TITUS. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?
CLOWN. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter:
I never drank with him in all my life.’
Titus Andronicus.
THE multiplication of uncomplimentary placards noticed by Mr Lyon and Felix Holt was one of several signs that the days of nomination and election were approaching. The presence of the revising barrister in Treby was not only an opportunity for all persons not otherwise busy to show their zeal for the purification of the voting-lists, but also to reconcile private ease and public duty by standing about the streets and lounging at doors.
It was no light business for Trebians to form an opinion; the mere fact of a public functionary with an unfamiliar title was enough to give them pause, as a premiss that was not to be quickly started from. To Mr Pink the saddler, for example, until some distinct injury or benefit had accrued to him, the existence of the revising barrister was like the existence of the young giraffe which Wombwell had lately brought into those parts — it was to be contemplated, and not criticised. Mr Pink professed a deep-dyed Toryism; but he regarded all fault-finding as Radical and somewhat impious, as disturbing to trade, and likely to offend the gentry or the servants through whom their harness was ordered: there was a Nemesis in things which made objection unsafe, and even the Reform Bill was a sort of electric eel which a thriving tradesman had better leave alone. It was only the ‘Papists’ who lived far enough off to be spoken of uncivilly.
But Mr Pink was fond of news, which he collected and retailed with perfect impartiality, noting facts and rejecting comments. Hence he was well pleased to have his shop so constant a place of resort for loungers, that to many Trebians there was a strong association between the pleasures of gossip and the smell of leather. He had the satisfaction of chalking and cutting, and of keeping his journeymen close at work, at the very time that he learned from his visitors who were those whose votes had been called in question before His Honour, how Lawyer Jermyn had been too much for Lawyer Labron about Todd’s cottages, and how, in the opinion of some townsmen, this looking into the value of people’s property, and swearing it down below a certain sum, was a nasty, inquisitorial kind of thing; while others observed that being nice to a few pounds was all nonsense — they should put the figure high enough, and then never mind if a voter’s qualification was thereabouts. But, said Mr Sims the auctioneer, everything was done for the sake of the lawyers. Mr Pink suggested impartially that lawyers must live; but Mr Sims, having a ready auctioneering wit, did not see that so many of them need live, or that babies were born lawyers. Mr Pink felt that this speculation was complicated by the ordering of side-saddles for lawyers’ daughters, and, returning to the firm ground of fact, stated that it was getting dusk.
The dusk seemed deepened the next moment by a tall figure obstructing the doorway, at sight of whom Mr Pink rubbed his hands and smiled and bowed more than once, with evident solicitude to show honour where honour was due, while he said —
‘Mr Christian, sir, how do you do, sir?’
Christian answered with the condescending familiarity of a superior. ‘Very badly, I can tell you, with these confounded braces that you were to make such a fine job of. See, old fellow, they’ve burst out again.’
‘Very sorry, sir. Can you leave them with me?’
‘O yes, I’ll leave them. What’s the news, eh?’ said Christian, half seating himself on a high stool, and beating his boot with a hand-whip.
‘Well, sir, we look to you to tell us that,’ said Mr Pink, with a knowing smile. ‘You’re at headquarters — eh, sir? That was what I said to Mr Scales the other day. He came for some straps, Mr Scales did, and he asked that question in pretty near the same terms that you’ve done, sir, and I answered him, as I may say, ditto. Not meaning any disrespect to you, sir, but a way of speaking.’
‘Come, that’s gammon, Pink,’ said Christian. ‘You know everything. You can tell me, if you will, who is the fellow employed to paste up Transome’s handbills?’
‘What do you say, Mr Sims?’ said Pink, looking at the auctioneer.
‘Why, you know and I know well enough. It’s Tommy Trounsem — an old, crippling, half-mad fellow. Most people know Tommy. I’ve employed him myself for charity.’
‘Where shall I find him?’ said Christian.
‘At the Cross-Keys, in Pollard’s End, most likely,’ said Mr Sims. ‘I don’t know where he puts himself when he isn’t at the public.’
‘He was a stoutish fellow fifteen year ago, when he carried pots,’ said Mr Pink.
‘Ay, and has snared many a hare in his time,’ said Mr Sims. ‘But he was always a little cracked. Lord bless you! he used to swear he’d a right to the Transome estate.’
‘Why, what put that notion into his head?’ said Christian, who had learned more than he expected.
‘The lawing, sir — nothing but the lawing about the estate. There was a deal of it twenty year ago,’ said Mr Pink. ‘Tommy happened to turn up hereabout at that time; a big, lungeous fellow, who would speak disrespectfully of hanybody.’
‘O, he meant no harm,’ said Mr Simms. ‘He was fond of a drop to drink, and not quite right in the upper story, and he could hear no difference between Trounsem and Transome. It’s an odd way of speaking they have in that part where he was born — a little north’ard. You’ll hear it in his tongue now, if you talk to him.’
‘At the Cross-Keys I shall find him, eh?’ said Christian, getting off his stool. ‘Good-day, Pink, good-day.’
Christian went straight from the saddler’s to Quorlen’s, the Tory printer’s, with whom he had contrived a political spree. Quorlen was a new man in Treby, who had so reduced the trade of Dow, the old hereditary printer, that Dow had lapsed to Whiggery and Radicalism and opinions in general, so far as they were contented to express themselves in a small stock of types. Quorlen had brought his Duffield wit with him, and insisted that religion and joking were the handmaids of politics; on which principle he and Christian undertook the joking, and left the religion to the rector. The joke at present in question was a practical one. Christian, turning into the shop, merely said, ‘I’ve found him out — give me the placards’; and, tucking a thickish flat bundle, wrapped in a black glazed cotton bag, under his arm, walked out into the dusk again.
‘Suppose now,’ he said to himself, as he strode along — ‘suppose there should be some secret to be got out of this old scamp, or some notion that’s as good as a secret to those who know how to use it? That would be virtue rewarded. But I’m afraid the old tosspot is not likely to be good for much. There’s truth in wine, and there may be some in gin and muddy beer; but whether it’s truth worth my knowing, is another question. I’ve got plenty of truth in my time out of men who were half-seas-over, but never any that was worth a sixpence to me.’
The Cross-Keys was a very old-fashioned ‘public’: its bar was a big rambling kitchen, with an undulating brick floor; the small-paned windows threw an interesting obscurity over the far-off dresser, garnished with pewter and tin, and with large dishes that seemed to speak of better times; the two settles were half pushed under the wide-mouthed chimney; and the grate, with its brick hobs, massive iron crane, and various pothooks, suggested a generous plenty possibly existent in all moods and tenses except the indicative present. One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures. The Cross-Keys had a fungous-featured landlord and a yellow sickly landlady, with a napkin bound round her head like a resuscitated Lazarus; it had doctored ale, an odour of bad tobacco, and remarkably strong cheese. It was not what Astraea, when come back, might be expected to approve as the scene of ecstatic enjoyment for the beings whose special prerogative it is to lift their sublime faces towards heaven. Still, there was ample space on the hearth — accommodation for narrative bagmen or boxmen — room for a man to stretch his legs; his brain was not pressed upon by a white wall within a yard of him, and the light did not stare in mercilessly on bare ugliness, turning the fire to ashes. Compared with some beerhouses of this more advanced period, the Cross-Keys of that day presented a high standard of pleasure.
But though this venerable ‘public’ had not failed to share in the recent political excitement of drinking, the pleasures it offered were not at this early hour of the evening sought by a numerous company. There were only three or four pipes being smoked by the firelight, but it was enough for Christian when he found that one of these was being smoked by the bill-sticker, whose large flat basket stuffed with placards, leaned near him against the settle. So splendid an apparition as Christian was not a little startling at the Cross-Keys, and was gazed at in expectant silence; but he was a stranger in Pollard’s End, and was taken for the highest style of traveller when he declared that he was deucedly thirsty, ordered six-pennyworth of gin and a large jug of water, and, putting a few drops of the spirit into his own glass, invited Tommy Trounsem, who sat next him, to help himself. Tommy was not slower than a shaking hand obliged him to be in accepting this invitation. He was a tall broad-shouldered old fellow, who had once been good-looking; but his cheeks and chest were both hollow now, and his limbs were shrunken.
‘You’ve got some bills there, master, eh?’ said Christian, pointing to the basket. ‘Is there an auction coming on?’
‘Auction? no,’ said Tommy, with a gruff hoarseness, which was the remnant of a jovial bass, and with an accent which differed from the Trebian fitfully, as an early habit is wont to reassert itself ‘I’ve nought to do wi’ auctions; I’m a pol’tical charicter. It’s me am getting Trounsem into parliament.’
‘Trounsem, says he,’ the landlord observed, taking out his pipe with a low laugh. ‘It’s Transome, sir. Maybe you don’t belong to this part. It’s the candidate ‘ull do most for the working men, and’s proved it too, in the way o’ being openhanded and wishing ’em to enjoy themselves. If I’d twenty votes, I’d give one for Transome, and I don’t care who hears me.’
The landlord peeped out from his fungous cluster of features with a beery confidence that the high figure of twenty had somehow raised the hypothetic value of his vote.
‘Spilkins, now,’ said Tommy, waving his hand to the landlord, ‘you let one genelman speak to another, will you? This genelman wants to know about my bills. Does he, or doesn’t he?’
‘What then? I spoke according,’ said the landlord, mildly holding his own.
‘You’re all very well, Spilkins,’ returned Tommy, ‘but y’aren’t me. I know what the bills are. It’s public business. I’m none o’ your common bill-stickers, master; I’ve left off sticking up ten guineas reward for a sheep-stealer, or low stuff like that. These are Trounsem’s bills; and I’m the rightful family, and so I give him a lift. A Trounsem I am, and a Trounsem I’ll be buried; and if Old Nick tries to lay hold on me for poaching, I’ll say, “You be hanged for a lawyer, Old Nick; every hare and pheasant on the Trounsem’s land is mine”; and what rises the family, rises old Tommy; and we’re going to get into parl’ment — that’s the long and the short on’t, master. And I’m the head o’ the family, and I stick the bills. There’s Johnsons, and Thomsons, and Jacksons, and Billsons; but I’m a Trounsem, I am. What do you say to that, master?’
This appeal, accompanied by a blow on the table, while the landlord winked at the company, was addressed to Christian, who answered, with severe gravity — ‘I say there isn’t any work more honourable than bill-sticking.’
‘No, no,’ said Tommy, wagging his head from side to side. ‘I thought you’d come in to that. I thought you’d know better than say contrairy. But I’ll shake hands wi’ you; I don’t want to knock any man’s head off. I’m a good chap — a sound crock — an old family kep’ out o’ my rights. I shall go to heaven, for all Old Nick.’
As these celestial prospects might imply that a little extra gin was beginning to tell on the bill-sticker, Christian wanted to lose no time in arresting his attention. He laid his hand on Tommy’s arm and spoke emphatically.
‘But I’ll tell you what you bill-stickers are not up to. You should be on the look-out when Debarry’s side have stuck up fresh bills, and go and paste yours over them. I know where there’s a lot of Debarry’s bills now. Come along with me, and I’ll show you. We’ll paste them over, and then we’ll come back and treat the company.’
‘Hooray! ‘ said Tommy. ‘Let’s be off then.’
He was one of the thoroughly inured, originally hale drunkards, and did not easily lose his head or legs or the ordinary amount of method in his talk. Strangers often supposed that Tommy was tipsy when he had only taken what he called ‘one blessed pint’, chiefly from that glorious contentment with himself and his adverse fortunes which is not usually characteristic of the sober Briton. He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, seized his paste-vessel and his basket, and prepared to start, with a satisfactory promise that he could know what he was about.
The landlord and some others had confidently concluded that they understood all about Christian now. He was a Transome’s man, come to see after the bill-sticking in Transome’s interest. The landlord, telling his yellow wife snappishly to open the door for the gentleman, hoped soon to see him again.
‘This is a Transome’s house, sir,’ he observed, ‘in respect of entertaining customers of that colour. I do my duty as a publican, which, if I know it, is to turn back no genelman’s money. I say, give every genelman a chanch, and the more the merrier, in parl’ment and out of it. And if anybody says they want but two parl’ment men, I say it ‘ud be better for trade if there was six of ’em, and voters according.’
‘Ay, ay,’ said Christian; ‘you’re a sensible man, landlord. You don’t mean to vote for Debarry then, eh?’
‘Not nohow,’ said the landlord, thinking that where negatives were good the more you heard of them the better.
As soon as the door had closed behind Christian and his new companion, Tommy said —
‘Now, master, if you’re to be my lantern, don’t you be a Jacky Lantern, which I take to mean one as leads you the wrong way. For I’ll tell you what — if you’ve had the luck to fall in wi’ Tommy Trounsem, don’t you let him drop.’
‘No, no — to be sure not,’ said Christian. ‘Come along here. We’ll go to the Back Brewery wall first.’
‘No, no; don’t you let me drop. Give me a shilling any day you like, and I’ll tell you more nor you’ll hear from Spilkins in a week. There isna many men like me. I carried pots for fifteen years off and on — what do you think o’ that now, for a man as might ha’ lived up there at Trounsem Park, and snared his own game? Which I’d ha’ done,’ said Tommy, wagging his head at Christian in the dimness undisturbed by gas. ‘None o’ your shooting for me — it’s two to one you’ll miss. Snaring’s more fishing-like. You bait your hook, and if it isna the fishes’ goodwill to come, that’s nothing again’ the sporting genelman. And that’s what I say by snaring.’
‘But if you’d a right to the Transome estate, how was it you were kept out of it, old boy? It was some foul shame or other, eh?’
‘It’s the law — that’s what it is. You’re a good sort o’ chap; I don’t mind telling you. There’s folks born to property, and there’s folks catch hold on it; and the law’s made for them as catch hold. I’m pretty deep; I see a good deal further than Spilkins. There was Ned Patch, the pedlar, used to say to me “You canna read, Tommy,” says he. “No; thank you,” says I; “I’m not going to crack my headpiece to make myself as big a fool as you.” I was fond o’ Ned. Many’s the pot we’ve had together.’
‘I see well enough you’re deep, Tommy. How came you to know you were born to property?’
‘It was the regester — the parish regester,’ said Tommy, with his knowing wag of the head, ‘that shows as you was born. I allays felt it inside me as I was somebody, and I could see other chaps thought it on me too; and so one day at Littleshaw, where I kept ferrets and a little bit of a public, there comes a fine man looking after me, and walking me up and down wi’ questions. And I made out from the clerk as he’d been at the regester; and I gave the clerk a pot or two, and he got it of our parson as the name o’ Trounsem was a great name hereabout. And I waits a bit for my fine man to come again. Thinks I, if there’s property wants a right owner, I shall be called for; for I didn’t know the law then. And I waited and waited, till I see’d no fun i’ waiting. So I parted wi’ my public and my ferrets — for she was dead a’ready, my wife was, and I hadn’t no cumbrance. And off I started a pretty long walk to this countryside, for I could walk for a wager in them days.’
‘Ah! well, here we are at the Back Brewery wall. Put down your paste and your basket now, old boy, and I’ll help you. You paste, and I’ll give you the bills, and then you can go on talking.’
Tommy obeyed automatically, for he was now carried away by the rare opportunity of talking to a new listener, and was only eager to go on with his story. As soon as his back was turned, and he was stooping over his paste-pot, Christian, with quick adroitness, exchanged the placards in his own bag for those in Tommys basket. Christian’s placards had not been printed at Treby, but were a new lot which had been sent from Duffield that very day — ‘highly spiced’, Quorlen had said, ‘coming from a pen that was up to that sort of thing’. Christian had read the first of the sheaf, and supposed they were all alike. He proceeded to hand one to Tommy, and said —
‘Here, old boy, paste this over the other. And so, when you got into this country-side, what did you do?’
‘Do? Why, I put up at a good public and ordered the best, for I’d a bit o’ money in my pocket; and I axed about, and they said to me, if it’s Trounsem business you’re after, you go to Lawyer Jermyn. And I went; and says I, going along, he’s maybe the fine man as walked me up and down. But no such thing. I’ll tell you what Lawyer Jermyn was. He stands you there, and holds you away from him wi’ a pole three yards long. He stares at you, and says nothing, till you feel like a Tomfool; and then he threats you to set the justice on you; and then he’s sorry for you, and hands you money, and preaches you a sarmint, and tells you you’re a poor man, and he’ll give you a bit of advice — and you’d better not be meddling wi’ things belonging to the law, else you’ll be catched up in a big wheel and fly to bits. And I went of a cold sweat, and I wished I might never come i’ sight o’ Lawyer Jermyn again. But he says, if you keep i’ this neighbourhood, behave yourself well, and I’ll pertect you. I were deep enough, but it’s no use being deep, ‘cause you can never know the law. And there’s times when the deepest fellow’s worst frightened.’
‘Yes, yes. There! Now for another placard. And so that was all?’
