Bot-S: Felix Holt, the Radical

The debate was to begin at eleven, for the rector would not allow the
evening to be chosen, when low men and boys might want to be admitted
out of mere mischief. This was one reason why the female part of the
audience outnumbered the males. But some chief Trebians were there, even
men whose means made them as independent of theory as Mr. Pendrell and
Mr. Wace; encouraged by reflecting that they were not in a place of
worship, and would not be obliged to stay longer than they chose. There
was a muster of all Dissenters who could spare the morning time, and on
the back benches were all the aged Churchwomen who shared the remnants
of the sacrament wine, and who were humbly anxious to neglect nothing
ecclesiastical or connected with "going to a better place."

At eleven the arrival of listeners seemed to have ceased. Mr. Lyon was
seated on the school tribune or dais at his particular round table;
another round table, with a chair, awaited the curate, with whose
superior position it was quite in keeping that he should not be the
first on the ground. A couple of extra chairs were placed farther back,
and more than one important personage had been requested to act as
chairman; but no Churchman would place himself in a position so
equivocal as to dignity of aspect, and so unequivocal as to the
obligation of sitting out the discussion; and the rector had beforehand
put a veto on any Dissenting chairman.

Mr. Lyon sat patiently absorbed in his thoughts, with his notes in
minute handwriting lying before him, seeming to look at the audience,
but not seeing them. Every one else was contented that there should be
an interval in which there could be a little neighborly talk.

Esther was particularly happy, seated on a side-bench near her father's
side of the tribune, with Felix close behind her, so that she could turn
her head and talk to him. He had been very kind ever since that morning
when she had called at his home, more disposed to listen indulgently to
what she had to say, and less blind to her looks and movements. If he
had never railed at her or ignored her, she would have been less
sensitive to the attention he gave her; but as it was, the prospect of
seeing him seemed to light up her life, and to disperse the old
dullness. She looked unusually charming to-day, from the very fact that
she was not vividly conscious of anything but of having a mind near her
that asked her to be something better than she actually was. The
consciousness of her own superiority amongst the people around her was
superseded, and even a few brief weeks had given a softened expression
to her eyes, a more feminine beseechingness and self-doubt to her
manners. Perhaps, however, a little new defiance was rising in place of
the old contempt--defiance of the Trebian views about Felix Holt.

"What a very nice-looking young woman your minister's daughter is?" said
Mrs. Tiliot in an undertone to Mrs. Muscat, who, as she had hoped, had
found a seat next her quondam friend--"quite the lady."

"Rather too much so, considering," said Mrs. Muscat. "She's thought
proud, and that is not pretty in a girl, even if there was anything to
back it up. But now she seems to be encouraging that young Holt, who
scoffs at everything, as you may judge by his appearance. She has
despised his betters before now; but I leave you to judge whether a
young man who has taken to low ways of getting a living can pay for fine
cambric handkerchiefs and light kid gloves."

Mrs. Muscat lowered her blonde eyelashes and swayed her neat head just
perceptibly from side to side, with a sincere desire to be moderate in
her expressions, notwithstanding any shock that facts might have given
her.

"Dear, dear," said Mrs. Tiliot. "What! that is young Holt leaning
forward now without a cravat? I've never seen him before to notice him,
but I've heard Tiliot talking about him. They say he's a dangerous
character, and goes stirring up the workingmen at Sproxton. And--well,
to be sure, such great eyes and such a great head of hair--it is enough
to frighten one. What can she see in him? Quite below her."

"Yes, and brought up a governess," said Mrs. Muscat; "you'd have thought
she'd knowed better how to choose. But the minister has let her get the
upper hand sadly too much. It's a pity in a man of God. I don't deny
he's _that_."

"Well, I am sorry," said Mrs. Tiliot, "for I meant her to give my girls
lessons when they came from school."

Mr. Wace and Mr. Pendrell meanwhile were standing up and looking round
at the audience, nodding to their fellow-townspeople with the affability
due from men in their position.

"It's time he came now," said Mr. Wace, looking at his watch and
comparing it with the schoolroom clock. "This debating is a new-fangled
sort of thing; but the rector would never have given in to it if there
hadn't been good reasons. Nolan said he wouldn't come. He says this
debating is an atheistical sort of thing; the Atheists are very fond of
it. Theirs is a bad book to take a leaf out of. However, we shall hear
nothing but what's good from Mr. Sherlock. He preaches a capital
sermon--for such a young man."

"Well, it was our duty to support him--not to leave him alone among the
Dissenters," said Mr. Pendrell. "You see everybody hasn't felt that.
Labron might have shown himself, if not Lukyn. I could have alleged
business myself if I had thought proper."

"Here he comes, I think," said Mr. Wace, turning round on hearing a
movement near the small door on a level with the platform. "By George!
it's Mr. Debarry. Come now, this is handsome."

Mr. Wace and Mr. Pendrell clapped their hands, and the example was
followed even by most of the Dissenters. Philip was aware that he was
doing a popular thing, of a kind that Treby was not used to from the
elder Debarrys; but his appearance had not been long premeditated. He
was driving through the town toward an engagement at some distance, but
on calling at Labron's office he had found that the affair which
demanded his presence had been deferred, and so had driven round to the
Free School. Christian came in behind him.

Mr. Lyon was now roused from his abstraction, and, stepping from his
slight elevation, begged Mr. Debarry to act as moderator or president on
the occasion.

"With all my heart," said Philip. "But Mr. Sherlock has not arrived,
apparently?"

"He tarries somewhat unduly," said Mr. Lyon. "Nevertheless there may be
a reason of which we know not. Shall I collect the thoughts of the
assembly by a brief introductory address in the interval?"

"No, no, no," said Mr. Wace, who saw a limit to his powers of endurance.
"Mr. Sherlock is sure to be here in a minute or two."

"Christian," said Philip Debarry, who felt a slight misgiving, "just be
so good--but stay, I'll go myself. Excuse me, gentlemen: I'll drive
round to Mr. Sherlock's lodgings. He may be under a little mistake as to
the time. Studious men are sometimes rather absent-minded. You needn't
come with me, Christian."

As Mr. Debarry went out, Rufus Lyon stepped on to the tribune again in
rather an uneasy state of mind. A few ideas had occurred to him,
eminently fitted to engage the audience profitably, and so to wrest some
edification out of an unforeseen delay. But his native delicacy made him
feel that in this assembly the Church people might fairly decline any
"deliverance" on his part which exceeded the programme, and Mr. Wace's
negative had been energetic. But the little man suffered from imprisoned
ideas, and was as restless as a racer held in. He could not sit down
again, but walked backward and forward, stroking his chin, emitting his
low guttural interjections under the pressure of clauses and sentences
which he longed to utter aloud, as he would have done in his own study.
There was a low buzz in the room which helped to deepen the minister's
sense that the thoughts within him were as divine messengers unheeded or
rejected by a trivial generation. Many of the audience were standing;
all, except the old Churchwomen on the back seats, and a few devout
Dissenters who kept their eyes shut and gave their bodies a gentle
oscillating motion, were interested in chat.

"Your father is uneasy," said Felix to Esther.

"Yes; and now, I think, he is feeling for his spectacles. I hope he has
not left them at home: he will not be able to see anything two yards
before him without them;--and it makes him so unconscious of what people
expect or want."

"I'll go and ask him whether he has them," said Felix, striding over the
form in front of him, and approaching Mr. Lyon, whose face showed a
gleam of pleasure at this relief from his abstracted isolation.

"Miss Lyon is afraid that you are at a loss for your spectacles, sir,"
said Felix.

"My dear young friend," said Mr. Lyon, laying his hand on Felix Holt's
fore-arm, which was about on a level with the minister's shoulder, "it
is a very glorious truth, albeit made somewhat painful to me by the
circumstances of the present moment, that as a counterpoise to the
brevity of our mortal life (wherein, as I apprehend, our powers are
being trained not only for the transmission of an improved heritage, as
I have heard you insist, but also for our own entrance into a higher
initiation in the Divine scheme)--it is, I say, a very glorious truth,
that even in what are called the waste minutes of our time, like those
of expectation, the soul may soar and range, as in some of our dreams
which are brief as a broken rainbow in duration, yet seem to comprise a
long history of terror or joy. And again, each moment may be a beginning
of a new spiritual energy; and our pulse would doubtless be a coarse and
clumsy notation of the passage from that which was not to that which is,
even in the finer processes of the material world--and how much
more----"

Esther was watching her father and Felix, and though she was not within
hearing of what was being said, she guessed the actual state of the
case--that the enquiry about the spectacles had been unheeded, and that
her father was losing himself and embarrassing Felix in the intricacies
of a dissertation. There was not the stillness around her that would
have made a movement on her part seem conspicuous, and she was impelled
by her anxiety to step on the tribune and walk up to her father, who
paused a little startled.

"Pray see whether you have forgotten your spectacles, father. If so, I
will go home at once and look for them."

Mr. Lyon was automatically obedient to Esther, and he began immediately
to feel in his pockets.

"How is it that Miss Jermyn is so friendly with the Dissenting parson?"
said Christian to Quorlen, the Tory printer, who was an intimate of his.
"Those grand Jermyns are not Dissenters surely?"

