mahometans - he's got neither religion nor morals left. He can't
know anything about English politics. He'll go and cut his own nose
off as a land-holder, and never know . However, he won't get in - he'll
spend his money for nothing.'
'I fear he is a very licentious man,' said Lady Debarry. 'We know now
why his mother seemed so uneasy. I should think she reflects a little,
poor creature.'
'It's a confounded nuisance we didn't meet Christian on our way,
instead of coming back; but better now than later. He's an
uncommonly adroit, useful fellow, that factotum of Philip's. I wish Phil
would take my man and give me Christian. I'd make him house-
steward; he might reduce the accounts a little.'
Perhaps Sir Maximus would not have been so sanguine as to Mr
Christian's economical virtues if he had seen that gentleman relaxing
himself the same evening among the other distinguished dependants
of the family and frequenters of the steward's room. But a man of Sir
Maximus's rank is like those antediluvian animals whom the system
of things condemned to carry such a huge bulk that they really could
not inspect their bodily appurtenance, and had no conception of their
own tails: their parasites doubtless had a merry time of it, and after
did extremely well when the high-bred saurian himself was ill at ease.
Treby Manor, measured from the front saloon to the remotest shed,
was as large as a moderate-sized village, and there were certainly
more lights burning in it every evening, more wine, spirits, and ale
drunk, more waste and more folly, than could be found in some large
villages. There was fast revelry in the steward's room, and slow revelry
in the Scotch bailiff's room; short whist, costume, and flirtation in the
housekeeper's room, and the same at a lower price in the servants'
hall; a select Olympian feast in the private apartment of the cook, who
was a much grander person than her ladyship, and wore gold and
jewellery to a vast amount of suet; a gambling group in the stables,
and the coachman, perhaps the most innocent member of the
establishment, tippling in majestic solitude by a fire in the harness
room. For Sir Maximus, as every one said, was a gentleman of the
right sort, condescended to no mean inquiries, greeted his head-
servants with a 'good evening, gentlemen', when he met them in the
park, and only snarled in a subdued way when he looked over the
accounts, willing to endure some personal inconvenience in order to
keep up the institutions of the country, to maintain his hereditary
establishment, and do his duty in that station of life - the station of
the long-tailed saurian - to which it had pleased Providence to call
him.
The focus of brilliancy at Treby Manor that evening was in no way the
dining-room, where Sir Maximus sipped his port under some mental
depression, as he discussed with his brother, the Reverend Augustus,
the sad fact, that one of the oldest names in the county was to be on
the wrong side - not in the drawing-room, where Miss Debarry and
Miss Selina, quietly elegant in their dress and manners, were feeling
rather dull than otherwise, having finished Mr Bulwer's Eugene Aram,
and being thrown back on the last great prose work of Mr Southey,
while their mamma slumbered a little on the sofa. No; the centre of
eager talk and enjoyment was the steward's room, where Mr Scales,
house-steward and head -butler, a man most solicitous about his
boots, wristbands, the roll of his whiskers, and other attributes of a
gentleman, distributed cigars, cognac, and whisky, to various
colleagues and guests who were discussing, with that freedom of
conjecture which is one of our inalienable privileges as Britons, the
probable amount of Harold Transome's fortune, concerning which
fame had already been busy long enough to have acquired vast
magnifying power.
The chief part in this scene was undoubtedly Mr Christian's, although
he had hitherto been comparatively silent; but he occupied two chairs
with so much grace, throwing his right leg over the seat of the second,
and resting his right hand on th e back; he held his cigar and
displayed a splendid seal-ring with such becoming nonchalance, and
had his grey hair arranged with so much taste, that experienced eyes
would at once have seen even the great Scales himself to be but a
secondary character.
'Why,' said Mr Crowder, an old respectable tenant, though much in
arrear as to his rent, who condesce nded frequently to drink in the
steward's room for the sake of the conversation; 'why, I suppose they
get money so fast in the East - it's wonderful. Why,' he went on, with a
hesitating look towards Mr Scales, 'this Transome has p'raps got a
matter of a hundred thousand.'
'A hundred thousand, my dear sir! fiddle-stick's end of a hundred
thousand,' said Mr Scales, with a contempt very painful to be borne
by a modest man.
'Well,' said Mr Crowder, giving wa y under torture, as the all-knowing
butler puffed and stared at him, 'perhaps not so much as that.'
'Not so much, sir! I tell you that a hundred thousand pounds is a
bagatelle.'
'Well, I know it's a big sum,' said Mr Crowder, deprecatingly.
Here there was a general laugh. All the other intellects present were
more cultivated than Mr Crowder's.
'Bagatelle is the French for trifle, my friend,' said Mr Christian. 'Don't
talk over people's heads so, Scales. I shall have hard work to
understand you myself soon.'
'Come, that's a good one,' said the head-gardener, who was a ready
admirer; 'I should like to hear the thing you don't understand,
Christian.'
'He's a first-rate hand at sneering,' said Mr Scales, rather nettled.
'Don't be waspish, man. I'll ring the bell for lemons, and make some
punch. That's the thing for putting people up to the unknown
tongues,' said Mr Christian, star ting up, and slapping Scales's
shoulder as he passed him.
'What I mean, Mr Crowder, is this.' Here Mr Scales paused to puff,
and pull down his waistcoat in a gentlemanly manner, and drink. He
was wont in this way to give his hearers time for meditation.
'Come, then, speak English; I'm no t against being taught,' said the
reasonable Crowder.
'What I mean is, that in a large way of trade a man turns his capital
over almost as soon as he can turn himself. Bless your soul! I know
something about these matters, eh, Brent?'
'To be sure you do - few men more,' said the gardener, who was the
person appealed to.
'Not that I've had anything to do with commercial families myself. I've
those feelings that I look to other things besides lucre. But I can't say
that I've not been intimate with parties who have been less nice than I
am myself; and knowing what I know, I shouldn't wonder if Transome
had as much as five hundred thousand. Bless your soul, sir I people
who get their money out of land are as long scraping five pounds
together as your trading men are in turning five pounds into a
hundred.'
'That's a wicked thing, though,' said Mr Crowder, meditatively.
'However,' he went on, retreating from this difficult ground, 'trade or
no trade, the Transomes have been poor enough this many a long
year. I've a brother a tenant on their estate - I ought to know a little
bit about that.'
'They've kept up no establishment at all,' said Mr Scales, with disgust.
'They've even let their kitchen gardens. I suppose it was the eldest
son's gambling. I've seen something of that. A man who has always
lived in first-rate families is likely to know a thing or two on that
subject.'
'Ah, but it wasn't gambling did the first mischief,' said Mr Crowder,
with a slight smile, feeling that it was his turn to have some
superiority. 'New-comers don't know what happened in this country
twenty and thirty year ago. I'm turned fifty myself, and my father lived
under Sir Maximus's father. But if anybody from London can tell me
more than I know about this country-side, I'm willing to listen.'
'What was it, then, if it wasn't gambling?' said Mr Scales, with some
impatience. 'I don't pretend to know.'
'It was law - law - that's what it was. Not but what the Transomes
always won.'
'And always lost,' said the too-read y Scales. 'Yes, yes; I think we all
know the nature of law.'
'There was the last suit of all made the most noise, as I understood,'
continued Mr Crowder; 'but it wasn't tried hereabout. They said there
was a deal o' false swearing. Some young man pretended to be the
true heir - let me see - I can't justly remember the names - he'd got
two. He swore he was one man, and they swore he was another.
However, Lawyer Jermyn won it - they say he'd win a game against
the Old One himself - and the young fellow turned out to be a scamp.
Stop a bit - his name was Scaddon - Henry Scaddon.'
Mr Christian here let a lemon slip from his hand into the punch-bowl
with a plash which sent some of the nectar into the company's faces.
'Hallo! What a bungler I am!' he said, looking as if he were quite jarred
by this unusual awkwardness of his. 'Go on with your tale, Mr
Crowder - a scamp named Harry Scaddon.'
'Well, that's the tale,' said Mr Crowder. 'He was never seen nothing of
any more. It was a deal talked of at the time - and I've sat by; and my
father used to shake his head; an d always when this Mrs Transome
was talked of, he used to shake his head, and say she carried things
with a high hand once. But, Lord I it was before the battle of Waterloo,
and I'm a poor hand at tales; I do n't see much good in 'em myself -
but if anybody'll tell me a cure for the sheep-rot I'll thank him.'
Here Mr Crowder relapsed into smoking and silence, a little
discomfited that the knowledge of which he had been delivered had
turned out rather a shapeless and insignificant birth.
'Well, well, bygones should be bygones; there are secrets in most good
families,' said Mr Scales, winking, 'and this young Transome, coming
back with a fortune to keep up the establishment, and have things
done in a decent and gentlemanly way - it would all have been right if
he'd not been this sort of Radical madman. But now he's done for
himself. I heard Sir Maximus sa y at dinner that he would be
excommunicated; and that's a pretty strong word, I take it.'
'What does it mean, Scales,' said Mr Christian, who loved tormenting.
'Ay, what's the meaning?' insisted Mr Crowder, encouraged by finding
that even Christian was in the dark.
'Well, it's a law term - speaking in a figurative sort of way - meaning
that a Radical was no gentleman.'
'Perhaps it's partly accounted for by his getting his money so fast, and
in foreign countries,' said Mr Crowde r, tentatively. 'It's reasonable to
think he'd be against the land and this country - eh, Sircome?'
Sircome was an eminent miller who had considerable business
transactions at the manor, and appr eciated Mr Scales's merits at a
handsome percentage on the yearly account. He was a highly
honourable tradesman, but in this and in other matters submitted to
the institutions of his country; for great houses, as he observed, must
have great butlers. He replied to his friend Crowder sententiously.
'I say nothing. Before I bring words to market, I should like to see 'em
a bit scarcer. There's the land and there's trade - I hold with both. I
swim with the stream.'
'Hey-day, Mr Sircome! that's a Radical maxim,' said Mr Christian, who
knew that Mr Sircome's last sente nce was his favourite formula. 'I
advise you to give it up, else it will injure the quality of your flour.'
'A Radical maxim!' said Mr Sircome, in a tone of angry astonishment. I
should like to hear you prove that . It's as old as my grandfather,
anyhow.'
'I'll prove it in one minute,' said th e glib Christian. 'Reform has set in
by the will of the majority - that's the rabble you know; and the
respectability and good sense of the country, which are in the
minority, are afraid of Reform running on too fast. So the stream must
be running towards Reform and Radicalism; and if you swim with it,
Mr Sir - come, you're a Reformer and a Radical, and your flour is
objectionable, and not full weight - and being tried by Scales, will be
found wanting.'
There was a roar of laughter. This pun upon Scales was highly
appreciated by every one except the miller and the butler. The latter
pulled down his waistcoat, and puffed and stared in rather an excited
manner. Mr Christian's wit, in general, seemed to him a poor kind of
quibbling.
'What a fellow you are for fence, Ch ristian,' said the gardener. 'Hang
me, if I don't think you're up to everything.'
'That's a compliment you might pay Old Nick, if you come to that,'
said Mr Sircome, who was in the painful position of a man deprived of
his formula.
'Yes, yes,' said Mr Scales; 'I'm no fool myself, and could parry a thrust
if I liked, but I shouldn't like it to be said of me that I was up to
everything. I'll keep a little principle if you please.'
'To be sure,' said Christian, ladling out the punch. 'What would justice
be without Scales?'
The laughter was not quite so full-throated as before. Such excessive
cleverness was a little Satanic.
'A joke's a joke among gentlemen,' said the butler, getting
exasperated; 'I think there has been quite liberties enough taken with
my name. But if you must talk about names, I've heard of a party
before now calling himself a Christian, and being anything but it.'
'Come, that's beyond a joke,' said the surgeon's assistant, a fast man,
whose chief scene of dissipation was the Manor. 'Let it drop, Scales.'
'Yes, I daresay it's beyond a joke. I'm not a harlequin to talk nothing
but jokes. I leave that to other Christians, who are up to everything,
and have been everywhere - to the hulks, for what I know; and more
than that, they come from nobody knows where, and try to worm
themselves into gentlemen's confid ence, to the prejudice of their
betters.'
There was a stricter sequence in Mr Scales's angry eloquence than
was apparent - some chief links bein g confined to his own breast, as
is often the case in energetic disc ourse. The company were in a state
of expectation. There was something behind worth knowing, and
something before them worth seeing. In the general decay of other fine
British pugnacious sports, a quarrel between gentlemen was all the
more exciting, and though no one would himself have liked to turn on
Scales, no one was sorry for the chance of seeing him put down. But
the amazing Christian was unmoved. He had taken out his
handkerchief and was rubbing his lips carefully. After a slight pause,
he spoke with perfect coolness.
'I don't intend to quarrel with you, Scales. Such talk as this is not
profitable to either of us. It makes you purple in the face - you are
apoplectic, you know - and it spoils good company. Be tter tell a few
fibs about me behind my back - it will heat you less, and do me more
harm. I'll leave you to it; I shall go and have a game at whist with the
ladies.'
As the door closed behind the questionable Christian, Mr Scales was
in a state of frustration that prevented speech. Every one was rather
embarrassed.
'That's a most uncommon sort o' fe llow,' said Mr Crowder, in an
under-tone, to his next neighbour, the gardener. 'Why, Mr Philip
picked him up in foreign parts, didn't he?'
'He was a courier,' said the gardener. 'He's had a deal of experience.
And I believe, by what I can make out - for he's been pretty free with
me sometimes - there was a time when he was in that rank of life that
he fought a duel.' 'Ah I that makes him such a cool chap,' said Mr
Crowder.
'He's what I call an overbearing fell ow,' said Mr Sircome, also sotto
voce, to his next neighbour, Mr Filmore, the surgeon's assistant. 'He
runs you down with a sort of talk that's neither here nor there. He's
got a deal too many samples in his pocket for me.'
'All I know is, he's a wonderful hand at cards,' said Mr Filmore, whose
whiskers and shirt-pin were quite ab ove the average. 'I wish I could
play ecarte as he does; it's beautiful to see him; he can make a man
look pretty blue - he'll empty his pocket for him in no time.'
'That's none to his credit,' said Mr Sircome.
The conversation had in this way broken up into tete-a-tete, and the
hilarity of the evening might be considered a failure. Still the punch
was drunk, the accounts were duly swelled, and, notwithstanding the
innovating spirit of the time, Sir Maximus Debarry's establishment
was kept up in a sound hereditary Bridsh manner.
Chapter 8
'Rumour doth double like the voice and echo.' - SHAKESPEARE.
The mind of a man is as a country which was once open to squatters,
who have bred and multiplied and become masters of the land. But
then happeneth a time when new and hungry comers dispute the
land; and there is trial of strength, and the stronger wins.
Nevertheless the first squatters be they who have prepared the
ground, and the crops to the end will be sequent (though chiefly on
the nature of the soil, as of light sand, mixed loam, or heavy clay, yet)
somewhat on the primal labour an d sowing. THAT talkative maiden,
Rumour, though in the interest of art she is figured as a youthful
winged beauty with flowing garments, soaring above the heads of men,
and breathing world-thrilling ne ws through a gracefully-curved
trumpet, is in fact a very old maid, who puckers her silly face by the
fireside, and really does no more th an chirp a wrong guess or a lame
story into the ear of a fellow-gossip; all the rest of the work attributed
to her is done by the ordinary working of those passions against
which men pray in the Litany, with the help of a plentiful stupidity
against which we have never yet had any authorised form of prayer.
When Mr Scales's strong need to make an impressive figure in
conversation, together with his very slight need of any other premise
than his own sense of his wide general knowledge and probable
infallibility, led him to specify five hundred thousand as the lowest
admissible amount of Harold Transome's commercially-acquired
fortune, it was not fair to put this down to poor old Miss Rumour, who
had only told Scales that the fortune was considerable. And again,
when the curt Mr Sircome found occasion at Treby to mention the five
hundred thousand as a fact that fo lks seemed pretty sure about, this
expansion of the butler into 'folks' was entirely due to Mr Sircome's
habitual preference for words which could not be laid hold of or give
people a handle over him. It was in this simple way that the report of
Harold Transome's fortune spread and was magnified, adding much
lustre to his opinions in the eyes of Liberals, and compelling even men
of the opposite party to admit that it increased his eligibility as a
member for North Loamshire. It wa s observed by a sound thinker in
these parts that property was ballast; and when once the aptness of
that metaphor had been perceived, it followed that a man was not fit
to navigate the sea of politics without a great deal of such ballast; and
that, rightly understood, whatever increased the expense of election,
inasmuch as it virtually raised the property qualification, was an
unspeakable boon to the country.
Meanwhile the fortune that was getting larger in the imagination of
constituents was shrinking a little in the imagination of its owner. It
was hardly more than a hundred an d fifty thousand; and there were
not only the heavy mortgages to be paid off, but also a large amount of
capital was needed in order to repa ir the farm-buildings all over the
estate, to carry out extensive draining, and make allowances to
incoming tenants, which might remove the difficulty of newly letting
the farms in a time of agricultural depression. The farms actually
tenanted were held by men who had begged hard to succeed their
fathers in getting a little poorer every year, on land which was also
getting poorer, where the highest rate of increase was in the arrears of
rent, and where the master, in crushed hat and corduroys, looked
pitiably lean and care-worn by the side of pauper labourers, who
showed that superior assimilating power often obse rved to attend
nourishment by the public money. Mr Goffe, of Rabbit's End, had
never had it explained to him that, according to the true theory of
rent, land must inevitably be given up when it would not yield a profit
equal to the ordinary rate of interest; so that from want of knowing
what was inevitable, and not from a Titanic spirit of opposition, he
kept on his land. He often said of himself, with a melancholy wipe of
his sleeve across his brow, that he 'didn't know which-a-way to turn';
and he would have been still more at a loss on the subject if he had
quitted Rabbit's End with a waggonful of furniture and utensils, a file
of receipts, a wife with five children, and a shepherd-dog in low spirits.
It took no long time for Harold Transome to discover this state of
things, and to see, moreover, that, except on the demesne immediately
around the house, the timber had been mismanaged. The woods had
been recklessly thinned, and there ha d been insufficient planting. He
had not yet thoroughly investigated the various accounts kept by his
mother, by Jermyn, and by Banks the bailiff; but what had been done
with the large sums which had been received for timber was a
suspicious mystery to him. He observed that the farm held by Jermyn
was in first-rate order, that a good deal had been spent on the
buildings, and that the rent had stood unpaid. Mrs Transome had
taken an opportunity of saying th at Jermyn had had some of the
mortgage-deeds transferred to him, and that his rent was set against
so much interest. Harold had only said, in his careless yet decisive
way, 'O, Jermyn be hanged! It seems to me if Durfey hadn't died and
made room for me, Jermyn would have ended by coming to live here,
and you would have had to keep the lodge and open the gate for his
carriage. But I shall pay him off - mortgages and all - by-and-by. I'll
owe him nothing - not even a curse.' Mrs Transome said no more.
Harold did not care to enter fully into the subject with his mother. The
fact that she had been active in the management of the estate - had
ridden about it continually, had busied herself with accounts, had
been head-bailiff of the vacant farms, and had yet allowed things to go
wrong - was set down by him simply to the general futility of women's
attempts to transact men's business. He did not want to say anything
to annoy her: he was only determined to let her understand, as quietly
as possible, that she had better cease all interference.
Mrs Transome did understand this; and it was very little that she
dared to say on business, though there was a fierce struggle of her
anger and pride with a dread which was nevertheless supreme. As to
the old tenants, she only observed, on hearing Harold burst forth
about their wretched condition 'that with the estate so burthened, the
yearly loss by arrears could bett er be borne than the outlay and
sacrifice necessary in order to let the farms anew'.
'I was really capable of calculating, Harold,' she ended, with a touch of
bitterness. 'It seems easy to deal with farmers and their affairs when
you only see them in print, I daresa y; but it's not quite so easy when
you live among them. You have only to look at Sir Maximus's estate:
you will see plenty of the same th ing. The times have been dreadful,
and old families like to keep their old tenants. But I daresay that is
Toryism.'
'It's a hash of odds and ends, if that is Toryism, my dear mother.
However, I wish you had kept three more old tenants; for then I
should have had three more fifty-pound voters. And, in a hard run,
one may be beaten by a head. But,' Harold added, smiling and
handing her a ball of worsted, which had fallen, 'a woman ought to be
a Tory, and graceful, and handsome, like you. I should hate a woman
who took up my opinions, and talk ed for me. I'm an Oriental, you
know. I say, mother, shall we have this room furnished with rose-
colour? I notice that it suits your bright grey hair.'
Harold thought it was only natural that his mother should have been
in a sort of subjection to Jermyn throughout the awkward
circumstances of the family. It was the way of women, and all weak
minds, to think that what they had been used to was inalterable, and
any quarrel with a man who managed private affairs was necessarily a
formidable thing. He himself wa s proceeding very cautiously, and
preferred not even to know too much just at present, lest a certain
personal antipathy he was consci ous of toward Jermyn, and an
occasional liability to exasperation, should get the better of a calm and
clear-sighted resolve not to quarrel with the man while he could be of
use. Harold would have been disgusted with himself if he had helped
to frustrate his own purpose. And his strongest purpose now was to
get returned for parliament, to make a figure there as a Liberal
member, and to become on all grounds a personage of weight in North
Loamshire.
How Harold Transome came to be a Liberal in opposition to all the
traditions of his family, was a more subtle inquiry than he had ever
cared to follow out. The newspapers undertook to explain it. The North
Loamshire Herald witnessed with a grief and disgust certain to be
shared by all persons who were actuated by wholesome British feeling,
an example of defection in the inheritor of a family name which in
times past had been associated with attachment to right principle,
and with the maintenance of our constitution in Church and State;
and pointed to it as an additional proof that men who had passed any
large portion of their lives beyond the limits of our favoured country,
usually contracted not only a laxity of feeling towards Protestantism,
nay, towards religion itself - a latitudinarian spirit hardly
distinguishable from atheism - but also a levity of disposition,
inducing them to tamper with those institutions by which alone Great
Britain had risen to her pre-eminen ce among the nations. Such men,
infected with outlandish habits, intoxicated with vanity, grasping at
momentary power by flattery of the multitude, fearless because
godless, liberal because un-English, were ready to pull one stone from
under another in the national edifice, till the great structure tottered
to its fall. On the other hand, the Duffield Watchman saw in this
signal instance of self-liberation from the trammels of prejudice, a
decisive guarantee of intellectual pre-eminence, united with a
generous sensibility to the claims of man as man, which had burst
asunder, and cast off, by a spon taneous exertion of energy, the
cramping out-worn shell of hereditary bias and class interest.
But these large-minded guides of public opinion argued from wider
data than could be furnished by an y knowledge of the particular case
concerned. Harold Transome was ne ither the dissolute cosmopolitan
so vigorously sketched by the Tory Herald, nor the intellectual giant
and moral lobster suggested by the liberal imagination of the
Watchman. Twenty years ago he had been a bright, active, good-
tempered lad, with sharp eyes and a good aim; he delighted in success
and in predominance; but he did not long for an impossible
predominance, and become sour and sulky because it was impossible.
He played at the games he was clev er in, and usually won; all other
games he let alone, and thought them of little worth. At home and at
Eton he had been side by side wi th his stupid elder brother Durfey,
whom he despised; and he very early began to reflect that since this
Caliban in miniature was older than himself, he must carve out his
own fortune. That was a nuisance; and on the whole the world seemed
rather ill-arranged, at Eton especially, where there were many reasons
why Harold made no great figure . He was not sorry the money was
wanting to send him to Oxford; he did not see the good of Oxford; he
had been surrounded by many things during his short life, of which
he had distinctly said to himself that he did not see the good, and he
was not disposed to venerate on the strength of any good that others
saw. He turned his back on home very cheerfully, though he was
rather fond of his mother, and very fond of Transome Court, and the
river where he had been used to fish; but he said to himself as he
passed the lodge-gates, 'I'll get rich somehow, and have an estate of
my own, and do what I like with it.' This determined aiming at
something not easy but clearly possible, marked the direction in
which Harold's nature was strong; he had the energetic will and
muscle, the self-confidence, the quick perception, and the narrow
imagination which make what is admiringly called the practical mind.
Since then his character had been ripened by a various experience,
and also by much knowledge which he had set himself deliberately to
gain. But the man was no more than the boy writ large, with an
extensive commentary. The years had nourished an inclination to as
much opposition as would enable him to assert his own independence
and power without throwing himself into that tabooed condition which
robs power of its triumph. And this inclination had helped his
shrewdness in forming judgments which were at once innovating and
moderate. He was addicted at once to rebellion and to conformity, and
only an intimate personal knowledge could enable any one to predict
where his conformity would begin. The limit was not defined by
theory, but was drawn in an irregula r zigzag by early disposition and
association; and his resolution, of which he had never lost hold, to be
a thorough Englishman again some day, had kept up the habit of
considering all his conclusions with reference to English politics and
English social conditions. He meant to stand up for every change that
the economical condition of the country required, and he had an
angry contempt for men with coronets on their coaches, but too small
a share of brains to see when they had better make a virtue of
necessity. His respect was rather for men who had no coronets, but
who achieved a just influence by fu rthering all measures which the
common sense of the country, and the increasing self-assertion of the
majority, peremptorily demanded. He could be such a man himself.
In fact Harold Transome was a clever, frank, good-natured egoist; not
stringently consistent, but without any disposition to falsity; proud,
but with a pride that was moulded in an individual rather than an
hereditary form; unspeculative, un sentimental, unsympathetic; fond
of sensual pleasures, but disincline d to all vice, and attached as a
healthy, clear-sighted person, to al l conventional morality, construed
with a certain freedom, like doctrinal articles to which the public order
may require subscription. A character is apt to look but indifferently,
written out in this way. Reduced to a map, our premises seem
insignificant, but they make, nevertheless, a very pretty freehold to
live in and walk over; and so, if Harold Transome had been among
your acquaintances, and you had observed his qualities through the
medium of his agreeable person, br ight smile, and a certain easy
charm which accompanies sensuousness when unsullied by
coarseness - through the medium al so of the many opportunities in
which he would have made himself useful or pleasant to you - you
would have thought him a good fellow, highly acceptable as a guest, a
colleague, or a brother-in-law. Whet her all mothers would have liked
him as a son, is another question.
It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the back-ground, that
mothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when their
sons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them to
college or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which are
not filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envying
yet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons. Mrs
Transome was certainly not one of those bland, adoring, and gently
tearful women. After sharing the common dream that when a
beautiful man-child was born to he r, her cup of happiness would be
full, she had travelled through long years apart from that child to find
herself at last in the presence of a son of whom she was afraid, who
was utterly unmanageable by her, and to whose sentiments in any
given case she possessed no key. Yet Harold was a kind son: he kissed
his mother's brow, offered her his arm, let her choose what she liked
for the house and garden, asked her whether she would have bays or
greys for her new carriage, and was bent on seeing her make as good
a figure in the neighbourhood as any other woman of her rank. She
trembled under this kindness: it was not enough to satisfy her; still, if
it should ever cease and give place to something else - she was too
uncertain about Harold's feelings to imagine clearly what that
something would be. The finest threads, such as no eye sees, if bound
cunningly about the sensitive flesh, so that the movement to break
them would bring torture, may make a worse bondage than any
fetters. Mrs Transome felt the fatal threads about her, and the
bitterness of this helpless bond age mingled itself with the new
elegancies of the dining and draw ing rooms, and all the household
changes which Harold had ordered to be brought about with magical
quickness. Nothing was as she had once expected it would be. If
Harold had shown the least care to have her stay in the room with
him - if he had really cared for her opinion - if he had been what she
had dreamed he would be in the ey es of those people who had made
her world - if all the past could be dissolved, and leave no solid trace
of itself - mighty ifs that were all impossible - she would have tasted
some joy; but now she began to look back with regret to the days
when she sat in loneliness among the old drapery, and still longed for
something that might happen. Yet, save in a bitter little speech, or in
a deep sigh heard by no one besides Denner, she kept all these things
hidden in her heart, and went out in the autumn sunshine to overlook
the alterations in the pleasure-grounds very much as a happy woman
might have done. One day, however, when she was occupied in this
way, an occasion came on which she chose to express indirectly a part
of her inward care.
She was standing on the broad gravel in the afternoon; the long
shadows lay on the grass; the light seemed the more glorious because
of the reddened and golden trees. The gardeners were busy at their
pleasant work; the newly-turned soil gave out an agreeable fragrance;
and little Harry was playing with Nimrod round old Mr Transome, who
sat placidly on a low garden-chair. The scene would have made a
charming picture of English domestic life, and the handsome,
majestic, grey-haired woman (obviously grandmamma) would have
been especially aclmired. But the artist would have felt it requisite to
turn her face towards her husband and little grandson, and to have
given her an elderly amiability of expression which would have divided
remark with his exquisite rendering of her Indian shawl. Mrs
Transome's face was turned the other way, and for this reason she
only heard an approaching step, and did not see whose it was; yet it
startled her: it was not quick enough to be her son's step, and
besides, Harold was away at Duffield. It was Mr Jermyn's.
Chapter 9
'A woman, naturally born to fears.' - King John. 'Methinks Some
unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, Is coming towards me; and my
inward soul With nothing trembles.' - King Richard II.
MATTHEW JERMYN approached Mrs Transome taking off his hat and
smiling. She did not smile, but said - 'You knew Harold was not at
home?'
'Yes; I came to see you, to know if you had any wishes that I could
further, since I have not had an opportunity of consulting you since
he came home.'
'Let us walk towards the Rookery, then.'
They turned together, Mr Jermyn st ill keeping his hat off and holding
it behind him; the air was so soft and agreeable that Mrs Transome
herself had nothing but a large veil over her head.
They walked for a little while in silence till they were out of sight,
under tall trees, and treading noiselessly on fallen leaves. What
Jermyn was really most anxious about, was to learn from Mrs
Transome whether anything had tran spired that was significant of
Harold's disposition towards him, which he suspected to be very far
from friendly. Jermyn was not naturally flinty-hearted: at five-and-
twenty he had written verses, an d had got himself wet through in
order not to disappoint a dark-e yed woman whom he was proud to
believe in love with him; but a family man with grown-up sons and
daughters, a man with a professional position and complicated affairs
that make it hard to ascertain the exact relation between property and
liabilities, necessarily thinks of himself and what may be impending.
'Harold is remarkably acute and clever,' he began at last, since Mrs
Transome did not speak. 'If he gets into parliament, I have no doubt
he will distinguish himself. He has a quick eye for business of all
kinds.'
'That is no comfort to me,' said Mrs Transome. To-day she was more
conscious than usual of that bitterness which was always in her mind
in Jermyn's presence, but which was carefully suppressed: -
suppressed because she could not endure that the degradation she
inwardly felt should ever become visible or audible in acts or words of
her own - should ever be reflected in any word or look of his. For years
there had been a deep silence about the past between them: on her
side, because she remembered; on his, because he more and more
forgot.
'I trust he is not unkind to you in any way. I know his opinions pain
you; but I trust you find him in everything else disposed to be a good
son.'
'O, to be sure - good as men are disposed to be to women, giving them
cushions and carriages, and recommending them to enjoy themselves,
and then expecting them to be contented under contempt and neglect.
I have no power over him - remember that - none.'
Jermyn turned to look in Mrs Transome's face: it was long since he
had heard her speak to him as if she were losing her self-command.
'Has he shown any unpleasant feeling about your management of the
affairs?'
'My management of the affair s?' Mrs Transome said, with
concentrated rage, flashing a fier ce look at Jermyn. She checked
herself: she felt as if she were lighting a torch to flare on her own past
folly and misery. It was a resolve which had become a habit, that she
would never quarrel with this man - never tell him what she saw him
to be. She had kept her woman's pride and sensibility intact: through
all her life there had vibrated the maiden need to have her hand
kissed and be the object of chivalry. And so she sank into silence
again, trembling.
Jermyn felt annoyed - nothing more. There was nothing in his mind
corresponding to the intricate meshes of sensitiveness in Mrs
Transome's. He was anything but stupid; yet he always blundered
when he wanted to be delicate or magnanimous; he constantly sought
to soothe others by praising him self. Moral vulgarity cleaved to him
like an hereditary odour. He blundered now.
'My dear Mrs Transome,' he said in a tone of bland kindness, 'you are
agitated - you appear angry with me . Yet I think, if you consider, you
will see that you have nothing to complain of in me, unless you will
complain of the inevitable course of man's life. I have always met your
wishes both in happy circumstances and in unhappy ones. I should
be ready to do so now, if it were possible.'
Every sentence was as pleasant to her as if it had been cut in her
bared arm. Some men's kindness and love-making are more
exasperating, more humiliating than others' derision; but the pitiable
woman who has once made herself secretly dependent on a man who
is beneath her in feeling, must bear that humiliation for fear of worse.
Coarse kindness is at least better than coarse anger; and in all private
quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dulness. Mrs
Transome knew in her inmost soul that those relations which had
sealed her lips on Jermyn's conduct in business matters, had been
with him a ground for presuming that he should have impunity in any
lax dealing into which circumstances had led him. She knew that she
herself had endured all the more privation because of his dishonest
selfishness. And now, Harold's long-deferred heirship, and his return
with startlingly unexpected penetration, activity, and assertion of
mastery, had placed them both in the full presence of a difficulty
which had been prepared by the years of vague uncertainty as to
issues. In this position, with a gr eat dread hanging over her, which
Jermyn knew, and ought to have felt that he had caused her, she was
inclined to lash him with indignation, to scorch him with the words
that were just the fit names for his doings - inclined all the more when
he spoke with an insolent blandness, ignoring all that was truly in her
heart. But no sooner di d the words 'You have brought it on me' rise
within her than she heard within also the retort, 'You brought it on
yourself.' Not for all the world beside could she bear to hear that retort
uttered from without. What did she do? With strange sequence to all
that rapid tumult, after a few moments' silence she said, in a gentle
and almost tremulous voice - 'Let me take your arm.'
He gave it immediately, putting on his hat and wondering. For more
than twenty years Mrs Transome had never chosen to take his arm.
'I have but one thing to ask. Make me a promise.'
'What is it?'
'That you will never quarrel with Harold.'
'You must know that it is my wish not to quarrel with him.'
'But make a vow - fix it in your mind as a thing not to be done. Bear
anything from him rather than quarrel with him.
'A man can't make a vow not to quarrel,' said Jermyn, who was
already a little irritated by the implication that Harold might be
disposed to use him roughly. 'A man's temper may get the better of
him at any moment. I am not prepared to bear anything.'
'Good God!' said Mrs Transome, taking her hand from his arm,' is it
possible you don't feel how horrible it would be?'
As she took away her hand, Jermyn let his arm fall, put both his
hands in his pockets, and shruggin g his shoulders said, 'I shall use
him as he uses me.'
Jermyn had turned round his savage side, and the blandness was out
of sight. It was this that had al ways frightened Mrs Transome: there
was a possibility of fierce insolence in this man who was to pass with
those nearest to her as her indebted servant, but whose brand she
secretly bore. She was as powerless with him as she was with her son.
This woman, who loved rule, dared not speak another word of
attempted persuasion. They were both silent, taking the nearest way
into the sunshine again. There was a half-formed wish in both their
minds - even in the mother's - that Harold Transome had never been
born.
'We are working hard for the election,' said Jermyn, recovering
himself, as they turned into the sunshine again. 'I think we shall get
him returned, and in that case he will be in high good-humour.
Everything will be more propitious than you are apt to think. You
must persuade yourself,' he added, smiling at her, 'that it is better for
a man of his position to be in parl iament on the wrong side than not
be in at all.'
'Never,' said Mrs Transome. 'I am too old to learn to call bitter sweet
and sweet bitter. But what I may think or feel is of no consequence
now. I am as unnecessary as a chimney ornament.'
And in this way they parted on the gravel, in that pretty scene where
they had met. Mrs Transome shivered as she stood alone: all around
her, where there had once been brightness and warmth, there were
white ashes, and the sunshine looked dreary as it fell on them.
Mr Jermyn's heaviest reflections in riding homeward turned on the
possibility of incidents between hi mself and Harold Transome which
would have disagreeable results, requiring him to raise money, and
perhaps causing scandal, which in its way might also help to create a
monetary deficit. A man of sixty, with a wife whose Duffield
connections were of the highest resp ectability, with a family of tall
daughters, an expensive establis hment, and a la rge professional
business, owed a great deal more to himself as the mainstay of all
those solidities, than to feelings and ideas which were quite
unsubstantial. There were many unfortunate coincidences which
placed Mr Jermyn in an uncomfortable position just now; he had not
been much to blame, he considered; if it had not been for a sudden
turn of affairs no one would have complained. He defied any man to
say that he had intended to wrong people; he was able to refund, to
make reprisals, if th ey could be fairly demanded. Only he would
certainly have preferred that they should not be demanded.
A German poet was intrusted with a particularly fine sausage, which
he was to convey to the donor's friend at Paris. In the course of the
long journey he smelt the sausage; he got hungry, and desired to taste
it; he pared a morsel off, then another, and another, in successive
moments of temptation, till at last the sausage was, humanly
speaking, at an end. The offence had not been premeditated. The poet
had never loved meanness, but he loved sausage; and the result was
undeniably awkward.
So it was with Matthew Jermyn. He was far from liking that ugly
abstraction rascality, but he had liked other things which had
suggested nibbling. He had had to do many things in law and in daily
life which, in the abstract, he would have condemned; and indeed he
had never been tempted by them in the abstract. Here, in fact, was
the inconvenience; he had sinned for the sake of particular concrete
things, and particular concrete consequences were likely to follow.
But he was a man of resolution, who, having made out what was the
best course to take under a difficulty, went straight to his work. The
election must be won: that would put Harold in good-humour, give
him something to do, and leave himself more time to prepare for any
crisis.
He was in anything but low spirits that evening. It was his eldest
daughter's birthday, and the young people had a dance. Papa was
delightful - stood up fo r a quadrille and a countr y-dance, told stories
at supper, and made humorous quotations from his early readings: if
these were Latin, he apologised, and translated to the ladies; so that a
deaf lady-visitor from Duffield kept her trumpet up continually, lest
she should lose any of Mr Jermyn's conversation, and wished that her
niece Maria had been present, who was young and had a good
memory.
Still the party was smaller than usual, for some families in Treby
refused to visit Jermyn, now that he was concerned for a Radical
candidate.
Chapter 10
'He made love neither with roses, nor with apples, nor with locks of
hair.' - THEOCRITUS.
ONE Sunday afternoon Felix Holt rapped at the door of Mr Lyon's
house, although he could hear the voice of the minister preaching in
the chapel. He stood with a book under his arm, apparently confident
that there was some one in the house to open the door for him. In
fact, Esther never went to chapel in the afternoon: that 'exercise' made
her head ache.
In these September weeks Felix had got rather intimate with Mr Lyon.
They shared the same political sympathies; and though, to Liberals
who had neither freehold nor copyhold nor leasehold, the share in a
county election consisted chiefly of that prescriptive amusement of the
majority known as 'looking on,' there was still something to be said on
the occasion, if not to be done . Perhaps the most delightful
friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much
disputation, and yet more person al liking; and the advent of the
public-spirited, contradictory, yet affectionate Felix, into Treby life,
had made a welcome epoch to the minister. To talk with this young
man, who, though hopeful, had a singularity which some might at
once have pronounced heresy, but which Mr Lyon persisted in
regarding as orthodoxy 'in the making,' was like a good bite to strong
teeth after a too plentiful allowance of spoon meat. To cultivate his
society with a view to checking his erratic tendencies was a laudable
purpose; but perhaps if Felix had been rapidly subdued and reduced
to conformity, little Mr Lyon would have found the conversation much
flatter.
Esther had not seen so much of their new acquaintance as her father
had. But she had begun to find him amusing, and also rather
irritating to her woman's love of conquest. He always opposed and
criticised her; and besides that, he
looked at her as if he never saw a single detail about her person -
quite as if she were a middle-aged woman in a cap. She did not believe
that he had ever admired her hands, or her long neck, or her graceful
movements, which had made all the girls at school call her Calypso
(doubtless from their familiarity with Telemaque). Felix ought properly
to have been a little in love with her - never mentioning it, of course,
because that would have been disagreeable, and his being a regular
lover was out of the question. But it was quite clear that, instead of
feeling any disadvantage on his own side, he held himself to be
immeasurably her superior: and, what was worse, Esther had a secret
consciousness that he was her superior. She was all the more vexed at
the suspicion that he thought slightly of her; and wished in her
vexation that she could have found more fault with him - that she had
not been obliged to admire more an d more the varying expressions of
his open face and his deliciously good-humoured laugh, always loud
at a joke against himself. Beside s, she could not help having her
curiosity roused by the unusual combinations both in his mind and in
his outward position, and she had surprised herself as well as her
father one day by suddenly starting up and proposing to walk with
him when he was going to pay an afternoon visit to Mrs Holt, to try
and soothe her concerning Felix. 'W hat a mother he has!' she said to
herself when they came away again; 'but, rude and queer as he is, I
cannot say there is anything vulgar about him. Yet - I don't know - if I
saw him by the side of a finished gentleman.' Esther wished that
finished gentleman were among her acquaintances: he would certainly
admire her, and make her aware of Felix's inferiority.
On this particular Sunday aftern oon, when she heard the knock at
the door, she was seated in the kitchen corner between the fire and
the window reading Rene. Certainly, in her well-fitting light-blue dress
- she almost always wore some shade of blue - with her delicate
sandalled slipper stretc hed towards the fire, her little gold watch,
which had cost her nearly a quarter's earnings, visible at her side, her
slender fingers playing with a shower of brown curls, and a coronet of
shining plaits at the summit of her head, she was a remarkable
Cinderella. When the rap came, she coloured, and was going to shut
her book and put it out of the way on the window-ledge behind her;
but she desisted with a little toss, laid it open on the table beside her,
and walked to the outer door, which opened into the kitchen. There
was rather a mischievous gleam in her face: the rap was not a small
one; it came probably from a large personage with a vigorous arm.
'Good afternoon, Miss Lyon ,' said Felix, taking off his cloth cap: he
resolutely declined the expensive ugliness of a hat, and in a poked cap
and without a cravat, made a figure at which his mother cried every
Sunday, and thought of with a slow shake of the head at several
passages in the minister's prayer.
'Dear me, it is you, Mr Holt! fear you will have to wait some time
before you can see my father. The sermon is not ended yet, and there
will be the hymn and the prayer, and perhaps other things to detain
him.'
'Well, will you let me sit down in the kitchen? I don't want to be a
bore.'
'O no,' said Esther, with her pretty light laugh, 'I always give you
credit for not meaning it. Pray come in, if you don't mind waiting. I
was sitting in the kitchen: the kettle is singing quite prettily. It is
much nicer than the parlour - not half so ugly.'
'There I agree with you.'
'How very extraordinary! But if you prefer the kitchen, and don't want
to sit with me, I can go into the parlour.'
'I came on purpose to sit with you,' said Felix, in his blunt way, 'but I
thought it likely you might be vexed at seeing me. I wanted to talk to
you, but I've got nothing pleasant to say. As your father would have it,
I'm not given to prophesy smooth things - to prophesy deceit.'
'I understand,' said Esther, sitting down. 'Pray be seated. You thought
I had no afternoon sermon, so you came to give me one.'
'Yes,' said Felix, seating himself si deways in a chair not far off her,
and leaning over the back to look at her with his large clear grey eyes,
'and my text is something you said the other day. You said you didn't
mind about people having right opinio ns so that they had good taste.
Now I want you to see what shallow stuff that is.'
'Oh, I don't doubt it if you say so . I know you are a person of right
opinions.'
'But by opinions you mean men's thoughts about great subjects, and
by taste you mean their thoughts about small ones; dress, behaviour,
amusements, ornaments.'
'Well - yes - or rather, their sensibilities about those things.'
'It comes to the same thing; thoughts, opinions, knowledge, are only a
sensibility to facts and ideas. If I understand a geometrical problem, it
is because I have a sensibility to the way in which lines and figures
are related to each other; and I want you to see that the creature who
has the sensibilities that you call taste, and not the sensibilities that
you call opinions, is simply a lower, pettier sort of being - an insect
that notices the shaking of the table, but never notices the thunder.'
'Very well, I am an insect; yet I notice that you are thundering at me.'
'No, you are not an insect. That is what exasperates me at your
making a boast of littleness. You have enough understanding to make
it wicked that you should add one more to the women who hinder
men's lives from having any nobleness in them.'
Esther coloured deeply: she resented this speech, yet she disliked it
less than many Felix had addressed to her.
'What is my horrible guilt?' she said , rising and standing, as she was
wont, with one foot on the fender, and looking at the fire. If it had
been any one but Felix who was near her, it might have occurred to
her that this attitude showed her to advantage; but she had only a
mortified sense that he was quite indifferent to what others praised
her for.
'Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?' he
said, snatching up Rene, and running his eye over the pages.
'Why don't you always go to chapel , Mr Holt, and read Howe's Living
Temple, and join the church?'
'There's just the difference between us - I know why I don't do those
things. I distinctly see that I can do something better. I have other
principles, and should sink myself by doing what I don't recognise as
the best.'
'I understand,' said Esther, as lightly as she could, to conceal her
bitterness. 'I am a lower kind of being, and could not so easily sink
myself.'
'Not by entering into your father's ideas. If a woman really believes
herself to be a lower kind of be ing, she should place herself in
subjection: she should be ruled by the thoughts of her father or
husband. If not, let her show her power of choosing something better.
You must know that your father's principles are greater and worthier
than what guides your life. You have no reason but idle fancy and
selfish inclination for shirking his teaching and giving your soul up to
trifles.'
'You are kind enough to say so. But I am not aware that I have ever
confided my reasons to you.'
'Why, what worth calling a reason could make any mortal hang over
this trash? - idiotic immorality dressed up to look fine, with a little bit
of doctrine tacked to it, like a hare 's foot on a dish, to make believe
the mess is not cat's flesh. Look here ! ‘Est-ce ma faute, si je trouve
partout les bornes, si ce qui est fini n'a pour moi aucune valeur?’ Yes,
sir, distinctly your fault, because you're an ass. Your dunce who can't
do his sums always has a taste for the infinite. Sir, do you know what
a rhomboid is? Oh no, I don't value these things with limits.
‘Cependant, j'aime la monotonie des sentimens de la vie, et si j'avais
encore la folie de croire au bonheur -’ '
'O pray, Mr Holt, don't go on reading with that dreadful accent; it sets
one's teeth on edge.' Esther, smar ting helplessly under the previous
lashes, was relieved by this diversion of criticism.
'There it is!' said Felix, throwing the book on the table, and getting up
to walk about. 'You are only happy when you can spy a tag or a tassel
loose to turn the talk, and get rid of any judgment that must carry
grave action after it.'
'I think I have borne a great deal of talk without turning it.'
'Not enough, Miss Lyon - not all that I came to say. I want you to
change. Of course I am a brute to say so. I ought to say you are
perfect. Another man would, perhaps. But I say, I want you to
change.'
'How am I to oblige you? By joining the church?'
'No; but by asking yourself whether life is not as solemn a thing as
your father takes it to be - in which you may be either a blessing or a
curse to many. You know you have never done that. You don't care to
be better than a bird trimming its feathers, and pecking about after
what pleases it. You are discontented with the world because you
can't get just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's
a world where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and
misery, and tainted with pollution.'
Esther felt her heart swelling with mingled indignation at this liberty,
wounded pride at this depreciation, and acute consciousness that she
could not contradict what Felix said. He was outrageously ill-bred; but
she felt that she should be lowering herself by telling him so, and
manifesting her anger: in that way she would be confirming his
accusation of a littleness that shrank from severe truth; and, besides,
through all her mortification there pierced a sense that this
exasperation of Felix against her was more complimentary than
anything in his previous behaviour. She had self-command enough to
speak with her usual silvery voice.
'Pray go on, Mr Holt. Relieve yourse lf of these burning truths. I am
sure they must be troublesome to carry unuttered.'
'Yes, they are,' said Felix, pausing, and standing not far off her. 'I can't
bear to see you going the way of the foolish women who spoil men's
lives. Men can't help loving them, and so they make themselves slaves
to the petty desires of petty creatures. That's the way those who might
do better spend their lives for nought - get checked in every great
effort - toil with brain and limb for things that have no more to do with
a manly life than tarts and confectionery. That's what makes women a
curse; all life is stunted to suit th eir littleness. That's why I'll never
love, if I can help it; and if I love, I'll bear it, and never marry.'
The tumult of feeling in Esther's mind - mortification, anger, the sense
of a terrible power over her that Felix seemed to have as his angry
words vibrated through her - was getting almost too much for her self-
control. She felt her lips quivering; but her pride, which feared
nothing so much as the betrayal of her emotion, helped her to a
desperate effort. She pinched her own hand to overcome her tremor,
and said, in a tone of scorn -
'I ought to be very much obliged to you for giving me your confidence
so freely.'
'Ah! now you are offended with me, and disgusted with me. I expected
it would be so. A woman doesn't like a man who tells her the truth.'
'I think you boast a little too much of your truth-telling, Mr Holt,' said
Esther, flashing out at last. 'That virtue is apt to be easy to people
when they only wound others and not themselves. Telling the truth
often means no more than taking a liberty.'
'Yes, I suppose I should have been taking a liberty if I had tried to
drag you back by the skirt when I saw you running into a pit.'
'You should really found a sect. Preaching is your vocation. It is a pity
you should ever have an audience of only one.'
'I see; I have made a fool of myself. I thought you had a more generous
mind - that you might be kindled to a better ambition. But I've set
your vanity aflame - nothing else. I'm going. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye,' said Esther, not looking at him. He did not open the door
immediately. He seemed to be adju sting his cap and pulling it down.
Esther longed to be able to throw a lasso round him and compel him
to stay, that she might say what she chose to him; her very anger
made this departure irritating, especially as he had the last word, and
that a very bitter one. But soon the latch was lifted and the door
closed behind him. She ran up to her bedroom and burst into tears.
Poor maiden! There was a strange contradiction of impulses in her
mind in those first moments. She could not bear that Felix should not
respect her, yet she could not bear that he should see her bend before
his denunciation. She revolted agains t his assumption of superiority,
yet she felt herself in a new kind of subjection to him. He was ill-bred,
he was rude, he had taken an unwarrantable liberty; yet his indignant
words were a tribute to her: he thought she was worth more pains
than the women of whom he took no notice. It was excessively
impertinent in him to tell her of his resolving not to love - not to marry
- as if she cared about that; as if he thought himself likely to inspire
an affection that would incline any woman to marry him after such
eccentric steps as he had taken. Had he ever for a moment imagined
that she had thought of him in the light of a man who would make
love to her? . . . But did he love her one little bit, and was that the
reason why he wanted her to change? Esther felt less angry at that
form of freedom; though she was quite sure that she did not love him,
and that she could never love any one who was so much of a
pedagogue and a master, to say nothing of his oddities. But he wanted
her to change. For the first time in her life Esther felt herself seriously
shaken in her self-contentment. She knew there was a mind to which
she appeared trivial, narrow, selfish. Every word Felix had said to her
seemed to have burnt itself into her memory. She felt as if she should
for evermore be haunted by self-cri ticism, and never do anything to
satisfy those fancies on which she had simply piqued herself before
without being dogged by inward questions. Her father's desire for her
conversion had never moved her; she saw that he adored her all the
while, and he never checked her unregenerate acts as if they degraded
her on earth, but only mourned over them as unfitting her for heaven.
Unfitness for heaven (spoken of as 'Jerusalem' and 'glory'), the prayers
of a good little father, whose thoughts and motives seemed to her like
the Life of Dr Doddridge, which she was content to leave unread, did
not attack her self-respect and self-satisfaction. But now she had been
stung - stung even into a new consciousness concerning her father.
Was it true that his life was so much worthier than her own? She
could not change for anything Felix said, but she told herself he was
mistaken if he supposed her incapable of generous thoughts.
She heard her father coming into the house. She dried her tears, tried
to recover herself hurriedly, and went down to him.
'You want your tea, father; how your forehead burns!' she said gently,
kissing his brow, and then putting her cool hand on it.
Mr Lyon felt a little surprise; such spontaneous tenderness was not
quite common with her; it reminded him of her mother.
'My sweet child,' he said grateful ly, thinking with wonder of the
treasures still left in our fallen nature.
Chapter 11
Truth is the precious harvest of the earth. But once, when harvest
waved upon a land, The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar,
Locusts, and all the swarming foul-born broods, Fastened upon it with
swift, greedy jaws, And turned the harvest into pestilence, Until men
said, What profits it to sow?
FELIX was going to Sproxton that Sunday afternoon. He always
enjoyed his walk to that out-lying hamlet; it took him (by a short cut)
through a corner of Sir Maximus De barry's park; then across a piece
of common, broken here and there into red ridges below dark masses
of furze; and for the rest of the way alongside the canal, where the
Sunday peacefulness that seemed to rest on the bordering meadows
and pastures was hardly broken if a horse pulled into sight along the
towing-path, and a boat, with a littl e curl of blue smoke issuing from
its tin chimney, came slowly gliding behind. Felix retained something
of his boyish impression that the da ys in a canal-boat were all like
Sundays; but the horse, if it had been put to him, would probably
have preferred a more Judaic or Scotch rigour with regard to canal-
boats, or at least that the Sunday towing should be done by asses, as
a lower order.
This canal was only a branch of the grand trunk, and ended among
the coal-pits, where Felix, crossi ng a network of black tram-roads,
soon came to his destination - th at public institute of Sproxton,
known to its frequenters chiefly as Chubb's, but less familiarly as the
Sugar Loaf or the New Pits; this last being the name for the more
modern and lively nucleus of the Sproxton hamlet. The other nucleus,
known as the Old Pits, also supp orted its 'public,' but it had
something of the forlorn air of an abandoned capital; and the
company at the Blue Cow was of an inferior kind - equal, of course, in
the fundamental attributes of humanity, such as desire for beer, but
not equal in ability to pay for it.
When Felix arrived, the great Chubb was standing at the door. Mr
Chubb was a remarkable publican; none of your stock Bonifaces, red,
bloated, jolly, and joking. He was thin and sallow, and was never, as
his constant guests observed, seen to be the worse (or the better) for
liquor; indeed, as among soldiers an eminent general was held to have
a charmed life, Chubb was held by the members of the Benefit Club to
have a charmed sobriety, a vigilance over his own interest that
resisted all narcotics. His very dreams, as stated by himself, had a
method in them beyond the waking thoughts of other men. Pharaoh's
dream, he observed, was nothing to them; and, as lying so much out
of ordinary experience, they were held particularly suitable for
narration on Sunday evenings, when the listening colliers, well
washed and in their best coats, shook their heads with a sense of that
peculiar edification which belongs to the inexplicable. Mr Chubb's
reasons for becoming landlord of th e Sugar Loaf were founded on the
severest calculation. Having an active mind, and being averse to
bodily labour, he had thoroughly considered what calling would yield
him the best livelihood with the least possible exertion, and in that
sort of line he had seen that a 'public' amongst miners who earned
high wages was a fine opening. He had prospered according to the
merits of such judicious calculat ion, was already a forty-shilling
freeholder, and was conscious of a vote for the county. He was not one
of those mean-spirited men who found the franchise embarrassing,
and would rather have been without it: he regarded his vote as part of
his investment, and meant to make the best of it. He called himself a
straightforward man, and at suit able moments expressed his views
freely; in fact, he was known to have one fundamental division for all
opinion - 'my idee' and 'humbug'.
When Felix approached, Mr Chubb wa s standing, as usual, with his
hands nervously busy in his pocket s, his eyes glancing round with a
detective expression at the black landscape, and his lipless mouth
compressed yet in constant movement. On a superficial view it might
be supposed that so eager-seeming a personality was unsuited to the
publican's business; but in fact it was a great provocative to drinking.
Like the shrill biting talk of a vixenish wife, it would have compelled
you to 'take a little something' by way of dulling your sensibility.
Hitherto, notwithstanding Felix drank so little ale, the publican had
treated him with high civility. The coming election was a great
opportunity for applying his politica l 'idee,' which was, that society
existed for the sake of the indivi dual, and that the name of that
individual was Chubb. Now, fr om a conjunction of absurd
circumstances inconsistent with that idea, it happened that Sproxton
had been hitherto somewhat neglected in the canvass. The head
member of the company that worked the mines was Mr Peter Garstin,
and the same company received the rent for the Sugar Loaf. Hence, as
the person who had the most power of annoying Mr Chubb, and being
of detriment to him, Mr Garstin was naturally the candidate for whom
he had reserved his vote. But where there is this intention of
ultimately gratifying a gentleman by voting for him in an open British
manner on the day of the poll, a man, whether publican or pharisee
(Mr Chubb used this generic classification of mankind as one that was
sanctioned by Scripture), is all th e freer in his relations with those
deluded persons who take him for what he is not, and imagine him to
be a waverer. But for some time opportunity had seemed barren.
There were but three dubious votes besides Mr Chubb's in the small
district of which the Sugar Loaf could be regarded as the centre of
intelligence and inspiration: the coll iers, of course, had no votes, and
did not need political conversion; consequently, the interests of
Sproxton had only been tacitly cherished in the breasts of candidates.
But ever since it had been known that a Radical candidate was in the
field, that in consequences of this Mr Debarry had coalesced with Mr
Garstin, and that Sir James Clement, the poor baronet, had
retired, Mr Chubb had been occupied with the most ingenious mental
combinations in order to ascertain what possibilities of profit to the
Sugar Loaf might lie in this altered state of the canvass.
He had a cousin in another county, also a publican, but in a larger
way, and resident in a borough, and from him Mr Chubb had
gathered more detailed political information than he could find in the
Loamshire newspapers. He was now enlightened enough to know that
there was a way of using voteless miners and navvies at nominations
and elections. He approved of that; it entered into his political 'idee';
and indeed he would have been fo r extending the franchise to this
class - at least in Sproxton. If an y one had observed that you must
draw a line somewhere, Mr Chubb would have concurred at once, and
would have given permission to draw it at a radius of two miles from
his own tap.
From the first Sunday evening when Felix had appeared at the Sugar
Loaf, Mr Chubb had made up his mind that this 'cute man who kept
himself sober was an electioneering agent. That he was hired for some
purpose or other there was not a do ubt; a man didn't come and drink
nothing without a good reason. In proportion as Felix's purpose was
not obvious to Chubb's mind, it must be deep; and this growing
conviction had even led the publican on the last Sunday evening
privately to urge his mysterious visitor to let a little alc be chalked up
for him - it was of no consequence. Felix knew his man, and had
taken care not to betray too soon that his real object was so to win the
ear of the best fellows about him as to induce them to meet him on a
Saturday evening in the room where Mr Lyon, or one of his deacons,
habitually held his Wednesday preachings. Only women and children,
three old men, a journeyman ta ilor, and a consumptive youth,
attended those preachings; not a collier had been won from the strong
ale of the Sugar Loaf, not even a na vvy from the muddier drink of the
Blue Cow. Felix was sanguine; he saw some pleasant faces among the
miners when they were washed on Sundays; they might be taught to
spend their wages better. At all events, he was going to try: he had
great confidence in his powers of appeal, and it was quite true that he
never spoke without arresting attention. There was nothing better
than a dame school in the hamlet; he thought that if he could move
the fathers, whose blackened week -day persons and flannel caps,
ornamented with tallow candles by way of plume, were a badge of
hard labour for which he had a mo re sympathetic fibre than for any
ribbon in the button-hole - if he could move these men to save
something from their drink and pay a schoolmaster for their boys, a
greater service would be done them than if Mr Garstin and his
company were persuaded to establish a school.
'I'll lay hold of them by their fatherhood,' said Felix; 'I'll take one of
their little fellows and set him in the midst. Till they can show there's
something they love better than swilling themselves with ale,
extension of the suffrage can never mean anything for them but
extension of boozing. One must begin somewhere: I'll begin at what is
under my nose. I'll begin at Sproxt on. That's what a man would do if
he had a red-hot superstition. Can't one work for sober truth as hard
as for megrims?'
Felix Holt had his illusions, like other young men, though they were
not of a fashionable sort; referring neither to the impression his
costume and horsemanship might make on beholders, nor to the ease
with which he would pay the Jews when he gave a loose to his talents
and applied himself to work. He had fixed his choice on a certain Mike
Brindle (not that Brindle was his real name - each collier had his
sobriquet) as the man whom he would induce to walk part of the way
home with him this very evening, and get to invite some of his
comrades for the next Saturday. Brindle was one of the head miners;
he had a bright good-natured face, and had given especial attention to
certain performances with a magnet which Felix carried in his pocket.
Mr Chubb, who had also his illusi ons, smiled graciously as the
enigmatic customer came up to the door-step.
'Well, sir, Sunday seems to be your day: I begin to look for you on a
Sunday now.'
'Yes, I'm a working man; Sunday is my holiday,' said Felix, pausing at
the door since the host seemed to expect this.
'Ah, sir, there's many ways of workin g. I look at it you're one of those
as work with your brains. That's what I do myself.'
'One may do a good deal of that and work with one's hands too.'
'Ah, sir,' said Mr Chubb, with a cer tain bitterness in his smile, 'I've
that sort of head that I've often wished I was stupider. I use things up,
sir; I see into things a deal too quick. I eat my dinner, as you may say,
at breakfast-time. That's why I hardly ever smoke a pipe. No sooner do
I stick a pipe in my mouth than I puff and puff till it's gone before
other folks are well lit; and then, where am I? I might as well have let
it alone. In this world it's better not to be too quick. But you know
what it is, sir.'
'Not I,' said Felix, rubbing the back of his head, with a grimace. 'I
generally feel myself rather a blockhead. This world's a largish place,
and I haven't turned everything inside out yet.'
'Ah, that's your deepness. I think we understand one another. And
about this here election, I lay two to one we should agree if we was to
come to talk about it.'
'Ah ! ' said Felix, with an air of caution.
'You're none of a Tory, eh, sir? You won't go to vote for Debarry? That
was what I said at the very first go-off. Says I, he's no Tory. I think I
was right, sir - eh?'
'Certainly; I'm no Tory.'
'No, no, you don't catch me wrong in a hurry. Well, between you and
me, I care no more for the Debarrys than I care for Johnny Groats. I
live on none o' their land, and not a pot's worth did they ever send to
the Sugar Loaf. I'm not frightened at the Debarrys: there's no man
more independent than me. I'll plump or I'll split for them as treat me
the handsomest and are the most of what I call gentlemen; that's my
idee. And in the way of hacting for any man, them are fools that don't
employ me.'
We mortals sometimes cut a pitiable figure in our attempts at display.
We may be sure of our own merits, ye t fatally ignorant of the point of
view from which we are regarded by our neighbour. Our fine patterns
in tattooing may be far from throwing him into a swoon of admiration,
though we turn ourselves all round to show them. Thus it was with
Mr Chubb.
'Yes,' said Felix, dryly; 'I should think there are some sorts of work for
which you are just fitted.'
'Ah, you see that? Well, we understa nd one another. You're no Tory;
no more am I. And if I'd got four hands to show at a nomination, the
Debarry's shouldn't have one of 'em. My idee is, there's a deal too
much of their scutchins and their moniments in Treby church. What's
their scutchins mean? They're a sign with little liquor behind 'em;
that's how I take it. There's nobody can give account of 'em as I ever
heard.'
Mr Chubb was hindered from further explaining his views as to the
historical element in society by the arrival of new guests, who
approached in two groups. The foremost group consisted of well-
known colliers, in their good Sunday beavers and coloured
handkerchiefs serving as cravats, with the long ends floating. The
second group was a more unusual one, and caused Mr Chubb to
compress his mouth and agitate the muscles about it in rather an
excited manner.
First came a smartly-dressed pe rsonage on horseback, with a
conspicuous expansive shirt-front and figured satin stock. He was a
stout man, and gave a strong sense of broadcloth. A wild idea shot
through Mr Chubb's brain: could this grand visitor be Harold
Transome? Excuse him: he had been given to understand by his
cousin from the distant borough that a Radical candidate in the
condescension of canvassing had even gone the length of eating
bread-and-treacle with the children of an honest freeman, and
declaring his preference for that si mple fare. Mr Chubb's notion of a
Radical was that he was a new and agreeable kind of lick-spittle who
fawned on the poor instead of on the rich, and so was likely to send
customers to a 'public'; so that he argued well enough from the
premises at his command.
The mounted man of broadcloth had followers: several shabby-looking
men, and Sproxton boys of all sizes, whose curiosity had been
stimulated by unexpected largesse. A stranger on horseback
scattering halfpence on a Sunday was so unprecedented that there
was no knowing what he might do next; and the smallest hindmost
fellows in sealskin caps were not without hope that an entirely new
order of things had set in.
Every one waited outside for the stranger to dismount, and Mr Chubb
advanced to take the bridle.
'Well, Mr Chubb,' were the first words when the great man was safely
out of the saddle, 'I've often heard of your fine tap, and I'm come to
taste it.'
'Walk in, sir - pray walk in,' said Mr Chubb, giving the horse to the
stable-boy. 'I shall be proud to draw for you. If anybody's been
praising me, I think my ale will back him.'
All entered in the rear of the stranger except the boys, who peeped in
at the window.
'Won't you please to walk into the parlour, sir?' said Chubb,
obsequiously.
'No, no, I'll sit down here. This is what I like to see,' said the stranger,
looking round at the colliers, who ey ed him rather shyly - 'a bright
hearth where working men can enjoy themselves. However, I'll step
into the other room for three minutes, just to speak half-a-dozen
words with you.'
Mr Chubb threw open the parlour door, and then stepping back, took
the opportunity of saying, in a low tone, to Felix, 'Do you know this
gentleman?'
'Not I; no.'
Mr Chubb's opinion of Felix Holt sank from that moment. The parlour
door was closed, but no one sat down or ordered beer.
'I say, master,' said Mike Brindle, going up to Felix, 'don't you think
that's one o' the 'lection men?'
'Very likely.'
'I heard a chap say they're up and down everywhere,' said Brindle;
'and now's the time, they say, when a man can get beer for nothing.'
'Ay, that's sin' the Reform,' said a big, red-whiskered man, called
Dredge. 'That's brought the 'lections and the drink into these parts;
for afore that, it was all kep up the Lord knows wheer.'
'Well, but the Reform's niver come anigh Sprox'on,' said a grey-haired
but stalwart man called Old Sleck. 'I don't believe nothing about'n, I
don't.'
'Don't you?' said Brindle, with some contempt. 'Well, I do. There's
folks won't believe beyond the end o' their own pickaxes. You can't
drive nothing into 'em, not if you sp lit their skulls. I know for certain
sure, from a chap in the cartin' way, as he's got money and drink too,
only for hollering. Eh, master, what do you say?' Brindle ended,
turning with some deference to Felix.
'Should you like to know all about the Reform?' said Felix, using his
opportunity. 'If you would, I can tell you.'
'Ay, ay - tell's; you know, I'll be bound,' said several voices at once.
'Ah, but it will take some little time. And we must be quiet. The
cleverest of you - those who are looked up to in the club - must come
and meet me at Peggy Button's cottage next Saturday, at seven
o'clock, after dark. And, Brindle, you must bring that little yellow-
haired lad of yours. And anybody that's got a little boy - a very little
fellow, who won't understand what is said - may bring him. But you
must keep it close, you know. We don't want fools there. But
everybody who hears me may come. I shall be at Peggy Button's.'
'Why, that's where the Wednesday preachin' is,' said Dredge. 'I've been
aforced to give my wife a black eye to hinder her from going to the
preachin'. Lors-a-massy, she thinks she knows better nor me, and I
can't make head nor tail of her talk.'
'Why can't you let the woman alone?' said Brindle, with some disgust.
'I'd be ashamed to beat a poor crawling thing 'cause she likes
preaching.'
'No more I did beat her afore, not if she scrat' me,' said Dredge, in
vindication; 'but if she jabbers at me, I can't abide it. Howsomever, I'll
bring my Jack to Peggy's o' Saturday. His mother shall wash him. He
is but four year old, and he'll swea r and square at me a good un, if I
set him on.'
'There you go blatherin',' said Brindle, intending a mild rebuke.
This dialogue, which was in danger of becoming too personal, was
interrupted by the reopening of the parlour door, and the
reappearance of the impressive stranger with Mr Chubb, whose
countenance seemed unusually radiant.
'Sit you down here, Mr Johnson,' said Chubb, moving an arm-chair.
'This gentleman is kind enough to treat the company,' he added,
looking round, 'and what's more, he'll take a cup with 'em; and I think
there's no man but what'll say that's a honour.'
The company had nothing equivalent to a 'hear, hear', at command,
but they perhaps felt the more, as they seated themselves with an
expectation unvented by utterance. There was a general satisfactory
sense that the hitherto shadowy Reform had at length come to
Sproxton in a good round shape, wi th broadcloth and pockets. Felix
did not intend to accept the treating, but he chose to stay and hear,
taking his pint as usual.
'Capital ale, capital ale,' said Mr Johnson, as he set down his glass,
speaking in a quick, smooth treble. 'Now,' he went on, with a certain
pathos in his voice, looking at Mr Chubb, who sat opposite, 'there's
some satisfaction to me in finding an establishment like this at the
Pits. For what would higher wage s do for the working man if he
couldn't get a good article for his money? Why, gentlemen' - here he
looked round - 'I've been into ale-houses where I've seen a fine fellow
of a miner or a stone-cutter come in and have to lay down money for
beer that I should be sorry to give to my pigs ! ' Here Mr Johnson
leaned forward with squared elbows, hands placed on his knees, and
a defiant shake of the head.
'Aw, like at the Blue Cow,' fell in the irrepressible Dredge, in a deep
bass; but he was rebuked by a severe nudge from Brindle.
'Yes, yes, you know what it is, my friend,' said Mr Johnson, looking at
Dredge, and restoring his self-satisfaction. 'But it won't last much
longer, that's one good thing. Bad liquor will be swept away with other
bad articles. Trade will prosper - and what's trade now without steam?
and what is steam without coal? And mark you this, gentlemen -
there's no man and no government can make coal.'
A brief loud 'Haw, haw,' showed that this fact was appreciated.
'Nor freeston' nayther,' said a wide-mouthed wiry man called Gills,
who wished for an exhaustive treatment of the subject, being a stone-
cutter.
'Nor freestone, as you say; else, I think, if coal could be made
aboveground, honest fellows who are the pith of our population would
not have to bend their backs and sweat in a pit six days out of the
seven. No, no: I say, as this country prospers it has more and more
need of you, sirs. It can do without a pack of lazy lords and ladies, but
it can never do without brave colliers. And the country will prosper. I
pledge you my word, sirs, this co untry will rise to the tip-top of
everything, and there isn't a man in it but what shall have his joint in
the pot, and his spare money jingling in his pocket, if we only exert
ourselves to send the right men to parliament - men who will speak
up for the collier, and the stone-cu tter, and the navvy' (Mr Johnson
waved his hand liberally), 'and will stand no nonsense. This is a crisis,
and we must exert ourselves. We've got Reform, gentlemen, but now
the thing is to make Reform work. It's a crisis - I pledge you my word
it's a crisis.'
Mr Johnson threw himself back as if from the concussion of that great
noun. He did not suppose that one of his audience knew what a crisis
meant; but he had large experience in the effect of uncomprehended
words; and in this case the colliers were thrown into a state of
conviction concerning they did not know what, which was a fine
preparation for 'hitting out', or any other act carrying a due sequence
to such a conviction.
Felix felt himself in danger of getting into a rage. There is hardly any
mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our
own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling. He began
to feel the sharp lower edge of his tin pint-measure, and to think it a
tempting missile.
Mr Johnson certainly had some qualif ications as an orator. After this
impressive pause he leaned forward again, and said, in a lowered
tone, looking round -
'I think you all know the good news.'
There was a movement of shoe-soles on the quarried floor, and a
scrape of some chair legs, but no other answer.
'The good news I mean is, that a first-rate man, Mr Transome of
Transome Court, has offered himself to represent you in parliament,
sirs. I say you in particular, for what he has at heart is the welfare of
the working man - of the brave fellows that wield the pickaxe, and the
saw, and the hammer. He's rich - has more money than Garstin - but
he doesn't want to keep it to himself. What he wants is, to make a
good use of it, gentlemen. He's come back from foreign parts with his
pockets full of gold. He could buy up the Debarry's if they were worth
buying, but he's got something better to do with his money. He means
to use it for the good of the working men in these parts. I know there
are some men who put up for parliament and talk a little too big. They
may say they want to befriend the colliers, for example. But I should
like to put a question to them. I should like to ask them, ‘What
colliers?’ There are colliers up at Newcastle, and there are colliers
down in Wales. Will it do any good to honest Tom, who is hungry in
Sproxton, to hear that Jack at Newcastle has his bellyful of beef and
pudding?'
'It ought to do him good,' Felix burst in, with his loud abrupt voice, in
odd contrast with glib Mr Johnson's. 'If he knows it's a bad thing to be
hungry and not have enough to eat, he ought to be glad that another
fellow, who is not idle, is not suffering in the same way.'
Every one was startled. The audience was much impressed with the
grandeur, the knowledge, and the power of Mr Johnson. His brilliant
promises confirmed the impression that Reform had at length reached
the New Pits; and Reform, if it were good for anything, must at last
resolve itself into spare money - meaning 'sport' and drink, and
keeping away from work for several days in the week. These 'brave'
men of Sproxton liked Felix as one of themselves, only much more
knowing - as a working man who ha d seen many distant parts, but
who must be very poor, since he never drank more than a pint or so.
They were quite inclined to hear what he had got to say on another
occasion, but they were rather irritated by his interruption at the
present moment. Mr Johnson was annoyed, but he spoke with the
same glib quietness as before, though with an expression of contempt.
'I call it a poor-spirited thing to take up a man's straight-forward
words and twist them. What I meant to say was plain enough - that no
man can be saved from starving by looking on while others eat. I think
that's common sense, eh, sirs?'
There was again an approving 'Haw, haw.' To hear anything said, and
understand it, was a stimulus that had the effect of wit. Mr Chubb
cast a suspicious and viperous glan ce at Felix, who felt that he had
been a simpleton for his pains.
'Well, then,' continued Mr Johnson, 'I suppose I may go on. But if
there is any one here better able to inform the company than I am, I
give way - I give way.'
'Sir,' said Mr Chubb, magisterially, 'no man shall take the words out
of your mouth in this house. And, ' he added, looking pointedly at
Felix, 'company that's got no more orders to give, and wants to turn
up rusty to them that has, had bett er be making room than filling it.
Love an' 'armony's the word on our club's flag, an' love an' 'armony's
the meaning of ‘The Sugar Loaf, William Chubb.’ Folks of a different
mind had better seek another house of call.'
'Very good,' said Felix, laying down his money and taking his cap, 'I'm
going.' He saw clearly enough that if he said more, there would be a
disturbance which could have no desirable end.
When the door had closed behind him, Mr Johnson said, 'What is that
person's name?'
'Does anybody know it?' said Mr Chubb.
A few noes were heard.
'I've heard him speak like a downri ght Reformer, else I should have
looked a little sharper after him. But you may see he's nothing
partic'lar.'
'It looks rather bad that no one knows his name,' said Mr Johnson.
'He's most likely a Tory in disguise - a Tory spy. You must be careful,
sirs, of men who come to you and say they're Radicals, and yet do
nothing for you. They'll stuff you wi th words - no lack of words - but
words are wind. Now, a man like Transome comes forward and says to
the working men of this country: ‘Here I am, ready to serve you and to
speak for you in parliament, and to get the laws made all right for you;
and in the meanwhile, if there's any of you who are my neighbours
who want a day's holiday, or a cup to drink with friends, or a copy of
the king's likeness - why, I'm your man. I'm not a paper handbill - all
words and no substance - nor a man with land and nothing else; I've
got bags of gold as well as land.’ I think you know what I mean by the
king's likeness?'
Here Mr Johnson took a half-crown out of his pocket and held the
head towards the company.
'Well, sirs, there are some men who like to keep this pretty picture a
great deal too much to themselves. I don't know whether I'm right, but
I think I've heard of such a one not a hundred miles from here. I think
his name was Spratt, and he managed some company's coal-pits.'
'Haw, haw ! Spratt - Spratt's his name,' was rolled forth to an
accompaniment of scraping shoe-soles.
'A screwing fellow, by what I unders tand - a domineering fellow - who
would expect men to do as he liked without paying them for it. I think
there's not an honest man who woul dn't like to disappoint such an
upstart.'
There was a murmur which was interp reted by Mr Chubb. 'I'll answer
for 'em, sir.'
'Now, listen to me. Here's Garstin: he's one of the company you work
under. What's Garstin to you? who sees him? and when they do see
him they see a thin miserly fellow who keeps his pockets buttoned. He
calls himself a Whig, yet he'll split vo tes with a Tory - he'll drive with
the Debarrys. Now, gentlemen, if I said I'd got a vote, and anybody
asked me what I should do with it, I should say, ‘I'll plump for
Transome’. You've got no votes, and that's a shame. But you will have
some day, if such men as Transome are returned; and then you'll be
on a level with the first gentleman in the land, and if he wants to sit in
Parliament, he must take off his hat and ask your leave. But though
you haven't got a vote you can give a cheer for the right man, and
Transome's not a man like Garstin; if you lost a day's wages by giving
a cheer for Transome, he'll make you amends. That's the way a man
who has no vote can yet serve himself and his country: he can lift up
his hand and shout ‘Transome for ev er’ - ‘hurray for Transome’. Let
the working men - let colliers and navvies and stone-cutters, who
between you and me have a good deal too much the worst of it, as
things are now - let them join together and give their hands and voices
for the right man, and they'll make the great people shake in their
shoes a little; and when you shout for Transome, remember you shout
for more wages, and more of your rights, and you shout to get rid of
rats and sprats and such small an imals, who are the tools the rich
make use of to squeeze the blood out of the poor man.'
'I wish there'd be a row - I'd pommel him,' said Dredge, who was
generally felt to be speaking to the question.
'No, no, my friend - there you're a little wrong. No pommelling - no
striking first. There you have the law and the constable against you. A
little rolling in the dust and knocking hats off, a little pelting with soft
things that'll stick and not bruise - all that doesn't spoil the fun. If a
man is to speak when you don't like to hear him, it is but fair you
should give him something he doesn't like in return. And the same if
he's got a vote and doesn't use it for the good of the country; I see no
harm in splitting his coat in a quiet way. A man must be taught
what's right if he doesn't know it. But no kicks, no knocking down, no
pommelling.'
'It 'ud be good fun, though, if so-be,' said Old Sleck, allowing himself
an imaginative pleasure.
'Well, well, if a Spratt wants you to say Garstin, it's some pleasure to
think you can say Transome. Now, my notion is this. You are men
who can put two and two together - I don't know a more solid lot of
fellows than you are; and what I say is, let the honest men in this
country who've got no vote show themselves in a body when they have
the chance. Why, sirs, for every Tory sneak that's got a vote, there's
fifty-five fellows who must stand by and be expected to hold their
tongues. But I say, let 'em hiss the sneaks, let 'em groan at the
sneaks, and the sneaks will be ashamed of themselves. The men
who've got votes don't know how to use them. There's many a fool with
a vote, who is not sure in his mind whether he shall poll, say for
Debarry, or Garstin, or Transome - whether he'll plump or whether
he'll split; a straw will turn him. Let him know your mind if he doesn't
know his own. What's the reason Debarry gets returned? Because
people are frightened at the Debarr ys. What's that to you? You don't
care for the Debarrys. If people are frightened at the Tories, we'll turn
round and frighten them. You know what a Tory is - one who wants to
drive the working men as he'd drive cattle. That's what a Tory is; and
a Whig is no better, if he's like Garstin. A Whig wants to knock the
Tory down and get the whip, that's all. But Transome's neither Whig
nor Tory; he's the working man's friend, the collier's friend, the friend
of the honest navvy. And if he gets into Parliament, let me tell you, it
will be the better for you. I don't say it will be the better for
overlookers and screws, and rats and sprats; but it will be the better
for every good fellow who takes his pot at the Sugar Loaf.'
Mr Johnson's exertions for the political education of the Sproxton men
did not stop here, which was the more disinterested in him as he did
not expect to see them again, and could only set on foot an
organisation by which their, inst ruction could be continued without
him. In this he was quite successful. A man known among the
'butties' as Pack, who had already been mentioned by Mr Chubb,
presently joined the party, and had a private audience of Mr Johnson,
that he might be instituted as the 'shepherd' of this new flock.
'That's a right down genelman,' said Pack, as he took the seat vacated
by the orator, who had ridden away.
'What's his trade, think you?' said Gills, the wiry stone-cutter.
'Trade?' said Mr Chubb. 'He's one of the top-sawyers of the country.
He works with his head, you may see that.'
'Let's have our pipes, then,' said Old Sleck; 'I'm pretty well tired o'
jaw.'
'So am I,' said Dredge. 'It's wriggling work - like follering a stoat. It
makes a man dry. I'd as lief hear preaching, on'y there's nought to be
got by't. I shouldn't know which end I stood on if it wasn't for the
tickets and the treatin'.'
Chapter 12
'Oh, sir, 'twas that mixture of spite and over-fed merriment which
passes for humour with the vulgar. In their fun they have much
resemblance to a turkey-cock. It has a cruel beak, and a silly iteration
of ugly sounds; it spreads its tail in self-glorification, but shows you
the wrong side of that ornament - liking admiration, but knowing not
what is admirable.'
THIS Sunday evening, which promised to be so memorable in the
experience of the Sproxton mine rs, had its drama also for those
unsatisfactory objects to Mr Jo hnson's moral sense, the Debarrys.
Certain incidents occurring at Tr eby Manor caused an excitement
there which spread from the dining -room to the stables; but no one
underwent such agitating transitions of feeling as Mr Scales. At six
o'clock that superior butler was chuckling in triumph at having played
a fine and original practical joke on his rival Mr Christian. Some two
hours after that time, he was frightened, sorry, and even meek; he
was on the brink of a humiliating confession; his cheeks were almost
livid; his hair was flattened for want of due attention from his fingers;
and the fine roll of his whiskers, which was too firm to give way,
seemed only a sad reminiscence of past splendour and felicity. His
sorrow came about in this wise.