‘All?’ said Tommy, turning round and holding the pastebrush in suspense. ‘Don’t you be running too quick. Thinks I, “I’ll meddle no more. I’ve got a bit o’ money — I’ll buy a basket, and be a potman. It’s a pleasant life. I shall live at publics and see the world, and pick up ‘quaintance, and get a chanch penny.” But when I’d turned into the Red Lion, and got myself warm again wi’ a drop o’ hot, something jumps into my head. Thinks I, Tommy, you’ve done finely for yourself: you’re a rat as has broke up your house to take a journey, and show yourself to a ferret. And then it jumps into my head: I’d once two ferrets as turned on one another, and the little un killed the big un. Says I to the landlady, “Missis, could you tell me of a lawyer,” says I, “not very big or fine, but a second size — a pig-potato, like?” “That I can,” says she; “there’s one now in the bar-parlour.” “Be so kind as bring us together,” says I. And she cries out — I think I hear her now — “Mr Johnson! “ And what do you think?’
At this crisis in Tommy’s story the grey clouds, which had been gradually thinning, opened sufficiently to let down the sudden moonlight, and show his poor battered old figure and face in the attitude and with the expression of a narrator sure of the coming effect on his auditor; his body and neck stretched a little on one side, and his paste-brush held out with an alarming intention of tapping Christian’s coat-sleeve at the right moment. Christian started to a safe distance, and said —
‘It’s wonderful. I can’t tell what to think.’
‘Then never do you deny Old Nick,’ said Tommy, with solemnity. ‘I’ve believed in him more ever since. Who was Johnson? Why, Johnson was the fine man as had walked me up and down with questions. And I out with it to him then and there. And he speaks me civil, and says, “Come away wi’ me, my good fellow.” And he told me a deal o’ law. And he says, whether you’re a Tommy Trounsem or no, it’s no good to you, but only to them as have got hold o’ the property. If you was a Tommy Trounsem twenty times over, it ‘ud be no good, for the law’s bought you out; and your life’s no good, only to them as have catched hold o’ the property. The more you live, the more they’ll stick in. Not as they want you now, says he — you’re no good to anybody, and you might howl like a dog for iver, and the law ‘ud take no notice on you. Says Johnson. I’m doing a kind thing by you, to tell you. For that’s the law. And if you want to know the law, master, you ask Johnson. I heard ’em say after, as he was an understrapper at Jermyn’s. I’ve never forgot it from that day to this. But I saw clear enough, as if the law hadn’t been again’ me, the Trounsem estate ‘ud ha’ been mine. But folks are fools hereabouts, and I’ve left off talking. The more you tell ’em the truth, the more they’ll niver believe you. And I went and bought my basket and the pots, and —’
‘Come, then, fire away,’ said Christian. ‘Here’s another placard.’
‘I’m getting a bit dry, master.’
‘Well, then, make haste, and you’ll have something to drink all the sooner.’
Tommy turned to his work again, and Christian, continuing his help, said, ‘And how long has Mr Jermyn been employing you?’
‘Oh, no particular time — off and on; but a week or two ago he sees me upo’ the road, and speaks to me uncommon civil, and tells me to go up to his office, and he’ll give me employ. And I was noways unwilling to stick the bills to get the family into parl’ment. For there’s no man can help the law. And the family’s the family, whether you carry pots or no. Master, I’m uncommon dry — my head’s a turning round — it’s talking so long on end.’
The unwonted excitement of poor Tommy’s memory was producing a reaction.
‘Well, Tommy,’ said Christian, who had just made a discovery among the placards which altered the bent of his thoughts, ‘you may go back to the Cross-Keys now, if you like; here’s a half-crown for you to spend handsomely. I can’t go back there myself just yet; but you may give my respects to Spilkins, and mind you paste the rest of the bills early tomorrow morning.
‘Ay, ay. But don’t you believe too much i’ Spilkins,’ said Tommy, pocketing the half-crown, and showing his gratitude by giving this advice — ‘he’s no harm much — but weak. He thinks he’s at the bottom o’ things because he scores you up. But I bear him no ill-will. Tommy Trounsem’s a good chap; and any day you like to give me half-a-crown, I’ll tell you the same story over again. Not now; I’m dry. Come, help me up wi’ these things; you’re a younger chap than me. Well, I’ll tell Spilkins you’ll come again another day.’
The moonlight, which had lit up poor Tommy’s oratorical attitude, had served to light up for Christian the print of the placards. He had expected the copies to be various, and had turned them half over at different depths of the sheaf before drawing out those he offered to the bill-sticker. Suddenly the clear light had shown him on one of them a name which was just then especially interesting to him, and all the more when occurring in a placard intended to dissuade the electors of North Loamshire from voting for the heir of the Transomes. He hastily turned over the lists that preceded and succeeded, that he might draw out and carry away all of this pattern; for it might turn out to be wiser for him not to contribute to the publicity of handbills which contained allusions to Bycliffe versus Transome. There were about a dozen of them; he pressed them together and thrust them into his pocket, returning all the rest to Tommy’s basket. To take away this dozen might not be to prevent similar bills from being posted up elsewhere, but he had reason to believe that these were all of the same kind which had been sent to Treby from Duffield.
Christian’s interest in his practical joke had died out like a morning rushlight. Apart from this discovery in the placards, old Tommy’s story had some indications in it that were worth pondering over. Where was that well-informed Johnson now? Was he still an understrapper of Jermyn’s?
With this matter in his thoughts, Christian only turned in hastily at Quorlen’s, threw down the black bag which contained the captured Radical handbills, said he had done the job, and hurried back to the Manor that he might study his problem.
‘I doe believe that, as the gall has several receptacles in several creatures, soe there’s scarce any creature but hath that emunctorye somewhere.’ — SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
FANCY what a game at chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning: if you were not only uncertain about your adversary’s men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop, in disgust at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt.
Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his instruments. He thinks himself sagacious, perhaps, because he trusts no bond except that of self-interest; but the only self-interest he can safely rely on is what seems to be such to the mind he would use or govern. Can he ever be sure of knowing this?
Matthew Jermyn was under no misgivings as to the fealty of Johnson. He had ‘been the making of Johnson’; and this seems to many men a reason for expecting devotion, in spite of the fact that they themselves, though very fond of their own persons and lives, are not at all devoted to the Maker they believe in. Johnson was a most serviceable subordinate. Being a man who aimed at respectability, a family man, who had a good church-pew, subscribed for engravings of banquet pictures where there were portraits of political celebrities, and wished his children to be more unquestionably genteel than their father, he presented all the more numerous handles of worldly motive by which a judicious superior might keep a hold on him. But this useful regard to respectability had its inconvenience in relation to such a superior: it was a mark of some vanity and some pride, which, if they were not touched just in the right handlling-place, were liable to become raw and sensitive. Jermyn was aware of Johnson’s weaknesses, and thought he had flattered them sufficiently. But on the point of knowing when we are disagreeable, our human nature is fallible. Our lavender-water, our smiles, our compliments, and other polite falsities, are constantly offensive, when in the very nature of them they can only be meant to attract admiration and regard. Jermyn had often been unconsciously disagreeable to Johnson, over and above the constant offence of being an ostentatious patron. He would never let Johnson dine with his wife and daughters; he would not himself dine at Johnson’s house when he was in town. He often did what was equivalent to pooh-poohing his conversation by not even appearing to listen, and by suddenly cutting it short with a query on a new subject. Jermyn was able and politic enough to have commanded a great deal of success in his life, but he could not help being handsome, arrogant, fond of being heard, indisposed to any kind of comradeship, amorous and bland towards women, cold and self-contained towards men. You will hear very strong denial that an attorney’s being handsome could enter into the dislike he excited; but conversation consists a good deal in the denial of what is true. From the British point of view masculine beauty is regarded very much as it is in the drapery business: as good solely for the fancy department — for young noblemen, artists, poets, and the clergy. Some one who, like Mr Lingon, was disposed to revile Jermyn (perhaps it was Sir Maximus), had called him ‘a cursed, sleek, handsome, long-winded, over-bearing sycophant;’ epithets which expressed, rather confusedly, the mingled character of the dislike he excited. And serviceable John Johnson, himself sleek, and mindful about his broadcloth and his cambric fronts, had what he considered ‘spirit’ enough within him to feel that dislike of Jermyn gradually gathering force through years of obligation and subjection, till it had become an actuating motive disposed to use an opportunity, if not to watch for one.
It was not this motive, however, but rather the ordinary course of business, which accounted for Johnson’s playing a double part as an electioneering agent. What men do in elections is not to be classed either among sins or marks of grace: it would be profane to include business in religion, and conscience refers to failure, not to success. Still, the sense of being galled by Jermyn’s harness was an additional reason for cultivating all relations that were independent of him; and pique at Harold Transome’s behaviour to him in Jermyn’s office perhaps gave all the more zest to Johnson’s use of his pen and ink when he wrote a handbill in the service of Garstin, and Garstin’s incomparable agent, Putty, full of innuendoes against Harold Transome, as a descendant of the Durfey-Transomes. It is a natural subject of self-congratulation to a man, when special knowledge, gained long ago without any forecast, turns out to afford a special inspiration in the present; and Johnson felt a new pleasure in the consciousness that he of all people in the world next to Jermyn had the most intimate knowledge of the Transome affairs. Still better — some of these affairs were secrets of Jermyn’s. If in an uncomplimentary spirit he might have been called Jermyn’s ‘man of straw’, it was a satisfaction to know that the unreality of the man John Johnson was confined to his appearance in annuity deeds, and that elsewhere he was solid, locomotive, and capable of remembering anything for his own pleasure and benefit. To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.
By such causes it came to pass that Christian held in his hands a bill in which Jermyn was playfully alluded to as Mr German Cozen, who won games by clever shuffling and odd tricks without any honour, and backed Durfey’s crib against Bycliffe, — in which it was adroitly implied that the so-called head of the Transomes was only the tail of the Durfeys, — and that some said the Durfeys would have died out and left their nest empty if it had not been for their German Cozen.
Johnson had not dared to use any recollections except such as might credibly exist in other minds besides his own. In the truth of the case, no one but himself had the prompting to recall these outworn scandals; but it was likely enough that such foul-winged things should be revived by election heats for Johnson to escape all suspicion.
Christian could gather only dim and uncertain inferences from this ‘dat irony and heavy joking; but one chief thing was clear to him. He had been right in his conjecture that Jermyn’s interest about Bycliffe had its source in some claim of Bycliffe’s on the Transome property. And then, there was that story of the old bill-sticker’s, which, closely considered, indicated that the right of the present Transomes depended, or at least had depended, on the continuance of some other lives. Christian in his time had gathered enough legal notions to be aware that possession by one man sometimes depended on the life of another; that a man might sell his own interest in property, and the interest of his descendants, while a claim on that property would still remain to some one else than the purchaser, supposing the descendants became extinct, and the interest they had sold were at an end. But under what conditions the claim might be valid or void in any particular case, was all darkness to him. Suppose Bycliffe had any such claim on the Transome estates: how was Christian to know whether at the present moment it was worth anything more than a bit of rotten parchment? Old Tommy Trounsem had said that Johnson knew all about it. But even if Johnson were still above-ground — and all Johnsons are mortal — he might still be an understrapper of Jermyn’s, in which case his knowledge would be on the wrong side of the hedge for the purposes of Henry Scaddon. His immediate care must be to find out all he could about Johnson. He blamed himself for not having questioned Tommy further while he had him at command; but on this head the bill-sticker could hardly know more than the less dilapidated denizens of Treby.
Now it had happened that during the weeks in which Christian had been at work in trying to solve the enigma of Jermyn’s interest about Bycliffe, Johnson’s mind also had been somewhat occupied with suspicion and conjecture as to new information on the subject of the old Bycliffe claims which Jermyn intended to conceal from him. The letter which, after his interview with Christian, Jermyn had written with a sense of perfect safety to his faithful ally Johnson, was, as we know, written to a Johnson who had found his self-love incompatible with that faithfulness of which it was supposed to be the foundation. Anything that the patron felt it inconvenient for his obliged friend and servant to know, became by that very fact an object of peculiar curiosity. The obliged friend and servant secretly doted on his patron’s inconvenience, provided that he himself did not share it; and conjecture naturally became active.
Johnson’s legal imagination, being very differently furnished from Christian’s, was at no loss to conceive conditions under which there might arise a new claim on the Transome estates. He had before him the whole history of the settlement of those estates made a hundred years ago by John Justus Transome, entailing them, whilst in his possession, on his son Thomas and his heirs-male, with remainder to the Bycliffes in fee. He knew that Thomas, son of John Justus, proving a prodigal, had, without the knowledge of his father, the tenant in possession, sold his own and his descendants’ rights to a lawyer-cousin named Durfey; that, therefore, the title of the Durfey-Transomes, in spite of that old Durfey’s tricks to show the contrary, depended solely on the purchase of the ‘base fee’ thus created by Thomas Transome; and that the Bycliffes were the ‘remainder-men’ who might fairly oust the Durfey-Transomes if ever the issue of the prodigal Thomas went clean out of existence, and ceased to represent a right which he had bargained away from them.
Johnson, as Jermyn’s subordinate, had been closely cognisant of the details concerning the suit instituted by successive Bycliffes, of whom Maurice Christian Bycliffe was the last, on the plea that the extinction of Thomas Transome’s line had actually come to pass — a weary suit, which had eaten into the fortunes of two families, and had only made the cankerworms fat. The suit had closed with the death of Maurice Christian Bycliffe in prison; but before his death, Jermyn’s exertions to get evidence that there was still issue of Thomas Transome’s line surviving, as a security of the Durfey title, had issued in the discovery of a Thomas Transome at Littleshaw, in Stonyshire, who was the representative of a pawned inheritance. The death of Maurice had made this discovery useless — had made it seem the wiser part to say nothing about it; and the fact had remained a secret known only to Jermyn and Johnson. No other Bycliffe was known or believed to exist, and the Durfey-Transomes might be considered safe, unless — yes, there was an ‘unless’ which Johnson could conceive: an heir or heiress of the Bycliffes — if such a personage turned out to be in existence — might some time raise a new and valid claim when once informed that wretched old Tommy Trounsem the bill-sticker, tottering drunkenly on the edge of the grave, was the last issue remaining above ground from that dissolute Thomas who played his Esau part a century before. While the poor old bill-sticker breathed, the Durfey-Transomes could legally keep their possession in spite of a possible Bycliffe proved real; but not when the parish had buried the bill-sticker.
Still, it is one thing to conceive conditions, and another to see any chance of proving their existence. Johnson at present had no glimpse of such a chance; and even if he ever gained the glimpse, he was not sure that he should ever make any use of it. His inquiries of Medwin, in obedience to Jermyn’s letter, had extracted only a negative as to any information possessed by the lawyers of Bycliffe concerning a marriage, or expectation of offspring on his part. But Johnson felt not the less stung by curiosity to know what Jermyn had found out that he had found something in relation to a possible Bycliffe, Johnson felt pretty sure. And he thought with satisfaction that Jermyn could not hinder him from knowing what he already knew about Thomas Transome’s issue. Many things might occur to alter his policy and give a new value to facts. Was it certain that Jermyn would always be fortunate?
When greed and unscrupulousness exhibit themselves on a grand historical scale, and there is question of peace or war or amicable partition, it often occurs that gentlemen of high diplomatic talents have their minds bent on the same object from different points of view. Each, perhaps, is thinking of a certain duchy or province, with a view to arranging the ownership in such a way as shall best serve the purposes of the gentleman with high diplomatic talents in whom each is more especially interested. But these select minds in high office can never miss their aims from ignorance of each other’s existence or whereabouts. Their high titles may be learned even by common people from every pocket almanac.
But with meaner diplomatists, who might be mutually useful, such ignorance is often obstructive. Mr John Johnson and Mr Christian, otherwise Henry Scaddon, might have had a concentration of purpose and an ingenuity of device fitting them to make a figure in the parcelling of Europe, and yet they might never have met, simply because Johnson knew nothing of Christian, and because Christian did not know where to find Johnson.
‘His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth:
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;
And, being angry, doth forget that ever
He heard the name of death.’ — Coriolanus.
CHRISTIAN and Johnson did meet, however, by means that were quite incalculable. The incident which brought them into communication was due to Felix Holt, who of all men in the world had the least affinity either for the indusuious or the idle parasite.
Mr Lyon had urged Felix to go to Duffield on the 15th of December, to witness the nomination of the candidates for North Loamshire. The minister wished to hear what took place; and the pleasure of gratifying him helped to outweigh some opposing reasons.
‘I shall get into a rage at something or other,’ Felix had said. ‘I’ve told you one of my weak points. Where I have any particular business, I must incur the risks my nature brings. But I’ve no particular business at Duffield. However, I’ll make a holiday and go. By dint of seeing folly, I shall get lessons in patience.’