"_What_ Miss Jermyn?"

"Why--don't you see?--that fine girl who is talking to him."

"Miss Jermyn! Why, that's the little parson's daughter."

"His daughter!" Christian gave a low brief whistle, which seemed a
natural expression of surprise that "the rusty old ranter" should have a
daughter of such distinguished appearance.

Meanwhile the search for the spectacles had proved vain. "'Tis a
grievous fault in me, my dear," said the little man, humbly; "I become
thereby sadly burdensome to you."

"I will go at once," said Esther, refusing to let Felix go instead of
her. But she had scarcely stepped off the tribune when Mr. Debarry
re-entered, and there was a commotion which made her wait. After a
low-toned conversation with Mr. Pendrell and Mr. Wace, Philip Debarry
stepped on to the tribune with his hat in his hand and said, with an air
of much concern and annoyance--

"I am sorry to have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that--doubtless
owing to some accidental cause which I trust will soon be explained as
nothing serious--Mr. Sherlock is absent from his residence and is not to
be found. He went out early, his landlady informs me, to refresh himself
by a walk on this agreeable morning, as is his habit, she tells me, when
he has been kept up late by study; and he has not returned. Do not let
us be too anxious. I shall cause enquiry to be made in the direction of
his walk. It is easy to imagine many accidents, not of a grave
character, by which he might nevertheless be absolutely detained against
his will. Under these circumstances, Mr. Lyon," continued Philip,
turning to the minister, "I presume that the debate must be adjourned."

"The debate, doubtless," began Mr. Lyon; but his farther speech was
drowned by a general rising of the Church people from their seats, many
of them feeling that, even if the cause were lamentable, the adjournment
was not altogether disagreeable.

"Good gracious me!" said Mrs. Tiliot, as she took her husband's arm, "I
hope the poor young man hasn't fallen into the river or broken his leg."

But some of the more acrid Dissenters, whose temper was not controlled
by the habits of retail business, had begun to hiss, implying that in
their interpretation the curate's absence had not depended on any injury
to life or limb.

"He's turned tail, sure enough," said Mr. Muscat to the neighbor behind
him, lifting his eyebrows and shoulders, and laughing in a way that
showed that, deacon as he was, he looked at the affair in an entirely
secular light.

But Mrs. Muscat thought it would be nothing but right to have all the
waters dragged, agreeing in this with the majority of the Church ladies.

"I regret sincerely, Mr. Lyon," said Philip Debarry, addressing the
minister with politeness, "that I must say good-morning to you, with the
sense that I have not been able at present to contribute to your
satisfaction as I had wished."

"Speak not of it in the way of apology, sir," said Mr. Lyon, in a tone
of depression. "I doubt not that you yourself have acted in good faith.
Nor will I open any door of egress to constructions such as anger often
deems ingenious, but which the disclosure of the simple truth may expose
as erroneous and uncharitable fabrications. I wish you good-morning,
sir."

When the room was cleared of the Church people, Mr. Lyon wished to
soothe his own spirit and that of his flock by a few reflections
introductory to a parting prayer. But there was a general resistance to
this effort. The men mustered round the minister and declared their
opinion that the whole thing was disgraceful to the Church. Some said
that the curate's absence had been contrived from the first. Others more
than hinted that it had been a folly in Mr. Lyon to set on foot any
procedure in common with Tories and clergymen, who, if they ever aped
civility to Dissenters, would never do anything but laugh at them in
their sleeves. Brother Kemp urged in his heavy bass that Mr. Lyon should
lose no time in sending an account of the affair to the _Patriot_; and
brother Hawkins, in his high tenor, observed that it was an occasion on
which some stinging things might be said with all the extra effect of an
_apropos_.

The position of receiving a many-voiced lecture from the members of his
church was familiar to Mr. Lyon; but now he felt weary, frustrated, and
doubtful of his own temper. Felix, who stood by and saw that this man of
sensitive fibre was suffering from talkers whose noisy superficiality
cost them nothing, got exasperated. "It seems to me, sirs," he burst in,
with his predominant voice, "that Mr. Lyon has hitherto had the hard
part of the business, while you of his congregation have had the easy
one. Punish the Church clergy, if you like--they can take care of
themselves. But don't punish your own minister. It's no business of
mine, perhaps, except so far as fair-play is everybody's business; but
it seems to me the time to ask Mr. Lyon to take a little rest, instead
of setting on him like so many wasps."

By this speech Felix raised a displeasure which fell on the minister as
well as on himself; but he gained his immediate end. The talkers dropped
off after a slight show of persistence, and Mr. Lyon quitted the field
of no combat with a small group of his less imperious friends, to whom
he confided his intention of committing his argument fully to paper,
and forwarding it to a discriminating editor.

"But regarding personalities," he added, "I have not the same clear
showing. For, say that this young man was pusillanimous--I were but
ill-provided with arguments if I took my stand even for a moment on so
poor an irrelevancy as that because one curate is ill furnished
therefore Episcopacy is false. If I held up any one to just obloquy, it
would be the well-designated Incumbent of this parish, who, calling
himself one of the Church militant, sends a young and weak-kneed
substitute to take his place in the fight."

Mr. Philip Debarry did not neglect to make industrious enquiry
concerning the accidents which had detained the Reverend Theodore
Sherlock on his morning walk. That well-intentioned young divine was
seen no more in Treby Magna. But the river was not dragged, for by the
evening coach the rector received an explanatory letter. The Reverend
Theodore's agitation had increased so much during his walk, that the
passing coach had been a means of deliverance not to be resisted; and,
literally at the eleventh hour, he had hailed and mounted the cheerful
Tally-ho! and carried away his portion of the debate in his pocket.

But the rector had subsequently the satisfaction of receiving Mr.
Sherlock's painstaking production in print, with a dedication to the
Reverend Augustus Debarry, a motto from St. Chrysostom, and other
additions, the fruit of ripening leisure. He was "sorry for poor
Sherlock, who wanted confidence"; but he was convinced that for his own
part he had taken the course which under the circumstances was the least
compromising to the Church. Sir Maximus, however, observed to his son
and brother that he had been right and they had been wrong as to the
danger of vague, enormous expressions of gratitude to a Dissenting
preacher, and on any differences of opinion seldom failed to remind them
of that precedent.




CHAPTER XXV.

    Your fellow-man?--Divide the epithet:
    Say rather, you're the fellow, he the man.


When Christian quitted the Free School with the discovery that the young
lady whose appearance had first startled him with an indefinable
impression in the market-place was the daughter of the old Dissenting
preacher who had shown so much agitated curiosity about his name, he
felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player, who sees that the
pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and might open the way
for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how. Ever since his interview
with Jermyn, his mind had been occupied with the charade it offered to
his ingenuity. What was the real meaning of the lawyer's interest in
him, and in his relations with Maurice Christian Bycliffe? Here was a
secret; and secrets were often a source of profit, of that agreeable
kind which involved little labor. Jermyn had hinted at profit which
might possibly come through him; but Christian said inwardly, with
well-satisfied self-esteem, that he was not so pitiable a nincompoop as
to trust Jermyn. On the contrary, the only problem before him was to
find out by what combination of independent knowledge he could outwit
Jermyn, elude any purchase the attorney had on him through his past
history, and get a handsome bonus, by which a somewhat shattered man of
pleasure might live well without a master. Christian, having early
exhausted the more impulsive delights of life, had become a sober
calculator; and he had made up his mind that, for a man who had long ago
run through his own money, servitude in a great family was the best kind
of retirement after that of a pensioner; but if a better chance offered,
a person of talent must not let it slip through his fingers. He held
various ends of threads, but there was danger of pulling at them too
impatiently. He had not forgotten the surprise which had made him drop
the punch-ladle, when Mr. Crowder, talking in the steward's room, had
said that a scamp named Henry Scaddon had been concerned in a lawsuit
about the Transome estate. Again, Jermyn was the family lawyer of the
Transomes; he knew of the exchange of names between Scaddon and
Bycliffe; he clearly wanted to know as much as he could about Bycliffe's
history. The conclusion was not remote that Bycliffe had had some claim
on the Transome property, and that a difficulty had arisen from his
being confounded with Henry Scaddon. But hitherto the other incident
which had been apparently connected with the interchange of names--Mr.
Lyon's demand that he should write down the name Maurice Christian,
accompanied with the question whether that were his whole name--had had
no visible link with the inferences arrived at through Crowder and
Jermyn.

The discovery made this morning at the Free School that Esther was the
daughter of the Dissenting preacher at last suggested a possible link.
Until then, Christian had not known why Esther's face had impressed him
so peculiarly; but the minister's chief association for him was with
Bycliffe, and that association served as a flash to show him that
Esther's features and expression, and still more her bearing, now she
stood and walked, revived Bycliffe's image. Daughter? There were various
ways of being a daughter. Suppose this were a case of adoption; suppose
Bycliffe were known to be dead, or thought to be dead. "Begad, if the
old parson had fancied the original father was come to life again, it
was enough to frighten him a little. Slow and steady," Christian said to
himself; "I'll get some talk with the old man again. He's safe enough:
one can handle him without cutting one's self. I'll tell him I knew
Bycliffe, and was his fellow-prisoner. I'll worm out the truth about
this daughter. Could pretty Annette have married again, and married this
little scare-crow? There's no knowing what a woman will not do."