After service on that Sunday morning, Mr Philip Debarry had left the
rest of the family to go home in the carriage, and had remained at the
Rectory to lunch with his uncle Augustus, that he might consult him
touching some letters of importance. He had returned the letters to
his pocket-book but had not returned the book to his pocket, and he
finally walked away leaving the enclosure of private papers and bank-
notes on his uncle's escritoire. After his arrival at home he was
reminded of his omission, and immediately despatched Christian with
a note begging his uncle to seal up the pocket-book and send it by the
bearer. This commission, which wa s given between three and four
o'clock, happened to be very unwelcome to the courier. The fact was
that Mr Christian, who had been remarkable through life for that
power of adapting himself to circumstances which enables a man to
fall safely on all-fours in the mo st hurried expulsions and escapes,
was not exempt from bodily suffering - a circumstance to which there
is no known way of adapting one's self so as to be perfectly
comfortable under it, or to push it off on to other people's shoulders.
He did what he could: he took doses of opium when he had an access
of nervous pains, and he consoled himself as to future possibilities by
thinking that if the pains ever became intolerably frequent a
considerable increase in the dose might put an end to them
altogether. He was neither Cato nor Hamlet, and though he had
learned their soliloquies at his first boarding-school, he would
probably have increased his dose without reciting those masterpieces.
Next to the pain itself he disliked that any one should know of it:
defective health diminished a man's market value; he did not like to
be the object of the sort of pity he himself gave to a poor devil who was
forced to make a wry face or 'give in' altogether.
He had felt it expedient to take a slight dose this afternoon, and still
he was not altogether relieved at the time he set off to the rectory. On
returning with the valuable case safely deposited in his hind pocket he
felt increasing bodily uneasiness, and took another dose. Thinking it
likely that he looked rather pitiable, he chose not to proceed to the
house by the carriage-road. The servants often walked in the park on
a Sunday, and he wished to avoid any meeting. He would make a
circuit, get into the house privately, and after delivering his packet to
Mr Debarry, shut himself up till the ringing of the half-hour bell. But
when he reached an elbowed seat under some sycamores, he felt so ill
at ease that he yielded to the temptation of throwing himself on it to
rest a little. He looked at his watch: it was but five; he had done his
errand quickly hitherto, and Mr De barry had not urged haste. But in
less than ten minutes he was in a sound sleep. Certain conditions of
his system had determined a stronger effect than usual from the
opium.
As he had expected, there were servants strolling in the park, but they
did not all choose the most frequented part. Mr Scales, in pursuit of a
slight flirtation with the younger lady's-maid, had preferred a more
sequestered walk in the company of that agreeable nymph. And it
happened to be this pair, of all others, who alighted on the sleeping
Christian - a sight which at the very first moment caused Mr Scales a
vague pleasure as at an incident th at must lead to something clever
on his part. To play a trick, and make some one or other look foolish,
was held the most pointed form of wit throughout the back regions of
the Manor, and served as a constant substitute for theatrical
entertainment: what the farce wanted in costume or 'make up' it
gained in the reality of the mortification which excited the general
laughter. And lo ! here was the offensive, the exasperatingly cool and
superior, Christian caught compar atively helpless, with his head
hanging on his shoulder, and one coat-tail hanging out heavily below
the elbow of the rustic seat. It wa s this coat-tail which served as a
suggestion to Mr Scales's genius. Pu tting his finger up in warning to
Mrs Cherry, and saying, 'Hush - be quiet - I see a fine bit of fun' - he
took a knife from his pocket, stepped behind the unconscious
Christian, and quickly cut off the pendent coat-tail. Scales knew
nothing of the errand to the rectory; and as he noticed that there was
something in the pocket, thought it was probably a large cigar-case.
So much the better - he had no time to pause. He threw the coat-tail
as far as he could, and noticed that it fell among the elms under
which they had been walking. Then, beckoning to Mrs Cherry, he
hurried away with her towards the more open part of the park, not
daring to explode in laughter unt il it was safe from the chance of
waking the sleeper. And then the vision of the graceful well-appointed
Mr Christian, who sneered at Scales about his 'get-up', having to walk
back to the house with only one tail to his coat, was a source of so
much enjoyment to the butler, that the fair Cherry began to be quite
jealous of the joke. Still she admitted that it really was funny, tittered
intermittently, and pledged herself to secrecy. Mr Scales explained to
her that Christian would try to creep in unobserved, but that this
must be made impossible; and he re quested her to imagine the figure
this interloping fellow would cut when everybody was asking what had
happened. 'Hallo, Christian! where's your coat-tail?' would become a
proverb at the Manor, where jokes kept remarkably well without the
aid of salt; and Mr Christian's comb would be cut so effectually that it
would take a long time to grow again. Exit Scales, laughing, and
presenting a fine example of dramatic irony to any one in the secret of
Fate.
When Christian awoke, he was shocked to find himself in the twilight.
He started up, shook himself, miss ed something, and soon became
aware what it was he missed. He did not doubt that he had been
robbed, and he at once foresaw that the consequence would be highly
unpleasant. In no way could the cause of the accident be so
represented to Mr Philip Debarry as to prevent him from viewing his
hitherto unimpeachable factotum in a new and unfavourable light.
And though Mr Christian did not regard his present position as
brilliant, he did not see his way to anything better. A man nearly fifty
who is not always quite well is seldo m ardently hopeful: he is aware
that this is a world in which merit is often overlooked. With the idea of
robbery in full possession of his mind, to peer about and search in the
dimness, even if it had occurred to him, would have seemed a
preposterous waste of time and energy. He knew it was likely that Mr
Debarry's pocket-book had important and valuable contents, and that
he should deepen his offence by deferring his announcement of the
unfortunate fact. He hastened back to the house, relieved by the
obscurity from that mortification of his vanity on which the butler had
counted. Indeed, to Scales himself the affair had already begun to
appear less thoroughly jocose th an he had anticipated. For he
observed that Christia n's non-appearance before dinner had caused
Mr Debarry some consternation; and he gathered that the courier had
been sent on a commission to th e rectory. 'My uncle must have
detained him for some reason or other,' he heard Mr Philip say; 'but it
is odd. If he were less trusty about commissions, or had ever seemed
to drink too much, I should be uneasy.' Altogether the affair was not
taking the turn Mr Scales had intended. At last, when dinner had
been removed and the butler's chief duties were at an end, it was
understood that Christian had entered without his coat-tail, looking
serious and even agitated; that he had asked leave at once to speak to
Mr Debarry; and that he was even then in parley with the gentlemen
in the dining-room. Scales was in alarm; it must have been some
property of Mr Debarry's that had weighted the pocket. He took a
lantern, got a groom to accompany him with another lantern, and with
the utmost practicable speed reached the fatal spot in the park. He
searched under the elms - he was certain that the pocket had fallen
there - and he found the pocket; but he found it empty, and, in spite
of further search, did not find the contents, though he had at first
consoled himself with thinking that they had fallen out, and would be
lying not far off. He returned with the lanterns and the coat-tail and a
most uncomfortable consciousness in that great seat of a butler's
emotion, the stomach. He had no sooner re-entered than he was met
by Mrs Cherry, pale and anxious, who drew him aside to say that if he
didn't tell everything, she would; that the constables were to be sent
for; that there had been no end of bank-notes and letters and things
in Mr Debarry's pocket-book, whic h Christian was carrying in that
very pocket Scales had cut off; that the rector was sent for, the
constable was coming, and they shou ld all be hanged. Mr Scales's
own intellect was anything but clea r as to the possible issues. Crest-
fallen, and with the coal-tail in hi s hands as an attestation that he
was innocent of anything more than a joke, he went and made his
confession. His story relieved Christian a little, but did not relieve Mr
Debarry, who was more annoyed at the loss of the letters, and the
chance of their getting into hands that might make use of them, than
at the loss of the bank-notes. Nothing could be done for the present,
but that the rector, who was a magistrate, should instruct the
constables, and that the spot in th e park indicated by Scales should
again be carefully searched. This wa s done, but in vain; and many of
the family at the manor had disturbed sleep that night.
Chapter 13
'Give sorrow leave awhile, to tutor me
To this submission.' - Richard II.
MEANWHILE Felix Holt had been making his way back from Sproxton
to Treby in some irritation and bitterness of spirit. For a little while he
walked slowly along the direct road, hoping that Mr Johnson would
overtake him, in which case he would have the pleasure of quarrelling
with him, and telling him what he thought of his intentions in coming
to cant at the Sugar Loaf. But he presently checked himself in this
folly and turned off again towards th e canal, that he might avoid the
temptation of getting into a passion to no purpose.
'Where's the good,' he thought, 'of pulling at such a tangled skein as
this electioneering trickery? As long as three-fourths of the men in
this country see nothing in an election but self-interest, and nothing
in self-interest but some form of greed, one might as well try to purify
the proceedings of the fishes and sa y to a hungry cod-fish - ‘My good
friend, abstain; don't goggle your eyes so, or show such a stupid
gluttonous mouth, or think the little fishes are worth nothing except
in relation to your own inside.’ He'd be open to no argument short of
crimping him. I should get into a rage with this fellow, and perhaps
end by thrashing him. There's some reason in me as long as I keep my
temper, but my rash humour is drunkenness without wine. I
shouldn't wonder if he upsets all my plans with these colliers. Of
course he's going to treat them for the sake of getting up a posse at
the nomination and speechifyings. They'll drink double, and never
come near me on a Saturday evening. I don't know what sort of man
Transome really is. It's no use my speaking to anybody else, but if I
could get at him, he might put a veto on this thing. Though, when
once the men have been promised and set agoing, the mischief is
likely to be past mending. Hang th e Liberal cod-fish! I shouldn't have
minded so much if he'd been a Tory!'
Felix went along in the twilight struggling in this way with the
intricacies of life, which would certainly be greatly simplified if corrupt
practices were the invariable mark of wrong opinions. When he had
crossed the common and had entered the park, the overshadowing
trees deepened the grey gloom of the evening; it was useless to try and
keep the blind path, and he could only be careful that his steps
should be bent in the direction of the park-gate. He was striding along
rapidly now, whistling 'Bannockburn' in a subdued way as an
accompaniment to his inward di scussion, when something smooth
and soft on which his foot alighted arrested him with an unpleasant
startling sensation, and made him stoop to examine the object he was
treading on. He found it to be a large leather pocket-book swelled by
its contents, and fastened with a seal ed ribbon as well as a clasp. In
stooping he saw about a yard off something whitish and square lying
on the dark grass. This was an ornamental note-book of pale leather
stamped with gold. Apparently it had burst open in falling, and out of
the pocket, formed by the cover, there protruded a small gold chain
about four inches long, with various seals and other trifles attached to
it by a ring at the en d. Felix thrust the chai n back, and finding that
the clasp of the note-book was broken, he closed it and thrust it into
his side-pocket, walking along un der some annoyance that fortune
had made him the finder of articles belonging most probably to one of
the family at Treby Manor. He was much too proud a man to like any
contact with the aristocracy, and he could still less endure coming
within speech of their servants. Some plan must be devised by which
he could avoid carrying these things up to the Manor himself: he
thought at first of leaving them at the lodge, but he had a scruple
against placing property, of wh ich the ownership was after all
uncertain, in the hands of persons unknown to him. It was possible
that the large pocket-book contained papers of high importance, and
that it did not belong to any of the Debarry family. He resolved at last
to carry his findings to Mr Lyon, who would perhaps be good-natured
enough to save him from the necessary transactions with the people
at the Manor by undertaking those transactions himself. With this
determination he walked straight to Malthouse Yard, and waited
outside the chapel until the congregation was dispersing, when he
passed along the aisle to the vestry in order to speak to the minister in
private.
But Mr Lyon was not alone when Felix entered. Mr Nuttwood, the
grocer, who was one of the deacons, was complaining to him about
the obstinate demeanour of the singers, who had declined to change
the tunes in accordance with a change in the selection of hymns, and
had stretched short metre into long out of pure wilfulness and
defiance, irreverently adapting th e most sacred monosyllables to a
multitude of wandering quavers, arranged, it was to be feared, by
some musician who was inspired by conceit rather than by the true
spirit of psalmody.
'Come in, my friend,' said Mr Lyon, smiling at Felix, and then
continuing in a faint voice, while he wiped the perspiration from his
brow and bald crown, 'Brother Nuttwood, we must be content to carry
a thorn in our sides while the ne cessities of our imperfect state
demand that there should be a body set apart and called a choir,
whose special office it is to lead the singing, not because they are
more disposed to the devout uplifting of praise, but because they are
endowed with better vocal organs, and have attained more of the
musician's art. For all office, un less it be accompanied by peculiar
grace, becomes, as it were, a diseased organ, seeking to make itself
too much of a centre. Singers, specially so called, are, it must be
confessed, an anomaly among us who seek to reduce the church to its
primitive simplicity, and to cast away all that may obstruct the direct
communion of spirit with spirit.'
'They are so headstrong,' said Mr Nuttwood, in a tone of sad
perplexity, 'that if we dealt not warily with them, they might end in
dividing the church, even now that we have had the chapel enlarged.
Brother Kemp would side with them , and draw the half part of the
members after him. I cannot but think it a snare when a professing
Christian has a bass voice like Brother Kemp's. It makes him desire to
be heard of men; but the weaker song of the humble may have more
power in the ear of God.'
'Do you think it any better vanity to flatter yourself that God likes to
hear you, though men don't?' said Felix, with unwarrantable
bluntness.
The civil grocer was prepared to be scandalised by anything that came
from Felix. In common with many hearers in Malthouse Yard, he
already felt an objection to a young man who was notorious for having
interfered in a question of wholesa le and retail, which should have
been left to Providence. Old Mr Holt, being a church member, had
probably had 'leadings' which were more to be relied on than his son's
boasted knowledge. In any case, a little visceral disturbance and
inward chastisement to the consumers of questionable medicines
would tend less to obscure the divine glory than a show of punctilious
morality in one who was not a 'profe ssor'. Besides, how was it to be
known that the medicines would not be blessed, if taken with due
trust in a higher influence? A Christian must consider not the
medicines alone in their relation to our frail bodies (which are dust),
but the medicines with Omnipotence behind them. Hence a pious
vendor will look for 'leadings', and he is likely to find them in the
cessation of demand and the disproportion of expenses and returns.
The grocer was thus on his guard against the presumptuous
disputant.
'Mr Lyon may understand you, sir,' he replied. 'He seems to be fond of
your conversation. But you have too much of the pride of human
learning for me. I follow no new lights.'
'Then follow an old one,' said Felix, mischievously disposed towards a
sleek tradesman. 'Follow the light of the old-fashioned Presbyterians
that I've heard sing at Glasgow. The preacher gives out the psalm, and
then everybody sings a different tune, as it happens to turn up in
their throats. It's a domineering thing to set a tune and expect
everybody else to follow it. It's a denial of private judgement.'
'Hush, hush, my young friend,' said Mr Lyon, hurt by this levity,
which glanced at himself as well as at the deacon. 'Play not with
paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others
may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the
quality of things. 'Tis difficult enough to see our way and keep our
torch steady in this dim labyrinth: to whirl the torch and dazzle the
eyes of our fellow-seekers is a poor daring, and may end in total
darkness. You yourself are a lover of freedom, and a bold rebel against
usurping authority. But the right to rebellion is the right to seek a
higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness. Wherefore, I
beseech you, seem not to say that liberty is licence. And I apprehend -
though I am not endowed with an ear to seize those earthly
harmonies, which to some devout souls have seemed, as it were, the
broken echoes of the heavenly choir - I apprehend that there is a law
in music, disobedience whereunto would bring us in our singing to the
level of shrieking maniacs or howling beasts: so that herein we are
well instructed how true liberty can be nought but the transfer of
obedience from the will of one or of a few men to that will which is the
norm or rule for all men. And thou gh the transfer may sometimes be
but an erroneous direction of se arch, yet is the search good and
necessary to the ultimate finding. And even as in music, where all
obey and concur to one end, so that each has the joy of contributing
to a whole whereby he is ravished and lifted up into the courts of
heaven so will it be in that crowning time of the millennial reign, when
our daily prayer will be fulfilled, and one law shall be written on all
hearts, and be the very structure of all thought, and be the principle
of all action.
Tired, even exhausted, as the minister had been when Felix Holt
entered, the gathering excitement of speech gave more and more
energy to his voice and manner; he walked away from the vestry table,
he paused, and came back to it; he walked away again, then came
back, and ended with his deepest-toned largo, keeping his hands
clasped behind him, while his brown eyes were bright with the lasting
youthfulness of enthusiastic thought and love. But to any one who
had no share in the energies that were thrilling his little body, he
would have looked queer enough. No sooner had he finished his eager
speech, than he held out his hand to the deacon, and said, in his
former faint tone of fatigue -
'God be with you, brother. We shall meet to-morrow, and we will see
what can be done to subdue these refractory spirits.'
When the deacon was gone, Felix said, 'Forgive me, Mr Lyon; I was
wrong, and you are right.'
'Yes, yes, my friend; you have that ma rk of grace within you, that you
are ready to acknowledge the justice of a rebuke. Sit down; you have
something to say - some packet there.'
They sat down at a corner of the sm all table, and Felix drew the note-
book from his pocket to lay it down with the pocket-book, saying -
'I've had the ill-luck to be the finder of these things in the Debarrys'
Park. Most likely they belong to one of the family at the Manor, or to
some grandee who is staying there. I hate having anything to do with
such people. They'll think me a poor rascal, and offer me money. You
are a known man, and I thought you would be kind enough to relieve
me by taking charge of these things, and writing to Debarry, not
mentioning me, and asking him to send some one for them. I found
them on the grass in the park this evening about half-past seven, in
the corner we cross going to Sproxton.'
'Stay,' said Mr Lyon, 'this little book is open; we may venture to look in
it for some sign of ownership. There be others who possess property,
and might be crossing that end of the park, beside the Debarrys.'
As he lifted the note-book close to his eyes, the chain again slipped
out. He arrested it and held it in his hand, while he examined some
writing, which appeared to be a name on the inner leather. He looked
long, as if he were trying to de cipher something that was partly
rubbed out; and his hands began to tremble noticeably. He made a
movement in an agitated manner, as if he were going to examine the
chain and seals, which he held in his hand. But he checked himself,
closed his hand again, and rested it on the table, while with the other
hand he pressed sides of the note-book together.
Felix observed his agitation, and was much surprised; but with a
delicacy of which he was capable under all his abruptness, he said,
'You are overcome with fatigue, sir. I was thoughtless to tease you
with these matters at the end of Sunday, when you have been
preaching three sermons.'
Mr Lyon did not speak for a few moments, but at last he said -
'It is true. I am overcome. It was a name I saw - a name that called up
a past sorrow. Fear not; I will do what is needful with these things.
You may trust them to me.'
With trembling fingers he replaced the chain, and tied both the large
pocket-book and the note-book in hi s handkerchief. He was evidently
making a great effort over himself. But when he had gathered the knot
of the handkerchief in his hand, he said -
'Give me your arm to the door, my friend. I feel ill. Doubtless I am
over-wearied.'
The door was already open, and Lyddy was watching for her master's
return. Felix therefore said 'Good-night' and passed on, sure that this
was what Mr Lyon would prefer. The minister's supper of warm
porridge was ready by the kitchen-fire , where he always took it on a
Sunday evening, and afterwards smoked his weekly pipe up the broad
chimney - the one great relaxation he allowed himself. Smoking, he
considered, was a recreation of the tr availed spirit, which, if indulged
in, might endear this world to us by the ignoble bonds of mere
sensuous ease. Daily smoking might be lawful, but it was not
expedient. And in this Esther concurred with a doctrinal eagerness
that was unusual in her. It was her habit to go to her own room,
professedly to bed, very early on Sundays - immediately on her return
from chapel - that she might avoid her father's pipe. But this evening
she had remained at home, under a true plea of not feeling well; and
when she heard him enter, she ran out of the parlour to meet him.
'Father, you are ill,' she said, as he tottered to the wicker-bottomed
arm-chair, while Lyddy stood by, shaking her head.
'No, my dear,' he answered feebly, as she took off his hat and looked
in his face inquiringly; 'I am weary.'
'Let me lay these things down for you,' said Esther, touching the
bundle in the handkerchief.
'No; they are matters which I have to examine,' he said, laying them
on the table, and putting his arm across them. 'Go you to bed, Lyddy.'
'Not me, sir. If ever a man looked as if he was struck with death, it's
you, this very night as here is.'
'Nonsense, Lyddy,' said Esther angrily. 'Go to bed when my father
desires it. I will stay with him.'
Lyddy was electrified by surprise at this new behaviour of Miss
Esther's. She took her candle silently and went.
'Go you too, my dear,' said Mr Lyon, tenderly, giving his hand to
Esther, when Lyddy was gone. 'It is your wont to go early. Why are
you up?'
'Let me lift your porridge from before the fire, and stay with you,
father. You think I'm so naughty that I don't like doing anything for
you,' said Esther, smiling rather sadly at him.
'Child, what has happened? you have become the image of your
mother to-night,' said the minister, in a loud whisper. The tears came
and relieved him, while Esther, who had stooped to lift the porridge
from the fender, paused on one knee and looked up at him. 'She was
very good to you?' asked Esther, softly.
'Yes, dear. She did not reject my affection. She thought not scorn of
my love. She would have forgiven me, if I had erred against her, from
very tenderness. Could you forgive me, child?'
'Father, I have not been good to you; but I will be, I will be,' said
Esther, laying her head on his knee.
He kissed her head. 'Go to bed, my dear; I would be alone.'
When Esther was lying down that night, she felt as if the little
incidents between herself and her father on this Sunday had made it
an epoch. Very slight words and deeds may have a sacramental
efficacy, if we can cast our self-lo ve behind us, in order to say or do
them. And it has been well believed through many ages that the
beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life; that the mind
which sees itself blameless may be called dead in trespasses - in
trespasses on the love of others, in trespasses on their weakness, in
trespasses on all those great claims which are the image of our own
need.
But Esther persisted in assuring herself that she was not bending to
any criticism from Felix. She was full of resentment against his
rudeness, and yet more against his too harsh conception of her
character. She was determined to keep as much at a distance from
him as possible.
Chapter 14
This man's metallic; at a sudden blow
His soul rings hard. I cannot lay my palm,
Trembling with life, upon that jointed brass.
I shudder at the cold unanswering touch;
But if it press me in response, I'm bruised.
THE next morning, when the Debarrys, including the rector, who had
ridden over to the Manor early, were still seated at breakfast,
Christian came in with a letter, sayi ng that it had been brought by a
man employed at the chapel in Malthouse Yard, who had been
ordered by the minister to use aLi speed and care in the delivery. The
letter was addressed to Sir Maximus.
'Stay, Christian, it may possibly re fer to the lost pocket-book,' said
Philip Debarry, who was beginning to feel rather sorry for his
factotum, as a reaction from previous suspicions and indignation.
Sir Maximus opened the letter and felt for his glasses, but then said,
'Here, you read it, Phil: the man writes a hand like small print.'
Philip cast his eyes over it, an d then read aloud in a tone of
satisfaction: -
Sir, - I send this letter to apprise you that I have now in my
possession certain articles, which, last evening, at about half-past
seven o'clock, were found lying on the grass at the western extremity
of your park. The articles are - 1ø, a well-filled pocket-book, of brown
leather, fastened with a black ribbon and with a seal of red wax; 2ø, a
small note-book, covered with gild ed vellum, whereof the clasp was
burst, and from out whereof had partly escaped a small gold chain,
with seals and a locket attached, the locket bearing on the back a
device, and round the face a female name.
Wherefore I request that you will further my effort to place these
articles in the right hands, by ascertaining whether any person within
your walls claims them as his property, and by sending that person to
me (if such be found); for I will on no account let them pass from my
care save into that of one who, declaring himself to be the owner, can
state to me what is the impression on the seal, and what the device
and name upon the locket. - I am, Si r, yours to command in all right
dealing,
RUFUS LYON. Malthouse Yard, Oct. 3, 1832.
'Well done, old Lyon,' said the rector; 'I didn't think that any
composition of his would ever give me so much pleasure.'
'What an old fox it is!' said Sir Maximus. 'Why couldn't he send the
things to me at once along with the letter?'
'No, no, Max; he uses a justifiable caution,' said the rector, a refined
and rather severe likeness of his brother, with a ring of fearlessness
and decision in his voice which startled all flaccid men and unruly
boys. 'What are you going to do, Phil?' seeing his nephew rise.
'To write, of course. Those other matters are yours, I suppose?' said
Mr Debarry, looking at Christian.
'Yes, sir.'
'I shall send you with a letter to the preacher. You can describe your
own property. And the seal, uncle - was it your coat-of-arms?'
'No, it was this head of Achilles. Here, I can take it off the ring, and
you can carry it, Christian. But don't lose that, for I've had it ever
since eighteen hundred. I should like to send my compliments with it,'
the rector went on, looking at his br other, 'and beg that since he has
so much wise caution at command, he would exercise a little in more
public matters, instead of making himself a firebrand in my parish,
and teaching hucksters and tape-weavers that it's their business to
dictate to statesmen.'
'How did Dissenters, and Methodists, and Quakers, and people of that
sort first come up, uncle?' said Miss Selina, a radiant girl of twenty,
who had given much time to the harp.
'Dear me, Selina,' said her elder sister, Harriet, whose forte was
general knowledge, 'don't you reme mber Woodstock? They were in
Cromwell's time.'
'O! Holdenough, and those people? Yes; but they preached in the
churches; they had no chapels. Tell me, uncle Gus; I like to be wise,'
said Selina, looking up at the face which was smiling down on her
with a sort of severe benignity. 'Phil says I'm an ignorant puss.'
'The seeds of Nonconformity were sown at the Reformation, my dear,
when some obstinate men made scruples about surplices and the
place of the communion-table, and other trifles of that sort. But the
Quakers came up about Cromwell's time, and the Methodists only in
the last century. The first Methodists were regular clergymen, the
more's the pity.'
'But all those wrong things - why didn't government put them down?'
'Ah, to be sure,' fell in Sir Maximus, in a cordial tone of corroboration.
'Because error is often strong, and government is often weak, my dear.
Well, Phil, have you finished your letter?'
'Yes, I will read it to you,' said Philip, turning and leaning over the
back of his chair with the letter in his hand.
There is a portrait of Mr Philip Debarry still to be seen at Treby Manor,
and a very fine bust of him at Rome, where he died fifteen years later,
a convert to Catholicism. His face would have been plain but for the
exquisite setting of his hazel eyes, which fascinated even the dogs of
the household. The other features, th ough slight and irregular, were
redeemed from triviality by the stamp of gravity and intellectual
preoccupation in his face and bearing. As he read aloud, his voice was
what his uncle's might have been if it had been modulated by delicate
health and a visitation of self-doubt.
Sir, - In reply to the letter with which you have favoured me this
morning, I beg to state that the articles you describe were lost from
the pocket of my servant, who is the bearer of this letter to you, and is
the claimant of the vellum note-book and the gold chain. The large
leathern pocket-book is my own property, and the impression on the
wax, a helmeted head of Achilles, was made by my uncle, the Rev.
Augustus Debarry, who allows me to forward his seal to you in proof
that I am not making a mistaken claim.
I feel myself under deep obligation to you, sir, for the care and trouble
you have taken in order to restore to its right owner a piece of
property which happens to be of pa rticular importance to me. And I
shall consider myself doubly fortunate if at any time you can point out
to me some method by which I may procure you as lively a satisfaction
as I am now feeling, in that full and speedy relief from anxiety which I
owe to your considerate conduct.
I remain, sir, your obliged and faithful servant, PHILIP DEBARRY.
'You know best, Phil, of course,' said Sir Maximus, pushing his plate
from him, by way of interjection. 'But it seems to me you exaggerate
preposterously every little service a man happens to do for you. Why
should you make a general offer of that sort? How do you know what
he will be asking you to do? Stuff and nonsense! Tell Willis to send
him a few head of game. You should think twice before you give a
blank cheque of that sort to one of these quibbling, meddle-some
Radicals.'
'You are afraid of my committing myself to ‘the bottomless perjury of
an et cetera’,' said Philip, smiling, as he turned to fold his letter. 'But I
think I am not doing any mischief; at all events I could not be content
to say less. And I have a notion that he would regard a present of
game just now as an insult. I should, in his place.'
'Yes, yes, you; but you don't make yourself a measure of dissenting
preachers, I hope,' said Sir Maximu s, rather wrathfully. 'What do you
say, Gus?'
'Phil is right,' said the rector, in an absolute tone. 'I would not deal
with a Dissenter, or put profits into the pocket of a Radical which I
might put into the pocket of a good churchman and a quiet subject.
But if the greatest scoundrel in the world made way for me, or picked
my hat up, I would thank him. So would you, Max.'
'Pooh! I didn't mean that one shouldn't behave like a gentleman,' said
Sir Maximus, in some vexation. He had great pride in his son's
superiority even to himself; but he did not enjoy having his own
opinion argued down as it always was, and did not quite trust the dim
vision opened by Phil's new word s and new notions. He could only
submit in silence while the letter was delivered to Christian, with the
order to start for Malthouse Yard immediately.
Meanwhile, in that somewhat dim locality the possible claimant of the
note-book and the chain was thought of and expected with palpitating
agitation. Mr Lyon was seated in his study, looking haggard and
already aged from a sleepless night. He was so afraid lest his emotion
should deprive him of the presence of mind necessary to the due
attention to particulars in the coming interview, that he continued to
occupy his sight and touch with the objects which had stirred the
depths, not only of memory, but of dread. Once again he unlocked a
small box which stood beside his desk , and took from it a little oval
locket, and compared this with one which hung with the seals on the
stray gold chain. There was the same device in enamel on the back of
both: clasped hands surrounded with blue flowers. Both had round
the face a name in gold italics on a blue ground: the name on the
locket taken from the drawer was Maurice; the name on the locket
which hung with the seals was Annette, and within the circle of this
name there was a lover's knot of light-brown hair, which matched a
curl that lay in the box. The hair in the locket which bore the name of
Maurice was of a very dark brown, and before returning it to the
drawer Mr Lyon noted the colour and quality of this hair more
carefully than ever. Then he recurred to the note-book: undoubtedly
there had been something, probably a third name, beyond the names
Maurice Christian, which had themselves been rubbed and slightly
smeared as if by accident; and from the very first examination in the
vestry, Mr Lyon could not prevent himself from transferring the
mental image of the third name in faint lines to the rubbed leather.
The leaves of the note-book seemed to have been recently inserted;
they were of fresh white paper, and only bore some abbreviations in
pencil with a notation of small sums. Nothing could be gathered from
the comparison of the writing in the book with that of the yellow
letters which lay in the box: the smeared name had been carefully
printed, and so bore no resemblance to the signature of those letters;
and the pencil abbreviations and figures had been made too hurriedly
to bear any decisive witness. 'I will ask him to wr ite - to write a
description of the locket,' had been one of Mr Lyon's thoughts; but he
faltered in that intention. His power of fulfilling it must depend on
what he saw in this visitor, of wh ose coming he had a horrible dread,
at the very time he was writing to demand it. In that demand he was
obeying the voice of his rigid conscience, which had never left him
perfectly at rest under his one act of deception - the concealment from
Esther that he was not her natural father, the assertion of a false
claim upon her. 'Let my path be henceforth simple,' he had said to
himself in the anguish of that night; 'let me seek to know what is, and
if possible to declare it.' If he was really going to find himself face to
face with the man who had been Annette's husband, and who was
Esther's father - if that wandering of his from the light had brought
the punishment of a blind sacril ege as the issue of a conscious
transgression, - he prayed that he might be able to accept all
consequences of pain to himsel f. But he saw other possibilities
concerning the claimant of the bo ok and chain. His ignorance and
suspicions as to the history and character of Annette's husband made
it credible that he had laid a plan for convincing her of his death as a
means of freeing himself from a burthensome tie; but it seemed
equally probable that he was really dead, and that these articles of
property had been a bequest, or a payment, or even a sale, to their
present owner. Indeed, in all these years there was no knowing into
how many hands such pretty trifles might have passed. And the
claimant might, after all, have no connection with the Debarrys; he
might not come on this day or the next. There might be more time left
for reflection and prayer.
All these possibilities, which wo uld remove the pressing need for
difficult action, Mr Lyon represented to himself, but he had no
effective belief in them; his belief went with his strongest feeling, and
in these moments his strongest feeling was dread. He trembled under
the weight that seemed already added to his own sin; he felt himself
already confronted by Annette's husband and Esther's father. Perhaps
the father was a gentleman on a visit to the Debarrys. There was no
hindering the pang with which the old man said to himself -
'The child will not be sorry to leave this poor home, and I shall be
guilty in her sight.'
He was walking about among the rows of books when there came a
loud rap at the outer door. The rap shook him so that he sank into his
chair, feeling almost powerless. Lyddy presented herself.
'Here's ever such a fine man from the Manor wants to see you, sir.
Dear heart, dear heart I shall I tell him you're too bad to see him?'
'Show him up,' said Mr Lyon, making an effort to rally. When
Christian appeared, the minister half rose, leaning on an arm of his
chair, and said, 'Be seated, sir,' seeing nothing but that a tall man
was entering.
'I've brought you a letter from Mr Debarry,' said Christian, in an off-
hand manner. This rusty little man, in his dismal chamber, seemed to
the Ulysses of the steward's room a pitiable sort of human curiosity,
to whom a man of the world wo uld speak rather loudly, in
accommodation to an eccentricity which was likely to be accompanied
with deafness. One cannot be emin ent in everything; and if Mr
Christian had dispersed his facult ies in study that would have
enabled him to share unconventional points of view, he might have
worn a mistaken kind of boot, an d been less competent to win at
ecarte, or at betting, or in any other contest suitable to a person of
figure.
As he seated himself, Mr Lyon opened the letter, and held it close to
his eyes, so that his face was hidd en. But at the word 'servant' he
could not avoid starting, and looking off the letter towards the bearer.
Christian, knowing what was in th e letter, conjectured that the old
man was amazed to learn that so distinguished-looking a personage
was a servant; he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees,
balanced his cane on his fingers, and began a whispering whistle. The
minister checked himself, finished the reading of the letter, and then
slowly and nervously put on his spectacles to survey this man,
between whose fate and his own ther e might be a terri ble collision.
The word 'servant' had been a fresh caution to him. He must do
nothing rashly. Esther's lot was deeply concerned. 'Here is the seal
mentioned in the letter,' said Christian.
Mr Lyon drew the pocket-book from his desk, and, after comparing
the seal with the impression, said, 'It is right, sir: I deliver the pocket-
book to you.'
He held it out with the seal, and Christian rose to take them, saying,
carelessly, 'The other things - the chain and the little book - are mine.'
'Your name then is -'
'Maurice Christian.'
A spasm shot through Mr Lyon. It had seemed possible that he might
hear another name, and be freed from the worse half of his anxiety.
His next words were not wisely chosen, but escaped him impulsively.
'And you have no other name?'
'What do you mean?' said Christian, sharply.
'Be so good as to reseat yourself.'
Christian did not comply. 'I'm ra ther in a hurry, sir,' he said,
recovering his coolness. 'If it suits you to restore to me those small
articles of mine, I shall be glad; bu t I would rather leave them behind
than be detained.' He had reflecte d that the minister was simply a
punctilious old bore. The question meant nothing else. But Mr Lyon
had wrought himself up to the task of finding out, then and there, if
possible, whether or not this were Annette's husband. How could he
lay himself and his sin before God if he wilfully declined to learn the
truth?
'Nay, sir, I will not detain you unreasonably,' he said, in a firmer tone
than before. 'How long have these articles been your property?'
'Oh, for more than twenty years,' said Christian, carelessly. He was
not altogether easy under the minister's persistence, but for that very
reason he showed no more impatience.
'You have been in France and in Germany?'
'I have been in most countries on the continent.'
'Be so good as to write me your na me,' said Mr Lyon, dipping a pen in
the ink, and holding it out with a piece of paper.
Christian was much surprised, but not now greatly al armed. In his
rapid conjectures as to the explanation of the minister's curiosity, he
had alighted on one which might carry advantage rather than
inconvenience. But he was not going to commit himself.
'Before I oblige you there, sir,' he said, laying down the pen, and
looking straight at Mr Lyon, 'I must know exactly the reasons you
have for putting these questions to me. You are a stranger to me - an
excellent person, I daresay - but I have no concern about you farther
than to get from you those small articles. Do you still doubt that they
are mine? You wished, I think, that I should tell you what the locket is
like. It has a pair of hands and blue flowers on one side, and the name
Annette round the hair on the other side. That is all I have to say. If
you wish for anything more from me, you will be good enough to tell
me why you wish it. Now then, sir, what is your concern with me?'
The cool stare, the hard challenging voice, with which these words
were uttered, made them fall like the beating, cutting chill of heavy
hail on Mr Lyon. He sank back in his chair in utter irresolution and
helplessness. How was it possible to lay bare the sad and sacred past
in answer to such a call as this? The dread with which he had thought
of this man's coming, the strongly -confirmed suspicion that he was
really Annette's husband, intensified the antipathy created by his
gestures and glances. The sensitive little minister knew instinctively
that words which would cost him efforts as painful as the obedient
footsteps of a wounded bleeding houn d that wills a foreseen throe,
would fall on this man as the pressure of tender fingers falls on a
brazen glove. And Esther - if this man was her father - every
additional word might help to brin g down irrevocable, perhaps cruel,
consequences on her. A thick mist seemed to have fallen where Mr
Lyon was looking for the track of duty: the difficult question, how far
he was to care for consequences in seeking and avowing the truth,
seemed anew obscured. All these thin gs, like the vision of a coming
calamity, were compressed into a moment of consciousness. Nothing
could be done to-day; everything must be deferred. He answered
Christian in a low apologetic tone.
'It is true, sir; you have told me all I can demand. I have no sufficient
reason for detaining your property further.'
He handed the note-book and chain to Christian, who had been
observing him narrowly, and now said, in a tone of indifference, as he
pocketed the articles -
'Very good, sir. I wish you a good-morning.'
'Good-morning,' said Mr Lyon, feeling, while the door closed behind
his guest, that mixture of uneasiness and relief which all
procrastination of difficulty prod uces in minds capable of strong
forecast. The work was still to be done. He had still before him the
task of learning everything that could be learned about this man's
relation to himself and Esther.
Christian, as he made his way back along Malthouse Lane, was
thinking, 'This old fellow has got so me secret in his head. It's not
likely he can know anything about me; it must be about Bycliffe. But
Bycliffe was a gentleman: how should he ever have had anything to do
with such a seedy old ranter as that?'
Chapter 15
And doubt shall be as lead upon the feet
Of thy most anxious will.
MR LYON was careful to look in at Felix as soon as possible after
Christian's departure, to tell him that his trust was discharged.
During the rest of the day he was somewhat relieved from agitating
reflections by the necessity of atte nding to his ministerial duties, the
rebuke of rebellious singers being one of them; and on his return from
the Monday evening prayer-meeti ng he was so overcome with
weariness that he went to bed without taking note of any objects in
his study. But when he rose the ne xt morning, his mind, once more
eagerly active, was arrested by Philip Debarry's letter, which still lay
open on his desk, and was arrested by precisely that portion which
had been unheeded the day before: 'I shall consider myself doubly
fortunate if at any time you can point out to me some method by
which I may procure you as lively a satisfaction as I am now feeling, in
that full and speedy relief from anxiety which I owe to your
considerate conduct.'
To understand how these words could carry the suggestion they
actually had for the minister in a crisis of peculiar personal anxiety
and struggle, we must bear in mi nd that for many years he had
walked through life with the sense of having for a space been
unfaithful to what he esteemed the highest trust ever committed to
man - the ministerial vocation. In a mind of any nobleness, a lapse
into transgression against an object still regarded as supreme, issues
in a new and purer devotedness, chastised by humility and watched
over by a passionate regret. So it was with that ardent spirit which
animated the little body of Rufus Lyon. Once in his life he had been
blinded, deafened, hurried along by rebellious impulse; he had gone
astray after his own desires, and had let the fire die out on the altar;
and as the true penitent, hating his self-besotted error, asks from all
coming life duty instead of joy, and service instead of ease, so Rufus
was perpetually on the watch lest he should ever again postpone to
some private affection a great public opportunity which to him was
equivalent to a command.
Now here was an opportunity brought by a combination of that
unexpected incalculable kind which might be regarded as the divine
emphasis invoking especial attention to trivial events - an opportunity
of securing what Rufus Lyon had often wished for as a means of
honouring truth, and exhibiting error in the character of a
stammering, halting, short-breathed usurper of office and dignity.
What was more exasperating to a zealous preacher, with whom
copious speech was not a difficulty but a relief - who never lacked
argument, but only combatants and listeners - than to reflect that
there were thousands on thousand s of pulpits in this kingdom,
supplied with handsome soundi ng-boards, and occupying an
advantageous position in buildings far larger than the chapel in
Malthouse Yard - buildings sure to be places of resort, even as the
markets were, if only from habit and interest; and that these pulpits
were filled, or rather made vacuous, by men whose privileged
education in the ancient centres of instruction issued in twenty
minutes' formal reading of tepid exhortation or probably infirm
deductions from premises based on rotten scaffolding? And it is in the
nature of exasperation gradually to concentrate itself. The sincere
antipathy of a dog towards cats in general, necessarily takes the form
of indignant barking at the neighbour's black cat which makes daily
trespass; the bark at imagined cats, though a frequent exercise of the
canine mind, is yet comparatively feeble. Mr Lyon's sarcasm was not
without an edge when he dilated in general on an elaborate education
for teachers which issued in the minimum of teaching, but it found a
whetstone in the particular example of that bad system known as the
rector of Treby Magna. There was no thing positive to be said against
the Rev. Augustus Debarry; his life could not be pronounced blame-
worthy except for its negatives. And the good Rufus was too pure-
minded not to be glad of that. He had no delight in vice as discrediting
wicked opponents; he shrank from dwelling on the images of cruelty
or of grossness, and his indignation was habitually inspired only by
those moral and intellectual mistakes which darken the soul but do
not injure or degrade the temple of the body. If the rector had been a
less respectable man, Rufus would have more reluctantly made him
an object of antagonism; but as an incarnation of soul-destroying
error, dissociated from those baser sins which have no good repute
even with the worldly, it would be an argumentative luxury to get into
close quarters with him, and fight with a dialectic short-sword in the
eyes of the Treby world (sending also a written account thereof to the
chief organs of dissenting opinion). Vice was essentially stupid - a deaf
and eyeless monster, insusceptible to demonstration: the Spirit might
work on it by unseen ways, and the unstudied sallies of sermons were
often as the arrows which pierced and awakened the bmtified
conscience; but illuminated thought, finely-dividing speech, were the
choicer weapons of the divine armoury, which whoso could wield must
be careful not to leave idle.
Here, then, was the longed-for opportunity. Here was an engagement -
an expression of a strong wish - on the part of Philip Debarry, if it
were in his power, to procure a satisfaction to Rufus Lyon. How had
that man of God and exemplary Independent minister, Mr Ainsworth,
of persecuted sanctity, conducted himself when a similar occasion had
befallen him at Amsterdam? ' He had thought of nothing but the glory
of the highest cause, and had converted the offer of recompense into a
public debate with a Jew on the chief mysteries of the faith. Here was
a model: the case was nothing short of a heavenly indication, and he,
Rufus Lyon, would seize the occasion to demand a public debate with
the rector on the constitution of the true church.
What if he were inwardly torn by doubt and anxiety concerning his
own private relations and the facts of his past life? That danger of
absorption within the narrow bounds of self only urged him the more
towards action which had a wider bearing, and might tell on the
welfare of England at large. It was decided. Before the minister went
down to his breakfast that morning he had written the following letter
to Mr Philip Debarry:
Sir, - Referring to your letter of yesterday, I find the following words: 'I
shall consider myself doubly fortunate if at any time you can point out
to me some method by which I may procure you as lively a satisfaction
as I am now feeling, in that full and speedy relief from anxiety which I
owe to your considerate con duct.'
I am not unaware, sir, that, in the usage of the world, there are words
of courtesy (so called) which are understood, by those amongst whom
they are current, to have no precise meaning, and to constitute no
bond or obligation. I will not now insist that this is an abuse of
language, wherein our fallible nature requires the strictest safeguards
against laxity and misapplication, for I do not apprehend that in
writing the words I have above quoted, you were open to the reproach
of using phrases which, while seeming to carry a specific meaning,
were really no more than what is called a polite form. I believe, sir,
that you used these words advisedly, sincerely, and with an
honourable intention of acting on them as a pledge, should such
action be demanded. No other supposition on my part would
correspond to the character you bear as a young man who aspires
(albeit mistakenly) to engraft the finest fruits of public virtue on a
creed and institutions, whereof the sap is composed rather of human
self-seeking than of everlasting truth.
Wherefore I act on this my belief in the integrity of your written word;
and I beg you to procure for me (as it is doubtless in your power) that
I may be allowed a public discussion with your near relative, the
rector of this parish, the Reverend Augustus Debarry, to be held in the
large room of the Free School, or in the Assembly Room of the Marquis
of Granby, these being the largest covered spaces at our command.
For I presume he would neither allo w me to speak within his church,
nor would consent himself to speak within my chapel; and the
probable inclemency of the approaching season forbids an assured
expectation that we could discourse in the open air. The subjects I
desire to discuss are, - first, the co nstimtion of the true church; and,
secondly, the bearing thereupon of the English Reformation.
Confidently expecting that you will comply with this request, which is
the sequence of your expressed desire, I remain, sir, yours, with the
respect offered to a sincere with-stander,
Malthouse Yard. RUFUS LYON.
After writing this letter, the good Rufus felt that serenity and elevation
of mind which is infallibly brought by a preoccupation with the wider
relations of things. Already he was beginning to sketch the course his
argument might most judiciously take in the coming debate; his
thoughts were running into se ntences, and marking off careful
exceptions in parentheses; and he had come down and seated himself
at the breakfast-table quite automatically, without expectation of toast
or coffee, when Esther's voice and touch recalled him to an inward
debate of another kind, in which he felt himself much weaker. Again
there arose before him the image of that cool, hard-eyed, worldly man,
who might be this dear child's father, and one against whose rights he
had himself greviously offended. Always as the image recurred to him
Mr Lyon's heart sent forth a prayer for guidance, but no definite
guidance had yet made itself visible for him. It could not be guidance -
it was a temptation - that said, 'Let the matter rest: seek to know no
more; know only what is thrust upon you.' The remembrance that in
his time of wandering he had wilfully remained in ignorance of facts
which he might have inquired after, deepened the impression that it
was now an imperative duty to seek the fullest attainable knowledge.
And the inquiry might possibly issue in a blessed repose, by putting a
negative on all his suspicions. But the more vividly all the
circumstances became present to him, the more unfit he felt himself
to set about any investigation concerning this man who called himself
Maurice Christian. He could seek no confidant or helper among 'the
brethren'; he was obliged to admit to himself that the members of his
church, with whom he hoped to go to heaven, were not easy to
converse with on earth touching the deeper secrets of his experience,
and were still less able to advise him as to the wisest procedure, in a
case of high delicacy, with a wo rldling who had a carefully-trimmed
whisker and a fashionable costume. Fo r the first time in his life it
occurred to the minister that he should be glad of an adviser who had
more worldly than spiritual experience, and that it might not be
inconsistent with his principles to seek some light from one who had
studied human law. But it was a thought to be paused upon, and not
followed out rashly; some other guidance might intervene.
Esther noticed that her father was in a fit of abstraction, that he
seemed to swallow his coffee and to ast quite unconsciously, and that
he vented from time to time a low guttural interjection, which was
habitual with him when he was ab sorbed by an inward discussion.
She did not disturb him by remarks, and only wondered whether
anything unusua, had occurred on Sunday evening. But at last she
thought it needful to say, 'You recollect what I told you yesterday,
father?'
'Nay, child; what?' said Mr Lyon, rousing himself
'That Mr Jermyn asked me if you would probably be at home this
morning before one o'clock.'
Esther was surprised to see her father start and change colour as if he
had been shaken by some sudden collision before he answered -
'Assuredly; I do not intend to move from my study after I have once
been out to give this letter to Zachary.'
'Shall I tell Lyddy to take him up at once to your study if he comes? If
not, I shall have to stay in my ow n room, because I shall be at home
all this morning, and it is rather cold now to sit without a fire.'
'Yes, my dear, let him come up to me; unless, indeed, he should bring
a second person, which might happen, seeing that in all likelihood he
is coming, as hitherto, on electioneering business. And I could not well
accommodate two visitors up-stairs.'
While Mr Lyon went out to Zachary, the pew-opener, to give him a
second time the commission of carrying a letter to Treby Manor,
Esther gave her injunction to Lyddy that if one gentleman came he
was to be shown up-stairs - if two, they were to be shown into the
parlour. But she had to resolve various questions before Lyddy clearly
saw what was expected of her, - as that, 'if it was the gentleman as
came on Thursday in the pepper-a nd-salt coat, was he to be shown
up-stairs? And the gentleman from the Manor yesterday as went out
whistling - had Miss Esther heard about him? There seemed no end of
these great folks coming to Malthouse Yard since there was talk of the
election; but they might be poor lost creatures the most of 'em.'
Whereupon Lyddy shook her head and groaned, under an edifying
despair as to the future lot of gentlemen callers.
Esther always avoided asking questions of Lyddy, who found an
answer as she found a key, by pouring out a pocketful of miscellanies.
But she had remarked so many indications that something had
happened to cause her father unusual excitement and mental
preoccupation, that she could not help connecting with them the fact
of this visit from the Manor, which he had not mentioned to her.
She sat down in the dull parlour an d took up her netting; for since
Sunday she had felt unable to read when she was alone, being
obliged, in spite of herself, to think of Felix Holt - to imagine what he
would like her to be, and what sort of views he took of life so as to
make it seem valuable in the absence of all elegance, luxury, gaiety, or
romance. Had he yet reflected that he had behaved very rudely to her
on Sunday? Perhaps not. Perhaps he had dismissed her from his
mind with contempt. And at that thought Esther's eyes smarted
unpleasantly. She was fond of netting, because it showed to advantage
both her hand and her foot; and across this image of Felix Holt's
indifference and contempt there passed the vaguer image of a possible
somebody who would admire her hands and feet, and delight in
looking at their beauty, and long, yet not dare, to kiss them. Life
would be much easier in the presence of such a love. But it was
precisely this longing after her own satisfaction that Felix had
reproached her with. Did he want her to be heroic? That seemed
impossible without some great occasion. Her life was a heap of
fragments, and so were her thoughts: some great energy was needed
to bind them together. Esther was beginning to lose her complacency
at her own wit and criticism; to lose the sense of superiority in an
awakening need for reliance on one whose vision was wider, whose
nature was purer and stronger than her own. But then, she said to
herself, that 'one' must be tender to her, not rude and predominating
in his manners. A man with any chivalry in him could never adopt a
scolding tone towards a woman - that is, towards a charming woman.
But Felix had no chivalry in him. He loved lecturing and opinion too
well ever to love any woman.
In this way Esther strove to see that Felix was thoroughly in the
wrong - at least, if he did not co me again expressly to show that he
was sorry.
Chapter 16
TRUEBLUE. These men have no votes. Why should I court them ?
GREYFOX. No votes, but power.
TRUEBLUE. What I over charities ?
CREYFOX. No, over brains; which di sturbs the canvass. In a natural
state of things the average price of a vote at Paddlebrook is nine-and-
sixpence, throwing the fifty-pound tenants, who cost nothing, into the
divisor. But these talking men cause an artificial rise of prices.
THE expected important knock at the door came about twelve o'clock,
and Esther could hear that there were two visitors. Immediately the
parlour door was opened and the sh aggy-haired, cravatless image of
Felix Holt, which was then just full in the mirror of Esther's mind, was
displaced by the highly-contrasted appearance of a personage whose
name she guessed before Mr Jermyn had announced it. The perfect
morning costume of that day differed much from our present ideal: it
was essential that a gentleman's chin should be well propped, that his
collar should have a voluminous roll , that his waistcoat should imply
much discrimination, and that his buttons should be arranged in a
manner which would now expose him to general contempt. And it
must not be forgotten that at the distant period when Treby Magna
first knew the excitements of an election, there existed many other
anomalies now obsolete, besides short-waisted coats and broad
stiffeners.
But we have some notions of beauty and fitness which withstand the
centuries; and quite irrespective of dates, it would be pronounced that
at the age of thirty-four Harold Transome was a striking and
handsome man. He was one of those people, as Denner had remarked,
to whose presence in the room you could not be indifferent: if you do
not hate or dread them, you must find the touch of their hands, nay,
their very shadows, agreeable.
Esther felt a pleasure quite new to her as she saw his finely-
embrowned face and full bright eyes turned towards her with an air of
deference by which gallantry must commend itself to a refined woman
who is not absolutely free from vanity. Harold Transome regarded
women as slight things, but he was fond of slight things in the
intervals of business; and he held it among the chief arts of life to
keep these pleasant diversions within such bonds that they should
never interfere with the course of his serious ambition. Esther was
perfectly aware, as he took a chair near her, that he was under some
admiring surprise at her appearance and manner. How could it be
otherwise? She believed that in the eyes of a high-bred man no young
lady in Treby could equal her: she felt a glow of delight at the sense
that she was being looked at.
'My father expected you,' she said to Mr Jermyn. 'I delivered your
letter to him yesterday. He will be down immediately.'
She disentangled her foot from her netting and wound it up.
'I hope you are not going to let us disturb you,' said Harold, noticing
her action. 'We come to discuss election affairs, and particularly desire
to interest the ladies.'
'I have no interest with any one who is not already on the right side,'
said Esther, smiling.
'I am happy to see at least that you wear the Liberal colours.'
'I fear I must confess that it is more from love of blue than from love of
Liberalism. Yellow opinions could on ly have brunettes on their side.'
Esther spoke with her usual pretty fluency, but she had no sooner
uttered the words than she thought how angry they would have made
Felix.
'If my cause is to be recommended by the becomingness of my
colours, then I am sure you are acting in my interest by wearing
them.'
Esther rose to leave the room.
'Must you really go?' said Harold, preparing to open the door for her.
'Yes; I have an engagement - a lesson at half-past twelve,' said Esther,
bowing and floating out like a bl ue-robed Naiad, but not without a
suffused blush as she passed through the doorway.
It was a pity the room was so smal l, Harold Transome thought: this
girl ought to walk in a house wher e there were halls and corridors.
But he had soon dismissed this chance preoccupation with Esther; for
before the door was closed again Mr Lyon had entered, and Harold
was entirely bent on what had be en the object of his visit. The
minister, though no elector himself, had considerable influence over
Liberal electors, and it was the part of wisdom in a candidate to
cement all political adhesion by a li ttle personal regard, if possible.
Garstin was a harsh and wiry fellow; he seemed to suggest that sour
whey, which some say was the orig inal meaning of Whig in the
Scottish, and it might assist the theoretic advantages of Radicalism if
it could be associated with a mo re generous presence. What would
conciliate the personal regard of old Mr Lyon became a curious
problem to Harold, now the little man made his appearance. But
canvassing makes a gentleman acquainted with many strange
animals, together with the ways of catching and taming them; and
thus the knowledge of natural history advances amongst the
aristocracy and the wealthy commoners of our land.
'I am very glad to have secured this opportunity of making your
personal acquaintance, Mr Lyon,' said Harold, putting out his hand to
the minister when Jermyn had mentioned his name. 'I am to address
the electors here, in the Market-Place, to-morrow; and I should have
been sorry to do so without first paying my respects privately to my
chief friends, as there may be points on which they particularly wish
me to explain myself.'
'You speak civilly, sir, and reason ably,' said Mr Lyon, with a vague
shortsighted gaze, in which a cand idate's appearance evidently went
for nothing. 'Pray be seated, gentlemen. It is my habit to stand.'
He placed himself at right angle wi th his visitors, his worn look of
intellectual eagerness, slight fram e, and rusty attire, making an odd
contrast with their flourishing persons, unblemished costume, and
comfortable freedom from excitement . The group was fairly typical of
the difference between the men wh o are animated by ideas and the
men who are expected to apply them. Then he drew forth his
spectacles, and began to rub them with the thin end of his coat-tail.
He was inwardly exercising great self-mastery - suppressing the
thought of his personal needs, which Jermyn's presence tended to
suggest, in order that he might be equal to the larger duties of this
occasion.
'I am aware - Mr Jermyn has told me,' said Harold, 'what good service
you have done me already, Mr Lyon. The fact is, a man of intellect like
you was especially needed in my case. The race I am running is really
against Garstin only, who calls himself a Liberal, though he cares for
nothing, and understands nothing, except the interests of the wealthy
traders. And you have been able to explain the difference between
Liberal and Liberal, which, as you and I know, is something like the
difference between fish and fish.'
'Your comparison is not unapt, sir, ' said Mr Lyon, still holding his
spectacles in his hand, 'at this epoch, when the mind of the nation
has been strained on the passing of one measure. Where a great
weight has to be moved, we require not so much selected instruments
as abundant horse-power. But it is an unavoidable evil of these
massive achievements that they encourage a coarse
undiscriminatingness obstructive of more nicely-wrought results, and
an exaggerated expectation inconsistent with the intricacies of our
fallen and struggling condition. I say not that compromise is
unnecessary, but it is an evil attendant on our imperfection; and I
would pray every one to mark that, where compromise broadens,
intellect and conscience are thrust into narrower room. Wherefore it
has been my object to show our pe ople that there are many who have
helped to draw the car of Reform, whose ends are but partial, and who
forsake not the ungodly principle of selfish alliances, but would only
substitute Syria for Egypt - thinking chiefly of their own share in
peacocks, gold, and ivory.'
'Just so,' said Harold, who was quick at new languages, and still
quicker at translating other men's generalities into his own special
and immediate purposes, 'men who will be satisfied if they can only
bring in a plutocracy, buy up the land, and stick the old crests on
their new gateways. Now the practical point to secure against these
false Liberals at present is, that our electors should not divide their
votes. As it appears that many who vote for Debarry are likely to split
their votes in favour of Garstin, it is of the first consequence that my
voters should give me plumpers. If they divide their votes they can't
keep out Debarry, and they may help to keep out me. I feel some
confidence in asking you to use your influence in this direction, Mr
Lyon. We candidates have to praise ourselves more than is graceful;
but you are aware that, while I belong by my birth to the classes that
have their roots in tradition and all the old loyalties, my experience
has lain chiefly among those who make their own career, and depend
on the new rather than the old. I have had the advantage of
considering national welfare under varied lights: I have wider views
than those of a mere cotton lord . On questions connected with
religious liberty I would stop short at no measure that was not
thorough.'
'I hope not, sir - I hope not,' said Mr Lyon, gravely; finally putting on
his spectacles and examining the face of the candidate, whom he was
preparing to turn into a catechumen. For the good Rufus, conscious of
his political importance as an organ of persuasion, felt it his duty to
catechise a little, and also to do his part towards impressing a
probable legislator with a sense of his responsibility. But the latter
branch of duty somewhat obstructed the catechising, for his mind was
so urged by considerations whic h he held in danger of being
overlooked, that the questions and answers bore a very slender
proportion to his exposition. It was impossible to leave the question of
church-rates without noting the grounds of their injustice, and
without a brief enumeration of reasons why Mr Lyon, for his own part,
would not present that passive resistance to a legal imposition which
had been adopted by the Friends (w hose heroism in this regard was
nevertheless worthy of all honour).
Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome when we are not athirst
for information, but, to be quite fair, we must admit that superior
reticence is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often
barren; but silence also does not n ecessarily brood over a full nest.
Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be
sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling, will have
nothing to announce but that addled delusion.
Harold Transome was not at all a patient man, but in matters of
business he was quite awake to his cue, and in this case it was
perhaps easier to listen than to answer questions. But Jermyn, who
had plenty of work on his hands, took an opportunity of rising, and
saying, as he looked at his watch -
'I must really be at the office in five minutes. You will find me there,
Mr Transome; you have probably still many things to say to Mr Lyon.'
'I beseech you, sir,' said the minister, changing colour, and by a quick
movement laying his hand on Jermyn's arm - 'I beseech you to favour
me with an interview on some private business - this evening, if it
were possible.'
Mr Lyon, like others who are habitually occupied with impersonal
subjects, was liable to this impulsive sort of action. He snatched at
the details of life as if they were darting past him - as if they were like
the ribbons at his knees, which would never be tied all day if they
were not tied on the instant. Through these spasmodic leaps out of his
abstractions into real life, it constantly happened that he suddenly
took a course which had been the subject of too much doubt with him
ever to have been determined on by continuous thought. And if
Jermyn had not startled him by threatening to vanish just when he
was plunged in politics, he might never have made up his mind to
confide in a worldly attorney.
('An odd man,' as Mrs Muscat observ ed, 'to have such a gift in the
pulpit. But there's One knows better than we do -' which, in a lady
who rarely felt her judgment at a loss, was a concession that showed
much piety.)
Jermyn was surprised at the little man's eagemess. 'By all means,' he
answered, quite cordially. 'Could you come to my office at eight
o'dock?'
'For several reasons, I must beg you to come to me.'
'O, very good. I'll walk out and see you this evening, if possible. I shall
have much pleasure in being of any use to you.' Jermyn felt that in
the eyes of Harold he was appearing all the more valuable when his
services were thus in request. He went out, and Mr Lyon easily
relapsed into politics, for he had been on the brink of a favourite
subject on which he was at issue with his fellow-Liberals.
At that time, when faith in the efficacy of political change was at fever-
heat in ardent Reformers, many measures which men are still
discussing with little confidence on either side, were then talked about
and disposed of like property in near reversion. Crying abuses -
'bloated paupers', 'bloated pluralists', and other corruptions hindering
men from being wise and happy - had to be fought against and slain.
Such a time is a time of hope. Afterwards, when the corpses of those
monsters have been held up to the public wonder and abhorrence,
and yet wisdom and happiness do not follow, but rather a more
abundant breeding of the foolish and unhappy, comes a time of doubt
and despondency. But in the great Reform year hope was mighty: the
prospect of reform had even served the voters instead of drink; and in
one place, at least, there had been a 'dry election'. And now the
speakers at Reform banquets were exuberant in congratulation and
promise: Liberal clergymen of the Establishment toasted Liberal
Catholic clergymen without any allusion to scarlet, and Catholic
clergymen replied with a like tender reserve. Some dwelt on the
abolition of all abuses, and on millennial blessedness generally;
others, whose imaginations were less suffused with exhalations of the
dawn, insisted chiefly on the ballot-box.
Now on this question of the ballot the minister strongly took the
negative side. Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a
minority of a minority amongst ou r own party: - very happily, else
those poor opinions, born with no silver spoon in their mouths - how
would they get nourished and fed? So it was with Mr Lyon and his
objection to the ballot. But he had thrown out a remark on the subject
which was not quite clear to his he arer, who interpreted it according
to his best calculation of probabilities.
'I have no objection to the ballot,' sa id Harold, 'but I think that is not
the sort of thing we have to work at just now. We shouldn't get it. And
other questions are imminent.'
'Then, sir, you would vote for the ba llot?' said Mr Lyon, stroking his
chin.
'Certainly, if the point came up. I have too much respect for the
freedom of the voter to oppose anything which offers a chance of
making that freedom more complete.'
Mr Lyon looked at the speaker with a pitying smile and a subdued
'h'm - m - m', which Harold took for a sign of satisfaction. He was
soon undeceived.
'You grieve me, sir; you grieve me much. And I pray you to reconsider
this question, for it will take you to the root, as I think, of political
morality. I engage to show to any impartial mind, duly furnished with
the principles of public and private rectitude, that the ballot would be
pernicious, and that if it were not pernicious it would still be futile. I
will show, first, that it would be fu tile as a preservative from bribcry
and illegitimate influence; and, secondly, that it would be in the worst
kind pernicious, as shutting th e door against those influences
whereby the soul of a man and the character of a citizen are duly
educated for their great functions. Be not alarmed if I detain you, sir.
It is well worth the while.'
'Confound this old man,' thought Harold. 'I'll never make a canvassing
call on a preacher again, unless he has lost his voice from a cold.' He
was going to excuse himself as prudently as he could, by deferring the
subject till the morrow, and inviting Mr Lyon to come to him in the
committee-room before the time appointed for his public speech; but
he was relieved by the opening of the door. Lyddy put in her head to
say -
'If you please! sir, here's Mr Holt wants to know if he may come in and
speak to the gentleman. He begs your pardon, but you're to say ‘no’ if
you don't like him to come.'
'Nay, show him in at once, Lyddy. A young man,' Mr Lyon went on,
speaking to Harold, 'whom a representative ought to know - no voter,
but a man of ideas and study.'
'He is thoroughly welcome,' said Harold, truthfully enough, though he
felt little interest in the voteless man of ideas except as a diversion
from the subject of the ballot. He had been standing for the last
minute or two, feeling less of a victim in that attitude, and more able
to calculate on means of escape.
'Mr Holt, sir,' said the minister, as Felix entered, 'is a young friend of
mine, whose opinions on some points I hope to see altered, but who
has a zeal for public justice which I trust he will never lose.'
'I am glad to see Mr Holt,' said Harold, bowing. He perceived from the
way in which Felix bowed to him and turned to the most distant spot
in the room, that the candidate's shake of the hand would not be
welcome here. 'A formidable fellow,' he thought, 'capable of mounting
a cart in the market-place to-morrow and cross-examining me, if I say
anything that doesn't please him.'
'Mr Lyon,' said Felix, 'I have taken a liberty with you in asking to see
Mr Transome when he is engaged with you. But I have to speak to him
on a matter which I shouldn't care to make public at present, and it is
one on which I am sure you will back me. I heard that Mr Transome
was here, so I ventured to come. I hope you will both excuse me, as
my business refers to some electioneering measures which are being
taken by Mr Transome's agents.' 'P ray go on,' said Harold, expecting
something unpleasant.
'I'm not going to speak against treating voters,' said Felix; 'I suppose
buttered ale, and grease of that sort to make the wheels go, belong to
the necessary humbug of representation. But I wish to ask you, Mr
Transome, whether it is with your knowledge that agents of yours are
bribing rough fellows who are no voters - the colliers and navvies at
Sproxton - with the chance of extra drunkenness, that they may make
a posse on your side at the nomination and polling?'
'Certainly not,' said Harold. 'You are aware, my dear sir, that a
candidate is very much at the mercy of his agents as to the means by
which he is returned, especially when many years' absence has made
him a stranger to the men actually conducting business. But are you
sure of your facts?'
'As sure as my senses can make me,' said Felix, who then briefly
described what had happened on Sunday. 'I believed that you were
ignorant of all this, Mr Transome,' he ended, 'and that was why I
thought some good might be done by speaking to you. If not, I should
be tempted to expose the whole affa ir as a disgrace to the Radical
party. I'm a Radical myself, and mean to work all my life long against
privilege, monopoly, and oppression. But I would rather be a livery-
servant proud of my master's title, than I would seem to make
common cause with scoundrels who turn the best hopes of men into
by-words for cant and dishonesty.'
'Your energetic protest is needless he re, sir,' said Harold, offended at
what sounded like a threat, and was certainly premature enough to be
in bad taste. In fact, this error of behaviour in Felix proceeded from a
repulsion which was mutual. It was a constant source of irritation to
him that the public men on his side were, on the whole, not
conspicuously better than the public men on the other side; that the
spirit of innovation, which with him was a part of religion, was in
many of its mouthpieces no more of a religion than the faith in rotten
boroughs; and he was thus predisposed to distrust Harold Transome.
Harold, in his turn, disliked impr acticable notions of loftiness and
purity - disliked all enthusiasm; and he thought he saw a very
troublesome, vigorous incorporation of that nonsense in Felix. But it
would be foolish to exasperate him in any way.
'If you choose to accompany me to Jermyn's office,' he went on, 'the
matter shall be inquired into in your presence. I think you will agree
with me, Mr Lyon, that this will be the most satisfactory course?'
'Doubtless,' said the minister, who liked the candidate very well, and
believed that he would be amenable to argument; 'and I would caution
my young friend against a too grea t hastiness of words and action.
David's cause against Saul was a ri ghteous one; nevertheless not all
who clave unto David were righteous men.'
'The more was the pity, sir,' said Felix. 'Especially if he winked at their
malpractices.'
Mr Lyon smiled, shook his head, and stroked his favourite's arm
deprecatingly.
'It is rather too much for any man to keep the consciences of all his
party,' said Harold. 'If you had lived in the East, as I have, you would
be more tolerant. More tolerant, for example, of an active industrious
selfishness, such as we have here, though it may not always be quite
scrupulous: you would see how much better it is than an idle
selfishness. I have heard it said, a bridge is a good thing - worth
helping to make, though half the men who worked at it were rogues.'
'O yes I ' said Felix, scornfully, 'give me a handful of generalities and
analogies, and I'll undertake to justify Burke and Hare, and prove
them benefactors of their species. I'll tolerate no nuisances but such
as I can't help; and the question now is, not whether we can do away
with all the nuisances in the worl d, but with a particular nuisance
under our noses.'
'Then we had better cut the matter short, as I propose, by going at
once to Jermyn's,' said Harold. 'In that case, I must bid you good-
morning, Mr Lyon.'
'I would fain,' said the minister, looking uneasy - 'I would fain have
had a further opportunity of considering that question of the ballot
with you. The reasons against it need not be urged lengthily; they only
require complete enumeration to prevent any seeming hiatus, where
an opposing fallacy might thrust itself in.'
'Never fear, sir,' said Harold, shakin g Mr Lyon's hand cordially, 'there
will be opportunities. Shall I not see you in the committee-room to-
morrow?'
'I think not,' said Mr Lyon, rubbing his brow, with a sad remembrance
of his personal anxieties. 'But I will send you, if you will permit me, a
brief writing, on which you can meditate at your leisure.'
'I shall be delighted. Good-bye.'
Harold and Felix went out together; and the minister, going up to his
dull study, asked himself whether, under the pressure of conflicting
experience, he had faithfully discharged the duties of the past
interview?
If a cynical sprite were present, riding on one of the motes in that
dusty room, he may have made himself merry at the illusions of the
little minister who brought so much conscience to bear on the
production of so slight an effect. I confess to smiling myself, being
sceptical as to the effect of ardent appeals and nice distinctions on
gentlemen who are got up, both inside and out, as candidates in the
style of the period; but I never smiled at Mr Lyon's trustful energy
without falling to penitence and veneration immediately after. For
what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and
present realities - a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger
sweep of the world's forces - a movement towards a more assured end
than the chances of a single life. We see human heroism broken into
units and say, this unit did little - might as well not have been. But in
this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we
might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the
other might be cheaply parted with . Let us rather raise a monument
to the soldiers whose brave hearts only kept the ranks unbroken, and
met death - a monument to the faithful who were not famous, and
who are precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious,
though some of them fall unseen and on barrenness.
At present, looking back on that day at Treby, it seems to me that the
sadder illusion lay with Harold Transome, who was trusting in his
own skill to shape the success of hi s own morrows, ignorant of what
many yesterdays had determined for him beforehand.
Chapter 17
It is a good and soothfast saw;
Half-roasted never will be raw;
No dough is dried once more to meal
No crock new-shapen by the wheel;
You can't turn curds to milk again,
Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then;
And having tasted stolen honey,
You can't buy innocence for money.
JERMYN was not particularly pleased that some chance had
apparently hindered Harold Transo me from making other canvassing
visits immediately after leaving Mr Lyon, and so had sent him back to
the office earlier than he had been expected to come. The inconvenient
chance he guessed at once to be represented by Felix Holt, whom he
knew very well by Trebian report to be a young man with so little of
the ordinary Christian motives as to making an appearance and
getting on in the world, that he presented no handle to any judicious
and respectable person who might be willing to make use of him.
Harold Transome, on his side, was a good deal annoyed at being
worried by Felix into an inquiry about electioneering details. The real
dignity and honesty there was in him made him shri nk from this
necessity of satisfying a man with a troublesome tongue; it was as if
he were to show indignation at the discovery of one barrel with a false
bottom, when he had invested his money in a manufactory where a
larger or smaller number of such barrels had always been made. A
practical man must seek a good end by the only possible means; that
is to say, if he is to get into parliament he must not be too particular.
It was not disgraceful to be neither a Quixote nor a theorist, aiming to
correct the moral rules of the world; but whatever actually was, or
might prove to be, disgraceful, Harold held in detestation. In this
mood he pushed on unceremoniously to the inner office without
waiting to ask questions; and when he perceived that Jermyn was not
alone, he said, with haughty quickness -
'A question about the electioneering at Sproxton. Can you give your
attention to it at once? Here is Mr Holt, who has come to me about the
business.'
'A - yes - a - certainly,' said Jermyn, who, as usual, was the more cool
and deliberate because he was vexe d. He was standing, and, as he
turned round, his broad figure concealed the person who was seated
writing at the bureau. 'Mr Holt - a - will doubtless - a - make a point
of saving a busy man's time. You can speak at once. This gentleman' -
here Jermyn made a slight backward movement of his head - 'is one of
ourselves; he is a true-blue.'
'I have simply to complain,' said Felix, 'that one of your agents has
been sent on a bribing expedition to Sproxton - with what purpose
you, sir, may know better than I do. Mr Transome, it appears, was
ignorant of the affair, and does not approve it.'
Jermyn, looking gravely and steadily at Felix while he was speaking,
at the same time drew forth a small sheaf of papers from his side-
pocket, and then, as he turned his eyes slowly on Harold, felt in his
waistcoat-pocket for his pencil-case.
'I don't approve it at all,' said Ha rold, who hated Jermyn's calculated
slowness and conceit in his own impe netrability. 'Be good enough to
put a stop to it, will you?'
'Mr Holt, I know, is an excellent Liberal,' said Jermyn, just inclining
his head to Harold, and then al ternately looking at Felix and
docketing his bills; 'but he is pe rhaps too inexperienced to be aware
that no canvass - a - can be conducted without the action of able men,
who must - a - be trusted, and not interfered with. And as to any
possibility of promising to put a stop - a - to any procedure - a - that
depends. If he had ever held the coachman's ribbons in his hands, as
I have in my younger days - a - he would know that stopping is not
always easy.'
'I know very little about holding ribbons,' said Felix; 'but I saw clearly
enough at once that more mischief had been done than could be well
mended. Though I believe, if it were heartily tried, the treating might
be reduced, and something might be done to hinder the men from
turning out in a body to make a noise, which might end in worse.'
'They might be hindered from making a noise on our side,' said
Jermyn, smiling. 'That is perfectly true. But if they made a noise on
the other - would your purpose be answered better, sir?'
Harold was moving about in an irritated manner while Felix and
Jermyn were speaking. He preferred leaving the talk to the attorney, of
whose talk he himself liked to keep as clear as possible.
'I can only say,' answered Felix, 'that if you make use of those heavy
fellows when the drink is in them, I shouldn't like your responsibility.
You might as well drive bulls to roar on our side as bribe a set of
colliers and navvies to shout and groan.'
'A lawyer may well envy your comm and of language, Mr Holt,' said
Jermyn, pocketing his bills again, an d shutting up his pencil; 'but he
would not be satisfied with the accuracy - a - of your terms. You must
permit me to check your use of the word ‘bribery’. The essence of
bribery is, that it should be legall y proved; there is not such a thing -
a - in rerum natura - a - as unproved bribery. There has been no such
thing as bribery at Sproxton, I'll answer for it. The presence of a body
of stalwart fellows on - a - the Libera l side will tend to preserve order;
for we know that the benefit clubs fr om the Pitchley district will show
for Debarry. Indeed, the gentleman who has conducted the canvass at
Sproxton is experienced in parl iamentary affairs, and would not
exceed - a - the necessary measures that a rational judgment would
dictate!'
'What! you mean the man who calls himself Johnson?' said Felix, in a
tone of disgust.
Before Jermyn chose to answer, Ha rold broke in, saying, quickly and
peremptorily, 'The long and short of it is this, Mr Holt: I shall desire
and insist that whatever can be done by way of remedy shall be done.
Will that satisfy you? You see now some of a candidate's difficulties?'
said Harold, breaking into his most agreeable smile. 'I hope you will
have some pity for me.'
'I suppose I must be content,' said Fe lix, not thoroughly propitiated. 'I
bid you good-morning, gentlemen.'
When he was gone out, and had closed the door behind him, Harold,
turning round and flashing, in spit e of himself, an angry look at
Jermyn, said -
'And who is Johnson? an alias, I suppose. It seems you are fond of the
name.'
Jermyn turned perceptibly paler, but disagreeables of this sort
between himself and Harold had been too much in his anticipations of
late for him to be taken by surprise. He turned quietly round and just
touched the shoulder of the person seated at the bureau, who now
rose.
'On the contrary,' Jermyn answered, 'the Johnson in question is this
gentleman, whom I have the pleasure of introducing to you as one of
my most active helpmates in electioneering business - Mr Johnson, of
Bedford Row, London. I am comparatively a novice - a - in these
matters. But he was engaged with James Putty in two hardly-
contested elections, and there could scarcely be a better initiation.
Putty is one of the first men of the country as an agent - a - on the
Liberal side - a - eh, Johnson? I think Makepiece is - a - not altogether
a match for him, not quite of the same calibre - a - haud consimili
ingenio - a - in tactics - a - and in experience?'
'Makepiece is a wonderful man, and so is Putty,' said the glib
Johnson, too vain not to be pleased with an opportunity of speaking,
even when the situation was rather awkward. 'Makepiece for
scheming, but Putty for management. Putty knows men, sir,' he went
on, turning to Harold; 'it's a thousand pities that you have not had his
talents employed in your service. He's beyond any man for saving a
candidate's money - does half the work with his tongue. He'll talk of
anything, from the Areopagus, and that sort of thing, down to the joke
about ‘Where are you going, Paddy?’ - you know what I mean, sir!
‘Back again, says Paddy’ - an excellent electioneering joke. Putty
understands these things. He has said to me, ‘Johnson, bear in mind
there are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is, to
tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them
what they're used to.’ I shall never be the man to deny that I owe a
great deal to Putty. I always say it was a most providential thing in the
Mugham election last year that Putty was not on the Tory side. He
managed the women; and if you'll believe me, sir, one fourth of the
men would never have voted if their wives hadn't driven them to it for
the good of their families. And as for speaking - it's currently reported
in our London circles that Putty writes regularly for the Times. He has
that kind of language; and I needn't tell you, Mr Transome, that it's
the apex, which, I take it, means the tiptop - and nobody can get
higher than that, I think. I've belonged to a political debating society
myself; I've heard a little language in my time; but when Mr Jermyn
first spoke to me about having the honour to assist in your canvass of
North Loamshire' - here Johnson played with his watch-seals and
balanced himself a moment on his toes - 'the very first thing I said
was, ‘And there's Garstin has got Putty! No Whig could stand against
a Whig,’ I said, ‘who had Putty on his side: I hope Mr Transome goes
in for something of a deeper colour.’ I don't say that, as a general rule,
opinions go for much in a return, Mr Transome; it depends on who are
in the field before you, and on the skill of your agents. But as a
Radical, and a moneyed Radical, you are in a fine position, sir; and
with care and judgment - with care and judgment -'
It had been impossible to interrupt Johnson before, without the most
impolite rudeness. Jermyn was not sorry that he should talk, even if
he made a fool of himself; for in that solid shape, exhibiting the
average amount of human foibles, he seemed less of the alias which
Harold had insinuated him to be, and had all the additional
plausibility of a lie with a circumstance.
Harold had thrown himself with contemptuous resignation into a
chair, had drawn off one of his bu ff gloves, and was looking at his
hand. But when Johnson gave his iteration with a slightly slackened
pace, Harold looked up at him and broke in -
'Well, then, Mr Johnson, I shall be glad if you will use your care and
judgment in putting an end as well as you can to this Sproxton affair;
else it may turn out an ugly business.'
'Excuse me, sir, I must beg you to look at the matter a little more
closely. You will see that it is impossible to take a single step
backward at Sproxton. It was a matter of necessity to get the Sproxton
men; else I know to a certainty the other side would have laid hold of
them first, and now I've undermined Garstin's people. They'll use their
authority, and give a little shabby treating, but I've taken all the wind
out of their sails. But if, by your orders, I or Mr Jermyn here were to
break promise with the honest fellows, and offend Chubb the
publican, what would come of it? Chubb would leave no stone
unturned against you, sir; he would egg on his customers against you;
the colliers and navvies would be at the nomination and at the
election all the same, or rather not all the same, for they would be
there against us; and instead of hu stling people good-humouredly by
way of a joke, and counterbalancing Debarry's cheers, they'd help to
kick the cheering and the voting out of our men, and instead of being,
let us say, half-a-dozen ahead of Garstin, you'd be half-a-dozen
behind him, that's all. I speak plain English to you, Mr Transome,
though I've the highest respect for you as a gentleman of first-rate
talents and position. But, sir, to judge of these things a man must
know the English voter and the Engl ish publican; and it would be a
poor tale indeed' - here Mr Johnson's mouth took an expression at
once bitter and pathetic - 'that a gentleman like you, to say nothing of
the good of the country, should ha ve gone to the expense and trouble
of a canvass for nothing but to find himself out of parliament at the
end of it. I've seen it again and again; it looks bad in the cleverest man
to have to sing small.'
Mr Johnson's argument was not the less stringent because his idioms
were vulgar. It requires a convicti on and resolution amounting to
heroism not to wince at phrases that class our foreshadowed
endurance among those common and ignominious troubles which the
world is more likely to sneer at th an to pity. Harold remained a few
moments in angry silence looking at the floor, with one hand on his
knee, and the other on his hat, as if he were preparing to start up.
'As to undoing anything that's been done down there,' said Johnson,
throwing in this observation as something into the bargain, 'I must
wash my hands of it, sir. I coul dn't work knowingly against your
interest. And that young man who is just gone out, - you don't believe
that he need be listened to, I hope? Chubb, the publican, hates him.
Chubb would guess he was at the bott om of your having the treating
stopped, and he'd set half-a-dozen of the colliers to duck him in the
canal, or break his head by mistak e. I'm an experienced man, sir. I
hope I've put it clear enough.'
'Certainly, the exposition befits th e subject,' said Harold, scornfully,
his dislike of the man Johnson's personality being stimulated by
causes which Jermyn more than conjectured. 'It's a damned,
unpleasant, ravelled business that you and Mr Jermyn have knit up
between you. I've no more to say.'