The weak point to which Felix referred was his liability to be carried completely out of his own mastery by indignant anger. His strong health, his renunciation of selfish claims, his habitual preoccupation with large thoughts and with purposes independent of everyday casualties, secured him a fine and even temper, free from moodiness or irritability. He was full of long-suffering towards his unwise mother, who ‘pressed him daily with her words and urged him, so that his soul was vexed’; he had chosen to fill his days in a way that required the utmost exertion of patience, that required those little rill-like out-flowings of goodness which in minds of great energy must be fed from deep sources of thought and passionate devotedness. In this way his energies served to make him gentle; and now, in this twenty-sixth year of his life, they had ceased to make him angry, except in the presence of something that roused his deep indignation. When once exasperated, the passionateness of his nature threw off the yoke of a long-trained consciousness in which thought and emotion had been more and more completely mingled and concentrated itself in a rage as ungovernable as that of boyhood. He was thoroughly aware of the liability, and knew that in such circumstances he could not answer for himself. Sensitive people with feeble frames have often the same sort of fury within them; but they are themselves shattered, and shatter nothing. Felix had a terrible arm: he knew that he was dangerous; and he avoided the conditions that might cause him exasperation, as he would have avoided intoxicating drinks if he had been in danger of intemperance.
The nomination-day was a great epoch of successful trickery, or, to speak in a more parliamentary manner, of war-stratagem, on the part of skilful agents. And Mr Johnson had his share of inward chuckling and self-approval, as one who might justly expect increasing renown, and be some day in as general request as the great Putty himself. To have the pleasure and the praise of electioneering ingenuity, and also to get paid for it, without too much anxiety whether the ingenuity will achieve its ultimate end, perhaps gives to some select persons a sort of satisfaction in their superiority to their more agitated fellow-men that is worthy to be classed with those generous enjoyments of having the truth chiefly to yourself, and of seeing others in danger of drowning while you are high and dry, which seem to have been regarded as unmixed privileges by Lucretius and Lord Bacon.
One of Mr Johnson’s great successes was this. Spratt, the hated manager of the Sproxton Colliery, in careless confidence that the colliers and other labourers under him would follow his orders, had provided carts to carry some loads of voteless enthusiasm to Duffield on behalf of Garstin; enthusiasm which, being already paid for by the recognised benefit of Garstin’s existence as a capitalist with a share in the Sproxton mines, was not to cost much in the form of treating. A capitalist was held worthy of pious honour as the cause why working men existed. But Mr Spratt did not sufficiently consider that a cause which has to be proved by argument or testimony is not an object of passionate devotion to colliers: a visible cause of beer acts on them much more strongly. And even if there had been any love of the far-off Garstin, hatred of the too-immediate Spratt would have been the stronger motive. Hence Johnson’s calculations, made long ago with Chubb, the remarkable publican, had been well founded, and there had been diligent care to supply treating at Duffield in the name of Transome. After the election was over, it was not improbable that there would be much friendly joking between Putty and Johnson as to the success of this trick against Putty’s employer, and Johnson would be conscious of rising in the opinion of his celebrated senior.
For the show of hands and the cheering, the hustling and the pelting, the roaring and the hissing, the hard hits with small missiles, and the soft hits with small jokes, were strong enough on the side of Transome to balance the similar ‘demonstrations’ for Garstin, even with the Debarry interest in his favour. And the inconvenient presence of Spratt was early got rid of by a dexterously managed accident, which sent him bruised and limping from the scene of action. Mr Chubb had never before felt so thoroughly that the occasion was up to a level with his talents, while the clear daylight in which his virtue would appear when at the election he voted, as his duty to himself bound him, for Garstin only, gave him thorough repose of conscience.
Felix Holt was the only person looking on at the senseless exhibitions of this nomination-day, who knew from the beginning the history of the trick with the Sproxton men. He had been aware all along that the treating at Chubb’s had been continued, and that so far Harold Transome’s promise had produced no good fruits; and what he was observing today, as he watched the uproarious crowd, convinced him that the whole scheme would be carried out just as if he had never spoken about it. He could be fair enough to Transome to allow that he might have wished, and yet have been unable, with his notions of success, to keep his promise; and his bitterness towards the candidate only took the form of contemptuous pity; for Felix was not sparing in his contempt for men who put their inward honour in pawn by seeking the prizes of the world. His scorn fell too readily on the fortunate. But when he saw Johnson passing to and fro, and speaking to Jermyn on the hustings, he felt himself getting angry, and jumped off the wheel of the stationary cart on which he was mounted that he might no longer be in sight of this man, whose vitiating cant had made his blood hot and his fingers tingle on the first day of encountering him at Sproxton. It was a little too exasperating to look at this pink-faced rotund specimen of prosperity, to witness the power for evil that lay in his vulgar cant, backed by another man’s money, and to know that such stupid iniquity flourished the flags of Reform, and Liberalism, and justice to the needy. While the roaring and the scuffling were still going on, Felix, with his thick stick in his hand, made his way through the crowd, and walked on through the Duffield streets till he came out on a grassy suburb, where the houses surrounded a small common: Here he walked about in the breezy air, and ate his bread and apples, telling himself that this angry haste of his about evils that could only be remedied slowly, could be nothing else than obstructive, and might some day — he saw it so clearly that the thought seemed like a presentiment — be obstructive of his own work.
‘Not to waste energy, to apply force where it would tell, to do small work close at hand, not waiting for speculative chances of heroism, but preparing for them’ — these were the rules he had been constantly urging on himseIf. But what could be a greater waste than to beat a scoundrel who had law and opodeldoc at command? After this meditation, Felix felt cool and wise enough to return into the town, not, however, intending to deny himself the satisfaction of a few pungent words wherever there was place for them. Blows are sarcasms turned stupid: wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.
Anything that could be called a crowd was no longer to be seen. The show of hands having been pronounced to be in favour of Debarry and Transome, and a poll having been demanded for Garstin, the business of the day might be considered at an end. But in the street where the hustings were erected, and where the great hotels stood, there were many groups, as well as strollers and steady walkers to and fro. Men in superior greatcoats and well-brushed hats were awaiting with more or less impatience an important dinner, either at the Crown, which was Debarry’s house, or at the Three Cranes, which was Garstin’s, or at the Fox and Hounds, which was Transome’s. Knots of sober retailers, who had already dined, were to be seen at some shop-doors; men in very shabby coats and miscellaneous head-coverings, inhabitants of Duffield and not county voters, were lounging about in dull silence, or listening, some to a grimy man in a flannel shirt, hatless and with turbid red hair, who was insisting on political points with much more ease than had seemed to belong to the gentlemen speakers on the hustings, and others to a Scotch vendor of articles useful to sell, whose unfamiliar accent seemed to have a guarantee of truth in it wanting as an association with everyday English. Some rough-looking pipe-smokers, or distinguished cigar-smokers, chose to walk up and down in isolation and silence. But the majority of those who had shown a buming interest in the nomination had disappeared, and cockades no longer studded a close-pressed crowd, like, and also very unlike, meadow flowers among the grass. The street pavement was strangely painted with fragments of perishable missiles ground flat under heavy feet: but the workers were resting from their toil, and the buzz and tread and the fitfully discernible voices seemed like stillness to Felix after the roar with whuch the wide space had been filled when he left it.
The group round the speaker in the flannel shirt stood at the corner of a side-street, and the speaker himself was elevated by the head and shoulders above his hearers, not because he was tall, but because he stood on a projecting stone. At the opposite corner of the turning was the great inn of the Fox and Hounds, and this was the ultra-Liberal quarter of the High Street. Felix was at once attracted by this group; he liked the look of the speaker, whose bare arms were powerfully muscular, though he had the pallid complexion of a man who lives chiefly amidst the heat of furnaces. He was leaning against the dark stone building behind him with folded arms, the grimy paleness of his shirt and skin standing out in high relief against the dark stone building behind him. He lifted up one fore-finger, and marked his emphasis with it as he spoke. His voice was high and not strong, but Felix recognised the fluency and the method of a habitual preacher or lecturer.
‘It’s the fallacy of all monopolists,’ he was saying. ‘We know what monopolists are: men who want to keep a trade all to themselves, under the pretence that they’ll furnish the public with a better article. We know what that comes to: in some countries a poor man can’t afford to buy a spoonful of salt, and yet there’s salt enough in the world to pickle every living thing in it. That’s the sort of benefit monopolists do to mankind. And these are the men who tell us we’re to let politics alone; they’ll govern us better without our knowing anything about it. We must mind our business; we are ignorant; we’ve no time to study great questions. But I tell them this: the greatest question in the world is, how to give every man a man’s share in what goes on in life —’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Felix, in his sonorous voice, which seemed to give a new impressiveness to what the speaker had said. Every one looked at him: the well-washed face and its educated expression, along with a dress more careless than that of most well-to-do workmen on a holiday, made his appearance strangely arresting.
‘Not a pig’s share,’ the speaker went on, ‘not a horse’s share, not the share of a machine fed with oil only to make it work and nothing else. It isn’t a man’s share just to mind your pin-making, or your glass-blowing, and higgle about your own wages, and bring up your family to be ignorant sons of ignorant fathers, and no better prospect; that’s a slave’s share; we want a freeman’s share, and that is to think and speak and act about what concerns us all, and see whether these fine gentlemen who undertake to govern us are doing the best they can for us. They’ve got the knowledge, say they. Very well, we’ve got the wants. There’s many a one who would be idle if hunger didn’t pinch him; but the stomach sets us to work. There’s a fable told where the nobles are the belly and the people the members. But I make another sort of fable. I say, we are the belly that feels the pinches, and we’ll set these aristocrats, these great people who call themselves our brains, to work at some way of satisfying us a bit better. The aristocrats are pretty sure to try and govern for their own benefit; but how are we to be sure they’ll try and govern for ours? They must be looked after, I think, like other workmen. We must have what we call inspectors, to see whether the work’s well done for us. We want to send our inspectors to parliament. Well, they say — you’ve got the Reform Bill; what more can you want? Send your inspectors. But I say, the Reform Bill is a trick — it’s nothing but swearing-in special constables to keep the aristocrats safe in their monopoly; it’s bribing some of the people with votes to make them hold their tongues about giving votes to the rest. I say, if a man doesn’t beg or steal, but works for his bread, the poorer and the more miserable he is, the more he’d need have a vote to send an inspector to parliament — else the man who is worst off is likely to be forgotten; and I say, he’s the man who ought to be first remembered. Else what does their religion mean? Why do they build churches and endow them that their sons may get well paid for preaching a Saviour, and making themselves as little like Him as can be? If I want to believe in Jesus Christ, I must shut my eyes for fear I should see a parson. And what’s a bishop? A bishop’s a parson dressed up, who sits in the House of Lords to help and throw out Reform Bills. And because it’s hard to get anything in the shape of a man to dress himself up like that, and do such work, they gave him a palace for it, and plenty of thousands a-year. And then they cry out — “The church is in danger,” — “the poor man’s church”. And why is it the poor man’s church? Because he can have a seat for nothing. I think it is for nothing; for it would be hard to tell what he gets by it. If the poor man had a vote in the matter, I think he’d choose a different sort of a church to what that is. But do you think the aristocrats will ever alter it, if the belly doesn’t pinch them? Not they. It’s part of their monopoly. They’ll supply us with our religion like everything else, and get a profit on it. They’ll give us plenty of heaven. We may have land there. That’s the sort of religion they like — a religion that gives us working men heaven, and nothing else. But we’ll offer to change with ’em. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world. They don’t seem to care so much about heaven themselves till they feel the gout very bad — but you won’t get them to give up anything else, if you don’t pinch ’em for it. And to pinch them enough, we must get the suffrage, we must get votes, that we may send the men to parliament who will do our work for us; and we must have parliament dissolved every year, that we may change our man if he doesn’t do what we want him to do; and we must have the country divided so that the little kings of the counties can’t do as they like, but must be shaken up in one bag with us. I say, if we working men are ever to get a man’s share, we must have universal suffrage, and annual parliaments, and the vote by ballot, and electoral districts.”
‘No! — something else before all that,’ said Felix, again startling the audience into looking at him. But the speaker glanced coldly at him and went on.
‘That’s what Sir Francis Burdett went in for fifteen years ago; and it’s the right thing for us, if it was Tomfool who went in for it. You must lay hold of such handles as you can. I don’t believe much in Liberal aristocrats; but if there’s any fine carved gold-headed stick of an aristocrat will make a broom-stick of himself, I’ll lose no time but I’ll sweep with him. And that’s what I think about Transome. And if any of you have acquaintance among county voters, give ’em a hint that you wish ’em to vote for Transome.’
At the last word, the speaker stepped down from his slight eminence, and walked away rapidly, like a man whose leisure was exhausted, and who must go about his business. But he had left an appetite in his audience for further oratory, and one of them seemed to express a general sentiment as he turned immediately to Felix, and said, ‘Come, sir, what do you say?’
Felix did at once what he would very likely have done without being asked — he stepped on to the stone, and took off his cap by an instinctive prompting that always led him to speak uncovered. The effect of his figure in relief against the stone background was unlike that of the previous speaker. He was considerably taller, his head and neck were more massive, and the expression of his mouth and eyes was something very different from the mere acuteness and rather hard-lipped antagonism of the trades-union man. Felix Holt’s face had the look of the habitual meditative abstraction from objects of mere personal vanity or desire, which is the peculiar stamp of culture, and makes a very roughly-cut face worthy to be called ‘the human face divine’. Even lions and dogs know a distinction between men’s glances; and doubtless those Duffield men, in the expectation with which they looked up at Felix, were unconsciously influenced by the grandeur of his full yet firm mouth, and the calm clearness of his grey eyes, which were somehow unlike what they were accustomed to see along with an old brown velveteen coat, and an absence of chin-propping. When he began to speak, the contrast of voice was still stronger than that of appearance. The man in the flannel shirt had not been heard — had probably not cared to be heard — beyond the immediate group of listeners. But Felix at once drew the attention of persons comparatively at a distance.
‘In my opinion,’ he said, almost the moment after he was addressed, ‘that was a true word spoken by our friend when he said the great question was how to give every man a man’s share in life. But I think he expects voting to do more towards it than I do. I want the working men to have power. I’m a working man myself, and I don’t want to be anything else. But there are two sorts of power. There’s a power to do mischief — to undo what has been done with great expense and labour, to waste and destroy, to be cruel to the weak, to lie and quarrel, and to talk poisonous nonsense. That’s the sort of power that ignorant numbers have. It never made a joint stool or planted a potato. Do you think it’s likely to do much towards governing a great country, and making wise laws, and giving shelter, food, and clothes to millions of men? Ignorant power comes in the end to the same thing as wicked power; it makes misery. It’s another sort of power that I want us working men to have, and I can see plainly enough that our all having votes will do little towards it at present. I hope we, or the children that come after us, will get plenty of political power some time. I tell everybody plainly, I hope there will be great changes, and that some time, whether we live to see it or not, men will have come to be ashamed of things they’re proud of now. But I should like to convince you that votes would never give you political power worth having while things are as they are now, and that if you go the right way to work you may get power sooner without votes. Perhaps all you who hear me are sober men, who try to learn as much of the nature of things as you can, and to be as little like fools as possible. A fool or idiot is one who expects things to happen that never can happen; he pours milk into a can without a bottom, and expects the milk to stay there. The more of such vain expectations a man has, the more he is of a fool or idiot. And if any working man expects a vote to do for him what it never can do, he’s foolish to that amount, if no more. I think that’s clear enough, eh?’
‘Hear, hear,’ said several voices, but they were not those of the original group; they belonged to some strollers who had been attracted by Felix Holt’s vibrating voice, and were Tories from the Crown. Among them was Christian, who was smoking a cigar with a pleasure he always felt in being among people who did not know him, and doubtless took him to be something higher than he really was. Hearers from the Fox and Hounds also were slowly adding themselves to the nucleus. Felix, accessible to the pleasure of being listened to, went on with more and more animation —
‘The way to get rid of folly is to get rid of vain expectations, and of thoughts that don’t agree with the nature of things. The men who have had true thoughts about water, and what it will do when it is turned into steam and under all sorts of circumstances, have made themselves a great power in the world: they are turning the wheels of engines that will help to change most things. But no engines would have done, if there had been false notions about the way water would act. Now, all the schemes about voting, and districts, and annual parliaments, and the rest, are engines, and the water or steam — the force that is to work them — must come out of human nature — out of men’s passions, feelings, desires. Whether the engines will do good work or bad depends on these feelings; and if we have false expectations about men’s characters, we are very much like the idiot who thinks he’ll carry milk in a can without a bottom. In my opinion, the notions about what mere voting will do are very much of that sort.’
‘That’s very fine,’ said a man in dirty fustian, with a scornful laugh. ‘But how are we to get the power without votes?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s the greatest power under heaven,’ said Felix, ‘and that is public opinion — the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honourable and what is shameful. That’s the steam that is to work the engines. How can political freedom make us better any more than a religion we don’t believe in, if people laugh and wink when they see men abuse and defile it? And while public opinion is what it is — while men have no better beliefs about public duty — while corruption is not felt to be a damning disgrace — while men are not ashamed in parliament and out of it to make public questions which concern the welfare of millions a mere screen for their own petty private ends, — I say, no fresh scheme of voting will much mend our condition. For, take us working men of all sorts. Suppose out of every hundred who had a vote there were thirty who had some soberness, some sense to choose with, some good feeling to make them wish the right thing for all. And suppose there were seventy out of the hundred who were, half of them, not sober, who had no sense to choose one thing in politics more than another, and who had so little good feeling in them that they wasted on their own drinking the money that should have helped to feed and clothe their wives and children; and another half of them who, if they didn’t drink, were too ignorant or mean or stupid to see any good for themselves better than pocketing a five-shilling piece when it was offered them. Where would be the political power of the thirty sober men? The power would lie with the seventy drunken and stupid votes; and I’ll tell you what sort of men would get the power — what sort of men would end by returning whom they pleased to parliament.’