Christian could see no distinct result for himself from his industry;
but if there were to be any such result, it must be reached by following
out every clue; and to the non-legal mind there are dim possibilities in
law and heirship which prevent any issue from seeming too miraculous.

The consequence of these meditations was, that Christian hung about
Treby more than usual in his leisure time, and that on the first
opportunity he accosted Mr. Lyon in the street with suitable civility,
stating that since the occasion which had brought them together some
weeks before he had often wished to renew their conversation, and, with
Mr. Lyon's permission, would now ask to do so. After being assured, as
he had been by Jermyn, that this courier, who had happened by some
accident to possess the memorable locket and pocket-book, was certainly
not Annette's husband, and was ignorant whether Maurice Christian
Bycliffe were living or dead, the minister's mind had become easy again;
his habitual lack of interest in personal details rendering him
gradually oblivious of Jermyn's precautionary statement that he was
pursuing enquiries, and that if anything of interest turned up, Mr. Lyon
should be made acquainted with it. Hence, when Christian addressed him,
the minister, taken by surprise and shaken by the recollections of
former anxieties, said, helplessly--

"If it is business, sir, you would perhaps do better to address yourself
to Mr. Jermyn."

He could not have said anything that was a more valuable hint to
Christian. He inferred that the minister had made a confidant of Jermyn,
and it was needful to be wary.

"On the contrary, sir," he answered, "it may be of the utmost importance
to you that what passes between us should not be known to Mr. Jermyn."

Mr. Lyon was perplexed, and felt at once that he was no more in clear
daylight concerning Jermyn than concerning Christian. He dared not
neglect the possible duty of hearing what this man had to say, and he
invited him to proceed to Malthouse Yard, where they could converse in
private.

Once in Mr. Lyon's study, Christian opened the dialogue by saying that
since he was in this room before it had occurred to him that the anxiety
he had observed in Mr. Lyon might be owing to some acquaintance with
Maurice Christian Bycliffe--a fellow-prisoner in France, whom he,
Christian, had assisted in getting freed from his imprisonment, and who,
in fact, had been the owner of the trifles which Mr. Lyon had recently
had in his possession and had restored. Christian hastened to say that
he knew nothing of Bycliffe's history since they had parted in France,
but that he knew of his marriage with Annette Ledru, and had been
acquainted with Annette herself. He would be very glad to know what
became of Bycliffe, if he could, for he liked him uncommonly.

Here Christian paused; but Mr. Lyon only sat changing color and
trembling. This man's bearing and tone of mind were made repulsive to
him by being brought in contact with keenly-felt memories, and he could
not readily summon the courage to give answers or ask questions.

"May I ask if you knew my friend Bycliffe?" said Christian, trying a
more direct method.

"No, sir; I never saw him."

"Ah! well--you have seen a very striking likeness of him. It's
wonderful--unaccountable; but when I saw Miss Lyon at the Free School
the other day, I could have sworn she was Bycliffe's daughter."

"Sir!" said Mr. Lyon, in his deepest tone, half rising, and holding by
the arms of his chair, "these subjects touch me with too sharp a point
for you to be justified in thrusting them on me out of mere levity. Is
there any good you seek or any injury you fear in relation to them?"

"Precisely, sir. We shall come to an understanding. Suppose I believed
that the young lady who goes by the name of Miss Lyon was the daughter
of Bycliffe?"

Mr. Lyon moved his lips silently.

"And suppose I had reason to suspect that there would be some great
advantage for her if the law knew who was her father?"

"Sir!" said Mr. Lyon, shaken out of all reticence. "I would not conceal
it. She believes herself to be my daughter. But I will bear all things
rather than deprive her of a right. Nevertheless I appeal to the pity of
any fellow-man, not to thrust himself between her and me, but to let me
disclose the truth to her myself."

"All in good time," said Christian. "We must do nothing rash. Then Miss
Lyon is Annette's child?"

The minister shivered as if the edge of a knife had been drawn across
his hand. But the tone of this question, by the fact that it intensified
his antipathy to Christian, enabled him to collect himself for what must
be simply the endurance of a painful operation. After a moment or two he
said more coolly, "It is true, sir. Her mother became my wife. Proceed
with any statement which may concern my duty."

"I have no more to say than this: if there's a prize that the law might
hand over to Bycliffe's daughter, I am much mistaken if there isn't a
lawyer who'll take precious good care to keep the law hoodwinked. And
that lawyer is Mat Jermyn. Why, my good sir, if you've been taking
Jermyn into your confidence, you've been setting the fox to keep off the
weasel. It strikes me that when you were made a little anxious about
those articles of poor Bycliffe's, you put Jermyn on making enquiries of
me. Eh? I think I am right?"

"I do not deny it."

"Ah!--it was very well you did, for by that means I've found that he's
got hold of some secrets about Bycliffe which he means to stifle. Now,
sir, if you desire any justice for your daughter--step-daughter, I
should say--don't so much as wink to yourself before Jermyn; and if
you've got any papers or things of that sort that may come in evidence,
as these confounded rascals the lawyers call it, clutch them tight, for
if they get into Jermyn's hands they may soon fly up the chimney. Have I
said enough?"

"I had not purposed any further communication with Mr. Jermyn, sir;
indeed, I have nothing further to communicate. Except that one fact
concerning my daughter's birth, which I have erred in concealing from
her, I neither seek disclosures nor do I tremble before them."

"Then I have your word that you will be silent about this conversation
between us? It is for your daughter's interest, mind."

"Sir, I shall be silent," said Mr. Lyon, with cold gravity. "Unless,"
he added, with an acumen as to possibilities rather disturbing to
Christian's confident contempt for the old man--"unless I were called
upon by some tribunal to declare the whole truth in this relation; in
which case I should submit myself to that authority of investigation
which is a requisite of social order."

Christian departed, feeling satisfied that he had got the utmost to be
obtained at present out of the Dissenting preacher, whom he had not
dared to question more closely. He must look out for chance lights, and
perhaps, too, he might catch a stray hint by stirring the sediment of
Mr. Crowder's memory. But he must not venture on enquiries that might be
noticed.

When Mr. Lyon was alone he paced up and down among his books, and
thought aloud, in order to relieve himself after the constraint of this
interview. "I will not wait for the urgency of necessity," he said more
than once. "I will tell the child without compulsion. And then I shall
fear nothing. And an unwonted spirit of tenderness has filled her of
late. She will forgive me."




CHAPTER XXVI.

    Consideration like an angel came
    And whipped the offending Adam out of her;
    Leaving her body as a paradise
    To envelope and contain celestial spirits.

                                       --SHAKESPEARE: _Henry V_.


The next morning, after much prayer for the needful strength and wisdom,
Mr. Lyon came down stairs with the resolution that another day should
not pass without the fulfillment of the task he had laid on himself: but
what hour he should choose for this solemn disclosure to Esther must
depend on their mutual occupations. Perhaps he must defer it till they
sat up alone together, after Lyddy was gone to bed. But at breakfast
Esther said--

"To-day is a holiday, father. My pupils are all going to Duffield to see
the wild beasts. What have you got to do to-day? Come, you are eating no
breakfast. Oh, Lyddy, Lyddy, the eggs are hard again. I wish you would
not read Alleyne's 'Alarm' before breakfast; it makes you cry and forget
the eggs."

"They _are_ hard, and that's the truth; but there's hearts as are
harder, Miss Esther," said Lyddy.

"I think not," said Esther. "This is leathery enough for the heart of
the most obdurate Jew. Pray give it little Zachary for a football."

"Dear, dear, don't you be so light, miss. We may all be dead before
night."

"You speak out of season, my good Lyddy," said Mr. Lyon, wearily;
"depart into the kitchen."

"What have you got to do to-day, father?" persisted Esther. "I have a
holiday."

Mr. Lyon felt as if this were a fresh summons not to delay. "I have
something of great moment to do, my dear; and since you are not
otherwise demanded, I will ask you to come and sit with me up-stairs."

Esther wondered what there could be on her father's mind more pressing
than his morning studies.

Soon she knew. Motionless, but mentally stirred as she had never been
before, Esther listened to her mother's story, and to the outpouring of
her step-father's long-pent-up experience. The rays of the morning sun
which fell athwart the books, the sense of the beginning day had
deepened the solemnity more than night would have done. All knowledge
which alters our lives penetrates us more when it comes in the early
morning: the day that has to be travelled with something new and perhaps
forever sad in its light, is an image of the life that spreads beyond.
But at night the time of rest is near.

Mr. Lyon regarded his narrative as a confession--as a revelation to this
beloved child of his own miserable weakness and error. But to her it
seemed a revelation of another sort: her mind seemed suddenly enlarged
by a vision of passion and struggle, of delight and renunciation, in the
lot of beings who had hitherto been a dull enigma to her. And in the act
of unfolding to her that he was not her real father, but had only
striven to cherish her as a father, had only longed to be loved as a
father, the odd, way-worn, unworldly man became the object of a new
sympathy in which Esther exulted. Perhaps this knowledge would have been
less powerful within her, but for the mental preparation that had come
during the last two months from her acquaintance with Felix Holt, which
had taught her to doubt the infallibility of her own standard, and
raised a presentiment of moral depths that were hidden from her.