'Then, sir, if you've no more command s, I don't wish to intrude. I shall
wish you good-morning, sir,' said Johnson, passing out quickly.
Harold knew that he was indulging his temper, and he would probably
have restrained it as a foolish move if he had thought there was great
danger in it. But he was beginning to drop much of his caution and
self-mastery where Jermyn was concerned, under the growing
conviction that the attorney had very strong reasons for being afraid of
him; reasons which would only be re inforced by any action hostile to
the Transome interest. As for a sneak like this Johnson, a gendeman
had to pay him, not to please him. Harold had smiles at command in
the right place, but he was not going to smile when it was neither
necessary nor agreeable. He was one of those good-humoured, yet
energetic men, who have the gift of anger, hatred, and scom upon
occasion, though they are too healthy and selfcontented for such
feelings to get generated in them without external occasion. And in
relation to Jermyn the gift was coming into fine exercise.
'A - pardon me, Mr Harold,' said Jermyn, speaking as soon as
Johnson went out, 'but I am sorry - a - you should behave
disobligingly to a man who has it in his power to do much service -
who, in fact, holds many threads in his hands. I admit that - a - nemo
mortalium omnibus horis sapit, as we say - a -'
'Speak for yourself,' said Harold. 'I don't talk in tags of Latin, which
might be learned by a schoolmaster's footboy. I find the King's English
express my meaning better.'
'In the King's English, then,' said Jermyn who could be idiomatic
enough when he was stung, 'a candidate should keep his kicks till
he's a member.'
'O, I suppose Johnson will bear a kick if you bid him. You're his
principal, I believe.'
'Certainly, thus far - a - he is my London agent. But he is a man of
substance, and -'
'I shall know what he is if it's ne cessary, I daresay. But I must jump
into the carriage again. I've no time to lose; I must go to Hawkins at
the factory. Will you go?'
When Harold was gone, Jermyn's handsome face gathered blackness.
He hardly ever wore his worst expression in the presence of others,
and but seldom when he was alone, for he was not given to believe
that any game would ultimately go against him. His luck had been
good. New conditions might always turn up to give him new chances;
and if affairs threatened to come to an extremity between Harold and
himself, he trusted to finding some sure resource.
'He means to see to the bottom of everything if he can, that's quite
plain,' said Jermyn to himself. 'I believe he has been getting another
opinion; he has some new light about those annuities on the estate
that are held in Johnson's name. He has inherited a deuced faculty for
business - there's no denying that. But I shall beg leave to tell him
that I've propped up the family. I don't know where they would have
been without me; and if it comes to balancing, I know into which scale
the gratitude ought to go. Not that he's likely to feel any - but he can
feel something else; and if he makes signs of setting the dogs on me, I
shall make him feel it. The people named Transome owe me a good
deal more than I owe them.'
In this way Mr Jermyn inwardly appealed against an unjust
construction which he foresaw that his old acquaintance the Law
might put on certain items in his history.
I have known persons who have b een suspected of undervaluing
gratitude, and excluding it from the list of virtues; but on closer
observation it has been seen that, if they have never felt grateful, it
has been for want of an opportunity; and that, far from despising
gratitude, they regard it as the virtue most of all incumbent - on
others towards them.
Chapter 18
'The little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.'
WORDSWVORTH: Tintern Abbey.
JERMYN did not forget to pay his vi sit to the minister in Malthouse
Yard that evening. The mingled irritation, dread, and defiance which
he was feeling towards Harold Transome in the middle of the day,
depended on too many and far-stretching causes to be dissipated by
eight o'clock; but when he left Mr Lyon's house he was in a state of
comparative triumph in the belief that he, and he alone, was now in
possession of facts which, once gr ouped together, made a secret that
gave him new power over Harold.
Mr Lyon, in his need for help from one who had that wisdom of the
serpent which, he argued, is not forbidden, but is only of hard
acquirement to dove-like innocence, had been gradually led to pour
out to the attorney all the reasons which made him desire to know the
truth about the man who called himself Maurice Christian: he had
shown all the precious relics, the locket, the letters, and the marriage
certificate. And Jermyn had comfor ted him by confidently promising
to ascertain, without scandal or premature betrayals, whether this
man were really Annette's husband, Maurice Christian Bycliffe.
Jermyn was not rash in making this promise, since he had excellent
reasons for believing that he had already come to a true conclusion on
the subject. But he wished both to know a little more of this man
himself, and to keep Mr Lyon in ignorance - not a difficult precaution -
in an affair which it cost the mini ster so much pain to speak of. An
easy opportunity of getting an inte rview with Christian was sure to
offer itself before long - might even offer itself to-morrow. Jermyn had
seen him more than once, though hitherto without any reason for
observing him with interest; he had heard that Philip Debarry's
courier was often busy in the town, and it seemed especially likely
that he would be seen there when the market was to be agitated by
politics, and the new candidate was to show his paces.
The world of which Treby Magna was the centre was naturally curious
to see the young Transome, who had come from the East, was as rich
as a Jew, and called himself a Radi cal; characteristics all equally
vague in the minds of various excellent ratepayers, who drove to
market in their taxed carts, or in their hereditary gigs. Places at
convenient windows had been secured beforehand for a few best
bonnets; but, in general, a Radical candidate excited no ardent
feminine partisanship, even among the Dissenters in Treby, if they
were of the prosperous and longresident class. Some chapel-going
ladies were fond of remembering that 'their family had been Church';
others objected to politics alto gether as having spoiled old
neighbourliness, and sundered friends who had kindred views as to
cowslip wine and Michaelmas cleaning; others, of the melancholy sort,
said it would be well if people would think less of reforming
parliament and more of pleasing God. Irreproachable Dissenting
matrons, like Mrs Muscat, whose youth had been passed in a short-
waisted bodice and tight skirt, had never been animated by the
struggle for liberty, and had a timid suspicion that religion was
desecrated by being applied to the things of this world. Since Mr Lyon
had been in Malthouse Yard there had been far too much mixing up of
politics with religion; but, at any rate, these ladies had never yet been
to hear speechifying in the market -place, and they were not going to
begin that practice.
Esther, however, had heard some of her feminine acquaintances say
that they intended to sit at the druggist's upper window, and she was
inclined to ask her father if he could think of a suitable place where
she also might see and hear. Two inconsistent motives urged her. She
knew that Felix cared earnestly for all public questions, and she
supposed that he held it one of her deficiencies not to care about
them: well, she would try to learn the secret of this ardour, which was
so strong in him that it animated what she thought the dullest form of
life. She was not too stupid to find it out. But this self-correcting
motive was presently displaced by a motive of a different sort. It had
been a pleasant variety in her mo notonous days to see a man like
Harold Transome, with a distinguished appearance and polished
manners, and she would like to see him again: he suggested to her
that brighter and more luxurious life on which her imagination dwelt
without the painful effort it required to conceive the mental condition
which would place her in complete sympathy with Felix Holt. It was
this less unaccustomed prompting of which she was chiefly conscious
when she awaited her father's coming down to breakfast. Why, indeed,
should she trouble herself so much about Felix?
Mr Lyon, more serene now that he had unbosomed his anxieties and
obtained a promise of help, was al ready swimming so happily in the
deep water of polemics in expectation of Philip Debarry's answer to his
challenge, that, in the occupation of making a few notes lest certain
felicitous inspirations should be wasted, he had forgotten to come
down to breakfast. Esther, suspecting his abstraction, went up to his
study, and found him at his desk looking up with wonder at her
interruption.
'Come, father, you have forgotten your breakfast.'
'It is true, child; I will come,' he said, lingering to make some final
strokes.
'O you naughty father!' said Esther, as he got up from his chair, 'your
coat-collar is twisted, your waistcoat is buttoned all wrong, and you
have not brushed your hair. Sit down and let me brush it again as I
did yesterday.'
He sat down obediently, while Esth er took a towel, which she threw
over his shoulders, and then brushe d the thick long fringe of soft
auburn hair. This very trifling act, which she had brought herself to
for the first time yesterday, meant a great deal in Esther's little
history. It had been her habit to leave the mending of her father's
clothes to Lyddy; she had not liked even to touch his cloth garments;
still less had it seemed a thing she would willingly undertake to
correct his toilette, and use a brush for him. But having once done
this, under her new sense of faulty omission, the affectionateness that
was in her flowed so pleasantly, as she saw how much her father was
moved by what he thought a great act of tenderness, that she quite
longed to repeat it. This morning, as he sat under her hands, his face
had such a calm delight in it that she could not help kissing the top of
his bald head; and afterwards, when they were seated at breakfast,
she said, merrily -
'Father, I shall make a petit maitre of you by-and-by; your hair looks
so pretty and silken when it is well brushed.'
'Nay, child, I trust that while I would willingly depart from my evil
habit of a somewhat slovenly forget fulness in my attire, I shall never
arrive at the opposite extreme. For though there is that in apparel
which pleases the eye, and I deny not that your neat gown and the
colour thereof - which is that of certain little flowers that spread
themselves in the hedgerows, and make a blueness there as of the sky
when it is deepened in the water, - I deny not, I say, that these minor
strivings after a perfection which is, as it were, an irrecoverable yet
haunting memory, are a good in th eir proportion. Nevertheless, the
brevity of our life, and the hurry and crush of the great battle with
error and sin, often oblige us to an advised neglect of what is less
momentous This, I conceive, is the principle on which my friend Felix
Holt acts; and I cannot but think the light comes from the true fount,
though it shines through obstructions.'
'You have not seen Mr Holt since Sunday, have you, father?'
'Yes; he was here yesterday. He sought Mr Transome, having a matter
of some importance to speak upon with him. And I saw him
afterwards in the street, when he agreed that I should call for him this
morning before I go into the market-place. He will have it,' Mr Lyon
went on, smiling, 'that I must not walk about in the crowd without
him to act as my special constable.'
Esther felt vexed with herself that her heart was suddenly beating
with unusual quickness, and that her last resolution not to trouble
herself about what Felix thought, had transformed itself with magic
swiftness into mortification that he evidently avoided coming to the
house when she was there, though he used to come on the slightest
occasion. He knew that she was always at home until the afternoon on
market days; that was the reason why he would not call for her father.
Of course, it was because he attribut ed such littleness to her that he
supposed she would retain nothing else than a feeling of offence
towards him for what he had said to her. Such distrust of any good in
others, such arrogance of immeasur able superiority, was extremely
ungenerous. But presently she said -
'I should have liked to hear Mr Transome speak, but I suppose it is too
late to get a place now.'
'I am not sure; I would fain have you go if you desire it, my dear,' said
Mr Lyon, who could not bear to de ny Esther any lawful wish. 'Walk
with me to Mistress Holt's, and we will learn from Felix, who will
doubtless already have been out, whether he could lead you in safety
to Friend Lambert's.'
Esther was glad of the proposal, because, if it answered no other
purpose, it would be an easy way of obliging Felix to see her, and of
showing him that it was not she who cherished offence. But when,
later in the morning, she was walking towards Mrs Holt's with her
father, they met Mr Jermyn, who stopped them to ask, in his most
affable manner, whether Miss Lyon intended to hear the candidate,
and whether she had secured a suitable place. And he ended by
insisting that his daughters, who we re presently coming in an open
carriage, should call for her, if she would permit them. It was
impossible to refuse this civility, and Esther turned back to await the
carriage, pleased with the certainty of hearing and seeing, yet sorry to
miss Felix. There was another day for her to think of him with
unsatisfied resentment, mixed with some longings for a better
understanding; and in our spring-time every day has its hidden
growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded
blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.
Chapter 19
Consistency? - I never changed my mind,
Which is, and always was, to live at ease.
IT was only in the time of the summer fairs that the market-place had
ever looked more animated than it did under that autumn mid-day
sun. There were plenty of blue cockades and streamers, faces at all
the windows, and a crushing buzz ing crowd, urging each other
backwards and forwards round the small hustings in front of the Ram
Inn, which showed its more plebeian sign at right angles with the
venerable Marquis of Granby. Sometimes there were scornful shouts,
sometimes a rolling cascade of ch eers, sometimes the shriek of a
penny whistle; but above all these fitful and feeble sounds, the fine old
church-tower, which looked down from above the trees on the other
side of the narrow stream, sent vibrating, at every quarter, the
sonorous tones of its great bell, the Good Queen Bess.
Two carriages, with blue ribbons on the hamess, were conspicuous
near the hustings. One was Jermyn's, filled with the brilliantly-attired
daughters, accompanied by Esther, whose quieter dress helped to
mark her out for attention as the most striking of the group. The other
was Harold Transsome's; but in this there was no lady - only the olive-
skinned Dominic, whose acute yet mild face was brightened by the
occupation of amusing little Harry and rescuing from his tyrannies a
King Charles puppy, with big eyes , much after the pattern of the
boy's.
This Trebian crowd did not count for much in the political force of the
nation, but it was not the less determined as to lending or not lending
its ears. No man was permitted to speak from the platform except
Harold and his uncle Lingon, though, in the interval of expectation,
several Liberals had come forward. Among these ill-advised persons
the one whose attempt met the most emphatic resistance was Rufus
Lyon. This might have been taken for resentment at the
unreasonableness of the cloth, that, not content with pulpits, from
whence to tyrannise over the ears of men, wishes to have the larger
share of the platforms; but it was not so, for Mr Lingon was heard
with much cheering, and would have been welcomed again.
The rector of Little Treby had been a favourite in the neighbourhood
since the beginning of the century. A clergy-man thoroughly unclerical
in his habits had a piquancy about him which made him a sort of
practical joke. He had always been called Jack Lingon, or Parson Jack
- sometimes, in older and less serious days, even 'Cock-fighting Jack'.
He swore a little when the point of a joke seemed to demand it, and
was fond of wearing a coloured bandana tied loosely over his cravat,
together with large brown leather leggings; he spoke in a pithy familiar
way that people could understand , and had none of that frigid
mincingness called dignity, whic h some have thought a peculiar
clerical disease. In fact, he was 'a character' - something cheerful to
think of, not entirely out of connection with Sunday and sermons. And
it seemed in keeping that he should have turned sharp round in
politics, his opinions being only pa rt of the excellent joke called
Parson Jack. When his red eagle face and white hair were seen on the
platform, the Dissenters hardly cheered this questionable Radical; but
to make amends, all the Tory farmers gave him a friendly 'hurray'.
'Let's hear what old Jack will say for himself,' was the predominant
feeling among them; 'he'll have something funny to say, I'll bet a
penny.'
It was only Lawyer Labron's youn g clerks and their hangers-on who
were sufficiently dead to Trebian traditions to assail the parson with
various sharp-edged interjections, such as broken shells, and cries of
'Cock-a-doodle-doo'.
'Come now, my lads,' he began, in his full, pompous, yet jovial tones,
thrusting his hands into the stuffed- out pockets of his greatcoat, 'I'll
tell you what; I'm a parson, you know ; I ought to return good for evil.
So here are some good nuts for you to crack in return for your shells.'
There was a roar of laughter and cheering as he threw handfuls of
nuts and filberts among the crowd.
'Come, now, you'll say I used to be a Tory; and some of you, whose
faces I know as well as I know the head of my own crab-stick, will say
that's why I'm a good fellow. But now I'll tell you something else. It's
for that very reason - that I used to be a Tory, and am a good fellow -
that I go along with my nephew here, who is a thoroughgoing Liberal.
For will anybody here come forward and say, ‘A good fellow has no
need to tack about and change his road?’ No, there's not one of you
such a Tom-noddy. What's good for one time is bad for another. If
anybody contradicts that, ask him to eat pickled pork when he's
thirsty, and to bathe in the Lapp there when the spikes of ice are
shooting. And that's the eason why the men who are the best Liberals
now are the very men who used to be the best Tories. There isn't a
nastier horse than your horse that 'll jib and back and turn round
when there is but one road for him to go, and that's the road before
him.
'And my nephew here - he comes of a Tory breed, you know - I'll
answer for the Lingons. In the old Tory times there was never a pup
belonging to a Lingon but would howl if a Whig came near him. The
Lingon blood is good, rich old Tory blood - like good rich milk - and
that's why, when the right time come s, it throws up a Liberal cream.
The best sort of Tory turns to the best sort of Radical. There's plenty of
Radical scum - I say, beware of the scum, and look out for the cream.
And here's my nephew - some of the cream, if there is any: none of
your Whigs, none of your painted water that looks as if it ran, and it's
standing still all the while; none of your spinning-jenny fellows. A
gentleman; but up to all sorts of business. I'm no fool myself; I'm
forced to wink a good deal, for fear of seeing too much, for a
neighbourly man must let himself be cheated a little. But though I've
never been out of my own country, I know less about it than my
nephew does. You may tell what he is, and only look at him. There's
one sort of fellow sees nothing but the end of his own nose, and
another sort that sees nothing but the hinder side of the moon; but
my nephew Harold is of another sort; he sees everything that's at
hitting distance, and he's not one to miss his mark. A good-looking
man in his prime! Not a greenhorn; not a shrivelled old fellow, who'll
come to speak to you and find he's left his teeth at home by mistake.
Harold Transome will do you credit; if anybody says the Radicals are a
set of sneaks, Brummagem halfpennies, scamps who want to play
pitch and toss with the property of the country, you can say, ‘Look at
the member for North Loamshire ! ‘ And mind what you'll hear him
say; he'll go in for making everyth ing right - Poor-l aws and charities
and church - he wants to reform 'em all. Perhaps you'll say, ‘There's
that Parson Lingon talking about church reform - why, he belongs to
the church himself - he wants reforming too.’ Well, well, wait a bit,
and you'll hear by-and-by that old Parson Lingon is reformed - shoots
no more cracks his joke no more, has drunk his last bottle: the dogs
the old pointers, will be sorry; but you'll hear that the parson at Little
Treby is a new man. That's what church reform is sure to come to
before long. So now here are some more nuts for you, lads, and I leave
you to listen to your candidate. Here he is - give him a good hurray;
wave your hats, and I'll begin. Hurray!
Harold had not been quite confident beforehand as to the good effect
of his uncle's introduction; but he was soon reassured. There was no
acrid partisanship among the ol dfashioned Tories who mustered
strong about the Marquis of Granby , and Parson Jack had put them
in a good humour. Harold's only interruption came from his own
party. The oratorical clerk at the factory, acting as the tribune of the
dissenting interest, and feeling bound to put questions, might have
been troublesome; but his voice being unpleasantly sharp, while
Harold's was full and penetrating, the questioning was cried down.
Harold's speech 'did': it was no t of the glib-nonsensical sort, not
ponderous, not hesitating - which is as much as to say, that it was
remarkable among British speeches. Read in print the next day,
perhaps it would be neither pregnant nor conclusive, which is saying
no more than that its excellence was not of an abnormal kind, but
such as is usually found in the best efforts of eloquent candidates.
Accordingly the applause drowne d the opposition, and content
predominated.
But, perhaps, the moment of most diffusive pleasure from public
speaking is that in which the speech ceases and the audience can
turn to commenting on it. The one speech, sometimes uttered under
great responsibility as to missiles and other consequences, has given a
text to twenty speakers who are under no responsibility. Even in the
days of duelling a man was not challenged for being a bore, nor does
this quality apparently hinder him from being much invited to dinner,
which is the great index of social responsibility in a less barbarous
age.
Certainly the crowd in the market-place seemed to experience this
culminating enjoyment when the speaki ng on the platform in front of
the Ram had ceased, and there were no less than three orators
holding forth from the elevation of chance vehicles, not at all to the
prejudice of the talking among those who were on a level with their
neighbours. There was little ill-humour among the listeners, for Queen
Bess was striking the last quarter before two, and a savoury smell
from the inn kitchens inspired them with an agreeable consciousness
that the speakers were helping to trifle away the brief time before
dinner.
Two or three of Harold's committee had lingered talking to each other
on the platform, instead of re-entering; and Jermyn, after coming out
to speak to one of them, had tunred to the corner near which the
carriages were standing, that he mi ght tell the Transomes' coachman
to drive round to the side door, and signal to his own coachman to
follow. But a dialogue which was going on below induced him to
pause, and, instead of giving the order, to assume the air of a careless
gazer. Christian, whom the attorney had already observed looking out
of a window at the Marquis of Granby, was talking to Dominic. The
meeting appeared to be one of ne w recognition, for Christian was
saying -
'You've not got grey as I have, Mr Lenoni; you're not a day older for the
sixteen years. But no wonder you di dn't know me; I'm bleached like a
dried bone.'
'Not so. It is true I was confused a meenute - I could put your face
nowhere; but after that, Naples came behind it, and I said, Mr
Creestian. And so you reside at the Manor, and I am at Transome
Court.'
'Ah I it's a thousand pities you're not on our side, else we might have
dined together at the Marquis,' said Christian. 'Eh, could you manage
it?' he added, languidly, knowing there was no chance of a yes.
'No - much obliged - couldn't leave the leetle boy. Ahi I Arry, Arry,
pinch not poor Moro.'
While Dominic was answering, Christian had stared about him, as his
manner was when he was being spoken to, and had had his eyes
arrested by Esther, who was leaning forward to look at Mr Harold
Transome's extraordinary little gipsy of a son. But happening to meet
Christian's stare, she felt annoyed, drew back, and turned away her
head, colouring.
'Who are those ladies?' said Christian, in a low tone, to Dominic, as if
he had been startled into a sudden wish for this information.
'They are Meester Jermyn's daught ers,' said Dominic, who knew
nothing either of the lawyer's family or of Esther.
Christian looked puzzled a moment or two, and was silent.
'O, well - au revoir,' he said, kissing the tips of his fingers, as the
coachman, having had Jermyn's order, began to urge on the horses.
'Does he see some likeness in the girl?' thought Jermyn, as he turned
away. 'I wish I hadn't invited her to come in the carriage, as it
happens.'
Chapter 20
'Good earthenware pitchers, sir! - of an excellent quaint pattern and
sober colour.'
THE market dinner at 'the Marquis' was in high repute in Treby and
its neighbourhood. The frequenters of this three-and-sixpenny
ordinary liked to allude to it, as men allude to anything which implies
that they move in good society, and habitually converse with those
who are in the secret of the highest affairs. The guests were not only
such rural residents as had driven to market, but some of the most
substantial townsmen, who had always assured their wives that
business required this weekly sacr ifice of domestic pleasure. The
poorer farmers, who put up at the Ram or the Seven Stars, where
there was no fish, felt their disadvantage, bearing it modestly or
bitterly, as the case might be; and although the Marquis was a Tory
house, devoted to Debarry, it wa s too much to expect that such
tenants of the Transomes as had always been used to dine there,
should consent to eat a worse dinne r, and sit with worse company,
because they suddenly found themselves under a Radical landlord,
opposed to the political party known as Sir Maxim's. Hence the recent
political divisions had not reduced the handsome length of the table at
the Marquis; and the many gradations of dignity - from Mr Wace, the
brewer, to the rich butcher from Leek Malton, who always modestly
took the lowest seat, though without the reward of being asked to
come up higher - had not been abbreviated by any secessions.
To-day there was an extra table spread for expected supernumeraries,
and it was at this that Christian took his place with some of the
younger farmers, who had almost a sense of dissipation in talking to a
man of his questionable station and unknown experience. The
provision was especially liberal, and on the whole the presence of a
minority destined to vote for Transome was a ground for joking, which
added to the good-humour of the chief talkers. A respectable old
acquaintance turned Radical rather against his will, was rallied with
even greater gusto than if his wife had had twins twice over. The best
Trebian Tories were far too sweet-blooded to turn against such old
friends, and to make no distinct ion between them and the Radical,
Dissenting, Papistical, Deistical set with whom they never dined, and
probably never saw except in their imagination. But the talk was
necessarily in abeyance until the more serious business of dinner was
ended, and the wine, spirits, and tobacco raised mere satisfaction into
beatitude.
Among the frequent though not regular guests, whom every one was
glad to see, was Mr Nolan, the retired London hosier, a wiry old
gentleman past seventy, whose square tight forehead, with its rigid
hedge of grey hair, whose bushy eyebrows, sharp dark eyes, and
remarkable hooked nose, gave a hand some distinction to his face in
the midst of rural physiognomies. He had married a Miss Pendrell
early in life, when he was a poor young Londoner, and the match had
been thought as bad as ruin by her family; but fifteen years ago he
had had the satisfaction of bringing his wife to settle amongst her own
friends, and of being received with pride as a brother-in-law, retired
from business, possessed of unknown thousands, and of a most
agreeable talent for anecdote and co nversation generally. No question
had ever been raised as to Mr Nolan's extraction on the strength of his
hooked nose, or of his name being Baruch. Hebrew names 'ran' in the
best Saxon families; the Bible accounted for them; and no one among
the uplands and hedgerows of that district was suspected of having an
Oriental origin unless he carried a pedlar's jewel-box. Certainly,
whatever genealogical research mi ght have discovered, the worthy
Baruch Nolan was so free from an y distinctive marks of religious
persuasion - he went to church with so ordinary an irregularity, and
so often grumbled at the sermon - that there was no ground for
classing him otherwise than with good Trebian Churchmen. He was
generally regarded as a good-looking old gentleman, and a certain thin
eagerness in his aspect was attributed to the life of the metropolis,
where narrow space had the same sort of effect on men as on thickly-
planted trees. Mr Nolan always ordere d his pint of port, which, after
he had sipped it a little, was wont to animate his recollections of the
Royal Family, and the various ministries which had been
contemporary with the successive stages of his prosperity. He was
always listened to with interest: a man who had been born in the year
when good old King George I came to the throne - who had been
acquainted with the nude leg of the Prince Regent, and hinted at
private reasons for believing that the Princess Charlotte ought not to
have died - had conversational matter as special to his auditors as
Marco Polo could have had on his return from Asiatic travel.
'My good sir,' he said to Mr Wace, as he crossed his knees and spread
his silk handkerchief over them, 'Transome may be returned, or he
may not be returned - that's a qu estion for North Loamshire; but it
makes little difference to the kingdom. I don't want to say things
which may put younger men out of spirits, but I believe this country
has seen its best days - I do indeed.'
'I am sorry to hear it from one of your experience, Mr Nolan,' said the
brewer, a large happy-looking man. 'I'd make a good fight myself
before I'd leave a worse world for my boys than I've found for myself.
There isn't a greater pleasure than doing a bit of planting and
improving one's buildings, and investing one's money in some pretty
acres of land, when it turns up here and there - land you've known
from a boy. It's a nasty thought that these Radicals are to turn things
round so as one can calculate on nothing. One doesn't like it for one's
self, and one doesn't like it for one's neighbours. But somehow, I
believe it won't do: if we can't trust the government just now, there's
providence and the good sense of the country; and there's a right in
things - that's what I've always said - there's a right in things. The
heavy end will get downmost. And if church and king, and every man
being sure of his own, are things go od for this country, there's a God
above will take care of 'em.'
'It won't do, my dear sir,' said Mr Nolan - 'it won't do. When Peel and
the duke turned round about the Catholics in '29, I saw it was all over
with us. We could never trust ministers any more. It was to keep off a
rebellion, they said; but I say it was to keep their places. They're
monstrously fond of place, both of them - that I know.' Here Mr Nolan
changed the crossing of his legs, and gave a deep cough, conscious of
having made a point. Then he went on - 'What we want is a king with
a good will of his own. If we'd had that, we shouldn't have heard what
we've heard to-day; reform would never have come to this pass. When
our good old King George the Thir d heard his ministers talking about
Catholic Emancipation, he boxed their ears all round. Ah, poor soul!
he did indeed, gentlemen,' ended Mr Nolan, shaken by a deep laugh of
admiration.
'Well, now, that's something like a king,' said Mr Crowder, who was an
eager listener.
'It was uncivil, though. How did they take it?' said Mr Timothy Rose, a
'gentleman farmer' from Leek Malton, against whose independent
position nature had provided the safeguard of a spontaneous servility.
His large porcine cheeks, round twinkling eyes, and thumbs
habitually twirling, expressed a concentrated effort not to get into
trouble, and to speak everybody fair except when they were safely out
of hearing.
'Take it! they'd be obliged to take it,' said the impetuous young Joyce,
a farmer of superior information. 'Have you ever heard of the king's
prerogative?'
'I don't say but what I have,' said Rose, retreating. 'I've nothing against
it - nothing at all.'
'No, but the Radicals have,' said young Joyce, winking. 'The
prerogative is what they want to clip close. They want us to be
governed by delegates from the trades-unions, who are to dictate to
everybody, and make everything square to their mastery.'
'They're a pretty set, now, those delegates,' said Mr Wace, with
disgust. 'I once heard two of 'em spouting away. They're a sort of
fellow I'd never employ in my brewery, or anywhere else. I've seen it
again and again. If a man takes to to ngue-work it's all over with him.
‘Everything's wrong,’ says he. That's a big text. But does he want to
make everything right? Not he. He'd lose his text. ‘We want every
man's good,’ say they. Why, they never knew yet what a man's good is.
How should they? It's working for hi s victual - not getting a slice of
other people's.'
'Ay, ay,' said young Joyce, cordially. 'I should just have liked all the
delegates in the country mustered for our yeomanry to go into - that's
all. They'd see where the strength of Old England lay then. You may
tell what it is for a country to trust to trade when it breeds such
spindling fellows as those.'
'That isn't the fault of trade, my good sir,' said Mr Nolan, who was
often a little pained by the defect s of provincial culture. 'Trade,
properly conducted, is good for a man's constitution. I could have
shown you, in my time, weavers past seventy, with all their faculties
as sharp as a penknife, doing withou t spectacles. It's the new system
of trade that's to blame: a country can't have too much trade, if it's
properly managed. Plenty of sound Tories have made their fortune by
trade. You've heard of Calibut & Co. - everybody has heard of Calibut.
Well, sir, I knew old Mr Calibut as well as I know you. He was once a
crony of mine in a city warehouse; and now, I'll answer for it, he has a
larger rent-roll than Lord Wyvern. Bless your soul! his subscriptions
to charities would make a fine in come for a nobleman. And he's as
good a Tory as I am. And as for his town establishment - why, how
much butter do you think is consumed there annually?'
Mr Nolan paused, and then his face glowed with triumph as he
answered his own question. 'Why, gentlemen, not less than two
thousand pounds of butter during the few months the family is in
town! Trade makes property, my good sir, and property is
Conservative, as they say now. Calibut's son-in-law is Lord
Fortinbras. He paid me a large debt on his marriage. It's all one web,
sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.'
'To be sure,' said Christian, who, smoking his cigar with his chair
turned away from the table, was willing to make himself agreeable in
the conversation. 'We can't do without nobility. Look at France. When
they got rid of the old nobles they were obliged to make new.'
'True, very true,' said Mr Nolan, who thought Christian a little too wise
for his position, but could not resist the rare gift of an instance in
point. 'It's the French Revolution that has done us harm here. It was
the same at the end of the last century, but the war kept it off - Mr
Pitt saved us. I knew Mr Pitt. I had a particular interview with him
once. He joked me about getting the length of his foot. ‘Mr Nolan,’ said
he, ‘there are those on the other side of the water whose name begins
with N. who would be glad to know what you know.’ I was
recommended to send an account of that to the newspapers after his
death, poor man! but I'm not fond of that kind of show myself.' Mr
Nolan swung his upper leg a little, and pinched his lip between thumb
and finger, naturally pleased with his own moderation.
'No, no, very right,' said Mr Wace, cordially. 'But you never said a
truer word than that about property. If a man's got a bit of property, a
stake in the country, he'll want to keep things square. Where Jack
isn't safe, Tom's in danger. But that's what makes it such an
uncommonly nasty thing that a man like Transome should take up
with these Radicals. It's my belief he does it only to get into
parliament; he'll turn round when he gets there. Come, Dibbs, there's
something to put you in spirits,' added Mr Wace, raising his voice a
little and looking at a guest lower down. 'You've got to vote for a
Radical with one side of your mouth, and make a wry face with the
other; but he'll turn round by-and-by. As Parson Jack says, he's got
the right sort of blood in him.'
'I don't care two straws who I vote for,' said Dibbs, sturdily. 'I'm not
going to make a wry face. It stands to reason a man should vote for
his landlord. My farm's in good condition, and I've got the best pasture
on the estate. The rot's never come nigh me. Let them grumble as are
on the wrong side of the hedge.'
'I wonder if Jermyn'll bring him in, though,' said Mr Sircome, the great
miller. 'He's an uncommon fellow fo r carrying things through. I know
he brought me through that suit about my weir; it cost a pretty penny,
but he brought me through.'
'It's a bit of a pill for him, too, having to turn Radical,' said Mr Wace.
'They say he counted on making friends with Sir Maximus, by this
young one coming home and joining with Mr Philip.'
'But I'll bet a penny he brings Transome in,' said Mr Sircome. 'Folks
say he hasn't got many votes hereabout; but towards Duffield, and all
there, where the Radicals are, everybody's for him. Eh, Mr Christian?
Come - you're at the fountainhead - what do they say about it now at
the Manor?'
When general attention was called to Christian, young Joyce looked
down at his own legs and touched the curves of his own hair, as if
measuring his own approximation to that correct copy of a gentleman.
Mr Wace turned his head to listen for Christian's answer with that
tolerance of inferiority which becomes men in places of public resort.
'They think it will be a hard run between Transome and Garstin,' said
Christian. 'It depends on Transome's getting plumpers.'
'Well, I know I shall not split for Garstin,' said Mr Wace. 'It's nonsense
for Debarry's voters to split for a Wh ig. A man's either a Tory or not a
Tory.'
'It seems reasonable there should be one of each side,' said Mr
Timothy Rose. 'I don't like showing favour either way. If one side can't
lower the poor's rates and take off the tithe, let the other try.'
'But there's this in it, Wace,' said Mr Sircome. 'I'm not altogether
against the Whigs. For they don't want to go so far as the Radicals do,
and when they find they've slipped a bit too far, they'll hold on all the
tighter. And the Whigs have got the upper hand now, and it's no use
fighting with the current. I run with the -'
Mr Sircome checked himself, looked furtively at Christian, and, to
divert criticism, ended with - 'eh, Mr Nolan?'
'There have been eminent Whigs, sir. Mr Fox was a Whig,' said Mr
Nolan. 'Mr Fox was a great orator. He gambled a good deal. He was
very intimate with the Prince of Wales. I've seen him, and the Duke of
York' too, go home by daylight with their hats crushed. Mr Fox was a
great leader of the Opposition: Go vernment requires an Opposition.
The Whigs should always be in opposition, and the Tories on the
ministerial side. That's what the co untry used to like. ‘The Whigs for
salt and mustard, the Tories for meat,’ Mr Gottlib the banker used to
say to me. Mr Gottlib was a worthy man. When there was a great run
on Gottlib's bank in '16, I saw a gentleman come in with bags of gold,
and say, ‘Tell Mr Gottlib there's plenty more where that came from.’ It
stopped the run, gentlemen - it did indeed.'
This anecdote was received with great admiration, but Mr Sircome
returned to the previous question.
'There now, you see, Wace - it's right there should be Whigs as well as
Tories - Pitt and Fox - I've always heard them go together.'
'Well, I don't like Garstin,' said th e brewer. 'I didn't like his conduct
about the canal company. Of the two, I like Transome best. If a nag is
to throw me, I say, let him have some blood.'
'As for blood, Wace,' said Mr Salt, the wool-factor, a relious man, who
only spoke when there was a good op portunity of contradicting, 'ask
my brother-in-law Labron a little about that. These Transomes are not
the old blood.'
'Well, they're the oldest that's forthcoming, I suppose,' said Mr Wace,
laughing. 'Unless you believe in mad old Tommy Trounsem. I wonder
where that old poaching fellow is now.'
'I saw him half-drunk the other day,' said young Joyce. 'He'd got a
flag-basket with hand-bills in it over his shoulder.'
'I thought the old fellow was dead,' said Mr Wace. 'Hey I why, Jermyn,'
he went on merrily, as he turned round and saw the attorney
entering; 'you Radical! how dare you show yourself in this Tory house?
Come, this is going a bit too far. We don't mind Old Harry managing
our law for us - that's his proper business from time immemorial; but
-'
'But - a -' said Jermyn, smiling, always ready to carry on a joke, to
which his slow manner gave the piquancy of surprise, 'if he meddles
with politics he must be a Tory.'
Jermyn was not afraid to show himself anywhere in Treby. He knew
many people were not exactly fond of him, but a man can do without
that, if he is prosperous. A provincial lawyer in those old-fashioned
days was as independent of personal esteem as if he had been a Lord
Chancellor.
There was a good-humoured laugh at this upper end of the room as
Jermyn seated himself at about an equal angle between Mr Wace and
Christian.
'We were talking about old Tommy Trounsem; you remember him?
They say he's turned up again,' said Mr Wace.
'Ah?' said Jermyn, indifferently. 'But - a - Wace - I'm very busy to-day
- but I wanted to see you about that bit of land of yours at the corner
of Pod's End. I've had a handsome of fer for you - I'm not at liberty to
say from whom - but an offer that ought to tempt you.'
'It won't tempt me,' said Mr Wace, peremptorily; 'if I've got a bit of
land, I'll keep it. It's hard enough to get hereabouts.'
'Then I'm to understand that you refuse all negotiation?' said Jermyn,
who had ordered a glass of sherry, and was looking round slowly as
he sipped it, till his eyes seemed to rest for the first time on Christian,
though he had seen him at once on entering the room.
'Unless one of the confounded rail ways should come. But then I'll
stand out and make 'em bleed for it.'
There was a murmur of approbation; the railways were a public wrong
much denunciated in Treby.
'A - Mr Philip Debarry at the Manor now?' said Jermyn, suddenly
questioning Christian, in a haughty tone of superiority which he often
chose to use.
'No,' said Christian, 'he is expected to-morrow morning.'
'Ah! -' Jermyn paused a moment or two, and then said, 'You are
sufficiently in his confidence, I think, to carry a message to him with a
small document?'
'Mr Debarry has often trusted me so far,' said Christian, with much
coolness; 'but if the business is yours, you can prob ably find some
one you know better.'
There was a little winking and grimacing among those of the company
who heard this answer.
'A - true - a,' said Jermyn, not showing any offence; 'if you decline.
But I think, if you will do me the favour to step round to my residence
on your way back, and learn the busi ness, you will prefer carrying it
yourself. At my residence, if you please - not my office.'
'O very well,' said Christian. 'I shall be very happy.' Christian never
allowed himself to be treated as a servant by any one but his master,
and his master treated a servant more deferentially than an equal.
'Will it be five o'clock? what hour shall we say?' said Jermyn.
Christian looked at his watch and said, 'About five I can be there.'
'Very good,' said Jermyn, finishing his sherry.
'Well - a - Wace - a - so you will hear nothing about Pod's End?'
'Not I.'
'A mere pocket-handkerchief, not enough to swear by - a -' here
Jermyn's face broke into a smile - 'without a magnifying-glass.'
'Never mind. It's mine into the bowels of the earth and up to the sky. I
can build the Tower of Babel on it if I like - eh, Mr Nolan?'
'A bad investment, my good sir,' said Mr Nolan, who enjoyed a certain
flavour of infidelity in this smart reply, and laughed much at it in his
inward way.
'See now, how blind you Tories are,' said Jermyn, rising; 'if I had been
your lawyer, I'd have had you make another forty-shilling freeholder
with that land, and all in time for this election. But - a - the verbum
sapientibus comes a little too late now.'
Jermyn was moving away as he finished speaking, but Mr Wace called
out after him, 'We're not so badly off for voices as you are - good
sound votes, that'll stand the revisi ng barrister. Debarry at the top of
the poll!'
The lawyer was already out of the doorway.
Chapter 21
'Tis grievous, that with all amplification of travel both by sea and land,
a man can never separate himself from his past history.
MR JERMYN'S handsome house stood a little way out of the town,
surrounded by garden and lawn and plantations of hopeful trees. As
Christian approached it he was in a perfectly easy state of mind: the
business he was going on was none of his, otherwise than as he was
well satisfied with any opportunity of making himself valuable to Mr
Philip Debarry. As he looked at Jermyn's length of wall and iron
railing, he said to himself, 'These lawyers are the fellows for getting on
in the world with the least expense of civility. With this cursed
conjuring secret of theirs called Law, they think everybody's frightened
at them. My Lord Jermyn seems to have his insolence as ready as his
soft sawder. He's as sleek as a rat, and has as vicious a tooth. I know
the sort of vermin well enough. I've helped to fatten one or two.'
In this mood of conscious, contemptuous penetration, Christian was
shown by the footman into Jermyn's private room, where the attorney
sat surrounded with massive oaken bookcases, and other furniture to
correspond, from the thickest-legged library-table to the calendar
frame and card-rack. It was the sort of room a man prepares for
himself when he feels sure of a long and respectable future. He was
leaning back in his leather chair, against the broad window opening
on the lawn, and had just taken off his spectacles and let the
newspaper fall on his knees, in despair of reading by the fading light.
When the footman opened the door and said, 'Mr Christian,' Jermyn
said, 'Good evening, Mr Christian. Be seated,' pointing to a chair
opposite himself and the window. 'Light the candles on the shelf,
John, but leave the blinds alone.'
He did not speak again till the man was gone out, but appeared to be
referring to a document which lay on the bureau before him. When
the door was closed he drew hims elf up again, began to rub his
hands, and turned to wards his visitor, who seemed perfectly
indifferent to the fact that the attorney was in shadow, and that the
light fell on himself. 'A - your name - a - is Henry Scaddon.'
There was a start through Christian's frame which he was quick
enough, almost simultaneously, to try and disguise as a change of
position. He uncrossed his legs and unbuttoned his coat. But before
he had time to say anything, Jermyn went on with slow emphasis.
'You were born on the 16th of D ecember 1782, at Blackheath Your
father was a cloth-merchant in London: he died when you were barely
of age, leaving an extensive business; before you were five-and-twenty
you had run through the greater part of the property, and had
compromised your safety by an attempt to defraud your creditors.
Subsequently you forged a cheque on your father's elder brother, who
had intended to make you his heir.'
Here Jermyn paused a moment and referred to the document.
Christian was silent.
'In 1808 you found it expedient to leave this country in a military
disguise, and were taken prisoner by the French. On the occasion of
an exchange of prisoners you had the opportunity of returning to your
own country, and to the bosom of your own family. You were generous
enough to sacrifice that prospect in favour of a fellow-prisoner, of
about your own age and figure, who had more pressing reasons than
yourself for wishing to be on this side of the water. You exchanged
dress, luggage, and names with him, and he passed to England
instead of you as Henry Scaddon. Almost immediately afterwards you
escaped from your imprisonment, after feigning an illness which
prevented your exchange of names from being discovered; and it was
reported that you - that is, you under the name of your fellow-prisoner
- were drowned in an open boat, trying to reach a Neapolitan vessel
bound for Malta. Nevertheless I have to congratulate you on the
falsehood of that report, and on the certainty that you are now, after
the lapse of more than twenty years, seated here in perfect safety.'
Jermyn paused so long that he wa s evidently awaiting some answer.
At last Christian replied, in a dogged tone -
'Well, sir, I've heard much longer stories than that told quite as
solemnly, when there was not a word of truth in them. Suppose I deny
the very peg you hang your statement on. Suppose I say I am not
Henry Scaddon.'
'A - in that case - a,' said Jermyn, with a wooden indifference, 'you
would lose the advantage which - a - may attach to your possession of
Henry Scaddon's knowledge. And at the same time, if it were in the
least - a - inconvenient to you that you should be recognised as Henry
Scaddon, your denial would no t prevent me from holding the
knowledge and evidence which I possess on that point; it would only
prevent us from pursuing the present conversation.'
'Well, sir, suppose we admit, for the sake of the conversation, that
your account of the matter is the true one: what advantage have you
to offer the man named Henry Scaddon ?'
'The advantage - a - is problematical; but it may be considerable. It
might, in fact, release you from the necessity of acting as courier, or -
a - valet, or whatever other office you may occupy which prevents you
from being your own master. On the other hand, my acquaintance
with your secret is not necessarily a disadvantage to you. To put the
matter in a nutshell, I am not inclined - a - gratuitously - to do you
any harm, and I may be able to do you a considerable service.'
'Which you want me to earn somehow?' said Christian. 'You offer me a
turn in a lottery?'
'Precisely. The matter in question is of no earthly interest to you,
except - a - as it may yield you a pr ize. We lawyers have to do with
complicated questions, and - a - legal subtleties, which are never - a -
fully known even to the parties immediately interested, still less to the
witnesses. Shall we agree, then, that you continue to retain two-thirds
of the name which you gained by exchange, and that you oblige me by
answering certain questions as to the experience of Henry Scaddon?'
'Very good. Go on.'
'What articles of property, once belonging to your fellow-prisoner,
Maurice Christian Bycliffe, do you still retain?'
'This ring,' said Christian, twirling round the fine seal-ring on his
finger, 'his watch, and the little matters that hung with it, and a case
of papers. I got rid of a gold snuf f-box once when I was hard-up. The
clothes are all gone, of course. We exchanged everything; it was all
done in a hurry. Bycliffe thought we should meet again in England
before long, and he was mad to get there. But that was impossible - I
mean that we should meet soon after. I don't know what's become of
him, else I would give him up his pa pers and the watch, and so on -
though, you know, it was I who did him the service, and he felt that.'
'You were at Vesoul together before being moved to Verdun?'
'Yes.'
'What else do you know about Bycliffe?'
'O, nothing very particular,' said Christian, pausing, and rapping his
boot with his cane. 'He'd been in the Hanoverian army - a high-
spirited fellow, took nothing easily; not overstrong in health. He made
a fool of himself with marrying at Vesoul; and there was the devil to
pay with the girl's relations; and then, when the prisoners were
ordered off, they had to part. Whether they ever got together again I
don't know.'
'Was the marriage all right, then?'
'O, all on the square - civil marriage, church - everything. Bycliffe was
a fool - a good-natured, proud, head-strong fellow.'
'How long did the marriage take pla ce before you left Vesoul?' 'About
three months. I was a witness to the marriage.' 'And you know no
more about the wife?'
'Not afterwards. I knew her very we ll before - pretty Annette - Annette
Ledru was her name. She was of a good family, and they had made up
a fine match for her. But she was one of your meek little diablesses,
who have a will of their own once in their lives - the will to choose
their own master.'
'Bycliffe was not open to you about his other affairs7'
'O no - a fellow you wouldn't dare to ask a question of. People told him
everything, but he told nothing in return. If Madame Annette ever
found him again, she found her lord and master with a vengeance;
but she was a regular lapdog. However, her family shut her up - made
a prisoner of her - to prevent her running away.'
'Ah - good. Much of what you have been so obliging as to say is
irrelevant to any possible purpose of mine, which, in fact, has to do
only with a mouldy law-case that might be aired some day. You will
doubtless, on your own account, maintain perfect silence on what has
passed between us, and with that cond ition duly preserved - a - it is
possible that - a - the lottery you have put into - as you observe - may
turn up a prize.'
'This, then, is all the business you have with me?' said Christian,
rising.
'All. You will, of course, preserve carefully all the papers and other
articles which have so many - a - recollections - a - attached to them?'
'O yes. If there's any chance of Bycliffe turning up again, I shall be
sorry to have parted with the snuff- box; but I was hard-up at Naples.
In fact, as you see, I was obliged at last to turn courier.'
'An exceedingly agreeable life for a man of some - a - accomplishments
and - a - no income,' said Jermyn , rising, and reaching a candle,
which he placed against his desk.
Christian knew this was a sign that he was expected to go, but he
lingered standing, with one hand on the back of his chair. At last he
said, rather sulkily -
'I think you're too clever, Mr Jermyn, not to perceive that I'm not a
man to be made a fool of.'
'Well - a - it may perhaps be a still better guarantee for you,' said
Jermyn, smiling, 'that I see no use in attempting that - a -
metamorphosis.'
The old gentleman, who ought never to have felt himself injured, is
dead now, and I'm not afraid of creditors after more than twenty
years.'
'Certainly not; - a - there may indeed be claims which can't assert
themselves - a - legally, which yet are molesting to a man of some
reputation. But you may perhaps be happily free from such fears.'
Jermyn drew round his chair towards the bureau, and Christian, too
acute to persevere uselessly, said, 'Good-day,' and left the room.
After leaning back in his chair to reflect a few minutes, Jermyn wrote
the following letter:
Dear Johnson, - I learn from your letter, received this morning, that
you intend returning to town on Saturday.
While you are there, be so good as to see Medwin, who used to be with
Batt & Cowley, and ascertain from him indirectly, and in the course of
conversation on other topics, whether in that old business in 1810-11,
Scaddon alias Bycliffe, or Bycli ffe alias Scaddon, before his
imprisonment, gave Batt & Cowley an y reason to believe that he was
married and expected to have a child. The question, as you know, is of
no practical importance; but I wish to draw up an abstract of the
Bycliffe case, and the exact position in which it stood before the suit
was closed by the death of the plaint iiff, in order that, if Mr Harold
Transome desires it, he may see how the failure of the last claim has
secured the Durfey-Transome title, and whether there is a hair's-
breadth of a chance that another claim should be set up.
Of course there is not a shadow of such a chance. For even if Batt &
Cowley were to suppose that they had alighted on a surviving
representative of the Bycliffes, it would not enter into their heads to
set up a new claim, since they brought evidence that the last life
which suspended the Bycliffe remainder was extinct before the case
was closed, a good twenty years ago.
Still, I want to show the present heir of the Durfey-Transomes the
exact condition of the family title to the estates. So get me an answer
from Medwin on the above-mentioned point.
I shall meet you at Duffield next week. We must get Transome
returned. Never mind his having been a little rough the other day, but
go on doing what you know is necessary for his interest. His interest is
mine, which I need not say is Jo hn Johnson's. - Yours faithfully,
MATTIEW JERMYN.
When the attorney had sealed this le tter and leaned back in his chair
again, he was inwardly saying -
'Now, Mr Harold, I shall shut up this affair in a private drawer till you
choose to take any extreme measures which will force me to bring it
out. I have the matter entirely in my own power. No one but old Lyon
knows about the girl's birth. No one but Scaddon can clinch the
evidence about Bycliffe, and I've got Scaddon under my thumb. No
soul except myself and Johnson, who is a limb of myself, knows that
there is one half-dead life which may presently leave the girl a new
claim to the Bycliffe heirship. I sh all learn through Methurst whether
Batt & Cowley knew, through Bycliffe, of this woman having come to
England. I shall hold all the threads between my thumb and finger. I
can use the evidence or I can nullify it.
'And so, if Mr Harold pushes me to extremity, and threatens me with
Chancery and ruin, I have an opposing threat, which will either save
me or turn into a punishment for him.'
He rose, put out his candles, and stood with his back to the fire,
looking out on the dim lawn, with its black twilight fringe of shrubs,
still meditating. Quick thought was gleaming over five-and-thirty years
filled with devices more or less clever, more or less desirable to be
avowed. Those which might be avowed with impunity were not always
to be distinguished as innocent by comparison with those which it
was advisable to conceal. In a prof ession where much that is noxious
may be done without disgrace, is a conscience likely to be without
balm when circumstances have urged a man to overstep the line
where his good technical informat ion makes him aware that (with
discovery) disgrace is likely to begin?
With regard to the Transome affairs, the family had been in pressing
need of money, and it had lain with him to get it for them: was it to be
expected that he would not consider his own advantage where he had
rendered services such as are never fully paid? If it came to a question
of right and wrong instead of law, the least justifiable things he had
ever done had been done on behalf of the Transomes. It had been a
deucedly unpleasant thing for him to get Bycliffe arrested and thrown
into prison as Henry Scaddon - perhaps hastening the man's death in
that way. But if it had not been done by dint of his (Jermyn's)
exertions and tact, he would like to know where the Durfey-
Transomes might have been by this ti me. As for right or wrong, if the
truth were known, the very possession of the estate by the Durfey-
Transomes was owing to law-tricks that took place nearly a century
ago, when the original old Durfey got his base fee.
But inward argument of this sort now, as always, was merged in
anger, in exasperation, that Harold, precisely Harold Transome should
have turned out to be the probable instrument of a visitation which
would be bad luck, not justice; for is there any justice where ninety-
nine out of a hundred escape? He felt himself beginning to hate
Harold as he had never -
Just then Jermyn's third daughter, a tall slim girl wrapped in a white
woollen shawl, which she had hung over her blanketwise, skipped
across the lawn towards the greenhouse to get a flower. Jermyn was
startled, and did not identify the figure, or rather he identified it
falsely with another tall white-wrapped figure which had sometimes
set his heart beating quickly more than thirty years before. For a
moment he was fully back in those distant years when he and another
bright-eyed person had seen no reason why they should not indulge
their passion and their vanity, and determine for themselves how their
lives should be made delightful in spite of unalterable external
conditions. The reasons had been unfolding themselves gradually ever
since through all the years which had converted the handsome, soft-
eyed, slim young Jermyn (with a touch of sentiment) into a portly
lawyer of sixty, for wh om life had resolved itself into the means of
keeping up his head among his professional brethren and maintaining
an establishment - into a grey-h aired husband and father, whose
third affectionate and expensive da ughter now rapped at the window
and called to him, 'Papa, papa , get ready for dinner; don't you
remember the Lukyns are coming?'
Chapter 22
Her gentle looks shot arrows, piercing him
As gods are pierced, with poison of sweet pity.
THE evening of the market-day had passed, and Felix had not looked
in at Malthouse Yard to talk over the public events with Mr Lyon.
When Esther was dressing the next morning, she had reached a point
of irritated anxiety to see Felix, at which she found herself devising
little schemes for attaining that end in some way that would be so
elaborate as to seem perfectly natural. Her watch had a long-standing
ailment of losing; possibly it wanted cleaning; Felix would tell her if it
merely wanted regulating, whereas Mr Prowd might detain it
unnecessarily, and cause her useless inconvenience. Or could she not
get a valuable hint from Mrs Holt about the home-made bread, which
was something as 'sad' as Lyddy her self? Or, if she came home that
way at twelve o'clock, Felix might be going out, she might meet him,
and not be obliged to call. Or - but it would be very much beneath her
to take any steps of this sort. Her watch had been losing for the last
two months - why should it not go on losing a little longer? She could
think of no devices that were not so transparent as to be undignified.
All the more undignified because Felix chose to live in a way that
would prevent any one from classing him according to his education
and mental refinement - 'which certa inly are very high', said Esther
inwardly, colouring, as if in answer to some contrary allegation, 'else I
should not think his opinion of any consequence'. But she came to the
conclusion that she could not possibly call at Mrs Holt's.
It followed that up to a few minutes past twelve, when she reached the
turning towards Mrs Holt's, she believed that she should go home the
other way; but at the last moment there is always a reason not
existing before - namely, the impossibility of further vacillation. Esther
turned the corner without any visible pause, and in another minute
was knocking at Mrs Holt's door, not without an inward flutter, which
she was bent on disguising.
'It's never you, Miss Lyon! who'd have thought of seeing you at this
time? Is the minister ill? I thought he looked creechy. If you want
help, I'll put my bonnet on.'
'Don't keep Miss Lyon at the door, mother; ask her to come in,' said
the ringing voice of Felix, surmounting various small shufflings and
babbling voices within.
'It's my wish for her to come in, I'm sure,' said Mrs Holt, making way;
'but what is there for her to come in to? a floor worse than any public.
But step in, pray, if you're so incl ined. When I've been forced to take
my bit of carpet up, and have benches, I don't see why I need mind
nothing no more.'
'I only came to ask Mr Holt if he would look at my watch for me,' said
Esther, entering, and blushing a general rose-colour.
'He'll do that fast enough,' said Mrs Holt, with emphasis; 'that's one of
the things he will do.'
'Excuse my rising, Miss Lyon,' said Felix; 'I'm binding up Job's finger.'
Job was a small fellow about five, with a germinal nose, large round
blue eyes, and red hair that curled close to his head like the wool on
the back of an infantine lamb. He had evidently been crying, and the
corners of his mouth were still dolorous. Felix held him on his knee as
he bound and tied up very cleverly a tiny forefinger. There was a table
in front of Felix and against the window, covered with his
watchmaking implements and some open books. Two benches stood
at right angles on the sanded floor, and six or seven boys of various
ages up to twelve were getting their caps and preparing to go home.
They huddled themselves together and stood still when Esther
entered. Felix could not look up ti ll he had finished his surgery, but
he went on speaking.
'This is a hero, Miss Lyon. This is Job Tudge, a bold Briton whose
finger hurts him, but who doesn't mean to cry. Good morning, boys.
Don't lose your time. Get out into the air.'
Esther seated herself on the end of the bench near Felix, much
relieved that Job was the immediate object of attention; and the other
boys rushed out behind her with a brief chant of 'Good morning!'
'Did you ever see,' said Mrs Holt, st anding to look on, 'how wonderful
Felix is at that small work with his large fingers? And that's because
he learnt doctoring. It isn't for want of cleverness he looks like a poor
man, Miss Lyon. I've left off speaking, else I should say it's a sin and a
shame.'
'Mother,' said Felix, who often amused himself and kept good-
humoured by giving his mother answ ers that were unintelligible to
her, 'you have an astonishing readiness in the Ciceronian antiphrasis,
considering you have never studied oratory. There, Job - thou patient
man - sit still if thou wilt; and now we can look at Miss Lyon.'
Esther had taken off her watch and was holding it in her hand. But he
looked at her face, or rather at her eyes, as he said, 'You want me to
doctor your watch?'
Esther's expression was appealing and timid, as it had never been
before in Felix's presence; but when she saw the perfect calmness,
which to her seemed coldness, of his clear grey eyes, as if he saw no
reason for attaching any emphasis to this first meeting, a pang swift
as an electric shock darted through her. She had been very foolish to
think so much of it. It seemed to her as if her inferiority to Felix made
a great gulf between them. She could not at once rally her pride and
self-command, but let her glance fall on her watch, and said, rather
tremulously, 'It loses. It is very troublesome. It has been losing a long
while.'
Felix took the watch from her hand; then, looking round and seeing
that his mother was gone out of the room, he said, very gently -
'You look distressed, Miss Lyon. I hope there is no trouble at home'
(Felix was thinking of the minister's agitation on the previous
Sunday). 'But I ought perhaps to beg your pardon for saying so much.'
Poor Esther was quite helpless. The mortification which had come like
a bruise to all the sensibilities that had been in keen activity, insisted
on some relief. Her eyes filled instantly, and a great tear rolled down
while she said in a loud sort of whisper, as involuntary as her tears -
'I wanted to tell you that I was not offended - that I am not
ungenerous - I thought you might think - but you have not thought of
it.'
Was there ever more awkward speaking? - or any behaviour less like
that of the graceful, self-possessed Miss Lyon, whose phrases were
usually so well turned, and whose repartees were so ready?
For a moment there was silence. Esther had her two little delicately-
gloved hands clasped on the table. The next moment she felt one hand
of Felix covering them both and pre ssing them firmly; but he did not
speak. The tears were both on her cheeks now, and she could look up
at him. His eyes had an expression of sadness in them, quite new to
her. Suddenly little Job, who had his mental exercises on the
occasion, called out, impatiently -
'She's tut her finger!'
Felix and Esther laughed, and drew their hands away; and as Esther
took her handkerchief to wipe the tears from her cheeks, she said -
'You see, Job, I am a naughty cowa rd I can't help crying when I've
hurt myself.'
'Zoo soodn't kuy,' said Job, energetically, being much impressed with
a moral doctrine which had come to him after a sufficient
transgression of it.
'Job is like me,' said Felix, 'fonder of preaching than of practice. But
let us look at this same watch,' he went on, opening and examining it.
'These little Geneva toys are cleverly constructed to go always a little
wrong. But if you wind them up and set them regularly every night,
you may know at least that it's not noon when the hand points there.'
Felix chatted, that Esther might recover herself; but now Mrs Holt
came back and apologised.
'You'll excuse my going away, I kn ow, Miss Lyon. But there were the
dumplings to see to, and what little I've got left on my hands now, I
like to do well. Not but what I've mo re cleaning to do than ever I had
in my life before, as you may tell soon enough if you look at this floor.
But when you've been used to doing things, and they've been taken
away from you, it's as if your hands had been cut off, and you felt the
fingers as are of no use to you.'
'That's a great image, mother,' said Felix, as he snapped the watch
together, and handed it to Esther: 'I never heard you use such an
image before.'
'Yes, I know you've always some fault to find with what your mother
says. But if ever there was a woman could talk with the open Bible
before her, and not be afraid, it's me. I never did te ll stories, and I
never will - though I know it's done, Miss Lyon, and by church
members too, when they have candles to sell, as I could bring you the
proof. But I never was one of 'em, let Felix say what he will about the
printing on the tickets. His father believed it was gospel truth, and it's
presumptious to say it wasn't. For as for curing, how can anybody
know? There's no physic'll cure without a blessing, and with a
blessing I know I've seen a mustard plaister work when there was no
more smell nor strength in the mustard than so much flour. And
reason good - for the mustard had laid in paper nobody knows how
long - so I'll leave you to guess.'
Mrs Holt looked hard out of the wind ow and gave a slight inarticulate
sound of scorn.
Felix had leaned back in his chair with a resigned smile, and was
pinching Job's ears.
Esther said, 'I think I had better go now,' not knowing what else to
say, yet not wishing to go immediat ely, lest she should seem to be
running away from Mrs Holt. She felt keenly how much endurance
there must be for Felix. And she had often been discontented with her
father, and called him tiresome!
'Where does Job Tudge live?' she said, still sitting, and looking at the
droll little figure, set off by a ragged jacket with a tail about two inches
deep sticking out above the funniest of corduroys.
'Job has two mansions,' said Felix. 'He lives here chiefly; but he has
another home, where his grandfathe r, Mr Tudge the stone-breaker,
lives. My mother is very good to Job, Miss Lyon. She has made him a
little bed in a cupboard, and she gives him sweetened porridge.'
The exquisite goodness implied in these words of Felix impressed
Esther the more, because in her hearing his talk had usually been
pungent and denunciatory. Looking at Mrs Holt, she saw that her eyes
had lost their bleak north-easterly expression, and were shining with
some mildness on little Job, who had turned round towards her,
propping his head against Felix.
'Well, why shouldn't I be motherly to the child, Miss Lyon?' said Mrs
Holt, whose strong powers of argu ment required the file of an
imagined contradiction, if there were no real one at hand. 'I never was
hard-hearted, and I never will be. It was Felix picked the child up and
took to him, you may be sure, for there's nobody else master where he
is; but I wasn't going to beat the orphin child and abuse him because
of that, and him as straight as an arrow when he's stript, and me so
fond of children, and only had one of my own to live. I'd three babies,
Miss Lyon, but the blessed Lord only spared Felix, and him the
masterfullest and the brownest of 'em all. But I did my duty by him,
and I said, he'll have more schooling than his father, and he'll grow up
a doctor, and marry a woman with money to furnish - as I was myself,
spoons and everything - and I shall have the grandchildren to look up
to me, and be drove out in the gig sometimes, like old Mrs Lukyn. And
you see what it's all come to, Miss Lyon: here's Felix made a common
man of himself, and says he'll never be married - which is the most
unreasonable thing, and him never easy but when he's got the child
on his lap, or when -'
'Stop, stop, mother,' Felix burst in; 'pray don't use that limping
argument again - that a man should marry because he's fond of
children. That's a reason for not ma rrying. A bachelor's children are
always young: they're immortal ch ildren - always lisping, waddling,
helpless, and with a chance of turning out good.'
'The Lord above may know what you mean! And haven't other folk's
children a chance of turning out good?'
'O, they grow out of it very fast. Here's Job Tudge now,' said Felix,
turning the little one round on his knee, and holding his head by the
back - 'Job's limbs will get lanky; this little fist, that looks like a puff-
ball, and can hide nothing bigger than a gooseberry, will get large and
bony, and perhaps want to clutch more than its share; these wide
blue eyes that tell me more truth than Job knows, will narrow and
narrow and try to hide truth th at Job would be better without
knowing; this little negative nose will become long and self-asserting;
and this little tongue - put out thy tongue, Job' - Job, awe-struck
under this ceremony, put out a little red tongue very timidly - 'this
tongue, hardly bigger than a rose-leaf, will get large and thick, wag
out of season, do mischief, brag and cant for gain or vanity, and cut
as cruelly, for all its clumsiness as if it were a sharp-edge blade. Big
Job will perhaps be naughty -' As Felix, speaking with the loud
emphatic distinctness habitual to him, brought out this terribly
familiar word, Job's sense of mystification became too painful: he
hung his lip, and began to cry.
'See there,' said Mrs Holt, 'you're frightening the innicent child with
such talk - and it's enough to frighten them that think themselves the
safest.'
'Look here, Job, my man,' said Felix, setting the boy down and turning
him towards Esther; 'go to Miss Lyon, ask her to smile at you, and
that will dry up your tears like the sunshine.'
Job put his two brown fists on Esther's lap, and she stooped to kiss
him. Then holding his face between her hands, she said, 'Tell Mr Holt
we don't mean to be naughty, Job. He should believe in us more. But
now I must really go home.'
Esther rose and held out her hand to Mrs Holt who kept it while she
said, a little to Esther's confusion -
'I'm very glad it's took your fancy to come here sometimes, Miss Lyon.
I know you're thought to hold your head high, but I speak of people as
I find 'em. And I'm sure anybody had need be humble that comes
where there's a floor like this - for I've put by my best tea-trays,
they're so out of all charicter - I must look Above for comfort now; but
I don't say I'm not worthy to be called on for all that.'
Felix had risen and moved towards the door that he might open it and
shield Esther from more last words on his mother's part.
'Good-bye, Mr Holt.'
'Will Mr Lyon like me to sit with him an hour this evening, do you
think?'
'Why not? He always likes to see you.'
'Then I will come. Good-bye.'
'She's a very straight figure,' said Mrs Holt. 'How she carries herself!
But I doubt there's some truth in what our people say. If she won't
look at young Muscat, it's the better for him. He'd need have a big
fortune that marries her.'
'That's true, mother,' said Felix, sitting down, snatching up little Job,
and finding a vent for some unspea kable feeling in the pretence of
worrying him.
Esther was rather melancholy as she went home, yet happier withal
than she had been for many days before. She thought, 'I need not
mind having shown so much anxiet y about his opinion. He is too
clear-sighted to mistake our mutual position; he is quite above putting
a false interpretation on what I have done. Besides, he had not
thought of me at all - I saw that plainly enough. Yet he was very kind.
There is something greater and better in him than I had imagined. His
behaviour to-day - to his mother and me too - I should call it the
highest gentlemanliness, only it seems in him to be something deeper.
But he has chosen an intolerable life; though I suppose, if I had a
mind equal to his, and if he loved me very dearly, I should choose the
same life.'
Esther felt that she had prefixed an impossible 'if' to that result. But
now she had known Felix, her conception of what a happy love must
be had become like a dissolving view, in which the once-clear images
were gradually melting into new forms and new colours. The favourite
Byronic heroes were beginning to look something like last night's
decorations seen in the sober dawn. So fast does a little leaven spread
within us - so incalculable is the effect of one personality on another.
Behind all Esther's thoughts, like an unacknowledged yet
constraining presence, there was the sense, that if Felix Holt were to
love her, her life would be exalted into something quite new - into a
sort of difficult blessedness, such as one may imagine in beings who
are conscious of painfully growing into the possession of higher
powers.
It was quite true that Felix had not thought the more of Esther
because of that Sunday afternoon's interview which had shaken her
mind to the very roots. He had avoided intruding on Mr Lyon without
special reason, because he believed the minister to be preoccupied
with some private care. He had thought a great deal of Esther with a
mixture of strong disapproval and st rong liking, which both together
made a feeling the reverse of indifference; but he was not going to let
her have any influence on his life. Even if his determination had not
been fixed, he would have believed that she would utterly scorn him in
any other light than that of an acquaintance, and the emotion she had
shown to-day did not change that belief. But he was deeply touched
by this manifestation of her better qualities, and felt that there was a
new tie of friendship between them. That was the brief history Felix
would have given of his relation to Esther. And he was accustomed to
observe himself. But very close and diligent looking at living creatures,
even through the best microscope, will leave room for new and
contradictory discoveries.
Felix found Mr Lyon particularly glad to talk to him. The minister had
never yet disburthened himself about his letter to Mr Philip Debarry
concerning the public conference; an d as by this time he had all the
heads of his discussion thoroughly in his mind, it was agreeable to
recite them, as well as to express his regret that time had been lost by
Mr Debarry's absence from the Manor, which had prevented the
immediate fulfilment of his pledge.
'I don't see how he can fulfil it if the rector refuses,' said Felix,
thinking it well to moderate the little man's confidence.
'The rector is of a spirit that will not incur earthly impeachment, and
he cannot refuse what is necessary to his nephew's honourable
discharge of an obligation,' said Mr Lyon. 'My young friend, it is a case
wherein the prearranged conditions tend by such a beautiful fitness to
the issue I have sought, that I should have for ever held myself a
traitor to my charge had I neglected the indication.'
Chapter 23
'I will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be
admitted; there's no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused.' -
Henry IV.
WHEN Philip Debarry had come home that morning and read the
letters which had not been forwarded to him, he laughed so heartily at
Mr Lyon's that he congratulated himself on being in his private room.
Otherwise his laughter would have awakened the curiosity of Sir
Maximus, and Philip did not wish to tell any one the contents of the
letter until he had shown them to his uncle. He determined to ride
over to the rectory to lunch; for as Lady Mary was away, he and his
uncle might be tete-a-tete.
The rectory was on the other side of the river, close to the church of
which it was the fitting companion: a fine old brick-and-stone house,
with a great bow-window opening from the library on to the deep-
turfed lawn, one fat dog sleeping on the door-stone, another fat dog
waddling on the gravel, the autumn leaves duly swept away, the
lingering chrysanthemums cherished, tall trees stooping or soaring in
the most picturesque variety, and a Virginian creeper turning a little
rustic hut into a scarlet pavilion. It was one of those rectories which
are among the bulwarks of our venerable institutions - which arrest
disintegrating doubt, serve as a double embankment against Popery
and Dissent, and rally feminine instinct and affection to reinforce the
decisions of masculine thought.
'What makes you look so merry, Phil ?' said the rector, as his nephew
entered the pleasant library.
'Something that concerns you,' said Philip, taking out the letter. 'A
clerical challenge. Here's an opportunity for you to emulate the divines
of the sixteenth century and have a theological duel. Read this letter.'
'What answer have you sent the craz y little fellow?' said the rector,
keeping the letter in his hand and running over it again and again,
with brow knit, but eyes gleaming without any malignity. 'O, I sent no
answer. I awaited yours.'
'Mine!' said the rector, throwing down the letter on the table. 'You
don't suppose I'm going to hold a pu blic debate with a schismatic of
that sort? I should have an infidel shoe-maker next expecting me to
answer blasphemies delivered in bad grammar.'
'But you see how he puts it,' said Philip. With all his gravity of nature
he could not resist a slightly mich ievous prompting, though he had a
serious feeling that he should not like to be regarded as failing to fulfil
his pledge. 'I think if you refuse, I shall be obliged to offer myself.'
'Nonsense! Tell him he is himself acting a dishonourable part in
interpreting your words as a pledge to do any preposterous thing that
suits his fancy. Suppose he had asked you to give him land to build a
chapel on; doubtless that would have given him a ‘lively satisfaction.’
A man who puts a non-natural strained sense on a promise is no
better than a robber.'
'But he has not asked for land. I daresay he thinks you won't object to
his proposal. I confess there's a si mplicity and quaintness about the
letter that rather pleases me.'
'Let me tell you, Phil, he's a crazy li ttle firefly, that does a great deal of
harm in my parish. He inflames the Dissenters' minds on politics.
There's no end to the mischief done by these busy prating men. They
make the ignorant multitude the judges of the largest questions, both
political and religious, till we shall soon have no institution left that is
not on a level with the comprehension of a huckster or a drayman.
There can be nothing more retrograde - losing all the results of
civilisation, all the lessons of Prov idence - letting the windlass run
down after men have been turning at it painfully for generations. If the
instructed are not to judge for the uninstructed, why, let us set Dick
Stubbs to make our almanacs, and have a President of the Royal
Society elected by universal suffrage.'
The rector had risen, placed himself with his back to the fire, and
thrust his hands in his pockets, read y to insist further on this wide
argument. Philip sat nursing one leg, listening respectfully, as he
always did, though often listening to the sonorous echo of his own
statements, which suited his uncle's needs so exactly that he did not
distinguish them from his old impressions.
'True,' said Philip, 'but in special cases we have to do with special
conditions. You know I defend the casuists. And it may happen that,
for the honour of the church in Treby and a little also for my honour,
circumstances may demand a concession even to some notions of a
dissenting preacher.'
'Not at all. I should be making a figure which my brother clergy might
well take as an affront to themselves. The character of the
establishment has suffered enough already through the Evangelicals,
with their extempore incoherence and their pipe-smoking piety. Look
at Wimple, the man who is vicar of Shuttleton - without his gown and
bands, anybody would take him for a grocer in mourning.'
'Well, I shall cut a still worse figure, and so will you, in the dissenting
magazines and newspapers. It will go the round of the kingdom. There
will be a paragraph headed, ‘Tory Falsehood and Clerical Cowardice,’
or else ‘The Meanness of the Aristocracy and the Incompetence of the
Beneficed Clergy.’ '
'There would be a worse paragraph if I were to consent to the debate.
Of course it would be said that I was beaten hollow, and that now the
question had been cleared up at Treby Magna, the church had not a
sound leg to stand on. Besides,' the rector went on, frowning and
smiling, 'it's all very well for you to talk, Phil, but this debating is not
so easy when a man's close upon sixt y. What one writes or says must
be something good and scholarly; and after all had been done, this
little Lyon would buzz about one li ke a wasp, and cross-question and
rejoin. Let me tell you, a plain truth may be so worried and mauled by
fallacies as to get the worst of it. There's no such thing as tiring a
talking machine like Lyon.' 'Then you absolutely refuse?' 'Yes, I do.'
'You remember that when I wrote my letter of thanks to Lyon you
approved my offer to serve him if possible.'
'Certainly I remember it. But suppose he had asked you to vote for
civil marriage, or to go and hear him preach every Sunday?'
'But he has not asked that.'
'Something as unreasonable, though.'
'Well,' said Philip, taking up Mr Lyon's letter and looking graver -
looking even vexed, 'it is rather an unpleasant business for me. I really
felt obliged to him. I think there's a sort of worth in the man beyond
his class. Whatever may be the reas on of the case, I shall disappoint
him instead of doing him the service I offered.'
'Well, that's a misfortune; we can't help it.'
'The worst of it is, I should be insulting him to say, ‘I will do anything
else, but not just this that you want.’ He evidently feels himself in
company with Luther and Zwingl i and Calvin and considers our
letters part of the history of Protestantism.'
'Yes, yes. I know it's rather an unpleasant thing, Phil. You are aware
that I would have done anything in reason to prevent you from
becoming unpopular here. I consider your character a possession to
all of us.'
'I think I must call on him forthwith, and explain and apologise.'
'No, sit still; I've thought of something,' said the rector, with a sudden
revival of spirits. 'I've just seen Sh erlock coming in. He is to lunch
with me to-day. It would do no harm for him to hold the debate - a
curate and a young man - he'll gain by it; and it would release you
from any awkwardness, Phil. Sherlock is not going to stay here long,
you know; he'll soon have his title. I'll put the thing to him. He won't
object if I wish it. It's a capital idea. It will do Sherlock good. He's a
clever fellow, but he wants confidence.'
Philip had not time to object befo re Mr Sherlock appeared - a young
divine of good birth and figure, of sallow complexion and bashful
address.
'Sherlock, you have came in most opportunely,' said the rector. 'A case
has turned up in the parish in which you can be of eminent use. I
know that is what you have desired ever since you have been with me.
But I'm about so much myself that there really has not been sphere
enough for you. You are a studious man, I know; I daresay you have
all the necessary matter prepared - at your finger-ends, if not on
paper.'
Mr Sherlock smiled with rather a trembling lip, willing to distinguish
himself, but hoping that the rector only alluded to a dialogue on
baptism by aspersion, or some other pamphlet suited to the purposes
of the Christian Knowledge Society. But as the rector proceeded to
unfold the circumstances under which his eminent service was to be
rendered, he grew more and more nervous.
'You'll oblige me very much, Sherlock,' the rector ended, 'by going into
this thing zealously. Can you gu ess what time you will require?
because it will rest with us to fix the day.'
'I should be rejoiced to oblige you, Mr Debarry, but I really think I am
not competent to -'
'That's your modesty, Sherlock. Don't let me hear any more of that. I
know Filmore of Corpus said you might be a first-rate man if your
diffidence didn't do you injustice. And you can refer anything to me,
you know. Come, you will set about the thing at once. But, Phil, you
must tell the preacher to send a scheme of the debate - all the
different heads - and he must agree to keep rigidly within the scheme.
There, sit down at my desk and write the letter now; Thomas shall
carry it.'
Philip sat down to write, and the rector, with his firm ringing voice,
went on at his ease, giving 'indications' to his agitated curate.
'But you can begin at once preparing a good, cogent, clear statement,
and considering the probable points of assault. You can look into
Jewel, Hall, Hooker, Whitgift, and the rest: you'll find them all here.
My library wants nothing in English divinity. Sketch the lower ground
taken by Usher and those men, but bring all your force to bear on
marking out the true High-Church doctrine. Expose the wretched
cavils of the Nonconformists, and the noisy futility that belongs to
schismatics generally. I will give yo u a telling passage from Burke on
the Dissenters, and some good quotations which I brought together in
two sermons of my own on the Position of the English Church in
Christendom. How long do you thin k it will take you to bring your
thoughts together? You can throw them afterwards into the form of an
essay; we'll have the thing printed; it will do you good with the
bishop.'
With all Mr Sherlock's timidity, th ere was fascination for him in this
distinction. He reflected that he could take coffee and sit up late, and
perhaps produce something rather fine. It might be a first step
towards that eminence which it was no more than his duty to aspire
to. Even a polemical fame like that of a Philpotts must have had a
beginning. Mr Sherlock was not insensible to the pleasure of turning
sentences successfully, and it was a pleasure not always unconnected
with preferment. A diffident man likes the idea of doing something
remarkable, which will create belief in him without any immediate
display of brilliancy. Celebrity may blush and be silent, and win a
grace the more. Thus Mr Sherlock was constrained, trembling all the
while, and much wishing that his essay were already in print.
'I think I could hardly be ready under a fortnight.'
'Very good. Just write that, Phil, and tell him to fix the precise day and
place. And then we'll go to lunch.'
The rector was quite satisfied. He had talked himself into thinking
that he should like to give Sherlock a few useful hints, look up his
own earlier sermons, and benefit the curate by his criticism, when the
argument had been got into shape. He was a healthy-natured man,
but that was not at all a reason why he should not have those
sensibilities to the odour of authorship which belong to almost
everybody who is not expected to be a writer - and especially to that
form of authorship which is called suggestion, and consists in telling
another man that he might do a gr eat deal with a given subject, by
bringing a sufficient amount of knowledge, reasoning, and wit to bear
upon it.
Philip would have had some twinges of conscience about the curate, if
he had not guessed that the honour thrust upon him was not
altogether disagreeable. The ch urch might perhaps have had a
stronger supporter; but for himself, he had done what he was bound
to do: he had done his best towards fulfilling Mr Lyon's desire.
Chapter 24
'If he come not, the play is marred.' - Midsummer Night's Dream
RUFUS LYON was very happy on that mild November morning
appointed for the great conference in the larger room at the Free
School, between himself and the Rev. Theodore Sherlock, B.A. The
disappointment of not contending wi th the rector in person, which
had at first been bitter, had been gradually lost sight of in the positive
enjoyment of an opportunity for debating on any terms. Mr Lyon had
two grand elements of pleasure on such occasions: confidence in the
strength of his case, and confidence in his own power of advocacy. Not
- to use his own phrase - not that he 'glorified himself herein'; for
speech and exposition were so easy to him, that if he argued forcibly,
he believed it to be simply because the truth was forcible. He was not
proud of moving easily in his native medium. A panting man thinks of
himself as a clever swimmer; but a fish swims much better, and takes
his performance as a matter of course.
Whether Mr Sherlock were that panting, self-gratulating man,
remained a secret. Philip Deba rry, much occupied with his
electioneering affairs, had only once had an opportunity of asking his
uncle how Sherlock got on, and the rector had said, curtly, 'I think
he'll do. I've supplied him well with references. I advise him to read
only, and decline everything else as out of order. Lyon will speak to a
point, and then Sherlock will read: it will be all the more telling. It will
give variety.' But on this partic ular morning peremptory business
connected with the magistracy called the rector away.
Due notice had been given, and the feminine world of Treby Magna
was much more agitated by the prospect than by that of any
candidate's speech. Mrs Pendrell at the Bank, Mrs Tiliot, and the
church ladies generally, felt boun d to hear the curate, who was
known, apparently by an intuition concerning the nature of curates,
to be a very clever young man; and he would show them what learning
had to say on the right side. One or two Dissenting ladies were not
without emotion at the thought that, seated on the front benches, they
should be brought near to old Church friends, and have a longer
greeting than had taken place sin ce the Catholic Emancipation. Mrs
Muscat, who had been a beauty, and was as nice in her millinery as
any Trebian lady belonging to the establishment, reflected that she
should put on her best large embroi dered collar, and that she should
ask Mrs Tiliot where it was in Duffield that she once got her
bedhangings dyed so beautifully. When Mrs Tiliot was Mary Salt, the
two ladies had been bosom friends; but Mr Tiliot had looked higher
and higher since his gin had become so famous; and in the year '29 he
had, in Mr Muscat's hearing, sp oken of Dissenters as sneaks, - a
personality which could not be overlooked.
The debate was to begin at eleven, for the rector would not allow the
evening to be chosen, when low men and boys might want to be
admitted out of mere mischief. This was one reason why the female
part of the audience outnumbered the males. But some chief Trebians
were there, even men whose means made them as independent of
theory as Mr Pendrell and Mr Wace; encouraged by reflecting that they
were not in a place of worship, and would not be obliged to stay longer
than they chose. There was a muster of all Dissenters who could
spare the morning time, and on the back benches were all the aged
churchwomen who shared the remnants of the sacrament wine, and
who were humbly anxious to ne glect nothing ecclesiastical or
connected with 'going to a better place'.