Felix had seen every face around him, and had particularly noticed a recent addition to his audience; but now he looked before him without appearing to fix his glance on any one. In spite of his cooling meditations an hour ago, his pulse was getting quickened by indignation, and the desire to crush what he hated was likely to vent itself in articulation. His tone became more biting.
‘They would be men who would undertake to do the business for a candidate, and return him: men who have no real opinions, but who pilfer the words of every opinion, and turn them into a cant which will serve their purpose at the moment; men who look out for dirty work to make their fortunes by, because dirty work wants little talent and no conscience; men who know aU the ins and outs of bribery, because there is not a cranny in their own souls where a bribe can’t enter. Such men as these will be the masters wherever there’s a majority of voters who care more for money, more for drink, more for some mean little end which is their own and nobody else’s, than for anything that has ever been called Right in the world. For suppose there’s a poor voter named Jack, who has seven children, and twelve or fifteen shillings a-week wages, perhaps less. Jack can’t read — I don’t say whose fault that is — he never had the chance to learn; he knows so little that he perhaps thinks God made the poor-laws, and if anybody said the pattem of the workhouse was laid down in the Testament, he wouldn’t be able to contradict them. What is poor Jack likely to do when he sees a smart stranger coming to him, who happens to be just one of those men that I say will be the masters till public opinion gets too hot for them? He’s a middle-sized man, we’ll say; stout, with coat upon coat of fine broadcloth, open enough to show a fine gold chain: none of your dark, scowling men, but one with an innocent pink-and-white skin and very smooth light hair — a most respectable man, who calls himself by a good, sound, well-known English name — as Green, or Baker, or Wilson, or, let us say, Johnson —’
Felix was interrupted by an explosion of laughter from a majority of the bystanders. Some eyes had been turned on Johnson, who stood on the right hand of Felix, at the very beginning of the description, and these were gradually followed by others, till at last every hearer’s attention was fixed on him, and the first burst of laughter from the two or three who knew the attorney’s name, let every one sufficiently into the secret to make the amusement common. Johnson, who had kept his ground till his name was mentioned, now turned away, looking unusually white after being unusually red, and feeling by an attorney’s instinct for his pocket-book, as if he felt it was a case for taking down the names of witnesses.
All the well-dressed hearers turned away too, thinking they had had the cream of the speech in the joke against Johnson, which, as a thing worth telling, helped to recall them to the scene of dinner.
‘Who is this Johnson?’ said Christian to a young man who had been standing near him, and had been one of the first to laugh. Christian’s curiosity had naturally been awakened by what might prove a golden opportunity.
‘O— a London attorney. He acts for Transome. That tremendous fellow at the comer there is some red-hot Radical demagogue, and Johnson has offended him, I suppose; else he wouldn’t have turned in that way on a man of their own party.’
‘I had heard there was a Johnson who was an understrapper of Jermyn’s,’ said Christian.
‘Well, so this man may have been for what I know. But he’s a London man now — a very busy fellow — on his own legs in Bedford Row. Ha ha! It’s capital, though, when these Liberals get a slap in the face from the working men they’re so very fond of.’
Another turn along the street enabled Christian to come to a resolution. Having seen Jermyn drive away an hour before, he was in no fear: he walked at once to the Fox and Hounds and asked to speak to Mr Johnson. A brief interview, in which Christian ascertained that he had before him the Johnson mentioned by the bill-sticker, issued in the appointment of a longer one at a later hour; and before they left Duffield they had come not exactly to a mutual understanding, but to an exchange of information mutually welcome.
Christian had been very cautious in the commencement, only intimating that he knew something important which some chance hints had induced him to think might be interesting to Mr Johnson, but that this entirely depended on how far he had a common interest with Mr Jermyn. Johnson replied that he had much business in which that gentleman was not concerned, but that to a certain extent they had a common interest. Probably then, Christian observed, the affairs of the Transome estate were part of the business in which Mr Jermyn and Mr Johnson might be understood to represent each other — in which case he need not detain Mr Johnson? At this hint Johnson could not conceal that he was becoming eager. He had no idea what Christian’s information was, but there were many grounds on which Johnson desired to know as much as he could about the Transome affairs independently of Jermyn. By little and little an understanding was arrived at. Christian told of his interview with Tommy Trounsem, and stated that if Johnson could show him whether the knowledge could have any legal value, he could bring evidence that a legitimate child of Bycliffe’s existed: he felt certain of this fact, and of his proof. Johnson explained, that in this case the death of the old bill-sticker would give the child the first valid claim to the Bycliffe heirship; that for his own part he should be glad to further a true claim, but that caution must be observed. How did Christian know that Jermyn was informed on this subject? Christian, more and more convinced that Johnson would be glad to counteract Jermyn, at length became explicit about Esther, but still withheld his own real name, and the nature of his relations with Bycliffe. He said he would bring the rest of his information when Mr Johnson took the case up seriously, and placed it in the hands of Bycliffe’s old lawyers — of course he would do that? Johnson replied that he would certainly do that; but that there were legal niceties which Mr Christian was probably not acquainted with; that Esther’s claim had not yet accrued; and that hurry was useless.
The two men parted, each in distrust of the other, but each well pleased to have learned something. Johnson was not at all sure how he should act, but thought it likely that events would soon guide him. Christian was beginning to meditate a way of securing his own ends without depending in the least on Johnson’s procedure. It was enough for him that he was now assured of Esther’s legal claim on the Transome estates.
‘In the copia of the factious language the word Tory was entertained, . . . and being a vocal clever-sounding word, readily pronounced, it kept its hold, and took possession of the foul mouths of the faction. . . . The Loyalists began to cheer up and to take heart of grace, and in the working of this crisis, according to the common laws of scolding, they considered which way to make payment for so much of Tory as they had been treated with, to clear scores. . . . Immediately the train took, and ran like wildfire and became general. And so the account of Tory was balanced, and soon began to run up a sharp score on the other side.’ — NORTH’S Examen, p. 321.
AT last the great epoch of the election for North Loamshire had arrived. The roads approaching Treby were early traversed by a large number of vehicles, horsemen, and also foot-passengers, than were ever seen there at the annual fair. Treby was the polling-place for many voters whose faces were quite strange in the town; and if there were some strangers who did not come to poll, though they had business not unconnected with the election, they were not liable to be regarded with suspicion or especial curiosity. It was understood that no division of a county had ever been more thoroughly canvassed, and that there would be a hard run between Garstin and Transome. Mr Johnson’s head-quarters were at Duffield; but it was a maxim which he repeated after the great Putty, that a capable agent makes himself omnipresent; and quite apart from the express between him and Jermyn, Mr John Johnson’s presence in the universe had potent effects on this December day at Treby Magna.
A slight drizzling rain which was observed by some Tories who looked out of their bedroom windows before six o’clock, made them hope that, after all, the day might pass off better than alarmists had expected. The rain was felt to be somehow on the side of quiet and Conservatism; but soon the breaking of the clouds and the mild gleams of a December sun brought back previous apprehensions. As there were already precedents for riot at a Reformed election, and as the Trebian district had had its confidence in the natural course of things somewhat shaken by a landed proprietor with an old name offering himself as a Radical candidate, the election had been looked forward to by many with a vague sense that it would be an occasion something like a fighting match, when bad characters would probably assemble, and there might be struggles and alarms for respectable men, which would make it expedient for them to take a little neat brandy as a precaution beforehand and a restorative afterwards. The tenants on the Transome estate were comparatively fearless: poor Mr Goffe, of Rabbit’s End, considered that ‘one thing was as mauling as another’, and that an election was no worse than the sheep-rot, while Mr Dibbs, taking the more cheerful view of a prosperous man, reflected that if the Radicals were dangerous, it was safer to be on their side. It was the voters for Debarry and Garstin who considered that they alone had the right to regard themselves as targets for evil-minded men; and Mr Crowder, if he could have got his ideas countenanced, would have recommended a muster of farm-servants with defensive pitchforks on the side of church and king. But the bolder men were rather gratified by the prospect of being groaned at, so that they might face about and groan in return.
Mr Crow, the high constable of Treby, inwardly rehearsed a brief address to a riotous crowd in case it should be wanted, having been warned by the rector that it was a primary duty on these occasions to keep a watch against provocation as well as violence. The rector, with a brother magistrate who was on the spot, had thought it desirable to swear in some special constables, but the presence of loyal men not absolutely required for the polling was not looked at in the light of a provocation. The benefit clubs from various quarters made a show, some with the orange-coloured ribbons and streamers of the true Tory candidate, some with the mazarine of the Whig. The orange-coloured bands played ‘Auld Langsyne’, and a louder mazarine band came across them with ‘O whistle and I will come to thee, my lad’ — probably as the tune the most symbolical of Liberalism which their repertory would furnish. There was not a single club bearing the Radical blue: the Sproxton Club members wore the mazarine, and Mr Chubb wore so much of it that he looked (at a sufficient distance) like a very large gentianella. It was generally understood that ‘these brave fellows’, representing the fine institution of benefit clubs, and holding aloft the motto, ‘Let brotherly love continue’, were a civil force calculated to encourage voters of sound opinions and keep up their spirits. But a considerable number of unadorned heavy navvies, colliers, and stone-pit men, who used their freedom as British subjects to be present in Treby on this great occasion, looked like a possibly uncivil force whose politics were dubious until it was clearly seen for whom they cheered and for whom they groaned.
Thus the way up to the polling-booths was variously lined, and those who walked it, to whatever side they belonged, had the advantage of hearing from the opposite side what were the most marked defects or excesses in their personal appearance; for the Trebians of that day held, without being aware that they had Cicero’s authority for it, that the bodily blemishes of an opponent were a legitimate ground for ridicule; but if the voter frustrated wit by being handsome, he was groaned at and satirised according to a formula, in which the adjective was Tory, Whig, or Radical, as the case might be, and the substantive blank to be filled up after the taste of the speaker.
Some of the more timid had chosen to go through this ordeal as early as possible in the morning. One of the earliest was Mr Timothy Rose, the gentleman-farmer from Leek Malton. He had left home with some foreboding, having swathed his more vital parts in layers of flannel, and put on two greatcoats as a soft kind of armour. But reflecting with some trepidation that there were no resources for protecting his head, he once more wavered in his intention to vote; he once more observed to Mrs Rose that these were hard times when a man of independent property was expected to vote ‘willy-nilly;’ but finally, coerced by the sense that he should be looked ill on ‘in these times’ if he did not stand by the gentlemen round about, he set out in his gig, taking with him a powerful waggoner, whom he ordered to keep him in sight as he went to the polling-booth. It was hardly more than nine o’clock when Mr Rose, having thus come up to the level of his times, cheered himself with a little cherry-brandy at the Marquis, drove away in a much more courageous spirit, and got down at Mr Nolan’s, just outside the town. The retired Londoner, he considered, was a man of experience, who would estimate properly the judicious course he had taken, and could make it known to others. Mr Nolan was superintending the removal of some shrubs in his garden.
‘Well, Mr Nolan,’ said Rose, twinkling a self-complacent look over the red prominence of his cheeks, ‘have you been to give your vote yet?’
‘No; all in good time. I shall go presently.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t lose an hour, I wouldn’t. I said to myself, if I’ve got to do gentlemen a favour, I’ll do it at once. You see, I’ve got no landlord, Nolan — I’m in that position o’ life that I can be independent.’
‘Just so, my dear sir,’ said the wiry-faced Nolan, pinching his under-lip between his thumb and finger, and giving one of those wonderful universal shrugs, by which he seemed to be recalling all his garments from a tendency to disperse themselves. ‘Come in and see Mrs Nolan?’
‘No, no, thankye. Mrs Rose expects me back. But, as I was saying, I’m an independent man, and I consider it’s not my part to show favour to one more than another, but to make things as even as I can. If I’d been a tenant to anybody, well, in course I must have voted for my landlord — that stands to sense. But I wish everybody well; and if one’s returned to parliament more than another, nobody can say it’s my doing; for when you can vote for two, you can make things even. So I gave one to Debarry and one to Transome; and I wish Garstin no ill, but I can’t help the odd number, and he hangs on to Debarry, they say.’
‘God bless me, sir,’ said Mr Nolan, coughing down a laugh, ‘don’t you perceive that you might as well have stayed at home, and not voted at all, unless you would rather send a Radical to parliament than a sober Whig?’
‘Well, I’m sorry you should have anything to say against what I’ve done, Nolan,’ said Mr Rose, rather crestfallen, though sustained by inward warmth. ‘I thought you’d agree with me, as you’re a sensible man. But the most an independent man can do is to try and please all; and if he hasn’t the luck — here’s wishing I may do it another time,’ added Mr Rose, apparently confounding a toast with a salutation, for he put out his hand for a passing shake, and then stepped into his gig again.
At the time that Mr Timothy Rose left the town, the crowd in King Street and in the market-place, where the polling-booths stood, was fluctuating. Voters as yet were scanty, and brave fellows who had come from any distance this morning, or who had sat up late drinking the night before, required some reinforcement of their strength and spirits. Every public-house in Treby, not excepting the venerable and sombre Cross-Keys, was lively with changing and numerous company. Not, of course, that there was any treating: treating necessarily had stopped, from moral scruples, when once ‘the writs were out’; but there was drinking, which did equally well under any name.
Poor Tommy Trounsem, breakfasting here on Falstaff’s proportion of bread, and something which, for gentility’s sake, I will call sack, was more than usually victorious over the ills of life, and felt himself one of the heroes of the day. He had an immense light-blue cockade in his hat, and an amount of silver in a dirty little canvas bag which astonished himself. For some reason, at first inscrutable to him, he had been paid for his bill-sticking with great liberality at Mr Jermyn’s office, in spite of his having been the victim of a trick by which he had once lost his own bills and pasted up Debarry’s; but he soon saw that this was simply a recognition of his merit as ‘an old family kept out of its rights’, and also of his peculiar share in an occasion when the family was to get into parliament. Under these circumstances, it was due from him that he should show himself prominently where business was going forward, and give additional value by his presence to every vote for Transome. With this view he got a half-pint bottle filled with his peculiar kind of ‘sack’, and hastened back to the market-place, feeling good-natured and patronising towards all political parties, and only so far partial as his family bound him to be.
But a disposition to concentrate at that extremity of Ring Street which issued in the market-place was not universal among the increasing crowd. Some of them seemed attracted towards another nucleus at the other extremity of King Street, near the Seven Stars. This was Garsdn’s chief house, where his committee sat, and it was also a point which must necessarily be passed by many voters entering the town on the eastern side. It seemed natural that the mazarine colours should be visible here, and that Pack, the tall ‘shepherd’ of the Sproxton men, should be seen moving to and fro where there would be a frequent opportunity of cheering the voters for a gentleman who had the chief share in the Sproxton mines. But the side lanes and entries out of Ring Street were numerous enough to relieve any pressure if there was need to make way. The lanes had a distinguished reputation. Two of them had odours of brewing; one had a side entrance to Mr Tiliot’s wine and spirit vaults; up another Mr Muscat’s cheeses were frequently being unloaded; and even some of the entries had those cheerful suggestions of plentiful provision which were among the characteristics of Treby.
Between ten and eleven the voters came in more rapid succession, and the whole scene became spirited. Cheers, sarcasms, and oaths, which seemed to have a flavour of wit for many hearers, were beginning to be reinforced by more practical demonstrations, dubiously jocose. There was a disposition in the crowd to close and hem in the way for voters, either going or coming, until they had paid some kind of toll. It was difficult to see who set the example in the transition from words to deeds. Some thought it was due to Jacob Cuff, a Tory charity-man, who was a well-known ornament of the pothouse, and gave his mind much leisure for amusing devices; but questions of origination in stirring periods are notoriously hard to settle. It is by no means necessary in human things that there should be only one beginner. This, however, is certain — that Mr Chubb, who wished it to be noticed that he voted for Garstin solely, was one of the first to get rather more notice than he wished, and that he had his hat knocked off and crushed in the interest of Debarry by Tories opposed to coalition. On the other hand, some said it was at the same time that Mr Pink, the saddler, being stopped on his way and made to declare that he was going to vote for Debarry, got himself well chalked as to his coat, and pushed up an entry, where he remained the prisoner of terror combined with the want of any back outlet, and never gave his vote that day.