Esther had taken her place opposite to her father, and had not moved
even her clasped hands while he was speaking. But after the long
outpouring in which he seemed to lose the sense of everything but the
memories he was giving utterance to, he paused a little while, and then
said timidly--

"This is a late retrieval of a long error, Esther. I make not excuses
for myself, for we ought to strive that our affections be rooted in the
truth. Nevertheless you----"

Esther had risen, and had glided on to the wooden stool on a level with
her father's chair, where he was accustomed to lay books. She wanted to
speak, but the flood-gates could not be opened for words alone. She
threw her arms round the old man's neck and sobbed out with a passionate
cry, "Father, father! forgive me if I have not loved you enough. I
will--I will!"

The old man's little delicate frame was shaken by a surprise and joy
that was almost painful in their intensity. He had been going to ask
forgiveness of her who asked it for herself. In that moment of supreme
complex emotion one ray of the minister's joy was the thought, "Surely
the work of grace is begun in her--surely here is a heart that the Lord
hath touched."

They sat so, enclasped in silence, while Esther relieved her full heart.
When she raised her head, she sat quite still for a minute or two
looking fixedly before her, and keeping one little hand in the
minister's. Presently she looked at him and said--

"Then you lived like a workingman, father; you were very, very poor. Yet
my mother had been used to luxury, She was well born--she was a lady?"

"It is true, my dear; it was a poor life that I could give her."

Mr. Lyon answered in utter dimness as to the course Esther's mind was
taking. He had anticipated before his disclosure, from his long-standing
discernment of tendencies in her which were often the cause of silent
grief to him, that the discovery likely to have the keenest interest for
her would be that her parents had a higher rank than that of the poor
Dissenting preacher; but she had shown that other and better
sensibilities were predominant. He rebuked himself now for a hasty and
shallow judgment concerning the child's inner life, and waited for new
clearness.

"But that must be the best life, father," said Esther, suddenly rising,
with a flush across her paleness, and standing with her head thrown a
little backward, as if some illumination had given her a new decision.
"That must be the best life."

"What life, my dear child?"

"Why, that where one bears and does everything because of some great and
strong feeling--so that this and that in one's circumstances don't
signify."

"Yea, verily; but the feeling that should be thus supreme is devotedness
to the Divine Will."

Esther did not speak; her father's words did not fit on to the
impressions wrought in her by what he had told her. She sat down again,
and said, more quietly--

"Mamma did not speak much of my--first father?"

"Not much, dear. She said he was beautiful to the eye, and good and
generous; and that his family was of those who had been long privileged
among their fellows. But now I will deliver to you the letters, which,
together with the ring and locket, are the only visible memorials she
retained of him."

Mr. Lyon reached and delivered to Esther the box containing the relics.
"Take them, and examine them in privacy, my dear. And that I may no more
err by concealment, I will tell you some late occurrences that bear on
these memorials, though to my present apprehension doubtfully and
confusedly."

He then narrated to Esther all that had passed between himself and
Christian. The possibility--to which Mr. Lyon's alarms had pointed--that
her real father might still be living, was a new shock. She could not
speak about it to her present father, but it was registered in silence
as a painful addition to the uncertainties which she suddenly saw
hanging over her life.

"I have little confidence in this man's allegations," Mr. Lyon ended. "I
confess his presence and speech are to me as the jarring of metal. He
bears the stamp of one who has never conceived aught of more sanctity
than the lust of the eye and the pride of life. He hints at some
possible inheritance for you, and denounces mysteriously the devices of
Mr. Jermyn. All this may or may not have a true foundation. But it is
not my part to move in this matter save on a clear showing."

"Certainly not, father," said Esther, eagerly. A little while ago, these
problematic prospects might have set her dreaming pleasantly; but now,
for some reasons that she could not have put distinctly into words, they
affected her with dread.




CHAPTER XXVII.

    To hear with eyes is part of love's rare wit.

                                        --SHAKESPEARE: _Sonnets_.

                        Custom calls me to't;
    What custom wills, in all things should we do't.
    The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
    And mountainous error be too highly heaped
    For truth to over-peer.--_Coriolanus._


In the afternoon Mr. Lyon went out to see the sick amongst his flock,
and Esther, who had been passing the morning in dwelling on the memories
and the few remaining relics of her parents, was left alone in the
parlor amidst the lingering odors of the early dinner, not easily got
rid of in that small house. Rich people, who know nothing of these
vulgar details, can hardly imagine their significance in the history of
multitudes of human lives in which the sensibilities are never adjusted
to the external conditions. Esther always felt so much discomfort from
those odors that she usually seized any possibility of escaping from
them, and to-day they oppressed her the more because she was weary with
long-continued agitation. Why did she not put on her bonnet as usual and
get out into the open air? It was one of those pleasant November
afternoons--pleasant in the wide country--when the sunshine is on the
clinging brown leaves of the young oaks, and the last yellow leaves of
the elms flutter down in the fresh but not eager breeze. But Esther sat
still on the sofa--pale and with reddened eyelids, her curls all pushed
back carelessly, and her elbow resting on the ridgy black horsehair,
which usually almost set her teeth on edge if she pressed it even
through her sleeve--while her eyes rested blankly on the dull street.
Lyddy had said, "Miss, you look sadly; if you can't take a walk, go and
lie down." She had never seen the curls in such disorder, and she
reflected that there had been a death from typhus recently. But the
obstinate Miss only shook her head.

Esther was waiting for the sake of--not a probability, but--a mere
possibility, which made the brothy odors endurable. Apparently, in less
than half an hour, the possibility came to pass, for she changed her
attitude, almost started from her seat, sat down again, and listened
eagerly. If Lyddy should send him away, could she herself rush out and
call him back? Why not? Such things were permissible where it was
understood, from the necessity of the case, that there was only
friendship. But Lyddy opened the door and said, "Here's Mr. Holt, Miss,
wants to know if you'll give him leave to come in. I told him you was
sadly."

"Oh, yes, Lyddy, beg him to come in."

"I should not have persevered," said Felix, as they shook hands, "only I
know Lyddy's dismal way. But you do look ill," he went on, as he seated
himself at the other end of the sofa. "Or rather--for that's a false way
of putting it--you look as if you had been very much distressed. Do you
mind about my taking notice of it?"

He spoke very kindly, and looked at her more persistently than he had
ever done before, when her hair was perfect.

"You are quite right. I am not at all ill. But I have been very much
agitated this morning. My father has been telling me things I never
heard before about my mother, and giving me things that belonged to her.
She died when I was a very little creature."

"Then it is no new pain or trouble for you and Mr. Lyon? I could not
help being anxious to know that."

Esther passed her hand over her brow before she answered. "I hardly know
whether it is pain, or something better than pleasure. It has made me
see things I was blind to before--depths in my father's nature."

As she said this, she looked at Felix, and their eyes met very gravely.

"It is such a beautiful day," he said, "it would do you good to go into
the air. Let me take you along the river toward Little Treby, will you?"

"I will put my bonnet on," said Esther, unhesitatingly, though they had
never walked out together before.

It is true that to get into the fields they had to pass through the
street; and when Esther saw some acquaintances, she reflected that her
walking alone with Felix might be a subject of remark--all the more
because of his cap, patched boots, no cravat, and thick stick. Esther
was a little amazed herself at what she had come to. So our lives glide
on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and there is
no more jumping ashore.

When they were in the streets Esther hardly spoke. Felix talked with his
usual readiness, as easily as if he were not doing it solely to divert
her thoughts, first about Job Tudge's delicate chest, and the
probability that the little white-faced monkey would not live long; and
then about a miserable beginning of a night-school, which was all he
could get together at Sproxton, and the dismalness of that hamlet, which
was a sort of lip to the coalpit on one side and the "public" on the
other--and yet a paradise compared with the wynds of Glasgow, where
there was little more than a chink of daylight to show the hatred in
women's faces.

But soon they got into the fields, where there was a right of way toward
Little Treby, now following the course of the river, now crossing toward
a lane, and now turning into a cart-track through a plantation.

"Here we are!" said Felix, when they had crossed the wooden bridge, and
were treading on the slanting shadows made by the elm-trunks. "I think
this is delicious. I never feel less unhappy than in these late autumn
afternoons when they are sunny."

"Less unhappy! There now!" said Esther, smiling at him with some of her
habitual sauciness, "I have caught you in self-contradiction. I have
heard you quite furious against puling, melancholy people. If I had said
what you have just said, you would have given me a long lecture, and
told me to go home and interest myself in the reason of the
rule-of-three."

"Very likely," said Felix, beating the weeds, according to the foible of
our common humanity when it has a stick in its hand. "But I don't think
myself a fine fellow because I'm melancholy. I don't measure my force by
the negations in me, and think my soul must be a mighty one because it
is more given to idle suffering than to beneficent activity. That's what
your favorite gentlemen do, of the Byronic-bilious style."

"I don't admit that those are my favorite gentlemen."

"I've heard you defend them--gentlemen like your Rénés, who have no
particular talent for the finite, but a general sense that the infinite
is the right thing for them. They might as well boast of nausea as a
proof of a strong inside."