At eleven the arrival of listeners seemed to have ceased. Mr Lyon was
seated on the school tribune or dais at his particular round table;
another round table, with a chair, awaited the curate, with whose
superior position it was quite in keeping that he should not be first on
the ground. A couple of extra chairs were placed further back, and
more than one important personag e had been requested to act as
chairman; but no churchman would place himself in a position so
equivocal as to dignity of aspect, and so unequivocal as to the
obligation of sitting out the discussion; and the rector had beforehand
put a veto on any Dissenting chairman.
Mr Lyon sat patiently absorbed in his thoughts, with his notes in
minute handwriting lying before him, seeming to look at the audience,
but not seeing them. Every one else was contented that there should
be an interval in which there could be a little neighbourly talk.
Esther was particularly happy, se ated on a side-bench near her
father's side of the tribune, with Felix close behind her, so that she
could turn her head and talk to him. He had been very kind ever since
that morning when she had called at his home, more disposed to
listen indulgently to what she had to say, and less blind to her looks
and movements. If he had never railed at her or ignored her, she
would have been less sensitive to the attention he gave her; but as it
was, the prospect of seeing him seemed to light up her life, and to
disperse the old dulness. She looked unusually charming to-day, from
the very fact that she was not vividly conscious of anything but of
having a mind near her that asked her to be something better than
she actually was. The consciousness of her own superiority amongst
the people around her was superseded, and even a few brief weeks
had given a softened expression to her eyes, a more feminine
beseechingness and self-doubt to her manners. Perhaps, however, a
little new defiance was rising in place of the old contempt - defiance of
the Trebian views concerning Felix Holt.
'What a very nice-looking young woman your minister's daughter is ! '
said Mrs Tiliot in an undertone to Mrs Muscat, who, as she had
hoped, had found a seat next to her quondam friend - 'quite the lady'.
'Rather too much so, considering,' said Mrs Muscat. 'She's thought
proud, and that's not pretty in a girl, even if there was anything to
back it up. But now she seems to be encouraging that young Holt,
who scoffs at everything, as you may judge by his appearance. She
has despised his betters before now; but I leave you to judge whether
a young man who has taken to low ways of getting his living can pay
for fine cambric handkerchiefs and light kid gloves.'
Mrs Muscat lowered her blond eyelashes and swayed her neat head
just perceptibly from side to side, with a sincere desire to be moderate
in her expressions, not withstanding any shock that facts might have
given her.
'Dear, dear,' said Mrs Tiliot. 'What! that is young Holt leaning forward
now without a cravat? I've never seen him before to notice him, but
I've heard Tiliot talking about him. They say he's a dangerous
character, and goes stirring up the working men at Sproxton. And -
well, to be sure, such great eyes and such a great head of hair - it is
enough to frighten one. What can she see in him? Quite below her.'
'Yes, and brought up a governess,' said Mrs Muscat; 'you'd have
thought she'd know better how to choose. But the minister has let her
get the upper hand sadly too much. It's a pity in a man of God - I
don't deny he's that.'
'Well, I am sorry,' said Mrs Tiliot, 'for I meant her to give my girls
lessons when they came from school.'
Mr Wace and Pendrell meanwhile were standing up and looking round
at the audience, nodding to their fellow-townspeople with the affability
due from men in their position.
'It's time he came now,' said Mr Wace, looking at his watch and
comparing it with the schoolroo m clock. 'This debating is a
newfangled sort of thing; but the rector would never have given in to it
if there hadn't been good reasons. Nolan said he wouldn't come. He
says this debating is an atheistical sort of thing; the Atheists are very
fond of it. Theirs is a bad book to take a leaf out of. However, we shall
hear nothing but what's good from Mr Sherlock. He preaches a capital
sermon - for such a young man.'
'Well, it was our duty to support him - not to leave him alone among
the Dissenters,' said Mr Pendrell. 'Y ou see, everybody hasn't felt that.
Labron might have shown himself, if not Lukyn. I could have alleged
business myself if I had thought proper.'
'Here he comes, I think,' said Mr Wace, turning round on hearing a
movement near the small door on a level with the platform. 'By
George! it's Mr Debarry. Come now, this is handsome.'
Mr Wace and Mr Pendrell clapped their hands, and the example was
followed even by most of the Dissenters. Philip was aware that he was
doing a popular thing, of a kind that Treby was not used to from the
elder Debarrys; but his appearance had not been long premeditated.
He was driving through the town towards an engagement at some
distance, but on calling at Labron's office he had found that the affair
which demanded his presence had b een deferred, and so had driven
round to the Free School. Christian came in behind him.
Mr Lyon was now roused from his abstraction, and, stepping from his
slight elevation, begged Mr Debarry to act as moderator or president
on the occasion.
'With all my heart,' said Philip. 'But Mr Sherlock has not arrived,
apparently?'
'He tarries somewhat unduly,' said Mr Lyon. 'Nevertheless there may
be a reason of which we know not. Shall I collect the thoughts of the
assembly by a brief introductory address in the interval?'
'No, no, no,' said Mr Wace, wh o saw a limit to his powers of
endurance. 'Mr Sherlock is sure to be here in a minute or two.'
'Christian,' said Philip Debarry, who felt a slight misgiving, 'just be so
good - but stay, I'll go myself. Excuse me, gentlemen; I'll drive round
to Mr Sherlock's lodgings. He may be under a little mistake as to the
time. Studious men are sometimes rather absent. You needn't come
with me, Christian.'
As Mr Debarry went out, Rufus Lyon stepped on to the tribune again
in rather an uneasy state of mind. A few ideas had occurred to him,
eminently fitted to engage the audience profitably, and so to wrest
some edification out of an unforeseen delay. But his native delicacy
made him feel that in this assembl y the church people might fairly
decline any 'deliverance' on his part which exceeded the programme,
and Mr Wace's negative had been energetic. But the little man
suffered from imprisoned ideas, and was as restless as a racer held in.
He could not sit down again, bu t walked backwards and forwards,
stroking his chin, emitting his low guttural interjection under the
pressure of clauses and sentences which he longed to utter aloud, as
he would have done in his own study. There was a low buzz in the
room which helped to deepen the mi nister's sense that the thoughts
within him were as divine messengers unheeded or rejected by a
trivial generation. Many of the audience were standing; all, except the
old churchwomen on the back seats, and a few devout Dissenters who
kept their eyes shut and gave their bodies a gentle oscillating motion,
were interested in chat. 'Your father is uneasy,' said Felix to Esther.
'Yes; and now, I think, he is feelin g for his spectacles. I hope he has
not left them at home: he will not be able to see anything two yards
before him without them; - and it makes him so unconscious of what
people expect or want.'
'I'll go and ask him whether he has th em,' said Felix, striding over the
form in front of him, and approaching Mr Lyon, whose face showed a
gleam of pleasure at this relief from his abstracted isolation.
'Miss Lyon is afraid that you are at a loss for your spectacles, sir,' said
Felix.
'My dear young friend,' said Mr Lyon , laying his hand on Felix Holt's
fore-arm, which was about on a level with the minister's shoulder, 'it
is a very glorious truth, albeit made somewhat painful to me by the
circumstances of the present moment, that as a counterpoise to the
brevity of our mortal life (wherein , as I apprehend, our powers are
being trained not only for the transmission of an improved heritage, as
I have heard you insist, but also fo r our own entrance into a higher
initiation in the divine scheme) - it is, I say, a very glorious truth, that
even in what are called the waste minutes of our time, like those of
expectation, the soul may soar and range, as in some of our dreams
which are brief as a broken rainbow in duration, yet seem to comprise
a long history of terror or of joy. And again, each moment may be a
beginning of a new spiritual energy; and our pulse would doubtless be
a coarse and clumsy notation of the passage from that which was not
to that which is, even in the finer processes of the material world -
and how much more -'
Esther was watching her father and Felix, and though she was not
within hearing of what was being said, she guessed the actual state of
the case - that the inquiry about the spectacles had been unheeded,
and that her father was losing himself and embarrassing Felix in the
intricacies of a dissertation. There was not the stillness around her
that would have made a movement on her part seem conspicuous,
and she was impelled by her anxiety to step on the tribune and walk
up to her father, who paused, a little startled.
'Pray see whether you have forgotten your spectacles, father. If so, I
will go home at once and look for them.'
Mr Lyon was automatically obedient to Esther, and he began
immediately to feel in his pockets.
'How is it that Miss Jermyn is so friendly with the Dissenting parson?'
said Christian to Quorlen, the Tory printer, who was an intimate of
his. 'Those grand Jermyns are not Dissenters surely?'
'What Miss Jermyn?'
'Why - don't you see? - that fine girl who is talking to him.'
'Miss Jermyn! Why, that's the little parson's daughter.'
'His daughter!' Christian gave a low brief whistle, which seemed a
natural expression of surprise that 'the rusty old ranter' should have a
daughter of such distinguished appearance.
Meanwhile the search for the spectacles had proved vain.
'Tis a grievous fault in me, my dear,' said the little man, humbly; 'I
become thereby sadly burthensome to you.'
'I will go at once,' said Esther, refu sing to let Felix go instead of her.
But she had scarcely stepped off the tribune when Mr Debarry re-
entered, and there was a commotion which made her wait. After a low-
toned conversation with Mr Pendre ll and Mr Wace, Philip Debarry
stepped on to the tribune with his hat in his hand, and said, with an
air of much concern and annoyance -
'I am sorry to have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that - doubtless
owing to some accidental cause which I trust will soon be explained as
nothing serious - Mr Sherlock is absent from his residence, and is not
to be found. He went out early, his landlady informs me, to refresh
himself by a walk on this agreeable morning, as is his habit, she tells
me, when he has been kept up late by study; and he has not returned.
Do not let us be too anxious. I shall cause inquiry to be made in the
direction of his walk. It is easy to imagine many accidents, not of a
grave character, by which he might nevertheless be absolutely
detained against his will. Under these circumstances, Mr Lyon,'
continued Philip, turning to the minister, 'I presume that the debate
must be adjourned.'
'The debate, doubtless,' began Mr Lyon; but his further speech was
drowned by a general rising of the church people from their seats,
many of them feeling that even if the cause were lamentable, the
adjournment was not altogether disagreeable.
'Good gracious me!' said Mrs Tiliot, as she took her husband's arm, 'I
hope the poor young man hasn't fallen into the river or broken his leg.'
But some of the more acrid Dissenters, whose temper was not
controlled by the habits of retail business, had begun to hiss, implying
that in their interpretation the curate's absence had not depended on
any injury to life or limb.
'He's turned tail, sure enough,' said Mr Muscat to the neighbour
behind him, lifting his eyebrows and shoulders, and laughing in a way
that showed that, deacon as he was, he looked at the affair in an
entirely secular light.
But Mrs Muscat thought it would be nothing but right to have all the
waters dragged, agreeing in this with the majority of the church
ladies.
'I regret sincerely, Mr Lyon,' sa id Philip Debarry, addressing the
minister with politeness, 'that I mu st say goodmorning to you, with
the sense that I have not been able at present to contribute to your
satisfaction as I had wished.'
'Speak not of it in the way of apology, sir,' said Mr Lyon, in a tone of
depression. 'I doubt not that you yourself have acted in good faith. Nor
will I open any door of egress to constructions such as anger often
deems ingenious, but which the disclosure of the simple truth may
expose as erroneous and uncharitable fabrications. I wish you
goodmorning, sir.'
When the room was deared of the church people, Mr Lyon wished to
soothe his own spirit and that of his flock by a few reflections
introductory to a parting prayer. But there was a general resistance to
this effect. The men mustered round the minister, and declared their
opinion that the whole thing was disgraceful to the church. Some said
the curate's absence had been contrived from the first. Others more
than hinted that it had been a folly in Mr Lyon to set on foot any
procedure in common with Tories and clergymen, who, if they ever
aped civility to Dissenters, would never do anything but laugh at them
in their sleeves. Brother Remp urged in his heavy bass that Mr Lyon
should lose no time in sending an a ccount of the affair to the Patriot;
and Brother Hawkins, in his high tenor, observed that it was an
occasion on which some stinging th ings might be said with all the
extra effect of an apro pos.
The position of receiving a many-v oiced lecture from the members of
his church was familiar to Mr Lyon, but now he felt weary, frustrated,
and doubtful of his own temper. Felix, who stood by and saw that this
man of sensitive fibre was suffering from talkers whose noisy
superficiality cost them nothing, got exasperated. 'It seems to me,
sirs,' he burst in, with his predominant voice, 'that Mr Lyon has
hitherto had the hard part of the business, while you of his
congregation have had the easy one. Punish the church clergy, if you
like - they can take care of themselves. But don't punish your own
minister. It's no business of mine, perhaps, except so far as fair-play
is everybody's business; but it seems to me the time to ask Mr Lyon to
take a little rest, instead of setting on him like so many wasps.'
By this speech Felix raised a displeasure which fell on the minister as
well as on himself; but he gained his immediate end. The talkers
dropped off after a slight show of persistence, and Mr Lyon quitted the
field of no combat with a small group of his less imperious friends, to
whom he confided his intention of committing his argument fully to
paper, and forwarding it to a discriminating editor.
'But regarding personalities,' he added, 'I have not the same clear
showing. For, say that this young man was pusillanimous - I were but
ill provided with arguments if I took my stand even for a moment on
so poor an irrelevancy as that b ecause one curate is ill furnished
therefore episcopacy is false. If I he ld up any one to just obloquy, it
would be the well-designated incumbent of this parish, who, calling
himself one of the church militan t, sends a young and weak-kneed
substitute to take his place in the fight.'
Mr Philip Debarry did not neglect to make industrious inquiry
concerning the accidents which had detained the Rev. Theodore
Sherlock on his moming walk. That well-intentioned young divine was
seen no more in Treby Magna. But the river was not dragged, for by
the evening coach the rector received an explanatory letter. The Rev.
Theodore's agitation had increased so much during his walk, that the
passing coach had been a means of deliverance not to be resisted,
and, literally at the eleventh hour, he had hailed and mounted the
cheerful Tally-ho! and carried away his portion of th e debate in his
pocket.
But the rector had subsequently the satisfaction of receiving Mr
Sherlock's painstaking production in print, with a dedication to the
Rev. Augustus Debarry, a motto from St Chrysostum, and other
additions, the fruit of ripening leisure. He was 'sorry for poor Sherlock,
who wanted confidence'; but he was convinced that for his own part
he had taken the course which under the circumstances was the least
compromising to the church. Sir Maximus, however, observed to his
son and brother that he had been right and they had been wrong as to
the danger of vague, enormous expressions of gratitude to a
Dissenting preacher, and on any differences of opinion seldom failed
to remind them of that precedent.
Chapter 25
Your fellow-man? - Divide the epithet:
Say rather, you're the fellow, he the man.
WHEN Christian quitted the Free School with the discovery that the
young lady whose appearance had first startled him with an
indefinable impression in the market-place was the daughter of the
old Dissenting preacher who had sh own so much agitated curiosity
about his name, he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player
who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and
might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how.
Ever since his interview with Jermyn, his mind had been occupied
with the charade it offered to his ingenuity. What was the real
meaning of the lawyer's interest in him, and in his relations with
Maurice Christian Bycliffe? Here wa s a secret; and secrets were often
a source of profit, of that agreeable kind which involved little labour.
Jermyn had hinted at profit which might possibly come through him;
but Christian said inwardly, with we ll-satisfied self-esteem, that he
was not so pitiable a nincompoop as to trust Jermyn. On the contrary,
the only problem before him was to find out by what combination of
independent knowledge he could outwit Jermyn, elude any purchase
the attorney had on him through his past history, and get a handsome
bonus, by which a somewhat shatte red man of pleasure might live
well without a master. Christian, having early exhausted the more
impulsive delights of life, had become a sober calculator; and he had
made up his mind that, for a man who had long ago run through his
own money, servitude in a great family was the best kind of retirement
after that of a pensioner; but if a better chance offered, a person of
talent must not let it slip through hi s fingers. He held various ends of
threads, but there was danger in pulling at them too impatiently. He
had not forgotten the surprise which had made him drop the punch-
ladle, when Mr Crowder, talking in the steward's room, had said that
a scamp named Henry Scaddon had been concerned in a lawsuit
about the Transome estate. Again, Jermyn was the family lawyer of
the Transomes; he knew about the exchange of names between
Scaddon and Bycliffe; he clearly wanted to know as much as he could
about Bycliffe's history. The conclu sion was not remote that Bycliffe
had had some claim on the Transome property, and that a difficulty
had arisen from his being confou nded with Henry Scaddon. But
hitherto the other incident which had been apparently connected with
the interchange of names - Mr Lyon's demand that he should write
down the name Maurice Christian, accompanied with the question
whether that were his whole name - had had no visible link with the
inferences arrived at through Crowder and Jermyn.
The discovery made this morning at the Free School that Esther was
the daughter of the Dissenting preacher at last suggested a possible
link. Until then, Christian had not known why Esther's face had
impressed him so peculiarly; but the minister's chief association for
him was with Bycliffe, and that asso ciation served as a flash to show
him that Esther's features and expression, and still more her bearing,
now she stood and walked, revived Bycliffe's image. Daughter? There
were various ways of being a daug hter. Suppose this were a case of
adoption: suppose Bycliffe were known to be dead, or thought to be
dead. 'Begad, if the old parson ha d fancied the original father was
come to life again, it was enough to frighten him a little. Slow and
steady,' Christian said to himself; 'I'll get some talk with the old man
again. He's safe enough: one can handle him without cutting one's
self. I'll tell him I knew Bycliffe, an d was his fellow-prisoner. I'll worm
out the truth about this daughter. Could pretty Annette have married
again, and married this little scarecrow? There's no knowing what a
woman will not do.'
Christian could see no distinct result for himself from his industry;
but if there were to be any such result, it must be reached by
following out every clue; and to the non-legal mind there are dim
possibilities in law and heirship which prevent any issue from
seeming too miraculous.
The consequence of these meditations was, that Christian hung about
Treby more than usual in his leisure time, and that on the first
opportunity he accosted Mr Lyon in the street with suitable civility,
stating that since the occasion which had brought them together some
weeks before he had often wished to renew their conversation, and,
with Mr Lyon's permission, woul d now ask to do so. After being
assured, as he had been by Jerm yn, that this courier, who had
happened by some accident to possess the memorable locket and
pocket-book, was certainly not Anne tte's husband, and was ignorant
whether Maurice Christian Bycliffe we re living or dead, the minister's
mind had become easy again; his habitual lack of interest in personal
details rendering him gradually oblivious of Jermyn's precautionary
statement that he was pursuing inquiries, and that if anything of
interest turned up, Mr Lyon should be made acquainted with it.
Hence, when Christian addressed him, the minister, taken by surprise
and shaken by the recollections of former anxieties, said, helplessly -
'If it is business, sir, you would pe rhaps do better to address yourself
to Mr Jermyn.'
He could not have said anything th at was a more valuable hint to
Christian. He inferred that the minister had made a confidant of
Jermyn, and it was needful to be wary
'On the contrary, sir,' he answered, 'it may be of the utmost
importance to you that what passes between us should not be known
to Mr Jermyn.'
Mr Lyon was perplexed, and felt at once that he was no more in clear
daylight concerning Jermyn than concerning Christian. He dared not
neglect the possible duty of hearing what this man had to say, and he
invited him to proceed to Malthous e Yard, where they could converse
in private.
Once in Mr Lyon's study, Christian opened the dialogue by saying that
since he was in this room before it had occurred to him that the
anxiety he had observed in Mr Lyon might be owing to some
acquaintance with Maurice Christia n Bycliffe - a fellow-prisoner in
France whom he, Christian, had assi sted in getting freed from his
imprisonment, and who, in fact, ha d been the owner of the trifles
which Mr Lyon had recently had in his possession and had restored.
Christian hastened to say that he knew nothing of Bycliffe's history
since they had parted in France, but that he knew of his marriage
with Annette Ledru, and had been acquainted with Annette herself. He
would be very glad to know what became of Bycliffe, if he could, for he
liked him uncommonly.
Here Christian paused; but Mr Lyon only sat changing colour and
trembling. This man's bearing and tone of mind were made repulsive
to him by being brought in contact with keenly-felt memories, and he
could not readily summon the courage to give answers or ask
questions.
'May I ask if you knew my friend By cliffe?' said Christian, trying a
more direct method.
'No, sir; I never saw him.'
'Ah I well - you have seen a very striking likeness of him. It's
wonderful - unaccountable; but when I saw Miss Lyon at the Free
School the other day, I could have sworn she was Bycliffe's daughter.'
'Sir!' said Mr Lyon, in his deepest tone, half rising, and holding by the
arms of his chair, 'these subjects touch me with too sharp a point for
you to be justified in thrusting them on me out of mere levity. Is there
any good you seek or any injury you fear in relation to them?'
'Precisely, sir. We shall come now to an understanding. Suppose I
believed that the young lady who goes by the name of Miss Lyon was
the daughter of Bycliffe?'
Mr Lyon moved his lips silently.
'And suppose I had reason to suspect that there would be some great
advantage for her if the law knew who was her father?'
'Sir!' said Mr Lyon, shaken out of all reticence, 'I would not conceal it.
She believes herself to be my daughter. But I will bear all things
rather than deprive her of a right. Nevertheless I will appeal to the pity
of any fellow-man, not to thrust himself between her and me, but to
let me disclose the truth to her myself.'
'All in good time,' said Christian. 'We must do nothing rash. Then Miss
Lyon is Annette's child?'
The minister shivered as if the edge of a knife had been drawn across
his hand. But the tone of the question, by the very fact that it
intensified his antipathy to Christian, enabled him to collect himself
for what must be simply the endurance of a painful operation. After a
moment or two he said more coolly, 'It is true, sir. Her mother became
my wife. Proceed with any statement which may concern my duty.'
'I have no more to say than this: If there's a prize that the law might
hand over to Bycliffe's daughter, I am much mistaken if there isn't a
lawyer who'll take precious good care to keep the law hoodwinked.
And that lawyer is Mat Jermyn. Why, my good sir, if you've been
taking Jermyn into your confidence , you've been setting the fox to
keep off the weasel. It strikes me that when you were made a little
anxious about those articles of poor Bycliffe's, you put Jermyn on
making inquiries of me. Eh? I think I am right?'
'I do not deny it.'
'Ah! - it was very well you did, for by that means I've found out that
he's got hold of some secrets about Bycliffe which he means to stifle.
Now, sir, if you desire any justice for your daughter, step-daughter, I
should say - don't so much as wink to yourself before Jermyn; and if
you've got any papers or things of that sort that may come in
evidence, as these confounded rescals the lawyers call it, clutch them
tight, for if they get into Jermyn's hands they may soon fly up the
chimney. Have I said enough?'
'I had not purposed any further co mmunication with Mr Jermyn, sir;
indeed, I have nothing further to communicate. Except that one fact
concerning my daughter's birth, which I have erred in concealing from
her, I neither seek disclosures nor do I tremble before them.'
'Then I have your word that you will be silent about this conversation
between us? It is for your daughter's interest, mind.'
'Sir, I shall be silent,' said Mr Ly on, with cold gravity. 'Unless,' he
added, with an acumen as to possibilities rather disturbing to
Christian's confident contempt for the old man - 'unless I were called
upon by some tribunal to declare th e whole truth in this relation; in
which case I should submit myself to that authority of investigation
which is a requisite of social order.'
Christian departed, feeling satisfied that he had got the utmost to be
obtained at present out of the Dissenting preacher, whom he had not
dared to question more closely. He must look out for chance lights,
and perhaps, too, he might catch a stray hint by stirring the sediment
of Mr Crowder's memory. But he must not venture on inquiries that
might be noticed. He was in awe of Jermyn.
When Mr Lyon was alone he paced up and down among his books,
and thought aloud, in order to relieve himself after the constraint of
this interview. 'I will not wait for the urgency of necessity,' he said,
more than once. 'I will tell the child, without compulsion. And then I
shall fear nothing. And an unwonted spirit of tenderness has filled her
of late. She will forgive me.'
Chapter 26
'Consideration like an angel came
And whipped the of ending Adam out of her
Leaving her body as a paradise
To envelop and contain celestial spirits.'
SHAKESPEARE: Henry V.
THE next morning, after much pray er for the needful strength and
wisdom, Mr Lyon came downstairs with the resolution that another
day should not pass without the fulfilment of the task he had laid on
himself; but what hour he should choose for his solemn disclosure to
Esther, must depend on their mutual occupations. Perhaps he must
defer it till they sat up alone together, after Lyddy was gone to bed.
But at breakfast Esther said -
'To-day is a holiday, father. My pupils are all going to Duffield to see
the wild beasts. What have you got to do to-day? Come, you are eating
no breakfast. O, Lyddy, Lyddy, the eggs are hard again. I wish you
would not read Alleyne's Alarm before breakfast; it makes you cry and
forget the eggs.'
'They are hard, and that's the truth; but there's hearts as are harder,
Miss Esther,' said Lyddy.
'I think not,' said Esther. 'This is leathery enough for the heart of the
most obdurate Jew. Pray give it little Zachary for a football.'
'Dear, dear, don't you be so light, miss. We may all be dead before
night.'
'You speak out of season, my good Lyddy,' said Mr Lyon, wearily;
'depart into the kitchen.'
'What have you got to do to-day, father?' persisted Esther. 'I have a
holiday.'
Mr Lyon felt as if this were a fresh summons not to delay. 'I have
something of great moment to do, my dear; and since you are not
otherwise demanded, I will ask you to come and sit with me up-stairs.'
Esther wondered what there could be on her father's mind more
pressing than his morning studies.
She soon knew. Motionless, but me ntally stirred as she had never
been before, Esther listened to her mother's story, and to the
outpouring of her step-father's long-pent-up experience. The rays of
the morning sun which fell athwart the books, the sense of the
beginning day, had deepened the solemnity more than night would
have done. All knowledge which alters our lives penetrates us more
when it comes in the early morning: the day that has to be travelled
with something new and perhaps for ever sad in its light, is an image
of the life that spreads beyond. But at night the time of rest is near.
Mr Lyon regarded his narrative as a confession - as a revelation to this
beloved child of his own miserable weakness and error. But to her it
seemed a revelation of another sort: her mind seemed suddenly
enlarged by a vision of passion and struggle, of delight and
renunciation, in the lot of beings who had hitherto been a dull enigma
to her. And in the act of unfolding to her that he was not her real
father, but had only striven to cherish her as a father, had only longed
to be loved as a father, the odd, wayworn, unworldly man became the
object of a new sympathy in which Esther felt herself exalted. Perhaps
this knowledge would have been less powerful within her, but for the
mental preparation that had come during the last two months from
her acquaintance with Felix Holt, which had taught her to doubt the
infallibility of her own standard, an d raised a presentiment of moral
depths that were hidden from her.
Esther had taken her place opposite to her father, and had not moved
even her clasped hands while he was speaking. But after the long out-
pouring in which he seemed to lose the sense of everything but the
memories he was giving utterance to, he paused a little while and then
said timidly -
'This is a late retrieval of a long error, Esther. I make not excuses for
myself, for we ought to strive that our affections be rooted in the
truth. Nevertheless you -'
Esther had risen, and had glided on to the wooden stool on a level
with her father's chair, where he was accustomed to lay books. She
wanted to speak, but the floodgat es could not be opened for words
alone. She threw her arms round the old man's neck and sobbed out
with a passionate cry, 'Father, fath er! forgive me if I have not loved
you enough I will - I will!'
The old man's little delicate fram e was shaken by a surprise and joy
that were almost painful in their intensity. He had been going to ask
forgiveness of her who asked it for herself. In that moment of supreme
complex emotion one ray of the minister's joy was the thought, 'Surely
the work of grace is begun in her - surely here is a heart that the Lord
hath touched.'
They sat so, enclasped in silence, while Esther relieved her full heart.
When she raised her head, she sat quite still for a minute or two
looking fixedly before her, and keeping one little hand in the
minister's. Presently she looked at him and said -
'Then you lived like a working man, father; you were very, very poor.
Yet my mother had been used to luxury. She was well born - she was
a lady.'
'It is true, my dear; it was a poor life that I could give her.'
Mr Lyon answered in utter dimne ss as to the course Esther's mind
was taking. He had anticipated before his disclosure, from his long-
standing discernment of tendencies in her which were often the cause
of silent grief to him, that the discovery likely to have the keenest
interest for her would be that her parents had a higher rank than that
of the poor Dissenting preacher; but she had shown that other and
better sensibilities were predomin ant. He rebuked himself now for a
hasty and shallow judgment concer ning the child's inner life, and
waited for new clearness.
'But that must be the best life, fa ther,' said Esther, suddenly rising,
with a flush across her paleness, an d standing with her head thrown
a little backward, as if some illumination had given her a new
decision. 'That must be the best life.' 'What life, my dear child?'
'Why, that where one bears and does everything because of some great
and strong feeling - so that this and that in one's circumstances don't
signify.'
'Yea, verily; but the feeling that should be thus supreme is
devotedness to the Divine Will.'
Esther did not speak; her father's words did not fit on to the
impressions wrought in her by what he had told her. She sat down
again, and said, more quietly -
'Mamma did not speak much of my - first father?'
'Not much, dear. She said he was beautiful to the eye, and good and
generous; and that his family was of those who have been long
privileged among their fellows. But now I will deliver to you the letters,
which, together with a ring and locket, are the only visible memorials
she retained of him.'
Mr Lyon reached and delivered to Esther the box containing the relics.
'Take them, and examine them in privacy, my dear. And that I may no
more err by concealment, I will tell you some late occurrences that
bear on these memorials, though to my present apprehension
doubtfully and confusedly.'
He then narrated to Esther all that had passed between himself and
Christian. The possibility - to which Mr Lyon's alarms had pointed -
that her real father might still be living, was a new shock. She could
not speak about it to her present father, but it was registered in
silence as a painful addition to th e uncertainties which she suddenly
saw hanging over her life.
'I have little confidence in this ma n's allegations,' Mr Lyon ended. 'I
confess his presence and speech are to me as the jarring of metal. He
bears the stamp of one who has never conceived aught of more
sanctity than the lust of the eye and the pride of life. He hints at some
possible inheritance for you, and de nounces mysteriously the devices
of Mr Jermyn. All this may or may not have a true foundation. But it
is not my part to move in this matter save on a clearer showing.
'Certainly not, father,' said Esther, eagerly. A little while ago, these
problematic prospects might have set her dreaming pleasantly; but
now, for some reasons that she co uld not have put distinctly into
words, they affected her with dread.
Chapter 27
'To hear with eyes is part of love's rare wit.'
- SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
'Custom calls me to't :-
What custom wills, in all things should we do't?
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heaped
For truth to over-peer.' - Coriolanus.
IN the afternoon Mr Lyon went out to see the sick amongst his flock,
and Esther, who had been passing the morning in dwelling on the
memories and the few remaining relics of her parents, was left alone
in the parlour amidst the lingering odours of the early dinner, not
easily got rid of in that small house. Rich people, who know nothing of
these vulgar details, can hardly imagine their significance in the
history of multitudes of human lives in which the sensibilities are
never adjusted to the external conditions. Esther always felt so much
discomfort from those odours that she usually seized any possibility of
escaping from them, and to-day they oppressed her the more because
she was weary with long-continued agitation. Why did she not put on
her bonnet as usual and get out into the open air? It was one of those
pleasant November afternoons - pleasant in the wide country - when
the sunshine is on the clinging brown leaves of the young oaks, and
the last yellow leaves of the elms flutter down in the fresh but not
eager breeze. But Esther sat still on the sofa - pale and with reddened
eyelids, her curls all pushed back carelessly, and her elbow resting on
the ridgy black horse-hair, which usually almost set her teeth on edge
if she pressed it even through her sleeve - while her eyes rested
blankly on the dull street. Lyddy had said, 'Miss, you look sadly; if you
can't take a walk, go and lie down .' She had never seen the curls in
such disorder, and she reflected that there had been a death from
typhus recently. But the obstinate miss only shook her head.
Esther was waiting for the sake of - not a probability, but - a mere
possibility, which made the brothy odours endurable. Apparently, in
less than half an hour, the possibi lity came to pass, for she changed
her attitude, almost started from her seat, sat down again, and
listened eagerly. If Lyddy should send him away, could she herself
rush out and call him back? Why not? Such things were permissible
where it was understood, from the necessity of the case, that there
was only friendship. But Lyddy open ed the door and said, 'Here's Mr
Holt, miss, wants to know if you'll give him leave to come in. I told him
you was sadly.'
'O yes, Lyddy, beg him to come in.'
'I should not have persevered,' said Felix, as they shook hands, 'only I
know Lyddy's dismal way. But you do look ill,' he went on, as he
seated himself at the other end of the sofa. 'Or rather - for that's a
false way of putting it - you look as if you had been very much
distressed. Do you mind about my taking notice of it?'
He spoke very kindly, and looked at her more persistently than he had
ever done before, when her hair was perfect.
'You are quite right. I am not at all ill. But I have been very much
agitated this morning. My father has been telling me things I never
heard before about my mother, and giving me things that belonged to
her. She died when I was a very little creature.'
'Then it is no new pain or trouble for you and Mr Lyon? I could not
help being anxious to know that.'
Esther passed her hand over her brow before she answered. 'I hardly
know whether it is pain, or something better than pleasure. It has
made me see things I was blind to before - depths in my father's
nature.'
As she said this, she looked at Felix, and their eyes met very gravely.
'It is such a beautiful day,' he said, 'it would do you good to go into the
air. Let me take you along the river towards Little Treby, will you?'
'I will put my bonnet on,' said Esther, unhesitatingly, though they had
never walked out together before.
It is true that to get into the fields they had to pass through the street;
and when Esther saw some acquaintances, she reflected that her
walking alone with Felix might be a subject of remark - all the more
because of his cap, patched boots, no cravat, and thick stick. Esther
was a little amazed herself at what she had come to. So our lives glide
on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then
there is no more jumping ashore.
When they were in the streets Esther hardly spoke. Felix talked with
his usual readiness, as easily as if he were not doing it solely to divert
her thoughts, first about Job Tudge's delicate chest, and the
probability that the little white-faced monkey would not live long; and
then about a miserable beginning of a night-school, which was all he
could get together at Sproxton; and the dismalness of that hamlet,
which was a sort of lip to the coalpi t on one side and the 'public' on
the other - and yet a paradise compared with the wynds of Glasgow,
where there was little more than a chink of daylight to show the
hatred in women's faces.
But soon they got into the fields, where there was a right of way
towards Little Treby, now following the course of the river, now
crossing towards a lane, and now tu rning into a cart-track through a
plantation.
'Here we are!' said Felix, when they had crossed the wooden bridge,
and were treading on the slanting shadows made by the elm trunks. 'I
think this is delicious. I never feel less unhappy than in these late
autumn afternoons when they are sunny.'
'Less unhappy! There now!' said Esther , smiling at him with some of
her habitual sauciness, 'I have caught you in self-contradiction. I have
heard you quite furious against puling, melancholy people. If I had
said what you have just said, you would have given me a long lecture,
and told me to go home and interest myself in the reason of the rule of
three.'
'Very likely,' said Felix, beating the weeds, according to the foible of
our common humanity when it has a stick in its hand. 'But I don't
think myself a fine fellow because I'm melancholy. I don't measure my
force by the negations in me, and think my soul must be a mighty one
because it is more given to idle suffering than to beneficent activity.
That's what your favourite gentlemen do, of the Byronic bilious style.'
'I don't admit that those are my favourite gentlemen.'
'I've heard you defend them - gentlemen like your Renes, who have no
particular talent for the finite, but a general sense that the infinite is
the right thing for them. They might as well boast of nausea as a proof
of a strong inside.'
'Stop, stop! You run on in that way to get out of my reach. I convicted
you of confessing that you are melancholy.'
'Yes!' said Felix, thrusting his left hand into his pocket, with a shrug;
'as I could confess to a great many other things I'm not proud of. The
fact is, there are not many easy lo ts to be drawn in the world at
present; and such as they are I am not envious of them. I don't say life
is not worth having: it is worth having to a man who has some sparks
of sense and feeling and bravery in him. And the finest fellow of all
would be the one who could be glad to have lived because the world
was chiefly miserable, and his life had come to help some one who
needed it. He would be the man who had the most powers and the
fewest selfish wants. But I'm not up to the level of what I see to be
best. I'm often a hungry discontented fellow.'
'Why have you made life so hard then?' said Esther, rather frightened
as she asked the question. 'It seems to me you have tried to find just
the most difficult task.'
'Not at all,' said Felix, with curt decision. 'My course was a very simple
one. It was pointed out to me by conditions that I saw as clearly as I
see the bars of this stile. It's a diffi cult stile too,' added Felix, striding
over. 'Shall I help you, or will you be left to yourself?'
'I can do without help, thank you.'
'It was all simple enough,' continued Felix, as they walked on. 'If I
meant to put a stop to the sale of those drugs, I must keep my
mother, and of course at her age she would not leave the place she
had been used to. And I had made up my mind against what they call
genteel businesses.'
'But suppose every one did as you do? Please to forgive me for saying
so; but I cannot see why you could not have lived as honourably with
some employment that presupposes education and refinement.'
'Because you can't see my history or my nature,' said Felix, bluntly. 'I
have to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don't blame
them, or think I am better than they; their circumstances are
different. I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labour
and common burthen of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself
from the push and the scramble fo r money and position. Any man is
at liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the
push and the scramble in the long-r un. But I care for the people who
live now and will not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, I
prefer going shares with the unlucky.'
Esther did not speak, and there was silence between them for a
minute or two, till they passed through a gate into a plantation where
there was no large timber, but only thin-stemmed trees and
underwood, so that the sunlight fe ll on the mossy spaces which lay
open here and there.
'See how beautiful those stooping birch-stems are with the light on
them!' said Felix. 'Here is an old felled trunk they have not thought
worth carrying away. Shall we sit down a little while?'
'Yes, the mossy ground with the dry leaves sprinkled over it is
delightful to one's feet.' Esther sat down and took off her bonnet, that
the light breeze might fall on her head. Felix, too, threw down his cap
and stick, lying on the ground with his back against the felled trunk.
'I wish I felt more as you do,' she said, looking at the point of her foot,
which was playing with a tuft of moss . 'I can't help caring very much
what happens to me. And you seem to care so little about yourself.'
'You are thoroughly mistaken,' said Felix. 'It is just because I'm a very
ambitious fellow, with very hungry passions, wanting a great deal to
satisfy me, that I have chosen to give up what people call worldly
good. At least that has been one determining reason. It all depends on
what a man gets into his consciou sness - what life thrusts into his
mind, so that it becomes present to him as remorse is present to the
guilty, or a mechanical problem to an inventive genius. There are two
things I've got present in that way: one of them is the picture of what I
should hate to be. I'm determined never to go about making my face
simpering or solemn, and telling prof essional lies for profit; or to get
tangled in affairs where I must wi nk at dishonesty and pocket the
proceeds, and justify that knavery as part of a system that I can't
alter. If I once went into that sort of struggle for success, I should
want to win - I should defend the wrong that I had once identified
myself with. I should become everything that I see now beforehand to
be detestable. And what's more, I should do this, as men are doing it
every day, for a ridiculously small prize - perhaps for none at all -
perhaps for the sake of two parlours , a rank eligible for the church-
wardenship, a discontented wife and several unhopeful children.'
Esther felt a terrible pressure on her heart - the certainty of her
remoteness from Felix - the sense that she was utterly trivial to him.
'The other thing that's got into my mind like a splinter,' said Felix,
after a pause, 'is the life of the miserable - the spawning life of vice
and hunger. I'll never be one of the sleek dogs. The old Catholics are
right, with their higher rule and their lower. Some are called to subject
themselves to a harder discipline, and renounce things voluntarily
which are lawful for others. It is the old word - ‘necessity is laid upon
me’.'
'It seems to me you are stricter than my father is.'
'No! I quarrel with no delight that is not base or cruel, but one must
sometimes accommodate one's self to a small share. That is the lot of
the majority. I would wish the minority joy, only they don't want my
wishes.'
Again there was silence. Esther's cheeks were hot in spite of the
breeze that sent her hair floating backward. She felt an inward strain,
a demand on her to see things in a light that was not easy or soothing.
When Felix had asked her to walk, he had seemed so kind, so alive to
what might be her feelings, that she had thought herself nearer to him
than she had ever been before; but since they had come out, he had
appeared to forget all that. And yet she was conscious that this
impatience of hers was very petty. Battling in this way with her own
little impulses, and looking at the birch-stems opposite till her gaze
was too wide for her to see anything distinctly, she was unaware how
long they had remained without speaking. She did not know that Felix
had changed his attitude a little, and was resting his elbow on the
tree-trunk, while he supported his head, which was turned towards
her. Suddenly he said, in a lower tone than was habitual to him -
'You are very beautiful.'
She started and looked round at hi m, to see whether his face would
give some help to the interpretation of this novel speech. He was
looking up at her quite calmly, very much as a reverential Protestant
might look at a picture of the Virgin, with a devoutness suggested by
the type rather than by the image. Esther's vanity was not in the least
gratified: she felt that, somehow or other, Felix was going to reproach
her.
'I wonder,' he went on, still looking at her, 'whether the subtle
measuring of forces will ever come to measuring the force there would
be in one beautiful woman whose mi nd was as noble as her face was
beautiful - who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with
all the great aims of his life.'
Esther's eyes got hot and smarting. It was no use trying to be
dignified. She had turned away her head, and now said, rather
bitterly, 'It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be anything good
when she is not believed in - when it is always supposed that she
must be contemptible.'
'No, dear Esther' - it was the first time Felix had been prompted to call
her by her Christian name, and as he did so he laid his large hand on
her two little hands, which were clasped on her knees. 'You don't
believe that I think you contemptible. When I first saw you -'
'I know, I know,' said Esther, inte rrupting him impetuously, but still
looking away. 'You mean you did think me contemptible then. But it
was very narrow of you to judge me in that way, when my life had
been so different from yours. I have great faults. I know I am selfish,
and think too much of my own small tastes and too little of what
affects others. But I am not stupid. I am not unfeeling. I can see what
is better.'
'But I have not done you injustice since I knew more of you,' said
Felix, gently.
'Yes, you have,' said Esther, turning and smiling at him through her
tears. 'You talk to me like an angry pedagogue. Were you always wise?
Remember the time when you were foolish or naughty.'
'That is not far off,' said Felix, curtly, taking away his hand and
clasping it with the other at the back of his head. The talk, which
seemed to be introducing a mutual understanding, such as had not
existed before, seemed to have undergone some check.
'Shall we get up and walk back now?' said Esther, after a few
moments.
'No,' said Felix, entreatingly. 'Don't move yet. I daresay we shall never
walk together or sit here again.'
'Why not?'
'Because I am a man who am warned by visions. Those old stories of
visions and dreams guiding men have their truth: we are saved by
making the future present to ourselves.'
'I wish I could get visions, then,' sa id Esther, smiling at him, with an
effort at playfulness, in resistan ce to something vaguely mournful
within her.
'That is what I want,' said Felix, looking at her very earnestly. 'Don't
turn your head. Do look at me, and then I shall know if I may go on
speaking. I do believe in you; but I want you to have such a vision of
the future that you may never lose your best self. Some charm or
other may be flung about you - some of your atta-of-rose fascinations
- and nothing but a good strong terribl e vision will save you. And if it
did save you, you might be that woman I was thinking of a little while
ago when I looked at your face: the woman whose beauty makes a
great task easier to men instead of turning them away from it. I am
not likely to see such fine issues; but they may come where a woman's
spirit is finely touched. I should like to be sure they would come to
you.'
'Why are you not likely to know what becomes of me?' said Esther,
turning away her eyes in spite of his command. 'Why should you not
always be my father's friend and mine?'
'O, I shall go away as soon as I can to some large town,' said Felix, in
his more usual tone, - 'some ugly, wi cked, miserable place. I want to
be a demagogue of a new sort; an hone st one, if possible, who will tell
the people they are blind and fool ish, and neither flatter them nor
fatten on them. I have my heritage - an order I belong to. I have the
blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up
for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be
better trained to all the best functions of his nature than if he
belonged to the grimacing set who have visiting-cards, and are proud
to be thought richer than their neighbours.'
'Would nothing ever make it seem right to you to change your mind?'
said Esther (she had rapidly woven some possibilities out of the new
uncertainties in her own lot, though she would not for the world have
had Felix know of her weaving). 'Suppose, by some means or other, a
fortune might come to you honourably - by marriage, or in any other
unexpected way - would you see no change in your course?'
'No,' said Felix, peremptorily: 'I will never be rich. I don't count that as
any peculiar virtue. Some men do well to accept riches, but that is not
my inward vocation: I have no fellow -feeling with the rich as a class;
the habits of their lives are odious to me. Thousands of men have
wedded poverty because they expect to go to heaven for it; I don't
expect to go to heaven for it, but I wed it because it enables me to do
what I most want to do on earth. Whatever the hopes for the world
may be - whether great or small - I am a man of this generation; I will
try to make life less bitter for a few within my reach. It is held
reasonable enough to toil for the fortunes of a family, though it may
turn to imbecility in the third generation. I choose a family with more
chances in it.'
Esther looked before her dreamily till she said, 'That seems a hard lot;
yet it is a great one.' She rose to walk back.
'Then you don't think I'm a fool,' said Felix, loudly, starting to his feet,
and then stooping to gather up his cap and stick.
'Of course you suspected me of that stupidity.'
'Well - women, unless they are Saint Theresas or Elizabeth Frys,
generally think this sort of thing madness, unless when they read of it
in the Bible.'
'A woman can hardly ever choose in that way; she is dependent on
what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only
meaner things are within her reach.'
'Why, can you imagine yourself choosing hardship as the better lot?'
said Felix, looking at her with a sudden question in his eyes.
'Yes, I can,' she said, flushing over neck and brow.
Their words were charged with a me aning dependent entirely on the
secret consciousness of each. Nothing had been said which was
necessarily personal. They walked a few yards along the road by which
they had come, without further speech, till Felix said gently, 'Take my
arm.' She took it, and they walked home so, entirely without
conversation. Felix was struggling as a firm man struggles with a
temptation, seeing beyond it and disbelieving its lying promise. Esther
was struggling as a woman struggles with the yearning for some
expression of love, and with vexation under that subjection to a
yearning which is not likely to be satisfied. Each was conscious of a
silence which each was unable to br eak, till they entered Malthouse
Lane, and were within a few yards of the minister's door.
'It is getting dusk,' Felix then said; 'will Mr Lyon be anxious about
you?'
'No, I think not. Lyddy would tell him that I went out with you, and
that you carried a large stick,' said Esther, with her light laugh.
Felix went in with Esther to take tea, but the conversation was
entirely between him and Mr Lyon about the tricks of canvassing, and
foolish personality of the placards, and the probabilities of Transome's
return, as to which Felix declared himself to have become indifferent.
This scepticism made the minister uneasy: he had great belief in the
old political watchwords, had preached that universal suffrage and no
ballot were agreeable to the will of God, and liked to believe that a
visible 'instrument' was forthcoming in the Radical candidate who had
pronounced emphatically against Whig finality. Felix, being in a
perverse mood, contended that univ ersal suffrage would be equally
agreeable to the devil; that he would change his politics a little, having
a larger traffic, and see himself more fully represented in parliament.
'Nay, my friend,' said the minist er, 'you are again sporting with
paradox; for you will not deny that you glory in the na me of Radical,
or Root-and-branch man, as they said in the great times when
Nonconformity was in its giant youth.'
'A Radical - yes; but I want to go to some roots a good deal lower down
than the franchise.'
'Truly there is a work within which cannot be dispensed with; but it is
our preliminary work to free men from the stifled life of political
nullity, and bring them into what Milton calls ‘the liberal air’, wherein
alone can be wrought the final triumphs of the Spirit.'
'With all my heart. But while Caliban is Caliban, though you multiply
him by a million, he'll worship every Trinculo that carries a bottle. I
forget, though - you don't read Shakspeare, Mr Lyon.'
'I am bound to confess that I have so far looked into a volume of
Esther's as to conceive your meaning; but the fantasies therein were
so little to be reconciled with a steady contemplation of that divine
economy which is hidden from sense and revealed to faith, that I
forbore the reading, as likely to perturb my ministrations.'
Esther sat by in unusual silence. The conviction that Felix willed her
exclusion from his life was making it plain that something more than
friendship between them was not so thoroughly out of the question as
she had always inwardly asserted. In her pain that his choice lay aloof
from her, she was compelled frankl y to admit to herself the longing
that it had been otherwise, and that he had entreated her to share his
difficult life. He was like no one else to her: he had seemed to bring at
once a law, and the love that gave strength to obey the law. Yet the
next moment, stung by his independen ce of her, she denied that she
loved him; she had only longed for a moral support under the
negations of her life. If she were no t to have that support, all effort
seemed useless.
Esther had been so long used to hear the formulas of her father's
belief without feeling or understanding them, that they had lost all
power to touch her. The first religious experience of her life - the first
self-questioning, the first voluntary subjection, the first longing to
acquire the strength of greater motives and obey the more strenuous
rule - had come to her through Felix Holt. No wonder that she felt as if
the loss of him were inevitable backsliding.
But was it certain that she should lose him? She did not believe that
he was really indifferent to her.
Chapter 28
'Titus. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?
CLOWN. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter:
I never drank with him in all my life.'
Titus Andronicus.
THE multiplication of uncomplimentary placards noticed by Mr Lyon
and Felix Holt was one of several si gns that the days of nomination
and election were approaching. The presence of the revising barrister
in Treby was not only an opportun ity for all persons not otherwise
busy to show their zeal for the purification of the voting-lists, but also
to reconcile private ease and public duty by standing about the streets
and lounging at doors.
It was no light business for Trebians to form an opinion; the mere fact
of a public functionary with an unfamiliar title was enough to give
them pause, as a premiss that was not to be quickly started from. To
Mr Pink the saddler, for example, until some distinct injury or benefit
had accrued to him, the existence of the revising barrister was like the
existence of the young giraffe which Wombwell had lately brought into
those parts - it was to be contemplated, and not criticised. Mr Pink
professed a deep-dyed Toryism; but he regarded all fault-finding as
Radical and somewhat impious, as di sturbing to trade, and likely to
offend the gentry or the servants through whom their harness was
ordered: there was a Nemesis in things which made objection unsafe,
and even the Reform Bill was a sort of electric eel which a thriving
tradesman had better leave alone. It was only the 'Papists' who lived
far enough off to be spoken of uncivilly.
But Mr Pink was fond of news, which he collected and retailed with
perfect impartiality, noting facts and rejecting comments. Hence he
was well pleased to have his shop so constant a place of resort for
loungers, that to many Trebians there was a strong association
between the pleasures of gossip and the smell of leather. He had the
satisfaction of chalking and cuttin g, and of keeping his journeymen
close at work, at the very time that he learned from his visitors who
were those whose votes had been called in question before His
Honour, how Lawyer Jermyn had been too much for Lawyer Labron
about Todd's cottages, and how, in the opinion of some townsmen,
this looking into the value of people's property, and swearing it down
below a certain sum, was a nasty, inquisitorial kind of thing; while
others observed that being nice to a few pounds was all nonsense -
they should put the figure high enough, and then never mind if a
voter's qualification was thereabo uts. But, said Mr Sims the
auctioneer, everything was done for the sake of the lawyers. Mr Pink
suggested impartially that lawyers must live; but Mr Sims, having a
ready auctioneering wit, did not see that so many of them need live, or
that babies were born lawyers. Mr Pink felt that this speculation was
complicated by the ordering of side-saddles for lawyers' daughters,
and, returning to the firm ground of fact, stated that it was getting
dusk.
The dusk seemed deepened the next moment by a tall figure
obstructing the doorway, at sight of whom Mr Pink rubbed his hands
and smiled and bowed more than once, with evident solicitude to
show honour where honour was due, while he said -
'Mr Christian, sir, how do you do, sir?'
Christian answered with the condes cending familiarity of a superior.
'Very badly, I can tell you, with these confounded braces that you
were to make such a fine job of. See, old fellow, they've burst out
again.'
'Very sorry, sir. Can you leave them with me?'
'O yes, I'll leave them. What's the news, eh?' said Christian, half
seating himself on a high stool, and beating his boot with a hand-
whip.
'Well, sir, we look to you to tell us that,' said Mr Pink, with a knowing
smile. 'You're at headquarters - eh, sir? That was what I said to Mr
Scales the other day. He came for some straps, Mr Scales did, and he
asked that question in pretty near the same terms that you've done,
sir, and I answered him, as I may say, ditto. Not meaning any
disrespect to you, sir, but a way of speaking.'
'Come, that's gammon, Pink,' said Christian. 'You know everything.
You can tell me, if you will, who is the fellow employed to paste up
Transome's handbills?'
'What do you say, Mr Sims?' said Pink, looking at the auctioneer.
'Why, you know and I know well en ough. It's Tommy Trounsem - an
old, crippling, half-mad fellow. Most people know Tommy. I've
employed him myself for charity.'
'Where shall I find him?' said Christian.
'At the Cross-Keys, in Pollard's End, most likely,' said Mr Sims. 'I don't
know where he puts himself when he isn't at the public.'
'He was a stoutish fellow fifteen year ago, when he carried pots,' said
Mr Pink.
'Ay, and has snared many a hare in his time,' said Mr Sims. 'But he
was always a little cracked. Lord bl ess you! he used to swear he'd a
right to the Transome estate.'
'Why, what put that notion into his head?' said Christian, who had
learned more than he expected.
'The lawing, sir - nothing but the lawing about the estate. There was a
deal of it twenty year ago,' said Mr Pink. 'Tommy happened to turn up
hereabout at that time; a big, lungeous fellow, who would speak
disrespectfully of hanybody.'
'O, he meant no harm,' said Mr Simms. 'He was fond of a drop to
drink, and not quite right in the up per story, and he could hear no
difference between Trounsem and Transome. It's an odd way of
speaking they have in that part where he was born - a little north'ard.
You'll hear it in his tongue now, if you talk to him.'
'At the Cross-Keys I shall find him, eh?' said Christian, getting off his
stool. 'Good-day, Pink, good-day.'
Christian went straight from the saddler's to Quorlen's, the Tory
printer's, with whom he had contrived a political spree. Quorlen was a
new man in Treby, who had so reduced the trade of Dow, the old
hereditary printer, that Dow had la psed to Whiggery and Radicalism
and opinions in general, so far as they were contented to express
themselves in a small stock of types. Quorlen had brought his Duffield
wit with him, and insisted that religion and joking were the
handmaids of politics; on which principle he and Christian undertook
the joking, and left the religion to the rector. The joke at present in
question was a practical one. Christian, turning into the shop, merely
said, 'I've found him out - give me the placards'; and, tucking a
thickish flat bundle, wrapped in a black glazed cotton bag, under his
arm, walked out into the dusk again.
'Suppose now,' he said to himself, as he strode along - 'suppose there
should be some secret to be got out of this old scamp, or some notion
that's as good as a secret to th ose who know how to use it? That
would be virtue rewarded. But I'm afraid the old tosspot is not likely to
be good for much. There's truth in wine, and there may be some in gin
and muddy beer; but whether it's truth worth my knowing, is another
question. I've got plenty of truth in my time out of men who were half-
seas-over, but never any that was worth a sixpence to me.'
The Cross-Keys was a very old-fashioned 'public': its bar was a big
rambling kitchen, with an undulating brick floor; the small-paned
windows threw an interesting obsc urity over the far-off dresser,
garnished with pewter and tin, and with large dishes that seemed to
speak of better times; the two settles were half pushed under the
wide-mouthed chimney; and the grate, with its brick hobs, massive
iron crane, and various pothooks, suggested a generous plenty
possibly existent in all moods an d tenses except the indicative
present. One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's
miseries is to go and look at their pleasures. The Cross-Keys had a
fungous-featured landlord and a yellow sickly landlady, with a napkin
bound round her head like a resuscitated
Lazarus; it had doctored ale, an odour of bad tobacco, and remarkably
strong cheese. It was not what Astraea, when come back, might be
expected to approve as the scene of ecstatic enjoyment for the beings
whose special prerogative it is to lift their sublime faces towards
heaven. Still, there was ample space on the hearth - accommodation
for narrative bagmen or boxmen - ro om for a man to stretch his legs;
his brain was not pressed upon by a white wall within a yard of him,
and the light did not stare in mercilessly on bare ugliness, turning the
fire to ashes. Compared with some beerhouses of this more advanced
period, the Cross-Keys of that da y presented a high standard of
pleasure.
But though this venerable 'public' had not failed to share in the recent
political excitement of drinking, th e pleasures it offered were not at
this early hour of the evening sought by a numerous company. There
were only three or four pipes being smoked by the firelight, but it was
enough for Christian when he found that one of these was being
smoked by the bill-sticker, whose large flat basket stuffed with
placards, leaned near him against the settle. So splendid an
apparition as Christian was not a little startling at the Cross-Keys,
and was gazed at in expectant silence; but he was a stranger in
Pollard's End, and was taken for the highest style of traveller when he
declared that he was deucedly thir sty, ordered six-pennyworth of gin
and a large jug of water, and, putting a few drops of the spirit into his
own glass, invited Tommy Trounsem, who sat next him, to help
himself. Tommy was not slower than a shaking hand obliged him to
be in accepting this invitation. He was a tall broad-shouldered old
fellow, who had once been good-looking; but his cheeks and chest
were both hollow now, and his limbs were shrunken.
'You've got some bills there, master, eh?' said Christian, pointing to
the basket. 'Is there an auction coming on?'
'Auction? no,' said Tommy, with a gruff hoarseness, which was the
remnant of a jovial bass, and with an accent which differed from the
Trebian fitfully, as an early habit is wont to reassert itself 'I've nought
to do wi' auctions; I'm a pol'tica l charicter. It's me am getting
Trounsem into parliament.'
'Trounsem, says he,' the landlord observed, taking out his pipe with a
low laugh. 'It's Transome, sir. Maybe you don't belong to this part. It's
the candidate 'ull do most for the working men, and's proved it too, in
the way o' being openhanded and wishing 'em to enjoy themselves. If
I'd twenty votes, I'd give one for Transome, and I don't care who hears
me.'
The landlord peeped out from his fu ngous cluster of features with a
beery confidence that the high figure of twenty had somehow raised
the hypothetic value of his vote.
'Spilkins, now,' said Tommy, waving his hand to the landlord, 'you let
one genelman speak to another, will you? This genelman wants to
know about my bills. Does he, or doesn't he?'
'What then? I spoke according,' said the landlord, mildly holding his
own.
'You're all very well, Spilkins,' returned Tommy, 'but y'aren't me. I
know what the bills are. It's public business. I'm none o' your common
bill-stickers, master; I've left off sticking up ten guineas reward for a
sheep-stealer, or low stuff like th at. These are Trounsem's bills; and
I'm the rightful family, and so I give him a lift. A Trounsem I am, and a
Trounsem I'll be buried; and if Old Nick tries to lay hold on me for
poaching, I'll say, ‘You be hanged for a lawyer, Old Nick; every hare
and pheasant on the Trounsem's la nd is mine’; and what rises the
family, rises old Tommy; and we're going to get into parl'ment - that's
the long and the short on't, master. And I'm the head o' the family,
and I stick the bills. There's Johnsons, and Thomsons, and Jacksons,
and Billsons; but I'm a Trounsem, I am. What do you say to that,
master?'
This appeal, accompanied by a blow on the table, while the landlord
winked at the company, was addres sed to Christian, who answered,
with severe gravity - 'I say there is n't any work more honourable than
bill-sticking.'
'No, no,' said Tommy, wagging his head from side to side. 'I thought
you'd come in to that. I thought you'd know better than say contrairy.
But I'll shake hands wi' you; I don't want to knock any man's head off.
I'm a good chap - a sound crock - an old family kep' out o' my rights. I
shall go to heaven, for all Old Nick.'
As these celestial prospects might imply that a little extra gin was
beginning to tell on the bill-sticker, Christian wanted to lose no time
in arresting his attention. He laid his hand on Tommy's arm and
spoke emphatically.
'But I'll tell you what you bill-stickers are not up to. You should be on
the look-out when Debarry's side have stuck up fresh bills, and go
and paste yours over them. I know where there's a lot of Debarry's
bills now. Come along with me, and I'll show you. We'll paste them
over, and then we'll come back and treat the company.'
'Hooray ! ' said Tommy. 'Let's be off then.'
He was one of the thoroughly inured, originally hale drunkards, and
did not easily lose his head or legs or the ordinary amount of method
in his talk. Strangers often supposed that Tommy was tipsy when he
had only taken what he called 'one blessed pint', chiefly from that
glorious contentment with himself and his adverse fortunes which is
not usually characteristic of the sober Briton. He knocked the ashes
out of his pipe, seized his paste-vessel and his basket, and prepared
to start, with a satisfactory promise that he could know what he was
about.
The landlord and some others had confidently concluded that they
understood all about Christian now. He was a Transome's man, come
to see after the bill-sticking in Transome's interest. The landlord,
telling his yellow wife snappishly to open the door for the gentleman,
hoped soon to see him again.
'This is a Transome's house, si r,' he observed, 'in respect of
entertaining customers of that colo ur. I do my duty as a publican,
which, if I know it, is to turn back no genelman's money. I say, give
every genelman a chanch, and the more the merrier, in parl'ment and
out of it. And if anybody says they want but two parl'ment men, I say
it 'ud be better for trade if there was six of 'em, and voters according.'
'Ay, ay,' said Christian; 'you're a sensible man, landlord. You don't
mean to vote for Debarry then, eh?'
'Not nohow,' said the landlord, th inking that where negatives were
good the more you heard of them the better.
As soon as the door had closed behind Christian and his new
companion, Tommy said -
'Now, master, if you're to be my la ntern, don't you be a Jacky Lantern,
which I take to mean one as leads you the wrong way. For I'll tell you
what - if you've had the luck to fall in wi' Tommy Trounsem, don't you
let him drop.'
'No, no - to be sure not,' said Chri stian. 'Come along here. We'll go to
the Back Brewery wall first.'
'No, no; don't you let me drop. Give me a shilling any day you like, and
I'll tell you more nor you'll hear from Spilkins in a week. There isna
many men like me. I carried pots for fifteen years off and on - what do
you think o' that now, for a man as might ha' lived up there at
Trounsem Park, and snared his own game? Which I'd ha' done,' said
Tommy, wagging his head at Christian in the dimness undisturbed by
gas. 'None o' your shooting for me - it's two to one you'll miss.
Snaring's more fishing-like. You bait your hook, and if it isna the
fishes' goodwill to come, that's no thing again' the sporting genelman.
And that's what I say by snaring.'
'But if you'd a right to the Transome estate, how was it you were kept
out of it, old boy? It was some foul shame or other, eh?'
'It's the law - that's what it is. You're a good sort o' chap; I don't mind
telling you. There's folks born to property, and there's folks catch hold
on it; and the law's made for them as catch hold. I'm pretty deep; I see
a good deal further than Spilkins . There was Ned Patch, the pedlar,
used to say to me ‘You canna read, Tommy,’ says he. ‘No; thank you,’
says I; ‘I'm not going to crack my headpiece to make myself as big a
fool as you.’ I was fond o' Ned. Many's the pot we've had together.'
'I see well enough you're deep, Tommy. How came you to know you
were born to property?'
'It was the regester - the parish regester,' said Tommy, with his
knowing wag of the head, 'that shows as you was born. I allays felt it
inside me as I was somebody, and I could see other chaps thought it
on me too; and so one day at Littleshaw, where I kept ferrets and a
little bit of a public, there comes a fine man looking after me, and
walking me up and down wi' questions. And I made out from the clerk
as he'd been at the regester; and I gave the clerk a pot or two, and he
got it of our parson as the name o' Trounsem was a great name
hereabout. And I waits a bit for my fine man to come again. Thinks I,
if there's property wants a right owner, I shall be called for; for I didn't
know the law then. And I waited and waited, till I see'd no fun i'
waiting. So I parted wi' my public and my ferrets - for she was dead
a'ready, my wife was, and I hadn't no cumbrance. And off I started a
pretty long walk to this countryside, for I could walk for a wager in
them days.'
'Ah! well, here we are at the Back Brewery wall. Put down your paste
and your basket now, old boy, and I'll help you. You paste, and I'll give
you the bills, and then you can go on talking.'
Tommy obeyed automatically, for he was now carried away by the rare
opportunity of talking to a new listener, and was only eager to go on
with his story. As soon as his back was turned, and he was stooping
over his paste-pot, Christian, wi th quick adroitness, exchanged the
placards in his own bag for thos e in Tommys basket. Christian's
placards had not been printed at Treby, but were a new lot which had
been sent from Duffield that very day - 'highly spiced', Quorlen had
said, 'coming from a pen that was up to that sort of thing'. Christian
had read the first of the sheaf, and supposed they were all alike. He
proceeded to hand one to Tommy, and said -
'Here, old boy, paste this over the other. And so, when you got into
this country-side, what did you do?'
'Do? Why, I put up at a good public and ordered the best, for I'd a bit
o' money in my pocket; and I axed about, and they said to me, if it's
Trounsem business you're after, you go to Lawyer Jermyn. And I went;
and says I, going along, he's maybe the fine man as walked me up and
down. But no such thing. I'll tell you what Lawyer Jermyn was. He
stands you there, and holds you away from him wi' a pole three yards
long. He stares at you, and says noth ing, till you feel like a Tomfool;
and then he threats you to set the ju stice on you; and then he's sorry
for you, and hands you money, and preaches you a sarmint, and tells
you you're a poor man, and he'll give you a bit of advice - and you'd
better not be meddling wi' things belonging to the law, else you'll be
catched up in a big wheel and fly to bits. And I went of a cold sweat,
and I wished I might never come i' sight o' Lawyer Jermyn again. But
he says, if you keep i' this neighbourhood, behave yourself well, and
I'll pertect you. I were deep enough, but it's no use being deep, 'cause
you can never know the law. And there's times when the deepest
fellow's worst frightened.'
'Yes, yes. There! Now for another placard. And so that was all?'
'All?' said Tommy, turning round and holding the pastebrush in
suspense. 'Don't you be running too quick. Thinks I, ‘I'll meddle no
more. I've got a bit o' money - I'll buy a basket, and be a potman. It's a
pleasant life. I shall live at publics and see the world, and pick up
'quaintance, and get a chanch penny.’ But when I'd turned into the
Red Lion, and got myself warm again wi' a drop o' hot, something
jumps into my head. Thinks I, Tommy, you've done finely for yourself:
you're a rat as has broke up your house to take a journey, and show
yourself to a ferret. And then it jumps into my head: I'd once two
ferrets as turned on one another, and the little un killed the big un.
Says I to the landlady, ‘Missis, could you tell me of a lawyer,’ says I,
‘not very big or fine, but a second size - a pig-potato, like?’ ‘That I can,’
says she; ‘there's one now in the ba r-parlour.’ ‘Be so kind as bring us
together,’ says I. And she cries out - I think I hear her now - ‘Mr
Johnson ! ‘ And what do you think?'
At this crisis in Tommy's story the grey clouds, which had been
gradually thinning, opened sufficiently to let down the sudden
moonlight, and show his poor battered old figure and face in the
attitude and with the expression of a narrator sure of the coming
effect on his auditor; his body and neck stretched a little on one side,
and his paste-brush held out with an alarming intention of tapping
Christian's coat-sleeve at the right moment. Christian started to a safe
distance, and said -
'It's wonderful. I can't tell what to think.'
'Then never do you deny Old Nick,' said Tommy, with solemnity. 'I've
believed in him more ever since. Who was Johnson? Why, Johnson
was the fine man as had walked me up and down with questions. And
I out with it to him then and there. And he speaks me civil, and says,
‘Come away wi' me, my good fellow.’ And he told me a deal o' law. And
he says, whether you're a Tommy Trounsem or no, it's no good to you,
but only to them as have got hold o' the property. If you was a Tommy
Trounsem twenty times over, it 'ud be no good, for the law's bought
you out; and your life's no good, only to them as have catched hold o'
the property. The more you live, the more they'll stick in. Not as they
want you now, says he - you're no good to anybody, and you might
howl like a dog for iver, and the law 'ud take no notice on you. Says
Johnson. I'm doing a kind thing by you, to tell you. For that's the law.
And if you want to know the law, master, you ask Johnson. I heard
'em say after, as he was an understrapper at Jermyn's. I've never
forgot it from that day to this. But I saw clear enough, as if the law
hadn't been again' me, the Trounsem estate 'ud ha' been mine. But
folks are fools hereabouts, and I've left off talking. The more you tell
'em the truth, the more they'll niver believe you. And I went and
bought my basket and the pots, and -'
'Come, then, fire away,' said Christian. 'Here's another placard.'
'I'm getting a bit dry, master.'
'Well, then, make haste, and you'll have something to drink all the
sooner.'
Tommy turned to his work again, and Christian, continuing his help,
said, 'And how long has Mr Jermyn been employing you?'
'Oh, no particular time - off and on; but a week or two ago he sees me
upo' the road, and speaks to me uncommon civil, and tells me to go
up to his office, and he'll give me employ. And I was noways unwilling
to stick the bills to get the family into parl'ment. For there's no man
can help the law. And the family's the family, whether you carry pots
or no. Master, I'm uncommon dry - my head's a turning round - it's
talking so long on end.'
The unwonted excitement of poor Tommy's memory was producing a
reaction.
'Well, Tommy,' said Christian, who had just made a discovery among
the placards which altered the bent of his thoughts, 'you may go back
to the Cross-Keys now, if you like; here's a half-crown for you to spend
handsomely. I can't go back there my self just yet; but you may give
my respects to Spilkins, and mind you paste the rest of the bills early
to-morrow morning.
'Ay, ay. But don't you believe too much i' Spilkins,' said Tommy,
pocketing the half-crown, and showing his gratitude by giving this
advice - 'he's no harm much - but weak. He thinks he's at the bottom
o' things because he scores you up. But I bear him no ill-will. Tommy
Trounsem's a good chap; and any day you like to give me half-a-
crown, I'll tell you the same story over again. Not now; I'm dry. Come,
help me up wi' these things; you're a younger chap than me. Well, I'll
tell Spilkins you'll come again another day.'
The moonlight, which had lit up poor Tommy's oratorical attitude, had
served to light up for Christian the print of the placards. He had
expected the copies to be various, and had turned them half over at
different depths of the sheaf before drawing out those he offered to the
bill-sticker. Suddenly the clear light had shown him on one of them a
name which was just then especially interesting to him, and all the
more when occurring in a placard intended to dissuade the electors of
North Loamshire from voting for the heir of the Transomes. He hastily
turned over the lists that preceded and succeeded, that he might draw
out and carry away all of this pattern; for it might turn out to be wiser
for him not to contribute to the publicity of handbills which contained
allusions to Bycliffe versus Tran some. There were about a dozen of
them; he pressed them together and thrust them into his pocket,
returning all the rest to Tommy's basket. To take away this dozen
might not be to prevent similar bill s from being posted up elsewhere,
but he had reason to believe that these were all of the same kind
which had been sent to Treby from Duffield.
Christian's interest in his practical joke had died out like a morning
rushlight. Apart from this discovery in the placards, old Tommy's
story had some indications in it that were worth pondering over.
Where was that well-informed Johnson now? Was he still an
understrapper of Jermyn's?
With this matter in his thoughts, Christian only turned in hastily at
Quorlen's, threw down the black bag which contained the captured
Radical handbills, said he had done the job, and hurried back to the
Manor that he might study his problem.
Chapter 29
'I doe believe that, as the gall has several receptacles in several
creatures, soe there's scarce any creature but hath that emunctorye
somewhere.' - SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
FANCY what a game at chess would be if all the chessmen had
passions and intellects, more or l ess small and cunning: if you were
not only uncertain about your adve rsary's men, but a little uncertain
also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new
square by the sly; if your bishop, in disgust at your castling, could
wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you
because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts
that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-
headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten by your
own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you
depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded
your passionate pieces with contempt.
Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has
to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his
instruments. He thinks himself sagacious, perhaps, because he trusts
no bond except that of self-interest; but the only self-interest he can
safely rely on is what seems to be such to the mind he would use or
govern. Can he ever be sure of knowing this?
Matthew Jermyn was under no misgivings as to the fealty of Johnson.
He had 'been the making of Johnson'; and this seems to many men a
reason for expecting devotion, in spite of the fact that they themselves,
though very fond of their own persons and lives, are not at all devoted
to the Maker they believe in. Johnson was a most serviceable
subordinate. Being a man who aimed at respectability, a family man,
who had a good church-pew, subscr ibed for engravings of banquet
pictures where there were portraits of political celebrities, and wished
his children to be more unquestionably genteel than their father, he
presented all the more numerous handles of worldly motive by which
a judicious superior might keep a hold on him. But this useful regard
to respectability had its inconvenienc e in relation to such a superior:
it was a mark of some vanity and some pride, which, if they were not
touched just in the right handlling-place, were liable to become raw
and sensitive. Jermyn was awar e of Johnson's weaknesses, and
thought he had flattered them sufficiently. But on the point of
knowing when we are disagreeable, our human nature is fallible. Our
lavender-water, our smiles, our compliments, and other polite
falsities, are constantly offensive, when in the very nature of them
they can only be meant to attract admiration and regard. Jermyn had
often been unconsciously disagreeable to Johnson, over and above the
constant offence of being an ostentatious patron. He would never let
Johnson dine with his wife and daug hters; he would not himself dine
at Johnson's house when he was in town. He often did what was
equivalent to pooh-poohing his conversation by not even appearing to
listen, and by suddenly cutting it short with a query on a new subject.
Jermyn was able and politic enough to have commanded a great deal
of success in his life, but he could not help being handsome, arrogant,
fond of being heard, indisposed to any kind of comradeship, amorous
and bland towards women, cold and self-contained towards men. You
will hear very strong denial that an attorney's being handsome could
enter into the dislike he excited; but conversation consists a good deal
in the denial of what is true. From the British point of view masculine
beauty is regarded very much as it is in the drapery business: as good
solely for the fancy department - fo r young noblemen, artists, poets,
and the clergy. Some one who, like Mr Lingon, was disposed to revile
Jermyn (perhaps it was Sir Maximus), had called him 'a cursed, sleek,
handsome, long-winded, over-beari ng sycophant;' epithets which
expressed, rather confusedly, the mingled character of the dislike he
excited. And serviceable John Jo hnson, himself sleek, and mindful
about his broadcloth and his cambri c fronts, had what he considered
'spirit' enough within him to feel that dislike of Jermyn gradually
gathering force through years of obligation and subjection, till it had
become an actuating motive disposed to use an opportunity, if not to
watch for one.
It was not this motive, however, but rather the ordinary course of
business, which accounted for Johnson's playing a double part as an
electioneering agent. What men do in elections is not to be classed
either among sins or marks of grace: it would be profane to include
business in religion, and conscience refers to failure, not to success.
Still, the sense of being galled by Jermyn's harness was an additional
reason for cultivating all relations that were independent of him; and
pique at Harold Transome's behaviour to him in Jermyn's office
perhaps gave all the more zest to Johnson's use of his pen and ink
when he wrote a handbill in the service of Garstin, and Garstin's
incomparable agent, Putty, full of innuendoes against Harold
Transome, as a descendant of the Durfey-Transomes. It is a natural
subject of self-congratulation to a man, when special knowledge,
gained long ago without any forecast, turns out to afford a special
inspiration in the present; and Johnson felt a new pleasure in the
consciousness that he of all people in the world next to Jermyn had
the most intimate knowledge of the Transome affairs. Still better -
some of these affairs were secrets of Jermyn's. If in an
uncomplimentary spirit he might have been called Jermyn's 'man of
straw', it was a satisfaction to kn ow that the unreality of the man
John Johnson was confined to his a ppearance in annuity deeds, and
that elsewhere he was solid, loco motive, and capable of remembering
anything for his own pleasure and benefit. To act with doubleness
towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an
approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name
than diplomacy.
By such causes it came to pass that Christian held in his hands a bill
in which Jermyn was playfully alluded to as Mr
German Cozen, who won games by clever shuffling and odd tricks
without any honour, and backed Durfey's crib against Bycliffe, - in
which it was adroitly implied that the so-called head of the Transomes
was only the tail of the Durfeys, - and that some said the Durfeys
would have died out and left their nest empty if it had not been for
their German Cozen.
Johnson had not dared to use any recollections except such as might
credibly exist in other minds besides his own. In the truth of the case,
no one but himself had the prompting to recall these outworn
scandals; but it was likely enough that such foul-winged things
should be revived by election heats for Johnson to escape all
suspicion.
Christian could gather only dim and uncertain inferences from this
'dat irony and heavy joking; but one chief thing was clear to him. He
had been right in his conjecture that Jermyn's interest about Bycliffe
had its source in some claim of By cliffe's on the Transome property.
And then, there was that story of the old bill-sticker's, which, closely
considered, indicated that the right of the present Transomes
depended, or at least had depended, on the continuance of some other
lives. Christian in his time had gathered enough legal notions to be
aware that possession by one man sometimes depended on the life of
another; that a man might sell his own interest in property, and the
interest of his descendants, while a claim on that property would still
remain to some one else than the purchaser, supposing the
descendants became extinct, and the interest they had sold were at an
end. But under what conditions the claim might be valid or void in
any particular case, was all darkne ss to him. Suppose Bycliffe had
any such claim on the Transome estates: how was Christian to know
whether at the present moment it was worth anything more than a bit
of rotten parchment? Old Tommy Trounsem had said that Johnson
knew all about it. But even if Johnson were still above-ground - and
all Johnsons are mortal - he might still be an understrapper of
Jermyn's, in which case his knowledge would be on the wrong side of
the hedge for the purposes of Henry Scaddon. His immediate care
must be to find out all he could about Johnson. He blamed himself for
not having questioned Tommy further while he had him at command;
but on this head the bill-sticker could hardly know more than the less
dilapidated denizens of Treby.
Now it had happened that during the weeks in which Christian had
been at work in trying to solve the enigma of Jermyn's interest about
Bycliffe, Johnson's mind also ha d been somewhat occupied with
suspicion and conjecture as to new information on the subject of the
old Bycliffe claims which Jermyn intended to conceal from him. The
letter which, after his interview with Christian, Jermyn had written
with a sense of perfect safety to hi s faithful ally Johnson, was, as we
know, written to a Johnson who had found his self-love incompatible
with that faithfulness of which it was supposed to be the foundation.
Anything that the patron felt it inconvenient for his obliged friend and
servant to know, became by that ve ry fact an object of peculiar
curiosity. The obliged friend and servant secretly doted on his patron's
inconvenience, provided that he himself did not share it; and
conjecture naturally became active.
Johnson's legal imagination, being very differently furnished from
Christian's, was at no loss to conc eive conditions under which there
might arise a new claim on the Tran some estates. He had before him
the whole history of the settlement of those estates made a hundred
years ago by John Justus Transome, entailing them, whilst in his
possession, on his son Thomas and his heirs-male, with remainder to
the Bycliffes in fee. He knew that Thomas, son of John Justus,
proving a prodigal, had, without the knowledge of his father, the
tenant in possession, sold his own an d his descendants' rights to a
lawyer-cousin named Durfey; that, therefore, the title of the Durfey-
Transomes, in spite of that old Durf ey's tricks to show the contrary,
depended solely on the purchase of the 'base fee' thus created by
Thomas Transome; and that the By cliffes were the 'remainder-men'
who might fairly oust the Durfey-T ransomes if ever the issue of the
prodigal Thomas went clean out of existence, and ceased to represent
a right which he had bargained away from them.
Johnson, as Jermyn's subordinate, had been closely cognisant of the
details concerning the suit instituted by successive Bycliffes, of whom
Maurice Christian Bycliffe was the last, on the plea that the extinction
of Thomas Transome's line had actually come to pass - a weary suit,
which had eaten into the fortunes of two families, and had only made
the cankerworms fat. The suit had closed with the death of Maurice
Christian Bycliffe in prison; but be fore his death, Jermyn's exertions
to get evidence that there was still issue of Thomas Transome's line
surviving, as a security of the Durfey title, had issued in the discovery
of a Thomas Transome at Littleshaw, in Stonyshire, who was the
representative of a pawned inheritance. The death of Maurice had
made this discovery useless - had made it seem the wiser part to say
nothing about it; and the fact had remained a secret known only to
Jermyn and Johnson. No other Bycliffe was known or believed to
exist, and the Durfey-Transomes might be considered safe, unless -
yes, there was an 'unless' which Johnson could conceive: an heir or
heiress of the Bycliffes - if such a personage turned out to be in
existence - might some time raise a new and valid claim when once
informed that wretched old Tommy Trounsem the bill-sticker,
tottering drunkenly on the edge of the grave, was the last issue
remaining above ground from that dissolute Thomas who played his
Esau part a century before. While th e poor old bill-sticker breathed,
the Durfey-Transomes could legally keep their possession in spite of a
possible Bycliffe proved real; but not when the parish had buried the
bill-sticker.
Still, it is one thing to conceive conditions, and another to see any
chance of proving their existence. Johnson at present had no glimpse
of such a chance; and even if he ever gained the glimpse, he was not
sure that he should ever make any use of it. His inquiries of Medwin,
in obedience to Jermyn's letter, had extracted only a negative as to
any information possessed by the lawyers of Bycliffe concerning a
marriage, or expectation of offspring on his part. But Johnson felt not
the less stung by curiosity to know what Jermyn had found out that
he had found something in relation to a possible Bycliffe, Johnson felt
pretty sure. And he thought with satisfaction that Jermyn could not
hinder him from knowing what he already knew about Thomas
Transome's issue. Many things might occur to alter his policy and give
a new value to facts. Was it certain that Jermyn would always be
fortunate?
When greed and unscrupulousness exhibit themselves on a grand
historical scale, and there is question of peace or war or amicable
partition, it often occurs that gentlemen of high diplomatic talents
have their minds bent on the same object from different points of view.
Each, perhaps, is thinking of a certain duchy or province, with a view
to arranging the ownership in such a way as shall best serve the
purposes of the gentleman with high diplomatic talents in whom each
is more especially interested. But these select minds in high office can
never miss their aims from ignorance of each other's existence or
whereabouts. Their high titles may be learned even by common people
from every pocket almanac.