The second Tory joke was performed with much gusto. The majority of the Transome tenants came in a body from the Ram Inn, with Mr Banks the bailiff leading them. Poor Goffe was the last of them, and his worn melancholy look and forward-leaning gait gave the jocose Cuff the notion that the farmer was not what he called ‘compus’. Mr Goffe was cut off from his companions and hemmed in; asked, by voices with hot breath close to his ear, how many horses he had, how many cows, how many fat pigs; then jostled from one to another, who made trumpets with their hands and deafened him by telling him to vote for Debarry. In this way the melancholy Goffe was hustled on till he was at the polling-booth — filled with confused alarms, the immediate alarm being that of having to go back in still worse fashion than he had come. Arriving in this way after the other tenants had left, he astonished all hearers who knew him for a tenant of the Transomes by saying ‘Debarry’, and was jostled back trembling amid shouts of laughter.
By stages of this kind the fun grew faster, and was in danger of getting rather serious. The Tories began to feel that their jokes were returned by others of a heavier sort, and that the main strength of the crowd was not on the side of sound opinion, but might come to be on the side of sound cudgelling and kicking. The navvies and pitmen in dishabille seemed to be multiplying, and to be clearly not belonging to the party of Order. The shops were freely resorted to for various forms of playful missiles and weapons; and news came to the magistrates, watching from the large window of the Marquis, that a gentleman coming in on horseback at the other end of the street to vote for Garstin had had his horse turned round and frightened into a head-long gallop out of it again.
Mr Crow and his subordinates, and all the special constables, felt that it was necessary to make some energetic effort, or else every voter would be intimidated and the poll must be adjoumed. The rector determined to get on horseback and go amidst the crowd with the constables; and he sent a message to Mr Lingon, who was at the Ram, calling on him to do the same. ‘Sporting Jack’ was sure the good fellows meant no harm, but he was courageous enough to face any bodily dangers, and rode out in his brown leggings and coloured bandanna, speaking persuasively.
It was nearly twelve o’clock when this sally was made: the constables and magistrates tried the most pacific measures, and they seemed to succeed. There was a rapid thinning of the crowd: the most boisterous disappeared, or seemed to do so by becoming quiet; missiles ceased to fly, and a sufficient way was cleared for voters along King Street. The magistrates returned to their quarters, and the constables took convenient posts of observation. Mr Wace, who was one of Debarry’s committee, had suggested to the rector that it might be wise to send for the military from Duffield, with orders that they should station themselves at Hathercote, three miles off: there was so much property in the town that it would be better to make it secure against risks. But the rector felt that this was not the part of a moderate and wise magistrate, unless the signs of riot recurred. He was a brave man, and fond of thinking that his own authority sufficed for the maintenance of the general good in Treby.
‘Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before
Without the sense of that which I forbore —
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.’
MRS BROWNING.
FELIX HOLT, seated at his work without his pupils, who had asked for a holiday with a notion that the wooden booths promised some sort of show, noticed about eleven o’clock that the noises which reached him from the main street were getting more and more tumultuous. He had long seen bad auguries for this election, but, like all people who dread the prophetic wisdom that ends in desiring the fulfilment of its own evil forebodings, he had checked himself with remembering that, though many conditions were possible which might bring on violence, there were just as many which might avert it. There would, perhaps, be no other mischief than what he was already certain of. With these thoughts he had sat down quietly to his work, meaning not to vex his soul by going to look on at things he would fain have made different if he could. But he was of a fibre that vibrated too strongly to the life around him to shut himself away in quiet, even from suffering and irremediable wrong. As the noises grew louder, and wrought more and more strongly on his imagination, he was obliged to lay down his delicate wheel-work. His mother came from her turnip-paring in the kitchen, where little Job was her companion, to observe that they must be killing everybody in the High Street, and that the election, which had never been before at Treby, must have come for a judgment; that there were mercies where you didn’t look for them, and that she thanked God in His wisdom for making her live up a back street.
Felix snatched his cap and rushed out. But when he got to the turning into the market-place the magistrates were already on horseback there, the constables were moving about, and Felix observed that there was no strong spirit of resistance to them. He stayed long enough to see the partial dispersion of the crowd and the restoration of tolerable quiet, and then went back to Mrs Holt to tell her that there was nothing to fear now: he was going out again, and she must not be in any anxiety at his absence. She might set by his dinner for him.
Felix had been thinking of Esther and her probable alarm at the noises that must have reached her more distinctly than they had reached him, for Malthouse Yard was removed but a little way from the main street. Mr Lyon was away from home, having been called to preach charity sermons and attend meetings in a distant town; and Esther, with the plaintive Lyddy for her sole companion, was not cheerfully circumstanced. Felix had not been to see her yet since her father’s departure, but today he gave way to new reasons.
‘Miss Esther was in the garret,’ Lyddy said, trying to see what was going on. But before she was fetched she came running down the stairs, drawn by the knock at the door, which had shaken the small dwelling.
‘I am so thankful to see you,’ she said eagerly. ‘Pray come in.’
When she had shut the parlour door behind him, Felix said, ‘I suspected that you might have been made anxious by the noises. I came to tell you that things are quiet now. Though, indeed, you can hear that they are.’
‘I was frightened,’ said Esther. ‘The shouting and roaring of rude men is so hideous. It is a relief to me that my father is not at home — that he is out of the reach of any danger he might have fallen into if he had been here. But I gave you credit for being in the midst of the danger,’ she added, smiling, with a determination not to show much feeling. ‘Sit down and tell me what has happened.’
They sat down at the extremities of the old black sofa, and Felix said —
‘To tell you the truth, I had shut myself up, and tried to be as indifferent to the election as if I’d been one of the fishes in the Lapp, till the noises got too strong for me. But I only saw the tail end of the disturbance. The poor noisy simpletons seemed to give way before the magistrates and the constables. I hope nobody has been much hurt. The fear is that they may turn out again by-and-by; their giving way so soon may not be altogether a good sign. There’s a great number of heavy fellows in the town. If they go and drink more, the last end may be worse than the first. However —’
Felix broke off, as if this talk were futile, clasped his hands behind his head, and, leaning backward, looked at Esther, who was looking at him.
‘May I stay here a little while?’ he said, after a moment, which seemed long.
‘Pray do,’ said Esther, colouring. To relieve herself she took some work and bowed her head over her stitching. It was in reality a little heaven to her that Felix was there, but she saw beyond it — saw that by-and-by he would be gone, and that they should be farther on their way, not towards meeting, but parting. His will was impregnable. He was a rock, and she was no more to him than the white clinging mist-cloud.
‘I wish I could be sure that you see things just as I do,’ he said, abruptly, after a minute’s silence.
‘I am sure you see them much more wisely than I do,’ said Esther, almost bitterly, without looking up.
‘There are some people one must wish to judge one truly. Not to wish it would be mere hardness. I know you think I am a man without feeling — at least, without strong affections. You think I love nothing but my own resolutions.’
‘Suppose I reply in the same sort of strain?’ said Esther, with a little toss of the head.
‘How?’
‘Why, that you think me a shallow woman, incapable of believing what is best in you, setting down everything that is too high for me as a deficiency.’
‘Don’t parry what I say. Answer me.’ There was an expression of painful beseeching in the tone with which Felix said this. Esther let her work fall on her lap and looked at him, but she was unable to speak.
‘I want you to tell me — once — that you know it would be easier to me to give myself up to loving and being loved, as other men do, when they can, than to —’
This breaking-off in speech was something quite new in Felix. For the first time he had lost his self-possession, and turned his eyes away. He was at variance with himself. He had begun what he felt that he ought not to finish
Esther, like a woman as she was — a woman waiting for love, never able to ask for it — had her joy in these signs of her power; but they made her generous, not chary, as they might have done if she had had a pettier disposition. She said, with deep yet timid earnestness —
‘What you have chosen to do has only convinced me that your love would be the better worth having.’
All the finest part of Esther’s nature trembled in those words. To be right in great memorable moments, is perhaps the thing we need most desire for ourselves.
Felix as quick as lightning turned his look upon her again, and, leaning forward, took her sweet hand and held it to his lips some moments before he let it fall again and raised his head.
‘We shall always be the better for thinking of each other,’ he said, leaning his elbow on the back of the sofa, and supporting his head as he looked at her with calm sadness. ‘This thing can never come to me twice over. It is my knight-hood. That was always a business of great cost.’
He smiled at her, but she sat biting her inner lip, and pressing her hands together. She desired to be worthy of what she reverenced in Felix, but the inevitable renunciation was too difficult. She saw herself wandering through the future weak and forsaken. The charming sauciness was all gone from her face, but the memory of it made this child-like dependent sorrow all the more touching.
‘Tell me what you would —’ Felix burst out, leaning nearer to her; but the next instant he started up, went to the table, took his cap in his hand, and came in front of her.
‘Good-bye,’ he said, very gently, not daring to put out his hand. But Esther put up hers instead of speaking. He just pressed it and then went away.
She heard the doors close behind him, and felt free to be miserable. She cried bitterly. If she might have married Felix Holt, she could have been a good woman. She felt no trust that she could ever be good without him.
Felix reproached himself. He would have done better not to speak in that way. But the prompting to which he had chiefly listened had been the desire to prove to Esther that he set a high value on her feelings. He could not help seeing that he was very important to her; and he was too simple and sincere a man to ape a sort of humility which would not have made him any the better if he had possessed it. Such pretences turn our lives into sorry dramas. And Felix wished Esther to know that her love was dear to him as the beloved dead are dear. He felt that they must not marry — that they would ruin each other’s lives. But he had longed for her to know fully that his will to be always apart from her was renunciation, not an easy preference. In this he was thoroughly generous; and yet, now some subtle, mysterious conjuncture of impressions and circumstances had made him speak, he questioned the wisdom of what he had done. Express confessions give definiteness to memories that might more easily melt away without them; and Felix felt for Esther’s pain as the strong soldier, who can march on hungering without fear that he shall faint, feels for the young brother — the maiden-cheeked conscript whose load is too heavy for him.
‘Mischief, thou art afoot.’ — Julius Caesar.
FELIX could not go home again immediately after quitting Esther. He got out of the town, skirted it a little while, looking across the December stillness of the fields, and then re-entered it by the main road into the market-place, thinking that, after all, it would be better for him to look at the busy doings of men than to listen in solitude to the voices within him; and he wished to know how things were going on.
It was now nearly half-past one, and Felix perceived that the street was filling with more than the previous crowd. By the time he got in front of the booths, he was himself so surrounded by men who were being thrust hither and thither that retreat would have been impossible; and he went where he was obliged to go, although his height and strength were above the average even in a crowd where there were so many heavy-armed workmen used to the pick-axe. Almost all shabby-coated Trebians must have been there, but the entries and back-streets of the town did not supply the mass of the crowd; and besides the rural incomers, both of the more decent and the rougher sort, Felix, as he was pushed along, thought he discerned here and there men of that keener aspect which is only common in manufacturing towns.
But at present there was no evidence of any distinctly mischievous design. There was only evidence that the majority of the crowd were excited with drink, and that their action could hardly be calculated on more than those of oxen and pigs congregated amidst hootings and pushings. The confused deafening shouts, the incidental fighting, the knocking over, pulling and scuffling, seemed to increase every moment. Such of the constables as were mixed with the crowd were quite helpless; and if an official staff was seen above the heads, it moved about fitfully, showing as little sign of a guiding hand as the summit of a buoy on the waves. Doubtless many hurts and bruises had been received but no one could know the amount of injuries that were wildly scattered.
It was clear that no more voting could be done, and the poll had been adjourned. The probabilities of serious mischief had grown strong enough to prevail over the rector’s objection to getting military aid within reach; and when Felix re-entered the town, a galloping messenger had already been despatched to Duffield. The rector wished to ride out again, and read the Riot Act from a point where he could be better heard than from the window of the Marquis; but Mr Crow, the high constable, who had returned from closer observation, insisted that the risk would be too great. New special constables had been sworn in, but Mr Crow said prophetically that if once mischief began, the mob was past caring for constables.
But the rector’s voice was ringing and penetrating, and when he appeared on the narrow balcony and read the formula, commanding all men to go to their homes or about their lawful business, there was a strong transient effect. Every one within hearing listened, and for a few moments after the final words, ‘God save the King!’ the comparative silence continued. Then the people began to move, the buzz rose again, and grew, and grew, till it turned to shouts and roaring as before. The movement was that of a flood hemmed in; it carried nobody away. Whether the crowd would obey the order to disperse themselves within an hour, was a doubt that approached nearer and nearer to a negative certainty.
Presently Mr Crow, who held himself a tactician, took a well-intentioned step, which went far to fulfill his own prophecy. He had arrived with the magistrates by a back way at the Seven Stars, and here again the Riot Act was read from a window, with much the same result as before. The rector had returned by the same way to the Marquis, as the headquarters most suited for administration, but Mr Crow remained at the other extremity of King Street, where some awe-striking presence was certainly needed. Seeing that the time was passing, and all effect from the voice of law had disappeared, he showed himself at an upper window, and addressed the crowd, telling them that the soldiers had been sent for, and that if they did not disperse they would have cavalry upon them instead of constables.
Mr Crow, like some other high constables more celebrated in history, ‘enjoyed a bad reputation’; that is to say, he enjoyed many things which caused his reputation to be bad, and he was anything but popular in Treby. It is probable that a pleasant message would have lost something from his lips, and what he actually said was so unpleasant, that, instead of persuading the crowd, it appeared to enrage them. Some one, snatching a raw potato from a sack in the greengrocer’s shop behind him, threw it at the constable, and hit him on the mouth. Straightway raw potatoes and turnips were flying by twenties at the windows of the Seven Stars, and the panes were smashed. Felix, who was half-way up the street, heard the voices turning to a savage roar, and saw a rush towards the hardware shop, which furnished more effective weapons and missiles than turnips and potatoes. Then a cry ran along that the Tories had sent for the soldiers, and if those among the mob who called themselves Tories as willingly as anything else were disposed to take whatever called itself the Tory side, they only helped the main result of reckless disorder.
But there were proofs that the predominant will of the crowd was against ‘Debarry’s men,’ and in favour of Transome. Several shops were invaded, and they were all of them ‘Tory shops’. The tradesmen who could do so, now locked their doors and barricaded their windows within. There was a panic among the householders of this hitherto peaceful town, and a general anxiety for the military to arrive. The rector was in painful anxiety on this head: he had sent out two messengers as secretly as he could towards Hathercote, to order the soldiers to ride straight to the town; but he feared that these messengers had been somehow intercepted.
It was three o’clock: more than an hour had elapsed since the reading of the Riot Act. The rector of Treby Magna wrote an indignant message and sent it to the Ram, to Mr Lingon, the rector of Little Treby, saying that there was evidently a Radical animus in the mob, and that Mr Transome’s party should hold themselves peculiarly responsible. Where was Mr Jermyn?
Mr Lingon replied that he was going himself out towards Duffield to see after the soldiers. As for Jermyn, he was not that attorney’s sponsor: he believed that Jermyn was gone away somewhere on business — to fetch voters.
A serious effort was now being made by all the civil force at command. The December day would soon be passing into evening, and all disorder would be aggravated by obscurity. The horrors of fire were as likely to happen as any minor evil. The constables, as many of them as could do so, armed themselves with carbines and sabres; all the respectable inhabitants who had any courage prepared themselves to struggle for order; and many felt with Mr Wace and Mr Tiliot that the nearest duty was to defend the breweries and the spirit and wine vaults, where the property was of a sort at once most likely to be threatened and most dangerous in its effects. The rector, with fine determination, got on horseback again, as the best mode of leading the constables, who could only act efficiently in a close body. By his direction the column of armed men avoided the main street, and made their way along a back road, that they might occupy the two chief lanes leading to the wine-vaults and the brewery, and bear down on the crowd from these openings, which it was especially desirable to guard.
Meanwhile Felix Holt had been hotly occupied in King Street. After the first window-smashing at the Seven Stars, there was a sufficient reason for damaging that inn to the utmost. The destructive spirit tends towards completeness; and any object once maimed or otherwise injured, is as readily doomed by unreasoning men as by unreasoning boys. Also the Seven Stars sheltered Spratt; and to some Sproxton men in front of that inn it was exasperating that Spratt should be safe and sound on a day when blows were going, and justice might be rendered. And again, there was the general desirableness of being inside a public-house.
Felix had at last been willingly urged on to this spot. Hitherto swayed by the crowd, he had been able to do nothing but defend himself and keep on his legs; but he foresaw that the people would burst into the inn; he heard cries of ‘Spratt!’ ‘Fetch him out!’ ‘We’ll pitch him out!’ ‘Pummel him! ‘ It was not unlikely that lives might be sacrificed; and it was intolerable to Felix to be witnessing the blind outrages of this mad crowd, and yet be doing nothing to counteract them. Even some vain effort would satisfy him better than mere gazing. Within the walls of the inn he might save some one. He went in with a miscellaneous set, who dispersed themselves with different objects — some to the taproom, and to search for the cellar; some upstairs to search in all rooms for Spratt, or any one else perhaps, as a temporary scapegoat for Spratt. Guided by the screams of women, Felix at last got to a high up-stairs passage, where the landlady and some of her servants were running away in helpless terror from two or three half-tipsy men, who had been emptying a spirit-decanter in the bar. Assuming the tone pf a mob-leader, he cried out, ‘Here, boys, here’s better fun this way — come with me! ‘ and drew the men back with him along the passage. They reached the lower staircase in time to see the unhappy Spratt being dragged, coatless and screaming, down the steps. No one at present was striking or kicking him; it seemed as if he were being reserved for punishment on some wider area, where the satisfaction might be more generally shared. Felix followed close, determined, if he could, to rescue both assailers and assaulted from the worst consequences. His mind was busy with possible devices.