"Stop, stop! You run on in that way to get out of my reach. I convicted
you of confessing that you are melancholy."

"Yes," said Felix, thrusting his left hand into his pocket, with a
shrug; "as I could confess to a great many other things I'm not proud
of. The fact is, there are not many easy lots to be drawn in the world
at present; and such as they are I am not envious of them. I don't say
life is not worth having to a man who has some sparks of sense and
feeling and bravery in him. And the finest fellow of all would be the
one who could be glad to have lived because the world was chiefly
miserable, and his life had come to help some one who needed it. He
would be the man who had the most powers and the fewest selfish wants.
But I'm not up to the level of what I see to be best. I'm often a hungry
discontented fellow."

"Why have you made your life so hard then?" said Esther, rather
frightened as she asked the question. "It seems to me you have tried to
find just the most difficult task."

"Not at all," said Felix, with curt decision. "My course was a very
simple one. It was pointed out to me by conditions that I saw as clearly
as I see the bars of this stile. It's a difficult stile too," added
Felix, striding over. "Shall I help you, or will you be left to
yourself?"

"I can do without help, thank you."

"It was simple enough," continued Felix, as they walked on. "If I meant
to put a stop to the sale of those drugs, I must keep my mother, and of
course at her age she would not leave the place she had been used to.
And I had made up my mind against what they call genteel business."

"But suppose every one did as you do? Please to forgive me for saying
so; but I cannot see why you could not have lived as honorably with some
employment that presupposes education and refinement."

"Because you can't see my history or my nature," said Felix, bluntly. "I
have to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don't blame them,
or think I am better than they; their circumstances are different. I
would never choose to withdraw myself from the labor and common burden
of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the push and the
scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me a
fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the push and the scramble in
the long-run. But I care for the people who live now and will not be
living when the long-run comes. As it is, I prefer going shares with the
unlucky."

Esther did not speak, and there was silence between them for a minute or
two, till they passed through a gate into a plantation where there was
no large timber, but only thin-stemmed trees and underwood, so that the
sunlight fell on the mossy spaces which lay open here and there.

"See how beautiful those stooping birch-stems are with the light on
them!" said Felix. "Here is an old felled trunk they have not thought
worth carrying away. Shall we sit down a little while?"

"Yes; the mossy ground with the dry leaves sprinkled over it is
delightful to one's feet." Esther sat down and took off her bonnet, that
the light breeze might fall on her head. Felix, too, threw down his cap
and stick, lying on the ground with his back against the felled trunk.

"I wish I felt more as you do," she said, looking at the point of her
foot, which was playing with a tuft of moss. "I can't help caring very
much what happens to me. And you seem to care so little about yourself."

"You are thoroughly mistaken," said Felix. "It is just because I'm a
very ambitious fellow, with very hungry passions, wanting a great deal
to satisfy me, that I have chosen to give up what people call worldly
good. At least that has been one determining reason. It all depends on
what a man gets into his consciousness--what life thrusts into his mind,
so that it becomes present to him as remorse is present to the guilty,
or a mechanical problem to an inventive genius. There are two things
I've got present in that way: one of them is the picture of what I
should hate to be. I'm determined never to go about making my face
simpering or solemn, and telling professional lies for profit; or to get
tangled in affairs where I must wink at dishonesty and pocket the
proceeds, and justify that knavery as part of a system that I can't
alter. If I once went into that sort of struggle for success I should
want to win--I should defend the wrong that I had once identified myself
with. I should become everything that I see now beforehand to be
detestable. And what's more, I should do this, as men are doing it every
day, for a ridiculously small prize--perhaps for none at all--perhaps
for the sake of two parlors, a rank eligible for the churchwardenship, a
discontented wife, and several unhopeful children."

Esther felt a terrible pressure on her heart--the certainty of her
remoteness from Felix--the sense that she was utterly trivial to him.

"The other thing that's got into my mind like a splinter," said Felix,
after a pause, "is the life of the miserable--the spawning life of vice
and hunger. I'll never be one of the sleek dogs. The old Catholics are
right, with their higher rule and their lower. Some are called to
subject themselves to a harder discipline, and renounce things
voluntarily which are lawful for others. It is the old word--'necessity'
is laid upon me.

"It seems to me you are stricter than my father is."

"No; I quarrel with no delight that is not base or cruel, but one must
sometimes accommodate one's self to a small share. That is the lot of
the majority. I would wish the minority joy, only they don't want my
wishes."

Again there was silence. Esther's cheeks were hot in spite of the breeze
that sent her hair floating backward. She felt an inward strain, a
demand on her to see things in a light that was not easy or soothing.
When Felix had asked her to walk he seemed so kind, so alive to what
might be her feelings, that she had thought herself nearer to him than
she had ever been before; but since they had come out he had appeared to
forget all that. And yet she was conscious that this impatience of hers
was very petty. Battling in this way with her own little impulses, and
looking at the birch-stems opposite till her gaze was too wide for her
to see anything distinctly, she was unaware how long they had remained
without speaking. She did not know that Felix had changed his attitude a
little, and was resting his elbow on the tree-trunk, while he supported
his head, which was turned toward her. Suddenly he said, in a lower tone
than was habitual to him:

"You are very beautiful."

She started and looked round at him, to see whether his face would give
some help to the interpretation of this novel speech. He was looking up
at her quite calmly, very much as a reverential Protestant might look at
a picture of the Virgin, with a devoutness suggested by the type rather
than by the image. Esther's vanity was not in the least gratified: she
felt that, somehow or other, Felix was going to reproach her.

"I wonder," he went on, still looking at her, "whether the subtle
measuring of forces will ever come to measuring the force there would be
in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was
beautiful--who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all
the great aims of his life."

Esther's eyes got hot and smarting. It was no use trying to be
dignified. She had turned away her head, and now said, rather bitterly,
"It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be anything good when she is
not believed in--when it is always supposed that she must be
contemptible."

"No, dear Esther"--it was the first time Felix had been prompted to call
her by her Christian name, and as he did so he laid his large hand on
her two little hands, which were clasped on her knees. "You don't
believe that I think you contemptible. When I first saw you----"

"I know, I know," said Esther, interrupting him impetuously, but still
looking away. "You mean you did think me contemptible then. But it was
very narrow of you to judge me in that way, when my life had been so
different from yours. I have great faults. I know I am selfish, and
think too much of my own small tastes and too little of what affects
others. But I am not stupid. I am not unfeeling. I can see what is
better."

"But I have not done you injustice since I knew more of you," said
Felix, gently.

"Yes, you have," said Esther, turning and smiling at him through her
tears. "You talk to me like an angry pedagogue. Were _you_ always wise?
Remember the time when you were foolish or naughty."

"That is not far off," said Felix, curtly, taking away his hand, and
clasping it with the other at the back of his head. The talk, which
seemed to be introducing a mutual understanding, such as had not existed
before, seemed to have undergone some check.

"Shall we get up and walk back now?" said Esther, after a few moments.

"No," said Felix, entreatingly. "Don't move yet. I dare say we shall
never walk together or sit here again."

"Why not?"

"Because I am a man who am warned by visions. Those old stories of
visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making
the future present to ourselves."

"I wish I could get visions, then," said Esther, smiling at him, with an
effort of playfulness, in resistance to something vaguely mournful
within her.

"That is what I want," said Felix, looking at her very earnestly. "Don't
turn your head. Do look at me, and then I shall know if I may go on
speaking. I do believe in you; but I want you to have such a vision of
the future that you may never lose your best self. Some charm or other
may be flung about you--some of your attar-of-rose fascinations--and
nothing but a good strong terrible vision will save you. And if it did
save you, you might be that woman I was thinking of a little while ago
when I looked at your face: the woman whose beauty makes a great task
easier to men instead of turning them away from it. I am not likely to
see such fine issues; but they may come where a woman's spirit is finely
touched. I should like to be sure they would come to you."

"Why are you not likely to know what becomes of me?" said Esther,
turning away her eyes in spite of his command. "Why should you not
always be my father's friend and mine?"

"Oh, I shall go away as soon as I can to some large town," said Felix,
in his more usual tone--"some ugly, wicked, miserable place. I want to
be a demagogue of a new sort; an honest one, if possible, who will tell
the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor
fatten on them. I have my heritage--an order I belong to. I have the
blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up
for the lot of the handicraftsman as a good lot, in which a man may be
better trained to all the best functions of his nature than if he
belonged to the grimacing set who have visiting-cards, and are proud to
be thought richer than their neighbors."

"Would nothing ever make it seem right to you to change your mind?" said
Esther (she had rapidly woven some possibilities out of the new
uncertainties in her own lot, though she would not for the world have
had Felix know of her weaving). "Suppose, by some means or other, a
fortune might come to you honorably--by marriage, or in any other
unexpected way--would you see no change in your course?"

"No," said Felix, peremptorily; "I will never be rich. I don't count
that as any peculiar virtue. Some men do well to accept riches, but that
is not my inward vocation: I have no fellow-feeling with the rich as a
class; the habits of their lives are odious to me. Thousands of men have
wedded poverty because they expect to go to heaven for it; I don't
expect to go to heaven for it, but I wed it because it enables me to do
what I most want to do on earth. Whatever the hopes for the world may
be--whether great or small--I am a man of this generation; I will try to
make life less bitter for a few within my reach. It is held reasonable
enough to toil for the fortunes of a family, though it may turn to
imbecility in the third generation. I choose a family with more chances
in it."