But with meaner diplomatists, who might be mutually useful, such
ignorance is often obstructive. Mr John Johnson and Mr Christian,
otherwise Henry Scaddon, might have had a concentration of purpose
and an ingenuity of device fitting them to make a figure in the
parcelling of Europe, and yet they might never have met, simply
because Johnson knew nothing of Christian, and because Christian
did not know where to find Johnson.
Chapter 30
'His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth:
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;
And, being angry, doth forget that ever
He heard the name of death.' - Coriolanus.
CHRISTIAN and Johnson did meet, however, by means that were quite
incalculable. The incident which brought them into communication
was due to Felix Holt, who of all men in the world had the least
affinity either for the indusuious or the idle parasite.
Mr Lyon had urged Felix to go to Duffield on the 15th of December, to
witness the nomination of the cand idates for North Loamshire. The
minister wished to hear what took place; and the pleasure of gratifying
him helped to outweigh some opposing reasons.
'I shall get into a rage at something or other,' Felix had said. 'I've told
you one of my weak points. Where I have any particular business, I
must incur the risks my nature brings. But I've no particular business
at Duffield. However, I'll make a holiday and go. By dint of seeing folly,
I shall get lessons in patience.'
The weak point to which Felix referr ed was his liability to be carried
completely out of his own mastery by indignant anger. His strong
health, his renunciation of selfish claims, his habitual preoccupation
with large thoughts and with purposes independent of everyday
casualties, secured him a fine and even temper, free from moodiness
or irritability. He was full of long-suffering towards his unwise mother,
who 'pressed him daily with her words and urged him, so that his soul
was vexed'; he had chosen to fill hi s days in a way that required the
utmost exertion of patience, that required those little rill-like out-
flowings of goodness which in minds of great energy must be fed from
deep sources of thought and passiona te devotedness. In this way his
energies served to make him gentle; and now, in this twenty-sixth year
of his life, they had ceased to make him angry, except in the presence
of something that roused his deep indignation. When once
exasperated, the passionateness of his nature threw off the yoke of a
long-trained consciousness in which thought and emotion had been
more and more completely mingled and concentrated itself in a rage
as ungovernable as that of boyhood. He was thoroughly aware of the
liability, and knew that in such circumstances he could not answer
for himself. Sensitive people with feeble frames have often the same
sort of fury within them; but they are themselves shattered, and
shatter nothing. Felix had a terrible arm: he knew that he was
dangerous; and he avoided the conditions that might cause him
exasperation, as he would have avoided intoxicating drinks if he had
been in danger of intemperance.
The nomination-day was a great epoch of successful trickery, or, to
speak in a more parliamentary manner, of war-stratagem, on the part
of skilful agents. And Mr Johnson had his share of inward chuckling
and self-approval, as one who might justly expect increasing renown,
and be some day in as general request as the great Putty himself. To
have the pleasure and the praise of electioneering ingenuity, and also
to get paid for it, without too much anxiety whether the ingenuity will
achieve its ultimate end, perhaps gives to some select persons a sort
of satisfaction in their superiority to their more agitated fellow-men
that is worthy to be classed with those generous enjoyments of having
the truth chiefly to yourself, and of seeing others in danger of
drowning while you are high and dry, which seem to have been
regarded as unmixed privileges by Lucretius and Lord Bacon.
One of Mr Johnson's great successes was this. Spratt, the hated
manager of the Sproxton Colliery, in careless confidence that the
colliers and other labourers under him would follow his orders, had
provided carts to carry some loads of voteless enthusiasm to Duffield
on behalf of Garstin; enthusiasm which, being already paid for by the
recognised benefit of Garstin's existence as a capitalist with a share in
the Sproxton mines, was not to cost much in the form of treating. A
capitalist was held worthy of pious honour as the cause why working
men existed. But Mr Spratt did not su fficiently consider that a cause
which has to be proved by argument or testimony is not an object of
passionate devotion to colliers: a visible cause of beer acts on them
much more strongly. And even if there had been any love of the far-off
Garstin, hatred of the too-immediate Spratt would have been the
stronger motive. Hence Johnson's ca lculations, made long ago with
Chubb, the remarkable publican, had been well founded, and there
had been diligent care to supply tr eating at Duffield in the name of
Transome. After the election was over, it was not improbable that
there would be much friendly joking between Putty and Johnson as to
the success of this trick against Putty's employer, and Johnson would
be conscious of rising in the opinion of his celebrated senior.
For the show of hands and the cheering, the hustling and the pelting,
the roaring and the hissing, the hard hits with small missiles, and the
soft hits with small jokes, were strong enough on the side of Transome
to balance the similar 'demonstrations' for Garstin, even with the
Debarry interest in his favour. And the inconvenient presence of
Spratt was early got rid of by a dexterously managed accident, which
sent him bruised and limping from the scene of action. Mr Chubb had
never before felt so thoroughly that the occasion was up to a level with
his talents, while the clear daylight in which his virtue would appear
when at the election he voted, as his duty to himself bound him, for
Garstin only, gave him thorough repose of conscience.
Felix Holt was the only person looking on at the senseless exhibitions
of this nomination-day, who knew from the beginning the history of
the trick with the Sproxton men. He had been aware all along that the
treating at Chubb's had been continued, and that so far Harold
Transome's promise had produced no good fruits; and what he was
observing to-day, as he watched the uproarious crowd, convinced him
that the whole scheme would be carried out just as if he had never
spoken about it. He could be fair enough to Transome to allow that he
might have wished, and yet have been unable, with his notions of
success, to keep his promise; and his bitterness towards the
candidate only took the form of co ntemptuous pity; for Felix was not
sparing in his contempt for men who put their inward honour in pawn
by seeking the prizes of the world. His scorn fell too readily on the
fortunate. But when he saw Johnson passing to and fro, and speaking
to Jermyn on the hustings, he felt himself getting angry, and jumped
off the wheel of the stationary cart on which he was mounted that he
might no longer be in sight of this man, whose vitiating cant had
made his blood hot and his fingers tingle on the first day of
encountering him at Sproxton. It was a little too exasperating to look
at this pink-faced rotund specimen of prosperity, to witness the power
for evil that lay in his vulgar ca nt, backed by another man's money,
and to know that such stupid iniqui ty flourished the flags of Reform,
and Liberalism, and justice to the needy. While the roaring and the
scuffling were still going on, Felix, with his thick stick in his hand,
made his way through the crowd, and walked on through the Duffield
streets till he came out on a grassy suburb, where the houses
surrounded a small common: Here he walked about in the breezy air,
and ate his bread and apples, telling himself that this angry haste of
his about evils that could only be remedied slowly, could be nothing
else than obstructive, and might some day - he saw it so clearly that
the thought seemed like a presentiment - be obstructive of his own
work.
'Not to waste energy, to apply force where it would tell, to do small
work close at hand, not waiting fo r speculative chances of heroism,
but preparing for them' - these were the rules he had been constantly
urging on himseIf. But what could be a greater waste than to beat a
scoundrel who had law and opodeldoc at command? After this
meditation, Felix felt cool and wise enough to return into the town,
not, however, intending to deny himself the satisfaction of a few
pungent words wherever there was place for them. Blows are
sarcasms turned stupid: wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at
rest.
Anything that could be called a crowd was no longer to be seen. The
show of hands having been pronounced to be in favour of Debarry and
Transome, and a poll having been demanded for Garstin, the business
of the day might be considered at an end. But in the street where the
hustings were erected, and where the great hotels stood, there were
many groups, as well as strollers and steady walkers to and fro. Men
in superior greatcoats and well-brushed hats were awaiting with more
or less impatience an important di nner, either at the Crown, which
was Debarry's house, or at the Thre e Cranes, which was Garstin's, or
at the Fox and Hounds, which was Transome's. Knots of sober
retailers, who had already dined, were to be seen at some shop-doors;
men in very shabby coats and miscellaneous head-coverings,
inhabitants of Duffield and not county voters, were lounging about in
dull silence, or listening, some to a grimy man in a flannel shirt,
hatless and with turbid red hair, who was insisting on political points
with much more ease than had seemed to belong to the gentlemen
speakers on the hustings, and others to a Scotch vendor of articles
useful to sell, whose unfamiliar accent seemed to have a guarantee of
truth in it wanting as an associat ion with everyday English. Some
rough-looking pipe-smokers, or distinguished cigar-smokers, chose to
walk up and down in isolation and silence. But the majority of those
who had shown a buming interest in the nomination had disappeared,
and cockades no longer studded a cl ose-pressed crowd, like, and also
very unlike, meadow flowers among the grass. The street pavement
was strangely painted with fragments of perishable missiles ground
flat under heavy feet: but the workers were resting from their toil, and
the buzz and tread and the fitfully discernible voices seemed like
stillness to Felix after the roar with whuch the wide space had been
filled when he left it.
The group round the speaker in the flannel shirt stood at the corner of
a side-street, and the speaker himself was elevated by the head and
shoulders above his hearers, not because he was tall, but because he
stood on a projecting stone. At the opposite corner of the turning was
the great inn of the Fox and Hounds, and this was the ultra-Liberal
quarter of the High Street. Felix was at once attracted by this group;
he liked the look of the speaker, whose bare arms were powerfully
muscular, though he had the pallid complexion of a man who lives
chiefly amidst the heat of furnaces. He was leaning against the dark
stone building behind him with folded arms, the grimy paleness of his
shirt and skin standing out in hi gh relief against the dark stone
building behind him. He lifted up one fore-finger, and marked his
emphasis with it as he spoke. His voice was high and not strong, but
Felix recognised the fluency and the method of a habitual preacher or
lecturer.
'It's the fallacy of all monopolist s,' he was saying. 'We know what
monopolists are: men who want to keep a trade all to themselves,
under the pretence that they'll furnish the public with a better article.
We know what that comes to: in some countries a poor man can't
afford to buy a spoonful of salt, and yet there's salt enough in the
world to pickle every living thing in it. That's the sort of benefit
monopolists do to mankind. And th ese are the men who tell us we're
to let politics alone; they'll govern us better without our knowing
anything about it. We must mind our business; we are ignorant; we've
no time to study great questions. But I tell them this: the greatest
question in the world is, how to give every man a man's share in what
goes on in life -'
'Hear, hear!' said Felix, in his so norous voice, which seemed to give a
new impressiveness to what the speaker had said. Every one looked at
him: the well-washed face and its educated expression, along with a
dress more careless than that of most well-to-do workmen on a
holiday, made his appearance strangely arresting.
'Not a pig's share,' the speaker went on, 'not a horse's share, not the
share of a machine fed with oil only to make it work and nothing else.
It isn't a man's share just to mind your pin-making, or your glass-
blowing, and higgle about your own wages, and bring up your family
to be ignorant sons of ignorant fa thers, and no better prospect; that's
a slave's share; we want a freeman' s share, and that is to think and
speak and act about what concerns us all, and see whether these fine
gentlemen who undertake to govern us are doing the best they can for
us. They've got the knowledge, say they. Very well, we've got the
wants. There's many a one who would be idle if hunger didn't pinch
him; but the stomach sets us to work. There's a fable told where the
nobles are the belly and the people the members. But I make another
sort of fable. I say, we are the belly that feels the pinches, and we'll set
these aristocrats, these great people who call themselves our brains,
to work at some way of satisfying us a bit better. The aristocrats are
pretty sure to try and govern for their own benefit; but how are we to
be sure they'll try and govern for ours? They must be looked after, I
think, like other workmen. We must have what we call inspectors, to
see whether the work's well done for us. We want to send our
inspectors to parliament. Well, they say - you've got the Reform Bill;
what more can you want? Send your inspectors. But I say, the Reform
Bill is a trick - it's nothing but swearing-in special constables to keep
the aristocrats safe in their monopoly ; it's bribing some of the people
with votes to make them hold their tongues about giving votes to the
rest. I say, if a man doesn't beg or steal, but works for his bread, the
poorer and the more miserable he is, the more he'd need have a vote
to send an inspector to parliament - else the man who is worst off is
likely to be forgotten; and I say, he's the man who ought to be first
remembered. Else what does their religion mean? Why do they build
churches and endow them that their sons may get well paid for
preaching a Saviour, and making themselves as little like Him as can
be? If I want to believe in Jesus Christ, I must shut my eyes for fear I
should see a parson. And what's a bishop? A bishop's a parson
dressed up, who sits in the House of Lords to help and throw out
Reform Bills. And because it's hard to get anything in the shape of a
man to dress himself up like that, and do such work, they gave him a
palace for it, and plenty of thousand s a-year. And then they cry out -
‘The church is in danger,’ - ‘the po or man's church’. And why is it the
poor man's church? Because he can have a seat for nothing. I think it
is for nothing; for it would be hard to tell what he gets by it. If the poor
man had a vote in the matter, I think he'd choose a different sort of a
church to what that is. But do you think the aristocrats will ever alter
it, if the belly doesn't pinch them? Not they. It's part of their
monopoly. They'll supply us with our religion like everything else, and
get a profit on it. They'll give us plenty of heaven. We may have land
there. That's the sort of religion they like - a religion that gives us
working men heaven, and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with
'em. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in
something for us and our children in this world. They don't seem to
care so much about heaven themselves till they feel the gout very bad
- but you won't get them to give up anything else, if you don't pinch
'em for it. And to pinch them enough, we must get the suffrage, we
must get votes, that we may send the men to parliament who will do
our work for us; and we must have parliament dissolved every year,
that we may change our man if he doesn't do what we want him to do;
and we must have the country divide d so that the little kings of the
counties can't do as they like, but must be shaken up in one bag with
us. I say, if we working men are ever to get a man's share, we must
have universal suffrage, and annual parliaments, and the vote by
ballot, and electoral districts.’
'No! - something else before all that,' said Felix, again startling the
audience into looking at him. But the speaker glanced coldly at him
and went on.
'That's what Sir Francis Burdett went in for fifteen years ago; and it's
the right thing for us, if it was To mfool who went in for it. You must
lay hold of such handles as you can. I don't believe much in Liberal
aristocrats; but if there's any fine carved gold-headed stick of an
aristocrat will make a broom-stick of himself, I'll lose no time but I'll
sweep with him. And that's what I think about Transome. And if any
of you have acquaintance among coun ty voters, give 'em a hint that
you wish 'em to vote for Transome.'
At the last word, the speaker stepped down from his slight eminence,
and walked away rapidly, like a man whose leisure was exhausted,
and who must go about his business. But he had left an appetite in
his audience for further oratory, and one of them seemed to express a
general sentiment as he turned immediately to Felix, and said, 'Come,
sir, what do you say?'
Felix did at once what he would very likely have done without being
asked - he stepped on to the stone, and took off his cap by an
instinctive prompting that always led him to speak uncovered. The
effect of his figure in relief agai nst the stone background was unlike
that of the previous speaker. He was considerably taller, his head and
neck were more massive, and the expression of his mouth and eyes
was something very different from the mere acuteness and rather
hard-lipped antagonism of the trades-union man. Felix Holt's face had
the look of the habitual meditative abstraction from objects of mere
personal vanity or desire, which is the peculiar stamp of culture, and
makes a very roughly-cut face worthy to be called 'the human face
divine'. Even lions and dogs kn ow a distinction between men's
glances; and doubtless those Duffiel d men, in the expectation with
which they looked up at Felix, we re unconsciously influenced by the
grandeur of his full yet firm mouth, and the calm clearness of his grey
eyes, which were somehow unlike what they were accustomed to see
along with an old brown velveteen coat, and an absence of chin-
propping. When he began to speak, the contrast of voice was still
stronger than that of appearance. The man in the flannel shirt had
not been heard - had probably not cared to be heard - beyond the
immediate group of listeners. But Felix at once drew the attention of
persons comparatively at a distance.
'In my opinion,' he said, almost the moment after he was addressed,
'that was a true word spoken by our friend when he said the great
question was how to give every man a man's share in life. But I think
he expects voting to do more toward s it than I do. I want the working
men to have power. I'm a working man myself, and I don't want to be
anything else. But there are two sorts of power. There's a power to do
mischief - to undo what has been done with great expense and labour,
to waste and destroy, to be cruel to the weak, to lie and quarrel, and
to talk poisonous nonsense. That's the sort of power that ignorant
numbers have. It never made a joint stool or planted a potato. Do you
think it's likely to do much towa rds governing a great country, and
making wise laws, and gi ving shelter, food, and clothes to millions of
men? Ignorant power comes in the end to the same thing as wicked
power; it makes misery. It's anothe r sort of power that I want us
working men to have, and I can see plainly enough that our all having
votes will do little towards it at present. I hope we, or the children that
come after us, will get plenty of political power some time. I tell
everybody plainly, I hope there will be great changes, and that some
time, whether we live to see it or not, men will have come to be
ashamed of things they're proud of now. But I should like to convince
you that votes would never give you political power worth having while
things are as they are now, and that if you go the right way to work
you may get power sooner without votes. Perhaps all you who hear me
are sober men, who try to learn as much of the nature of things as
you can, and to be as little like fool s as possible. A fool or idiot is one
who expects things to happen that never can happen; he pours milk
into a can without a bottom, and expects the milk to stay there. The
more of such vain expectations a man has, the more he is of a fool or
idiot. And if any working man expects a vote to do for him what it
never can do, he's foolish to that amount, if no more. I think that's
clear enough, eh?'
'Hear, hear,' said several voices, but they were not those of the original
group; they belonged to some strollers who had been attracted by
Felix Holt's vibrating voice, and were Tories from the Crown. Among
them was Christian, who was smoking a cigar with a pleasure he
always felt in being among peop le who did not know him, and
doubtless took him to be something higher than he really was.
Hearers from the Fox and Hounds also were slowly adding themselves
to the nucleus. Felix, accessible to the pleasure of being listened to,
went on with more and more animation -
'The way to get rid of folly is to get rid of vain expectations, and of
thoughts that don't agree with the nature of things. The men who
have had true thoughts about water, and what it will do when it is
turned into steam and under all sorts of circumstances, have made
themselves a great power in the worl d: they are turning the wheels of
engines that will help to change most things. But no engines would
have done, if there had been false notions about the way water would
act. Now, all the schemes about vo ting, and districts, and annual
parliaments, and the rest, are engines, and the water or steam - the
force that is to work them - must come out of human nature - out of
men's passions, feelings, desires. Whether the engines will do good
work or bad depends on these feelings; and if we have false
expectations about men's characters, we are very much like the idiot
who thinks he'll carry milk in a can without a bottom. In my opinion,
the notions about what mere voting will do are very much of that sort.'
'That's very fine,' said a man in di rty fustian, with a scornful laugh.
'But how are we to get the power without votes?'
'I'll tell you what's the greatest power under heaven,' said Felix, 'and
that is public opinion - the ruling belief in society about what is right
and what is wrong, what is honour able and what is shameful. That's
the steam that is to work the engines. How can political freedom make
us better any more than a religion we don't believe in, if people laugh
and wink when they see men abuse and defile it? And while public
opinion is what it is - while men have no better beliefs about public
duty - while corruption is not felt to be a damning disgrace - while
men are not ashamed in parliament and out of it to make public
questions which concern the welfare of millions a mere screen for
their own petty private ends, - I say, no fresh scheme of voting will
much mend our condition. For, take us working men of all sorts.
Suppose out of every hundred who had a vote there were thirty who
had some soberness, some sense to choose with, some good feeling to
make them wish the right thing for all. And suppose there were
seventy out of the hundred who were, half of them, not sober, who
had no sense to choose one thing in politics more than another, and
who had so little good feeling in them that they wasted on their own
drinking the money that should have helped to feed and clothe their
wives and children; and another half of them who, if they didn't drink,
were too ignorant or mean or stupid to see any good for themselves
better than pocketing a five-shilling piece when it was offered them.
Where would be the political power of the thirty sober men? The power
would lie with the seventy drunken an d stupid votes; and I'll tell you
what sort of men would get the power - what sort of men would end by
returning whom they pleased to parliament.'
Felix had seen every face around him, and had particularly noticed a
recent addition to his audience; but now he looked before him without
appearing to fix his glance on any one. In spite of his cooling
meditations an hour ago, his pulse was getting quickened by
indignation, and the desire to crus h what he hated was likely to vent
itself in articulation. His tone became more biting.
'They would be men who would unde rtake to do the business for a
candidate, and return him: men who have no real opinions, but who
pilfer the words of every opinion, and turn them into a cant which will
serve their purpose at the moment; men who look out for dirty work to
make their fortunes by, because dirt y work wants little talent and no
conscience; men who know aU the ins and outs of bribery, because
there is not a cranny in their ow n souls where a bribe can't enter.
Such men as these will be the masters wherever there's a majority of
voters who care more for money, mo re for drink, more for some mean
little end which is their own and nobody else's, than for anything that
has ever been called Right in the world. For suppose there's a poor
voter named Jack, who has seven children, and twelve or fifteen
shillings a-week wages, perhaps less. Jack can't read - I don't say
whose fault that is - he never had the chance to learn; he knows so
little that he perhaps thinks God made the poor-laws, and if anybody
said the pattem of the workhouse was laid down in the Testament, he
wouldn't be able to contradict them. What is poor Jack likely to do
when he sees a smart stranger coming to him, who happens to be just
one of those men that I say will be the masters till public opinion gets
too hot for them? He's a middle-sized man, we'll say; stout, with coat
upon coat of fine broadcloth, open enough to show a fine gold chain:
none of your dark, scowling men, but one with an innocent pink-and-
white skin and very smooth light hair - a most respectable man, who
calls himself by a good, sound, well-known English name - as Green,
or Baker, or Wilson, or, let us say, Johnson -'
Felix was interrupted by an explosion of laughter from a majority of
the bystanders. Some eyes had been turned on Johnson, who stood
on the right hand of Felix, at the very beginning of the description,
and these were gradually followed by others, till at last every hearer's
attention was fixed on him, and the first burst of laughter from the
two or three who knew the attorney's name, let every one sufficiently
into the secret to make the amusement common. Johnson, who had
kept his ground till his name was mentioned, now turned away,
looking unusually white after being unusually red, and feeling by an
attorney's instinct for his pocket-book, as if he felt it was a case for
taking down the names of witnesses.
All the well-dressed hearers turned away too, thinking they had had
the cream of the speech in the joke against Johnson, which, as a thing
worth telling, helped to recall them to the scene of dinner.
'Who is this Johnson?' said Christian to a young man who had been
standing near him, and had been one of the first to laugh. Christian's
curiosity had naturally been awaken ed by what might prove a golden
opportunity.
'O - a London attorney. He acts for Transome. That tremendous fellow
at the comer there is some red-hot Radical demagogue, and Johnson
has offended him, I suppose; else he wouldn't have turned in that way
on a man of their own party.'
'I had heard there was a Johnson who was an understrapper of
Jermyn's,' said Christian.
'Well, so this man may have been for what I know. But he's a London
man now - a very busy fellow - on his own legs in Bedford Row. Ha ha!
It's capital, though, when these Liberals get a slap in the face from the
working men they're so very fond of.'
Another turn along the street en abled Christian to come to a
resolution. Having seen Jermyn drive away an hour before, he was in
no fear: he walked at once to the Fox and Hounds and asked to speak
to Mr Johnson. A brief interview, in which Christian ascertained that
he had before him the Johnson ment ioned by the bill-sticker, issued
in the appointment of a longer one at a later hour; and before they left
Duffield they had come not exactly to a mutual understanding, but to
an exchange of information mutually welcome.
Christian had been very cautious in the commencement, only
intimating that he knew something important which some chance
hints had induced him to think might be interesting to Mr Johnson,
but that this entirely depended on how far he had a common interest
with Mr Jermyn. Johnson replied that he had much business in
which that gentleman was not concerned, but that to a certain extent
they had a common interest. Probably then, Christian observed, the
affairs of the Transome estate were part of the business in which Mr
Jermyn and Mr Johnson might be understood to represent each other
- in which case he need not detain Mr Johnson? At this hint Johnson
could not conceal that he was becoming eager. He had no idea what
Christian's information was, but there were many grounds on which
Johnson desired to know as much as he could about the Transome
affairs independently of Jermyn. By little and little an understanding
was arrived at. Christian told of his interview with Tommy Trounsem,
and stated that if Johnson could show him whether the knowledge
could have any legal value, he could bring evidence that a legitimate
child of Bycliffe's existed: he felt certain of this fact, and of his proof.
Johnson explained, that in this case the death of the old bill-sticker
would give the child the first valid cl aim to the Bycliffe heirship; that
for his own part he should be glad to further a true claim, but that
caution must be observed. How did Christian know that Jermyn was
informed on this subject? Christian, more and more convinced that
Johnson would be glad to counteract Jermyn, at length became
explicit about Esther, but still withheld his own real name, and the
nature of his relations with Bycliffe. He said he would bring the rest of
his information when Mr Johnson took the case up seriously, and
placed it in the hands of Bycliffe's old lawyers - of course he would do
that? Johnson replied that he would certainly do that; but that there
were legal niceties which Mr Christian was probably not acquainted
with; that Esther's claim had not yet accrued; and that hurry was
useless.
The two men parted, each in distrust of the other, but each well
pleased to have learned something. Johnson was not at all sure how
he should act, but thought it likely that events would soon guide him.
Christian was beginning to meditate a way of securing his own ends
without depending in the least on Johnson's procedure. It was enough
for him that he was now assured of Esther's legal claim on the
Transome estates.
Chapter 31
'In the copia of the factious langua ge the word Tory was entertained,
... and being a vocal clever-sounding word, readily pronounced, it kept
its hold, and took possession of the foul mouths of the faction.... The
Loyalists began to cheer up and to take heart of grace, and in the
working of this crisis, according to the common laws of scolding, they
considered which way to make paymen t for so much of Tory as they
had been treated with, to clear scores.... Immediately the train took,
and ran like wildfire and became ge neral. And so the account of Tory
was balanced, and soon began to run up a sharp score on the other
side.' - NORTH'S Examen, p. 321.
AT last the great epoch of the election for North Loamshire had
arrived. The roads approaching Treby were early traversed by a large
number of vehicles, horsemen, and also foot-passengers, than were
ever seen there at the annual fair. Treby was the polling-place for
many voters whose faces were quite strange in the town; and if there
were some strangers who did not come to poll, though they had
business not unconnected with the election, they were not liable to be
regarded with suspicion or especial curiosity. It was understood that
no division of a county had ever been more thoroughly canvassed, and
that there would be a hard run between Garstin and Transome. Mr
Johnson's head-quarters were at Duffield; but it was a maxim which
he repeated after the great Putty, that a capable agent makes himself
omnipresent; and quite apart from the express between him and
Jermyn, Mr John Johnson's presence in the universe had potent
effects on this December day at Treby Magna.
A slight drizzling rain which was ob served by some Tories who looked
out of their bedroom windows before six o'clock, made them hope
that, after all, the day might pass off better than alarmists had
expected. The rain was felt to be somehow on the side of quiet and
Conservatism; but soon the breaking of the clouds and the mild
gleams of a December sun brought back previous apprehensions. As
there were already precedents for riot at a Reformed election, and as
the Trebian district had had its confidence in the natural course of
things somewhat shaken by a landed proprietor with an old name
offering himself as a Radical candidate, the election had been looked
forward to by many with a vague se nse that it would be an occasion
something like a fighting match, when bad characters would probably
assemble, and there might be stru ggles and alarms for respectable
men, which would make it expedient for them to take a little neat
brandy as a precaution beforehand and a restorative afterwards. The
tenants on the Transome estate were comparatively fearless: poor Mr
Goffe, of Rabbit's End, considered that 'one thing was as mauling as
another', and that an election was no worse than the sheep-rot, while
Mr Dibbs, taking the more cheerful view of a prosperous man,
reflected that if the Radicals were dangerous, it was safer to be on
their side. It was the voters for Debarry and Garstin who considered
that they alone had the right to regard themselves as targets for evil-
minded men; and Mr Crowder, if he could have got his ideas
countenanced, would have recommended a muster of farm-servants
with defensive pitchforks on the side of church and king. But the
bolder men were rather gratified by the prospect of being groaned at,
so that they might face about and groan in return.
Mr Crow, the high constable of Tr eby, inwardly rehearsed a brief
address to a riotous crowd in case it should be wanted, having been
warned by the rector that it was a primary duty on these occasions to
keep a watch against provocation as well as violence. The rector, with
a brother magistrate who was on the spot, had thought it desirable to
swear in some special constables, but the presence of loyal men not
absolutely required for the polling was not looked at in the light of a
provocation. The benefit clubs from various quarters made a show,
some with the orange-coloured ribbons and streamers of the true Tory
candidate, some with the mazarine of the Whig. The orange-coloured
bands played 'Auld Langsyne', an d a louder mazarine band came
across them with 'O whistle and I will come to thee, my lad' - probably
as the tune the most symbolical of Liberalism which their repertory
would furnish. There was not a single club bearing the Radical blue:
the Sproxton Club members wore the mazarine, and Mr Chubb wore
so much of it that he looked (at a sufficient distance) like a very large
gentianella. It was generally understood that 'these brave fellows',
representing the fine institution of benefit clubs, and holding aloft the
motto, 'Let brotherly love continue', were a civil force calculated to
encourage voters of sound opinions and keep up their spirits. But a
considerable number of unadorned heavy navvies, colliers, and stone-
pit men, who used their freedom as British subjects to be present in
Treby on this great occasion, looked like a possibly uncivil force whose
politics were dubious until it was clearly seen for whom they cheered
and for whom they groaned.
Thus the way up to the polling-booths was variously lined, and those
who walked it, to whatever side they belonged, had the advantage of
hearing from the opposite side what were the most marked defects or
excesses in their personal appearance; for the Trebians of that day
held, without being aware that they had Cicero's authority for it, that
the bodily blemishes of an opponent were a legitimate ground for
ridicule; but if the voter frustrat ed wit by being handsome, he was
groaned at and satirised according to a formula, in which the adjective
was Tory, Whig, or Radical, as the case might be, and the substantive
blank to be filled up after the taste of the speaker.
Some of the more timid had chosen to go through this ordeal as early
as possible in the morning. One of the earliest was Mr Timothy Rose,
the gentleman-farmer from Leek Malt on. He had left home with some
foreboding, having swathed his more vital parts in layers of flannel,
and put on two greatcoats as a soft kind of armour. But reflecting with
some trepidation that there were no resources for protecting his head,
he once more wavered in his intention to vote; he once more observed
to Mrs Rose that these were hard times when a man of independent
property was expected to vote 'willy-nilly;' but finally, coerced by the
sense that he should be looked il l on 'in these times' if he did not
stand by the gentlemen round about, he set out in his gig, taking with
him a powerful waggoner, whom he ordered to keep him in sight as he
went to the polling-booth. It was ha rdly more than nine o'clock when
Mr Rose, having thus come up to the level of his times, cheered
himself with a little cherry-brandy at the Marquis, drove away in a
much more courageous spirit, and got down at Mr Nolan's, just
outside the town. The retired Londoner, he considered, was a man of
experience, who would estimate properly the judicious course he had
taken, and could make it known to others. Mr Nolan was
superintending the removal of some shrubs in his garden.
'Well, Mr Nolan,' said Rose, twinkl ing a self-complacent look over the
red prominence of his cheeks, 'have you been to give your vote yet?'
'No; all in good time. I shall go presently.'
'Well, I wouldn't lose an hour, I wouldn't. I said to myself, if I've got to
do gentlemen a favour, I'll do it at once. You see, I've got no landlord,
Nolan - I'm in that position o' life that I can be independent.'
'Just so, my dear sir,' said the wi ry-faced Nolan, pinching his under-
lip between his thumb and finger, an d giving one of those wonderful
universal shrugs, by which he seemed to be recalling all his garments
from a tendency to disperse themselves. 'Come in and see Mrs Nolan?'
'No, no, thankye. Mrs Rose expects me back. But, as I was saying, I'm
an independent man, and I consider it's not my part to show favour to
one more than another, but to make things as even as I can. If I'd
been a tenant to anybody, well, in course I must have voted for my
landlord - that stands to sense. But I wish everybody well; and if one's
returned to parliament more than another, nobody can say
it's my doing; for when you can vo te for two, you can make things
even. So I gave one to Debarry and one to Transome; and I wish
Garstin no ill, but I can't help the odd number, and he hangs on to
Debarry, they say.'
'God bless me, sir,' said Mr Nolan, coughing down a laugh, 'don't you
perceive that you might as well have stayed at home, and not voted at
all, unless you would rather send a Radical to parliament than a sober
Whig?'
'Well, I'm sorry you should have an ything to say against what I've
done, Nolan,' said Mr Rose, rather crestfallen, though sustained by
inward warmth. 'I thought you'd agre e with me, as you're a sensible
man. But the most an independent man can do is to try and please
all; and if he hasn't the luck - here's wishing I may do it another time,'
added Mr Rose, apparently confounding a toast with a salutation, for
he put out his hand for a passing shake, and then stepped into his gig
again.
At the time that Mr Timothy Rose left the town, the crowd in King
Street and in the market-place, where the polling-booths stood, was
fluctuating. Voters as yet were scanty, and brave fellows who had
come from any distance this morning, or who had sat up late drinking
the night before, required some reinforcement of their strength and
spirits. Every public-house in Treby, not excepting the venerable and
sombre Cross-Keys, was lively with changing and numerous company.
Not, of course, that there was any treating: treating necessarily had
stopped, from moral scruples, when once 'the writs were out'; but
there was drinking, which did equally well under any name.
Poor Tommy Trounsem, breakfasting here on Falstaff's proportion of
bread, and something which, for gentility's sake, I will call sack, was
more than usually victorious over the ills of life, and felt himself one of
the heroes of the day. He had an immense light-blue cockade in his
hat, and an amount of silver in a dirty little canvas bag which
astonished himself. For some reason, at first inscrutable to him, he
had been paid for his bill-sticking with great liberality at Mr Jermyn's
office, in spite of his having been the victim of a trick by which he had
once lost his own bills and pasted up Debarry's; but he soon saw that
this was simply a recognition of his merit as 'an old family kept out of
its rights', and also of his peculi ar share in an occasion when the
family was to get into parliament. Under these circumstances, it was
due from him that he should show himself prominently where
business was going forward, and give additional value by his presence
to every vote for Transome. With this view he got a half-pint bottle
filled with his peculiar kind of 'sack', and hastened back to the
market-place, feeling good-natur ed and patronising towards all
political parties, and only so far partial as his family bound him to be.
But a disposition to concentrate at that extremity of Ring Street which
issued in the market-place was no t universal among the increasing
crowd. Some of them seemed attracted towards another nucleus at
the other extremity of King Street, near the Seven Stars. This was
Garsdn's chief house, where his committee sat, and it was also a point
which must necessarily be passed by many voters entering the town
on the eastern side. It seemed natural that the mazarine colours
should be visible here, and that Pack, the tall 'shepherd' of the
Sproxton men, should be seen moving to and fro where there would be
a frequent opportunity of cheering the voters for a gentleman who had
the chief share in the Sproxton mines. But the side lanes and entries
out of Ring Street were numerous enough to relieve any pressure if
there was need to make way. The lanes had a distinguished
reputation. Two of them had odours of brewing; one had a side
entrance to Mr Tiliot's wine and spirit vaults; up another Mr Muscat's
cheeses were frequently being unloaded; and even some of the entries
had those cheerful suggestions of plentiful provision which were
among the characteristics of Treby.
Between ten and eleven the voters came in more rapid succession,
and the whole scene became spirit ed. Cheers, sarcasms, and oaths,
which seemed to have a flavour of wit for many hearers, were
beginning to be reinforced by more practical demonstrations,
dubiously jocose. There was a dispos ition in the crowd to close and
hem in the way for voters, either going or coming, until they had paid
some kind of toll. It was difficult to see who set the example in the
transition from words to deeds. Some thought it was due to Jacob
Cuff, a Tory charity-man, who wa s a well-known ornament of the
pothouse, and gave his mind much leisure for amusing devices; but
questions of origination in stirring periods are notoriously hard to
settle. It is by no means necessary in human things that there should
be only one beginner. This, however, is certain - that Mr Chubb, who
wished it to be noticed that he voted for Garstin solely, was one of the
first to get rather more notice than he wished, and that he had his hat
knocked off and crushed in the inte rest of Debarry by Tories opposed
to coalition. On the other hand, some said it was at the same time
that Mr Pink, the saddler, being stopped on his way and made to
declare that he was going to vote for Debarry, got himself well chalked
as to his coat, and pushed up an entry, where he remained the
prisoner of terror combined with the want of any back outlet, and
never gave his vote that day.
The second Tory joke was performed with much gusto. The majority of
the Transome tenants came in a body from the Ram Inn, with Mr
Banks the bailiff leading them. Poor Goffe was the last of them, and
his worn melancholy look and forw ard-leaning gait gave the jocose
Cuff the notion that the farmer was not what he called 'compus'. Mr
Goffe was cut off from his companions and hemmed in; asked, by
voices with hot breath close to his ear, how many horses he had, how
many cows, how many fat pigs; then jostled from one to another, who
made trumpets with their hands an d deafened him by telling him to
vote for Debarry. In this way the melancholy Goffe was hustled on till
he was at the polling-booth - fi lled with confused alarms, the
immediate alarm being that of having to go back in still worse fashion
than he had come. Arriving in this way after the other tenants had
left, he astonished all hearers who knew him for a tenant of the
Transomes by saying 'Debarry', and was jostled back trembling amid
shouts of laughter.
By stages of this kind the fun grew faster, and was in danger of getting
rather serious. The Tories began to feel that their jokes were returned
by others of a heavier sort, and th at the main strength of the crowd
was not on the side of sound opinio n, but might come to be on the
side of sound cudgelling and kick ing. The navvies and pitmen in
dishabille seemed to be multiplying, and to be clearly not belonging to
the party of Order. The shops were freely resorted to for various forms
of playful missiles and weapons; an d news came to the magistrates,
watching from the large window of the Marquis, that a gentleman
coming in on horseback at the other end of the street to vote for
Garstin had had his horse turned round and frightened into a head-
long gallop out of it again.
Mr Crow and his subordinates, and all the special constables, felt that
it was necessary to make some energetic effort, or else every voter
would be intimidated an d the poll must be adjoumed. The rector
determined to get on horseback and go amidst the crowd with the
constables; and he sent a message to Mr Lingon, who was at the Ram,
calling on him to do the same. 'Sporting Jack' was sure the good
fellows meant no harm, but he was courageous enough to face any
bodily dangers, and rode out in his brown leggings and coloured
bandanna, speaking persuasively.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when this sally was made: the constables
and magistrates tried the most pacific measures, and they seemed to
succeed. There was a rapid thinning of the crowd: the most boisterous
disappeared, or seemed to do so by becoming quiet; missiles ceased to
fly, and a sufficient way was cleared for voters along King Street. The
magistrates returned to their qu arters, and the constables took
convenient posts of observation. Mr Wace, who was one of Debarry's
committee, had suggested to the rector that it might be wise to send
for the military from Duffield, with orders that they should station
themselves at Hathercote, three miles off: there was so much property
in the town that it would be better to make it secure against risks. But
the rector felt that this was not the part of a moderate and wise
magistrate, unless the signs of riot recurred. He was a brave man, and
fond of thinking that his own authority sufficed for the maintenance of
the general good in Treby.
Chapter 32
'Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before
Without the sense of that which I forbore -
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.'
MRS BROWNING.
FELIX HOLT, seated at his work without his pupils, who had asked for
a holiday with a notion that the wooden booths promised some sort of
show, noticed about eleven o'clock that the noises which reached him
from the main street were getting more and more tumultuous. He had
long seen bad auguries for this election, but, like all people who dread
the prophetic wisdom that ends in desiring the fulfilment of its own
evil forebodings, he had checked himself with remembering that,
though many conditions were possible which might bring on violence,
there were just as many which migh t avert it. There would, perhaps,
be no other mischief than what he was already certain of. With these
thoughts he had sat down quietly to his work, meaning not to vex his
soul by going to look on at things he would fain have made different if
he could. But he was of a fibre that vibrated too strongly to the life
around him to shut himself away in quiet, even from suffering and
irremediable wrong. As the noises grew louder, and wrought more and
more strongly on his imagination, he was obliged to lay down his
delicate wheel-work. His mother came from her turnip-paring in the
kitchen, where little Job was her companion, to observe that they
must be killing everybody in the High Street, and that the election,
which had never been before at Treby, must have come for a
judgment; that there were mercies where you didn't look for them, and
that she thanked God in His wisdom for making her live up a back
street.
Felix snatched his cap and rushed out. But when he got to the
turning into the market-place th e magistrates were already on
horseback there, the constables were moving about, and Felix
observed that there was no strong spirit of resistance to them. He
stayed long enough to see the partial dispersion of the crowd and the
restoration of tolerable quiet, and then went back to Mrs Holt to tell
her that there was nothing to fear now: he was going out again, and
she must not be in any anxiety at his absence. She might set by his
dinner for him.
Felix had been thinking of Esther and her probable alarm at the
noises that must have reached her more distinctly than they had
reached him, for Malthouse Yard was removed but a little way from
the main street. Mr Lyon was away from home, having been called to
preach charity sermons and attend meetings in a distant town; and
Esther, with the plaintive Lyddy for her sole companion, was not
cheerfully circumstanced. Felix had not been to see her yet since her
father's departure, but to-day he gave way to new reasons.
'Miss Esther was in the garret,' Ly ddy said, trying to see what was
going on. But before she was fetc hed she came running down the
stairs, drawn by the knock at the door, which had shaken the small
dwelling.
'I am so thankful to see you,' she said eagerly. 'Pray come in.'
When she had shut the parlour door behind him, Felix said, 'I
suspected that you might have been made anxious by the noises. I
came to tell you that things are quiet now. Though, indeed, you can
hear that they are.'
'I was frightened,' said Esther. 'The shouting and roaring of rude men
is so hideous. It is a relief to me that my father is not at home - that
he is out of the reach of any danger he might have fallen into if he had
been here. But I gave you credit for being in the midst of the danger,'
she added, smiling, with a determination not to show much feeling.
'Sit down and tell me what has happened.'
They sat down at the extremities of the old black sofa, and Felix said -
'To tell you the truth, I had shut myself up, and tried to be as
indifferent to the election as if I'd been one of the fishes in the Lapp,
till the noises got too strong for me. But I only saw the tail end of the
disturbance. The poor noisy simpletons seemed to give way before the
magistrates and the constables. I ho pe nobody has been much hurt.
The fear is that they may turn out again by-and-by; their giving way
so soon may not be altogether a go od sign. There's a great number of
heavy fellows in the town. If they go and drink more, the last end may
be worse than the first. However -'
Felix broke off, as if this talk were futile, clasped his hands behind his
head, and, leaning backward, looked at Esther, who was looking at
him.
'May I stay here a little while?' he said, after a moment, which seemed
long.
'Pray do,' said Esther, colouring. To relieve herself she took some work
and bowed her head over her stitching. It was in reality a little heaven
to her that Felix was there, but she saw beyond it - saw that by-and-
by he would be gone, and that they should be farther on their way,
not towards meeting, but parting. His will was impregnable. He was a
rock, and she was no more to him than the white clinging mist-cloud.
'I wish I could be sure that you see things just as I do,' he said,
abruptly, after a minute's silence.
'I am sure you see them much more wisely than I do,' said Esther,
almost bitterly, without looking up.
'There are some people one must wish to judge one truly. Not to wish
it would be mere hardness. I know you think I am a man without
feeling - at least, without strong affections. You think I love nothing
but my own resolutions.'
'Suppose I reply in the same sort of strain?' said Esther, with a little
toss of the head.
'How?'
'Why, that you think me a shallow woman, incapable of believing what
is best in you, setting down everyt hing that is too high for me as a
deficiency.'
'Don't parry what I say. Answer me.' There was an expression of
painful beseeching in the tone with which Felix said this. Esther let
her work fall on her la p and looked at him, but she was unable to
speak.
'I want you to tell me - once - that you know it would be easier to me
to give myself up to loving and being loved, as other men do, when
they can, than to -'
This breaking-off in speech was something quite new in Felix. For the
first time he had lost his self-p ossession, and turned his eyes away.
He was at variance with himself. He had begun what he felt that he
ought not to finish
Esther, like a woman as she was - a woman waiting for love, never
able to ask for it - had her joy in these signs of her power; but they
made her generous, not chary, as they might have done if she had had
a pettier disposition. She said, with deep yet timid earnestness -
'What you have chosen to do has on ly convinced me that your love
would be the better worth having.'
All the finest part of Esther's nature trembled in those words. To be
right in great memorable moments, is perhaps the thing we need most
desire for ourselves.
Felix as quick as lightning turned his look upon her again, and,
leaning forward, took her sweet hand and held it to his lips some
moments before he let it fall again and raised his head.
'We shall always be the better for thinking of each other,' he said,
leaning his elbow on the back of th e sofa, and supporting his head as
he looked at her with calm sadness. 'This thing can never come to me
twice over. It is my knight-hood. That was always a business of great
cost.'
He smiled at her, but she sat biti ng her inner lip, and pressing her
hands together. She desired to be worthy of what she reverenced in
Felix, but the inevitable renunciation was too difficult. She saw herself
wandering through the future we ak and forsaken. The charming
sauciness was all gone from her face, but the memory of it made this
child-like dependent sorrow all the more touching.
'Tell me what you would -' Felix burst out, leaning nearer to her; but
the next instant he started up, went to the table, took his cap in his
hand, and came in front of her.
'Good-bye,' he said, very gently, not daring to put out his hand. But
Esther put up hers instead of speaking. He just pressed it and then
went away.
She heard the doors close behind him, and felt free to be miserable.
She cried bitterly. If she might have married Felix Holt, she could have
been a good woman. She felt no tr ust that she could ever be good
without him.
Felix reproached himself. He would have done better not to speak in
that way. But the prompting to which he had chiefly listened had been
the desire to prove to Esther that he set a high value on her feelings.
He could not help seeing that he was very important to her; and he
was too simple and sincere a man to ape a sort of humility which
would not have made him any the better if he had possessed it. Such
pretences turn our lives into sorry dramas. And Felix wished Esther to
know that her love was dear to him as the beloved dead are dear. He
felt that they must not marry - that they would ruin each other's lives.
But he had longed for her to know fully that his will to be always
apart from her was renunciation, not an easy preference. In this he
was thoroughly generous; and yet, now some subtle, mysterious
conjuncture of impressions and ci rcumstances had made him speak,
he questioned the wisdom of what he had done. Express confessions
give definiteness to memories that might more easily melt away
without them; and Felix felt for Esther's pain as the strong soldier,
who can march on hungering without fear that he shall faint, feels for
the young brother - the maiden-cheeked conscript whose load is too
heavy for him.
Chapter 33
'Mischief, thou art afoot.' - Julius Caesar.
FELIX could not go home again immediately after quitting Esther. He
got out of the town, skirted it a little while, looking across the
December stillness of the fields, and then re-entered it by the main
road into the market-place, thinking that, after all, it would be better
for him to look at the busy doings of men than to listen in solitude to
the voices within him; and he wish ed to know how things were going
on.
It was now nearly half-past one, and Felix perceived that the street
was filling with more than the previous crowd. By the time he got in
front of the booths, he was himself so surrounded by men who were
being thrust hither and thither that retreat would have been
impossible; and he went where he was obliged to go, although his
height and strength were above the average even in a crowd where
there were so many heavy-armed workmen used to the pick-axe.
Almost all shabby-coated Trebians must have been there, but the
entries and back-streets of the town did not supply the mass of the
crowd; and besides the rural income rs, both of the more decent and
the rougher sort, Felix, as he was pushed along, thought he discerned
here and there men of that keener aspect which is only common in
manufacturing towns.
But at present there was no evidence of any distinctly mischievous
design. There was only evidence that the majority of the crowd were
excited with drink, and that their action could hardly be calculated on
more than those of oxen and pigs congregated amidst hootings and
pushings. The confused deafening shouts, the incidental fighting, the
knocking over, pulling and scuffling, seemed to increase every
moment. Such of the constables as were mixed with the crowd were
quite helpless; and if an official staff was seen above the heads, it
moved about fitfully, showing as little sign of a guiding hand as the
summit of a buoy on the waves. Doubtless many hurts and bruises
had been received but no one could know the amount of injuries that
were wildly scattered.
It was clear that no more voting could be done, and the poll had been
adjourned. The probabilities of se rious mischief had grown strong
enough to prevail over the rector's objection to getting military aid
within reach; and when Felix re -entered the town, a galloping
messenger had already been despatched to Duffield. The rector wished
to ride out again, and read the Riot Act from a point where he could
be better heard than from the window of the Marquis; but Mr Crow,
the high constable, who had returned from closer observation,
insisted that the risk would be t oo great. New special constables had
been sworn in, but Mr Crow said prophetically that if once mischief
began, the mob was past caring for constables.
But the rector's voice was ringing and penetrating, and when he
appeared on the narrow balcony and read the formula, commanding
all men to go to their homes or about their lawful business, there was
a strong transient effect. Every one within hearing listened, and for a
few moments after the final words, 'God save the King!' the
comparative silence continued. Then the people began to move, the
buzz rose again, and grew, and grew, till it turned to shouts and
roaring as before. The movement was that of a flood hemmed in; it
carried nobody away. Whether the crowd would obey the order to
disperse themselves within an hour, was a doubt that approached
nearer and nearer to a negative certainty.
Presently Mr Crow, who held himself a tactician, took a well-
intentioned step, which went far to fulfill his own prophecy. He had
arrived with the magistrates by a back way at the Seven Stars, and
here again the Riot Act was read from a window, with much the same
result as before. The rector had returned by the same way to the
Marquis, as the headquarters most suited for administration, but Mr
Crow remained at the other extremity of King Street, where some awe-
striking presence was certainly n eeded. Seeing that the time was
passing, and all effect from the voice of law had disappeared, he
showed himself at an upper window, and addressed the crowd, telling
them that the soldiers had been sent for, and that if they did not
disperse they would have cavalry upon them instead of constables.
Mr Crow, like some other high constables more celebrated in history,
'enjoyed a bad reputation'; that is to say, he enjoyed many things
which caused his reputation to be bad, and he was anything but
popular in Treby. It is probable that a pleasant message would have
lost something from his lips, and what he actually said was so
unpleasant, that, instead of persua ding the crowd, it appeared to
enrage them. Some one, snatching a raw potato from a sack in the
greengrocer's shop behind him, threw it at the constable, and hit him
on the mouth. Straightway raw potatoes and turnips were flying by
twenties at the windows of the Seven Stars, and the panes were
smashed. Felix, who was half-way up the street, heard the voices
turning to a savage roar, and saw a rush towards the hardware shop,
which furnished more effective weapons and missiles than turnips
and potatoes. Then a cry ran along that the Tories had sent for the
soldiers, and if those among the mob who called themselves Tories as
willingly as anything else were disp osed to take whatever called itself
the Tory side, they only helped the main result of reckless disorder.
But there were proofs that the predominant will of the crowd was
against 'Debarry's men,' and in favour of Transome. Several shops
were invaded, and they were all of them 'Tory shops'. The tradesmen
who could do so, now locked their doors and barricaded their windows
within. There was a panic among the householders of this hitherto
peaceful town, and a general anxiety for the military to arrive. The
rector was in painful anxiety on this head: he had sent out two
messengers as secretly as he could towards Hathercote, to order the
soldiers to ride straight to the town; but he feared that these
messengers had been somehow intercepted.
It was three o'clock: more than an hour had elapsed since the reading
of the Riot Act. The rector of Treby Magna wrote an indignant message
and sent it to the Ram, to Mr Lingon, the rector of Little Treby, saying
that there was evidently a Radical animus in the mob, and that Mr
Transome's party should hold themselves peculiarly responsible.
Where was Mr Jermyn?
Mr Lingon replied that he was going himself out towards Duffield to
see after the soldiers. As for Jerm yn, he was not that attorney's
sponsor: he believed that Jermyn was gone away somewhere on
business - to fetch voters.
A serious effort was now being made by all the civil force at command.
The December day would soon be passing into evening, and all
disorder would be aggravated by obscurity. The horrors of fire were as
likely to happen as any minor evil. The constables, as many of them
as could do so, armed themselves with carbines and sabres; all the
respectable inhabitants who had any courage prepared themselves to
struggle for order; and many felt with Mr Wace and Mr Tiliot that the
nearest duty was to defend the breweries and the spirit and wine
vaults, where the property was of a sort at once most likely to be
threatened and most dangerous in it s effects. The rector, with fine
determination, got on horseback agai n, as the best mode of leading
the constables, who could only act ef ficiently in a close body. By his
direction the column of armed men avoided the main street, and made
their way along a back road, that they might occupy the two chief
lanes leading to the wine-vaults and the brewery, and bear down on
the crowd from these openings, which it was especially desirable to
guard.
Meanwhile Felix Holt had been hotly occupied in King Street. After the
first window-smashing at the Seve n Stars, there was a sufficient
reason for damaging that inn to the utmost. The destructive spirit
tends towards completeness; and any object once maimed or
otherwise injured, is as readily doomed by unreasoning men as by
unreasoning boys. Also the Seven Stars sheltered Spratt; and to some
Sproxton men in front of that inn it was exasperating that Spratt
should be safe and sound on a day when blows were going, and
justice might be rendered. And again, there was the general
desirableness of being inside a public-house.
Felix had at last been willingly urged on to this spot. Hitherto swayed
by the crowd, he had been able to do nothing but defend himself and
keep on his legs; but he foresaw that the people would burst into the
inn; he heard cries of 'Spratt!' 'Fet ch him out!' 'We'll pitch him out!'
'Pummel him ! ' It was not unlikely that lives might be sacrificed; and
it was intolerable to Felix to be witnessing the blind outrages of this
mad crowd, and yet be doing nothing to counteract them. Even some
vain effort would satisfy him better than mere gazing. Within the walls
of the inn he might save some one. He went in with a miscellaneous
set, who dispersed themselves with different objects - some to the
taproom, and to search for the cellar ; some upstairs to search in all
rooms for Spratt, or any one else perhaps, as a temporary scapegoat
for Spratt. Guided by the screams of women, Felix at last got to a high
up-stairs passage, where the landlady and some of her servants were
running away in helpless terror from two or three half-tipsy men, who
had been emptying a spirit-decanter in the bar. Assuming the tone pf
a mob-leader, he cried out, 'Here, boys, here's better fun this way -
come with me ! ' and drew the men back with him along the passage.
They reached the lower staircase in time to see the unhappy Spratt
being dragged, coatless and screaming, down the steps. No one at
present was striking or kicking him; it seemed as if he were being
reserved for punishment on some wider area, where the satisfaction
might be more generally shared. Felix followed close, determined, if he
could, to rescue both assailers and assaulted from the worst
consequences. His mind was busy with possible devices.
Down the stairs, out along the stones through the gateway, Spratt was
dragged as a mere heap of linen and cloth rags. When he was got
outside the gateway, there was an immense hooting and roaring,
though many there had no grudge against him, and only guessed that
others had the grudge. But this was the narrower part of the street; it
widened as it went onwards, and Spratt was dragged on, his enemies
crying, 'We'll make a ring - we'll see how frightened he looks ! '
'Kick him, and have done with him,' Felix heard another say. 'Let's go
to Tiliot's vaults - there's more gin there!'
Here were two hideous threats. In dragging Spratt onward the people
were getting very near to the lane leading up to Tiliot's. Felix kept as
close as he could to the threatened victim. He had thrown away his
own stick, and carried a bludgeon which had escaped from the hands
of an invader at the Seven Stars! his head was bare; he looked, to
undiscerning eyes, like a leading spirit of the mob. In this condition he
was observed by several persons l ooking anxiously from their upper
windows, and finally observed to push himself, by violent efforts, close
behind the dragged man.
Meanwhile the foremost among the constables, who, coming by the
back way, had now reached the opening of Tiliot's Lane, discerned
that the crowd had a victim amongst them. One spirited fellow, named
Tucker, who was a regular constable, feeling that no time was to be
lost in meditation, called on his neighbour to follow him, and with the
sabre that happened to be his weap on got a way for himself where he
was not expected, by dint of quick resolution. At this moment Spratt
had been let go - had been dropped, in fact, almost lifeless with terror,
on the street stones, and the men round him had retreated for a little
space, as if to amuse themselves with looking at him. Felix had taken
his opportunity; and seeing the first step towards a plan he was bent
on, he sprang forward close to the cowering Spratt. As he did this,
Tucker had cut his way to the spot, and imagining Felix to be the
destined executioner of Spratt - fo r any discrimination of Tucker's lay
in his muscles rather than his eyes - he rushed up to Felix, meaning
to collar him and throw him down . But Felix had rapid senses and
quick thoughts; he discerned the situation; he chose between two
evils. Quick as lightning he frustrated the constable, fell upon him,
and tried to master his weapon. In the struggle, which was watched
without interference, the constable fell undermost, and Felix got his
weapon. He started up with the ba re sabre in his hand. The crowd
round him cried 'Hurray ! ' with a sense that he was on their side
against the constable. Tucker did not rise immediately; but Felix did
not imagine that he was much hurt.
'Don't touch him!' said Felix. 'Let him go. Here, bring Spratt, and
follow me.'
Felix was perfectly conscious that he was in the midst of a tangled
business. But he had chiefly before his imagination the horrors that
might come if the mass of wild chaotic desires and impulses around
him were not diverted from any furt her attack on places where they
would get in the midst of intoxicating and inflammable materials. It
was not a moment in which a spirit like his could calculate the effect
of misunderstanding as to himself: nature never makes men who are
at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating. He
believed he had the power, and he was resolved to try, to carry the
dangerous mass out of mischief till the military came to awe them -
which he supposed, from Mr Crow's announcement long ago, must be
a near event.
He was followed the more willingly, because Tiliot's Lane was seen by
the hindmost to be now defended by constables, some of whom had
fire-arms; and where there is no strong counter-movement, any
proposition to do something unspecifi ed stimulates stupid curiosity.
To many of the Sproxton men who were within sight of him, Felix was
known personally, and vaguely believed to be a man who meant many
queer things, not at all of an every-day kind.
Pressing along like a leader, with the sabre in his hand, and inviting
them to bring on Spratt, there seemed a better reason for following
him than for doing anything else. A man with a definite will and an
energetic personality acts as a sort of flag to draw and bind together
the foolish units of a mob. It was on this sort of influence over men
whose mental state was a mere medley of appetites and confused
impressions, that Felix had dared to count. He hurried them along
with words of invitation, telling them to hold up Spratt and not drag
him; and those behind followed him, with a growing belief that he had
some design worth knowing, while those in front were urged along
partly by the same notion, partly by the sense that there was a motive
in those behind them, not knowing what the motive was. It was that
mixture of pushing forward and being pushed forward, which is a
brief history of most human things.
What Felix really intended to do, was to get the crowd by the nearest
way out of the town, and induce them to skirt it on the north side with
him, keeping up in them the idea that he was leading them to execute
some strategem by which they would surprise something worth
attacking, and circumvent the constables who were defending the
lanes. In the meantime he trusted that the soldiers would have
arrived, and with this sort of mob, which was animated by no real
political passion or fury against so cial distinctions it was in the
highest degree unlikely that there would be any resistance to a
military force. The presence of fifty soldiers would probably be enough
to scatter the rioting hundreds. Ho w numerous the mob was, no one
ever knew: many inhabitants afterwards were ready to swear that
there must have been at least two thousand rioters. Felix knew he was
incurring great risks; but 'his bloo d was up:' we hardly allow enough
in common life for the results of that enkindled passionate
enthusiasm which, under other conditions, makes world-famous
deeds.
He was making for a point where the street branched off on one side
towards a speedy opening between hedgerows, on the other towards
the shabby wideness of Pollard's End. At this forking of the street
there was a large space, in the centre of which there was a small stone
platform, mounting by three steps, with an old green finger-post upon
it. Felix went straight to this platform and stepped upon it, crying
'Halt ! ' in a loud voice to the men behind and before him, and calling
to those who held Spratt to bring him there. All came to a stand with
faces towards the finger-post, and perhaps for the first time the
extremities of the crowd got a definite idea that a man with a sabre in
his hand was taking the command.
'Now!' said Felix, when Spratt had been brought on to the stone
platform, faint and trembling, 'h as anybody got cord? if not,
handkerchiefs knotted fast; give them to me.'
He drew out his own handkerchief, and two or three others were
mustered and handed to him. He ordered them to be knotted together,
while curious eyes were fixed on him. Was he going to have Spratt
hanged? Felix kept fast hold of his weapon, and ordered others to act.
'Now, put it round his waist, wind his arms in, draw them a little
backward - so I and tie it fast on the other side of the post.'
When that was done, Felix said, imperatively -
'Leave him there - we shall come back to him; let us make haste;
march along, lads! Up Park Street and down Hobb's Lane.'
It was the best chance he could think of for saving Spratt's life. And
he succeeded. The pleasure of seeing the helpless man tied up sufficed
for the moment, if there were any who had ferocity enough to count
much on coming back to him. No body's imagination represented the
certainty that some one out of the houses at hand would soon come
and untie him when he was left alone.
And the rioters pushed up Park Street, a noisy stream, with Felix still
in the midst of them, though he was labouring hard to get his way to
the front. He wished to determine the course of the crowd along a by-
road called Hobb's Lane, which would have taken them to the other -
the Duffield end of the town. He urged several of the men round him,
one of whom was no less a person than the big Dredge, our old
Sproxton acquaintance, to get forward, and be sure that all the fellows
would go down the lane, else they would spoil sport. Hitherto Felix
had been successful, and he had go ne along with an unbroken
impulse. But soon something occurred which brought with a terrible
shock the sense that his plan might turn out to be as mad as all bold
projects are seen to be when they have failed.
Mingled with the more headlong and half-drunken crowd there were
some sharp-visaged men who loved the irrationality of riots for
something else than its own sake, and who at present were not so
much the richer as they desired to be, for the pains they had taken in
coming to the Treby election, induced by certain prognostics gathered
at Duffield on the nomination-day that there might be the conditions
favourable to that confusion which was always a harvest-time. It was
known to some of these sharp men that Park Street led out towards
the grand house of Treby Manor, which was as good - nay, better for
their purpose than the bank. While Felix was entertaining his ardent
purpose, these other sons of Adam were entertaining another ardent
purpose of their peculiar sort, an d the moment was come when they
were to have their triumph
From the front ranks backward towards Felix there ran a new
summons - a new invitation.
'Let us go to Treby Manor!'
From that moment Felix was powerless; a new definite suggestion
overrode his vaguer influence. There was a determined rush past
Hobb's Lane, and not down it. Felix was carried along too. He did not
know whether to wish the contrary. Once on the road, out of the town,
with openings into fields and with the wide park at hand, it would
have been easy for him to liberate himself from the crowd. At first it
seemed to him the better part to do this, and to get back to the town
as fast as he could, in the hope of finding the military and getting a
detachment to come and save the Manor. But he reflected that the
course of the mob had been sufficiently seen, and that there were
plenty of people in Park Street to carry the information faster than he
could. It seemed more necessary that he should secure the presence
of some help for the family at the Manor by going there himself. The
Debarrys were not of the class he wa s wont to be anxious about; but
Felix Holt's conscience was alive to the accusation that any danger
they might be in now was brought on by a deed of his. In these
moments of bitter vexation and di sappointment, it did occur to him
that very unpleasant consequences might be hanging over him of a
kind quite different from inward dissatisfaction; but it was useless
now to think of averting such consequences. As he was pressed along
with the multitude into Treby Park, his very movement seemed to him
only an image of the day's fatalities, in which the multitudinous small
wickednesses of small selfish ends, really undirected towards any
larger result, had issued in widely -shared mischief that might yet be
hideous.
The light was declining: already the candles shone through many
windows of the Manor. Already the foremost part of the crowd had
burst into the offices, and adroit me n were busy in the right places to
find plate, after setting others to force the butler into unlocking the
cellars; and Felix had only just been able to force his way on to the
front terrace, with the hope of getting to the rooms where he would
find the ladies of the household and comfort them with the assurance
that rescue must soon come, when the sound of horses' feet convinced
him that the rescue was nearer than he had expected. Just as he
heard the horses, he had approached the large window of a room,
where a brilliant light suspended from the ceiling showed him a group
of women clinging together in terror. Others of the crowd were
pushing their way up the terrace-steps and gravel-slopes at various
points. Hearing the horses, he kept his post in front of the window,
and, motioning with his sabre, cried out to the oncomers, 'Keep back!
I hear the soldiers coming.' Some scrambled back, some paused
automatically.
The louder and louder sound of the hoofs changed its pace and
distribution. 'Halt! Fire!' Bang! bang! bang! - came deafening the ears
of the men on the terrace.
Before they had time or nerve to move, there was a rushing sound
closer to them - again 'Fire!' a bullet whizzed, and passed through
Felix Holt's shoulder - the shoulder of the arm that held the naked
weapon which shone in the light from the window.
Felix fell. The rioters ran confusedly , like terrified sheep. Some of the
soldiers, turning, drove them along vvith the flat of their swords. The
greater difficulty was to clear the invaded offices.
The rector, who with another magist rate and several other gentlemen
on horseback had accompanied the soldiers, now jumped on to the
terrace, and hurried to the ladies of the family.
Presently, there was a group ro und Felix, who had fainted and,
reviving, had fainted again. He had had little food during the day, and
had been overwrought. Two of the group were civilians, but only one of
them knew Felix, the other being a magistrate not resident in Treby.
The one who knew Felix was Mr John Johnson, whose zeal for the
public peace had brought him from Duffield when he heard that the
soldiers were summoned.
'I know this man very well,' said Mr Johnson. 'He is a dangerous
character - quite revolutionary.'
It was a weary night; and the next day, Felix, whose wound was
declared trivial, was lodged in Loamford Jail. He was committed on
three counts - for having assaulted a constable, for having committed
manslaughter (Tucker was dead fr om spinal concussion), and for
having led a riotous onslaught on a dwelling-house.
Four other men were committed: one of them for possessing himself of
a gold cup with the Debarry arms on it; the three others, one of whom
was the collier Dredge, for riot and assault.
That morning Treby town was no longer in terror; but it was in much
sadness. Other men, more innocent than the hated Spratt, were
groaning under severe bodily injuri es. And poor Tucker's corpse was
not the only one that had been lifted from the pavement. It is true that
none grieved much for the other dead man, unless it be grief to say,
'Poor old fellow!' He had been trampled upon, doubtless where he fell
drunkenly, near the entrance of the Seven Stars. This second corpse
was old Tommy Trounsem, the bill-sticker - otherwise Thomas
Transome, the last of a very old family-line.
Chapter 34
The fields are hoary with December's frost.
I too am hoary with the chills of age.
But through the fields and through the untrodden woods
Is rest and stillness - only in my heart
The pall of winter shrouds a throbbing life.
A WEEK after that Treby Riot, Haro ld Transome was at Transome
Court. He had returned from a hasty visit to town, to keep his
Christmas at this delightful country home, not in the best Christmas
spirits. He had lost the election; but if that had been his only
annoyance, he had good humour and good sense enough to have
borne it as well as most men, and to have paid the eight or nine
thousand, which had been the price of ascertaining that he was not to
sit in the next parliament, without useless grumbling. But the
disappointments of life can never, any more than its pleasures, be
estimated singly; and the healthiest and most agreeable of men is
exposed to that coincidence of various vexations, each heightening the
effect of the other, which may produce in him something
corresponding to the spontaneous and externally unaccountable
moodiness of the morbid and disagreeable.
Harold might not have grieved much at a small riot in Treby, even if it
had caused some expenses to fall on the county; but the turn which
the riot had actually taken, was a bitter morsel for rumination, on
more grounds than one. However the disturbances had arisen and
been aggravated - and probably no one knew the whole truth on these
points - the conspicuous, gravest incidents had all tended to throw
the blame on the Radical party, that is to say, on Transome and on
Transome's agents; and so far the candidateship and its results had
done Harold dishonour in the county: precisely the opposite effect to
that which was a dear object of his ambition. More than this, Harold's
conscience was active enough to be very unpleasantly affected by what
had befallen Felix Holt. His memory, always good, was particularly
vivid in its retention of Felix Holt's complaint to him about the treating
of the Sproxton men, and of the subsequent irritating scene in
Jermyn's office when the personage with the inauspicious name of
Johnson had expounded to him the impossibility of revising an
electioneering scheme once begun, and of turning your vehicle back
when it had already begun to roll downhill. Remembering Felix Holt's
words of indignant warning about hi ring men with drink in them to
make a noise, Harold could not resist the urgent impression that the
offences for which Felix was committ ed were fatalities, not brought
about by any willing co-operation of his with the rioters, but arising
probably from some ill-judged efforts to counteract their violence. And
this impression, which insisted on growing into a conviction, became
in one of its phases an uneasy sense that he held evidence which
would at once tend to exonerate Felix, and to place himself and his
agents in anything but a desirable light. It was likely that some one
else could give equivalent evidence in favour of Felix - the little
talkative Dissenting preacher, for ex ample; but, anyhow, the affair
with the Sproxton men would be ri pped open and made the worst of
by the opposite parties. The man who has failed in the use of some
indirectness, is helped very little by the fact that his rivals are men to
whom that indirectness is a something human, very far from being
alien. There remains this grand distinction, that he has failed, and
that the jet of light is thrown entirely on his misdoings.
In this matter Harold felt himself a victim. Could he hinder the tricks
of his agents? In this particular case he had tried to hinder them, and
had tried in vain. He had not loved the two agents in question, to
begin with; and now at this later stage of events he was more innocent
than ever of bearing them anything but the most sincere ill-will. He
was more utterly exasperated with them than he would probably have
been if his one great passion had been for public virtue. Jermyn, with
his John Johnson, had added this
ugly dirty business of the Treby el ection to all the long-accumulating
list of offences, which Harold was resolved to visit on him to the
utmost. He had seen some handbill s carrying the insinuation that
there was a discreditable indebtedness to Jermyn on the part of the
Transomes. If any such notions existed apart from electioneering
slander, there was all the more reason for letting the world see Jermyn
severely punished for abusing his power over the family affairs, and
tampering with the family property. And the world certainly should
see this with as little delay as possible. The cool confident assuming
fellow should be bled to the la st drop in compensation, and all
connection with him be finally got rid of. Now that the election was
done with, Harold meant to devote himself to private affairs, till
everything lay in complete order under his own supervision.
This morning he was seated as us ual in his private room, which had
now been handsomely fitted up for him. It was but the third morning
after the first Christmas he had spent in his English home for fifteen
years, and the home looked like an eminently desirable one. The white
frost lay on the broad lawn, on the many-formed leaves of the
evergreens, and on the giant trees at a distance. Logs of dry oak
blazed on the hearth; the carpet was like warm moss under his feet;
he had breakfasted just according to his taste, and he had the
interesting occupations of a large pr oprietor to fill the morning. All
through the house now, steps were noiseless on carpets or on fine
matting; there was warmth in hall and corridors; there were servants
enough to do everything, and to do it at the right time. Skilful Dominic
was always at hand to meet his master's demands, and his bland
presence diffused itself like a smile over the household, infecting the
gloomy English mind with the belief that life was easy, and making his
real predominance seem as soft and light as a down quilt. Old Mr
Transome had gathered new courage and strength since little Harry
and Dominic had come and since Harold had insisted on his taking
drives. Mrs Transome herself was seen on a fresh background with a
gown of rich new stuff. And if, in spite of this, she did not seem happy,
Harold either did not observe it, or kindly ignored it as the necessary
frailty of elderly women whose lives have had too much of dulness and
privation. Our minds get tricks and attitudes as our bodies do,
thought Harold, and age stiffens th em into unalterableness. 'Poor
mother! I confess I should not like to be an elderly woman myself. One
requires a good deal of the purring cat for that, or else of the loving
grandame. I wish she would take more to little Harry. I suppose she
has her suspicions about the lad's mother, and is as rigid in those
matters as in her Toryism. However, I do what I can; it would be
difficult to say what there is wanting to her in the way of indulgence
and luxury to make up for the old niggardly life.'
And certainly Transome Court was now such a home as many women
would covet. Yet even Harold's own satisfaction in the midst of its
elegant comfort needed at present to be sustained by the expectation
of gratified resentment. He was obviously less bright and enjoying
than usual, and his mother, who watched him closely without daring
to ask questions, had gathered hints and drawn inferences enough to
make her feel sure that there was some storm gathering between him
and Jermyn. She did not dare to as k questions, and yet she had not
resisted the temptation to say something bitter about Harold's failure
to get returned as a Radical, helping, with feminine self-defeat, to
exclude herself more completely from any consultation by him. In this
way poor women, whose power lies solely in their influence, make
themselves like music out of tune, and only move men to run away.
This morning Harold had ordered his letters to be brought to him at
the breakfast-table, which was no t his usual practice. His mother
could see that there were London business letters about which he was
eager, and she found out that the letter brought by a clerk the day
before was to make an appointment with Harold for Jermyn to come
to Transome Court at eleven this morning. She observed Harold
swallow his coffee and push away hi s plate with an early abstraction
from the business of breakfast which was not at all after his usual
manner. She herself ate nothing; her sips of tea seemed to excite her;
her cheeks flushed, and her hands were cold. She was still young and
ardent in her terrors; the passions of the past were living in her dread.
When Harold left the table she went into the long drawing-room,
where she might relieve her restlessness by walking up and down, and
catch the sound of Jermyn's entrance into Harold's room, which was
close by. Here she moved to and fro amongst the rose-coloured satin
of chairs and curtains - the great story of this world reduced for her to
the little tale of her own existence - dull obscurity everywhere, except
where the keen light fell on the narrow track of her own lot, wide only
for a woman's anguish. At last she heard the expected ring and
footstep, and the opening and closin g door. Unable to walk about any
longer, she sank into a large cushioned chair, helpless and prayerless.
She was not thinking of God's anger or mercy, but of her son's. She
was thinking of what might be brought, not by death, but by life.
Chapter 35
M. Check to your queen!
N. Nay, your own king is bare,
And moving so, you give yourself checkmate.
WHEN Jermyn entered the room, Harold, who was seated at his
library table examining papers, with his back towards the light and
his face towards the door, moved hi s head coldly. Jermyn said an
ungracious 'Good-morning' - as little as possible like a salutation to
one who might regard himself as a patron. On the attorney's
handsome face there was a black cloud of defiant determination,
slightly startling to Harold, who had expected to feel that the
overpowering weight of temper in the interview was on his own side.
Nobody was ever prepared beforehand for this expression of Jermyn's
face, which seemed as strongly contrasted with the cold
inpenetrableness which he preserved under the ordinary annoyances
of business as with the bland radiance of his lighter moments.
Harold himself did not look amiable just then, but his anger was of
the sort that seeks a vent without waiting to give a fatal blow; it was
that of a nature more subtly mi xed than Jermyn's - less animally
forcible, less unwavering in selfishness, and with more of high-bred
pride. He looked at Jermyn with increased disgust and secret wonder.
'Sit down,' he said, curtly.
Jermyn seated himself in silence, opened his greatcoat, and took some
papers from a side-pocket.
'I have written to Makepeace,' said Harold, 'to tell him to take the
entire management of the election expenses. So you will transmit your
accounts to him.'
'Very well. I am come this morning on other business.'
'If it's about the riot and the prisoners, I have only to say that I shall
enter into no plans. If I am called on, I shall say what I know about
that young fellow Felix Holt. People may prove what they can about
Johnson's damnable tricks, or yours either.'
'I am not come to speak about the riot. I agree with you in thinking
that quite a subordinate subject.' (When Jermyn had the black cloud
over his face, he never hesitated or drawled, and made no Latin
quotations.)
'Be so good, then, as to open your business at once,' said Harold, in a
tone of imperious indifference.
'That is precisely what I wish to do. I have here information from a
London correspondent that you are ab out to file a bill against me in
Chancery.' Jermyn, as he spoke, laid his hand on the papers before
him, and looked straight at Harold.
'In that case the question for you is, how far your conduct as the
family solicitor will bear investigation. But it is a question which you
will consider quite apart from me.'
'Doubtless. But prior to that there is a question which we must
consider together.'
The tone in which Jermyn said this gave an unpleasant shock to
Harold's sense of mastery. Was it possible that he should have the
weapon wrenched out of his hand?
'I shall know what to think of that,' he replied, as haughtily as ever,
'when you have stated what the question is.'
'Simply, whether you will choose to retain the family estates, or lay
yourself open to be forthwith legally deprived of them.'
'I presume you refer to some underhand scheme of your own, on a par
with the annuities you have drained us by in the name of Johnson,'
said Harold, feeling a new movement of anger. 'If so, you had better
state your scheme to my lawyers, Dymock and Halliwell.'
'No. I think you will approve of my stating in your own ear first of all,
that it depends on my will whethe r you remain an important landed
proprietor in North Loamshire, or whether you retire from the county
with the remainder of the fortune you have acquired in trade.'
Jermyn paused, as if to leave time for this morsel to be tasted.
'What do you mean?' said Harold, sharply
'Not any scheme of mine; but a state of the facts, resulting from the
settlement of the estate made in 1729: a state of the facts which
renders your father's title and your own title to the family estates
utterly worthless as soon as the true claimant is made aware of his
right.'
'And you intend to inform him?'
'That depends. I am the only person who has the requisite knowledge.
It rests with you to decide whether I shall use that knowledge against
you; or whether I shall use it in your favour - by putting an end to the
evidence that would serve to oust yo u in spite of your ‘robust title of
occupancy’.'
Jermyn paused again. He had been speaking slowly, but without the
least hesitation, and with a bitter de finiteness of enunciation. There
was a moment or two before Haro ld answered, and then he said
abruptly -
'I don't believe you.'
'I thought you were more shrewd,' said Jermyn, with a touch of scorn.
'I thought you understood that I had had too much experience to
waste my time in telling fables to persuade a man who has put himself
into the attitude of my deadly enemy.'
'Well, then, say at once what your proofs are,' said Harold, shaking in
spite of himself, and getting nervous.
'I have no inclination to be lengthy. It is not more than a few weeks
since I ascertained that there is in existence an heir of the Bycliffes,
the old adversaries of your family. More curiously, it is only a few days
ago - in fact, only since the day of the riot - that the Bycliffe claim has
become valid, and that the right of remainder accrues to the heir in
question.’
'And how pray?' said Harold, rising from his chair, and making a turn
in the room, with his hands thrust in his pockets. Jermyn rose too,
and stood near the hearth facing Harold, as he moved to and fro.
'By the death of an old fellow wh o got drunk, and was trampled to
death in the riot. He was the last of that Thomas Transome's line, by
the purchase of whose interest your family got its title to the estate.
Your title died with him. It was supposed that the line had become
extinct before - and on that supposition the old Bycliffes founded their
claim. But I hunted up this man just about the time the last suit was
closed. His death would have been of no consequence to you if there
had not been a Bycliffe in existence; but I happen to know that there
is, and that the fact can be legally proved.'
For a minute or two Harold did no t speak, but continued to pace the
room, while Jermyn kept his positi on, holding his hands behind him.
At last Harold said, from the other end of the room, speaking in a
scornful tone -
'That sounds alarming. But it is not to be proved simply by your
statement.'
'Clearly. I have here a document, with a copy, which will back my
statement. It is the opinion given on the case more than twenty years
ago, and it bears the signature of the Attorney-General and the first
conveyancer of the day.'
Jermyn took up the papers he had laid on the table, opening them
slowly and coolly as he went on speaking, and as Harold advanced
towards him.
'You may suppose that we spared no pains to ascertain the state of
the title in the last suit against Maurice Christian Bycliffe, which
threatened to be a hard run. Th is document is the result of a
consultation; it gives an opinion which must be taken as a final
authority. You may cast your eyes over that, if you please; I will wait
your time. Or you may read the summing-up here,' Jermyn ended,
holding out one of the papers to Harold, and pointing to a final
passage.
Harold took the paper, with a slight gesture of impatience. He did not
choose to obey Jermyn's indication, and confine himself to the
summing-up. He ran through the document. But in truth he was too
much excited really to follow the details, and was rather acting than
reading, till at length he threw himself into his chair and consented to
bend his attention on the passage to which Jermyn had pointed. The
attorney watched him as he read and twice re-read:
To sum up ... we are of opinion that the title of the present possessors
of the Transome estates can be strict ly proved to rest solely upon a
base fee created under the original settlement of 1729, and to be good
so long only as issue exists of the tenant in tail by whom that base fee
was created. We feel satisfied by the evidence that such issue exists in
the person of Thomas Transome, otherwise Trounsem, of Littleshaw.
But upon his decease without issue we are of opinion that the right in
remainder of the Bycliffe family wi ll arise, which right would not be
barred by any statute of limitation.
When Harold's eyes were on the signatures to this document for the
third time, Jermyn said -
'As it turned out, the case being closed by the death of the claimant,
we had no occasion for producing Thomas Transome, who was the old
fellow I tell you of. The inquiri es about him set him agog, and after
they were dropped he came into this neighbourhood, thinking there
was something fine in store for him. Here, if you like to take it, is a
memorandum about him. I repeat, that he died in the riot. The proof
is ready. And I repeat, that, to my knowledge, and mine only, there is
a Bycliffe in existence; and that I know how the proof can be made
out.'
Harold rose from his chair again, and again paced the room. He was
not prepared with any defiance.
'And where is he - this Bycliffe?' he said at last, stopping in his walk,
and facing round towards Jermyn.
'I decline to say more till you pr omise to suspend proceedings against
me.'
Harold turned again, and looked out of the window without speaking
for a moment or two. It was impossible
that there should not be a conflict within him, and at present it was a
very confused one. At last he said - 'This person is in ignorance of his
claim?' 'Yes.' 'Has been brought up in an inferior station?'
'Yes,' said Jermyn, keen enough to guess part of what was going on in
Harold's mind. 'There is no harm in leaving him in ignorance. The
question is a purely legal one. And, as I said before, the complete
knowledge of the case, as one of evidence, lies exclusively with me. I
can nullify the evidence, or I can make it tell with certainty against
you. The choice lies with you.'
'I must have time to think of this,' said Harold, conscious of a terrible
pressure.
'I can give you no time unless you promise me to suspend
proceedings.'
'And then, when I ask you, you will lay the details before me?'