Down the stairs, out along the stones through the gateway, Spratt was dragged as a mere heap of linen and cloth rags. When he was got outside the gateway, there was an immense hooting and roaring, though many there had no grudge against him, and only guessed that others had the grudge. But this was the narrower part of the street; it widened as it went onwards, and Spratt was dragged on, his enemies crying, ‘We’ll make a ring — we’ll see how frightened he looks! ’
‘Kick him, and have done with him,’ Felix heard another say. ‘Let’s go to Tiliot’s vaults — there’s more gin there!’
Here were two hideous threats. In dragging Spratt onward the people were getting very near to the lane leading up to Tiliot’s. Felix kept as close as he could to the threatened victim. He had thrown away his own stick, and carried a bludgeon which had escaped from the hands of an invader at the Seven Stars! his head was bare; he looked, to undiscerning eyes, like a leading spirit of the mob. In this condition he was observed by several persons looking anxiously from their upper windows, and finally observed to push himself, by violent efforts, close behind the dragged man.
Meanwhile the foremost among the constables, who, coming by the back way, had now reached the opening of Tiliot’s Lane, discerned that the crowd had a victim amongst them. One spirited fellow, named Tucker, who was a regular constable, feeling that no time was to be lost in meditation, called on his neighbour to follow him, and with the sabre that happened to be his weapon got a way for himself where he was not expected, by dint of quick resolution. At this moment Spratt had been let go — had been dropped, in fact, almost lifeless with terror, on the street stones, and the men round him had retreated for a little space, as if to amuse themselves with looking at him. Felix had taken his opportunity; and seeing the first step towards a plan he was bent on, he sprang forward close to the cowering Spratt. As he did this, Tucker had cut his way to the spot, and imagining Felix to be the destined executioner of Spratt — for any discrimination of Tucker’s lay in his muscles rather than his eyes — he rushed up to Felix, meaning to collar him and throw him down. But Felix had rapid senses and quick thoughts; he discerned the situation; he chose between two evils. Quick as lightning he frustrated the constable, fell upon him, and tried to master his weapon. In the struggle, which was watched without interference, the constable fell undermost, and Felix got his weapon. He started up with the bare sabre in his hand. The crowd round him cried ‘Hurray! ‘ with a sense that he was on their side against the constable. Tucker did not rise immediately; but Felix did not imagine that he was much hurt.
‘Don’t touch him!’ said Felix. ‘Let him go. Here, bring Spratt, and follow me.’
Felix was perfectly conscious that he was in the midst of a tangled business. But he had chiefly before his imagination the horrors that might come if the mass of wild chaotic desires and impulses around him were not diverted from any further attack on places where they would get in the midst of intoxicating and inflammable materials. It was not a moment in which a spirit like his could calculate the effect of misunderstanding as to himself: nature never makes men who are at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating. He believed he had the power, and he was resolved to try, to carry the dangerous mass out of mischief till the military came to awe them — which he supposed, from Mr Crow’s announcement long ago, must be a near event.
He was followed the more willingly, because Tiliot’s Lane was seen by the hindmost to be now defended by constables, some of whom had fire-arms; and where there is no strong counter-movement, any proposition to do something unspecified stimulates stupid curiosity. To many of the Sproxton men who were within sight of him, Felix was known personally, and vaguely believed to be a man who meant many queer things, not at all of an every-day kind. Pressing along like a leader, with the sabre in his hand, and inviting them to bring on Spratt, there seemed a better reason for following him than for doing anything else. A man with a definite will and an energetic personality acts as a sort of flag to draw and bind together the foolish units of a mob. It was on this sort of influence over men whose mental state was a mere medley of appetites and confused impressions, that Felix had dared to count. He hurried them along with words of invitation, telling them to hold up Spratt and not drag him; and those behind followed him, with a growing belief that he had some design worth knowing, while those in front were urged along partly by the same notion, partly by the sense that there was a motive in those behind them, not knowing what the motive was. It was that mixture of pushing forward and being pushed forward, which is a brief history of most human things.
What Felix really intended to do, was to get the crowd by the nearest way out of the town, and induce them to skirt it on the north side with him, keeping up in them the idea that he was leading them to execute some strategem by which they would surprise something worth attacking, and circumvent the constables who were defending the lanes. In the meantime he trusted that the soldiers would have arrived, and with this sort of mob, which was animated by no real political passion or fury against social distinctions it was in the highest degree unlikely that there would be any resistance to a military force. The presence of fifty soldiers would probably be enough to scatter the rioting hundreds. How numerous the mob was, no one ever knew: many inhabitants afterwards were ready to swear that there must have been at least two thousand rioters. Felix knew he was incurring great risks; but ‘his blood was up:’ we hardly allow enough in common life for the results of that enkindled passionate enthusiasm which, under other conditions, makes world-famous deeds.
He was making for a point where the street branched off on one side towards a speedy opening between hedgerows, on the other towards the shabby wideness of Pollard’s End. At this forking of the street there was a large space, in the centre of which there was a small stone platform, mounting by three steps, with an old green finger-post upon it. Felix went straight to this platform and stepped upon it, crying ‘Halt! ‘ in a loud voice to the men behind and before him, and calling to those who held Spratt to bring him there. All came to a stand with faces towards the finger-post, and perhaps for the first time the extremities of the crowd got a definite idea that a man with a sabre in his hand was taking the command.
‘Now!’ said Felix, when Spratt had been brought on to the stone platform, faint and trembling, ‘has anybody got cord? if not, handkerchiefs knotted fast; give them to me.’
He drew out his own handkerchief, and two or three others were mustered and handed to him. He ordered them to be knotted together, while curious eyes were fixed on him. Was he going to have Spratt hanged? Felix kept fast hold of his weapon, and ordered others to act.
‘Now, put it round his waist, wind his arms in, draw them a little backward — so I and tie it fast on the other side of the post.’
When that was done, Felix said, imperatively —
‘Leave him there — we shall come back to him; let us make haste; march along, lads! Up Park Street and down Hobb’s Lane.’
It was the best chance he could think of for saving Spratt’s life. And he succeeded. The pleasure of seeing the helpless man tied up sufficed for the moment, if there were any who had ferocity enough to count much on coming back to him. Nobody’s imagination represented the certainty that some one out of the houses at hand would soon come and untie him when he was left alone.
And the rioters pushed up Park Street, a noisy stream, with Felix still in the midst of them, though he was labouring hard to get his way to the front. He wished to determine the course of the crowd along a by-road called Hobb’s Lane, which would have taken them to the other — the Duffield end of the town. He urged several of the men round him, one of whom was no less a person than the big Dredge, our old Sproxton acquaintance, to get forward, and be sure that all the fellows would go down the lane, else they would spoil sport. Hitherto Felix had been successful, and he had gone along with an unbroken impulse. But soon something occurred which brought with a terrible shock the sense that his plan might turn out to be as mad as all bold projects are seen to be when they have failed.
Mingled with the more headlong and half-drunken crowd there were some sharp-visaged men who loved the irrationality of riots for something else than its own sake, and who at present were not so much the richer as they desired to be, for the pains they had taken in coming to the Treby election, induced by certain prognostics gathered at Duffield on the nomination-day that there might be the conditions favourable to that confusion which was always a harvest-time. It was known to some of these sharp men that Park Street led out towards the grand house of Treby Manor, which was as good — nay, better for their purpose than the bank. While Felix was entertaining his ardent purpose, these other sons of Adam were entertaining another ardent purpose of their peculiar sort, and the moment was come when they were to have their triumph
From the front ranks backward towards Felix there ran a new summons — a new invitation.
‘Let us go to Treby Manor!’
From that moment Felix was powerless; a new definite suggestion overrode his vaguer influence. There was a determined rush past Hobb’s Lane, and not down it. Felix was carried along too. He did not know whether to wish the contrary. Once on the road, out of the town, with openings into fields and with the wide park at hand, it would have been easy for him to liberate himself from the crowd. At first it seemed to him the better part to do this, and to get back to the town as fast as he could, in the hope of finding the military and getting a detachment to come and save the Manor. But he reflected that the course of the mob had been sufficiently seen, and that there were plenty of people in Park Street to carry the information faster than he could. It seemed more necessary that he should secure the presence of some help for the family at the Manor by going there himself. The Debarrys were not of the class he was wont to be anxious about; but Felix Holt’s conscience was alive to the accusation that any danger they might be in now was brought on by a deed of his. In these moments of bitter vexation and disappointment, it did occur to him that very unpleasant consequences might be hanging over him of a kind quite different from inward dissatisfaction; but it was useless now to think of averting such consequences. As he was pressed along with the multitude into Treby Park, his very movement seemed to him only an image of the day’s fatalities, in which the multitudinous small wickednesses of small selfish ends, really undirected towards any larger result, had issued in widely-shared mischief that might yet be hideous.
The light was declining: already the candles shone through many windows of the Manor. Already the foremost part of the crowd had burst into the offices, and adroit men were busy in the right places to find plate, after setting others to force the butler into unlocking the cellars; and Felix had only just been able to force his way on to the front terrace, with the hope of getting to the rooms where he would find the ladies of the household and comfort them with the assurance that rescue must soon come, when the sound of horses’ feet convinced him that the rescue was nearer than he had expected. Just as he heard the horses, he had approached the large window of a room, where a brilliant light suspended from the ceiling showed him a group of women clinging together in terror. Others of the crowd were pushing their way up the terrace-steps and gravel-slopes at various points. Hearing the horses, he kept his post in front of the window, and, motioning with his sabre, cried out to the oncomers, ‘Keep back! I hear the soldiers coming.’ Some scrambled back, some paused automatically.
The louder and louder sound of the hoofs changed its pace and distribution. ‘Halt! Fire!’ Bang! bang! bang! — came deafening the ears of the men on the terrace.
Before they had time or nerve to move, there was a rushing sound closer to them — again ‘Fire!’ a bullet whizzed, and passed through Felix Holt’s shoulder — the shoulder of the arm that held the naked weapon which shone in the light from the window.
Felix fell. The rioters ran confusedly, like terrified sheep. Some of the soldiers, turning, drove them along vvith the flat of their swords. The greater difficulty was to clear the invaded offices.
The rector, who with another magistrate and several other gentlemen on horseback had accompanied the soldiers, now jumped on to the terrace, and hurried to the ladies of the family.
Presently, there was a group round Felix, who had fainted and, reviving, had fainted again. He had had little food during the day, and had been overwrought. Two of the group were civilians, but only one of them knew Felix, the other being a magistrate not resident in Treby. The one who knew Felix was Mr John Johnson, whose zeal for the public peace had brought him from Duffield when he heard that the soldiers were summoned.
‘I know this man very well,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘He is a dangerous character — quite revolutionary.’
It was a weary night; and the next day, Felix, whose wound was declared trivial, was lodged in Loamford Jail. He was committed on three counts — for having assaulted a constable, for having committed manslaughter (Tucker was dead from spinal concussion), and for having led a riotous onslaught on a dwelling-house.
Four other men were committed: one of them for possessing himself of a gold cup with the Debarry arms on it; the three others, one of whom was the collier Dredge, for riot and assault.
That morning Treby town was no longer in terror; but it was in much sadness. Other men, more innocent than the hated Spratt, were groaning under severe bodily injuries. And poor Tucker’s corpse was not the only one that had been lifted from the pavement. It is true that none grieved much for the other dead man, unless it be grief to say, ‘Poor old fellow!’ He had been trampled upon, doubtless where he fell drunkenly, near the entrance of the Seven Stars. This second corpse was old Tommy Trounsem, the bill-sticker — otherwise Thomas Transome, the last of a very old family-line.
The fields are hoary with December’s frost.
I too am hoary with the chills of age.
But through the fields and through the untrodden woods
Is rest and stillness — only in my heart
The pall of winter shrouds a throbbing life.
A WEEK after that Treby Riot, Harold Transome was at Transome Court. He had returned from a hasty visit to town, to keep his Christmas at this delightful country home, not in the best Christmas spirits. He had lost the election; but if that had been his only annoyance, he had good humour and good sense enough to have borne it as well as most men, and to have paid the eight or nine thousand, which had been the price of ascertaining that he was not to sit in the next parliament, without useless grumbling. But the disappointments of life can never, any more than its pleasures, be estimated singly; and the healthiest and most agreeable of men is exposed to that coincidence of various vexations, each heightening the effect of the other, which may produce in him something corresponding to the spontaneous and externally unaccountable moodiness of the morbid and disagreeable.
Harold might not have grieved much at a small riot in Treby, even if it had caused some expenses to fall on the county; but the turn which the riot had actually taken, was a bitter morsel for rumination, on more grounds than one. However the disturbances had arisen and been aggravated — and probably no one knew the whole truth on these points — the conspicuous, gravest incidents had all tended to throw the blame on the Radical party, that is to say, on Transome and on Transome’s agents; and so far the candidateship and its results had done Harold dishonour in the county: precisely the opposite effect to that which was a dear object of his ambition. More than this, Harold’s conscience was active enough to be very unpleasantly affected by what had befallen Felix Holt. His memory, always good, was particularly vivid in its retention of Felix Holt’s complaint to him about the treating of the Sproxton men, and of the subsequent irritating scene in Jermyn’s office when the personage with the inauspicious name of Johnson had expounded to him the impossibility of revising an electioneering scheme once begun, and of turning your vehicle back when it had already begun to roll downhill. Remembering Felix Holt’s words of indignant warning about hiring men with drink in them to make a noise, Harold could not resist the urgent impression that the offences for which Felix was committed were fatalities, not brought about by any willing cooperation of his with the rioters, but arising probably from some ill-judged efforts to counteract their violence. And this impression, which insisted on growing into a conviction, became in one of its phases an uneasy sense that he held evidence which would at once tend to exonerate Felix, and to place himself and his agents in anything but a desirable light. It was likely that some one else could give equivalent evidence in favour of Felix — the little talkative Dissenting preacher, for example; but, anyhow, the affair with the Sproxton men would be ripped open and made the worst of by the opposite parties. The man who has failed in the use of some indirectness, is helped very little by the fact that his rivals are men to whom that indirectness is a something human, very far from being alien. There remains this grand distinction, that he has failed, and that the jet of light is thrown entirely on his misdoings.
In this matter Harold felt himself a victim. Could he hinder the tricks of his agents? In this particular case he had tried to hinder them, and had tried in vain. He had not loved the two agents in question, to begin with; and now at this later stage of events he was more innocent than ever of bearing them anything but the most sincere ill-will. He was more utterly exasperated with them than he would probably have been if his one great passion had been for public virtue. Jermyn, with his John Johnson, had added this ugly dirty business of the Treby election to all the long-accumulating list of offences, which Harold was resolved to visit on him to the utmost. He had seen some handbills carrying the insinuation that there was a discreditable indebtedness to Jermyn on the part of the Transomes. If any such notions existed apart from electioneering slander, there was all the more reason for letting the world see Jermyn severely punished for abusing his power over the family affairs, and tampering with the family property. And the world certainly should see this with as little delay as possible. The cool confident assuming fellow should be bled to the last drop in compensation, and all connection with him be finally got rid of. Now that the election was done with, Harold meant to devote himself to private affairs, till everything lay in complete order under his own supervision.
This morning he was seated as usual in his private room, which had now been handsomely fitted up for him. It was but the third morning after the first Christmas he had spent in his English home for fifteen years, and the home looked like an eminently desirable one. The white frost lay on the broad lawn, on the many-formed leaves of the evergreens, and on the giant trees at a distance. Logs of dry oak blazed on the hearth; the carpet was like warm moss under his feet; he had breakfasted just according to his taste, and he had the interesting occupations of a large proprietor to fill the morning. All through the house now, steps were noiseless on carpets or on fine matting; there was warmth in hall and corridors; there were servants enough to do everything, and to do it at the right time. Skilful Dominic was always at hand to meet his master’s demands, and his bland presence diffused itself like a smile over the household, infecting the gloomy English mind with the belief that life was easy, and making his real predominance seem as soft and light as a down quilt. Old Mr Transome had gathered new courage and strength since little Harry and Dominic had come and since Harold had insisted on his taking drives. Mrs Transome herself was seen on a fresh background with a gown of rich new stuff. And if, in spite of this, she did not seem happy, Harold either did not observe it, or kindly ignored it as the necessary frailty of elderly women whose lives have had too much of dulness and privation. Our minds get tricks and attitudes as our bodies do, thought Harold, and age stiffens them into unalterableness. ‘Poor mother! I confess I should not like to be an elderly woman myself. One requires a good deal of the purring cat for that, or else of the loving grandame. I wish she would take more to little Harry. I suppose she has her suspicions about the lad’s mother, and is as rigid in those matters as in her Toryism. However, I do what I can; it would be difficult to say what there is wanting to her in the way of indulgence and luxury to make up for the old niggardly life.’