Esther looked before her dreamily till she said, "That seems a hard lot;
yet it is a great one." She rose to walk back.

"Then you don't think I'm a fool," said Felix, loudly, starting to his
feet, and then stooping to gather up his cap and stick.

"Of course you suspected me of that stupidity."

"Well--women, unless they are Saint Theresas or Elizabeth Frys,
generally think this sort of thing madness, unless when they read of it
in the Bible."

"A woman can hardly ever choose in that way; she is dependent on what
happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things
are within her reach."

"Why, can you imagine yourself choosing hardship as the better lot?"
said Felix, looking at her with a sudden question in his eyes.

"Yes, I can," she said, flushing over neck and brow.

Their words were charged with a meaning dependent entirely on the secret
consciousness of each. Nothing had been said which was necessarily
personal. They walked a few yards along the road by which they had come,
without further speech, till Felix said gently, "Take my arm." She took
it, and they walked home so, entirely without conversation. Felix was
struggling as a firm man struggles with a temptation, seeing beyond it
and disbelieving its lying promise. Esther was struggling as a woman
struggles with the yearning for some expression of love, and with
vexation under that subjection to a yearning which is not likely to be
satisfied. Each was conscious of a silence which each was unable to
break, till they entered Malthouse Lane, and were within a few yards of
the minister's door.

"It is getting dusk," Felix then said; "will Mr. Lyon be anxious about
you?"

"No, I think not. Lyddy would tell him that I went out with you, and
that you carried a large stick," said Esther, with a light laugh.

Felix went in with Esther to take tea, but the conversation was entirely
between him and Mr. Lyon about the tricks of canvassing, the foolish
personality of the placards, and the probabilities of Transome's return,
as to which Felix declared himself to have become indifferent. This
scepticism made the minister uneasy: he had great belief in the old
political watchwords, had preached that universal suffrage and no ballot
were agreeable to the will of God, and liked to believe that a visible
"instrument" was forthcoming in the Radical candidate who had pronounced
emphatically against Whig finality. Felix, being in a perverse mood,
contended that universal suffrage would be equally agreeable to the
devil; that he would change his politics a little, have a larger
traffic, and see himself more fully represented in Parliament.

"Nay, my friend," said the minister, "you are again sporting with
paradox; for you will not deny that you glory in the name of Radical, or
Root-and-branch man, as they said in the great times when Nonconformity
was in its giant youth."

"A Radical--yes; but I want to go to some roots a good deal lower down
than the franchise."

"Truly there is a work within which cannot be dispensed with; but it is
our preliminary work to free men from the stifled life of political
nullity, and bring them into what Milton calls 'the liberal air,'
wherein alone can be wrought the final triumphs of the Spirit."

"With all my heart. But while Caliban is Caliban, though you multiply
him by a million, he'll worship every Trinculo that carries a bottle. I
forget, though--you don't read Shakespeare, Mr. Lyon."

"I am bound to confess that I have so far looked into a volume of
Esther's as to conceive your meaning; but the fantasies therein were so
little to be reconciled with a steady contemplation of that divine
economy which is hidden from sense and revealed to faith, that I forbore
the reading, as likely to perturb my ministrations."

Esther sat by in unusual silence. The conviction that Felix willed her
exclusion from his life was making it plain that something more than
friendship between them was not so thoroughly out of the question as she
had always inwardly asserted. In her pain that his choice lay aloof from
her, she was compelled frankly to admit to herself the longing that it
had been otherwise, and that he had entreated her to share his difficult
life. He was like no one else to her: he had seemed to bring at once a
law, and the love that gave strength to obey the law. Yet the next
moment, stung by his independence of her, she denied that she loved him;
she had only longed for a moral support under the negations of her life.
If she were not to have that support, all effort seemed useless.

Esther had been so long used to hear the formulas of her father's belief
without feeling or understanding them, that they had lost all power to
touch her. The first religious experience of her life--the first
self-questioning, the first voluntary subjection, the first longing to
acquire the strength of greater motives and obey the more strenuous
rule--had come to her through Felix Holt. No wonder that she felt as if
the loss of him were inevitable backsliding.

But was it certain that she should lose him? She did not believe that he
was really indifferent to her.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

    _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 premise 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 Honor, 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 honor where honor
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?"

"Oh, 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 up 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 had 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."

"Oh, he meant no harm," said Mr. Sims. "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, 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 large white kerchief bound round her cap,
as if her head had recently required surgery; it had doctored ale, an
odor of bad tobacco, and remarkably strong cheese. It was not what
Astræa, 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 toward 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 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 sixpenny worth 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 Parl'ment."

"Trounsem, said 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 workingmen, and's proved it too,
in the way o' being open-handed 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 peered 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 gentelman 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 honorable 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 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 color. 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 chance, 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 had 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 year 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' good-will
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 of 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 to catch hold. I'm pretty
deep; I see a good deal further than Spilkins. There was Ned Patch, the
peddler, 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 kep' ferrets and a little bit of a
public, there come 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 off 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 with 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
country-side, 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 Tommy's 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?"

"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 yard 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 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 neighborhood, 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 most frightened."

"Yes, yes. There! Now for another placard. And so that was all?"

"All?" said Tommy, turning round and holding the paste-brush 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 pot-man. It's a pleasant
life. I shall live at publics and see the world, and pick 'quaintance,
and get a chance 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,
'Missus, could you tell me of a lawyer,' says I, 'not very big or fine,
but a second-size--a big-potato, like?' 'That I can,' says she; 'there's
one now in the bar parlor.' '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 gray 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 foriver,
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
to-morrow morning."

"Ay, ay. But don't you believe too much i' Spilkins," said Tommy,
pocketing the half-crown, and showing his gratitude by giving this
advice--"he's no harm much--but weak. He thinks he's at the bottom o'
things because he scores you up. But I bear him no ill-will. Tommy
Trounsem's a good chap; and any day you like to give me half-a-crown,
I'll tell you the same story over again. Not now; I'm dry. Come, help me
up wi' these things; you're a younger chap than me. Well, I'll tell
Spilkins you'll come again another day."

The moonlight, which had lit up poor Tommy's oratorical attitude, had
served to light up for Christian the print of the placards. He had
expected the copies to be various, and had turned them half over at
different depths of the sheaf before drawing out those he offered to the
bill-sticker. Suddenly the clearer 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 bills 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.




CHAPTER XXIX.

    I doe believe that, as the gall has severall 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 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 beat, 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 as 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 get 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 handling-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 poohpoohing 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 toward women, cold and self-contained
toward men. You will hear very strong denials 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, overbearing 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 it did not 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 behavior 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 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 honor, 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 out-worn 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 flat
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 interests 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 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 cognizant 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 the 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 sometime 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 enquiries 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 a 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 diplomats, who might be mutually useful, such ignorance
is often obstructive. Mr. John Johnson and Mr. Christian, otherwise Mr.
Scaddon, might have had a concentration of purpose and an ingenuity of
device fitting them to make a figure in the parcelling of Europe, and
yet they might never have met, simply because Johnson knew nothing of
Christian, and because Christian did not know where to find Johnson.




CHAPTER XXX.

    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 industrious or the idle parasite.

Mr. Lyon had urged Felix to go to Duffield on the fifteenth 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 toward 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 outflowings 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 laborers 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 recognized
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 honor as the cause why workingmen
existed. But Mr. Spratt did not sufficiently consider that a cause which
was 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 favor. And the inconvenient presence of Spratt
was easily got rid of by a dexterously-managed accident, which sent him
bruised and limping from the scene of action. Mr. Chubb had never before
felt so thoroughly that the occasion was up to a level with his talents,
while the clear daylight in which his virtue would appear when at the
election he voted, as his duty to himself bound him, for Garstin only,
gave him thorough repose of conscience.

Felix Holt was the only person looking on at the senseless exhibitions
of this nomination-day, who knew from the beginning the history of the
trick with the Sproxton men. He had been aware all along that the
treating at Chubb's had been continued, and that so far Harold
Transome's promise had produced no good fruits; and what he was
observing to-day, as he watched the uproarious crowd, convinced him that
the whole scheme would be carried out just as if he had never spoken
about it. He could be fair enough to Transome to allow that he might
have wished, and yet have been unable, with his notions of success, to
keep his promise; and his bitterness toward the candidate only took the
form of contemptuous pity; for Felix was not sparing in his contempt for
men who put their inward honor 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 himself. 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 favor 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 burning 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 which 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 forefinger, and marked his emphasis with it
as he spoke. His voice was high and not strong, but Felix recognized the
fluency and the method of an 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, 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 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 paid well 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 person 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 have to give 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 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
workingmen heaven, and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with
them. We'll 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
workingmen 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 broomstick 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 hurried 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 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 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 gray 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 your friend when he said the great
question was how to give every man a man's share in life. But I think he
expects voting to do more toward it than I do. I want the workingmen to
have power. I'm a workingman 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 labor, 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 toward 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 workingmen to have,
and I can see plainly enough that our all having votes will do little
toward 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 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 honorable 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 workingmen 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 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 about 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 all 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, 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 pattern of the work-house 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 these 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 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.