'Not without a thorough understanding beforehand. If I engage not to
use my knowledge against you, you must engage in writing that on
being satisfied by the details, you will cancel all hostile proceedings
against me, and will not institute fr esh ones on the strength of any
occurrences now past.'
'Well, I must have time,' said Harold, more than ever inclined to
thrash the attorney, but feeling bound hand and foot with knots that
he was not sure he could ever unfasten.
'That is to say,' said Jermyn, with his black-browed persistence, 'you
will write to suspend proceedings.'
Again Harold paused. He was more than ever exasperated, but he was
threatened, mortified, and confounded by the necessity for an
immediate decision between alternatives almost equally hateful to
him. It was with difficulty that he could prevail on himself to speak
any conclusive words. He walked as far as he could from Jermyn - to
the other end of the room - then walked back to his chair and threw
himself into it. At last he said, without looking at Jermyn, 'I agree - I
must have time.' 'Very well. It is a bargain.'
'No further than this,' said Harold, hastily, flashing a look at Jermyn -
'no further than this, that I require time, and therefore I give it to you.'
'Of course. You require time to consider whether the pleasure of trying
to ruin me - me to whom you are really indebted - is worth the loss of
the Transome estates. I shall wish you good-morning.'
Harold did not speak to him or look at him again, and Jermyn walked
out of the room. As he appeared outside the door and closed it behind
him, Mrs Transome showed her wh ite face at another door which
opened on a level with Harold's in such a way that it was just possible
for Jermyn not to see her. He availed himself of that possibility, and
walked straight across the hall, where there was no servant in
attendance to let him out, as if he believed that no one was looking at
him who could expect recognition. He did not want to speak to Mrs
Transome at present; he had nothing to ask from her, and one
disagreeable interview had been enough for him this morning.
She was convinced that he had avoided her, and she was too proud to
arrest him. She was as insignificant now in his eyes as in her son's.
'Men have no memories in their hearts,' she said to herself, bitterly.
Turning into her sitting-room she he ard the voices of Mr Transome
and little Harry at play together. She would have given a great deal at
this moment if her feeble husband had not always lived in dread of
her temper and her tyranny, so that he might have been fond of her
now. She felt herself loveless - if she was important to any one, it was
only to her old waiting-woman Denner.
Chapter 36
'Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them like necessities.'
SHAKESPEARE: Henry IV.
See now the virtue living in a word I
Hobson will think of swearing it was noon
When he saw Dobson at the May-day fair,
To prove poor Dobson did not rob the mail.
'Tis neighbourly to save a neighbour's neck:
What harm is lying when you mean no harm?
But say 'tis perjury, then Hobson quakes -
He'll none of perjury.
Thus words embalm
The conscience of mankind; and Roman laws
Bring still a conscience to poor Hobson's aid.
FEW men would have felt otherwise than Harold Transome felt, if,
having a reversion tantamount to possession of a fine estate, carrying
an association with an old name an d considerable social importance,
they were suddenly informed that there was a person who had a legal
right to deprive them of these advantages; that person's right having
never been contemplated by any one as more than a chance, and
being quite unknown to himself. In ordinary cases a shorter
possession than Harold's family had enjoyed was allowed by the law to
constitute an indefeasible right; and if in rare and peculiar instances
the law left the possessor of a long inheritance exposed to deprivation
as a consequence of old obscure transactions, the moral reasons for
giving legal validity to the title of long occupancy were not the less
strong. Nobody would have said th at Harold was bound to hunt out
this alleged remainder-man and urge his rights upon him; on the
contrary, all the world would have laughed at such conduct, and he
would have been thought an interesting patient for a mad-doctor. The
unconscious remainder-man was probably much better off left in his
original station: Harold would not have been called upon to consider
his existence, if it had not been presented to him in the shape of a
threat from one who had power to execute the threat.
In fact, what he would have done had the circumstances been
different was much clearer than what he should choose to do or feel
himself compelled to do in the actu al crisis. He would not have been
disgraced if, on a valid claim being urged, he had got his lawyers to
fight it out for him on the chance of eluding the claim by some adroit
technical management. Nobody off the stage could be sentimental
about these things, or pretend to shed tears of joy because an estate
was handed over from a gentleman to a mendicant sailor with a
wooden leg. And this chance remainder-man was perhaps some such
specimen of inheritance as the drunken fellow killed in the riot. All the
world would think the actual Transomes in the right to contest any
adverse claim to the utmost. But then - it was not certain that they
would win in the contest; and not winning, they would incur other
loss besides that of the estate. There had been a little too much of
such loss already.
But why, if it were not wrong to contest the claim, should he feel the
most uncomfortable scruples about ro bbing the claim of its sting by
getting rid of its evidence? It was a mortal disappointment - it was a
sacrifice of indemnification - to abstain from punishing Jermyn. But
even if he brought his mind to contemplate that as the wiser course,
he still shrank from what looked li ke complicity with Jermyn; he still
shrank from the secret nullification of a just legal claim. If he had only
known the details, if he had known who this alleged heir was, he
might have seen his way to some course that would not have grated
on his sense of honour and dignity. But Jermyn had been too acute to
let Harold know this: he had even carefully kept to the masculine
pronoun. And he believed that there was no one besides himself who
would or could make Harold any wiser. He went home persuaded that
between this interview and the next which they would have together,
Harold would be left to an inward debate, founded entirely on the
information he himself had given. And he had not much doubt that
the result would be what he desire d. Harold was no fool: there were
many good things he liked better in life than an irrational
vindictiveness.
And it did happen that, after writin g to London in fulfilment of his
pledge, Harold spent many hours over that inward debate, which was
not very different from what Jermyn imagined. He took it everywhere
with him, on foot and on horseback, and it was his companion
through a great deal of the night. His nature was not of a kind given to
internal conflict, and he had never before been long undecided and
puzzled. This unaccustomed state of mind was so painfully irksome to
him - he rebelled so impatiently against the oppression of
circumstances in which his quick temperament and habitual decision
could not help him - that it added tenfold to his hatred of Jermyn,
who was the cause of it. And thus, as the temptation to avoid all risk
of losing the estate grew and grew till scruples looked minute by the
side of it, the difficulty of bringing himself to make a compact with
Jermyn seemed more and more insurmountable.
But we have seen that the attorney was much too confident in his
calculations. And while Harold was being galled by his subjection to
Jermyn's knowledge, independent information was on its way to him.
The messenger was Christian, who, after as complete a survey of
probabilities as he was capable of, had come to the conclusion that
the most profitable investment he could make of his peculiar
experience and testimony in relation to Bycliffe and Bycliffe's
daughter, was to place them at the disposal of Harold Transome. He
was afraid of Jermyn; he utterly distrusted Johnson; but he thought
he was secure in relying on Harold Transome's care for his own
interest; and he preferred above all issues the prospect of forthwith
leaving the country with a sum that at least for a good while would
put him at his ease.
When, only three mornings after the interview with Jermyn, Dominic
opened the door of Harold's sitting-room, and said that 'Meester
Chreestian', Mr Philip Debarry's courier and an acquaintance of his
own at Naples, requested to be admitted on business of importance,
Harold's immediate thought was that the business referred to the so-
called political affairs which were just now his chief association with
the name of Debarry, though it seemed an oddness requiring
explanation that a servant should be personally an intermediary. He
assented, expecting something rather disagreeable than otherwise.
Christian wore this morning those perfect manners of a subordinate
who is not servile, which he always adopted towards his
unquestionable superiors. Mr Deba rry, who preferred having some
one about him with as little resemblance as possible to a regular
servant, had a singular liking for the adroit, quiet-mannered
Christian, and would have been amazed to see the insolent
assumption he was capable of in the presence of people like Lyon, who
were of no account in society. Chri stian had that sort of cleverness
which is said to 'know the world' - that is to say, he knew the price-
current of most things.
Aware that he was looked at as a messenger while he remained
standing near the door with his hat in his hand, he said, with
respectful ease -
'You will probably be surprised, sir, at my coming to speak to you on
my own account; and, in fact, I co uld not have thought of doing so if
my business did not happen to be something of more importance to
you than to any one else.'
'You don't come from Mr Debarry, then?' said Harold, with some
surprise.
'No, sir. My business is a secret; and, if you please, must remain so.'
'Is it a pledge you are demanding from me?' said Harold, rather
suspiciously, having no ground for confidence in a man of Christian's
position.
'Yes, sir; I am obliged to ask no less than that you will pledge yourself
not to take Mr Jermyn into confidence concerning what passes
between us.'
'With all my heart,' said Harold, something like a gleam passing over
his face. His circulation had become more rapid. 'But what have you
had to do with Jermyn?'
'He has not mentioned me to you then - has he, sir?'
'No; certainly not - never.'
Christian thought, 'Aha, Mr Jermyn! you are keeping the secret well
are you?' He said, aloud -
'Then Mr Jermyn has never mentioned to you, sir, what I believe he is
aware of - that there is danger of a new suit being raised against you
on the part of a Bycliffe, to get the estate?'
'Aha !' said Harold, starting up, and placing himself with his back
against the mantelpiece. He was electrified by surprise at the quarter
from which this information was coming. Any fresh alarm was
counteracted by the flashing thought that he might be enabled to act
independently of Jermyn; and in the rush of feelings he could utter no
more than an interjection. Christian concluded that Harold had had
no previous hint.
'It is this fact, sir, that I came to tell you of '
'From some other motive than ki ndness to me, I presume,' said
Harold, with a slight approach to a smile.
'Certainly,' said Christian, as quietly as if he had been stating
yesterday's weather. 'I should not have the folly to use any affectation
with you, Mr Transome. I lost considerable property early in life, and
am now in the receipt of a salary simply. In the affair I have just
mentioned to you I can give evidence which will turn the scale against
you. I have no wish to do so, if you will make it worth my while to
leave the country.'
Harold listened as if he had b een a legendary hero, selected for
peculiar solicitation by the Evil One. Here was temptation in a more
alluring form than before, because it was sweetened by the prospect of
eluding Jermyn. But the desire to gain time served all the purposes of
caution and resistance, and his indifference to the speaker in this
case helped him to preserve perfect self-command.
'You are aware,' he said, coolly, 'that silence is not a commodity worth
purchasing unless it is loaded. There are many persons, I dare say,
who would like me to pay their travelling expenses for them. But they
might hardly be able to show me that it was worth my while.'
'You wish me to state what I know?'
'Well, that is a necessary preliminary to any further conversation.'
'I think you will see, Mr Transome, that, as a matter of justice, the
knowledge I can give is worth something, quite apart from my future
appearance or non-appearance as a witness. I must take care of my
own interest, and if anything should hinder you from choosing to
satisfy me for taking an essential witness out of the way, I must at
least be paid for bringing you the information.'
'Can you tell me who and where this Bycliffe is?'
'I can.'
'- And give me a notion of the whole affair?'
'Yes: I have talked to a lawyer - not Jermyn - who is at the bottom of
the law in the affair.'
'You must not count on any wish of mine to suppress evidence or
remove a witness. But name your price for the information.'
'In that case I must be paid the higher for my information. Say, two
thousand pounds.'
'Two thousand devils!' burst out Harold, throwing himself into his
chair again, and turning his shoulder towards Christian. New
thoughts crowded upon him. 'This fellow may want to decamp for
some reason or other,' he said to himself. 'More people besides Jermyn
know about his evidence, it seems. The whole thing may look black for
me if it comes out. I shall be believed to have bribed him to run away,
whether or not.' Thus the outside conscience came in aid of the inner.
'I will not give you one sixpence for your information,' he said,
resolutely, 'until time has made it clear that you do not intend to
decamp, but will be forthcoming wh en you are called for. On those
terms I have no objection to give yo u a note, specifying that after the
fulfilment of that condition - that is, after the occurrence of a suit, or
the understanding that no suit is to occur - I will pay you a certain
sum in consideration of the information you now give me!'
Christian felt himself caught in a vice. In the first instance he had
counted confidently on Harold's ready seizure of his offer to disappear,
and after some words had seemed to cast a doubt on this
presupposition, he had inwardly determined to go away, whether
Harold wished it or not, if he could get a sufficient sum. He did not
reply immediately, and Harold waited in silence, inwardly anxious to
know what Christian could tell, but with a vision at present so far
cleared that he was determined not to risk incurring the imputation of
having anything to do with scoundrelism. We are very much indebted
to such a linking of events as makes a doubtful action look wrong.
Christian was reflecting that if he stayed, and faced some possible
inconveniences of being known publicly as Henry Scaddon for the
sake of what he might get from Esther, it would at least be wise to be
certain of some money from Harold Transome, since he turned out to
be of so peculiar a disposition as to insist on a punctilious honesty to
his own disadvantage. Did he think of making a bargain with the
other side? If so, he might be content to wait for the knowledge till it
came in some other way. Christian was beginning to be afraid lest he
should get nothing by this clever mo ve of coming to Transome Court.
At last he said -
'I think, sir, two thousand would not be an unreasonable sum, on
those conditions.'
'I will not give two thousand.'
'Allow me to say, sir, you must co nsider that there is no one whose
interest it is to tell you as much as I shall, even if they could; since Mr
Jermyn, who knows it, has not thought fit to tell you. There may be
use you don't think of in getting the information at once.' 'Well?'
'I think a gentleman should act liberally under such circumstances.'
'So I will.'
I could not take less than a thousa nd pounds. It really would not be
worth my while. If Mr Jermyn knew I gave you the information, he
would endeavour to injure me.'
'I will give you a thousand,' said Harold, immediately, for Christian
had unconsciously touched a sure spring. 'At least, I'll give you a note
to the effect I spoke of.'
He wrote as he had promised, and gave the paper to Christian.
'Now, don't be circuitous,' said Harold. 'You seem to have a business-
like gift of speech Who and where is this Bycliffe?'
'You will be surprised to hear, sir, that she is supposed to be the
daughter of the old preacher, Lyon, in Malthouse.'
'Good God! How can that be?' said Harold. At once, the first occasion
on which he had seen Esther rose in his memory - the little dark
parlour - the graceful girl in blue, with the surprisingly distinguished
manners and appearance.
'In this way. Old Lyon, by some strange means or other, married
Bycliffe's widow when this girl wa s a baby. And the preacher didn't
want the girl to know that he was not her real father: he told me that
himself. But she is the image of Bycliffe, whom I knew well - an
uncommonly fine woman - steps like a queen.'
I have seen her,' said Harold, more than ever glad to have purchased
this knowledge. 'But now, go on.'
Christian proceeded to tell all he knew, including his conversation
with Jermyn, except so far as it had an unpleasant relation to himself.
'Then,' said Harold, as the details seemed to have come to a close, 'you
believe that Miss Lyon and her supposed father are at present
unaware of the claims that might be urged for her on the strength of
her birth?'
'I believe so. But I need not tell you that where the lawyers are on the
scent you can never be sure of anyt hing long together. I must remind
you, sir, that you have promised to protect me from Mr Jermyn by
keeping my confidence.'
'Never fear. Depend upon it, I shall betray nothing to Mr Jermyn.'
Christian was dismissed with a 'good-morning'; and while he
cultivated some friendly reminisce nces with Dominic, Harold sat
chewing the cud of his new knowledge, and finding it not altogether so
bitter as he had expected.
From the first, after his interview with Jermyn, the recoil of Harold's
mind from the idea of strangling a legal right threw him on the
alternative of attempting a compromise. Some middle course might be
possible, which would be a less evil th an a costly lawsuit, or than the
total renunciation of the estates. And now he had learned that the
new claimant was a woman - a young woman, brought up under
circumstances that would make the fo urth of the Transome property
seem to her an immense fortune. Both the sex and the social
condition were of the sort that lies open to many softening influences.
And having seen Esther, it was inevitable that, amongst the various
issues, agreeable and disagreeable, depicted by Harold's imagination,
there should present itself a possi bility that would unite the two
claims - his own, which he felt to be the rational, and Esther's, which
apparently was the legal claim.
Harold, as he had constantly said to his mother, was 'not a marrying
man;' he did not contemplate bringi ng a wife to Transome Court for
many years to come, if at all. Having little Harry as an heir, he
preferred freedom. Western women were not to his taste: they showed
a transition from the feebly animal to the thinking being, which was
simply troublesome. Harold preferred a slow-witted large-eyed woman,
silent and affectionate, with a load of black hair weighing much more
heavily than her brains. He had seen no such woman in England,
except one whom he had brought with him from the East.
Therefore Harold did not care to be married until or unless some
surprising chance presented itself; and now that such a chance had
occurred to suggest marriage to him, he would not admit to himself
that he contemplated marrying Esther as a plan; he was only obliged
to see that such an issue was not inconceivable. He was not going to
take any step expressly directed towards that end: what he had made
up his mind to, as the comse most satisfactory to his nature under
present urgencies, was to behave to Esther with a frank
gentlemanliness, which must win he r good-will, and incline her to
save his family interest as much as possible. He was helped to this
determination by the pleasure of fr ustrating Jermyn's contrivance to
shield himself from punishment; and his most distinct and cheering
prospect was, that within a very short space of time he should not
only have effected a satisfactory compromise with Esther, but should
have made Jermyn aware, by a very disagreeable form of
announcement, that Harold Transome was no longer afraid of him.
Jermyn should bite the dust.
At the end of these meditations he felt satisfied with himself and light-
hearted. He had rejected two dishonest propositions, and he was going
to do something that seemed eminently graceful. But he needed his
mother's assistance, and it was necessary that he should both confide
in her and persuade her.
Within two hours after Christian left him, Harold begged his mother to
come into his private room, and there he told her the strange and
startling story, omitting, however, any particulars which would involve
the identification of Christian as his informant. Harold felt that his
engagement demanded this reticence; and he told his mother that he
was bound to conceal the source of that knowledge which he had got
independently of Jermyn.
Mrs Transome said little in the course of the story: she made no
exclamations, but she listened with close attention, and asked a few
questions so much to the point as to surprise Harold. When he
showed her the copy of the legal opinion which Jermyn had left with
him, she said she knew it very well; she had a copy herself. The
particulars of that last lawsuit were too well engraven on her mind: it
happened at a time when there was no one to supersede her, and she
was the virtual head of the family affairs. She was prepared to
understand how the estate might be in danger; but nothing had
prepared her for the strange details - for the way in which the new
claimant had been reared and brought within the range of converging
motives that had led to this revelation, least of all for the part Jermyn
had come to play in the revelation. Mrs Transome saw these things
through the medium of certain dominant emotions that made them
seem like a long-ripening retribution. Harold perceived that she was
painfully agitated, that she trembled, and that her white lips would
not readily lend themselves to speech. And this was hardly more than
he expected. He had not liked the revelation himself when it had first
come to him.
But he did not guess what it was in his narrative which had most
pierced his mother. It was something that made the threat about the
estate only a secondary alarm. Now, for the first time, she heard of the
intended proceedings against Jermyn. Harold had not chosen to speak
of them before; but having at last called his mother into consultation,
there was nothing in his mind to hinder him from speaking without
reserve of his determination to visit on the attorney his shameful
maladministration of the family affairs.
Harold went through the whole narrative - of what he called Jermyn's
scheme to catch him in a vice, and his power of triumphantly
frustrating that scheme - in his usual rapid way, speaking with a final
decisiveness of tone: and his moth er felt that if she urged any
counter-consideration at all, she co uld only do so when he had no
more to say.
'Now, what I want you to do, mother, if you can see this matter as I
see it,' Harold said in conclusion, 'is to go with me to call on this girl
in Malthouse Yard. I will open the a ffair to her; it appears she is not
likely to have been informed yet; and you will invite her to visit you
here at once, that all scandal, all hatching of law-mischief, may be
avoided, and the thing may be brought to an amicable conclusion.'
'It seems almost incredible - extraordinary - a girl in her position,' said
Mrs Transome, with difficulty. It would have seemed the bitterest
humiliating penance if another sort of suffering had left any room in
her heart.
'I assure you she is a lady; I saw her when I was canvassing, and was
amazed at the time. You will be quite struck with her. It is no
indignity for you to invite her.'
'Oh,' said Mrs Transome, with low- toned bitterness, 'I must put up
with all things as they are determined for me. When shall we go?'
'Well,' said Harold, looking at his watch, 'it is hardly two yet. We could
really go to-day, when you have lunched. It is better to lose no time.
I'll order the carriage.'
'Stay,' said Mrs Transome, making a desperate effort. 'There is plenty
of time. I shall not lunch. I have a word to say.'
Harold withdrew his hand from the bell, and leaned against the
mantelpiece to listen.
'You see I comply with your wish at once, Harold?'
'Yes, mother, I'm much obliged to you for making no difficulties.'
'You ought to listen to me in return.'
'Pray go on,' said Harold, expecting to be annoyed.
'What is the good of having these Chancery proceedings against
Jermyn?'
'Good? This good; that fellow has burdened the estate with annuities
and mortgages to the extent of three thousand a-year; and the bulk of
them, I am certain, he holds himself under the name of another man.
And the advances this yearly interest represents, have not been much
more than twenty thousand. Of co urse he has hoodwinked you, and
my father never gave attention to these things. He has been up to all
sorts of devil's work with the deed s; he didn't count on my coming
back from Smyrna to fill poor Du rfey's place. He shall feel the
difference. And the good will be, that I shall save almost all the
annuities for the rest of my father 's life, which may be ten years or
more, and I shall get back some of the money, and I shall punish a
scoundrel. That is the good.' 'He will be ruined.' 'That's what I intend,'
said Harold, sharply.
'He exerted himself a great deal for us in the old suits: every one said
he had wonderful zeal and abilit y,' said Mrs Transome, getting
courage and warmth as she went on. Her temper was rising.
'What he did, he did for his own sa ke, you may depend on that,' said
Harold, with a scornful laugh.
'There were very painful things in that last suit. You seem anxious,
about this young woman, to avoid all further scandal and contests in
the family. Why don't you wish to do it in this case? Jermyn might be
willing to arrange things amicably - to make restitution as far as he
can - if he has done anything wrong.'
'I will arrange nothing amicably with him,' said Harold, decisively. 'If
he has ever done anything scandalous as our agent, let him bear the
infamy. And the right way to throw the infamy on him is to show the
world that he has robbed us, and that I mean to punish him. Why do
you wish to shield such a fellow, mother? It has been chiefly through
him that you have had to lead such a thrifty miserable life - you who
used to make as brilliant a figure as a woman need wish.'
Mrs Transome's rising temper was turned into a horrible sensation, as
painful as a sudden concussion from something hard and immovable
when we have struck out with our fist, intending to hit something
warm, soft, and breathing, like ourselves. Poor Mrs Transome's
strokes were sent jarring back on her by a hard unalterable past. She
did not speak in answer to Harold, but rose from the chair as if she
gave up the debate.
'Women are frightened at everythi ng, I know,' said Harold, kindly,
feeling that he had been a little harsh after his mother's compliance.
'And you have been used for so many years to think Jermyn a law of
nature. Come, mother,' he went on, looking at her gently, and resting
his hands on her shoulders, 'look cheerful. We shall get through all
these difficulties. And this girl - I daresay she will be quite an
interesting visitor for you. You have not had any young girl about you
for a long while. Who knows? she may fall deeply in love with me, and
I may be obliged to marry her.'
He spoke laughingly, only thinking how he could make his mother
smile. But she looked at him seriously and said, 'Do you mean that,
Harold?'
'Am I not capable of making a conquest? Not too fat yet - a handsome,
well-rounded youth of thirty-four?'
She was forced to look straight at the beaming face with its rich dark
colour, just bent a little over her. Why could she not be happy in this
son whose future she had once dreamed of, and who had been as
fortunate as she had ever hoped? The tears came, not plenteously, but
making her dark eyes as large an d bright as youth had once made
them without tears.
'There, there!' said Harold, coaxingly. 'Don't be afraid. You shall not
have a daughter-in-law unless she is a pearl. Now we will get ready to
go.'
In half an hour from that time Mrs Transome came down, looking
majestic in sables and velvet, ready to call on 'the girl in Malthouse
Yard'. She had composed herself to go through this task. She saw
there was nothing better to be done. After the resolutions Harold had
taken, some sort of compromise wi th this oddly-placed heiress was
the result most to be hoped for; if the compromise turned out to be a
marriage - well, she had no reason to care much: she was already
powerless. It remained to be seen what this girl was.
The carriage was to be driven round the back way, to avoid too much
observation. But the late election affairs might account for Mr Lyon's
receiving a visit from the unsuccessful Radical candidate.
Chapter 37
'I also could speak as ye do; if your soul were in my soul's stead, I
could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.' -
Book of Job.
IN the interval since Esther parted with Felix Holt on the day of the
riot, she had gone through so much emotion, and had already had so
strong a shock of surprise, that she was prepared to receive any new
incident of an unwonted kind with comparative equanimity.
When Mr Lyon had got home again from his preaching excursion,
Felix was already on his way to Loam ford Jail. The little minister was
terribly shaken by the news. He saw no clear explanation of Felix
Holt's conduct; for the statements Esther had heard were so
conflicting that she had not been able to gather distinctly what had
come out in the examination by th e magistrates. But Mr Lyon felt
confident that Felix was innocent of any wish to abet a riot or the
infliction of injuries; what he chiefly feared was that in the fatal
encounter with Tucker he had been moved by a rash temper, not
sufficiently guarded against by a prayerful and humble spirit.
'My poor young friend is being taught with mysterious severity the evil
of a too confident self-reliance,' he said to Esther, as they sat opposite
to each other, listening and speaking sadly.
'You will go and see him, father?'
'Verily will I. But I must straightway go and see that poor afflicted
woman, whose soul is doubtless whir led about in this trouble like a
shapeless and unstable thing driven by divided winds.' Mr Lyon rose
and took his hat hastily, ready to walk out, with his greatcoat flying
open and exposing his small person to the keen air.
'Stay, father, pray, till you have had some food,' said Esther, putting
her hand on his arm. 'You look quite weary and shattered.'
'Child, I cannot stay. I can neither eat bread nor drink water till I have
learned more about this young man's deeds, what can be proved and
what cannot be proved against him. I fear he has none to stand by
him in this town, for even by the friends of our church I have been oft
times rebuked because he seemed dear to me. But, Esther, my
beloved child -'
Here Mr Lyon grasped her arm, and seemed in the need of speech to
forget his previous haste. 'I bear in mind this: the Lord knoweth them
that are His; but we - we are left to judge by uncertain signs, that so
we may learn to exercise hope and faith towards one another; and in
this uncertainty I cling with awful hope to those whom the world loves
not because their conscience, albeit mistakenly, is at war with the
habits of the world. Our great faith, my Esther, is the faith of martyrs:
I will not lightly turn away from any man who endures harshness
because he will not lie; nay, though I would not wantonly grasp at
ease of mind through an arbitrary choice of doctrine, I cannot but
believe that the merits of the divine sacrifice are wider than our
utmost charity. I once believed otherwise - but not now, not now.'
The minister paused, and seemed to be abstractedly gazing at some
memory: he was always liable to be snatched away by thoughts from
the pursuit of a purpose which had seemed pressing. Esther seized
the opportunity and prevailed on him to fortify himself with some of
Lyddy's porridge before he went ou t on his tiring task of seeking
definite trustworthy knowledge from the lips of various witnesses,
beginning with that feminine darkener of counsel, poor Mrs Holt.
She, regarding all her trouble about Felix in the light of a fulfilment of
her own prophecies, treated the sad history with a preference for
edification above accuracy, and for mystery above relevance, worthy of
a commentator on the Apocalypse. Sh e insisted chiefly, not on the
important facts that Felix had sat at his work till after eleven, like a
deaf man, had rushed out in surprise and alarm, had come back to
report with satisfaction that things were quiet, and had asked her to
set by his dinner for him - facts which would tell as evidence that
Felix was disconnected with any pr oject of disturbances, and was
averse to them. These things came out incidentally in her long plaint
to the minister - but what Mrs Holt felt it essential to state was, that
long before Michaelmas was turned, sitting in her chair, she had said
to Felix that there would be a judg ment on him for being so certain
sure about the pills and the elixir.
'And now, Mr Lyon,' said the poor woman, who had dressed herself in
a gown previously cast off, a front all out of curl, and a cap with no
starch in it, while she held little coughing Job on her knee, - 'and now
you see - my words have come true sooner than I thought they would.
Felix may contradict me if he will; but there he is in prison, and here
am I, with nothing in the world to bless myself with but half-a-crown
a-week as I've saved by my own scraping and this house I've got to pay
rent for. It's not me has done wrong. Mr Lyon; there's nobody can say
it of me - not the orphin child on my knee is more innicent o' riot and
murder and anything else as is bad. But when you've got a son so
masterful and stopping medicines as providence has sent, and his
betters have been taking up and down the country since before he was
a baby, it's o' no use being good here below. But he was a baby, Mr
Lyon, and I gave him the breast,' - he re poor Mrs Holt's motherly love
overcame her expository eagerness, and she fell more and more to
crying as she spoke - 'And to think there's folks saying now as he'll be
transported, and his hair shaved off, and the treadmill, and
everything. O dear!'
As Mrs Holt broke off into sobbing, little Job also, who had got a
confused yet profound sense of sorrow, and of Felix being hurt and
gone away, set up a little wail of wondering misery.
'Nay, Mistress Holt,' said the minist er soothingly, 'enlarge not your
grief by more than warrantable grou nds. I have good hope that my
young friend your son will be deli vered from any severe consequences
beyond the death of the man Tucker, which I fear will ever be a sore
burthen on his memory. I feel confident that a jury of his countrymen
will discern between misfortune or it may be misjudgment, and an evil
will, and that he will be acquitted of any grave offence.'
'He never stole anything in his life, Mr Lyon,' said Mrs Holt, reviving.
'Nobody can throw it in my face as my son ran away with money like
the young man at the bank - though he looked most respectable, and
far different on a Sunday to what Felix ever did. And I know it's very
hard fighting with constables; but they say Tucker's wife'll be a deal
better off than she was before, for the great folks'll pension her, and
she'll be put on all the charities, and her children at the Free School,
and everything. Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a
lift for you; and if judge and jury wants to do right by Felix, they'll
think of his poor mother, with the bread took out of her mouth, all but
half-a-crown a-week and furniture - which, to be sure, is most
excellent, and of my own buying - and got to keep this orphin child as
Felix himself brought on me. And I might send him back to his old
grandfather on parish pay, but I' m not that woman, Mr Lyon; I've a
tender heart. And here's his little feet and toes, like marbil; do but
look' - here Mrs Holt drew off Job's sock and shoe, and showed a well-
washed little foot - 'and you'll perhaps say I might take a lodger; but
it's easy talking; it isn't everybody at a loose-end wants a parlour and
a bedroom; and if anything bad happens to Felix, I may as well go and
sit in the parish pound, and nobody to buy me out; for it's beyond
everything how the church members find fault with my son. But I
think they might leave his mother to find fault; for queer and
masterful he might be, and flying in the face of the very Scripture
about the physic, but he was most clever beyond anything - that I will
say - and was his own father's lawful child, and me his mother, that
was Mary Wall thirty years before ev er I married his father.' Here Mrs
Holt's feelings again became too much for her, but she struggled on to
say, sobbingly, 'And if they're to tran sport him, I should like to go to
the prison and take the orphin child; for he was most fond of having
him on his lap, and said he'd ne ver marry; and there was One above
overheard him, for he's been took at his word.'
Mr Lyon listened with low groans, and then tried to comfort her by
saying that he would himself go to Loamford as soon as possible, and
would give his soul no rest till he had done all he could do for Felix.
On one point Mrs Holt's plaint tallied with his own forebodings, and
he found them verified: the state of feeling in Treby among the Liberal
dissenting flock was unfavourable to Felix. None who had observed his
conduct from the windows saw anyt hing tending to excuse him, and
his own account of his motives, given on his examination, was spoken
of with head-shaking; if it had not been for his habit of always
thinking himself wiser than other people, he would never have
entertained such a wild scheme. He had set himself up for something
extraordinary, and had spoken ill of respectable tradespeople. He had
put a stop to the making of saleable drugs, contrary to the nature of
buying and selling, and to a due reliance on what providence might
effect in the human inside through the instrumentality of remedies
unsuitable to the stomach, looked at in a merely secular light; and the
result was what might have been expected. He had brought his
mother to poverty, and himself into trouble. And what for? He had
done no good to 'the cause'; if he had fought about churchrates, or
had been worsted in some struggle in which he was distinctly the
champion of Dissent and Liberalism, his case would have been one for
gold, silver, and copper subscription s, in order to procure the best
defence; sermons might have been preached on him, and his name
might have floated on flags from Newcastle to Dorchester. But there
seemed to be no edification in what had befallen Felix. The riot at
Treby, 'turn it which way you would, ' as Mr Muscat observed, was no
great credit to Liberalism; and what Mr Lyon had to testify as to Felix
Holt's conduct in the matter of the Sproxton men, only made it clear
that the defence of Felix was the ac cusation of his party. The whole
affair, Mr Nuttwood said, was dark and inscrutable, and seemed not
to be one in which the interference of God's servants would tend to
give the glory where the glory was due. That a candidate for whom the
richer church members had all voted should have his name associated
with the encouragement of drunke nness, riot, and plunder, was an
occasion for the enemy to blaspheme; and it was not clear how the
enemy's mouth would be stopped by exertions in favour of a rash
young man, whose interference had made things worse instead of
better. Mr Lyon was warned lest hi s human partialities should blind
him to the interests of truth; it was God's cause that was endangered
in this matter.
The little minister's soul was bruise d; he himself was keenly alive to
the complication of public and private regards in this affair, and
suffered a good deal at the thought of Tory triumph in the
demonstration that, excepting the attack on the Seven Stars, which
called itself a Whig house, all damage to property had been borne by
Tories. He cared intensely for his opinions, and would have liked
events to speak for them in a sort of picture-writing that everybody
could understand. The enthusiasms of the world are not to be
stimulated by a commentary in small and subtle characters which
alone can tell the whole truth; and the picture-writing in Felix Holt's
troubles was of an entirely puzzling kind: if he were a martyr, neither
side wanted to claim him. Yet the mi nister, as we have seen, found in
his Christian faith a reason for clinging the more to one who had not a
large party to back him. That little man's heart was heroic: he was not
one of those Liberals who make their anxiety for 'the cause' of
Liberalism a plea for cowardly desertion.
Besides himself, he believed there was no one who could bear
testimony to the remonstrances of Felix concerning the treating of the
Sproxton men, except Jermyn, Johnson, and Harold Transome.
Though he had the vaguest idea of what could be done in the case, he
fixed his mind on the probability that Mr Transome would be moved to
the utmost exertion, if only as an atonement; but he dared not take
any step until he had consulted Felix, who he foresaw was likely to
have a very strong determination as to the help he would accept or not
accept.
This last expectation was fulfilled. Mr Lyon returned to Esther, after
his days journey to Loamford an d back, with less of trouble and
perplexity in his mind: he had at least got a definite course marked
out, to which he must resign himself. Felix had declared that he
would receive no aid from Harold Transome, except the aid he might
give as an honest witness. There was nothing to be done for him but
what was perfectly simple and direct. Even if the pleading of counsel
had been permitted (and at that time it was not) on behalf of a
prisoner on trial for felony, Felix would have declined it: he would in
any case have spoken in his own defence. He had a perfectly simple
account to give, and needed not to avail himself of any legal
adroitness. He consented to accept the services of a respectable
solicitor in Loamford, who offered to conduct his case without any
fees. The work was plain and easy, Felix said. The only witnesses who
had to be hunted up at all were some who could testify that he had
tried to take the crowd down Hobb's Lane, and that they had gone to
the Manor in spite of him.
'Then he is not so much cast down as you feared, father?' said Esther.
'No, child; albeit he is pale and much shaken for one so stalwart. He
hath no grief, he says, save for the poor man Tucker, and for his
mother; otherwise his heart is without a burthen. We discoursed
greatly on the sad effect of all this for his mother, and on the
perplexed condition of human things, whereby even right action seems
to bring evil consequences, if we have respect only to our own brief
lives, and not to that larger rule whereby we are stewards of the
eternal dealings, and not contrivers of our own success.'
'Did he say nothing about me, father?' said Esther, trembling a little,
but unable to repress her egoism.
'Yea; he asked if you were well, and sent his affectionate regards. Nay,
he bade me say something which appears to refer to your discourse
together when I was not present. ‘T ell her,’ he said, ‘whatever they
sentence me to, she knows they ca n't rob me of my vocation. With
poverty for my bride, and preachin g and pedagogy for my business, I
am sure of a handsome establishment.’ He laughed - doubtless
bearing in mind some playfulness of thine.'
Mr Lyon seemed to be looking at Esther as he smiled, but she was not
near enough for him to discern the expression of her face. Just then it
seemed made for melancholy rather than for playfulness. Hers was
not a childish beauty; and when the sparkle of mischief, wit, and
vanity was out of her eyes, and the large look of abstracted sorrow
was there, you would have been surprised by a certain grandeur
which the smiles had hidden. That changing face was the perfect
symbol of her mixed susceptible nature, in which battle was
inevitable, and the side of victory uncertain.
She began to look on all that had passed between herself and Felix as
something not buried, but embalmed and kept as a relic in a private
sanctuary. The very entireness of her preoccupation about him, the
perpetual repetition in her memory of all that had passed between
them, tended to produce this effect. She lived with him in the past; in
the future she seemed shut out from him. He was an influence above
her life, rather than a part of it; some time or other, perhaps, he would
be to her as if he belonged to the solemn admonishing skies, checking
her self-satisfied pettiness with the suggestion of a wider life.
But not yet - not while her trouble was so fresh For it was still her
trouble, and not Felix Holt's. Perhaps it was a subtraction from his
power over her, that she could never think of him with pity, because
he always seemed to her too great and strong to be pitied: he wanted
nothing. He evaded calamity by choosing privation. The best part of a
woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her
precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses too, that were let fall
ready to soothe the wearied feet.
While Esther was carrying these things in her heart, the January days
were beginning to pass by with their wonted wintry monotony, except
that there was rather more of good cheer than usual remaining from
the feast of Twelfth Night among the triumphant Tories, and rather
more scandal than usual excited among the mortified Dissenters by
the wilfulness of their minister. He had actually mentioned Felix Holt
by name in his evening sermon, and offered up a petition for him in
the evening prayer, also by name - not as 'a young Ishmaelite, whom
we would fain see brought back from the lawless life of the desert, and
seated in the same fold even with the sons of Judah and of Benjamin',
a suitable periphrasis which Brot her Kemp threw off without any
effort, and with all the felicity of a suggestive critic. Poor Mrs Holt,
indeed, even in the midst of he r grief, experienced a proud
satisfaction, that though not a church member she was now an object
of congregational remark and ministerial allusion. Feeling herself a
spotless character standing out in relief on a dark background of
affliction, and a practical contradict ion to that extreme doctrine of
human depravity which she had never 'given in to', she was naturally
gratified and soothed by a notice which must be a recognition. But
more influential hearers were of opinion, that in a man who had so
many long sentences at command as Mr Lyon, so many parentheses
and modifying clauses, this naked use of a non-scriptural Treby name
in an address to the Almighty was all the more offensive. In a low
unlettered local preacher of the Wesleyan persuasion such things
might pass; but a certain style in prayer was demanded from
Independents,
the most educated body in the ranks of orthodox Dissent. To Mr Lyon
such notions seemed painfully perverse, and the next morning he was
declaring to Esther his resolution stoutly to withstand them, and to
count nothing common or unclean on which a blessing could be
asked, when the tenor of his thoughts was completely changed by a
great shock of surprise which made both himself and Esther sit
looking at each other in speechless amazement.
The cause was a letter brought by a special messenger from Duffield;
a heavy letter addressed to Esther in a business-like manner, quite
unexampled in her correspondence. And the contents of the letter
were more startling than its exterior. It began:
Madam, - Herewith we send you a brief abstract of evidence which has
come within our knowledge, that the right of remainder whereby the
lineal issue of Edward Bycliffe can claim possession of the estates of
which the entail was settled by John Justus Transome in 1729, now
first accrues to you as the sole an d lawful issue of Maurice Christian
Bycliffe. We are confident of success in the prosecution of this claim,
which will result to you in the poss ession of estates to the value, at
the lowest, of from five to six thousand per annum -
It was at this point that Esther, who was reading aloud, let her hand
fall with the letter on her lap, and with a pal pitating heart looked at
her father, who looked again, in silence that lasted for two or three
minutes. A certain terror was upon them both, though the thoughts
that laid that weight on the tongue of each were different.
It was Mr Lyon who spoke first.
'This, then, is what the man named Christian referred to. I distrusted
him, yet it seems he spoke truly.'
'But,' said Esther, whose imagination ran necessarily to those
conditions of wealth which she could best appreciate, 'do they mean
that the Transomes would be turned out of Transome Court, and that
I should go and live there? It seems quite an impossible thing.'
'Nay, child, I know not. I am ignorant in these things, and the thought
of worldly grandeur for you hath more of terror than of gladness for
me. Nevertheless we must duly weigh all things, not considering aught
that befalls us as a bare event, but rather as an occasion for faithful
stewardship. Let us go to my study and consider this writing further.'
How this announcement, which to Esther seemed as unprepared as if
it had fallen from the skies, came to be made to her by solicitors other
than Batt & Cowley, the old lawyers of the Bycliffes, was by a
sequence as natural, that is to say, as legally-natural, as any in the
world. The secret worker of the apparent wonder was Mr Johnson,
who, on the very day when he wrote to give his patron, Mr Jermyn,
the serious warning that a bill wa s likely to be filed in Chancery
against him, had carried forward with added zeal the business already
commenced, of arranging with another firm his share in the profits
likely to result from the prosecution of Esther Bycliffe's claim.
Jermyn's star was certainly going down, and Johnson did not feel an
unmitigated grief. Beyond some tr oublesome declarations as to his
actual share in transactions in which his name had been used,
Johnson saw nothing formidable in prospect for himself. He was not
going to be ruined, though Jerm yn probably was: he was not a
highflyer, but a mere climbing-bird, who could hold on and get his
livelihood just as well if his wings were clipped a little. And, in the
meantime, here was something to be gained in this Bycliffe business,
which, it was not unpleasant to think, was a nut that Jermyn had
intended to keep for his own particular cracking, and which would be
rather a severe astonishment to Mr Harold Transome, whose manners
towards respectable agents were such as leave a smart in a man of
spirit.
Under the stimulus of small many-mixed motives like these, a great
deal of business has been done in the world by well-clad and, in 1833,
clean-shaven men, whose names are on charity-lists, and who do not
know that they are base. Mr Johns on's character was not much more
exceptional than his double chin.
No system, religious or political, I believe, has laid it down as a
principle that all men are alike virtuous, or even that all the people
rated for œ80 houses are an honour to their species.
Chapter 38
The down we rest on in our aery dreams
Has not been plucked from birds that live and smart:
'Tis but warm snow, that melts not.
THE story and the prospect revealed to Esther by the lawyers' letter,
which she and her father studied together, had made an impression
on her very different from what she had been used to figure to herself
in her many daydreams as to the effe ct of a sudden elevation in rank
and fortune. In her day-dreams she had not traced out the means by
which such a change could be brought about; in fact, the change had
seemed impossible to her, except in her little private Utopia, which,
like other Utopias, was filled with delightful results, independent of
processes. But her mind had fixed it self habitually on the signs and
luxuries of ladyhood, for which she had the keenest perception. She
had seen the very mat in her carriage, had scented the dried rose-
leaves in her corridors, had felt the soft carpets under her pretty feet,
and seen herself, as she rose from her sofa cushions, in the crystal
panel that reflected a long drawing-room, where the conservatory
flowers and the pictures of fair women left her still with the
supremacy of charm. She had trodden the marble-firm gravel of her
garden-walks and the soft deep turf of her lawn; she had had her
servants about her filled with adoring respect, because of her
kindness as well as her grace and beauty; and she had had several
accomplished cavaliers all at once suing for her hand - one of whom,
uniting very high birth with long dark eyelashes and the most
distinguished talents, she secretly preferred, though his pride and
hers hindered an avowal, and supplied the inestimable interest of
retardation. The glimpses she had ha d in her brief life as a family
governess, supplied her ready faculty with details enough of delightful
still life to furnish her day-dreams; and no one who has not, like
Esther, a strong natural prompting and susceptibility towards such
things, and has at the same time suffered from the presence of
opposite conditions, can understa nd how powerful ly those minor
accidents of rank which please the fastidious sense can preoccupy the
imagination.
It seemed that almost everything in her day-dreams - cavaliers apart -
must be found at Transome Court. But now that fancy was becoming
real, and the impossible appeared possible, Esther found the balance
of her attention reversed: now that her ladyhood was not simply in
Utopia, she found herself arrested and painfully grasped by the means
through which the ladyhood was to be obtained. To her inexperience
this strange story of an alienated inheritance, of such a last
representative of pure-blooded lineage as old Thomas Transome the
bill-sticker, above all of the disp ossession hanging over those who
actually held, and had expected always to hold, the wealth and
position which were suddenly announ ced to be rightfully hers - all
these things made a picture, not for her own tastes and fancies to
float in with Elysian indulgence, but in which she was compelled to
gaze on the degrading hard experience of other human beings, and on
a humiliating loss which was the obverse of her own proud gain. Even
in her times of most untroubled eg oism Esther shrank from anything
ungenerous; and the fact that she had a very lively image of Harold
Transome and his gipsy-eyed bo y in her mind, gave additional
distinctness to the thought that if she entered they must depart. Of
the elder Transomes she had a dimmer vision, and they were
necessarily in the background to her sympathy.
She and her father sat with their hands locked, as they might have
done if they had been listening to a solemn oracle in the days of old
revealing unknown kinship and righ tful heirdom. It was not that
Esther had any thought of renouncing her fortune; she was incapable,
in these moments, of condensing her vague ideas and feelings into any
distinct plan of action, nor indeed did it seem that she was called
upon to act with any promptitude. It was only that she was conscious
of being strangely awed by somethin g that was called good fortune;
and the awe shut out any scheme of rejection as much as any
triumphant joy in acceptance. Her fi rst father, she learned, had died
disappointed and in wrongful impr isonment, and an undefined sense
of Nemesis seemed half to sanctify her inheritance, and counteract its
apparent arbitrariness.
Felix Holt was present in her mind throughout: what he would say
was an imaginary commentary that she was constantly framing, and
the words that she most frequently gave him - for she dramatised
under the inspiration of a sadness slightly bitter - were of this kind:
'That is clearly your destiny - to be aristocratic, to be rich. I always
saw that our lots lay widely apart. You are not fit for poverty, or any
work of difficulty. But remember what I once said to you about a
vision of consequences; take care where your fortune leads you.'
Her father had not spoken since they had ended their study and
discussion of the story and the eviden ce as it was presented to them.
Into this he had entered with his usual penetrating activity; but he
was so accustomed to the impersonal study of narrative, that even in
these exceptional moments the habit of half a century asserted itself,
and he seemed sometimes not to distinguish the case of Esther's
inheritance from a story in ancient hi story, until some detail recalled
him to the profound feeling that a great, great change might be
coming over the life of this child wh o was so close to him. At last he
relapsed into total silence, and for some time Esther was not moved to
interrupt it. He had sunk back in hi s chair, with his hand locked in
hers, and was pursuing a sort of prayerful meditation: he lifted up no
formal petition, but it was as if his soul travelled again over the facts
he had been considering in the company of a guide ready to inspire
and correct him. He was striving to purify his feeling in this matter
from selfish or worldly dross - a stri ving which is that prayer without
ceasing, sure to wrest an answer by its sublime importunity.
There is no knowing how long they might have sat in this way, if it
had not been for the inevitable Lyddy reminding them dismally of
dinner.
'Yes, Lyddy, we come,' said Esther; and then, before moving -
'Is there any advice you have in your mind for me, father?' The sense
of awe was growing in Esther. Her intensest life was no longer in her
dreams, where she made things to her own mind; she was moving in a
world charged with forces.
'Not yet, my dear - save this: that you will seek special illumination in
this juncture, and, above all, be watc hful that your soul be not lifted
up within you by what, righdy considered, is rather an increase of
charge, and a call upon you to walk along a path which is indeed easy
to the flesh, but dangerous to the spirit.'
'You would always live with me, father?' Esther spoke under a strong
impulse - partly affection, partly the need to grasp at some moral help.
But she had no sooner uttered the words than they raised a vision,
showing, as by a flash of lightning, the incongruity of that past which
had created the sanctities and affections of her life with that future
which was coming to her.... The little rusty old minister, with the one
luxury of his Sunday evening pipe, smoked up the kitchen chimney,
coming to live in the midst of grandeur ... but not her father, with the
grandeur of his past sorrow and his long struggling labours, forsaking
his vocation, and vulgarly accepting an existence unsuited to him....
Esther's face flushed with the excitement of this vision and its
reversed interpretation, which five months ago she would have been
incapable of seeing. Her question to her father seemed like a mockery;
she was ashamed. He answered slowly -
'Touch not that chord yet, child. I must learn to think of thy lot
according to the demands of Providence. We will rest a while from the
subject; and I will seek calmness in my ordinary duties.'
The next morning nothing more was said. Mr Lyon was absorbed in
his sermon-making, for it was near the end of the week, and Esther
was obliged to attend to her pupils. Mrs Holt came by invitation with
little Job to share their dinner of roast-meat; and, after much of what
the minister called unprofitable discourse, she was quitting the house
when she hastened back with an astonished face, to tell Mr Lyon and
Esther, who were already in wonder at crashing, thundering sounds
on the pavement, that there was a ca rriage stopping and stamping at
the entry into Malthouse Yard, with 'all sorts of fine liveries', and a
lady and gentleman inside. Mr Lyon and Esther looked at each other,
both having the same name in their minds.
'If it's Mr Transome or somebody else as is great, Mr Lyon,' urged Mrs
Holt, 'you'll remember my son, and say he's got a mother with a
character they may inquire into as much as they like. And never mind
what Felix says, for he's so masterful he'd stay in prison and be
transported whether or no, only to have his own way. For it's not to be
thought but what the great people could get him off if they would; and
it's very hard with a king in the co untry and all the texts in Proverbs
about the king's countenance, and Solomon and the live baby -'
Mr Lyon lifted up his hand deprecatingly, and Mrs Holt retreated from
the parlour-door to a comer of the kitchen, the outer doorway being
occupied by Dominic, who was inquiring if Mr and Miss Lyon were at
home, and could receive Mrs Transome and Mr Harold Transome.
While Dominic went back to the carriage Mrs Holt escaped with her
tiny companion to Zachary's, the pew-opener, observing to Lyddy that
she knew herself, and was not that woman to stay where she might
not be wanted; whereupon Lyddy, differing fundamentally,
admonished her parting ear that it was well if she knew herself to be
dust and ashes - silently extending the application of this remark to
Mrs Transome as she saw the tall lady sweep in arrayed in her rich
black and fur, with that fine gentleman behind her whose thick
topknot of wavy hair, sparkling ring, dark complexion, and general air
of worldly exaltation unconnected with chapel were painfully
suggestive to Lyddy of Herod, Po ntius Pilate or the much-quoted
Gallio.
Harold Transome, greeting Esther gracefully, presented his mother,
whose eagle-like glance, fixed on her from the first moment of
entering, seemed to Esther to pierce her through. Mrs Transome
hardly noticed Mr Lyon, not from studied haughtiness, but from sheer
mental inability to consider him - as a person ignorant of natural
history is unable to consider a fresh-water polype otherwise than as a
sort of animated weed, certainly not fit for table. But Harold saw that
his mother was agreeably struck by Esther, who indeed showed to
much advantage. She was not at all taken by surprise, and
maintained a dignified quietude; but her previous knowledge and
reflection about the possible dispossession of these Transomes gave
her a softened feeling towards them which tinged her manners very
agreeably.
Harold was carefully polite to the minister, throwing out a word to
make him understand that he had an important part in the important
business which had brought this un announced visit; and the four
made a group seated not far off each other near the window, Mrs
Transome and Esther being on the sofa.
'You must be astonished at a visit from me, Miss Lyon,' Mrs Transome
began; 'I seldom come to Treby Magna. Now I see you, the visit is an
unexpected pleasure; but the cause of my coming is business of a
serious nature, which my son will communicate to you.'
'I ought to begin by saying that what I have to announce to you is the
reverse of disagreeable, Miss Lyon,' said Harold, with lively ease. 'I
don't suppose the world would consider it very good news for me; but
a rejected candidate, Mr Lyon,' Harold went on, turning graciously to
the minister, 'begins to be inured to loss and misfortune.'
'Truly, sir,' said Mr Lyon, with a ra ther sad solemnity, 'your allusion
hath a grievous bearing for me, but I will not retard your present
purpose by further remark.'
'You will never guess what I have to disclose,' said Harold, again
looking at Esther, 'unless, indeed, you have had some previous
intimation of it.'
'Does it refer to law and inheritance?' said Esther, with a smile. She
was already brightened by Harold's manner. The news seemed to be
losing its chillness, and to be something really belonging to warm,
comfortable, interesting life.
'Then you have already heard of it?' said Harold, inwardly vexed, but
sufficiendy prepared not to seem so.
'Only yesterday,' said Esther, quite simply. 'I received a letter from
some lawyers with a statement of many surprising things, showing
that I was an heiress' - here she tu rned very prettily to address Mrs
Transome - 'which, as you may imagine, is one of the last things I
could have supposed myself to be.'
'My dear,' said Mrs Transome with el derly grace, just laying her hand
for an instant on Esther's, 'it is a lot that would become you
admirably.'
Esther blushed, and said playfully -
'O, I know what to buy with fifty pounds a-year, but I know the price
of nothing beyond that.'
Her father sat looking at her through his spectacles, stroking his chin.
It was amazing to herself that she was taking so lightly now what had
caused her such deep emotion yesterday.
'I daresay, then,' said Harold, 'you are more fully possessed of
particulars than I am. So that my mother and I need only tell you
what no one else can tell you - that is, what are her and my feelings
and wishes under these new and unexpected circumstances.'
'I am most anxious,' said Esther, with a grave beautiful look of respect
to Mrs Transome - 'most anxious on that point. Indeed, being of
course in uncertainty about it, I have not yet known whether I could
rejoice.' Mrs Transome's glance had softened. She liked Esther to look
at her.
'Our chief anxiety,' she said, knowing what Harold wished her to say,
'is, that there may be no contest, no useless expenditure of money. Of
course we will surrender what can be rightfully claimed.'
'My mother expresses our feeling precisely, Miss Lyon,' said Harold.
'And I'm sure, Mr Lyon, you will understand our desire.'
'Assuredly, sir. My daughter would in any case have had my advice to
seek a conclusion which would involve no strife. We endeavour, sir, in
our body, to hold to the apostolic rule that one Christian brother
should not go to law with another; and I, for my part, would extend
this rule to all my fellow-men, apprehending that the practice of our
courts is little consistent with the simplicity that is in Christ.'
'If it is to depend on my will,' said Esther, 'there is nothing that would
be more repugnant to me than any struggle on such a subject. But
can't the lawyers go on doing what they will in spite of me? It seems
that this is what they mean?'
'Not exactly,' said Harold, smiling. 'Of course they live by such
struggles as you dislike. But we ca n thwart them by determining not
to quarrel. It is desirable that we should consider the affair together,
and put it into the hands of honourable solicitors. I assure you we
Transomes will not contend for what is not our own.'
'And this is what I have come to beg of you,' said Mrs Transome. 'It is
that you will come to Transome Court - and let us take full time to
arrange matters. Do oblige me: you shall not be teased more than you
like by an old woman: you shall do just as you please, and become
acquainted with your future home, si nce it is to be yours. I can tell
you a world of things that you will want to know; and the business
can proceed properly.'
'Do consent,' said Harold, with winning brevity.
Esther was flushed, and her eyes were bright. It was impossible for
her not to feel that the proposal was a more tempting step towards her
change of condition than she could have thought of beforehand. She
had forgotten that she was in any trouble. But she looked towards her
father, who was again stroking his chin, as was his habit when he was
doubting and deliberating.
'I hope you do not disapprove of Miss Lyon's granting us this favour?'
said Harold to the minister.
'I have nothing to oppose to it, sir, if my daughter's own mind is clear
as to her course.'
'You will come - now - with us,' sa id Mrs Transome, persuasively. 'You
will go back with us in the carriage.'
Harold was highly gratified with the perfection of his mother's manner
on this occasion, which he had looked forward to as difficult. Since he
had come home again, he had never seen her so much at her ease, or
with so much benignancy in her fa ce. The secret lay in the charm of
Esther's sweet young deference, a sort of charm that had not before
entered into Mrs Transome's elderly life. Esther's pretty behaviour, it
must be confessed, was not fed entirely from lofty moral sources: over
and above her really generous feeling, she enjoyed Mrs Transome's
accent, the high-bred quietness of her speech, the delicate odour of
her drapery. She had always thought that life must be particularly
easy if one could pass it among refined people; and so it seemed at
this moment. She wished, unmixedly, to go to Transome Court.
'Since my father has no objection,' she said, 'and you urge me so
kindly. But I must beg for time to pack up a few clothes.
'By all means,' said Mrs Transome. 'We are not at all pressed.'
When Esther had left the room, Harold said, 'Apart from our
immediate reason for coming, Mr Lyon, I could have wished to see you
about these unhappy consequences of the election contest. But you
will understand that I have been much preoccupied with private
affairs.'
'You have well said that the conseq uences are unhappy, sir. And but
for a reliance on something more than human calculation, I know not
which I should most bewail - th e scandal which wrong-dealing has
brought on right principles, or the snares which it laid for the feet of a
young man who is dear to me. ‘One soweth, and another reapeth,’ is a
verity that applies to evil as well as good.'
'You are referring to Felix Holt. I have not neglected steps to secure
the best legal help for the prisoners; but I am given to understand that
Holt refuses any aid from me. I hope he will not go rashly to work in
speaking in his own defence without any legal instruction. It is an
opprobrium of our law that no co unsel is allowed to plead for the
prisoner in cases of felony. A ready tongue may do a man as much
harm as good in a court of justi ce. He piques himself on making a
display, and displays a little too much.'
'Sir, you know him not,' said the little minister, in his deeper tone. 'He
would not accept, even if it were accorded, a defence wherein the truth
was screened or avoided - not from a vainglorious spirit of self-
exhibition, for he hath a singular directness and simplicity of speech;
but from an averseness to a profession wherein a man may without
shame seek to justify the wicked for reward, and take away the
righteousness of the righteous from him.'
'It's a pity a fine young fellow should do himself harm by fanatical
notions of that sort. I could at le ast have procured the advantage of
first-rate consultation. He didn't look to me like a dreamy personage.'
'Nor is he dreamy; rather, his excess lies in being too practical.'
'Well, I hope you will not encourag e him in such irrationality: the
question is not one of misrepresentation, but of adjusting fact, so as
to raise it to the power of evidence. Don't you see that?'
'I do, I do. But I distrust not Felix Holt's discernment in regard to his
own case. He builds not on doubtful things, and hath no illusory
hopes; on the contrary, he is of a too-scornful incredulity where I
would fain see a more childlike faith. But we will hold no belief
without action corresponding thereto; and the occasion of his return
to this his native place at a time which has proved fatal, was no other
than his resolve to hinder the sale of some drugs, which had chiefly
supported his mother, but which his better knowledge showed him to
be pernicious to the human frame. He undertook to support her by
his own labour: but, sir, I pray you to mark - and old as I am, I will
not deny that this young man instructs me herein - I pray you to
mark the poisonous confusion of good and evil which is the wide-
spreading effect of vicious prac tices. Through the use of undue
electioneering means - concerning which, however, I do not accuse
you farther than of having acted the part of him who washes his
hands when he delivers up to others the exercise of an iniquitous
power - Felix Holt is, I will not scruple to say, the innocent victim of a
riot; and that deed of strict honesty, whereby he took on himself the
charge of his aged mother, seems now to have deprived her of
sufficient bread, and is even an occasion of reproach to him from the
weaker brethren.'
'I shall be proud to supply her as amply as you think desirable,' said
Harold, not enjoying this lecture.
'I will pray you to speak of this question with my daughter, who, it
appears, may herself have large means at command, and would desire
to minister to Mistress Holt's need s with all friendship and delicacy.
For the present, I can take care that she lacks nothing essential.'
As Mr Lyon was speaking, Esther re-entered, equipped for her drive.
She laid her hand on her father's arm, and said, 'You will let my
pupils know at once, will you, father?'
'Doubtless, my dear,' said the old man, trembling a little under the
feeling that this departure of Esther's was a crisis. Nothing again
would be as it had been in their mutual life. But he feared that he was
being mastered by a too-tender self-regard, and struggled to keep
himself calm.
Mrs Transome and Harold had both risen.
'If you are quite ready, Miss Lyon,' said Harold, divining that the
father and daughter would like to have an unobserved moment, 'I will
take my mother to the carriage, and come back for you.'
When they were alone, Esther put her hands on her father's
shoulders, and kissed him.
'This will not be a grief to you, I hope, father? You think it is better
that I should go?'
'Nay, child, I am weak. But I would fain be capable of a joy quite apart
from the accidents of my aged earthly existence, which, indeed, is a
petty and almost dried-up fountain - whereas to the receptive soul the
river of life pauseth not, nor is diminished.'
'Perhaps you will see Felix Holt again, and tell him everything?'
'Shall I say aught to him for you?'
'O no; only that Job Tudge has a little flannel shirt and a box of
lozenges,' said Esther, smiling. 'Ah, I hear Mr Transome coming back.
I must say good-bye to Lyddy, else she will cry over my hard heart.'
In spite of all the grave thoughts that had been, Esther felt it a very
pleasant as well as new experience to be led to the carriage by Harold
Transome, to be seated on soft cush ions, and bowled along, looked at
admiringly and deferentially by a person opposite, whom it was
agreeable to look at in return, and talked to with suavity and
liveliness. Towards what prospect was that easy carriage really leading
her? She could not be always aski ng herself Mentor-like questions.
Her young bright nature was rather weary of the sadness that had
grown heavier in these last weeks, like a chill white mist hopelessly
veiling the day. Her fortune was begi nning to appear worthy of being
called good fortune. She had come to a new stage in her journey; a
new day had arisen on new scenes, and her young untired spirit was
full of curiosity.
Chapter 39
No man believes that many-textured knowledge and skill - as a just
idea of the solar system, or the power of painting flesh, or of reading
written harmonies - can come late and of a sudden; yet many will not
stick at believing that happiness can come at any day and hour solely
by a new disposition of events; though there is nought less capable of
a magical production than a mortal 's happiness, which is mainly a
complex of habitual relations and di spositions not to be wrought by
news from foreign parts, or any whir ling of fortune's wheel for one on
whose brow Time has written legibly.
SOME days after Esther's arrival at Transome Court, Denner, coming
to dress Mrs Transome before dinner - a labour of love for which she
had ample leisure now - found her mistress seated with more than
ever of that marble aspect of self-absorbed suffering, which to the
waiting-woman's keen observation had been gradually intensifying
itself during the past week. She had tapped at the door without having
been summoned, and she had ventured to enter though she had
heard no voice saying 'Come in.'
Mrs Transome had on a dark warm dressing-gown, hanging in thick
folds about her, and she was seated before a mirror which filled a
panel from the floor to the ceiling. The room was bright with the light
of the fire and of wax candles. For some reason, contrary to her usual
practice, Mrs Transome had herself unfastened her abundant grey
hair, which rolled backward in a pale sunless stream over her dark
dress. She was seated before the mirror apparently looking at herself,
her brow knit in one deep furrow, and her jewelled hands laid one
above the other on her knee. Probably she had ceased to see the
reflection in the mirror, for her eyes had the fixed wide-open look that
belongs not to examination, but to reverie. Motionless in that way, her
clear-cut features keeping distinct record of past beauty, she looked
like an image faded, dried, and bleached by uncounted suns, rather
than a breathing woman who had numbered the years as they passed,
and had a consciousness within he r which was the slow deposit of
those ceaseless rolling years.'
Denner, with all her ingrained and systematic reserve, could not help
showing signs that she was startled , when, peering from between her
half-closed eyelids, she saw th e motionless image in the mirror
opposite to her as she entered. Her gentle opening of the door had not
roused her mistress, to whom the sensations produced by Denner's
presence were as little disturbing as those of a favourite cat. But the
slight cry, and the start reflected in the glass, were unusual enough to
break the reverie: Mrs Transome moved, leaned back in her chair, and
said -
'So you're come at last, Denner?'
'Yes, madam; it is not late. I'm sorry you should have undone your
hair yourself.'
'I undid it to see what an old hag I am. These fine clothes you put on
me, Denner, are only a smart shroud.'
'Pray don't talk so, madam. If there's anybody doesn't think it pleasant
to look at you, so much the worse for them. For my part, I've seen no
young ones fit to hold up your tr ain. Look at your likeness down
below; and though you're older now, what signifies? I wouldn't be
Letty in the scullery because she's got red cheeks. She mayn't know
she's a poor creature, but I know it, and that's enough for me: I know
what sort of a dowdy dr aggletail she'll be in ten years' time. I would
change with nobody, madam. And if troubles were put up to market,
I'd sooner buy old than new. It's something to have seen the worst.'
'A woman never has seen the worst till she is old, Denner,' said Mrs
Transome, bitterly.
The keen little waiting-woman was not clear as to the cause of her
mistress's added bitterness; but she rarely brought herself to ask
questions, when Mrs Transome did not authorise them by beginning
to give her information. Banks the bailiff and the head-servant had
nodded and winked a good deal over the certainty that Mr Harold was
'none so fond' of Jermyn, but th is was a subject on which Mrs
Transome had never made up her mind to speak, and Denner knew
nothing definite. Again, she felt quite sure that there was some
important secret connected with Esther's presence in the house; she
suspected that the close Dominic knew the secret, and was more
trusted than she was, in spite of her forty years' service; but any
resentment on this ground would ha ve been an entertained reproach
against her mistress, inconsistent with Denner's creed and character.
She inclined to the belief that Esther was the immediate cause of the
new discontent.
'If there's anything worse coming to you, I should like to know what it
is, madam,' she said, after a moment's silence, speaking always in the
same low quick way, and keeping up her quiet labours. 'When I awake
at cock-crow, I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty
false. It's better to know you're robbed than to think one's going to be
murdered.'
'I believe you are the creature in the world that loves me best, Denner;
yet you will never understand what I suffered. It's of no use telling
you. There's no folly in you and no heartache. You are made of iron.
You have never had any trouble.'
'I've had some of your trouble, madam.'
'Yes, you good thing. But as a sick-nurse, that never caught the fever.
You never even had a child.'
'I can feel for things I never went through. I used to be sorry for the
poor French queen when I was young: I'd have lain cold for her to lie
warm. I know people have feelings according to their birth and station.
And you always took things to he art, madam, beyond anybody else.
But I hope there's nothing new, to make you talk of the worst.'
'Yes, Denner, there is - there is,' said Mrs Transome, speaking in a low
tone of misery, while she bent for her headdress to be pinned on.
'Is it this young lady?'
'Why, what do you think about her, Denner?' said Mrs Transome, in a
tone of more spirit, rather curious to hear what the old woman would
say.
'I don't deny she's graceful, and she has a pretty smile and very good
manners: it's quite unaccountable by what Banks says about her
father. I know nothing of those Treby townsfolk myself, but for my
part I'm puzzled. I'm fond of Mr Harold. I always shall be, madam. I
was at his bringing into the worl d, and nothing but his doing wrong
by you would turn me against him. But the servants all say he's in
love with Miss Lyon.'
'I wish it were true, Denner,' said Mrs Transome, energetically. 'I wish
he were in love with her, so that she could master him, and make him
do what she pleased.'
'Then it is not true - what they say?'
'Not true that she will ever master him. No woman ever will. He will
make her fond of him, and afraid of him. That's one of the things you
have never gone through, Denner. A woman's love is always freezing
into fear. She wants everything, she is secure of nothing. This girl has
a fine spirit - plenty of fire and pr ide and wit. Men like such captives,
as they like horses that champ the bit and paw the ground: they feel
more triumph in their mastery. What is the use of a woman's will? - if
she tries, she doesn't get it, and she ceases to be loved. God was cruel
when he made women.'
Denner was used to such outbursts as this. Her mistress's rhetoric
and temper belonged to her superior rank, her grand person, and her
piercing black eyes. Mrs Transome had a sense of impiety in her
words which made them all the more tempting to her impotent anger.
The waiting-woman had none of that awe which could be turned into
defiance: the Sacred Grove was a common thicket to her.
'It mayn't be good-luck to be a woman,' she said. 'But one begins with
it from a baby: one gets used to it. And I shouldn't like to be a man -
to cough so loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day, and be so
wasteful with meat and drink. They 're a coarse lot, I think. Then I
needn't make a trouble of this young lady, madam,' she added, after a
moment's pause.
'No, Denner. I like her. If that were all - I should like Harold to marry
her. It would be the best thing. If the truth were known - and it will be
known soon - the estate is hers by law - such law as it is. It's a
strange story: she's a Bycliffe really.'
Denner did not look amazed, but went on fastening her mistress's
dress, as she said -
'Well, madam, I was sure there was something wonderful at the
bottom of it. And turning the old la wsuits and everything else over in
my mind, I thought the law might have something to do with it. Then
she is a born lady?'
'Yes; she has good blood in her veins.'
'We talked that over in the housekeeper's room - what a hand and an
instep she has, and how her head is set on her shoulders - almost like
your own, madam. But her lightish complexion spoils her, to my
thinking. And Dominic said Mr Haro ld never admired that sort of
woman before. There's nothing that smooth fellow couldn't tell you if
he would: he knows the answers to riddles before they're made.
However, he knows how to hold his tongue; I'll say that for him. And
so do I, madam.'
'Yes, yes; you will not talk of it till other people are talking of it.'
'And so, if Mr Harold married her, it would save all fuss and mischief?'
'Yes - about the estate.'
'And he seems inclined; and she'll not refuse him, I'll answer for it.
And you like her, madam. There's everything to set your mind at rest.'
Denner was putting the finishing-touch to Mrs Transome's dress by
throwing an Indian scarf over her shoulders, and so completing the
contrast between the majestic lady in costume and the dishevelled
Hecuba-like woman whom she had found half an hour before.
'I am not at rest!' Mrs Transome sa id, with slow distinctness, moving
from the mirror to the window, where the blind was not drawn down,
and she could see the chill white la ndscape and the far-off unheeding
stars.
Denner, more distressed by her mistress's suffering than she could
have been by anything else, took up with the instinct of affection a
gold vinaigrette which Mrs Transome often liked to carry with her, and
going up to her put it into her hand gently. Mrs Transome grasped the
little woman's hand hard, and held it so.
'Denner,' she said, in a low tone, 'if I could choose at this moment, I
would choose that Harold should never have been born.'
'Nay, my dear' (Denner had only once before in her life said 'my dear'
to her mistress), 'it was a happiness to you then.'
'I don't believe I felt the happiness then as I feel the misery now. It is
foolish to say people can't feel much when they are getting old. Not
pleasure, perhaps - little comes. But they can feel they are forsaken -
why, every fibre in me seems to be a memory that makes a pang. They
can feel that all the love in their lives is turned to hatred or contempt.'
'Not mine, madam, not mine. Let what would be, I should want to live
for your sake, for fear you should have nobody to do for you as I
would.'
'Ah, then, you are a happy woman, Denner; you have loved somebody
for forty years who is old and weak now, and can't do without you.'
The sound of the dinner-gong resounded below, and Mrs Transome let
the faithful hand fall again.
Chapter 40
'She's beautiful; and therefore to be wooed:
She is a woman; therefore to be won.' - Henry VI.
IF Denner had had a suspicion that Esther's presence at Transome
Court was not agreeable to her mistress, it was impossible to entertain
such a suspicion with regard to the other members of the family.
Between her and little Harry there was an extraordinary fascination.
This creature, with the soft broa d brown cheeks, low forehead, great
black eyes, tiny well-defined nose, fierce biting tricks towards every
person and thing he disliked, and insistence on entirely occupying
those he liked, was a human specimen such as Esther had never seen
before, and she seemed to be equally original in Harry's experience. At
first sight her light complexion and her blue gown, probably also her
sunny smile and her hands stretched out towards him, seemed to
make a show for him as of a new sort of bird: he threw himself
backward against his 'Gappa', as he called old Mr Transome, and
stared at this new-comer with the gravity of a wild animal. But she
had no sooner sat down on the sofa in the library than he climbed up
to her, and began to treat her as an attractive object in natural
history, snatched up her curls with his brown fist, and, discovering
that there was a little ear under them, pinched it and blew into it,
pulled at her coronet of plaits , and seemed to discover with
satisfaction that it did not grow at the summit of her head, but could
be dragged down and altogether undone. Then finding that she
laughed, tossed him back, kissed, and pretended to bite him - in fact,
was an animal that understood fun - he rushed off and made Dominic
bring a small menagerie of white-mice, squirrels, and birds, with
Moro, the black spaniel, to make her acquaintance. Whomsoever
Harry liked, it followed that Mr Transome must like: 'Gappa', along
with Nimrod the retriever, was part of the menagerie, and perhaps
endured more than all the other live creatures in the way of being
tumbled about. Seeing that Esther bore having her hair pulled down
quite merrily, and that she was willing to be harnessed and beaten,
the old man began to confide in her, in his feeble, smiling, and rather
jerking fashion, Harry's remarkable feats: how he had one day, when
Gappa was asleep, unpinned a whole drawerful of beetles, to see if
they would fly away; then, disgusted with their stupidity, was about to
throw them all on the ground and stamp on them, when Dominic
came in and rescued these valuable specimens; also, how he had
subtly watched Mrs Transome at the cabinet where she kept her
medicines, and, when she had left it for a little while without locking
it, had gone to the drawers and scattered half the contents on the
floor. But what old Mr Transome thought the most wonderful proof of
an almost preter-natural cleverness was, that Harry would hardly ever
talk, but preferred making inarticula te noises, or combining syllables
after a method of his own.
'He can talk well enough if he likes,' said Gappa, evidently thinking
that Harry, like the monkeys, had deep reasons for his reticence.
'You mind him,' he added, nodding at Esther, and shaking with low-
toned laughter. 'You'll hear: he knows the right names of things well
enough, but he likes to make his own. He'll give you one all to yourself
before long.'
And when Harry seemed to have made up his mind distinctly that
Esther's name was 'Boo', Mr Transome nodded at her with triumphant
satisfaction, and then told her in a low whisper, looking round
cautiously beforehand, that Harr y would never call Mrs Transome
'Gamma,' but always 'Bite.'
'It's wonderful ! ' said he, laughing slyly.
The old man seemed so happy now in the new world created for him
by Dominic and Harry, that he would perhaps have made a holocaust
of his flies and beetles if it had be en necessary in order to keep this
living, lively kindness about him. He no longer confined himself to the
library, but shuffled along from room to room, staying and looking on
at what was going forward wherever he did not find Mrs Transome
alone.
To Esther the sight of this feeble-minded, timid, paralytic man, who
had long abdicated all mastery over the things that were his, was
something piteous. Certainly this had never been part of the furniture
she had imagined for the delightful aristocratic dwelling in her Utopia;
and the sad irony of such a lot impressed her the more because in her
father she was accustomed to age accompanied with mental acumen
and activity. Her thoughts went back in conjecture over the past life of
Mr and Mrs Transome, a couple so strangely different from each
other. She found it impossible to arrange their existence in the
seclusion of this fine park and in this lofty large-roomed house, where
it seemed quite ridiculous to be anything so small as a human being,
without finding it rather dull. Mr Transome had always had his
beetles, but Mrs Transome - ? It was not easy to conceive that the
husband and wife had ever been very fond of each other.
Esther felt at her ease with Mrs Transome: she was gratified by the
consciousness - for on this point Esther was very quick - that Mrs
Transome admired her, and looked at her with satisfied eyes. But
when they were together in the early days of her stay, the conversation
turned chiefly on what happened in Mrs Transome's youth - what she
wore when she was presented at Court - who were the most
distinguished and beautiful women at that time - the terrible
excitement of the French Revolution - the emigrants she had known,
and the history of various titled members of the Lingon family. And
Esther, from native delicacy, did not lead to more recent topics of a
personal kind. She was copiously in structed that the Lingon family
was better than that even of the elder Transomes, and was privileged
with an explanation of the various quarterings, which proved that the
Lingon blood had been continually enriched. Poor Mrs Transome, with
her secret bitterness and dread, still found a flavour in this sort of
pride; none the less because certain deeds of her own life had been in
fatal inconsistency with it. Besides, genealogies entered into her stock
of ideas, and her talk on such subjects was as necessary as the notes
of the linnet or the blackbird. She had no ultimate analysis of things
that went beyond blood and family - the Herons of Fenshore or the
Badgers of Hillbury. She had never seen behind the canvas with which
her life was hung. In the dim background there was the burning
mount and the tables of the law; in the foreground there was Lady
Debarry privately gossiping about her, and Lady Wyvern finally
deciding not to send her invitations to dinner. Unlike that Semiramis
who made laws to suit her practical licence, she lived, poor soul, in
the midst of desecrated sanctities , and of honours that looked
tarnished in the light of monotonous and weary suns. Glimpses of the
Lingon heraldry in their freshness were interesting to Esther; but it
occurred to her that when she had known about them a good while
they would cease to be succulent th emes of converse or meditation,
and Mrs Transome, having known them all along, might have felt a
vacuum in spite of them.
Nevertheless it was entertaining at present to be seated on soft
cushions with her netting before her, while Mrs Transome went on
with her embroidery, and told in that easy phrase, and with that
refined high-bred tone and accent which she possessed in perfection,
family stories that to Esther were like so many novelettes: what
diamonds were in the earl's fami ly, own cousins to Mrs Transome;
how poor Lady Sara's husband went off into jealous madness only a
month after their marriage, and dragged that sweet blue-eyed thing by
the hair; and how the brilliant Fanny, having married a country
parson, became so niggardly that she had gone about almost begging
for fresh eggs from the farmers' wives, though she had done very well
with her six sons, as there was a bishop and no end of interest in the
family, and two of them got appointments in India.
At present Mrs Transome did not touch at all on her own time of
privation, or her troubles with her eldest son, or on anything that lay
very close to her heart. She conversed with Esther, and acted the part
of hostess as she performed her toilette and went on with her
embroidery: these things were to be done whether one were happy or
miserable. Even the patriarch Job, if he had been a gentleman of the
modern West, would have avoided pi cturesque disorder and poetical
laments; and the friends who called on him, though not less disposed
than Bildad the Shuhite to hint that their unfortunate friend was in
the wrong, would have sat on chairs and held their hats in their
hands. The harder problems of our life have changed less than our
manners; we wrestle with the old sorrows, but more decorously.
Esther's inexperience prevented her from divining much about this
fine grey-haired woman, whom she could not help perceiving to stand
apart from the family group, as if there were some cause of isolation
for her both within and without. To her young heart there was a
peculiar interest in Mrs Transome. An elderly woman, whose beauty,
position, and graceful kindness towards herself, made deference to
her spontaneous, was a new figure in Esther's experience. Her quick
light movement was always ready to anticipate what Mrs Transome
wanted; her bright apprehension and silvery speech were always ready
to cap Mrs Transome's narratives or instructions even about doses
and liniments, with some lively commentary. She must have behaved
charmingly; for one day when she ha d tripped across the room to put
the screen just in the right place, Mrs Transome said, taking her
hand, 'My dear, you make me wish I had a daughter!'
That was pleasant; and so it was to be decked by Mrs Transome's own
hands in a set of turquoise ornaments, which became her wonderfully,
worn with a white Cashmere dress, which was also insisted on. Esther
never reflected that there was a double intention in these pretty ways
towards her; with young generosity , she was rather preoccupied by
the desire to prove that she herself entertained no low triumph in the
fact that she had rights prejudicial to this family whose life she was
learning. And besides, through all Mrs Transome's perfect manners
there pierced some indefinable indications of a hidden anxiety much
deeper than anything she could feel about this affair of the estate - to
which she often alluded slightly as a reason for informing Esther of
something. It was impossible to mistake her for a happy woman; and
young speculation is always stirred by discontent for which there is no
obvious cause. When we are older, we take the uneasy eyes and the
bitter lips more as a matter of course.
But Harold Transome was more communicative about recent years
than his mother was. He thought it well that Esther should know how
the fortune of his family had been drained by law expenses, owing to
suits mistakenly urged by her family ; he spoke of his mother's lonely
life and pinched circumstances, of her lack of comfort in her elder
son, and of the habit she had consequently acquired of looking at the
gloomy side of things. He hinted that she had been accustomed to
dictate, and that, as he had left her when he was a boy, she had
perhaps indulged the dream that he would come back a boy. She was
still sore on the point of his politics. These things could not be helped,
but, so far as he could, he wished to make the rest of her life as
cheerful as possible.
Esther listened eagerly, and took these things to heart. The claim to
an inheritance, the sudd en discovery of a right to a fortune held by
others, was acquiring a very distinct and unexpected meaning for her.
Every day she was getting more clearly into her imagination what it
would be to abandon her own past, and what she would enter into in
exchange for it; what it would be to disturb a long possession, and
how difficult it was to fix a point at which the disturbance might
begin, so as to be contemplated without pain.
Harold Transome's thoughts turned on the same subject, but
accompanied by a different state of feeling and with more definite
resolutions. He saw a mode of reconciling all difficulties which looked
pleasanter to him the longer he looked at Esther. When she had been
hardly a week in the house, he had made up his mind to marry her;
and it had never entered into that mind that the decision did not rest
entirely with his inclination. It was not that he thought slightly of
Esther's demands; he saw that she would require considerable
attractions to please her, and th at there were difficulties to be
overcome. She was clearly a girl wh o must be wooed; but Harold did
not despair of presenting the requis ite attractions, and the difficulties
gave more interest to the wooing than he could have believed. When
he had said that he would not marry an Englishwoman, he had
always made a mental reservation in favour of peculiar circumstances;
and now the peculiar circumstances were come. To be deeply in love
was a catastrophe not likely to happen to him; but he was readily
amorous. No woman could make him miserable, but he was sensitive
to the presence of women, and was kind to them; not with grimaces,
like a man of mere gallantry, but beamingly, easily, like a man of
genuine good-nature. And each da y that he was near Esther, the
solution of all difficulties by marriage became a more pleasing
prospect; though he had to confess to himself that the difficulties did
not diminish on a nearer view, in spite of the flattering sense that she
brightened at his approach.