And certainly Transome Court was now such a home as many women would covet. Yet even Harold’s own satisfaction in the midst of its elegant comfort needed at present to be sustained by the expectation of gratified resentment. He was obviously less bright and enjoying than usual, and his mother, who watched him closely without daring to ask questions, had gathered hints and drawn inferences enough to make her feel sure that there was some storm gathering between him and Jermyn. She did not dare to ask questions, and yet she had not resisted the temptation to say something bitter about Harold’s failure to get returned as a Radical, helping, with feminine self-defeat, to exclude herself more completely from any consultation by him. In this way poor women, whose power lies solely in their influence, make themselves like music out of tune, and only move men to run away.
This morning Harold had ordered his letters to be brought to him at the breakfast-table, which was not his usual practice. His mother could see that there were London business letters about which he was eager, and she found out that the letter brought by a clerk the day before was to make an appointment with Harold for Jermyn to come to Transome Court at eleven this morning. She observed Harold swallow his coffee and push away his plate with an early abstraction from the business of breakfast which was not at all after his usual manner. She herself ate nothing; her sips of tea seemed to excite her; her cheeks flushed, and her hands were cold. She was still young and ardent in her terrors; the passions of the past were living in her dread.
When Harold left the table she went into the long drawing-room, where she might relieve her restlessness by walking up and down, and catch the sound of Jermyn’s entrance into Harold’s room, which was close by. Here she moved to and fro amongst the rose-coloured satin of chairs and curtains — the great story of this world reduced for her to the little tale of her own existence — dull obscurity everywhere, except where the keen light fell on the narrow track of her own lot, wide only for a woman’s anguish. At last she heard the expected ring and footstep, and the opening and closing door. Unable to walk about any longer, she sank into a large cushioned chair, helpless and prayerless. She was not thinking of God’s anger or mercy, but of her son’s. She was thinking of what might be brought, not by death, but by life.
M. Check to your queen!
N. Nay, your own king is bare,
And moving so, you give yourself checkmate.
WHEN Jermyn entered the room, Harold, who was seated at his library table examining papers, with his back towards the light and his face towards the door, moved his head coldly. Jermyn said an ungracious ‘Good-morning’ — as little as possible like a salutation to one who might regard himself as a patron. On the attorney’s handsome face there was a black cloud of defiant determination, slightly startling to Harold, who had expected to feel that the overpowering weight of temper in the interview was on his own side. Nobody was ever prepared beforehand for this expression of Jermyn’s face, which seemed as strongly contrasted with the cold inpenetrableness which he preserved under the ordinary annoyances of business as with the bland radiance of his lighter moments.
Harold himself did not look amiable just then, but his anger was of the sort that seeks a vent without waiting to give a fatal blow; it was that of a nature more subtly mixed than Jermyn’s — less animally forcible, less unwavering in selfishness, and with more of high-bred pride. He looked at Jermyn with increased disgust and secret wonder.
‘Sit down,’ he said, curtly.
Jermyn seated himself in silence, opened his greatcoat, and took some papers from a side-pocket.
‘I have written to Makepeace,’ said Harold, ‘to tell him to take the entire management of the election expenses. So you will transmit your accounts to him.’
‘Very well. I am come this morning on other business.’
‘If it’s about the riot and the prisoners, I have only to say that I shall enter into no plans. If I am called on, I shall say what I know about that young fellow Felix Holt. People may prove what they can about Johnson’s damnable tricks, or yours either.’
‘I am not come to speak about the riot. I agree with you in thinking that quite a subordinate subject.’ (When Jermyn had the black cloud over his face, he never hesitated or drawled, and made no Latin quotations.)
‘Be so good, then, as to open your business at once,’ said Harold, in a tone of imperious indifference.
‘That is precisely what I wish to do. I have here information from a London correspondent that you are about to file a bill against me in Chancery.’ Jermyn, as he spoke, laid his hand on the papers before him, and looked straight at Harold.
‘In that case the question for you is, how far your conduct as the family solicitor will bear investigation. But it is a question which you will consider quite apart from me.’
‘Doubtless. But prior to that there is a question which we must consider together.’
The tone in which Jermyn said this gave an unpleasant shock to Harold’s sense of mastery. Was it possible that he should have the weapon wrenched out of his hand?
‘I shall know what to think of that,’ he replied, as haughtily as ever, ‘when you have stated what the question is.’
‘Simply, whether you will choose to retain the family estates, or lay yourself open to be forthwith legally deprived of them.’
‘I presume you refer to some underhand scheme of your own, on a par with the annuities you have drained us by in the name of Johnson,’ said Harold, feeling a new movement of anger. ‘If so, you had better state your scheme to my lawyers, Dymock and Halliwell.’
‘No. I think you will approve of my stating in your own ear first of all, that it depends on my will whether you remain an important landed proprietor in North Loamshire, or whether you retire from the county with the remainder of the fortune you have acquired in trade.’
Jermyn paused, as if to leave time for this morsel to be tasted.
‘What do you mean?’ said Harold, sharply
‘Not any scheme of mine; but a state of the facts, resulting from the settlement of the estate made in 1729: a state of the facts which renders your father’s title and your own title to the family estates utterly worthless as soon as the true claimant is made aware of his right.’
‘And you intend to inform him?’
‘That depends. I am the only person who has the requisite knowledge. It rests with you to decide whether I shall use that knowledge against you; or whether I shall use it in your favour — by putting an end to the evidence that would serve to oust you in spite of your “robust title of occupancy”.’
Jermyn paused again. He had been speaking slowly, but without the least hesitation, and with a bitter definiteness of enunciation. There was a moment or two before Harold answered, and then he said abruptly —
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I thought you were more shrewd,’ said Jermyn, with a touch of scorn. ‘I thought you understood that I had had too much experience to waste my time in telling fables to persuade a man who has put himself into the attitude of my deadly enemy.’
‘Well, then, say at once what your proofs are,’ said Harold, shaking in spite of himself, and getting nervous.
‘I have no inclination to be lengthy. It is not more than a few weeks since I ascertained that there is in existence an heir of the Bycliffes, the old adversaries of your family. More curiously, it is only a few days ago — in fact, only since the day of the riot — that the Bycliffe claim has become valid, and that the right of remainder accrues to the heir in question.”
‘And how pray?’ said Harold, rising from his chair, and making a turn in the room, with his hands thrust in his pockets. Jermyn rose too, and stood near the hearth facing Harold, as he moved to and fro.
‘By the death of an old fellow who got drunk, and was trampled to death in the riot. He was the last of that Thomas Transome’s line, by the purchase of whose interest your family got its title to the estate. Your title died with him. It was supposed that the line had become extinct before — and on that supposition the old Bycliffes founded their claim. But I hunted up this man just about the time the last suit was closed. His death would have been of no consequence to you if there had not been a Bycliffe in existence; but I happen to know that there is, and that the fact can be legally proved.’
For a minute or two Harold did not speak, but continued to pace the room, while Jermyn kept his position, holding his hands behind him. At last Harold said, from the other end of the room, speaking in a scornful tone —
‘That sounds alarming. But it is not to be proved simply by your statement.’
‘Clearly. I have here a document, with a copy, which will back my statement. It is the opinion given on the case more than twenty years ago, and it bears the signature of the Attorney-General and the first conveyancer of the day.’
Jermyn took up the papers he had laid on the table, opening them slowly and coolly as he went on speaking, and as Harold advanced towards him.
‘You may suppose that we spared no pains to ascertain the state of the title in the last suit against Maurice Christian Bycliffe, which threatened to be a hard run. This document is the result of a consultation; it gives an opinion which must be taken as a final authority. You may cast your eyes over that, if you please; I will wait your time. Or you may read the summing-up here,’ Jermyn ended, holding out one of the papers to Harold, and pointing to a final passage.
Harold took the paper, with a slight gesture of impatience. He did not choose to obey Jermyn’s indication, and confine himself to the summing-up. He ran through the document. But in truth he was too much excited really to follow the details, and was rather acting than reading, till at length he threw himself into his chair and consented to bend his attention on the passage to which Jermyn had pointed. The attorney watched him as he read and twice re-read:
To sum up . . . we are of opinion that the title of the present possessors of the Transome estates can be strictly proved to rest solely upon a base fee created under the original settlement of 1729, and to be good so long only as issue exists of the tenant in tail by whom that base fee was created. We feel satisfied by the evidence that such issue exists in the person of Thomas Transome, otherwise Trounsem, of Littleshaw. But upon his decease without issue we are of opinion that the right in remainder of the Bycliffe family will arise, which right would not be barred by any statute of limitation.
When Harold’s eyes were on the signatures to this document for the third time, Jermyn said —
‘As it turned out, the case being closed by the death of the claimant, we had no occasion for producing Thomas Transome, who was the old fellow I tell you of. The inquiries about him set him agog, and after they were dropped he came into this neighbourhood, thinking there was something fine in store for him. Here, if you like to take it, is a memorandum about him. I repeat, that he died in the riot. The proof is ready. And I repeat, that, to my knowledge, and mine only, there is a Bycliffe in existence; and that I know how the proof can be made out.’
Harold rose from his chair again, and again paced the room. He was not prepared with any defiance.
‘And where is he — this Bycliffe?’ he said at last, stopping in his walk, and facing round towards Jermyn.
‘I decline to say more till you promise to suspend proceedings against me.’
Harold turned again, and looked out of the window without speaking for a moment or two. It was impossible that there should not be a conflict within him, and at present it was a very confused one. At last he said — ‘This person is in ignorance of his claim?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Has been brought up in an inferior station?’
‘Yes,’ said Jermyn, keen enough to guess part of what was going on in Harold’s mind. ‘There is no harm in leaving him in ignorance. The question is a purely legal one. And, as I said before, the complete knowledge of the case, as one of evidence, lies exclusively with me. I can nullify the evidence, or I can make it tell with certainty against you. The choice lies with you.’
‘I must have time to think of this,’ said Harold, conscious of a terrible pressure.
‘I can give you no time unless you promise me to suspend proceedings.’
‘And then, when I ask you, you will lay the details before me?’
‘Not without a thorough understanding beforehand. If I engage not to use my knowledge against you, you must engage in writing that on being satisfied by the details, you will cancel all hostile proceedings against me, and will not institute fresh ones on the strength of any occurrences now past.’
‘Well, I must have time,’ said Harold, more than ever inclined to thrash the attorney, but feeling bound hand and foot with knots that he was not sure he could ever unfasten.
‘That is to say,’ said Jermyn, with his black-browed persistence, ‘you will write to suspend proceedings.’
Again Harold paused. He was more than ever exasperated, but he was threatened, mortified, and confounded by the necessity for an immediate decision between alternatives almost equally hateful to him. It was with difficulty that he could prevail on himself to speak any conclusive words. He walked as far as he could from Jermyn — to the other end of the room — then walked back to his chair and threw himself into it. At last he said, without looking at Jermyn, ‘I agree — I must have time.’ ‘Very well. It is a bargain.’
‘No further than this,’ said Harold, hastily, flashing a look at Jermyn — ‘no further than this, that I require time, and therefore I give it to you.’
‘Of course. You require time to consider whether the pleasure of trying to ruin me — me to whom you are really indebted — is worth the loss of the Transome estates. I shall wish you good-morning.’
Harold did not speak to him or look at him again, and Jermyn walked out of the room. As he appeared outside the door and closed it behind him, Mrs Transome showed her white face at another door which opened on a level with Harold’s in such a way that it was just possible for Jermyn not to see her. He availed himself of that possibility, and walked straight across the hall, where there was no servant in attendance to let him out, as if he believed that no one was looking at him who could expect recognition. He did not want to speak to Mrs Transome at present; he had nothing to ask from her, and one disagreeable interview had been enough for him this morning.
She was convinced that he had avoided her, and she was too proud to arrest him. She was as insignificant now in his eyes as in her son’s. ‘Men have no memories in their hearts,’ she said to herself, bitterly. Turning into her sitting-room she heard the voices of Mr Transome and little Harry at play together. She would have given a great deal at this moment if her feeble husband had not always lived in dread of her temper and her tyranny, so that he might have been fond of her now. She felt herself loveless — if she was important to any one, it was only to her old waiting-woman Denner.
‘Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them like necessities.’
SHAKESPEARE: Henry IV.
See now the virtue living in a word I
Hobson will think of swearing it was noon
When he saw Dobson at the May-day fair,
To prove poor Dobson did not rob the mail.
’Tis neighbourly to save a neighbour’s neck:
What harm is lying when you mean no harm?
But say ’tis perjury, then Hobson quakes —
He’ll none of perjury.
Thus words embalm
The conscience of mankind; and Roman laws
Bring still a conscience to poor Hobson’s aid.
FEW men would have felt otherwise than Harold Transome felt, if, having a reversion tantamount to possession of a fine estate, carrying an association with an old name and considerable social importance, they were suddenly informed that there was a person who had a legal right to deprive them of these advantages; that person’s right having never been contemplated by any one as more than a chance, and being quite unknown to himself. In ordinary cases a shorter possession than Harold’s family had enjoyed was allowed by the law to constitute an indefeasible right; and if in rare and peculiar instances the law left the possessor of a long inheritance exposed to deprivation as a consequence of old obscure transactions, the moral reasons for giving legal validity to the title of long occupancy were not the less strong. Nobody would have said that Harold was bound to hunt out this alleged remainder-man and urge his rights upon him; on the contrary, all the world would have laughed at such conduct, and he would have been thought an interesting patient for a mad-doctor. The unconscious remainder-man was probably much better off left in his original station: Harold would not have been called upon to consider his existence, if it had not been presented to him in the shape of a threat from one who had power to execute the threat.
In fact, what he would have done had the circumstances been different was much clearer than what he should choose to do or feel himself compelled to do in the actual crisis. He would not have been disgraced if, on a valid claim being urged, he had got his lawyers to fight it out for him on the chance of eluding the claim by some adroit technical management. Nobody off the stage could be sentimental about these things, or pretend to shed tears of joy because an estate was handed over from a gentleman to a mendicant sailor with a wooden leg. And this chance remainder-man was perhaps some such specimen of inheritance as the drunken fellow killed in the riot. All the world would think the actual Transomes in the right to contest any adverse claim to the utmost. But then — it was not certain that they would win in the contest; and not winning, they would incur other loss besides that of the estate. There had been a little too much of such loss already.
But why, if it were not wrong to contest the claim, should he feel the most uncomfortable scruples about robbing the claim of its sting by getting rid of its evidence? It was a mortal disappointment — it was a sacrifice of indemnification — to abstain from punishing Jermyn. But even if he brought his mind to contemplate that as the wiser course, he still shrank from what looked like complicity with Jermyn; he still shrank from the secret nullification of a just legal claim. If he had only known the details, if he had known who this alleged heir was, he might have seen his way to some course that would not have grated on his sense of honour and dignity. But Jermyn had been too acute to let Harold know this: he had even carefully kept to the masculine pronoun. And he believed that there was no one besides himself who would or could make Harold any wiser. He went home persuaded that between this interview and the next which they would have together, Harold would be left to an inward debate, founded entirely on the information he himself had given. And he had not much doubt that the result would be what he desired. Harold was no fool: there were many good things he liked better in life than an irrational vindictiveness.
And it did happen that, after writing to London in fulfilment of his pledge, Harold spent many hours over that inward debate, which was not very different from what Jermyn imagined. He took it everywhere with him, on foot and on horseback, and it was his companion through a great deal of the night. His nature was not of a kind given to internal conflict, and he had never before been long undecided and puzzled. This unaccustomed state of mind was so painfully irksome to him — he rebelled so impatiently against the oppression of circumstances in which his quick temperament and habitual decision could not help him — that it added tenfold to his hatred of Jermyn, who was the cause of it. And thus, as the temptation to avoid all risk of losing the estate grew and grew till scruples looked minute by the side of it, the difficulty of bringing himself to make a compact with Jermyn seemed more and more insurmountable.
But we have seen that the attorney was much too confident in his calculations. And while Harold was being galled by his subjection to Jermyn’s knowledge, independent information was on its way to him. The messenger was Christian, who, after as complete a survey of probabilities as he was capable of, had come to the conclusion that the most profitable investment he could make of his peculiar experience and testimony in relation to Bycliffe and Bycliffe’s daughter, was to place them at the disposal of Harold Transome. He was afraid of Jermyn; he utterly distrusted Johnson; but he thought he was secure in relying on Harold Transome’s care for his own interest; and he preferred above all issues the prospect of forthwith leaving the country with a sum that at least for a good while would put him at his ease.
When, only three mornings after the interview with Jermyn, Dominic opened the door of Harold’s sitting-room, and said that ‘Meester Chreestian’, Mr Philip Debarry’s courier and an acquaintance of his own at Naples, requested to be admitted on business of importance, Harold’s immediate thought was that the business referred to the so-called political affairs which were just now his chief association with the name of Debarry, though it seemed an oddness requiring explanation that a servant should be personally an intermediary. He assented, expecting something rather disagreeable than otherwise.
