‘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 personal 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 and more the varying expressions of his open face and his deliciously good-humoured laugh, always loud at a joke against himself. Besides, 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. ‘What 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 afternoon, 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 stretched 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 sideways 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 opinions 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 being, 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, smarting 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 yourself 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 their 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 adjusting 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 against 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-criticism, 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 gratefully, thinking with wonder of the treasures still left in our fallen nature.
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 Debarry’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 little curl of blue smoke issuing from its tin chimney, came slowly gliding behind. Felix retained something of his boyish impression that the days 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, crossing a network of black tram-roads, soon came to his destination — that 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 supported 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 the 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 calculation, 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 suitable 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 was standing, as usual, with his hands nervously busy in his pockets, 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 political ‘idee,’ which was, that society existed for the sake of the individual, and that the name of that individual was Chubb. Now, from 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 the 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 colliers, 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 for extending the franchise to this class — at least in Sproxton. If any 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 doubt; 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 tailor, and a consumptive youth, attended those preachings; not a collier had been won from the strong ale of the Sugar Loaf, not even a navvy 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 more 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 Sproxton. 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 illusions, 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 working. 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 certain 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, yet 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 understand 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 personage 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 simple 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 eyed 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 split 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 swear 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, with 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 wages 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 country 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-cutter, 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 qualifications 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 had 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 glance 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 better 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 downright 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 with 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 understand — 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 wouldn’t like to disappoint such an upstart.’
There was a murmur which was interpreted 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 votes 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 ever” — “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 animals, 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 Debarrys. 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, instruction 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’.’
‘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 miners, had its drama also for those unsatisfactory objects to Mr Johnson’s moral sense, the Debarrys. Certain incidents occurring at Treby 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 was 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 most 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 Debarry 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 that 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 comparatively helpless, with his head hanging on his shoulder, and one coat-tail hanging out heavily below the elbow of the rustic seat. It was this coat-tail which served as a suggestion to Mr Scales’s genius. Putting 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 until 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 requested 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, missed 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 seldom 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 than he had anticipated. For he observed that Christian’s non-appearance before dinner had caused Mr Debarry some consternation; and he gathered that the courier had been sent on a commission to the 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, which Christian was carrying in that very pocket Scales had cut off; that the rector was sent for, the constable was coming, and they should all be hanged. Mr Scales’s own intellect was anything but clear as to the possible issues. Crest-fallen, and with the coal-tail in his 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 the park indicated by Scales should again be carefully searched. This was done, but in vain; and many of the family at the manor had disturbed sleep that night.
‘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 the 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 say 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 the 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 discussion, 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 sealed 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 end. Felix thrust the chain back, and finding that the clasp of the note-book was broken, he closed it and thrust it into his side-pocket, walking along under 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 which 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 the 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 necessities 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, unless 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 wholesale 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 ‘professor’. 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 though the transfer may sometimes be but an erroneous direction of search, 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 tomorrow, 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 mark 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 small 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 decipher 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 his 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 travailed 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-love 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.
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, saying 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 refer 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, and 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 — 1?, a well-filled pocket-book, of brown leather, fastened with a black ribbon and with a seal of red wax; 2?, a small note-book, covered with gilded 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, Sir, 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 brother, ‘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 remember 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, though 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 particular 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 Maximus, 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 words 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 write — 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 whose 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 sacrilege as the issue of a conscious transgression, — he prayed that he might be able to accept all consequences of pain to himself. But he saw other possibilities concerning the claimant of the book 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 would 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 would speak rather loudly, in accommodation to an eccentricity which was likely to be accompanied with deafness. One cannot be eminent in everything; and if Mr Christian had dispersed his faculties in study that would have enabled him to share unconventional points of view, he might have worn a mistaken kind of boot, and 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 hidden. But at the word ‘servant’ he could not avoid starting, and looking off the letter towards the bearer. Christian, knowing what was in the 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 there might be a terrible 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 rather 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; but I would rather leave them behind than be detained.’ He had reflected 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 name,’ 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 alarmed. 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 hound 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 bring 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 things, like the vision of a coming calamity, were compressed into a moment of consciousness. Nothing could be done today; 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 produces 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 some 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?’
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 attending to his ministerial duties, the rebuke of rebellious singers being one of them; and on his return from the Monday evening prayer-meeting 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 next 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 mind 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 thousands of pulpits in this kingdom, supplied with handsome sounding-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 nothing 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 allow 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 constimtion 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 sentences, 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 worldling who had a carefully-trimmed whisker and a fashionable costume. For 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 toast quite unconsciously, and that he vented from time to time a low guttural interjection, which was habitual with him when he was absorbed 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 own 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-and-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 and 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 come again expressly to show that he was sorry.
TRUEBLUE. These men have no votes. Why should I court them?
GREYFOX. No votes, but power.
TRUEBLUE. What? over charities?
CREYFOX. No, over brains; which disturbs 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 shaggy-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 only 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 blue-robed Naiad, but not without a suffused blush as she passed through the doorway.
It was a pity the room was so small, Harold Transome thought: this girl ought to walk in a house where 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 been 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 little personal regard, if possible. Garstin was a harsh and wiry fellow; he seemed to suggest that sour whey, which some say was the original meaning of Whig in the Scottish, and it might assist the theoretic advantages of Radicalism if it could be associated with a more 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, tomorrow; 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 reasonably,’ said Mr Lyon, with a vague shortsighted gaze, in which a candidate’s appearance evidently went for nothing. ‘Pray be seated, gentlemen. It is my habit to stand.’
He placed himself at right angle with his visitors, his worn look of intellectual eagerness, slight frame, 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 who 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 people 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 which 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 (whose 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 necessarily 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 observed, ‘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 our 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 hearer, who interpreted it according to his best calculation of probabilities.
‘I have no objection to the ballot,’ said 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 ballot?’ 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 futile as a preservative from bribcry and illegitimate influence; and, secondly, that it would be in the worst kind pernicious, as shutting the 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 tomorrow 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.’ ‘Pray 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 affair 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 here, 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 impracticable 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 great hastiness of words and action. David’s cause against Saul was a righteous 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 world, 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, shaking Mr Lyon’s hand cordially, ‘there will be opportunities. Shall I not see you in the committee-room tomorrow?’
‘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 his own morrows, ignorant of what many yesterdays had determined for him beforehand.
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 Transome 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 shrink 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 vexed. 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 Harold, who hated Jermyn’s calculated slowness and conceit in his own impenetrability. ‘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 alternately looking at Felix and docketing his bills; ‘but he is perhaps 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 command of language, Mr Holt,’ said Jermyn, pocketing his bills again, and 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 legally 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 Liberal side will tend to preserve order; for we know that the benefit clubs from the Pitchley district will show for Debarry. Indeed, the gentleman who has conducted the canvass at Sproxton is experienced in parliamentary 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, Harold 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 Felix, 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 spite 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 buff 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 hustling 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 English 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 have 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 conviction 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 than 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 couldn’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 bottom 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 mistake. I’m an experienced man, sir. I hope I’ve put it clear enough.’
‘Certainly, the exposition befits the 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 commands, 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 reinforced 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 necessary, 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 been 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.
‘The little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.’
WORDSWVORTH: Tintern Abbey.
JERMYN did not forget to pay his visit 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 grouped 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 comforted 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 minister so much pain to speak of. An easy opportunity of getting an interview with Christian was sure to offer itself before long — might even offer itself tomorrow. 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 Radical; 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 altogether 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 monotonous 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 already 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 Esther took a towel, which she threw over his shoulders, and then brushed 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 forgetfulness 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 their 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 attributed 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 immeasurable 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 deny 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 were 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.