Harold was not one to fail in a purp ose for want of assiduity. After an
hour or two devoted to business in the morning, he went to look for
Esther, and if he did not find he r at play with Harry and old Mr
Transome, or chatting with his mother, he went into the drawing-
room, where she was usually either seated with a book on her knee
and 'making a bed for her cheek' with one little hand, while she looked
out of the window, or else standing in front of one of the full-length
family portraits with an air of rumi nation. Esther found it impossible
to read in these days; her life was a book which she seemed herself to
be constructing - trying to make character clear before her, and
looking into the ways of destiny.
The active Harold had almost always something definite to propose by
way of filling the time: if it were fine, she must walk out with him and
see the grounds; and when the snow melted and it was no longer
slippery, she must get on horseback and learn to ride. If they stayed
indoors, she must learn to play at billiards, or she must go over the
house and see the pictures he had hung anew, or the costumes he
had brought from the East, or come into his study and look at the
map of the estate, and hear what - if it had remained in his family - he
had intended to do in every corner of it in order to make the most of
its capabilities.
About a certain time in the morning Esther had learned to expect him.
Let every woocr make himself strongly expected; he may succeed by
dint of being absent, but hardly in the first instance. One morning
Harold found her in the drawing-room, leaning against a consol table,
and looking at the full-length portrait of a certain Lady Betty
Transome, who had lived a century and a half before, and had the
usual charm of ladies in Sir Peter Lely's style.
'Don't move, pray,' he said on en tering; 'you look as if you were
standing for your own portrait.'
'I take that as an insinuation,' said Esther, laughing, and moving
towards her seat on an ottoman near the fire, 'for I notice almost all
the portraits are in a conscious, affected attitude. That fair Lady Betty
looks as if she had been drilled into that posture, and had not will
enough of her own ever to move again unless she had a little push
given to her.'
'She brightens up that panel well with her long satin skirt,' said
Harold, as he followed Esther, 'but alive I daresay she would have
been less cheerful company.'
'One would certainly think that she had just been unpacked from
silver paper. Ah, how chivalrous you are!' said Esther, as Harold,
kneeling on one knee, held her silken netting-stirrup for hcr to put her
foot through. She had often fancied pleasant scenes in which such
homage was rendered to her, and the homage was not disagreeable
now it was really come; but, strangely enough, a little darting
sensation at that moment was accompanied by the vivid remembrance
of some one who had never paid the least attention to her foot. There
had been a slight blush, such as often came and went rapidly, and
she was silent a moment. Harold naturally believed that it was he
himself who was filling the field of vision He would have liked to place
himself on the ottoman near Esther, and behave very much more like
a lover; but he took a chair opposite to her at a circumspect distance.
He dared not do otherwise. Along with Esther's playful charm she
conveyed an impression of person al pride and high spirit which
warned Harold's acuteness that in the delicacy of their present
position he might easily make a fa lse move and offend her. A woman
was likely to be credulous about adoration, and to find no difficulty in
referring it to her intrinsic attractions; but Esther was too dangerously
quick and critical not to discern the least awkwardness that looked
like offering her marriage as a convenient compromise for himself.
Beforehand, he might have said that such characteristics as hers were
not lovable in a woman; but, as it was, he found that the hope of
pleasing her had a piquancy quite new to him.
'I wonder,' said Esther, breaking her silence in her usual light silvery
tones - 'I wonder whether the woman who looked in that way ever felt
any troubles. I see there are two old ones upstairs in the billiard-room
who have only got fat; the expression of their faces is just of the same
sort.'
'A woman ought never to have any trouble. There should always be a
man to guard her from it.' (Harold Transome was masculine and
fallible; he had incautiously sat down this morning to pay his
addresses by talk about nothing in particular; and, clever experienced
man as he was, he fell into nonsense.)
'But suppose the man himself got into trouble - you would wish her to
mind about that. Or suppose,' added Esther, suddenly looking up
merrily at Harold, 'the man himself was troublesome?'
'O you must not strain probabilities in that way. The generality of men
are perfect. Take me, for example.'
'You are a perfect judge of sauces,' said Esther, who had her triumphs
in letting Harold know that she was capable of taking notes.
'That is perfection number one. Pray go on.'
'O, the catalogue is too long - I should be tired before I got to your
magnificent ruby ring and your gloves always of the right colour.'
'If you would let me tell you your perfections, I should not be tired.'
'That is not complimentary; it means that the list is short.'
'No; it means that the list is pleasant to dwell upon.'
'Pray don't begin,' said Esther, with her pretty toss of the head; 'it
would be dangerous to our good understanding. The person I liked
best in the world was one who did nothing but scold me and tell me of
my faults.'
When Esther began to speak, she meant to do no more than make a
remote unintelligible allusion, feeling, it must be owned, a naughty
will to flirt and be saucy, and thwart Harold's attempts to be felicitous
in compliment. But she had no sooner uttered the words than they
seemed to her like a confession. A deep flush spread itself over her
face and neck, and the sense that she was blushing went on
deepening her colour. Harold felt himself unpleasantly illuminated as
to a possibility that had never yet occurred to him. His surprise made
an uncomfortable pause, in which Esther had time to feel much
vexation.
'You speak in the past tense,' said Harold, at last; 'yet I am rather
envious of that person. I shall never be able to win your regard in the
same way. Is it any one at Treby? Because in that case I can inquire
about your faults.'
'O you know I have always lived among grave people,' said Esther,
more able to recover herself now she was spoken to. 'Before I came
home to be with my father I was nothing but a school-girl first, and
then a teacher in different stages of growth. People in those
circumstances are not usually flatte red. But there are varieties in
fault-finding. At our Paris school th e master I liked best was an old
man who stormed at me terribly when I read Racine, but yet showed
that he was proud of me.'
Esther was getting quite cool again. But Harold was not entirely
satisfied; if there was any obstacle in his way, he wished to know
exactly what it was.
'That must have been a wretched life for you at Treby,' he said, - 'a
person of your accomplishments.'
'I used to be dreadfully disconten ted,' said Esther, much occupied
with mistakes she had made in her netting. 'But I was becoming less
so. I have had time to get rather wise, you know; I am two-and-
twenty.'
'Yes,' said Harold, rising and walking a few paces backwards and
forwards, 'you are past your majo rity; you are empress of your own
fortunes - and more besides.'
'Dear me,' said Esther, letting her work fall, and leaning back against
the cushions; 'I don't think I know very well what to do with my
empire.'
'Well,' said Harold, pausing in front of her, leaning one arm on the
mantelpiece, and speaking very gravely, 'I hope that in any case, since
you appear to have no near relative who understands affairs, you will
confide in me, and trust me with all your intentions as if I had no
other personal concern in the matter than a regard for you. I hope you
believe me capable of acting as the guardian of your interest, even
where it turns out to be inevitably opposed to my own.'
'I am sure you have given me reason to believe it,' said Esther, with
seriousness, putting out her hand to Harold. She had not been left in
ignorance that he had had opportunities twice offered of stifling her
claims.
Harold raised the hand to his lips, but dared not retain it more than
an instant. Still the sweet relian ce in Esther's manner made an
irresistible temptation to him. After standing still a moment or two,
while she bent over her work, he glided to the ottoman and seated
himself close by her, looking at her busy hands.
'I see you have made mistakes in your work,' he said, bending still
nearer, for he saw that she was conscious yet not angry.
'Nonsense I you know nothing about it,' said Esther, laughing, and
crushing up the soft silk under he r palms. 'Those blunders have a
design in them.'
She looked round, and saw a handso me face very near her. Harold
was looking, as he felt, thoroughly enamoured of this bright woman,
who was not at all to his preconceived taste. Perhaps a touch of
hypothetic jealousy now helped to heighten the effect. But he
mastered all indiscretion, and only looked at her as he said -
'I am wondering whether you have any deep wishes and secrets that I
can't guess.'
'Pray don't speak of my wishes,' said Esther, quite overmastered by
this new and apparently involuntary manifestation in Harold; 'I could
not possibly tell you one at this mo ment - I think I shall never find
them out again. O yes she said, abruptly, struggling to relieve herself
from the oppression of unintelligible feelings - 'I do know one wish
distinctly. I want to go and see my father. He writes me word that all
is well with him, but still I want to see him.' 'You shall be driven there
when you like.'
'May I go now - I mean as soon as it is convenient?' said Esther,
rising.
'I will give the order immediately, if you wish it,' said Harold,
understanding that the audience was broken up.
Chapter 41
He rates me as a merchant does the wares
He will not purchase - 'quality not high I -
'Twill lose its colour opened to the sun,
Has no aroma, and, in fine, is naught -
I barter not for such commodities -
There is no ratio betwixt sand and gems.'
'Tis wicked judgment ! for the soul can grovv,
As embryos, that live and move but blindly,
Burst from the dark, emerge regenerate,
And lead a life of vision and of choice.
ESTHER did not take the carriage into Malthouse Lane, but left it to
wait for her outside the town; and when she entered the house she
put her finger on her lip to Lyddy and ran lightly upstairs. She wished
to surprise her father by this visit, and she succeeded. The little
minister was just then almost surro unded by a wall of books, with
merely his head peeping above them, being much embarrassed to find
a substitute for tables and desks on which to arrange the volumes he
kept open for reference. He was absorbed in mastering all those
painstaking interpretations of the Book of Daniel, which are by this
time well gone to the limbo of mistaken criticism; and Esther, as she
opened the door softly, heard hi m rehearsing aloud a passage in
which he declared, with some parenthetic provisoes, that he conceived
not how a perverse ingenuity could blunt the edge of prophetic
explicitness, or how an open mind could fail to see in the chronology
of 'the little horn' the resplend ent lamp of an inspired symbol
searching out the germinal growth of an antichristian power.
'You will not like me to interrupt you, father?' said Esther slyly.
'Ah, my beloved child!' he exclaimed, upsetting a pile of books, and
thus unintentionally making a convenient breach in his wall, through
which Esther could get up to him and kiss him. 'Thy appearing is as a
joy despaired of. I had thought of thee as the blinded think of the
daylight - which indeed is a thing to rejoice in, like all other good,
though we see it not nigh.'
'Are you sure you have been as well and comfortable as you said you
were in your letters?' said Esther, seating herself close in front of her
father, and laying her hand on his shoulder.
'I wrote truly, my dear, according to my knowledge at the time. But to
an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water
poured on the deep. It seems now that all has been as usual, except
my studies, which have gone somewhat curiously into prophetic
history. But I fear you will rebuke me for my negligent apparel,' said
the little man, feeling in front of Esther's brightness like a bat
overtaken by the morning.
'That is Lyddy's fault, who sits crying over her want of Christian
assurance instead of brushing your clothes and putting out your
clean cravat. She is always saying her righteousness is filthy rags, and
really I don't think that is a very strong expression for it. I'm sure it is
dusty clothes and furniture.'
'Nay, my dear, your playfulness gl ances too severely on our faithful
Lyddy. Doubtless I am myself deficient, in that I do not aid her infirm
memory by admonition. But now tell me aught that you have left
untold about yourself Your heart has gone out somewhat towards this
family - the old man and the child, whom I had not reckoned of?'
'Yes, father. It is more and more difficult to me to see how I can make
up my mind to disturb these people at all.'
'Something should doubtless be devised to lighten the loss and the
change to the aged father and mother. I would have you in any case
seek to temper a vicissitude, which is nevertheless a providential
arrangement not to be wholly set aside.'
'Do you think, father - do you feel assured that a case of inheritance
like this of mine is a sort of providential arrangement that makes a
command?'
'I have so held it,' said Mr Lyon , solemnly; 'in all my meditations I
have so held it. For you have to consider, my dear, that you have been
led by a peculiar path, and into experience which is not ordinarily the
lot of those who are seated in high places; and what I have hinted to
you already in my letters on this head, I shall wish on a future
opportunity to enter into more at large.'
Esther was uneasily silent. On this great question of her lot she saw
doubts and difficulties, in which it seemed as if her father could not
help her. There was no illumination for her in this theory of
providential arrangement. She said suddenly (what she had not
thought of at all suddenly) -
'Have you been again to see Felix Holt, father? You have not
mentioned him in your letters.'
'I have been since I last wrote, my dear, and I took his mother with
me, who, I fear, made the time heavy to him with her plaints. But
afterwards I carried her away to th e house of a brother minister of
Loamford, and returned to Felix, and then we had much discourse.'
'Did you tell him of everything that has happened - I mean about me -
about the Transomes?'
'Assuredly I told him, and he listened as one astonished. For he had
much to hear, knowing nought of your birth, and that you had any
other father than Rufus Lyon. 'Tis a narrative I trust I shall not be
called on to give to others; but I was not without satisfaction in
unfolding the truth to this young man, who hath wrought himself into
my affection strangely - I would fain hope for ends that will be a
visible good in his less way-worn life, when mine shall be no longer.'
'And you told him how the Transomes had come, and that I was
staying at Transome Court?'
'Yes, I told these things with some particularity, as is my wont
concerning what hath imprinted itself on my mind.' 'What did Felix
say?'
'Truly, my dear, nothing desirable to recite,' said Mr Lyon, rubbing his
hand over his brow.
'Dear father, he did say something, and you always remember what
people say. Pray tell me; I want to know.'
'It was a hasty remark, and rather escaped him than was consciously
framed. He said, ‘Then she will marry Transome; that is what
Transome means.’ '
'That was all?' said Esther, turning rather pale, and biting her lip with
the determination that the tears should not start.
'Yes, we did not go further into that branch of the subject. I
apprehend there is no warrant for his seeming prognostic, and I
should not be without disquiet if I thought otherwise. For I confess
that in your accession to this great position and property, I
contemplate with hopeful satisfaction your remaming attached to that
body of congregational Dissent, which, as I hold, hath retained most
of pure and primitive discipline. Your education and peculiar history
would thus be seen to have coincided with a long train of events in
making this family property a means of honouring and illustrating a
purer form of Christianity than th at which hath unhappily obtained
the pre-eminence in this land. I speak, my child, as you know, always
in the hope that you will fully join our communion; and this dear wish
of my heart - nay, this urgent prayer - would seem to be frustrated by
your marriage with a man, of whom there is at least no visible
indication that he would unite himself to our body.'
If Esther had been less agitated, she would hardly have helped smiling
at the picture her father's words suggested of Harold Transome
'joining the church' in Malthou se Yard. But she was too seriously
preoccupied with what Felix had said, which hurt her in a two-edged
fashion that was highly significant. First, she was angry with him for
daring to say positively whom she would marry; secondly, she was
angry at the implication that there was from the
first a cool deliberate design in Harold Transome to marry her. Esther
said to herself that she was quite capable of discerning Harold
Transome's disposition. and judging of his conduct. She felt sure he
was generous and open. It did not lower him in her opinion that since
circumstances had brought them together he evidently admired her -
was in love with her - in short, desired to marry her; and she thought
that she discerned the delicacy which hindered him from being more
explicit. There is no point on which young women are more easily
piqued than this of their sufficiency to judge the men who make love
to them. And Esther's generous nature delighted to believe in
generosity. All these thoughts were making a tumult in her mind while
her father was suggesting the radiance her lot might cast on the cause
of congregational Dissent. She heard what he said, and remembered it
afterwards, but she made no reply at present, and chose rather to
start up in search of a brush - an action which would seem to her
father quite a usual sequence with her. It served the purpose of
diverting him from a lengthy subject.
'Have you yet spoken with Mr Transome concerning Mistress Holt, my
dear?' he said, as Esther was moving about the room. 'I hinted to him
that you would best decide how assistance should be tendered to her.'
'No, father, we have not approached the subject. Mr Transome may
have forgotten it, and, for several reasons, I would rather not talk of
this - of money matters to him at present. There is money due to me
from the Lukyns and the Pendrells.'
'They have paid it,' said Mr Lyon, opening his desk. 'I have it here
ready to deliver to you.'
'Keep it, father, and pay Mrs Holt's rent with it, and do anything else
that is wanted for her. We must consider everything temporary now,'
said Esther, enveloping her father in a towel, and beginning to brush
his auburn fringe of hair, while he shut his eyes in preparation for
this pleasant passivity. 'Everything is uncertain - what may become of
Felix - what may become of us all. O dear!' she went on, changing
suddenly to laughing merriment, 'I am beginning to talk like Lyddy, I
think.'
'Truly,' said Mr Lyon, smiling, 'the uncertainty of things is a text
rather too wide and obvious for frui tful application; and to discourse
of it is, as one might say, to bottle up the air, and make a present of it
to those who are already standing out of doors.'
'Do you think,' said Esther, in the course of their chat, 'that the Treby
people know at all about the reasons of my being at Transome Court?'
'I have had no sign thereof; and indeed there is no one, as it appears,
who could make the story public. The man Christian is away in
London with Mr Debarry, parliament now beginning; and Mr Jermyn
would doubtless respect the confidence of the Transomes. I have not
seen him lately. I know nothing of his movements. And so far as my
own speech is concerned, and my strict command to Lyddy, I have
withheld the means of information even as to your having returned to
Transome Court in the carriage, not wishing to give any occasion to
solicitous questioning till time hath somewhat inured me. But it hath
got abroad that you are there, and is the subject of conjectures,
whereof, I imagine, the chief is, that you are gone as companion to
Mistress Transome; for some of our friends have already hinted a
rebuke to me that I should permit your taking a position so little likely
to further your spiritual welfare.'
'Now, father, I think I shall be obli ged to run away from you, not to
keep the carriage too long,' said Esther, as she finished her reforms in
the minister's toilette. 'You look be autiful now, and I must give Lyddy
a little lecture before I go.'
'Yes, my dear; I would not detain you, seeing that my duties demand
me. But take with you this Treatise, which I have purposely selected.
It concerns all the main questions between ourselves and the
establishment - government, discipline, state-support. It is seasonable
that you should give a nearer attent ion to these polemics, lest you be
drawn aside by the fallacious association of a state church with
elevated rank.'
Esther chose to take the volume submissively, rather than to adopt
the ungraceful sincerity of saying that she was unable at present to
give her mind to the original functions of a bishop, or the comparative
merit of endowments and voluntaryism. But she did not run her eyes
over the pages during her solitary drive to get a foretaste of the
argument, for she was entirely occu pied with Felix Holt's prophecy
that she would marry Harold Transome.
Chapter 42
'Thou sayst it, and not I; for thou hast done
The ugly deed that made these ugly words.'
SOPHOCLES: Electra.
'Yea, it becomes a man
To cherish memory, where he had delight.
For kindness is the natural birth of kindness.
Whose soul records not the great debt of joy,
Is stamped for ever an ignoble man.'
SOPHOCLES: Ajax.
IT SO happened that, on the morning of the day when Esther went to
see her father, Jermyn had not yet heard of her presence at Transome
Court. One fact conducing to keep him in this ignorance was, that
some days after his critical interview with Harold - days during which
he had been wondering how long it would be before Harold made up
his mind to sacrifice the luxury of satisfied anger for the solid
advantage of securing fortune and position - he was peremptorily
called away by business to the so uth of England, and was obliged to
inform Harold by letter of his absence. He took care also to notify his
return; but Harold made no sign in reply. The days passed without
bringing him any gossip concerning Esther's visit, for such gossip was
almost confined to Mr Lyon's co ngregation, her Church pupils, Miss
Louisa Jermyn among them, having been satisfied by her father's
written statement that she was gone on a visit of uncertain duration.
But on this day of Esther's call in Malthouse Yard, the Miss Jermyns
in their walk saw her getting into the Transome's carriage, which they
had previously observed to be waiting, and which they now saw
bowled along on the road towards Litt le Treby. It followed that only a
few hours later the news reached the astonished ears of Matthew
Jermyn.
Entirely ignorant of those converging indications and small links of
incident which had raised Christia n's conjectures, and had gradually
contributed to put him in possession of the facts; ignorant too of some
busy motives in the mind of his obliged servant Johnson; Jermyn was
not likely to see at once how the momentous information that Esther
was the surviving Bycliffe could possibly have reached Harold. His
daughters naturally leaped, as others had done, to the conclusion that
the Transomes, seeking a governess for little Harry, had had their
choice directed to Esther, and observed that they must have attracted
her by a high salary to induce her to take charge of such a small
pupil; though of course it was im portant that his English and French
should be carefully attended to from the first. Jermyn, hearing this
suggestion, was not without a momentary hope that it might be true,
and that Harold was still safely unconscious of having under the same
roof with him the legal claimant of the family estate.
But a mind in the grasp of a terribl e anxiety is not credulous of easy
solutions. The one stay that bears up our hopes is sure to appear frail,
and if looked at long will seem to totter. Too much depended on that
unconsciousness of Harold's; and although Jermyn did not see the
course of things that could have disclosed and combined the various
items of knowledge which he had imagined to be his own secret, and
therefore his safeguard, he saw quite clearly what was likely to be the
result of the disclosure. Not only would Harold Transome be no longer
afraid of him, but also, by marrying Esther (and Jermyn at once felt
sure of this issue), he would be triumphantly freed from my
unpleasant consequences, and could pursue much at his ease the
gratification of ruining Matthew Jermyn. The prevision of an enemy's
triumphant case is in any case sufficiently irritating to hatred, and
there were reasons why it was peculiarly exasperating here; but
Jermyn had not the leisure now for mere fruitless emotion; he had to
think of a possible device which might save him from imminent ruin -
not an indefinite adversity, but a ruin in detail, which his thoughts
painted out with the sharpest, ugliest intensity. A man of sixty, with
an unsuspicious wife and daughters capable of shrieking and fainting
at a sudden revelation, and of looking at him reproachfully in their
daily misery under a shabby lot to which he had reduced them - with
a mind and with habits dried hard by the years - with no glimpse of
an endurable standing-g round except where he could domineer and
be prosperous according to the ambitions of pushing middle-class
gentility, - such a man is likely to find the prospect of worldly ruin
ghastly enough to drive him to the most uninviting means of escape.
He will probably prefer any privat e scorn that will save him from
public infamy or that will leave him money in his pocket, to the
humiliation and hardship of new serv itude in old age, a shabby hat,
and a melancholy hearth, where the firing must be used and the
women look sad. But though a man may be willing to escape through
a sewer, a sewer with an outlet into the dry air is not always at hand.
Running away, especially when spok en of as absconding, seems at a
distance to offer a good modern substitute for the right of sanctuary;
but seen closely, it is often found inconvenient and scarcely possible.
Jermyn, on thoroughly considering his position, saw that he had no
very agreeable resources at command. But he soon made up his mind
what he would do next. He wrote to Mrs Transome requesting her to
appoint an hour in which he could see her privately: he knew she
would understand that it was to be an hour when Harold was not at
home. As he sealed the letter, he indulged a faint hope that in this
interview he might be assured of Esther's birth being unknown at
Transome Court; but in the worst case, perhaps some help might be
found in Mrs Transome. To such uses may tender relations come
when they have ceased to be tender! The Hazaels of our world who are
pushed on quickly against their preconceived confidence in
themselves to do doglike actions by the sudden suggestion of a wicked
ambition, are much fewer than those who are led on through the
years by the gradual demands of a selfishness which has spread its
fibres far and wide through the intr icate vanities and sordid cares of
an everyday existence.
In consequence of that letter to Mrs Transome, Jennyn was two days
afterwards ushered into the smaller drawing room at Transome Court.
It was a charming little room in its refurbished condition: it had two
pretty inlaid cabinets, great china va ses with contents that sent forth
odours of paradise, groups of flowers in oval frames on the walls, and
Mrs Transome's own portrait in th e evening costume of 1800, with a
garden in the background. That brilliant young woman looked
smilingly down on Mr Jermyn as he passed in front of the fire; and at
present hers was the only gaze in the room. He could not help meeting
the gaze as he waited, holding his hat behind him - could not help
seeing many memories lit up by it; but the strong bent of his mind
was to go on arguing each memory into a claim, and to see in the
regard others had for him a merit of his own. There had been plenty of
roads open to him when he was a young man; perhaps if he had not
allowed himself to be determined (chiefly, of course, by the feelings of
others, for of what effect would his own feelings have been without
them?) into the road he actually took, he might have done better for
himself. At any rate, he was likely at last to get the worst of it, and it
was he who had most reason to complain. The fortunate Jason, as we
know from Euripides, piously than ked the goddess, and saw clearly
that he was not at all obliged to Medea: Jermyn was perhaps not
aware of the precedent, but thought out his own freedom from
obligation and the indebtedness of others towards him with a native
faculty not inferior to Jason's. Before three minutes had passed,
however, as if by some sorcery, the brilliant smiling young woman
above the mantel-piece seemed to be appearing at the doorway
withered and frosted by many wint ers, and with lips and eyes from
which the smile had departed. Jermyn advanced, and they shook
hands, but neither of them said anything by way of greeting. Mrs
Transome seated herself, and pointed to a chair opposite and near
her.
'Harold has gone to Loamford,' she said, in a subdued tone. 'You had
something particular to say to me?'
'Yes,' said Jermyn, with his soft and deferential air. 'The last time I
was here I could not take the opportunity of speaking to you. But I am
anxious to know whether you are aw are of what has passed between
me and Harold?'
'Yes, he has told me everything.'
'About his proceedings against me? and the reason he stopped them?'
'Yes: have you had notice that he has begun them again?'
'No,' said Jermyn, with a very unpleasant sensation.
'Of course he will now,' said Mrs Tr ansome. 'There is no reason in his
mind why he should not.'
'Has he resolved to risk the estate then?'
'He feels in no danger on that score. And if there were, the danger
doesn't depend on you. The most likely thing is, that he will marry
this girl.'
'He knows everything then?' said Jermyn, the expression of his face
getting clouded.
'Everything. It's of no use for you to think of mastering him: you can't
do it. I used to wish Harold to be fortunate - and he is fortunate,' said
Mrs Transome, with intense bitterness. 'It's not my star that he
inherits.'
'Do you know how he came by the information about this girl?'
'No; but she knew it all before we spoke to her. It's no secret.'
Jermyn was confounded by this hopeless frustration to which he had
no key. Though he thought of Chri stian, the thought shed no light;
but the more fatal point was clear: he held no secret that could help
him.
'You are aware that these Chancery proceedings may ruin me?'
'He told me they would. But if you are imagining that I can do
anything, dismiss the notion. I have told him as plainly as I dare that I
wish him to drop all public quarrel with you, and that you could make
an arrangement without scandal. I can do no more. He will not listen
to me; he doesn't mind about my feelings. He cares more for Mr
Transome than he does for me. He will not listen to me any more than
if I were an old ballad-singer.'
'It's very hard on me, I know,' said Jermyn, in the tone with which a
man flings out a reproach
'I besought you three months ago to bear anything rather than quarrel
with him.'
'I have not quarrelled with him. It is he who has been always seeking a
quarrel with me. I have borne a good deal - more than any one else
would. He set his teeth against me from the first.'
'He saw things that annoyed him - and men are not like women,' said
Mrs Transome. There was a bitter innuendo in that truism.
'It's very hard on me - I know that,' said Jermyn, with an
intensification of his previous tone, rising and walking a step or two,
then turning and laying his hand on the back of the chair. 'Of course
the law in this case can't in the least represent the justice of the
matter. I made a good many sacrifices in times past. I gave up a great
deal of fine business for the sake of attending to the family affairs, and
in that lawsuit they would have gone to rack and ruin if it hadn't been
for me.'
He moved away again, laid down his hat, which he had been
previously holding, and thrust his hands into his pockets as he
returned. Mrs Transome sat motionless as marble, and almost as
pale. Her hands lay crossed on her knees. This man, young, slim, and
graceful, with a selfishness which then took the form of homage to
her, had at one time kneeled to he r and kissed those hands fervently;
and she had thought there was a poet ry in such passion beyond any
to be found in everyday domesticity.
'I stretched my conscience a good deal in that affair of Bycliffe, as you
know perfectly well. I told you everything at the time. I told you I was
very uneasy about those witnesses, and about getting him thrown into
prison. I know it's the blackest thing anybody could charge me with, if
they knew my life from beginning to end; and I should never have
done it, if I had not been under an infatuation such as makes a man
do anything. What did it signify to me about the loss of the lawsuit? I
was a young bachelor - I had the world before me.'
'Yes,' said Mrs Transome, in a low tone. 'It was a pity you didn't make
another choice.'
'What would have become of you?' said Jermyn, carried along a
climax, like other self-justifiers. 'I had to think of you. You would not
have liked me to make another choice then.'
'Clearly,' said Mrs Transome, with concentrated bitterness, but still
quietly; 'the greater mistake was mine.'
Egoism is usually stupid in a dialogue; but Jermyn's did not make
him so stupid that he did not feel the edge of Mrs Transome's words.
They increased his irritation.
'I hardly see that,' he rcplied, with a slight laugh of scorn. 'You had an
estate and a position to save, to go no further. I remember very well
what you said to me - ‘A clever lawyer can do anything if he has the
will; if it's impossible, he will make it possible. And the property is
sure to be Harold's some day.’ He was a baby then.'
'I remember most things a little too well: you had better say at once
what is your object in recalling them.'
'An object that is nothing more than justice. With the relation I stood
in, it was not likely I should think myself bound by all the forms that
are made to bind strangers. I had often immense trouble to raise the
money necessary to pay off debts and carry on the affairs; and, as I
said before, I had given up other lines of advancement which would
have been open to me if I had not stayed in this neighbourhood at a
critical time when I was fresh to the world. Anybody who knew the
whole circumstances would say that my being hunted and run down
on the score of my past transactions with regard to the family affairs,
is an abominably unjust and unnatural thing.'
Jermyn paused a moment, and then added, 'At my time of life ... and
with a family about me - and after what has passed ... I should have
thought there was nothing you would care more to prevent.'
'I do care. It makes me miserable. That is the extent of my power - to
feel miserable.'
'No, it is not the extent of your power. You could save me if you would.
It is not to be supposed that Harold would go on against me ... if he
knew the whole truth.'
Jermyn had sat down before he uttered the last words. He had
lowered his voice slightly. He had the air of one who thought that he
had prepared the way for an understanding. That a man with so much
sharpness, with so much suavity at command - a man who piqued
himself on his persuasiveness toward s women, - should behave just
as Jermyn did on this occasion, would be surprising, but for the
constant experience that temper an d selfish insensibility will defeat
excellent gifts - will make a sensible person shout when shouting is
out of place, and will make a po lished man rude when his polish
might be of eminent use to him.
As Jermyn, sitting down and leaning forward with an elbow on his
knee, uttered his last words - 'if he knew the whole truth' - a slight
shock seemed to pass through Mrs Transome's hitherto motionless
body, followed by a sudden light in her eyes, as in an animal's about
to spring.
'And you expect me to tell him?' she said, not loudly, but yet with a
clear metallic ring in her voice.
'Would it not be right for him to know?' said Jermyn, in a more bland
and persuasive tone than he had yet used.
Perhaps some of the most terrible ir ony of the human lot is this of a
deep truth coming to be uttered by lips that have no right to it.
'I will never tell him!' said Mrs Transome, starting up, her whole frame
thrilled with a passion that seemed almost to make her young again.
Her hands hung beside her clenched tightly, her eyes and lips lost the
helpless repressed bitterness of discontent, and seemed suddenly fed
with energy. 'You reckon up your sacrifices for me: you have kept a
good account of them, and it is need ful; they are some of them what
no one else could guess or find out. But you made your sacrifices
when they seemed pleasant to you; when you told me they were your
happiness; when you told me that it was I who stooped, and I who
bestowed favours.'
Jermyn rose too, and laid his hand on the back of the chair. He had
grown visibly paler, but seemed about to speak.
'Don't speak!' Mrs Transome said pe remptorily. 'Don't open your lips
again. You have said enough; I will speak now. I have made sacrifices
too, but it was when I knew that they were not my happiness. It was
after I saw that I had stooped - af ter I saw that your tenderness had
turned into calculation - after I sa w that you cared for yourself only,
and not for me. I heard your explanations - of your duty in life - of our
mutual reputation - of a virtuous young lady attached to you. I bore it;
I let everything go; I shut my eyes; I might almost have let myself
starve, rather than have scenes of quarrel with the man I had loved, in
which I must accuse him of turnin g my love into a good bargain.'
There was a slight tremor in Mrs Transome's voice in the last words,
and for a moment she paused; but when she spoke again it seemed as
if the tremor had frozen into a cutting icicle. 'I suppose if a lover
picked one's pocket, there's no woman would like to own it. I don't say
I was not afraid of you: I was afra id of you, and I know now I was
right.'
'Mrs Transome,' said Jermyn, white to the lips, 'it is needless to say
more. I withdraw any words that have offended you.' 'You can't
withdraw them. Can a man apologise for being a dastard? ... And I
have caused you to strain your con science, have I? - it is I who have
sullied your purity? I should think the demons have more honour -
they are not so impudent to one another. I would not lose the misery
of being a woman, now I see what can be the baseness of a man. One
must be a man - first to tell a woman that her love has made her your
debtor, and then ask her to pay you by breaking the last poor threads
between her and her son.'
'I do not ask it,' said Jermyn, with a certain asperity. He was
beginning to find this intolerable. The mere brute strength of a
masculine creature rebelled. He felt almost inclined to throttle the
voice out of this woman.
'You do ask it: it is what you would like. I have had a terror on me lest
evil should happen to you. From the first, after Harold came home, I
had a horrible dread. It seemed as if murder might come between you
- I didn't know what. I felt the horror of his not knowing the truth. I
might have been dragged at last, by my own feeling - by my own
memory - to tell him all, and make him as well as myself miserable, to
save you.'
Again there was a slight tremor, as if at the remembrance of womanly
tenderness and pity. But immediately she launched forth again.
'But now you have asked me, I will ne ver tell him! Be ruined - no - do
something more dastardly to save yourself. If I sinned, my judgment
went beforehand - that I should sin for a man like you.'
Swiftly upon those last words Mrs Transome passed out of the room.
The softly-padded door closed be hind her making no noise, and
Jermyn found himself alone.
For a brief space he stood still. Human beings in moments of
passionate reproach and denunciation, especially when their anger is
on their own account, are never so wholly in the right that the person
who has to wince cannot poss ibly protest against some
unreasonableness or unfairness in their outburst. And if Jermyn had
been capable of feeling that he had thoroughly merited this infliction,
he would not have uttered the words that drew it down on him. Men
do not become penitent and learn to abhor themselves by having their
backs cut open with the lash; rather, they learn to abhor the lash.
What Jermyn felt about Mrs Transome when she disappeared was,
that she was a furious woman - who would not do what he wanted her
to do. And he was supported as to his justifiableness by the inward
repetition of what he had already said to her: it was right that Harold
should know the truth. He did not take into account (how should he?)
the exasperation and loathing excited by his daring to urge the plea of
right. A man who had stolen the pyx, and got frightened when justice
was at his heels, might feel the sort of penitence which would induce
him to run back in the dark and lay the pyx where the sexton might
find it; but if in doing so he whispered to the Blessed Virgin that he
was moved by considering the sacr edness of all property, and the
peculiar sacredness of the pyx, it is not to be believed that she would
like him the better for it. Indeed, one often seems to see why the
saints should prefer candles to words, especially from penitents whose
skin is in danger. Some salt of generosity would have made Jermyn
conscious that he had lost the citizenship which authorised him to
plead the right; still more, that his self-vindication to Mrs Transome
would be like the exhibition of a brand-mark, and only show that he
was shame-proof. There is heroism even in the circles of hell for
fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never
recriminate. But these things, whic h are easy to discern when they
are painted for us on the large canvas of poetic story, become
confused and obscure even for well-read gentlemen when their
affection for themselves is alarmed by pressing details of actual
experience. If their comparison of instances is active at such times, it
is chiefly in showing them that their own case has subde distinctions
from all other cases, which should free them from unmitigated
condemnation.
And it was in this way with Matthew Jermyn. So many things were
more distinctly visible to him, and touched him more acutely, than the
effect of his acts or words on Mrs Transome's feelings! In fact - he
asked, with a touch of something that makes us all akin - was it not
preposterous, this excess of feeling on points which he himself did not
find powerfully moving? She had tr eated him most unreasonably. It
would have been right for her to do what he had - not asked, but only
hinted at in a mild and interrog atory manner. But the clearest and
most unpleasant result of the interview was, that this right thing
which he desired so much would certainly not be done for him by Mrs
Transome.
As he was moving his arm from th e chair-back, and turning to take
his hat, there was a boisterous noise in the entrance-hall; the door of
the small drawing-room, which had closed without latching, was
pushed open, and old Mr Transome appeared with a face of feeble
delight, playing horse to little Harry, who roared and flogged behind
him, while Moro yapped in a puppy voice at their heels. But when Mr
Transome saw Jermyn in the room he stood still in the doorway, as if
he did not know whether entrance we re permissible. The majority of
his thoughts were but ravelled threads of the past. The attorney came
forward to shake hands with due politeness, but the old man said,
with a bewildered look, and in a hesitating way -
'Mr Jermyn? - why - why - where is Mrs Transome?'
Jermyn smiled his way out past the unexpected group; and little
Harry, thinking he had an eligible opportunity, turned round to give a
parting stroke on the stranger's coattails.
Chapter 43
'Whichever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, though left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine.
Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near, in woe and weal;
O, loved the most when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher!'
TENNYSON: In Memoriam.
AFTER that moming on which Esther found herself reddened and
confused by the sense of having made a distant allusion to Felix Holt,
she felt it impossible that she should even, as she had sometimes
intended, speak of him explicitly to Harold, in order to discuss the
probabilities as to the issue of his trial. She was certain she could not
do it without betraying emotion, and there were very complex reasons
in Esther's mind why she could not bear that Harold should detect
her sensibility on this subject. It was not only all the fibres of
maidenly pride and reserve, of a bashfulness undefinably peculiar
towards this man, who, while much older than herself, and bearing
the stamp of an experience quite hidden from her imagination, was
taking strongly the aspect of a lover - it was not only this exquisite
kind of shame which was at work wi thin her: there was another sort
of susceptibility in Esther, which her present circumstances tended to
encourage, though she had come to regard it as not at all lofty, but
rather as something which condemned her to littleness in comparison
with a mind she had learned to venerate. She knew quite well that, to
Harold Transome, Felix Holt was one of the common people who could
come into question in no other than a public light. She had a native
capability for discerning that the sense of ranks and degrees has its
repulsions corresponding to the repulsions dependent on difference of
race and colour; and she remembered her own impressions too well
not to foresee that it would come on Harold Transome as a shock, if
he suspected there had been any love-passages between her and this
young man, who to him was of course no more than any other
intelligent member of the working class. 'To him,' said Esther to
herself, with a reaction of her newer, better pride, 'who has not had
the sort of intercourse in which Felix Holt's cultured nature would
have asserted its superiority.' And in her fluctuations on this matter,
she found herself mentally protesting that, whatever Harold might
think, there was a light in which he was vulgar compared with Felix.
Felix had ideas and motives which she did not believe that Harold
could understand. More than all, there was this test: she herself had
no sense of inferiority and just subjection when she was with Harold
Transome; there were even points in him for which she felt a touch,
not of angry, but of playful scorn; whereas with Felix she had always a
sense of dependence and possible illumination. In those large, grave,
candid grey eyes of his, love seemed something that belonged to the
high enthusiasm of life, such as might now be for ever shut out from
her.
All the same, her vanity winced at the idea that Harold should discern
what, from his point of view, would seem like a degradation of her
taste and refinement. She could not help being gratified by all the
manifestations from those around her that she was thought
thoroughly fitted for a high position - could not help enjoying, with
more or less keenness, a rehearsal of that demeanour amongst
luxuries and dignities which had often been a part of her daydreams,
and the rehearsal included the reception of more and more emphatic
attentions from Harold, and of an effusiveness in his manners, which,
in proportion as it would have been offensive if it had appeared earlier,
became flattering as the effect of a growing acquaintance and daily
contact. It comes in so many forms in this life of ours - the knowledge
that there is something sweetest and noblest of which we despair, and
the sense of something present that solicits us with an immediate and
easy indulgence. And there is a pernicious falsity in the pretence that
a woman's love lies above the range of such temptations.
Day after day Esther had an arm of fered her, had very beaming looks
upon her, had opportunities for a gr eat deal of light, airy talk, in
which she knew herself to be charming, and had the attractive
interest of noticing Harold's practical cleverness - the masculine ease
with which he governed everybody and administered everything about
him, without the least harshness, and with a facile good-nature which
yet was not weak. In the background, too, there was the ever-present
consideration, that if Harold Tran some wished to marry her, and she
accepted him, the problem of her lot would be more easily solved than
in any other way. It was difficult by any theory of providence, or
consideration of results, to see a course which she could call duty: if
something would come and urge itself strongly as pleasure, and save
her from the effort to find a clue of principle amid the labyrinthine
confusions of right and possession, the promise could not but seem
alluring. And yet, this life at Transome Court was not the life of her
daydreams: there was dulness already in its ease, and in the absence
of high demand; and there was the vague consciousness that the love
of this not unfascinating man who hovered about her gave an air of
moral mediocrity to all her prospe cts. She would not have been able
perhaps to define this impression; but somehow or other by this
elevation of fortune it seemed that the higher ambition which had
begun to spring in her was for ever nullified. All life seemed
cheapened; as it might seem to a young student who, having believed
that to gain a certain degree he must write a thesis in which he would
bring his powers to bear with memo rable effect, suddenly ascertained
that no thesis was expected, but the sum (in English money) of
twenty-seven pounds ten shillings and sixpence.
After all, she was a woman, and co uld not make her own lot. As she
had once said to Felix, 'A woman must choose meaner things, because
only meaner things are offered to he r.' Her lot is made for her by the
love she accepts. And Esther began to think that her lot was being
made for her by the love that was surrounding her with the influence
of a garden on a summer morning.
Harold, on his side, was conscious that the interest of his wooing was
not standing still. He was beginning to think it a conquest, in which it
would be disappointing to fail, even if this fair nymph had no claim to
the estate. He would have liked - and yet he would not have liked -
that just a slight shadow of do ubt as to his success should be
removed. There was something about Esther that he did not
altogether understand. She was clearly a woman that could be
governed; she was too charming for him to fear that she would ever be
obstinate or interfering. Yet there was a lightning that shot out of her
now and then, which seemed the sign of a dangerous judgment; as if
she inwardly saw something more admirable than Harold Transome.
Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman should not see this.
One fine February day, when already the golden and purple crocuses
were out on the terrace - one of those flattering days which sometimes
precede the north-east winds of March, and make believe that the
coming spring will be enjoyable - a very striking group, of whom
Esther and Harold made a part, came out at mid-day to walk upon the
gravel at Transome Court. They did not, as usual, go towards the
pleasure-grounds on the eastern side, because Mr Lingon, who was
one of them, was going home, and his road lay through the stone
gateway into the park.
Uncle Lingon, who disliked painful confidences, and preferred
knowing 'no mischief of anybody', had not objected to being let into
the important secret about Esther, and was sure at once that the
whole affair, instead of being a misfortune, was a piece of excellent
luck. For himself, he did not profess to be a judge of women, but she
seemed to have all the 'points', and ca rry herself as well as Arabella
did, which was saying a good de al. Honest Jack Lingon's first
impressions quickly became traditions, which no subsequent evidence
could disturb. He was fond of his sister, and seemed never to be
conscious of any change for the worse in her since their early time. He
considered that man a beast who said anything unpleasant about the
persons to whom he was attached. It was not that he winked; his
wide-open eyes saw nothing but what his easy disposition inclined
him to see. Harold was a good fellow; a clever chap; and Esther's
peculiar fitness for him, under all the circumstances, was
extraordinary: it reminded him of something in the classics, though he
couldn't think exactly what - in fact, a memory was a nasty uneasy
thing. Esther was always glad when the old rector came. With an odd
contrariety to her former niceti es she liked his rough attire and
careless frank speech; they were something not point device that
seemed to connect the life of Transome Court with that rougher,
commoner world where her home had been.
She and Harold were walking a little in advance of the rest of the
party, who were retarded by various causes. Old Mr Transome,
wrapped in a cloth cloak trimmed wi th sable, and with a soft warm
cap also trimmed with fur on hi s head, had a shuffling uncertain
walk. Little Harry was dragging a toy-vehicle, on the seat of which he
had insisted on tying Moro, with a piece of scarlet drapery round him,
making him look like a barbaric prince in a chariot. Moro, having little
imagination, objected to this, and barked with feeble snappishness as
the tyrannous lad ran forward, then whirled the chariot round, and
ran back to 'Gappa', then came to a dead stop, which overset the
chariot, that he might watch Uncle Lingon's water-spaniel run for the
hurled stick and bring it in his mo uth. Nimrod kept close to his old
master's legs, glancing with much indifference at this youthful ardour
about sticks - he had 'gone through all that'; and Dominic walked by,
looking on blandly, and taking ca re both of young and old. Mrs
Transome was not there.
Looking back and seeing that they were a good deal in advance of the
rest, Esther and Harold paused.
'What do you think about thinning the trees over there?' said Harold,
pointing with his stick. 'I have a bit of a notion that if they were
divided into clumps so as to show the oaks beyond, it would be a great
improvement. It would give an idea of extent that is lost now. And
there might be some very pretty cl umps got out of those mixed trees.
What do you think?'
'I should think it would be an improvemcnt. One likes a ‘beyond’
everywhere. But I never heard you express yourself so dubiously,' said
Esther, looking at him rather archly: 'you generally see things so
clearly, and are so convinced, that I shall begin to feel quite tottering if
I find you in uncertainty. Pray don' t begin to be doubtful; it is so
infectious.'
'You think me a great deal too sure - too confident?' said Harold.
'Not at all. It is an immense adva ntage to know your own will, when
you always mean to have it.'
'But suppose I couldn't get it, in spite of meaning?' said Harold, with a
beaming inquiry in his eyes.
'O then,' said Esther, turning her head aside, carelessly, as if she were
considering the distant birch-stems, 'you` would bear it quite easily,
as you did your not getting into parliament. You would know you
could get it another time - or get something else as good.'
'The fact is,' said Harold, moving on a little, as if he did not want to be
quite overtaken by the others, 'you consider me a fat, fatuous, self-
satisfied fellow.'
'O there are degrees,' said Esther, with a silvery laugh; 'you have just
as much of those qualities as is becoming. There are different styles.
You are perfect in your own.'
'But you prefer another style, I suspect. A more submissive, tearful,
devout worshipper, who would offer his incense with more trembling.'
'You are quite mistaken,' said Esther , still lightly. 'I find I am very
wayward. When anything is offered to me, it seems that I prize it less,
and don't want to have it.'
Here was a very baulking answer, but in spite of it Harold could not
help believing that Esther was very far from objecting to the sort of
incense he had been offering just then.
'I have often read that that is in human nature,' she went on, 'yet it
takes me by surprise in myself. I suppose,' she added, smiling, 'I
didn't think of myself as human nature.'
'I don't confess to the same waywardness,' said Harold. 'I am very fond
of things that I can get. And I never longed much for anything out of
my reach. Whatever I feel sure of getting I like all the better. I think
half those priggish maxims about human nature in the lump are no
more to be relied on than universal remedies. There are different sorts
of human nature. Some are given to discontent and longing, others to
securing and enjoying. And let me tell you, the discontented longing
style is unpleasant to live with.'
Harold nodded with a meaning smile at Esther.
'O, I assure you I have abjured all admiration for it,' she said, smiling
up at him in return.
She was remembering the schooling Felix had given her about her
Byronic heroes, and was inwardly adding a third sort of human
nature to those varieties which Harold had mentioned. He naturally
supposed that he might take the abjuration to be entirely in his own
favour. And his face did look very pl easant; she could not help liking
him, although he was certainly too particular about sauces, gravies,
and wines, and had a way of vi rtually measuring the value of
everything by the contribution it made to his own pleasure. His very
good-nature was unsympathetic: it never came from any thorough
understanding or deep respect for what was in the mind of the person
he obliged or indulged; it was like his kindness to his mother - an
arrangement of his for the happiness of others, which, if they were
sensible, ought to succeed. And an inevitable comparison which
haunted her, showed her the same quality in his political views: the
utmost enjoyment of his own advantages was the solvent that blended
pride in his family and position, with the adhesion to changes that
were to obliterate tradition and melt down enchased gold heirlooms
into plating for the egg-spoons of 'the people.' It is terrible - the keen
bright eye of a woman when it has once been turned with admiration
on what is severely true; but then, the severely true rarely comes
within its range of vision. Esther had had an unusuaI illumination;
Harold did not know how, but he di scerned enough of the effect to
make him more cautious than he had ever been in his life before. That
caution would have prevented him just then from following up the
question as to the style of person Esther would think pleasant to live
with, even if Uncle Lingon had not joined them, as he did, to talk
about soughing tiles; saying presently that he should turn across the
grass and get on to the Home Farm, to have a look at the
improvements that Harold was making with such racing speed.
'But you know, lad,' said the rector, as they paused at the expected
parting, 'you can't do everything in a hurry. The wheat must have time
to grow, even when you've reformed all us old Tories off the face of the
ground. Dash it! now the election's over: I'm an old Tory again. You
see, Harold, a Radical won't do for the county. At another election, you
must be on the look-out for a borough where they want a bit of blood.
I should have liked you uncommonl y to stand for the county; and a
Radical of good family squares well enough with a new-fashioned Tory
like young Debarry; but you see, these riots - it's been a nasty
business. I shall have my hair comb ed at the sessions for a year to
come. But hey-day ! What dame is this, with a small boy? - not one of
my parishioners?'
Harold and Esther turned, and saw an elderly woman advancing with
a tiny red-haired boy, scantily attired as to his jacket, which merged
into a small sparrow-tail a little higher than his waist, but muffled as
to his throat with a blue woollen comforter. Esther recognised the pair
too well, and felt very uncomfortable. We are so pitiably in subjection
to all sorts of vanity - even the very vanities we are practically
renouncing! And in spite of the almost solemn memories connected
with Mrs Holt, Esther's first shudde r was raised by the idea of what
things this woman would say, and by the mortification of having Felix
in any way represented by his mother.
As Mrs Holt advanced into closer observation, it became more evident
that she was attired with a view not to charm the eye, but rather to
afflict it with all that expression of woe which belongs to very rusty
bombazine and the limpest state of false hair. Still, she was not a
woman to lose the sense of her own value, or become abject in her
manners under any circumstances of depression; and she had a
peculiar sense on the present occasion that she was justly relying on
the force of her own character and judgment, in independence of
anything that Mr Lyon or the masterful Felix would have said, if she
had thought them worthy to know of her undertaking. She curtsied
once, as if to the entire group, now including even the dogs, who
showed various degrees of curiosity, especially as to what kind of
game the smaller animal Job might prove to be after due investigation;
and then she proceeded at once towards Esther, who, in spite of her
annoyance, took her arm from Harold's, said, 'How do you do, Mrs
Holt?' very kindly, and stooped to pat little Job.
'Yes - you know him, Miss Lyon,' said Mrs Holt, in that tone which
implies that the conversation is intended for the edification of the
company generally; 'you know the orphin child, as Felix brought home
for me that am his mother to take care of. And it's what I've done -
nobody more so - though it's trouble is my reward.'
Esther had raised herself again, to stand in helpless endurance of
whatever might be coming. But by this time young Harry, struck even
more than the dogs by the appearance of Job Tudge, had come round
dragging his chariot, and placed himself close to the pale child, whom
he exceeded in height and breadth, as well as in depth of colouring.
He looked into Job's eyes, peeped ro und at the tail of his jacket and
pulled it a little, and then, taking off the tiny cloth-cap, observed with
much interest the tight red curls which had been hidden underneath
it. Job looked at his inspector with the round blue eyes of
astonishment, until Harry, purely by way of experiment, took a bon-
bon from a fantastic wallet which hung over his shoulder, and applied
the test to Job's lips. The result was satisfactory to both. Every one
had been watching this small comedy, and when Job crunched the
bon-bon while Harry looked down at him inquiringly and patted his
back, there was general laughter except on the part of Mrs Holt, who
was shaking her head slowly, and slap ping the back of her left hand
with the painful patience of a tragedian whose part is in abeyance to
an ill-timed introduction of the humorous.
'I hope Job's cough has been better lately,' said Esther, in mere
uncertainty as to what it would be desirable to say or do.
'I daresay you hope so, Miss Lyon,' said Mrs Holt, looking at the
distant landscape. 'I've no reason to disbelieve but what you wish well
to the child, and to Felix, and to me. I'm sure nobody has any
occasion to wish me otherways. My character will bear inquiry, and
what you, as are young, don't know, others can tell you. That was
what I said to myself when I made up my mind to come here and see
you, and ask you to get me the fr eedom to speak to Mr Transome. I
said, whatever Miss Lyon may be now, in the way of being lifted up
among great people, she's our minister's daughter, and was not above
coming to my house and walking with my son Felix - though I'll not
deny he made that figure on the Lord's Day, that'll perhaps go against
him with the judge, if anybody thinks well to tell him.'
Here Mrs Holt paused a moment, as with a mind arrested by the
painful image it had called up.
Esther's face was glowing, when Harold glanced at her; and seeing
this, he was considerate enough to address Mrs Holt instead of her.
'You are then the mother of the unfortunate young man who is in
prison?'
'Indeed, I am, sir,' said Mrs Holt, feeling that she was now in deep
water. 'It's not likely I should claim him if he wasn't my own; though
it's not by my will, nor my advice, sir, that he ever walked; for I gave
him none but good. But if everybody's son was guided by their
mothers, the world 'ud be different; my son is not worse than many
another woman's son, and that in Treby, whatever they may say as
haven't got their sons in prison. And as to his giving up the doctoring,
and then stopping his father's medicines, I know it's bad - that I know
- but it's me as has had to suffer, and it's me a king and parliament
'ud consider, if they meant to do the right thing, and had anybody to
make it known to 'em. And as for the rioting and killing the constable
- my son said most plain to me he never meant it, and there was his
bit of potato-pie for his dinner getting dry by the fire, the whole
blessed time as I sat and never knew what was coming on me. And it's
my opinion as if great people make elections to get themselves into
parliament, and there's riot and murder to do it, they ought to see as
the widow and the widow's son doesn't suffer for it. I well know my
duty: and I read my Bible; and I know in Jude where it's been stained
with the dried tulip-leaves this many a year, as you're told not to rail
at your betters if they was the devil himself; nor will I; but this I do
say, if it's three Mr Transomes instead of one as is listening to me, as
there's them ought to go to the king and get him to let off my son
Felix.'
This speech, in its chief points, ha d been deliberately prepared. Mrs
Holt had set her face like a flint, to make the gentry know their duty
as she knew hers: her defiant, defensive tone was due to the
consciousness, not only that she was braving a powerful audience,
but that she was daring to stand on the strong basis of her own
judgment in opposition to her son's. Her proposals had been waived
off by Mr Lyon and Felix; but she had long had the feminine
conviction that if she could 'get to speak' in the right quarter, things
might be different. The daring bit of impromptu about the three Mr
Transomes was immediately suggested by a movement of old Mr
Transome to the foreground in a line with Mr Lingon and Harold; his
furred and unusual costume appearing to indicate a mysterious
dignity which she must hasten to include in her appeal.
And there were reasons that none could have foreseen, which made
Mrs Holt's remonstrance immediately effective. While old Mr Transome
stared, very much like a waxen image in which the expression is a
failure, and the rector, accustomed to female parishioners and
complainants, looked on with a smile in his eyes, Harold said at once,
with cordial kindness -
'I think you are quite right, Mrs Holt. And for my part, I am
determined to do my best for your son, both in the witness-box and
elsewhere. Take comfort; if it is necessary, the king shall be appealed
to. And rely upon it, I shall bear you in mind, as Felix Holt's mother.'
Rapid thoughts had convinced Harold that in this way he was best
commending himself to Esther.
'Well, sir,' said Mrs Holt, wh o was not going to pour forth
disproportionate thanks, 'I'm glad to hear you speak so becoming; and
if you had been the king himself, I should have made free to tell you
my opinion. For the Bible says, the king's favour is towards a wise
servant; and it's reasonable to think he'd make all the more account of
them as have never been in service, or took wage, which I never did,
and never thought of my son doing; and his father left money,
meaning otherways, so as he migh t have been a doctor on horseback
at this very minute, instead of being in prison.'
'What! was he regularly apprenticed to a doctor?' said Mr Lingon, who
had not understood this before.
'Sir, he was, and most clever, like his father before him, only he
turned contrairy. But as for harm ing anybody, Felix never meant to
harm anybody but himself and his mother, which he certainly did in
respect of his clothes, and taking to be a low working man, and
stopping my living respectable, more particular by the pills, which had
a sale, as you may be sure they suited people's insides. And what
folks can never have boxes enough of to swallow, I should think you
have a right to sell. And there's many and many a text for it, as I've
opened on without ever thinking; for if it's true, ‘Ask, and you shall
have,’ I should think it's truer when you're willing to pay for what you
have.'
This was a little too much for Mr Lingon's gravity; he exploded, and
Harold could not help following him. Mrs Holt fixed her eyes on the
distance, and slapped the back of her left hand again: it might be that
this kind of mirth was the peculiar effect produced by forcible truth on
high and worldly people who were neither in the Independent nor the
General Baptist connection.
'I'm sure you must be tired with your long walk, and little Job too,'
said Esther, by way of breaking this awkward scene. 'Aren't you, Job?'
she added, stooping to caress the child, who was timidly shrinking
from Harry's invitation to him to pull the little chariot - Harry's view
being that Job would make a good horse for him to beat, and would
run faster than Gappa.
'It's well you can feel for the orphin child, Miss Lyon,' said Mrs Holt,
choosing an indirect answer rath er than to humble herself by
confessing fatigue before gentlemen who seemed to be taking her too
lightly. 'I didn't believe but what you'd behave pretty, as you always
did to me, though everybody used to say you held yourself high. But
I'm sure you never did to Felix, for you let him sit by you at the Free
School before all the town, and him with never a bit of stock round his
neck. And it shows you saw that in him worth taking notice of; - and
it is but right, if you know my words are true, as you should speak for
him to the gentleman.'
'I assure you, Mrs Holt,' said Harold, coming to the rescue - 'I assure
you that enough has been said to make me use my best efforts for
your son. And now, pray, go on to the house with the little boy and
take some rcst. Dominic show Mrs Holt the way, and ask Mrs Hickes
to make her comfortable, and see that somebody takes her back to
Treby in the buggy.'
'I will go back with Mrs Holt,' sa id Esther, making an effort against
herself.
'No, pray,' said Harold, with that kind of entreaty which is rcally a
decision. 'Let Mrs Holt have time to rest. We shall have returned, and
you can see her before she goes. We will say good-bye for the present,
Mrs Holt.'
The poor woman was not sorry to have the prospect of rest and food,
especially for 'the orphin child', of whom she was tenderly careful.
Like many women who appear to others to have a masculine
decisiveness of tone, and to themselves to have a masculine force of
mind, and who come into severe co llision with sons arrived at the
masterful stage, she had the maternal cord vibrating strongly within
her towards all tiny children. And when she saw Dominic pick up Job
and hoist him on his arm for a little while, by way of making
acquaintance, she regarded him with an approval which she had not
thought it possible to extend to a foreigner. Since Dominic was going,
Harry and old Mr Transome chose to follow. Uncle Lingon shook
hands and turned off across the grass, and thus Esther was left alone
with Harold.
But there was a new consciousness between them. Harold's quick
perception was least likely to be slow in seizing indications of anything
that might affect his position with regard to Esther. Some time before,
his jealousy had been awakened to the possibility that before she had
known him she had been deeply interested in some one else. Jealousy
of all sorts - whether for our fo rtune or our love - is ready at
combinations, and likely even to outstrip the fact. And Esther's
renewed confusion, united with her silence about Felix, which now
first seemed noteworthy, and with Mrs Holt's graphic details as to her
walking with him and letting him sit by her before all the town, were
grounds not merely for a suspicion, but for a conclusion in Harold's
mind. The effect of this, which he at once regarded as a discovery, was
rather different from what Esther had anticipated. It seemed to him
that Felix was the least formidable person that he could have found
out as an object of interest ante cedent to himself. A young workman
who had got himself thrown into prison, whatever recommendations
he might have had for a girl at a romantic age in the dreariness of
Dissenting society at Treby, could hardly be considered by Harold in
the light of a rival. Esther was too clever and tasteful a woman to
make a ballad heroine of herself, by bestowing her beauty and her
lands on this lowly lover. Besides, Harold cherished the belief that, at
the present time, Esther was more wisely disposed to bestow these
things on another lover in every way eligible. But in two directions this
discovery had a determining effect on him; his curiosity was stirred to
know exactly what the relation with Felix had been, and he was
solicitous that his behaviour with regard to this young man should be
such as to enhance his own merit in Esther's eyes. At the same time
he was not inclined to any euphemisms that would seem by any
possibility to bring Felix into the lists with humself.
Naturally, when they were left alone, it was Harold who spoke first. 'I
should think there's a good deal of worth in this young fellow - this
Holt, notwithstanding the mistakes he has made. A little queer and
conceited, perhaps; but that is usually the case with men of his class
when they are at all superior to their fellows.'
'Felix Holt is a highly cultivated man; he is not at all conceited,' said
Esther. The different kinds of pride within her were coalescing now.
She was aware that there had been a betrayal.
'Ah?' said Harold, not quite liking the tone of this answer. 'This
eccentricity is a sort of fanatici sm, then? - this giving up being a
doctor on horseback, as the old woman calls it, and taking to - let me
see - watchmaking, isn't it?'
'If it is eccentricity to be very much better than other men, he is
certainly eccentric; and fanatical too, if it is fanatical to renounce all
small selfish motives for the sake of a great and unselfish one. I never
knew what nobleness of character really was before I knew Felix Holt!'
It seemed to Esther as if, in the excitement of this moment, her own
words were bringing her a clearer revelation.
'God bless me!' said Harold, in a tone of surprised yet thorough belief,
and looking in Esther's face. 'I wish you had talked to me about this
before.'
Esther at that moment looked perfectly beautiful, with an expression
which Harold had never hitherto seen. All the confusion which had
depended on personal feeling had given way before the sense that she
had to speak the truth about the man whom she felt to be admirable.
'I think I didn't see the meaning of anything fine - I didn't even see the
value of my father's character, un til I had been taught a little by
hearing what Felix Holt said, and seeing that his life was like his
words.'
Harold looked and listened, and felt his slight jealousy allayed rather
than heightened. 'This is not like love,' he said to himself, with some
satisfaction. With all due regard to Harold Transome, he was one of
those men who are liable to make the greater mistakes about a
particular woman's feelings, because they pique themselves on a
power of interpretation derived from much experience. Experience is
enlightening, but with a difference. Experiments on live animals may
go on for a long period, and yet the fauna on which they are made
may be limited. There may be a passion in the mind of a woman which
precipitates her, not along the path of easy beguilement, but into a
great leap away from it. Harold's experience had not taught him this;
and Esther's enthusiasm about Felix Holt did not seem to him to be
dangerous.
'He's quite an apostolic sort of fe llow, then,' was the self-quieting
answer he gave to her last words. 'He didn't look like that; but I had
only a short interview with him, and I was given to understand that he
refused to see me in prison. I believe he's not very well inclined
towards me. But you saw a great deal of him, I suppose; and your
testimony to any one is enough for me,' said Harold, lowering his voice
rather tenderly. 'Now I know what your opinion is, I shall spare no
effort on behalf of such a young man. In fact, I had come to the same
resolution before, but your wish would make difficult things easy '
After that energetic speech of Esther's, as often happens the tears had
just suffused her eyes. It was nothing more than might have been
expected in a tender-hearted woman considering Felix Holt's
circumstances, and the tears only made more lovely the look with
which she met Harold's when he spoke so kindly She felt pleased with
him - she was open to the fallacious delight of being assured that she
had power over him to make him do what she liked, and quite forgot
the many impressions which had convinced her that Harold had a
padded yoke ready for the neck of every man, woman, and child that
depended on him.
After a short silence, they were getting near the stone gateway, and
Harold said, with an air of intimate consultation -
'What could we do for this young ma n, supposing he were let off? I
shall send a letter with fifty pounds to the old woman to-morrow. I
ought to have done it before, but it really slipped my memory,
amongst the many things that have occupied me lately. But this
young man - what do you think would be the best thing we could do
for him, if he gets at large again? He should be put in a position where
his qualities could be more telling.'
Esther was recovering her liveliness a little, and was disposed to
encourage it for the sake of veiling other feelings, about which she felt
renewed reticence, now that the overpowering influence of her
enthusiasm was past. She was rather wickedly amused and scornful
at Harold's misconceptions and ill-placed intentions of patronage.
'You are hopelessly in the dark,' sh e said, with a light laugh and toss
of her head. 'What would you offer Felix Holt? a place in the Excise?
You might as well think of offering it to John the Baptist. Felix has
chosen his lot. He means always to be a poor man.'
'Means? Yes,' said Harold, slightly piqued, 'but what a man means
usually depends on what happens. I mean to be a commoner; but a
peerage might present itself under acceptable circumstances.'
'O there is no sum in proportion to be done there,' said Esther, again
gaily. 'As you are to a peerage, so is not Felix Holt to any offer an
advantage that you could imagine for him.'
'You must think him fit for any position - the first in the county.'
'No, I don't,' said Esther shaking her head mischievously. 'I think him
too high for it.'
'I see you can be ardent in your admiration.'
'Yes, it is my champagne; you know I don't like the other kind.'
'That would be satisfactory if one were sure of getting your
admiration,' said Harold, leading her up to the terrace, and amongst
the crocuses, from whence they had a fine view of the park and river.
They stood still near the east parapet, and saw the dash of light on the
water, and the pencilled shadows of the trees on the grassy lawn.
'Would it do as well to admire you, instead of being worthy to be
admired?' said Harold, turning his eyes from that landscape to
Esther's face.
'It would be a thing to be put up with,' said Esther, smiling at him
rather roguishly. 'But you are not in that state of self-despair.'
'Well, I am conscious of not having those severe virtues that you have
been praising.'
'That is true. You are quite in another genre.'
'A woman would not find me a tragic hero.'
'O, no! She must dress for genteel comedy - such as your mother once
described to me - where the most thrilling event is the drawing of a
handsome cheque.'
'You are a naughty fairy,' said Harold, daring to press Esther's hand a
little more closely to him, and drawing her down the eastern steps into
the pleasure-ground, as if he were unwilling to give up the
conversation. 'Confess that you are disgusted with my want of
romance.'
'I shall not confess to being disguste d. I shall ask you to confess that
you are not a romantic figure.'
'I am a little too stout.'
'For romance - yes. At least you mu st find security for not getting
stouter.'
'And I don't look languishing enough?'
'O yes - rather too much so - at a fine cigar.'
'And I am not in danger of committing suicide?'
'No; you are a widower.'
Harold did not reply immediately to this last thrust of Esther's. She
had uttered it with innocent thoughtlessness from the playful
suggestions of the moment; but it was a fact that Harold's previous
married life had entered strongly into her impressions about him. The
presence of Harry made it inevitable. Harold took the allusion of
Esther's as an indication that his quality of widower was a point that
made against him; and after a brief silence he said, in an altered,
more serious tone -
'You don't suppose, I hope, that any other woman has ever held the
place that you could hold in my life?'
Esther began to tremble a little, as she always did when the love-talk
between them seemed getting serious. She only gave the rather
stumbling answer, 'How so?' 'Harry 's mother had been a slave - was
bought, in fact.'
It was impossible for Harold to preconceive the effect this had on
Esther. His natural disqualification fo r judging of a girl's feelings was
heightened by the blinding effect of an exclusive object - which was to
assure her that her own place was peculiar and supreme. Hitherto
Esther's acquaintance with Oriental love was derived chiefly from
Byronic poems, and this had not sufficed to adjust her mind to a new
story, where the Giaour concerned was giving her his arm. She was
unable to speak; and Harold went on -
'Though I am close on thirty-five, I never met with a woman at all like
you before. There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to
youth - are something better than youth. I was never an aspirant till I
knew you.'
Esther was still silent.
'Not that I dare to call myself that. I am not so confident a personage
as you imagine. I am necessarily in a painful position for a man who
has any feeling.'
Here at last Harold had stirred th e right fibre. Esther's generosity
seized at once the whole meaning implied in that last sentence. She
had a fine sensibility to the line at which flirtation must cease; and
she was now pale, and shaken with feelings she had not yet defined
for herself.
'Do not let us speak of difficult things any more now,' she said, with
gentle seriousness. 'I am come into a new world of late, and have to
learn life all over again. Let us go in. I must see poor Mrs Holt again,
and my little friend Job.'
She paused at the glass door that opened on the terrace, and entered
there, while Harold went round to the stables.
When Esther had been upstairs and descended again into the large
entrance-hall, she found its stony spaciousness made lively by human
figures extremely unlike the statues. Since Harry insisted on playing
with Job again, Mrs Holt and her or phan, after dining, had just been
brought to this delightful scene fo r a game at hide-and-seek, and for
exhibiting the climbing powers of the two pet squirrels. Mrs Holt sat
on a stool, in singular relief agai nst the pedestal of the Apollo, while
Dominic and Denner (otherwise Mrs Hickes) bore her company; Harry,
in his bright red and purple, flitted about like a great tropic bird after
the sparrow-tailed Job, who hid himself with much intelligence behind
the scagliola pillars and the pedestals; while one of the squirrels
perched itself on the head of the tallest statue, and the other was
already peeping down from among the heavy stuccoed angels on the
ceiling, near the summit of a pillar.
Mrs Holt held on her lap a basket fi lled with good things for Job, and
seemed much soothed by pleasant company and excellent treatment.
As Esther, descending softly and unobserved, leaned over the stone
bannisters and looked at the scene for a minute or two, she saw that
Mrs Holt's attention, having been directed to the squirrel which had
scampered on to the head of the Silenus carrying the infant Bacchus,
had been drawn downward to the tiny babe looked at with so much
affection by the rather ugly and hairy gentleman, of whom she
nevertheless spoke with reserve as of one who possibly belonged to the
Transome family.
'It's most pretty to see its little limbs, and the gentleman holding it. I
should think he was amiable by hi s look; but it was odd he should
have his likeness took without any clothes. Was he Transome by
name?' (Mrs Holt suspected that there might be a mild madness in the
family.)
Denner, peering and smiling quietly, was about to reply, when she
was prevented by the appearance of old Mr Transome, who since his
walk had been having 'forty winks' on the sofa in the library, and now
came out to look for Harry. He had doffed his furred cap and cloak,
but in lying down to sleep he had thrown over his shoulders a soft
Oriental scarf which Harold had give n him, and this still hung over
his scanty white hair and down to his knees, held fast by his wooden-
looking arms and laxly clasped hands, which fell in front of him.
This singular appearance of an undoubted Transome fitted exactly
into Mrs Holt's thought at the moment. It lay in the probabilities of
things that gentry's intellects should be peculiar: since they had not to
get their own living, the good Lord might have economised in their
case that common sense which others were so much more in need of;
and in the shuffling figure before her she saw a descendant of the
gentleman who had chosen to be represented without his clothes - all
the more eccentric where there were the means of buying the best.
But these oddities 'said nothing' in great folks, who were powerful in
high quarters all the same. And Mrs Holt rose and curtsied with a
proud respect, precisely as she would have done if Mr Transome had
looked as wise as Lord Burleigh.
'I hope I'm in no ways taking a liberty, sir,' she began, while the old
gentleman looked at her with bland feebleness; 'I'm not that woman to
sit anywhere out of my own home without inviting, and pressing too.
But I was brought here to wait, because the little gentleman wanted to
play with the orphin child.'
'Very glad, my good woman - sit down - sit down,' said Mr Transome,
nodding and smiling between his clauses. 'Nice little boy. Your
grandchild?'
'Indeed, sir, no,' said Mrs Holt, co ntinuing to stand. Quite apart from
any awe of Mr Transome - sitting down, she felt, would be a too great
familiarity with her own pathetic importance on this extra and
unlooked-for occasion. 'It's not me has any grandchild, nor ever shall
have, though most fit. But with my only son saying he'll never be
married, and in prison besides, and some saying he'll be transported,
you may see yourself - though a gentleman - as there isn't much
chance of my having grandchildren of my own. And this is old Master
Tudge's grandchild, as my own Felix took to for pity because he was
sickly and clemm'd, and I was noways against it, being of a tender
heart. For I'm a widow myself, and my son Felix, though big, is
fatherless, and I know my duty in consequence. And it's to be wished,
sir, as others should know it as are more in power and live in great
houses, and can ride in a carriage where they will. And if you're the
gentleman as is the head of everything - and it's not to be thought
you'd give up to your son as a poor widow's been forced to do - it
behoves you to take the part of them as are deserving; for the Bible
says, grey hairs should speak.'
'Yes, yes - poor woman - what shall I say?' said old Mr Transome,
feeling himself scolded, and as usual desirous of mollifying
displeasure.
'Sir, I can tell you what to say fast enough; for it's what I should say
myself if I could get to speak to th e king. For I've asked them that
know, and they say it's the truth bo th out of the Bible and in, as the
king can pardon anything and anybody. And judging by his
countenance on the new signs, and the talk there was a while ago
about his being the people's friend, as the minister once said it from
the very pulpit - if there's any meaning in words, he'll do the right
thing by me and my son, if he's asked proper.'
'Yes - a very good man - he'll do anything right,' said Mr Transome,
whose own ideas about the king just then were somewhat misty,
consisting chiefly in broken reminiscences of George the Third. 'I'll ask
him anything you like,' he added, with a pressing desire to satisfy Mrs
Holt, who alarmed him slightly.
'Then, sir, if you'll go in your ca rriage and say, This young man, Felix
Holt by name, as his father was known the country round, and his
mother most respectable - he never meant harm to anybody, and so
far from bloody murder and fighting , would part with his victual to
them that needed it more - and if you'd get other gentlemen to say the
same, and if they're not satisfied to inquire - I'll not believe but what
the king 'ud let my son out of prison. Or if it's true he must stand his
trial, the king 'ud take care no mischief happened to him. I've got my
senses, and I'll never believe as in a country where there's a God
above and a king below, the right thing can't be done if great people
was willing to do it.'
Mrs Holt, like all orators, had wa xed louder and more energetic,
ceasing to propel her arguments, and being propelled by them. Poor
old Mr Transome, getting more and more frightened at this severe-
spoken woman, who had the horrible possibility to his mind of being a
novelty that was to become permanent, seemed to be fascinated by
fear, and stood helplessly forgetful that if he liked he might turn
round and walk away.
Little Harry, alive to anything that had relation to 'Gappa', had paused
in his game, and, discerning what he thought a hostile aspect in this
naughty black old woman, rushed towards her and proceeded first to
beat her with his mimic jockey's whip, and then, suspecting that her
bombazine was not sensitive, to set his teeth in her arm. While
Dominic rebuked him and pulled him off, Nimrod began to bark
anxiously, and the scene was become alarming even to the squirrels,
which scrambled as far off as possible.
Esther, who had been waiting for an opportunity of intervention, now
came up to Mrs Holt to speak so me soothing words; and old Mr
Transome, seeing a sufficient screen between himself and his
formidable suppliant, at last ga thered courage to turn round and
shuffle away with unusual swiftness into the library.
'Dear Mrs Holt,' said Esther, 'do rest comforted. I assure you, you
have done the utmost that can be do ne by your words. Your visit has
not been thrown away. See how the children have enjoyed it I I saw
little Job actually laughing. I think I never saw him do more than
smile before.' Then, turning round to Dominic, she said, 'Will the
buggy come round to this door?'
This hint was sufficient. Dominic went to see if the vehicle was ready,
and Denner, remarking that Mrs Holt would like to mount it in the
inner court, invited her to go back into the housekeeper's room. But
there was a fresh resistance raised in Harry by the threatened
departure of Job, who had seemed an invaluable addition to the
menagerie of tamed creatures; and it was barely in time that Esther
had the relief of seeing the entrance-hall cleared so as to prevent any
further encounter of Mrs Holt with Harold, who was now coming up
the flight of steps at the entrance.
Chapter 44
I'm sick at heart. The eye of day,
The insistent summer noon, seems pitiless,
Shining in all the barren crevices
Of weary life, leaving no shade, no dark,
Where I may dream that hidden waters lie.
SHORTLY after Mrs Holt's striking presentation of herself at Transome
Court, Esther went on a second visit to her father. The Loamford
Assizes were approaching; it was expected that in about ten days Felix
Holt's trial would come on, and some hints in her father's letters had
given Esther the impression that he was taking a melancholy view of
the result. Harold Transome had once or twice mentioned the subject
with a facile hopefulness as to 'the young fellow's coming off easily',
which, in her anxious mind, was no t a counterpoise to disquieting
suggestions, and she had not chosen to introduce another
conversation about Felix Holt, by questioning Harold concerning the
probabilities he relied on. Since those moments on the terrace, Harold
had daily become more of the soli citous and indirectly beseeching
lover; and Esther, from the very fact that she was weighed on by
thoughts that were painfully bewildering to her - by thoughts which,
in their newness to her young mind, seemed to shake her belief that
life could be anything else than a compromise with things repugnant
to the moral taste - had become more passive to his attentions at the
very time that she had begun to feel more profoundly that in accepting
Harold Transome she left the high mountain air, the passionate
serenity of perfect love for ever behind her, and must adjust her
wishes to a life of middling deligh ts, overhung with the languorous
haziness of motiveless ease, where poetry was only literature, and the
fine ideas had to be taken down from the shelves of the library when
her husband's back was turned. But it seemed as if all outward
conditions concurred, along with her generous sympathy for the
Transomes, and with those native tendencies against which she had
once begun to struggle, to make this middling lot the best she could
attain to. She was in this half-sad half-satisfied resignation to
something like what is called worl dly wisdom, when she went to see
her father, and learn what she could from him about Felix.
The little minister was much depressed, unable to resign himself to
the dread which had begun to haunt him, that Felix might have to
endure the odious penalty of transportation for the manslaughter,
which was the offence that no evidence in his favour could disprove.
'I had been encouraged by the assurances of men instructed in this
regard,' said Mr Lyon, while Esther sat on the stool near him, and
listened anxiously, 'that though he were pronounced guilty in regard
to this deed whereinto he hath calamitously fallen, yet that a judge
mildly disposed, and with a due sense of that invisible activity of the
soul whereby the deeds which are the same in the outward
appearance and effect, yet differ as the knife-stroke of the surgeon,
even though it kill, differs from the knife-stroke of a wanton mutilator,
might use his discretion in tempering the punishment, so that it
would not be very evil to bear. But now it is said that the judge who
cometh is a severe man, and one nourishing a prejudice against the
bolder spirits who stand not in the old paths.'
'I am going to be present at the trial, father,' said Esther, who was
preparing the way to express a wish, which she was timid about even
with her father. 'I mentioned to Mrs Transome that I should like to do
so, and she said that she used in old days always to attend the
assizes, and that she would take me. You will be there, father?'
'Assuredly I shall be there, having been summoned to bear witness to
Felix's character, and to his having uttered remonstrances and
warnings long beforehand whereby he proved himself an enemy to
riot. In our ears, who knew him, it sounds strangely that aught else
should be credible; but he hath few to speak for him, though I trust
that Mr Harold Transome's testimony will go far, if, as you say, he is
disposed to set aside all minor regards, and not to speak the truth
grudgingly and reluctantly. For the very truth hath a colour from the
disposition of the utterer.' 'He is kind; he is capable of being
generous,' said Esther.
'It is well. For I verily believe that evil-minded men have been at work
against Felix. The Duffield Watchman hath written continually in
allusion to him as one of those mischievous men who seek to elevate
themselves through the dishonour of their party; and as one of those
who go not heart and soul with the needs of the people, but seek only
to get a hearing for themselves by raising their voices in crotchety
discord. It is those things that cause me heaviness of spirit: the dark
secret of this young man's lot is a cross I carry daily.'
'Father,' said Esther, timidly, while the eyes of both were filling with
tears, 'I should like to see him again, before his trial. Might I? Will you
ask him? Will you take me?'
The minister raised his suffused eyes to hers, and did not speak for a
moment or two. A new thought had visited him. But his delicate
tenderness shrank even from an inward inquiry that was too curious -
that seemed like an effort to peep at sacred secrets.
'I see nought against it, my dear child, if you arrived early enough,
and would take the elderly lady in to your confidence, so that you
might descend from the carriage at some suitable place - the house of
the Independent minister, for example - where I could meet and
accompany you. I would forewarn Felix, who would doubtless delight
to see your face again; seeing that he may go away, and be, as it were,
buried from you, even though it may be only in prison, and not -
This was too much for Esther. She threw her arms round her father's
neck and sobbed like a child. It was an unspeakable relief to her after
all the pent-up stifling experience, all the inward incommunicable
debate of the last few weeks. The old man was deeply moved too, and
held his arm close round the dear child, praying silently.
No word was spoken for some minutes, till Esther raised herself, dried
her eyes, and with an action that seemed playful, though there was no
smile on her face, pressed her handkerchief against her father's
cheeks. Then, when she had put her hand in his, he said, solemnly -
'Tis a great and mysterious gift, this clinging of the heart, my Esther,
whereby, it hath often seemed to me that even in the very moment of
suffering our souls have the keenest foretaste of heaven. I speak not
lightly, but as one who hath endured. And 'tis a strange truth that
only in the agony of parting we look into the depths of love.'
So the interview ended, without any question from Mr Lyon
concerning what Esther contemplated as the ultimate arrangement
between herself and the Transomes.
After this conversation, which showed him that what happened to
Felix touched Esther more closely than he had supposed, the minister
felt no impulse to raise the images of a future so unlike anything that
Felix would share. And Esther would have been unable to answer any
such questions. The successive weeks, instead of bringing her nearer
to clearness and decision, had only brought that state of
disenchantment belonging to the actual presence of things which have
long dwelt in the imagination with all the factitious charms of
arbitrary arrangement. Her imaginary mansion had not been
inhabited just as Transome Court was; her imaginary fortune had not
been attended with circumstances which she was unable to sweep
away. She herself, in her Utopia, had never been what she was now -
a woman whose heart was divided and oppressed. The first
spontaneous offering of her woman's devotion, the first great
inspiration of her life, was a sort of vanished ecstasy which had left its
wounds. It seemed to her a cruel misfortune of her young life that her
best feeling, her most precious dependence, had been called forth just
where the conditions were hardest, an d that all the easy invitations of
circumstance were towards something which that previous
consecration of her longing had made a moral descent for her. It was
characteristic of her that she scarcely at all entertained the alternative
of such a compromise, as would have given her the larger portion of
the fortune to which she had a legal claim, and yet have satisfied her
sympathy by leaving the Transomes in possession of their old home.