Christian wore this morning those perfect manners of a subordinate who is not servile, which he always adopted towards his unquestionable superiors. Mr Debarry, who preferred having some one about him with as little resemblance as possible to a regular servant, had a singular liking for the adroit, quiet-mannered Christian, and would have been amazed to see the insolent assumption he was capable of in the presence of people like Lyon, who were of no account in society. Christian had that sort of cleverness which is said to ‘know the world’ — that is to say, he knew the price-current of most things.
Aware that he was looked at as a messenger while he remained standing near the door with his hat in his hand, he said, with respectful ease —
‘You will probably be surprised, sir, at my coming to speak to you on my own account; and, in fact, I could not have thought of doing so if my business did not happen to be something of more importance to you than to any one else.’
‘You don’t come from Mr Debarry, then?’ said Harold, with some surprise.
‘No, sir. My business is a secret; and, if you please, must remain so.’
‘Is it a pledge you are demanding from me?’ said Harold, rather suspiciously, having no ground for confidence in a man of Christian’s position.
‘Yes, sir; I am obliged to ask no less than that you will pledge yourself not to take Mr Jermyn into confidence concerning what passes between us.’
‘With all my heart,’ said Harold, something like a gleam passing over his face. His circulation had become more rapid. ‘But what have you had to do with Jermyn?’
‘He has not mentioned me to you then — has he, sir?’
‘No; certainly not — never.’
Christian thought, ‘Aha, Mr Jermyn! you are keeping the secret well are you?’ He said, aloud —
‘Then Mr Jermyn has never mentioned to you, sir, what I believe he is aware of — that there is danger of a new suit being raised against you on the part of a Bycliffe, to get the estate?’
‘Aha!’ said Harold, starting up, and placing himself with his back against the mantelpiece. He was electrified by surprise at the quarter from which this information was coming. Any fresh alarm was counteracted by the flashing thought that he might be enabled to act independently of Jermyn; and in the rush of feelings he could utter no more than an interjection. Christian concluded that Harold had had no previous hint.
‘It is this fact, sir, that I came to tell you of ’
‘From some other motive than kindness to me, I presume,’ said Harold, with a slight approach to a smile.
‘Certainly,’ said Christian, as quietly as if he had been stating yesterday’s weather. ‘I should not have the folly to use any affectation with you, Mr Transome. I lost considerable property early in life, and am now in the receipt of a salary simply. In the affair I have just mentioned to you I can give evidence which will turn the scale against you. I have no wish to do so, if you will make it worth my while to leave the country.’
Harold listened as if he had been a legendary hero, selected for peculiar solicitation by the Evil One. Here was temptation in a more alluring form than before, because it was sweetened by the prospect of eluding Jermyn. But the desire to gain time served all the purposes of caution and resistance, and his indifference to the speaker in this case helped him to preserve perfect self-command.
‘You are aware,’ he said, coolly, ‘that silence is not a commodity worth purchasing unless it is loaded. There are many persons, I dare say, who would like me to pay their travelling expenses for them. But they might hardly be able to show me that it was worth my while.’
‘You wish me to state what I know?’
‘Well, that is a necessary preliminary to any further conversation.’
‘I think you will see, Mr Transome, that, as a matter of justice, the knowledge I can give is worth something, quite apart from my future appearance or non-appearance as a witness. I must take care of my own interest, and if anything should hinder you from choosing to satisfy me for taking an essential witness out of the way, I must at least be paid for bringing you the information.’
‘Can you tell me who and where this Bycliffe is?’
‘I can.’
‘— And give me a notion of the whole affair?’
‘Yes: I have talked to a lawyer — not Jermyn — who is at the bottom of the law in the affair.’
‘You must not count on any wish of mine to suppress evidence or remove a witness. But name your price for the information.’
‘In that case I must be paid the higher for my information. Say, two thousand pounds.’
‘Two thousand devils!’ burst out Harold, throwing himself into his chair again, and turning his shoulder towards Christian. New thoughts crowded upon him. ‘This fellow may want to decamp for some reason or other,’ he said to himself. ‘More people besides Jermyn know about his evidence, it seems. The whole thing may look black for me if it comes out. I shall be believed to have bribed him to run away, whether or not.’ Thus the outside conscience came in aid of the inner.
‘I will not give you one sixpence for your information,’ he said, resolutely, ‘until time has made it clear that you do not intend to decamp, but will be forthcoming when you are called for. On those terms I have no objection to give you a note, specifying that after the fulfilment of that condition — that is, after the occurrence of a suit, or the understanding that no suit is to occur — I will pay you a certain sum in consideration of the information you now give me!’
Christian felt himself caught in a vice. In the first instance he had counted confidently on Harold’s ready seizure of his offer to disappear, and after some words had seemed to cast a doubt on this presupposition, he had inwardly determined to go away, whether Harold wished it or not, if he could get a sufficient sum. He did not reply immediately, and Harold waited in silence, inwardly anxious to know what Christian could tell, but with a vision at present so far cleared that he was determined not to risk incurring the imputation of having anything to do with scoundrelism. We are very much indebted to such a linking of events as makes a doubtful action look wrong.
Christian was reflecting that if he stayed, and faced some possible inconveniences of being known publicly as Henry Scaddon for the sake of what he might get from Esther, it would at least be wise to be certain of some money from Harold Transome, since he turned out to be of so peculiar a disposition as to insist on a punctilious honesty to his own disadvantage. Did he think of making a bargain with the other side? If so, he might be content to wait for the knowledge till it came in some other way. Christian was beginning to be afraid lest he should get nothing by this clever move of coming to Transome Court. At last he said —
‘I think, sir, two thousand would not be an unreasonable sum, on those conditions.’
‘I will not give two thousand.’
‘Allow me to say, sir, you must consider that there is no one whose interest it is to tell you as much as I shall, even if they could; since Mr Jermyn, who knows it, has not thought fit to tell you. There may be use you don’t think of in getting the information at once.’ ‘Well?’
‘I think a gentleman should act liberally under such circumstances.’
‘So I will.’
I could not take less than a thousand pounds. It really would not be worth my while. If Mr Jermyn knew I gave you the information, he would endeavour to injure me.’
‘I will give you a thousand,’ said Harold, immediately, for Christian had unconsciously touched a sure spring. ‘At least, I’ll give you a note to the effect I spoke of.’
He wrote as he had promised, and gave the paper to Christian.
‘Now, don’t be circuitous,’ said Harold. ‘You seem to have a business-like gift of speech Who and where is this Bycliffe?’
‘You will be surprised to hear, sir, that she is supposed to be the daughter of the old preacher, Lyon, in Malthouse.’
‘Good God! How can that be?’ said Harold. At once, the first occasion on which he had seen Esther rose in his memory — the little dark parlour — the graceful girl in blue, with the surprisingly distinguished manners and appearance.
‘In this way. Old Lyon, by some strange means or other, married Bycliffe’s widow when this girl was a baby. And the preacher didn’t want the girl to know that he was not her real father: he told me that himself. But she is the image of Bycliffe, whom I knew well — an uncommonly fine woman — steps like a queen.’
I have seen her,’ said Harold, more than ever glad to have purchased this knowledge. ‘But now, go on.’
Christian proceeded to tell all he knew, including his conversation with Jermyn, except so far as it had an unpleasant relation to himself.
‘Then,’ said Harold, as the details seemed to have come to a close, ‘you believe that Miss Lyon and her supposed father are at present unaware of the claims that might be urged for her on the strength of her birth?’
‘I believe so. But I need not tell you that where the lawyers are on the scent you can never be sure of anything long together. I must remind you, sir, that you have promised to protect me from Mr Jermyn by keeping my confidence.’
‘Never fear. Depend upon it, I shall betray nothing to Mr Jermyn.’
Christian was dismissed with a ‘good-morning’; and while he cultivated some friendly reminiscences with Dominic, Harold sat chewing the cud of his new knowledge, and finding it not altogether so bitter as he had expected.
From the first, after his interview with Jermyn, the recoil of Harold’s mind from the idea of strangling a legal right threw him on the alternative of attempting a compromise. Some middle course might be possible, which would be a less evil than a costly lawsuit, or than the total renunciation of the estates. And now he had learned that the new claimant was a woman — a young woman, brought up under circumstances that would make the fourth of the Transome property seem to her an immense fortune. Both the sex and the social condition were of the sort that lies open to many softening influences. And having seen Esther, it was inevitable that, amongst the various issues, agreeable and disagreeable, depicted by Harold’s imagination, there should present itself a possibility that would unite the two claims — his own, which he felt to be the rational, and Esther’s, which apparently was the legal claim.
Harold, as he had constantly said to his mother, was ‘not a marrying man;’ he did not contemplate bringing a wife to Transome Court for many years to come, if at all. Having little Harry as an heir, he preferred freedom. Western women were not to his taste: they showed a transition from the feebly animal to the thinking being, which was simply troublesome. Harold preferred a slow-witted large-eyed woman, silent and affectionate, with a load of black hair weighing much more heavily than her brains. He had seen no such woman in England, except one whom he had brought with him from the East.
Therefore Harold did not care to be married until or unless some surprising chance presented itself; and now that such a chance had occurred to suggest marriage to him, he would not admit to himself that he contemplated marrying Esther as a plan; he was only obliged to see that such an issue was not inconceivable. He was not going to take any step expressly directed towards that end: what he had made up his mind to, as the comse most satisfactory to his nature under present urgencies, was to behave to Esther with a frank gentlemanliness, which must win her good-will, and incline her to save his family interest as much as possible. He was helped to this determination by the pleasure of frustrating Jermyn’s contrivance to shield himself from punishment; and his most distinct and cheering prospect was, that within a very short space of time he should not only have effected a satisfactory compromise with Esther, but should have made Jermyn aware, by a very disagreeable form of announcement, that Harold Transome was no longer afraid of him. Jermyn should bite the dust.
At the end of these meditations he felt satisfied with himself and light-hearted. He had rejected two dishonest propositions, and he was going to do something that seemed eminently graceful. But he needed his mother’s assistance, and it was necessary that he should both confide in her and persuade her.
Within two hours after Christian left him, Harold begged his mother to come into his private room, and there he told her the strange and startling story, omitting, however, any particulars which would involve the identification of Christian as his informant. Harold felt that his engagement demanded this reticence; and he told his mother that he was bound to conceal the source of that knowledge which he had got independently of Jermyn.
Mrs Transome said little in the course of the story: she made no exclamations, but she listened with close attention, and asked a few questions so much to the point as to surprise Harold. When he showed her the copy of the legal opinion which Jermyn had left with him, she said she knew it very well; she had a copy herself. The particulars of that last lawsuit were too well engraven on her mind: it happened at a time when there was no one to supersede her, and she was the virtual head of the family affairs. She was prepared to understand how the estate might be in danger; but nothing had prepared her for the strange details — for the way in which the new claimant had been reared and brought within the range of converging motives that had led to this revelation, least of all for the part Jermyn had come to play in the revelation. Mrs Transome saw these things through the medium of certain dominant emotions that made them seem like a long-ripening retribution. Harold perceived that she was painfully agitated, that she trembled, and that her white lips would not readily lend themselves to speech. And this was hardly more than he expected. He had not liked the revelation himself when it had first come to him.
But he did not guess what it was in his narrative which had most pierced his mother. It was something that made the threat about the estate only a secondary alarm. Now, for the first time, she heard of the intended proceedings against Jermyn. Harold had not chosen to speak of them before; but having at last called his mother into consultation, there was nothing in his mind to hinder him from speaking without reserve of his determination to visit on the attorney his shameful maladministration of the family affairs.
Harold went through the whole narrative — of what he called Jermyn’s scheme to catch him in a vice, and his power of triumphantly frustrating that scheme — in his usual rapid way, speaking with a final decisiveness of tone: and his mother felt that if she urged any counter-consideration at all, she could only do so when he had no more to say.
‘Now, what I want you to do, mother, if you can see this matter as I see it,’ Harold said in conclusion, ‘is to go with me to call on this girl in Malthouse Yard. I will open the affair to her; it appears she is not likely to have been informed yet; and you will invite her to visit you here at once, that all scandal, all hatching of law-mischief, may be avoided, and the thing may be brought to an amicable conclusion.’
‘It seems almost incredible — extraordinary — a girl in her position,’ said Mrs Transome, with difficulty. It would have seemed the bitterest humiliating penance if another sort of suffering had left any room in her heart.
‘I assure you she is a lady; I saw her when I was canvassing, and was amazed at the time. You will be quite struck with her. It is no indignity for you to invite her.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Transome, with low-toned bitterness, ‘I must put up with all things as they are determined for me. When shall we go?’
‘Well,’ said Harold, looking at his watch, ‘it is hardly two yet. We could really go today, when you have lunched. It is better to lose no time. I’ll order the carriage.’
‘Stay,’ said Mrs Transome, making a desperate effort. ‘There is plenty of time. I shall not lunch. I have a word to say.’
Harold withdrew his hand from the bell, and leaned against the mantelpiece to listen.
‘You see I comply with your wish at once, Harold?’
‘Yes, mother, I’m much obliged to you for making no difficulties.’
‘You ought to listen to me in return.’
‘Pray go on,’ said Harold, expecting to be annoyed.
‘What is the good of having these Chancery proceedings against Jermyn?’
‘Good? This good; that fellow has burdened the estate with annuities and mortgages to the extent of three thousand a-year; and the bulk of them, I am certain, he holds himself under the name of another man. And the advances this yearly interest represents, have not been much more than twenty thousand. Of course he has hoodwinked you, and my father never gave attention to these things. He has been up to all sorts of devil’s work with the deeds; he didn’t count on my coming back from Smyrna to fill poor Durfey’s place. He shall feel the difference. And the good will be, that I shall save almost all the annuities for the rest of my father’s life, which may be ten years or more, and I shall get back some of the money, and I shall punish a scoundrel. That is the good.’ ‘He will be ruined.’ ‘That’s what I intend,’ said Harold, sharply.
‘He exerted himself a great deal for us in the old suits: every one said he had wonderful zeal and ability,’ said Mrs Transome, getting courage and warmth as she went on. Her temper was rising.
‘What he did, he did for his own sake, you may depend on that,’ said Harold, with a scornful laugh.
‘There were very painful things in that last suit. You seem anxious, about this young woman, to avoid all further scandal and contests in the family. Why don’t you wish to do it in this case? Jermyn might be willing to arrange things amicably — to make restitution as far as he can — if he has done anything wrong.’
‘I will arrange nothing amicably with him,’ said Harold, decisively. ‘If he has ever done anything scandalous as our agent, let him bear the infamy. And the right way to throw the infamy on him is to show the world that he has robbed us, and that I mean to punish him. Why do you wish to shield such a fellow, mother? It has been chiefly through him that you have had to lead such a thrifty miserable life — you who used to make as brilliant a figure as a woman need wish.’
Mrs Transome’s rising temper was turned into a horrible sensation, as painful as a sudden concussion from something hard and immovable when we have struck out with our fist, intending to hit something warm, soft, and breathing, like ourselves. Poor Mrs Transome’s strokes were sent jarring back on her by a hard unalterable past. She did not speak in answer to Harold, but rose from the chair as if she gave up the debate.
‘Women are frightened at everything, I know,’ said Harold, kindly, feeling that he had been a little harsh after his mother’s compliance. ‘And you have been used for so many years to think Jermyn a law of nature. Come, mother,’ he went on, looking at her gently, and resting his hands on her shoulders, ‘look cheerful. We shall get through all these difficulties. And this girl — I daresay she will be quite an interesting visitor for you. You have not had any young girl about you for a long while. Who knows? she may fall deeply in love with me, and I may be obliged to marry her.’
He spoke laughingly, only thinking how he could make his mother smile. But she looked at him seriously and said, ‘Do you mean that, Harold?’
‘Am I not capable of making a conquest? Not too fat yet — a handsome, well-rounded youth of thirty-four?’
She was forced to look straight at the beaming face with its rich dark colour, just bent a little over her. Why could she not be happy in this son whose future she had once dreamed of, and who had been as fortunate as she had ever hoped? The tears came, not plenteously, but making her dark eyes as large and bright as youth had once made them without tears.
‘There, there!’ said Harold, coaxingly. ‘Don’t be afraid. You shall not have a daughter-inlaw unless she is a pearl. Now we will get ready to go.’
In half an hour from that time Mrs Transome came down, looking majestic in sables and velvet, ready to call on ‘the girl in Malthouse Yard’. She had composed herself to go through this task. She saw there was nothing better to be done. After the resolutions Harold had taken, some sort of compromise with this oddly-placed heiress was the result most to be hoped for; if the compromise turned out to be a marriage — well, she had no reason to care much: she was already powerless. It remained to be seen what this girl was.
The carriage was to be driven round the back way, to avoid too much observation. But the late election affairs might account for Mr Lyon’s receiving a visit from the unsuccessful Radical candidate.