"Oh--a London attorney. He acts for Transome. That tremendous fellow at
the corner 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
workingmen 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 his 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 would have to 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
place it in the hands of Bycliffe's old lawyers--of course he would do
that? Johnson replied that he would certainly do that; but that there
were legal niceties which Mr. Christian was probably not acquainted
with; that Esther's claim had not yet accrued, and that hurry was
useless.

The two men parted, each in distrust of the other, but each well pleased
to have learned something. Johnson was not at all sure how he should
act, but thought it likely that events would soon guide him. Christian
was beginning to meditate a way of securing his own ends without
depending in the least on Johnson's procedure. It was enough for him
that he was now assured of Esther's legal claim on the Transome estates.




CHAPTER XXXI.

    "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 law 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 larger number of
vehicles, horsemen, and also foot-passengers than were ever seen 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 headquarters 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
afterward. The tenants on the Transome estate were comparatively
fearless: poor Mr. Goffe, of Rabbit's End, considered that "one thing
was as mauling as the other," 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-colored ribbons and streamers of the true Tory
candidate, some with the mazarine of the Whig. The orange-colored bands
played "Auld Lang Syne," and a louder mazarine band came across them
with "Oh, 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, 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 possible 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
satirized according to a formula, in which the adjective was Tory, Whig,
or Radical, as the case might be, and the substantive a 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 armor. 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 wagoner, 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 favor, 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 a
independent man, and I consider it's not my part to show favor 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 a 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 wits 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 patronizing toward all political parties, and only so
far partial as his family bound him to be.

But a disposition to concentrate at that extremity of King Street which
issued in the market-place, was not universal among the increasing
crowd. Some of them seemed attracted toward another nucleus at the other
extremity of King Street, near the Seven Stars. This was Garstin'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 colors 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 King 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 odors 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 flavor 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 headlong 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 adjourned. 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 colored bandana, 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.




CHAPTER XXXII.

    Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
    Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
    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 fulfillment 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 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
fiber 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 to-day 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 parlor door behind them, 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 was 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, coloring. 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
toward 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 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 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 knighthood. 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
childlike 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; and Felix felt for
Esther's pain as the strong soldier, who can march on hungering without
fear that he shall faint, feels for the young brother--the
maiden-cheeked conscript whose load is too heavy for him.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

    Mischief, thou art afoot.--_Julius Cæsar._


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 pickaxe. 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 the 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 widely 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 dispatched 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 to a negative certainty.

Presently Mr. Crow, who called 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 green-grocer'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 toward 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 favor 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 toward 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 toward 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 into the wine-vaults
of 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 toward
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 tap-room, and
to search for the cellar: some up-stairs to search in all the 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 of 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
onward, 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 neighbor to follow him, and with a sabre that
happened to be his weapon, got away 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 toward 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 attacks 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 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 a long time 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
firearms; and where there is no strong counter-movement, any proposition
to do something that is 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 everyday 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 stratagem, 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 afterward 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
toward a speedy opening between hedgerows, on the other toward 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
toward 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 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! 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 laboring 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 favorable to that
confusion which was always a harvest-time. It was known to some of these
sharp men that Park Street led out toward 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 had come when they were to have their triumph.

From the front ranks backward toward 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 town, with openings into
fields and with the wide park at hand, it would have been easy 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 of
people 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 toward any larger result, had issued in
widely-shared mischief that might yet be hideous.

[Illustration: FELIX WOUNDED IN THE RIOT.]

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 with 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. There were three charges against
him: that he had assaulted a constable, that he had committed
manslaughter (Tucker was dead from spinal concussion), and that he had
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.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

    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 humor
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 dishonor 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 co-operation
of his with the noisy rioters, but arising probably from some rather
ill-judged efforts to counteract their violence. And this urgent
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 favor 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 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 was
now lying 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 dullness 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 gran-dame. 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 had 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-colored 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.




CHAPTER XXXV.

    _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 toward the light and his face
toward 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 impenetrableness which he preserved under the ordinary
annoyance 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 country
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: state of the facts which renders
your father's title and your own title to the family estates utterly
worthless as soon as the 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 favor 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 toward 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 once 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 estate 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 told you of. The enquiries about him set him agog, and after they were
dropped he came into this neighborhood, 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 toward 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.
And then 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.




CHAPTER XXXVI.

    Are these things then necessities?
    Then let us meet them like necessities.

                                        --SHAKESPEARE: _Henry IV_.

    See now the virtue living in a word!
    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 neighborly to save a neighbor's neck:
    What harm in 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 the 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 losses 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 honor 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 fulfillment 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 gulled 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 toward 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 Mr. 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?"

"Ah!" 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 no previous hint.

"It is this fact, 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 toward 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 vise. 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
endeavor 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 Yard."

"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 parlor--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 which 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 toward that end: what he had made up his mind
to, as the course most satisfactory to his nature under present
urgencies, was to behave to Esther with a frank gentle manliness, 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 his 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 vise, 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 to-day, when you have lunched. It is better to lose no
time. I'll order the carriage."

"Stay," said Mrs. Transome, with 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: everyone 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 dare say 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
color, 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-in-law unless she is a pearl. Now we will get ready to
go."

In half an hour from that time Mrs. Transome came down, looking majestic
in sables and velvet, ready to call on "the girl in Malthouse Yard." She
had composed herself to go through this task. She saw there was nothing
better to be done. After the resolutions Harold had taken, some sort of
compromise 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.




CHAPTER XXXVII.

    I also could speak as ye do; if your soul were in my soul's stead,
    I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at
    you.--_Book of Job._


In the interval since Esther parted with Felix Holt on the day of the
riot, she had gone through so much emotion, and had already had so
strong a shock of surprise, that she was prepared to receive any new
incident of an unwonted kind with comparative equanimity.

When Mr. Lyon had got home again from his preaching excursion, Felix was
already on his way to Loamford Jail. The little minister was terribly
shaken by the news. He saw no clear explanation of Felix Holt's conduct;
for the statements Esther had heard were so conflicting that she had not
been able to gather distinctly what had come out in the examination by
the magistrates. But Mr. Lyon felt confident that Felix was innocent of
any wish to abet a riot or the infliction of injuries; what he chiefly
feared was that in the fatal encounter with Tucker he had been moved by
a rash temper, not sufficiently guarded against by a prayerful and
humble spirit.

"My poor young friend is being taught with mysterious severity the evil
of a too confident self-reliance," he said to Esther, as they sat
opposite to each other, listening and speaking sadly.

"You will go and see him, father?"

"Verily will I. But I must straightway go and see that poor afflicted
woman, whose soul is doubtless whirled about in this trouble like a
shapeless and unstable thing driven by divided winds." Mr. Lyon rose and
took his hat hastily, ready to walk out, with his greatcoat flying open
and exposing his small person to the keen air.

"Stay, father, pray, till you have had some food," said Esther, putting
her hand on his arm. "You look quite weary and shattered."

"Child, I cannot stay. I can neither eat bread nor drink water till I
have learned more about this young man's deeds, what can be proved and
what cannot be proved against him. I fear he has none to stand by him in
this town, for even by the friends of our church I have been ofttimes
rebuked because he seemed dear to me. But, Esther, my beloved child----"

Here Mr. Lyon grasped her arm, and seemed in the need of speech to
forget his previous haste. "I bear in mind this: the Lord knoweth them
that are His; but we--we are left to judge by uncertain signs, that so
we may learn to exercise hope and faith toward one another; and in this
uncertainty I cling with awful hope to those whom the world loves not
because their conscience, albeit mistakenly, is at war with the habits
of the world. Our great faith, my Esther, is the faith of martyrs: I
will not lightly turn away from any man who endures harshness because he
will not lie; nay, though I would not wantonly grasp at ease of mind
through an arbitrary choice of doctrine, I cannot but believe that the
merits of the Divine Sacrifice are wider than our utmost charity. I once
believed otherwise--but not now, not now."

The minister paused, and seemed to be abstractedly gazing at some
memory: he was always liable to be snatched away by thoughts from the
pursuit of a purpose which had seemed pressing. Esther seized the
opportunity and prevailed on him to fortify himself with some of Lyddy's
porridge before he went out on his tiring task of seeking definite
trustworthy knowledge from the lips of various witnesses, beginning with
that feminine darkener of counsel, poor Mrs. Holt.

She, regarding all her trouble about Felix in the light of a fulfilment
of her own prophecies, treated the sad history with a preference for
edification above accuracy, and for mystery above relevance, worthy of a
commentator on the Apocalypse. She insisted chiefly, not on the
important facts that Felix had sat at his work till after eleven, like a
deaf man, had rushed out in surprise and alarm, had come back to report
with satisfaction that things were quiet, and had asked her to set by
his dinner for him--facts which would tell as evidence that Felix was
disconnected with any project of disturbances, and was averse to them.
These things came out incidentally in her long plaint to the minister;
but what Mrs. Holt felt it essential to state was, that long before
Michaelmas was turned, sitting in her chair, she had said to Felix that
there would be a judgment on him for being so certain sure about the
Pills and the Elixir.