Her domestication with his family had brought them into the
foreground of her imagination; the gradual wooing of Harold had acted
on her with a constant immediate influence that predominated over all
indefinite prospects; and a solitary elevation to wealth, which out of
Utopia she had no notion how she should manage, looked as chill and
dreary as the offer of dignities in an unknown country.
In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to
be alone, and for some women also. But Esther was not one of these
women: she was intensely of the feminine type, verging neither
towards the saint nor the angel. She was 'a fair divided excellence,
whose fulness of perfection' must be in marriage. And, like all
youthful creatures, she felt as if the present conditions of choice were
final. It belonged to the freshness of her heart that, having had her
emotions strongly stirred by real objects, she never speculated on
possible relations yet to come. It seemed to her that she stood at the
first and last parting of the ways. And, in one sense, she was under no
illusion. It is only in that freshness of our time that the choice is
possible which gives unity to life, and makes the memory a temple
where all relics and all votive offerings, all worship and all grateful joy,
are an unbroken history sanctified by one religion.
Chapter 45
We may not make this world a paradise
By walking it together with clasped hands
And eyes that meeting feed a double strength.
We must be only joined by pains divine,
Of spirits blent in mutual memories.
IT was a consequence of that inte rview with her father, that when
Esther stepped early on a grey March morning into the carriage with
Mrs Transome, to go to the Loamford Assizes, she was full of an
expectation that held her lips in trembling silence, and gave her eyes
that sightless beauty which tells that the vision is all within.
Mrs Transome did not disturb her wi th unnecessary speech. Of late,
Esther's anxious observation had been drawn to a change in Mrs
Transome, shown in many small ways which only women notice. It
was not only that when they sat together the talk seemed more of an
effort to her: that might have come from the gradual draining away of
matter for discourse pertaining to most sorts of companionship, in
which repetition is not felt to be as desirable as novelty. But while Mrs
Transome was dressed just as usual, took her seat as usual, trifled
with her drugs and had her embroidery before her as usual, and still
made her morning greetings with th at finished easy politeness and
consideration of tone which to rougher people seems like affection,
Esther noticed a strange fitfulness in her movements. Sometimes the
stitches of her embroidery went on with silent unbroken swiftness for
a quarter of an hour as if she had to work out her deliverance from
bondage by finishing a scroll-pattern ed border; then her hands dropt
suddenly and her gaze fe ll blankly on the tabl e before her, and she
would sit in that way motionless as a seated statue, apparently
unconscious of Esther's presence, till some thought darting within her
seemed to have the effect of an external shock and rouse her with a
start, when she looked round hastily like a person ashamed of having
slept. Esther, touched with wondering pity at signs of unhappiness
that were new in her experience, took the most delicate care to appear
inobservant, and only tried to increase the gentle attention that might
help to soothe or gratify this uneasy woman. But, one morning, Mrs
Transome had said, breaking rather a long silence -
'My dear, I shall make this house dull for you. You sit with me like an
embodied patience. I am unendurable; I am getting into a melancholy
dotage. A fidgety old woman like me is as unpleasant to see as a rook
with its wing broken. Don't mind me, my dear. Run away from me
without ceremony. Every one else does, you see. I am part of the old
furniture with new drapery.'
'Dear Mrs Transome,' said Esther, gliding to the low ottoman close by
the basket of embroidery, 'do you dislike my sitting with you?'
'Only for your sake, my fairy,' said Mrs Transome, smiling faintly, and
putting her hand under Esther's chin. 'Doesn't it make you shudder to
look at me?'
'Why will you say such naughty things?' said Esther, affectionately. 'If
you had had a daughter, she would have desired to be with you most
when you most wanted cheering. And surely every young woman has
something of a daughter's feeling towards an older one who has been
kind to her.'
'I should like you to be really my daughter,' said Mrs Transome,
rousing herself to look a little brighter. 'That is something still for an
old woman to hope for.'
Esther blushed: she had not foreseen this application of words that
came from pitying tenderness. To divert the train of thought as
quickly as possible, she at once asked what she had previously had in
her mind to ask. Before her blush had disappeared she said -
'O, you are so good; I shall ask you to indulge me very much. It is to
let us set out very early to Loamford on Wednesday, and put me down
at a particular house, that I may keep an engagement with my father.
It is a private matter, that I wish no one to know about, if possible.
And he will bring me back to you wherever you appoint.'
In that way Esther won her end without needing to betray it; and as
Harold was already away at Loamford, she was the more secure.
The Independent minister's house at which she was set down, and
where she was received by her father, was in a quiet street not far
from the jail. Esther had thrown a dark cloak over the handsomer
coverings which Denner had assured her was absolutely required of
ladies who sat anywhere near the judge at a great trial; and as the
bonnet of that day did not throw the face into high relief, but rather
into perspective, a veil drawn down gave her a sufficiently
inconspicuous appearance.
'I have arranged all things, my dear ,' said Mr Lyon, 'and Felix expects
us. We will lose no time.'
They walked away at once, Esther not asking a question. She had no
consciousness of the road along which they passed; she could never
remember anything but a dim sense of entering within high walls and
going along passages, till they were ushered into a larger space than
she expected, and her father said -
'It is here that we are permitted to see Felix, my Esther. He will
presently appear.'
Esther automatically took off her gloves and bonnet, as if she had
entered the house after a walk. She had lost the complete
consciousness of everything except that she was going to see Felix.
She trembled. It seemed to her as if he too would look altered after her
new life - as if even the past would change for her and be no longer a
steadfast remembrance, but something she had been mistaken about,
as she had been about the new life. Perhaps she was growing out of
that childhood to which common things have rareness, and all objects
look larger. Perhaps from hencef orth the whole world was to be
meaner for her. The dread concentrated in those moments seemed
worse than anything she had known before. It was what the dread of a
pilgrim might be who has it whispered to him that the holy places are
a delusion, or that he will see them with a soul unstirred and
unbelieving. Every minute that passes may be charged with some
such crisis in the little inner world of man or woman.
But soon the door opened slightly; some one looked in; then it opened
wide, and Felix Holt entered.
'Miss Lyon - Esther!' and her hand was in his grasp.
He was just the same - no, something inexpressibly better, because of
the distance and separation, and the half-weary novelties, which made
him like the return of morning.
'Take no heed of me, children,' said Mr Lyon. 'I have some notes to
make, and my time is precious. We may remain here only a quarter of
an hour.' And the old man sat down at a window with his back to
them, writing with his head bent close to the paper.
'You are very pale; you look ill, compared with your old self,' said
Esther. She had taken her hand away, but they stood still near each
other, she looking up at him.
'The fact is, I'm not fond of prison,' said Felix, smiling; 'but I suppose
the best I can hope for is to have a good deal more of it.'
'It is thought that in the worst case a pardon may be obtained,' said
Esther, avoiding Harold Transome's name.
'I don't rely on that,' said Felix, shaking his head. 'My wisest course is
to make up my mind to the very ugliest penalty they can condemn me
to. If I can face that, anything less will seem easy. But you know,' he
went on, smiling at her brightly, 'I never went in for fine company and
cushions. I can't be very heavily disappointed in that way.'
'Do you see things just as you used to do?' said Esther, turning pale
as she said it - 'I mean - about poverty, and the people you will live
among. Has all the misunderstanding and sadness left you just as
obstinate?' She tried to smile, but could not succeed.
'What - about the sort of life I should lead if I were free again?' said
Felix.
'Yes. I can't help being discouraged for you by all these things that
have happened. See how you may fail!' Esther spoke timidly. She saw
a peculiar smile, which she knew well, gathering in his eyes. 'Ah, I
daresay I am silly,' she said, deprecatingly.
'No, you are dreadfully inspired,' said Felix. 'When the wicked tempter
is tired of snarling that word fail ure in a man's cell, he sends a voice
like a thrush to say it for him. See now what a messenger of darkness
you are!' He smiled, and took her two hands between his, pressed
together as children hold them up in prayer. Both of them felt too
solemnly to be bashful. They looked straight into each other's eyes, as
angels do when they tell some truth. And they stood in that way while
he went on speaking.
'But I'm proof against that word fail ure. I've seen behind it. The only
failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees
to be best. As to just the amount of result he may see from his
particular work - that's a tremendous uncertainty: the universe has
not been arranged for the gratification of his feelings. As long as a
man sees and believes in some great good, he'll prefer working
towards that in the way he's best fit for, come what may. I put effects
at their minimum, but I'd rather have the minimum of effect, if it's of
the sort I care for, than the maximum of effect I don't care for - a lot of
fine things that are not to my taste - and if they were, the conditions
of holding them while the world is what it is, are such as would jar on
me like grating metal.'
'Yes,' said Esther, in a low tone, 'I think I understand that now, better
than I used to do.' The words of Felix at last seemed strangely to fit
her own experience. But she said no more, though he seemed to wait
for it a moment or two, looking at her. But then he went on -
'I don't mean to be illustrious, yo u know, and make a new era, else it
would be kind of you to get a raven and teach it to croak ‘failure’ in
my ears. Where great things can't happen, I care for very small things,
such as will never be known beyo nd a few garrets and workshops.
And then, as to one thing I believe in, I don't think I can altogether
fail. If there's anything our people want convincing of, it is, that
there's some dignity and happiness for a man other than changing his
station. That's one of the beliefs I choose to consecrate my life to. If
anybody could demonstrate to me that I was a flat for it, I shouldn't
think it would follow that I must borrow money to set up genteelly and
order new clothes. That's not a rigorous consequence to my
understanding.'
They smiled at each other, with the old sense of amusement they had
so often had together.
'You are just the same,' said Esther.
'And you?' said Felix. 'My affairs have been settled long ago. But yours
- a great change has come in them - magic at work.'
'Yes,' said Esther, rather falteringly.
'Well,' said Felix, looking at her gravely again, 'it's a case of fitness
that seems to give a chance sanction to that musty law. The first time
I saw you, your birth was an imme nse puzzle to me. However, the
appropriate conditions are come at last.'
These words seemed cruel to Esther. But Felix could not know all the
reasons for their seeming so. She could not speak; she was turning
cold and feeling her heart beat painfully.
'All your tastes are gratified now,' he went on innocently. 'But you'll
remember the old pedagogue and his lectures?'
One thought in the mind of Felix was, that Esther was sure to marry
Harold Transome. Men readily believe these things of the women who
love them. But he could not allude to the marriage more directly. He
was afraid of this destiny for her, without having any very distinct
knowledge by which to justify his fear to the mind of another. It did
not satisfy him that Esther should marry Harold Transome.
'My children,' said Mr Lyon at this moment, not looking round, but
only looking close at his watch, 'we have just two minutes more.' Then
he went on writing.
Esther did not speak, but Felix could not help observing now that her
hands had turned to a deathly cold ness, and that she was trembling.
He believed, he knew, that whatever prospects she had, this feeling
was for his sake. An overpowering impulse from mingled love,
gratitude, and anxiety, urged him to say -
'I had a horrible struggle, Esther. But you see I was right. There was a
fitting lot in reserve for you. But remember you have cost a great price
- don't throw what is precious away . I shall want the news that you
have a happiness worthy of you.'
Esther felt too miserable for tears to come. She looked helplessly at
Felix for a moment, then took her hands from his, and, turning away
mutely, walked dreamily towards her father, and said, 'Father, I am
ready - there is no more to say.'
She turned back again, towards th e chair where her bonnet lay, with
a face quite corpse-like above her dark garment.
'Esther!'
She heard Felix say the word, with an entreating cry, and went
towards him with the swift movement of a frightened child towards its
protector. He clasped her, and they kissed each other.
She never could recall anything else that happened, till she was in the
carriage again with Mrs Transome.
Chapter 46
Why, there are maidens of heroic touch,
And yet they seem like things of gossamer
You'd pinch the life out of, as out of moths.
O, it is not loud tones and mouthingness
'Tis not the arms akimbo and large strides,
That makes a woman's force. The tiniest birds,
With softest downy breasts, have passions in them
And are brave with love.
ESTHER was so placed in the court, under Mrs Transome's wing as to
see and hear everything without effort. Harold had received them at
the hotel, and had observed that Esther looked ill, and was unusually
abstracted in her manner, but this seemed to be sufiiciently
accounted for by her sympathetic anxiety about the result of a trial in
which the prisoner at the bar was a friend, and in which both her
father and himself were important witnesses. Mrs Transome had no
reluctance to keep a small secret from her son, and no betrayal was
made of that previous 'engagement' of Esther's with her father. Harold
was particularly delicate and unobtrusive in his attentions to-day: he
had the consciousness that he was going to behave in a way that
would gratify Esther and win her admiration, and we are all of us
made more graceful by the inward presence of what we believe to be a
generous purpose; our actions mo ve to a hidden music - 'a melody
that's sweetly pitched in tune'.
If Esther had been less absorbed by supreme feelings, she would have
been aware that she was an object of special notice. In the bare
squareness of a public hall, where there was not one jutting angle to
hang a guess or a thought upon, not an image or a bit of colour to stir
the fancy, and where the only objects of speculation, of admiration, or
of any interest whatever, were human beings, and especially the
human beings that occupied positi ons indicating some importance,
the notice bestowed on Esther would not have been surprising, even if
it had been merely a tribute to her youthful charm, which was well
companioned by Mrs Transome's elderly majesty. But it was due also
to whisperings that she was an here ditary claimant of the Transome
estates, whom Harold Transome was about to marry. Harold himself
had of late not cared to conceal either the fact or the probability: they
both tended rather to his honour than his dishonour. And to-day,
when there was a good proportion of Trebians present, the
whisperings spread rapidly.
The court was still more crowded than on the previous day, when our
poor acquaintance Dredge and his two collier companions were
sentenced to a year's imprisonment with hard labour, and the more
enlightened prisoner, who stole the Debarrys' plate, to transportation
for life. Poor Dredge had cried, had wished he'd 'never heared of a
'lection,' and in spite of sermons from the jail chaplain, fell back on
the explanation that this was a world in which Spratt and Old Nick
were sure to get the best of it; so that in Dredge's case, at least, most
observers must have had the melanc holy conviction that there had
been no enhancement of public spirit and faith in progress from that
wave of political agitation which had reached the Sproxton Pits.
But curiosity was necessarily at a higher pitch to-day, when the
character of the prisoner and the circumstances of his offence were of
a highly unusual kind. As soon as Felix appeared at the bar, a
murmur rose and spread into a loud buzz, which continued until
there had been repeated authoritative calls for silence in the court.
Rather singularly, it was now for the first time that Esther had a
feeling of pride in him on the ground simply of his appearance. At this
moment, when he was the centre of a multitudinous gaze, which
seemed to act on her own vision like a broad unmitigated daylight, she
felt that there was something pre-eminent in him, notwithstanding the
vicinity of numerous gentlemen. No apple-woman would have admired
him; not only to feminine minds li ke Mrs Tiliot's, but to many minds
in coat and waistcoat, there was something dangerous and perhaps
unprincipled in his bare throat and great Gothic head; and his
somewhat massive person would do ubtless have come out very oddly
from the hands of a fashionable tailor of that time. But as Esther saw
his large grey eyes looking round calmly and undefiantly, first at the
audience generally, and then with a more observant expression at the
lawyers and other persons immediatel y around him, she felt that he
bore the outward stamp of a distin guished nature. Forgive her if she
needed this satisfaction: all of us - whether men or women - are liable
to this weakness of liking to have our preference justified before
others as well as ourselves. Esth er said inwardly, with a certain
triumph, that Felix Holt looked as worthy to be chosen in the midst of
this large assembly, as he had ever looked in their tete-a-tete under
the sombre light of the little parlour in Malthouse Yard.
Esther had felt some relief in hearing from her father that Felix had
insisted on doing without his moth er's presence; and since to Mrs
Holt's imagination, notwithstandin g her general desire to have her
character inquired into, there was no greatly consolatory difference
between being a witness and a criminal, and an appearance of any
kind 'before the judge' could hard ly be made to suggest anything
definite that would overcome the di m sense of unalleviated disgrace,
she had been less inclined than usual to complain of her son's
decision. Esther had shuddered beforehand at the inevitable farce
there would be in Mrs Holt's testimony. But surely Felix would lose
something for want of a witness who could testify to his behaviour in
the morning before he became involved in the tumult?
'He is really a fine young fellow,' said Harold, coming to speak to
Esther after a colloquy with the prisoner's solicitor. 'I hope he will not
make a blunder in defending himself.'
'He is not likely to make a blunde r,' said Esther. She had recovered
her colour a little, and was brighter than she had been all the morning
before.
Felix had seemed to include her in his general glance, but had avoided
looking at her particularly. She understood how delicate feeling for her
would prevent this, and that she might safely look at him, and
towards her father, whom she could see in the same direction.
Turning to Harold to make an observation, she saw that he was
looking towards the same point, but with an expression on his face
that surprised her.
'Dear me,' she said, prompted to speak without any reflection; 'how
angry you look! I never saw you look so angry before. It is not my
father you are looking at?'
'Oh no ! I am angry at something I'm looking away from,' said Harold,
making an effort to drive back the troublesome demon who would
stare out at window. 'It's that Jermyn,' he added, glancing at his
mother as well as Esther. 'He will thrust himself under my eyes
everywhere since I refused him an interview and returned his letter.
I'm determined never to speak to him directly again, if I can help it.'
Mrs Transome heard with a changeless face. She had for some time
been watching, and had taken on her marble look of immobility. She
said an inward bitter 'Of course!' to everything that was unpleasant.
After this Esther soon became impatient of all speech: her attention
was riveted on the proceedings of the court, and on the mode in which
Felix bore himself. In the case fo r the prosecution there was nothing
more than a reproduction, with ir relevancies added by witnesses, of
the facts already known to us. Spratt had retained consciousness
enough, in the midst of his terror, to swear that, when he was tied to
the finger-post, Felix was presiding over the actions of the mob. The
landlady of the Seven Stars, who was indebted to Felix for rescue from
pursuit by some drunken rioters, gave evidence that went to prove his
assumption of leadership prio r to the assault on Spratt, -
remembering only that he had call ed away her pursuers to 'better
sport'. Various respectable witnesses swore to Felix's 'encouragement'
of the rioters who were dragging Spratt in King Street; to his fatal
assault on Tucker; and to his attitu de in front of the drawing-room
window at the Manor.
Three other witnesses gave evidence of expressions used by the
prisoner, tending to show the character of the acts with which he was
charged. Two were Treby tradesmen, the third was a clerk from
Duffield. The clerk had heard Felix speak at Duffield; the Treby men
had frequently heard him declare himself on public matters; and they
all quoted expressions which tended to show that he had a virulent
feeling against the respectable shop -keeping class, and that nothing
was likely to be more congenial to him than the gutting of retailers'
shops. No one else knew - the witnesses themselves did not know fully
- how far their strong perception and memory on these points was due
to a fourth mind, namely, that of Mr John Johnson, the attorney, who
was nearly related to one of the Treby witnesses, and a familiar
acquaintance of the Duffield cler k. Man cannot be defined as an
evidence-giving animal; and in the difficulty of getting up evidence on
any subject, there is room for much unrecognised action of diligent
persons who have the extra stimulus of some private motive. Mr
Johnson was present in court to-day, but in a modest, retired
situation. He had come down to give information to Mr Jermyn, and to
gather information in other quarters, which was well illuminated by
the appearance of Esther in company with the Transomes.
When the case for the prosecution closed, all strangers thought that it
looked black for the prisoner. In two instances only Felix had chosen
to put a cross-examining question. The first was to ask Spratt if he did
not believe that his having been tied to the post had saved him from a
probably mortal injury? The second was to ask the tradesman who
swore to his having heard Felix tell the rioters to leave Tucker alone
and come along with him, whether he had not, shortly before, heard
cries among the mob summoning to an attack on the wine-vaults and
brewery.
Esther had hitherto listened closely but calmly. She knew that there
would be this strong adverse test imony; and all her hopes and fears
were bent on what was to come beyond it. It was when the prisoner
was asked what he had to adduce in reply that she felt herself in the
grasp of that tremor which does not disable the mind, but rather gives
keener consciousness of a mind having a penalty of body attached to
it.
There was a silence as of night when Felix Holt began to speak. His
voice was firm and clear: he spoke with simple gravity, and evidently
without any enjoyment of the occasion. Esther had never seen his face
look so weary.
'My Lord, I am not going to occupy the time of the court with
unnecessary words. I believe the wi tnesses for the prosecution have
spoken the truth as far as a superficial observation would enable
them to do it; and I see nothing that can weigh with the jury in my
favour, unless they believe my statement of my own motives, and the
testimony that certain witnesses will give to my character and
purposes as being inconsistent with my willingly abetting disorder. I
will tell the court in as few words as I can, how I got entangled in the
mob, how I came to attack the cons table, and how I was led to take a
course which seems rather mad to myself, now I look back upon it.'
Felix then gave a concise narrative of his motives and conduct on the
day of the riot, from the moment when he was startled into quitting
his work by the earlier uproar of th e morning. He omitted, of course,
his visit to Malthouse Yard, and merely said that he went out to walk
again after returning to quiet his mother's mind. He got warmed by
the story of his experience, which moved him more strongly than ever,
now he recalled it in vibrating words before a large audience of his
fellow-men. The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the
great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs of
sorrow.
'That is all I have to say for myself, my Lord. I pleaded ‘Not guilty’ to
the charge of manslaughter, because I know that word may carry a
meaning which would not fairly apply to my act. When I threw Tucker
down, I did not see the possibility th at he would die from a sort of
attack which ordinarily occurs in fighting without any fatal effect. As
to my assaulting a constable, it wa s a quick choice between two evils:
I should else have been disabled. And he attacked me under a mistake
about my intentions. I'm not prepared to say I never would assault a
constable where I had more chance of deliberation. I certainly should
assault him if I saw him doing anything that made my blood boil: I
reverence the law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it
should be the very object of law to hinder. I consider that I should be
making an unworthy defence, if I let the court infer from what I say
myself, or from what is said by my witnesses, that because I am a
man who hates drunken disorder, or any wanton harm, therefore I am
a man who would never fight against authority. I hold it blasphemy to
say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great
religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning. It
would be impertinent for me to speak of this now, if I did not need to
say in my own defence, that I should hold myself the worst sort of
traitor if I put my hand either to fighting or disorder - which must
mean injury to somebody - if I were not urged to it by what I hold to
be sacred feelings, making a sacred duty either to my own manhood
or to my fellow-man. And certainly,' Felix ended with a strong ring of
scorn in his voice, I never held it a sacred duty to try and get a Radical
candidate returned fo r North Loamshire, by willingly heading a
drunken howling mob, whose public action must consist in breaking
windows, destroying hard-got produce, and endangering the lives of
men and women. I have no more to say, my Lord.'
'I foresaw he would make a blunder,' said Harold, in a low voice to
Esther. Then, seeing her shrink a little, he feared she might suspect
him of being merely stung by the allusion to himself. 'I don't mean
what he said about the Radical ca ndidate,' he added hastily, in
correction. 'I don't mean the last sentence. I mean that whole
peroration of his, which he ought to have left unsaid. It has done him
harm with the jury - they won't understand it, or rather will
misunderstand it. And I'll answer for it, it has soured the judge. It
remains to be seen what we witnesses can say for him, to nullify the
effect of what he has said for himself. I hope the attorney has done his
best in collecting the evidence: I understand the expense of the
witnesses is undertaken by some Liberals at Glasgow and in
Lancashire friends of Holt's. But I suppose your father has told you.'
The first witness called for the defence was Mr Lyon. The gist of his
statements was, that from the beginning of September last until the
day of election he was in very frequent intercourse with the prisoner;
that he had become intimately acquainted with his character and
views of life, and his conduct with respect to the election, and that
these were totally inconsistent with any other supposition than that
his being involved in the riot, and his fatal encounter with the
constable, were due to the calamitous failure of a bold but good
purpose. He stated further that he had been present when an
interview had occurred in his own house between the prisoner and Mr
Harold Transome, who was then canv assing for the representation of
North Loamshire. That the object of the prisoner in seeking this
interview had been to inform Mr Tr ansome of treating given in his
name to the workmen in the pits and on the canal at Sproxton, and to
remonstrate against its continuance; the prisoner fearing that
disturbance and mischief might result from what he believed to be the
end towards which this treating was directed - namely, the presence of
these men on the occasions of the nomination and polling. Several
times after this interview, Mr Lyon said, he had heard Felix Holt recur
to the subject therein discussed with expressions of grief and anxiety.
He himself was in the habit of visi ting Sproxton in his ministerial
capacity: he knew fully what the prisoner had done there in order to
found a night-school, and was certain that the prisoner's interest in
the working men of that district turned entirely on the possibility of
converting them somewhat to habi ts of soberness and to a due care
for the instruction of their children. Finally, he stated that the
prisoner, in compliance with his request, had been present at Duffield
on the day of the nomination, and had on his return expressed
himself with strong indignation co ncerning the employment of the
Sproxton men on that occasion, and what he called the wickedness of
hiring blind violence.
The quaint appearance and manner of the little Dissenting minister
could not fail to stimulate the peculiar wit of the bar. He was
subjected to a troublesome cross-ex amination, which he bore with
wide-eyed shortsighted quietude and absorption in the duty of
truthful response. On being asked, rather sneeringly, if the prisoner
was not one of his flock? he answ ered, in that deeper tone which
made one of the most effective transitions of his varying voice -
'Nay - would to God he were! I should then feel that the great virtues
and the pure life I have beheld in him were a witness to the efficacy of
the faith I believe in and the discipline of the church whereunto I
belong.'
Perhaps it required a larger power of comparison than was possessed
by any of that audience to appreciate the moral elevation of an
Independent minister who could utter those words. Nevertheless there
was a murmur, which was clearly one of sympathy.
The next witness, and the one on whom the interest of the spectators
was chiefly concentrated, was Harold Transome. There was a decided
predominance of Tory feeling in th e court, and the human disposition
to enjoy the infliction of a little punishment on an opposite party, was,
in this instance, of a Tory complexion. Harold was keenly alive to this,
and to everything else that might prove disagreeable to him in his
having to appear in the witness-box. But he was not likely to lose his
self-possession, or to fail in ad justing himself gracefully, under
conditions which most men would fi nd it difficult to carry without
awkwardness. He had generosity and candour enough to bear Felix
Holt's proud rejection of his adva nces without any petty resentment;
he had all the susceptibilities of a gentleman; and these moral
qualities gave the right direction to his acumen, in judging of the
behaviour that would best secure his dignity. Everything requiring
self-command was easier to him because of Esther's presence; for her
admiration was just then the object which this well-tanned man of the
world had it most at heart to secure.
When he entered the witness-box he was much admired by the ladies
amongst the audience, many of whom sighed a little at the thought of
his wrong course in politics. He certainly looked like a handsome
portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in which that remarkable artist had
happily omitted the usual excess of honeyed blandness mixed with
alert intelligence, which is hardly compatible with the state of man out
of paradise. He stood not far off Fe lix; and the two Radicals certainly
made a striking contrast. Felix might have come from the hands of a
sculptor in the later Roman period, when the plastic impulse was
stirred by the grandeur of barbaric forms - when rolled collars were
not yet conceived, and satin stocks were not.
Harold Transome declared that he had had only one interview with the
prisoner: it was the interview referred to by the previous witness, in
whose presence and in whose house it was begun. The interview,
however, was continued beyond the observation of Mr Lyon. The
prisoner and himself quitted the Dissenting minister's house in
Malthouse Yard together, and proceeded to the office of Mr Jermyn,
who was then conducting electioneer ing business on his behalf. His
object was to comply with Holt's remonstrance by inquiring into the
alleged proceedings at Sproxton, and, if possible to put a stop to them.
Holt's language, both in Malthouse Yard and in the attorney's office,
was strong: he was evidently indignant, and his indignation turned on
the danger of employing ignorant men excited by drink on an occasion
of popular concourse. He believed that Holt's sole motive was the
prevention of disorder, and what he considered the demoralisation of
the workmen by treating. The event had certainly justified his
remonstrances. He had not had an y subsequent opportunities of
observing the prisoner; but if any reliance was to be placed on a
rational conclusion, it must, he thought, be plain that the anxiety
thus manifested by Holt was a guarantee of the statement he had
made as to his motives on the day of the riot. His entire impression
from Holt's manner in that single interview was, that he was a moral
and political enthusiast, who, if he sought to coerce others, would
seek to coerce them into a difficult, and perhaps impracticable,
scrupulosity.
Harold spoke with as noticeable a directness and emphasis, as if what
he said could have no reaction on himself. He had of course not
entered unnecessarily into what occurred in Jermyn's office. But now
he was subjected to a cross-examination on this subject, which gave
rise to some subdued shrugs, smiles, and winks, among county
gentlemen.
The questions were directed so as to bring out, if possible, some
indication that Felix Holt was moved to his remonstrance by personal
resentment against the political agents concerned in setting on foot
the treating at Sproxton, but such questioning is a sort of target-
shooting that sometimes hits ab out widely. The cross-examining
counsel had close connections amon g the Tories of Loamshire, and
enjoyed his business to-day. Under the fire of various questions about
Jermyn and the agent employed by him at Sproxton, Harold got warm,
and in one of his replies said, with his rapid sharpness -
'Mr Jermyn was my agent then, not now: I have no longer any but
hostile relations with him.'
The sense that he had shown a slight heat would have vexed Harold
more if he had not got some satisfaction out of the thought that
Jermyn heard those words. He recovered his good temper quickly, and
when, subsequently, the question came -
'You acquiesced in the treating of the Sproxton men, as necessary to
the efficient working of the reformed constituency?' Harold replied,
with quiet fluency -
'Yes; on my return to England, befo re I put up for North Loamshire, I
got the best advice from practised agents, both Whig and Tory. They
all agreed as to electioneering measures.'
The next witness was Michael Brincey, otherwise Mike Brindle, who
gave evidence of the sayings and do ings of the prisoner amongst the
Sproxton men. Mike declared that Felix went 'uncommon again' drink,
and pitch-and-toss, and quarrelling, and sich,' and was 'all for
schooling and bringing up the li ttle chaps'; but on being cross-
examined, he admitted that he 'couldn't give much account'; that Felix
did talk again' idle folks, whether poor or rich, and that most like he
meant the rich, who had 'a rights to be idle', which was what he, Mike,
liked himself sometimes, though for the most part he was 'a hard-
working butty'. On being checked for this superfluous allegation of his
own theory and practice, Mike became timidly conscious that
answering was a great mystery beyond the reaches of a butty's soul,
and began to err from defect instead of excess. However, he reasserted
that what Felix most wanted was, 'to get 'em to set up a school for the
little chaps'.
With the two succeeding witnesses, who swore to the fact that Felix
had tried to lead the mob along Hobb's Lane instead of towards the
Manor, and to the violently threatening character of Tucker's attack
on him, the case for the defence was understood to close.
Meanwhile Esther had been looking on and listening with growing
misery, in the sense that all had not been said which might have been
said on behalf of Felix. If it was the jury who were to be acted on, she
argued to herself, there might have been an impression made on their
feeling which would determine their verdict. Was it not constantly said
and seen that juries pronounced Guilty or Not Guilty from sympathy
for or against the accused? She was too inexperienced to check her
own argument by thoroughly representing to herself the course of
things: how the counsel for the prosecution would reply, and how the
judge would sum up, with the object of cooling down sympathy into
deliberation. What she had painfull y pressing on her inward vision
was, that the trial was coming to an end, and that the voice of right
and truth had not been strong enough.
When a woman feels purely and nobly, that ardour of hers which
breaks through formulas too rigorously urged on men by daily
practical needs, makes one of her most precious influences: she is the
added impulse that shatters the stiffening crust of cautious
experience. Her inspired ignorance gives a sublimity to actions so
incongruously simple, that otherwise they would make men smile.
Some of that ardour which has flashed out and illuminated all poetry
and history was burning to-day in the bosom of sweet Esther Lyon. In
this, at least, her woman's lot was perfect: that the man she loved was
her hero; that her woman's passio n and her reverence for rarest
goodness rushed together in an undivided current. And to-day they
were making one danger, one terror, one irresistible impulse for her
heart. Her feelings were growing into a necessity for action, rather
than a resolve to act. She could not support the thought that the trial
would come to an end, that sentence would be passed on Felix, and
that all the while something had been omitted which might have been
said for him. There had been no wi tness to tell what had been his
behaviour and state of mind just before the riot. She must do it. It was
possible. There was time. But not too much time. All other agitation
became merged in eagerness not to let the moment escape. The last
witness was being called. Harold Transome had not been able to get
back to her on leaving the witness-box, but Mr Lingon was close by
her. With firm quickness she said to him -
'Pray tell the attorney that I have evidence to give for the prisoner -
lose no time.'
'Do you know what you are going to say, my dear?' said Mr Lingon,
looking at her in astonishment.
'Yes - I entreat you, for God's sake,' said Esther, in that low tone of
urgent beseeching which is equivalent to a cry; and with a look of
appeal more penetrating still, 'I would rather die than not do it.'
The old rector, always leaning to the good-natured view of things, felt
chiefly that there seemed to be an additional chance for the poor
fellow who had got himself into trou ble. He disputed no farther, but
went to the attorney.
Before Harold was aware of Esther's intention she was on her way to
the witness-box. When she appeared th ere, it was as if a vibration,
quick as light, had gone through the court and had shaken Felix
himself, who had hitherto seemed impassive. A sort of gleam seemed
to shoot across his face, and any one close to him could have seen
that his hand, which lay on the edge of the dock, trembled.
At the first moment Harold was startled and alarmed; the next, he felt
delight in Esther's beautiful aspect, and in the admiration of the
court. There was no blush on her face: she stood, divested of all
personal considerations whether of vanity or shyness. Her clear voice
sounded as it might have done if she had been making a confession of
faith. She began and went on without query or interruption. Every
face looked grave and respectful.
'I am Esther Lyon, the daughter of Mr Lyon, the Independent minister
at Treby, who has been one of the witnesses for the prisoner. I know
Felix Holt well. On the day of the election at Treby, when I had been
much alarmed by the noises that reached me from the main street,
Felix Holt came to call upon me. He knew that my father was away,
and he thought that I should be alarmed by the sounds of
disturbance. It was about the middle of the day, and he came to tell
me that the disturbance was quieted, and that the streets were nearly
emptied. But he said he feared th at the men would collect again after
drinking, and that some thing worse might happen later in the day.
And he was in much sadness at this thought. He stayed a little while,
and then he left me. He was very melancholy. His mind was full of
great resolutions that came from his kind feeling towards others. It
was the last thing he would have done to join in riot or to hurt any
man, if he could have helped it. His nature is very noble; he is tender-
hearted; he could never have had any intention that was not brave
and good.'
There was something so naive and beautiful in this action of Esther's,
that it conquered every low or petty suggestion even in the commonest
minds. The three men in that assembly who knew her best - even her
father and Felix Holt - felt a thrill of surprise mingling with their
admiration. This bright, delicate, be autiful-shaped thing that seemed
most like a toy or ornament - some hand had touched the chords, and
there came forth music that brought tears. Half a year before, Esther's
dread of being ridiculous spread over the surface of her life; but the
depth below was sleeping.
Harold Transome was ready to give her his hand and lead her back to
her place. When she was there, Felix, for the first time, could not help
looking towards her, and their eyes met in one solemn glance.
Afterwards Esther found herself unable to listen so as to form any
judgment on what she heard. The acting out of that strong impulse
had exhausted her energy. There was a brief pause, filled with a
murmur, a buzz, and much coughing. The audience generally felt as if
dull weather was setting in again. And under those auspices the
counsel for the prosecution got up to make his reply. Esther's deed
had its effect beyond the momentary one, but the effect was not visible
in the rigid necessities of legal procedure. The counsel's duty of
restoring all unfavourable facts to due prominence in the minds of the
jurors, had its effect altogether reinforced by the summing-up of the
judge. Even the bare discernment of facts, much more their
arrangement with a view to inferences, must carry a bias: human
impartiality, whether judicial or not, can hardly escape being more or
less loaded. It was not that the ju dge had severe intentions; it was
only that he saw with severity. Th e conduct of Felix was not such as
inclined him to indulgent consideratio n, and, in his directions to the
jury, that mental attitude necessari ly told on the light in which he
placed the homicide. Even to many in the court who were not
constrained by judicial duty, it seemed that though this high regard
felt for the prisoner by his friend s, and especially by a generous-
hearted woman, was very pretty, such conduct as his was not the less
dangerous and foolish and assaulting and killing a constable was not
the less an offence to be regarded without leniency.
Esther seemed now so tremulous, and looked so ill, that Harold
begged her to leave the court with his mother and Mr Lingon. He
would come and tell her the issue. But she said, quietly, that she
would rather stay; she was only a li ttle overcome by the exertion of
speaking. She was inwardly resolved to see Felix to the last moment
before he left the court.
Though she could not follow the addr ess of the counsel or the judge,
she had a keen ear for what was brief and decisive. She heard the
verdict, 'Guilty of manslaughter.' And every word uttered by the judge
in pronouncing sentence fell upon her like an unforgettable sound
that would come back in dreaming and in waking. She had her eyes
on Felix, and at the word, 'Impriso nment for four years,' she saw his
lip tremble. But otherwise he stood firm and calm.
Esther gave a start from her seat. Her heart swelled with a horrible
sensation of pain; but, alarmed lest she should lose her self-
command, she grasped Mrs Transome 's hand, getting some strength
from that human contact.
Esther saw that Felix had turned. She could no longer see his face.
'Yes,' she said, drawing down her veil, 'let us go.'
Chapter 47
The devil tempts us not - 'tis we tempt him.
Beckoning his skill with opportunity.
THE more permanent effect of Esther's action in the trial was visible
in a meeting which took place the next day in the principal room of
the White Hart at Loamford. To the magistrates an d other county
gentlemen who were drawn together about noon, some of the
necessary impulse might have been lacking but for that stirring of
heart in certain just-spirited men and good fathers among them,
which had been raised to a high pitch of emotion by Esther's maidenly
fervour. Among these one of the foremost was Sir Maximus Debarry,
who had come to the assizes with a mind, as usual, slightly rebellious
under an influence which he never ultimately resisted - the influence
of his son. Philip Debarry himself was detained in London, but in his
correspondence with his father he had urged him, as well as his uncle
Augustus, to keep eyes and interest awake on the subject of Felix
Holt, whom, from all the knowledge of the case he had been able to
obtain, he was inclined to believe peculiarly unfortunate rather than
guilty. Philip had said he was the more anxious that his family should
intervene benevolently in this affair, if it were possible, because he
understood that Mr Lyon took the young man's case particularly to
heart, and he should always regard himself as obliged to the old
preacher. At this superfineness of consideration Sir Maximus had
vented a few 'pshaws!' and, in relation to the whole affair, had
grumbled that Phil was always setting him to do he didn't know what -
always seeming to turn nothing into something by dint of words which
hadn't so much substance as a mote behind them. Nevertheless he
was coerced; and in reality he was willing to do anything fair or good-
natured which had a handle that his understanding could lay hold of.
His brother, the rector, desired to be rigorously just; but he had come
to Loamford with a severe opinion concerning Felix, thinking that
some sharp punishment might be a wholesome check on the career of
a young man disposed to rely too much on his own crude devices.
Before the trial commenced, Sir Maximus had naturally been one of
those who had observed Esther with curiosity, owing to the report of
her inheritance, and her probable marriage to his once welcome but
now exasperating neighbour, Harold Transome; and he had made the
emphatic comment - 'A fine girl! so mething thoroughbred in the look
of her. Too good for a Radical; that's all I have to say.' But during the
trial Sir Maximus was wrought into a state of sympathetic ardour that
needed no fanning. As soon as he could take his brother by the
buttonhole, he said -
'I tell you what, Gus! we must exert ourselves to get a pardon for this
young fellow. Confound it! what's th e use of mewing him up for four
years? Example? Nonsense. Will there be a man knocked down the
less for it? That girl made me cry. Depend upon it, whether she's going
to marry Transome or not, she's been fond of Holt - in her poverty,
you know. She's a modest, brave, beautiful woman. I'd ride a
steeplechase, old as I am, to gratify her feelings. Hang it ! the fellow's
a good fellow if she thinks so. And he threw out a fine sneer, I
thought, at the Radical candidate. Depend upon it, he's a good fellow
at bottom.'
The rector had not exactly the same kind of ardour, nor was he open
to precisely that process of proof which appeared to have convinced
Sir Maximus; but he had been so far influenced as to be inclined to
unite in an effort on the side of mercy, observing, also, that he 'knew
Phil would be on that side'. An d by the co-operation of similar
movements in the minds of other men whose names were of weight, a
meeting had been determined on to consult about getting up a
memorial to the Home Secretary on behalf of Felix Holt. His case had
never had the sort of significance that could rouse political
partisanship; and such interest as was now felt in him was still more
unmixed with that inducement. The gentlemen who gathered in the
room at the White Hart were - no t as the large imagination of the
North Loamshire Herald suggested, 'of all shades of political opinion,'
but - of as many shades as were to be found among the gentlemen of
that county.
Harold Transome has been energetically active in bringing about this
meeting. Over and above the stings of conscience and a determination
to act up to the level of all recognised honourableness, he had the
powerful motive of desiring to do what would satisfy Esther. His
gradually heightened perception that she had a strong feeling towards
Felix Holt had not made him uneasy. Harold had a conviction that
might have seemed like fatuity if it had not been that he saw the effect
he produced on Esther by the light of his opinions about women in
general. The conviction was, that Felix Holt could not be his rival in
any formidable sense: Esther's ad miration for this eccentric young
man was, he thought, a moral enthusiasm, a romantic fervour, which
was one among those many attrac tions quite novel in his own
experience; her distress about the trouble of one who had been a
familiar object in her former ho me, was no more than naturally
followed from a tender woman's compassion. The place young Holt
had held in her regard had necessarily changed its relations now that
her lot was so widely changed. It is undeniable, that what most
conduced to the quieting nature of Harold's conclusions was the
influence on his imagination of the more or less detailed reasons that
Felix Holt was a watchmaker, that his home and dress were of a
certain quality, that his person and manners - that, in short (for
Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him
the trouble of distinct ideas), Feli x Holt was not the sort of man a
woman would be likely to be in love with when she was wooed by
Harold Transome.
Thus, he was sufficiently at rest on this point not to be exercising any
painful self-conquest in acting as the zealous advocate of Felix Holt's
cause with all persons worth influe ncing; but it was by no direct
intercourse between him and Sir Maximus that they found themselves
in co-operation, for the old barone t would not recognise Harold by
more than the faintest bow, and Harold was not a man to expose
himself to a rebuff. Whatever he in his inmost soul regarded as
nothing more than a narrow prejudice, he could defy, not with airs of
importance, but with easy indifference. He could bear most things
good-humouredly where he felt that he had the superiority. The object
of the meeting was discussed, and the memorial agreed upon without
any clashing. Mr Lingon was gone ho me, but it was expected that his
concurrence and signature would be given, as well as those of other
gentlemen who were absent. The business gradually reached that
stage at which the concentration of interest ceases - when the
attention of all but a few who are more practically concerned drops off
and disperses itself in private ch at, and there is no longer any
particular reason why everybody stays except that everybody is there.
The room was rather a long one, and invited to a little movement: one
gentleman drew another aside to speak in an under-tone about Scotch
bullocks, another had something to say about the North Loamshire
Hunt to a friend who was the reverse of good-looking, but who,
nevertheless, while listening, showed his strength of mind by giving a
severe attention also to his full-length reflection in the handsome tall
mirror that filled the space between two windows. And in this way the
groups were continually shifting
But in the meantime there were moving towards this room at the
White Hart the footsteps of a person whose presence had not been
invited, and who, very far from bein g drawn thither by the belief that
he would be welcome, knew well that his entrance would, to one
person at least, be bitterly disagreeable. They were the footsteps of Mr
Jermyn, whose appearance that morning was not less comely and less
carefully tended than usual, but who was suffering the torment of a
compressed rage, which, if not impotent to inflict pain on another,
was impotent to avert evil from himself. After his interview with Mrs
Transome there had been for some reasons a delay of positive
procedures against him by Harold, of which delay Jermyn had twice
availed himself; first, to seek an interview with Harold and then to
send him a letter. The interview had been refused; and the letter had
been returned, with the statement that no communication could take
place except through Harold's lawyers. And yesterday Johnson had
brought Jermyn the information that he would quickly hear of the
proceedings in Chancery being resu med: the watch Johnson kept in
town had given him secure knowledge on this head. A doomed animal,
with every issue earthed up except that where its enemy stands, must,
if it has teeth and fierceness, try its one chance without delay. And a
man may reach a point in his life in which his impulses are not
distinguished from those of a hunt ed brute by any capability of
scruples. Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching, that, well
encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little
scmples.
Since Harold would not give Jermyn access to him, that vigorous
attorney was resolved to take it. He knew all about the meeting at the
White Hart, and he was going thither with the determination of
accosting Harold. He thought he knew what he should say, and the
tone in which he should say it. It would be a vague intimation,
carrying the effect of a threat, which should compel Harold to give him
a private interview. To any counter-consideration that presented itself
in his mind - to anything that an imagined voice might say - that
imagined answer arose, 'That's all very fine, but I'm not going to be
ruined if I can help it - least of all, mined in that way.' Shall we call it
degeneration or gradual development - this effect of thirty additional
winters on the soft-glancing, versifying young Jermyn?
When Jermyn entered the room at the White Hart he did not
immediately see Harold. The door was at the extremity of the room,
and the view was obstructed by groups of gentlemen with figures
broadened by overcoats. His entrance excited no peculiar observation:
several persons had come in late. Only one or two, who knew Jermyn
well, were not too much pre-occupied to have a glancing remembrance
of what had been chatted about freely the day before - Harold's
irritated reply about his agent, from the witness-box. Receiving and
giving a slight nod here and there, Jermyn pushed his way, looking
round keenly, until he saw Harold standing near the other end of the
room. The solicitor who had acted for Felix was just then speaking to
him. but having put a paper into his hand turned away; and Harold,
standing isolated, though at no great distance from others, bent his
eyes on the paper. He looked brilliant that moming; his blood was
flowing prosperously. He had come in after a ride, and was
additionally brightened by rapid talk and the excitement of seeking to
impress himself favourably, or at least powerfully, on the minds of
neighbours nearer or more remote. He had just that amount of flush
which indicates that life is more enjoyable than usual; and as he
stood with his left hand caressing his whisker, and his right holding
the paper and his riding-whip, his dark eyes running rapidly along the
written lines, and his lips reposing in a curve of good-humour which
had more happiness in it than a smile, all beholders might have seen
that his mind was at ease.
Jermyn walked quickly and quietly close up to him. The two men were
of the same height, and before Harold looked round Jermyn's voice
was saying, close to his ear, not in a whisper, but in a hard, incisive,
disrespectful and yet not loud tone -
'Mr Transome, I must speak to you in private.'
The sound jarred through Harold with a sensation all the more
insufferable because of the revulsion from the satisfied, almost elated,
state in which it had seized him. He started and looked round into
Jermyn's eyes. For an instant, which seemed long, there was no
sound between them, but only angry hatred gathering in the two
faces. Harold felt himself going to crush this insolence: Jermyn felt
that he had words within him that we re fangs to clutch this obstinate
strength, and wring forth the blood and compel submission. And
Jermyn's impulse was the more urgent. He said, in a tone that was
rather lower, but yet harder and more biting - 'You will repent else -
for your mother's sake.'
At that sound, quick as a leaping flame, Harold had struck Jermyn
across the face with his whip. The brim of the hat had been a defence.
Jermyn, a powerful man, had instantly thrust out his hand and
clutched Harold hard by the clot hes just below the throat, pushing
him slightly so as to make him stagger.
By this time everybody's attention had been called to this end of the
room, but both Jermyn and Harold were beyond being arrested by any
consciousness of spectators.
'Let me go, you scoundrel!' said Harold, fiercely, 'or I'll be the death of
you.'
'Do,' said Jermyn, in a grating voice; 'I am your father.'
In the thrust by which Harold had been made to stagger backward a
little, the two men had got very near the long mirror. They were both
white - both had anger and hatred in their faces; the hands of both
were upraised. As Harold heard the last terrible words he started at a
leaping throb that went through him, and in the start turned his eyes
away from Jermyn's face. He turned them on the same face in the
glass with his own beside it, and saw the hated fatherhood reasserted.
The young strong man reeled with a sick faintness. But in the same
moment Jermyn released his hold, and Harold felt himself supported
by the arm. It was Sir Maximus Debarry who had taken hold of him.
'Leave the room, sir!' the baronet said to Jermyn, in a voice of
imperious scorn. 'This is a meeting of gentlemen.'
'Come, Harold,' he said, in the old friendly voice, 'come away with me.'
Chapter 48
'Tis law as stedfast as the throne of Zeus -
Our days are heritors of days gone by.'
AESCHYLUS: Agamemnon.
A LITTLE after five o'clock that day, Harold arrived at Transome Court.
As he was winding along the broad road of the park, some parting
gleams of the March sun pierced the trees here and there, and threw
on the grass a long shadow of himself and the groom riding, and
illuminated a window or two of the home he was approaching. But the
bittemess in his mind made these su nny gleams almost as odious as
an artificial smile. He wished he had never come back to this pale
English sunshine.
In the course of his eighteen miles' drive, he had made up his mind
what he would do. He understood now, as he had never understood
before, the neglected solitariness of his mother's life, the allusions and
innuendoes which had come out during the election. But with a proud
insurrection against the hardship of an ignominy which was not of his
own making, he inwardly said, that if the circumstances of his birth
were such as to warrant any man in regarding his character of
gentleman with ready suspicion, that character should be the more
strongly asserted in his conduct. No one should be able to allege with
any show of proof that he had inherited meanness.
As he stepped from the carriage and entered the hall, there were the
voice and the trotting feet of little Harry as usual, and the rush to
clasp his father's leg and make hi s joyful puppy-like noises. Harold
just touched the boy's head, and then said to Dominic in a weary
voice -
'Take the child away. Ask where my mother is.'
Mrs Transome, Dominic said, was upstairs. He had seen her go up
after coming in from her walk with Miss Lyon, and she had not come
down again.
Harold, throwing off his hat and greatcoat, went straight to his
mother's dressing-room. There was still hope in his mind. He might be
suffering simply from a lie. There is much misery created in the world
by mere mistake or slander, and he might have been stunned by a lie
suggested by such slander. He rapped at his mother's door.
Her voice said immediately, 'Come in.'
Mrs Transome was resting in her easy-chair, as she often did between
an afternoon walk and dinner. She had taken off her walking-dress
and wrapped herself in a soft dressinggown. She was neither more nor
less empty of joy than usual. But when she saw Harold, a dreadful
certainty took possession of her. It was as if a long-expected letter,
with a black seal, had come at last.
Harold's face told her what to fear the more decisively, because she
had never before seen it express a man's deep agitation. Since the
time of its pouting childhood and careless youth she had seen only the
confident strength and good-humoured imperiousness of maturity.
The last five hours had made a change as great as illness makes.
Harold looked as if he had been wrestling, and had had some terrible
blow. His eyes had that sunken look which, because it is unusual,
seems to intensify expression.
He looked at his mother as he entered, and her eyes followed him as
he moved, till he came and stood in front of her, she looking up at
him, with white lips.
'Mother,' he said, speaking with a distant slowness, in strange
contrast with his habitual manner, 'tell me the truth, that I may know
how to act.'
He paused a moment, and then said, 'Who is my father?'
She was mute: her lips only trembled. Harold stood silent for a few
moments, as if waiting. Then he spoke again.
'He has said - said it before others - that he is my father.'
He looked still at his mother. She seemed as if age was striking her
with a sudden wand - as if her trembling face were getting haggard
before him. She was mute. But her eyes had not fallen; they looked up
in helpless misery at her son.
Her son turned away his eyes from her, and left her. In that moment
Harold felt hard: he could show no pity. All the pride of his nature
rebelled against his sonship.
Chapter 49
Nay, falter not - 'tis an assured good
To seek the noblest - 'tis your only good
Now you have seen it; for that higher vision
Poisons all meaner choice for evermore.
THAT day Esther dined with old Mr Transome only. Harold sent word
that he was engaged and had already dined, and Mrs Transome that
she was feeling ill. Esther was mu ch disappointed that any tidings
Harold might have brought relating to Felix were deferred in this way;
and, her anxiety making her fearful, she was haunted by the thought
that if there had been anything cheering to tell, he would have found
time to tell it without delay. Old Mr Transome went as usual to his
sofa in the library to sleep after dinner, and Esther had to seat herself
in the small drawing-room, in a well-lit solitude that was unusually
dispiriting to her. Pretty as this room was, she did not like it. Mrs
Transome's full-length portrait, being the only picture there, urged
itself too strongly on her attention: the youthful brilliancy it
represented saddened Esther by its inevitable association with what
she daily saw had come instead of it - a joyless, embittered age. The
sense that Mrs Transome was unhappy, affected Esther more and
more deeply as the growing familiarity which relaxed the efforts of the
hostess revealed more and more the thread-bare tissue of this
majestic lady's life. Even the flowers and the pure sunshine and the
sweet waters of Paradise would have been spoiled for a young heart, if
the bowered walks had been haunted by an Eve gone grey with bitter
memories of an Adam who had complained, 'The woman ... she gave
me of the tree, and I did eat.' And many of us know how, even in our
childhood, some blank discontented face on the background of our
home has marred our summer mornings. Why was it, when the birds
were singing, when the fields were a garden, and when we were
clasping another little hand just larger than our own, there was
somebody who found it hard to smile? Esther had got far beyond that
childhood to a time and circumstan ces when this daily presence of
elderly dissatisfaction amidst such outward things as she had always
thought must greatly help to sa tisfy, awaked, not merely vague
questioning emotion, but strong determining thought. And now, in
these hours since her return from Loamford, her mind was in that
state of highly-wrought activity, that large discourse, in which we
seem to stand aloof from our own life - weighing impartially our own
temptations and the weak desires that most habitually solicit us. 'I
think I am getting that power Felix wished me to have: I shall soon see
strong visions,' she said to hersel f, with a melancholy smile flitting
across her face, as she put out the wax lights that she might get rid of
the oppressive urgency of walls and upholstery and that portrait
smiling with deluded brightness, unwitting of the future.
Just then Dominic came to say that Mr Harold sent his compliments,
and begged that she would grant him an interview in his study. He
disliked the small drawing-room: if she would oblige him by going to
the study at once, he would join her very soon. Esther went, in some
wonder and anxiety. What she most feared or hoped in these moments
related to Felix Holt, and it did not occur to her that Harold could
have anything special to say to her that evening on other subjects.
Certainly the study was pleasanter than the small drawing-room. A
quiet light shone on nothing bu t greenness and dark wood, and
Dominic had placed a delightful chair for her opposite to his master's,
which was still empty. All the little objects of luxury around indicated
Harold's habitual occupancy; and as Esther sat opposite all these
things along with the empty chair which suggested the coming
presence, the expectation of his beseeching homage brought with it an
impatience and repugnance which she had never felt before. While
these feelings were strongly upon her, the door opened and Harold
appeared.
He had recovered his self-possessi on since his interview with his
mother: he had dressed, and was perfectly calm. He had been
occupied with resolute thoughts, determining to do what he knew that
perfect honour demanded, let it cost him what it would. It is true he
had a tacit hope behind, that it might not cost him what he prized
most highly: it is true he had a glimpse even of reward; but it was not
less true that he would have acted as he did without that hope or
glimpse. It was the most serious moment in Harold Transome's life: for
the first time the iron had entered into his soul, and he felt the hard
pressure of our common lot, the yoke of that mighty resistless destiny
laid upon us by the acts of other men as well as our own.
When Esther looked at him she relented, and felt ashamed of her
gratuitous impatience. She saw that his mind was in some way
burdened. But then immediately sprang the dread that he had to say
something hopeless about Felix.
They shook hands in silence, Esth er looking at him with anxious
surprise. He released her hand, but it did not occur to her to sit down,
and they both continued standing on the hearth.
'Don't let me alarm you,' said Haro ld, seeing that her face gathered
solemnity from his. 'I suppose I carry the marks of a past agitation. It
relates entirely to troubles of my own - of my own family. No one
beyond is involved in them.'
Esther wondered still more, and felt still more relenting.
'But,' said Harold, after a slight pause, and in a voice that was
weighted with new feeling, 'it involves a difference in my position with
regard to you; and it is on this point that I wished to speak to you at
once. When a man sees what ought to be done, he had better do it
forthwith. He can't answer for himself to-morrow.'
While Esther continued to look at him, with eyes widened by anxious
expectation, Harold turned a little, leaned on the mantelpiece, and
ceased to look at her as he spoke.
'My feelings drag me another way. I need not tell you that your regard
has become very important to me - that if our mutual position had
been different - that, in short, you must have seen - if it had not
seemed to be a matter of worldly interest, I should have told you
plainly already that I loved you, and that my happiness could be
complete only if you would consent to marry me.'
Esther felt her heart beginning to beat painfully. Harold's voice and
words moved her so much that her own task seemed more difficult
than she had before imagined. It seemed as if the silence, unbroken
by anything but the clicking of the fire, had been long, before Harold
turned round towards her again and said -
'But to-day I have heard something that affects my own position. I
cannot tell you what it is. There is no need. It is not any culpability of
my own. But I have not just the same unsullied name and fame in the
eyes of the world around us, as I believed that I had when I allowed
myself to entertain that wish about you. You are very young, entering
on a fresh life with bright prospe cts - you are worthy of everything
that is best. I may be too vain in thinking it was at all necessary; but I
take this precaution against myself. I shut myself out from the chance
of trying, after to-day, to induce you to accept anything which others
may regard as specked and stained by any obloquy, however slight.'
Esther was keenly touched. With a paradoxical longing, such as often
happens to us, she wished at that moment that she could have loved
this man with her whole heart. The tears came into her eyes; she did
not speak, but, with an angel's tenderness in her face, she laid her
hand on his sleeve. Harold commanded himself strongly, and said -
'What is to be done now is, that we should proceed at once to the
necessary legal measures for putting you in possession of your own,
and arranging mutual claims. After that I shall probably leave
England.'
Esther was oppressed by an overpo wering difficulty. Her sympathy
with Harold at this moment was so strong, that it spread itself like a
mist over all previous thought and resolve. It was impossible now to
wound him afresh. With her hand st ill resting on his arm, she said
timidly -
'Should you be urged - obliged to go - in any case?'
'Not in every case, perhaps,' Harold said, with an evident movement of
the blood towards his face; 'at least not for long, not for always.'
Esther was conscious of the gleam in his eyes. With terror at herself,
she said, in difficult haste, 'I can't speak. I can't say anything to-night.
A great decision has to be made: I must wait - till to-morrow.'
She was moving her hand from his arm, when Harold took it
reverentially and raised it to his lips. She turned towards her chair,
and as he released her hand she sank down on the seat with a sense
that she needed that support. She did not want to go away from
Harold yet. All the while there was something she needed to know,
and yet she could not bring herself to ask it. She must resign herself
to depend entirely on his recollection of anything beyond his own
immediate trial. She sat helpless under contending sympathies, while
Harold stood at some distance fr om her, feeling more harassed by
weariness and uncertainty, now that he had fulfilled his resolve, and
was no longer under the excitement of actually fulfilling it.
Esther's last words had forbidden his revival of the subject that was
necessarily supreme with him. But still she sat there, and his mind,
busy as to the probabilities of her feeling, glanced over all she had
done and said in the later days of their intercourse. It was this
retrospect that led him to say at last -
'You will be glad to hear that we shall get a very powerfully signed
memorial to the Home Secretary about young Holt. I think your
speaking for him helped a great deal. You made all the men wish what
you wished.'
This was what Esther had been yearning to hear and dared not ask,
as well from respect for Harold's absorption in his own sorrow, as
from the shrinking that belongs to our dearest need. The intense relief
of hearing what she longed to hear, affected her whole frame: her
colour, her expression, changed as if she had been suddenly freed
from some torturing constraint. But we interpret signs of emotion as
we interpret other signs - often quite erroneously, unless we have the
right key to what they signify. Harold did not gather that this was
what Esther had waited for, or that the change in her indicated more
than he had expected her to feel at this allusion to an unusual act
which she had done under a strong impulse.
Besides, the introduction of a new subject after very momentous
words have passed, and are still dwelling on the mind, is necessarily a
sort of concussion, shaking us into a new adjustment of ourselves.
It seemed natural that soon afterward Esther put out her hand and
said, 'Good-night.'
Harold went to his bedroom on the same level with this study,
thinking of the morning with an uncertainty that dipped on the side of
hope. This sweet woman, for whom he felt a passion newer than any
he had expected to feel, might possibly make some hard things more
bearable - if she loved him. If not - well, he had acted so that he could
defy any one to say he was not a gentleman.
Esther went up-stairs to her bedroom, thinking that she should not
sleep that night. She set her light on a high stand, and did not touch
her dress. What she desired to see with undisturbed clearness were
things not present: the rest she needed was the rest of a final choice.
It was difficult. On each side there was renunciation.
She drew up her blinds, liking to see the grey sky, where there were
some veiled glimmerings of moonlight, and the lines of the for-ever
running river, and the bending movement of the black trees. She
wanted the largeness of the world to help her thought. This young
creature, who trod lightly backward and forward, and leaned against
the window-frame, and shook back he r brown curls as she looked at
something not visible, had lived ha rdly more than six months since
she saw Felix Holt for the first time. But life is measured by the
rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being;
and Esther had undergone something little short of an inward
revolution. The revolutionary struggle, however, was not quite at an
end.
There was something which she now felt profoundly to be the best
thing that life could give her. But - if it was to be had at all - it was not
to be had without paying a heavy price for it, such as we must pay for
all that is greatly good. A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime
rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the
soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to
know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to
tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true
that love makes all things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult.
Esther's previous life had brought her into close acquaintance with
many negations, and with many positive ills too, not of the acutely
painful, but of the distasteful sort. What if she chose the hardship,
and had to bear it alone, with no strength to lean upon - no other
better self to make a place for trust and joy? Her past experience
saved her from illusions. She knew the dim life of the back street, the
contact with sordid vulgarity, the lack of refinement for the senses,
the summons to a daily task; and the gain that was to make that life
of privation something on which she dreaded to turn her back, as if it
were heaven - the presence and the love of Felix Holt - was only a
quivering hope, not a certainty. It was not in her woman's nature that
the hope should not spring within her and make a strong impulse.
She knew that he loved her: had he not said how a woman might help
a man if she were worthy? and if she proved herself worthy? But still
there was the dread that after all she might find herself on the stony
road alone, and faint and be weary. Even with the fulfilment of her
hope, she knew that she pledged herself to meet high demands.
And on the other side there was a lot where everything seemed easy -
but for the fatal absence of those feelings which, now she had once
known them, it seemed nothing less than a fall and a degradation to
do without. With a terrible prescience which a multitude of
impressions during her stay at Tr ansome Court had contributed to
form, she saw herself in a silken bondage that arrested all motive, and
was nothing better than a well-cushioned despair. To be restless
amidst ease, to be languid among all appliances for pleasure, was a
possibility that seemed to haunt the rooms of this house, and wander
with her under the oaks and elms of the park. And Harold Transome's
love, no longer a hovering fancy wi th which she played, but become a
serious fact, seemed to threaten her with a stifling oppression. The
homage of a man may be delightful until he asks straight for love, by
which a woman renders homage. Since she and Felix had kissed each
other in the prison, she felt as if she had vowed herself away, as if
memory lay on her lips like a seal of possession. Yet what had
happened that very evening had strengthened her liking for Harold,
and her care for all that regard ed him: it had increased her
repugnance to turning him out of anything he had expected to be his,
or to snatching anything from him on the ground of an arbitrary
claim. It had even made her dread, as a coming pain, the task of
saying anything to him that was no t a promise of the utmost comfort
under this newly-disclosed trouble of his.
It was already near midnight, but with these thoughts succeeding and
returning in her mind like scenes through which she was living,
Esther had a more intense wakefulness than any she had known by
day. All had been stillness hitherto, except the fitful wind outside. But
her ears now caught a sound within - slight, but sudden. She moved
near her door, and heard the sweep of something on the matting
outside. It came closer, and paused. Then it began again, and seemed
to sweep away from her. Then it approached, and paused as it had
done before. Esther listened, wondering. The same thing happened
again and again, till she could bear it no longer. She opened her door,
and in the dim light of the corridor, where the glass above seemed to
make a glimmering sky, she saw Mrs Transome's tall figure pacing
slowly, with her cheek upon her hand.
Chapter 50
'The great question in life is the suffering we cause; and the utmost
ingenuity of metaphysics cannot justify the man who has pierced the
heart that loved him.' - BENJAMlN CONSTANT.
WHEN Denner had gone up to her mistress's room to dress her for
dinner, she had found her seated just as Harold had found her, only
with eyelids drooping and trembling over slowly-rolling tears - nay,
with a face in which every sensitive feature, every muscle, seemed to
be quivering with a silent endurance of some agony.
Denner went and stood by the chair a minute without speaking, only
laying her hand gently on Mrs Transome's. At last she said,
beseechingly, 'Pray speak, madam. What has happened?'
'The worst, Denner - the worst.'
'You are ill. Let me undress you, and put you to bed.'
'No, I am not ill, I am not going to die! I shall live - I shall live!'
'What may I do?'
'Go and say I shall not dine. Then you may come back, if you will.'
The patient waiting-woman came back and sat by her mistress in
motionless silence. Mrs Transome would not let her dress be touched,
and waved away all proffers with a slight movement of her hand.
Denner dared not even light a candle without being told. At last, when
the evening was far gone, Mrs Transome said -
'Go down, Denner, and find out wher e Harold is, and come back and
tell me.'
'Shall I ask him to come to you, madam?'
'No; don't dare to do it, if you love me. Come back.'
Denner brought word that Mr Harold was in his study, and that Miss
Lyon was with him. He had not dine d, but had sent later to ask Miss
Lyon to go into his study. 'Light the candles and leave me.' 'Mayn't I
come again?' 'No. It may be that my son will come to me.' 'Mayn't I
sleep on the little bed in your bedroom?' 'No, good Denner; I am not ill.
You can't help me.' 'That's the hardest word of all, madam.' 'The time
will come - but not now. Kiss me. Now go.'
The small quiet old woman obeyed, as she had always done. She
shrank from seeming to claim an equal's share in her mistress's
sorrow.
For two hours Mrs Transome's mind hung on what was hardly a hope
- hardly more than the listening fo r a bare possibility. She began to
create the sounds that her anguish craved to hear - began to imagine
a footfall, and a hand upon the door. Then, checked by continual
disappointment, she tried to rouse a truer consciousness by rising
from her seat and walking to her window, where she saw streaks of
light moving and disappearing on the grass, and the sound of bolts
and closing doors. She hurried away and threw herself into her seat
again, and buried her head in th e deafening down of the cushions.
There was no sound of comfort for her.
Then her heart cried out within her against the cruelty of this son.
When he turned from her in the first moment, he had not had time to
feel anything but the blow that had fallen on himself. But afterwards -
was it possible that he should not be touched with a son's pity - was it
possible that he should not have b een visited by some thought of the
long years through which she had suffered? The memory of those
years came back to her now with a protest against the cruelty that
had all fallen on her. She started up with a new restlessness from this
spirit of resistance. She was not penitent. She had borne too hard a
punishment. Always the edge of calamity had fallen on her. Who had
felt for her? She was desolate. God had no pity, else her son would not
have been so hard. What dreary future was there after this dreary
past? She, too, looked out into the dim night; but the black boundary
of trees and the long line of the river seemed only part of the
loneliness and monotony of her life.
Suddenly she saw a light on the stone balustrades of the balcony that
projected in front of Esther's window, and the flash of a moving candle
falling on a shrub below. Esther was still awake and up. What had
Harold told her - what had passed between them? Harold was fond of
this young creature, who had been always sweet and reverential to
her. There was mercy in her young heart; she might be a daughter
who had no impulse to punish an d to strike her whom fate had
stricken. On the dim loneliness before her she seemed to see Esther's
gentle look; it was possible still that the misery of this night might be
broken by some comfort. The prou d woman yearned for the caressing
pity that must dwell in that young bosom. She opened her door gently,
but when she had reached Esther's she hesitated. She had never yet
in her life asked for compassion - had never thrown herself in faith on
an unproffered love. And she might have gone on pacing the corridor
like an uneasy spirit without a goal, if Esther's thought, leaping
towards her, had not saved her from the need to ask admission.
Mrs Transome was walking towards the door when it opened. As
Esther saw that image of restless misery, it blent itself by a rapid flash
with all that Harold had said in the evening. She divined that the
son's new trouble must be one with the mother's long sadness. But
there was no waiting. In an instan t Mrs Transome felt Esther's arm
round her neck, and a voice saying softly -
'O why didn't you call me before?'
They turned hand in hand into the room, and sat down together on a
sofa at the foot of the bed. The disordered grey hair - the haggard face
- the reddened eyelids under which the tears seemed to be coming
again with pain, pierced Esther to the heart. A passionate desire to
soothe this suffering woman came over her. She clung round her
again, and kissed her poor quiverin g lips and eyelids, and laid her
young cheek against the pale and haggard one. Words could not be
quick or strong enough to utter he r yearning. As Mrs Transome felt
that soft clinging, she said - 'God has some pity on me.'
'Rest on my bed,' said Esther. 'You are so tired. I will cover you up
warmly, and then you will sleep.'
'No - tell me, dear - tell me what Harold said.'
'That he has had some new trouble.'
'He said nothing hard about me?'
'No - nothing. He did not mention you.'
'I have been an unhappy woman, dear.'
'I feared it,' said Esther, pressing her gently.
'Men are selfish. They are selfish and cruel. What they care for is their
own pleasure and their own pride.'
'Not all,' said Esther, on whom these words fell with a painful jar.
'All I have ever loved,' said Mrs Transome. She paused a moment or
two, and then said, 'For more than twenty years I have not had an
hour's happiness. Harold knows it, and yet he is hard to me.'
'He will not be. To-morrow he will not be. I am sure he will be good,'
said Esther, pleadingly. 'Remember - he said to me his trouble was
new - he has not had time.'
'It is too hard to bear, dear,' Mrs Transome said, a new sob rising as
she clung fast to Esther in return. 'I am old, and expect so little now -
a very little thing would seem great. Why should I be punished any
more?'
Esther found it difficult to speak. The dimly-suggested tragedy of this
woman's life, the dreary waste of years empty of sweet trust and
affection, afflicted her even to horror. It seemed to have come as a last
vision to urge her towards the life where the draughts of joy sprang
from the unchanging fountains of reverence and devout love.
But all the more she longed to still the pain of this heart that beat
against hers.
'Do let me go to your own room with you, and let me undress you, and
let me tend upon you,' she said, with a woman's gentle instinct. 'It will
be a very great thing to me. I shall seem to have a mother again. Do
let me.'
Mrs Transome yielded at last, and let Esther soothe her with a
daughter's tendance. She was undressed and went to bed; and at last
dozed fitfully, with frequent starts. But Esther watched by her till the
chills of morning came, and then she only wrapped more warmth
around her, and slept fast in the chair till Denner's movement in the
room roused her. She started out of a dream in which she was telling
Felix what had happened to her that night.
Mrs Transome was now in the sounder morning sleep which
sometimes comes after a long night of misery. Esther beckoned
Denner into the dressing-room, and said -
'It is late, Mrs Hickes. Do you think Mr Harold is out of his room?'
'Yes, a long while; he was out earlier than usual.'
'Will you ask him to come up here? Say I begged you.'
When Harold entered, Esther was leaning against the back of the
empty chair where yesterday he had seen his mother sitting. He was
in a state of wonder and suspense , and when Esther approached him
and gave him her hand, he said, in a startled way -
'Good God! how ill you look! Have you been sitting up with my
mother?'
'Yes. She is asleep now,' said Esther. They had merely pressed hands
by way of greeting, and now stood apart looking at each other
solemnly.
'Has she told you anything?' said Harold.
'No - only that she is wretched. O, I think I would bear a great deal of
unhappiness to save her from having any more.'
A painful thrill passed through Haro ld, and showed itself in his face
with that pale rapid flash which can never be painted. Esther pressed
her hands together, and said, timidly, though it was from an urgent
prompting -
'There is nothing in all this place - nothing since ever I came here - I
could care for so much as that you should sit down by her now, and
that she should see you when she wakes.'
Then with delicate instinct, she added, just laying her hand on his
sleeve, 'I know you would have come. I know you meant it. But she is
asleep now. Go gently before she wakes.'
Harold just laid his right hand for an instant on the back of Esther's
as it rested on his sleeve, and then stepped softly to his mother's
bedside.
An hour afterwards, when Harold had laid his mother's pillow afresh,
and sat down again by her, she said -
'If that dear thing will marry you, Harold, it will make up to you for a
great deal.'
But before the day closed Harold knew that this was not to be. That
young presence, which had flitted li ke a white new-winged dove over
all the saddening relics and new fine ry of Transome Court, could not
find its home there. Harold heard from Esther's lips that she loved
some one else, and that she resigned all claim to the Transome
estates.
She wished to go back to her father.
Chapter 51
The maiden said, I wis the londe
Is very fair to see,
But my true-love that is in bonde
Is fairer still to me.
ONE April day, when the sun shone on the lingering raindrops, Lyddy
was gone out, and Esther chose to sit in the kitchen, in the wicker
chair against the white table, between the fire and the window. The
kettle was singing, and the clock was ticking steadily towards four
o'clock.
She was not reading, but stitching; and as her fingers moved nimbly,
something played about her parted li ps like a ray. Suddenly she laid
down her work, pressed her hands together on her knees, and bent
forward a little. The next moment there came a loud rap at the door.
She started up and opened it, but kept herself hidden behind it.
'Mr Lyon at home?' said Felix, in his firm tones.
'No, sir,' said Esther from behind her screen; 'but Miss Lyon is, if
you'll please to walk in.'
'Esther!' exclaimed Felix, amazed.
They held each other by both hands, and looked into each other's
faces with delight.
'You are out of prison?'
'Yes, till I do something bad again. But you? - how is it all?'
'Oh, it is,' said Esther, smiling brightly as she moved towards the
wicker chair, and seated herself again, 'that everything is as usual: my
father is gone to see the sick; Lyddy is gone in deep despondency to
buy the groccry; and I am sitting here, with some vanity in me,
needing to be scolded.'
Felix had seated himself on a chair that happened to be near her, at
the corner of the table. He looked at her still with questioning eyes -
he grave, she mischievously smiling. 'Are you come back to live here
then?' 'Yes.'
'You are not going to be married to Harold Transome, or to be rich?'
'No.' Something made Esther take up her work again, and begin to
stitch. The smiles were dying into a tremor.
'Why?' said Felix, in rather a low tone, leaning his elbow on the table,
and resting his head on his hand while he looked at her.
'I did not wish to marry him, or to be rich.'
'You have given it all up?' said Felix, leaning forward a little, and
speaking in a still lower tone.
Esther did not speak. They heard the kettle singing and the clock
loudly ticking. There was no knowing how it was: Esther's work fell,
their eyes met; and the next instant their arms were round each
other's necks, and once more they kissed each other.
When their hands fell again, their eyes were bright with tears. Felix
laid his hand on her shoulder.
'Could you share the life of a poor man, then, Esther?'
'If I thought well enough of him,' she said, the smile coming again,
with the pretty saucy movement of her head.
'Have you considered well what it would be? - that it will be a very
bare and simple life?'
'Yes - without atta of roses.'
Felix suddenly removed his hand from her shoulder, rose from his
chair, and walked a step or two; then he turned round and said, with
deep gravity -
'And the people I shall live among, Esther? They have not just the
same follies and vices as the rich, but they have their own forms of
folly and vice; and they have not what are called the refinements of
the rich to make their faults more bearable. I don't say more bearable
to me - I'm not fond of those refinements; but you are.'
Felix paused an instant, and then added -
'It is very serious, Esther.'
'I know it is serious,' said Esther, looking up at him. 'Since I have
been at Transome Court I have seen many things very seriously. If I
had not, I should not have left what I did leave. I made a deliberate
choice.'
Felix stood a moment or two, dwelling on her with a face where the
gravity gathered tenderness.
'And these curls?' he said, with a sort of relenting, seating himself
again, and putting his hand on them.
'They cost nothing - they are natural.'
'You are such a delicate creature.'
'I am very healthy. Poor women, I think, are healthier than the rich.
Besides,' Esther went on, with a michievous meaning, 'I think of
having some wealth.'
'How?' said Felix, with an anxious start. 'What do you mean?'
'I think even of two pounds a-week: one needn't live up to the
splendour of all that, you know; we must live as simply as you liked:
there would be money to spare, and you could do wonders, and be
obliged to work too, only not if sickness came. And then I think of a
little income for your mother, enough for her to live as she has been
used to live; and a little income for my father, to save him from being
dependent when he is no longer able to preach.'
Esther said all this in a playful tone, but she ended, with a grave look
of appealing submission -
'I mean - if you approve. I wish to do what you think it will be right to
do.'
Felix put his hand on her shoulder again and reflected a little while,
looking on the hearth: then he said, lifting up his eyes, with a smile at
her -
'Why, I shall be able to set up a great library, and lend the books to be
dog's-eared and marked with breadcrumbs.'
Esther said, laughing, 'You think yo u are to do everything. You don't
know how clever I am. I mean to go on teaching a great many things.'
'Teaching me?'
'Oh yes,' she said, with a little toss; 'I shall improve your French
accent.'
'You won't want me to wear a stock? ' said Felix, with a defiant shake
of the head.
'No; and you will not attribute stupid thoughts to me before I've
uttered them.'
They laughed merrily, each holding the other's arms, like girl and boy.
There was the ineffable sense of youth in common.
Then Felix leaned forward, that their lips might meet again, and after
that his eyes roved tenderly over her face and curls.
'I'm a rough, severe fellow, Esther. Shall you never repent? - never be
inwardly reproaching me that I was not a man who could have shared
your wealth? Are you quite sure?'
'Quite sure!' said Esther, shaking her head; 'for then I should have
honoured you less. I am weak - my husband must be greater and
nobler than I am.'
'O, I tell you what, though!' said Felix, starting up, thrusting his
hands into his pockets, and creasing his brow playfully, 'if you take
me in that way I shall be forced to be a much better fellow than I ever
thought of being.'
'I call that retribution,' said Es ther, with a laugh as sweet as the
morning thrush.
Epilogue
Our finest hope is finest memory;
And those who love in age think youth is happy,
Because it has a life to fill with love.
THE very next May, Felix and Esther were married. Every one in those
days was married at the parish church, but Mr Lyon was not satisfied
without an additional private so lemnity, 'wherein there was no
bondage to questionable forms, so that he might have a more enlarged
utterance of joy and supplication.'
It was a very simple wedding; but no wedding, even the gayest, ever
raised so much interest and debate in Treby Magna. Even very great
people, like Sir Maximus and his family, went to the church to look at
this bride, who had renounced wealth and chosen to be the wife of a
man who said he would always be poor.
Some few shook their heads; could not quite believe it; and thought
there was 'more behind'. But the majority of honest Trebians were
affected somewhat in the same wa y as happy-looking Mr Wace was,
who observed to his wife, as they walked from under the churchyard
chestnuts, 'It's wonderful how things go through you - you don't know
how. I feel somehow as if I believed more in everything that's good.'
Mrs Holt that day, said she felt he rself to be receiving 'some reward',
implying that justice certainly had much more in reserve. Little Job
Tudge had an entirely new suit, of which he fingered every separate
brass button in a way that threatened an arithmetical mania; and Mrs
Holt had out her best tea-trays and put down her carpet again, with
the satisfaction of thinking that there would no more be boys coming
in all weathers with dirty shoes.
For Felix and Esther did not take up their abode in Treby Magna; and
after a while Mr Lyon left the town too, and joined them where they
dwelt. On his resignation the church in Malthouse Yard chose a
successor to him whose doctrine was rather higher.
There were other departures from Treby. Mr Jermyn's establishment
was broken up, and he was understood to have gone to reside at a
great distance: some said 'abroa d' that large home of ruined
reputations. Mr Johnson continued blond and sufficiently prosperous
till he got grey and rather more prosperous. Some persons, who did
not think highly of him, held that his prosperity was a fact to be kept
in the background, as being dangerous to the morals of the young;
judging that it was not altogether creditable to the Divine Providence
that anything but virtue should be rewarded by a front and back
drawing-room in Bedford Row.
As for Mr Christian, he had no more profitable secrets at his disposal.
But he got his thousand pounds from Harold Transome.
The Transome family were absent for some time from Transome Court.
The place was kept up and shown to visitors, but not by Denner, who
was away with her mistress. After a while the family came back, and
Mrs Transome died there. Sir Maximus was at her funeral, and
throughout that neighbourhood there was silence about the past.
Uncle Lingon continued to watch over the shooting on the Manor and
the covers until that event occurred which he had predicted as a part
of Church reform sure to come. Little Treby had a new rector, but
others were sorry besides the old pointers.
As to all that wide parish of Treb y Magna, it had since prospered as
the rest of England has prospered. Doubtless there is more
enlightenment now. Whether the farmers are all public-spirited, the
shopkeepers nobly independent, the Sproxton men entirely sober and
judicious, the Dissenters quite without narrowness or asperity in
religion and politics, and the publicans all fit, like Gaius, to be the
friends of an apostle - these thin gs I have not heard, not having
correspondence in those parts. Whether any presumption may be
drawn from the fact that North Loamshire does not yet return a
Radical candidate, I leave to the all-wise - I mean the newspapers.
As to the town in which Felix Holt now resides, I will keep that a
secret, lest he should be troubled by any visitor having the
insufferable motive of curiosity.
I will only say that Esther has never repented. Felix, however,
grumbles a little that she has made hi s life too easy, and that, if it
were not for much walking, he should be a sleek dog.
There is a young Felix, who has a great deal more science than his
father, but not much more money.
The End