"And now, Mr. Lyon," said the poor woman, who had dressed herself in a
gown previously cast off, a front all out of curl, and a cap with no
starch in it, while she held little coughing Job on her knee,--"and now
you see--my words have come true sooner than I thought they would. Felix
may contradict me if he will; but there he is in prison, and here am I,
with nothing in the world to bless myself with but half-a-crown a-week
as I've saved by my own scraping, and this house I've got to pay rent
for. It's not me has done wrong, Mr. Lyon; there's nobody can say it of
me--not the orphan child on my knee is more innicent o' riot and murder
and anything else as is bad. But when you've got a son so masterful and
stopping medicines as Providence has sent, and his betters have been
taking up and down the country since before he was a baby, it's o' no
use being good here below. But he _was_ a baby, Mr. Lyon, and I gave him
the breast,"--here poor Mrs. Holt's motherly love over-came her
expository eagerness, and she fell more and more to crying as she
spoke--"And to think there's folks saying now as he'll be transported,
and his hair shaved off, and the treadmill, and everything. Oh, dear!"

As Mrs. Holt broke off into sobbing, little Job also, who had got a
confused yet profound sense of sorrow, and of Felix being hurt and gone
away, set up a little wail of wondering misery.

"Nay, Mistress Holt," said the minister, soothingly, "enlarge not your
grief by more than warrantable grounds. I have good hope that my young
friend, your son, will be delivered from any severe consequences beyond
the death of the man Tucker, which I fear will ever be a sore burden on
his memory. I feel confident that a jury of His country-men will
discern between misfortune, or it may be misjudgment, and an evil will,
and that he will be acquitted of any grave offence."

"He never stole anything in his life, Mr. Lyon," said Mrs. Holt,
reviving. "Nobody can throw it in my face as my son ran away with money
like the young man at the bank--though he looked most respectable, and
far different on a Sunday to what Felix ever did. And I know it's very
hard fighting with constables; but they say Tucker's wife'll be a deal
better off than she was before, for the great folks'll pension her, and
she'll be put on all the charities, and her children at the Free School,
and everything. Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift
for you; and if judge and jury wants to do right by Felix, they'll think
of his poor mother, with the bread took out of her mouth, all but
half-a-crown a-week and furniture--which, to be sure, is most excellent,
and of my own buying--and got to keep this orphin child as Felix himself
brought on me. And I might send him back to his old grandfather on
parish pay, but I'm not that woman, Mr. Lyon; I've a tender heart. And
here's his little feet and toes, like marbil; do but look"--here Mrs.
Holt drew off Job's sock and shoe, and showed a well-washed little
foot--"and you'll perhaps say I might take a lodger; but it's easy
talking; it isn't everybody at a loose-end wants a parlor and a bedroom;
and if anything bad happens to Felix, I may as well go and sit in the
parish pound, and nobody to buy me out; for it's beyond everything how
the church members find fault with my son. But I think they might leave
his mother to find fault; for queer and masterful he might be, and
flying in the face of the very Scripture about the physic, but he was
most clever beyond anything--that I _will_ say--and was his own father's
lawful child, and me his mother, that was Mary Wall thirty years before
ever I married his father." Here Mrs. Holt's feelings again became too
much for her, but she struggled on to say, sobbingly, "And if they're to
transport him, I should like to go to the prison and take the orphin
child; for he was most fond of having him on his lap, and said he'd
never marry; and there was One above overheard him, for he's been took
at his word."

Mr. Lyon listened with low groans, and then tried to comfort her by
saying that he would himself go to Loamford as soon as possible, and
would give his soul no rest till he had done all he could do for Felix.

On one point Mrs. Holt's plaint tallied with his own forebodings, and he
found them verified: the state of feeling in Treby among the Liberal
Dissenting flock was unfavorable to Felix. None who had observed his
conduct from the windows saw anything tending to excuse him, and his own
account of his motives, given on his examination, was spoken of with
head-shaking; if it had not been for his habit of always thinking
himself wiser than other people, he would never have entertained such a
wild scheme. He had set himself up for something extraordinary, and had
spoken ill of respectable trades-people. He had put a stop to the making
of saleable drugs, contrary to the nature of buying and selling, and to
a due reliance on what Providence might effect in the human inside
through the instrumentality of remedies unsuitable to the stomach,
looked at in a merely secular light; and the result was what might have
been expected. He had brought his mother to poverty, and himself into
trouble. And what for? He had done no good to "the cause"; if he had
fought about Church-rates, or had been worsted in some struggle in which
he was distinctly the champion of Dissent and Liberalism, his case would
have been one for gold, silver, and copper subscriptions, in order to
procure the best defence; sermons might have been preached on him, and
his name might have floated on flags from Newcastle to Dorchester. But
there seemed to be no edification in what had befallen Felix. The riot
at Treby, "turn it which way you would," as Mr. Muscat observed, was no
great credit to Liberalism; and what Mr. Lyon had to testify as to Felix
Holt's conduct in the matter of the Sproxton men, only made it clear
that the defence of Felix was the accusation of his party. The whole
affair, Mr. Nuttwood said, was dark and inscrutable, and seemed not to
be one in which the interference of God's servants would tend to give
the glory where the glory was due. That a candidate for whom the richer
church members had all voted should have his name associated with the
encouragement of drunkenness, riot, and plunder, was an occasion for the
enemy to blaspheme; and it was not clear how the enemy's mouth would be
stopped by exertions in favor of a rash young man, whose interference
had made things worse instead of better. Mr. Lyon was warned lest his
human partialities should blind him to the interests of truth: it was
God's cause that was endangered in this matter.

The little minister's soul was bruised; he himself was keenly alive to
the complication of public and private regards in this affair, and
suffered a good deal at the thought of Tory triumph in the demonstration
that, excepting the attack on the Seven Stars, which called itself a
Whig house, all damage to property had been borne by Tories. He cared
intensely for his opinions, and would have liked events to speak for
them in a sort of picture-writing that everybody could understand. The
enthusiasms of the world are not to be stimulated by a commentary in
small and subtle characters which alone can tell the whole truth; and
the picture writing in Felix Holt's troubles was of an entirely puzzling
kind: if he were a martyr, neither side wanted to claim him. Yet the
minister, as we have seen, found in his Christian faith a reason for
clinging the more to one who had not a large party to back him. That
little man's heart was heroic; he was not one of those Liberals who make
their anxiety for "the cause" of Liberalism a plea for cowardly
desertion.

Besides himself, he believed there was no one who could bear testimony
to the remonstrances of Felix concerning the treating of the Sproxton
men, except Jermyn, Johnson, and Harold Transome. Though he had the
vaguest idea of what could be done in the case, he fixed his mind on the
probability that Mr. Transome would be moved to the utmost exertion, if
only as an atonement; but he dared not take any step until he had
consulted Felix, who he foresaw was likely to have a very strong
determination as to the help he would accept or not accept.

This last expectation was fulfilled. Mr. Lyon returned to Esther, after
his day's journey to Loamford and back, with less of trouble and
perplexity in his mind: he had at least got a definite course marked
out, to which he must resign himself. Felix had declared that he would
receive no aid from Harold Transome, except the aid he might give as an
honest witness. There was nothing to be done for him but what was
perfectly simple and direct. Even if the pleading of counsel had been
permitted (and at that time it was not) on behalf of a prisoner on trial
for felony, Felix would have declined it: he would in any case have
spoken in his own defence. He had a perfectly simple account to give,
and needed not to avail himself of any legal adroitness. He consented to
accept the services of a respectable solicitor in Loamford, who offered
to conduct his case without any fees. The work was plain and easy, Felix
said. The only witnesses who had to be hunted up at all were some who
could testify that he had tried to take the crowd down Hobb's Lane, and
that they had gone to the Manor in spite of him.

"Then he is not so much cast down as you feared, father?" said Esther.

"No, child; albeit he is pale and much shaken for one so stalwart. He
hath no grief, he says, save for the poor man Tucker, and for his
mother; otherwise his heart is without a burden. We discoursed greatly
on the sad effect of all this for his mother, and on the perplexed
condition of human things, whereby even right action seems to bring evil
consequences, if we have respect only to our own brief lives, and not to
that larger rule whereby we are stewards of the eternal dealings, and
not contrivers of our own success."

"Did he say nothing about me, father?" said Esther, trembling a little,
but unable to repress her egoism.

"Yes; he asked if you were well, and sent his affectionate regards. Nay,
he bade me say something which appears to refer to your discourse
together when I was not present. 'Tell her,' he said, 'whatever they
sentence me to, she knows they can't rob me of my vocation. With poverty
for my bride, and preaching and pedagoguy for my business, I am sure of
a handsome establishment.' He laughed--doubtless bearing in mind some
playfulness of thine."

Mr. Lyon seemed to be looking at Esther as he smiled, but she was not
near enough for him to discern the expression of her face. Just then it
seemed made for melancholy rather than for playfulness. Hers was not a
childish beauty; and when the sparkle of mischief, wit and vanity was
out of her eyes, and the large look of abstracted sorrow was there, you
would have been surprised by a certain grandeur which the smiles had
hidden. That changing face was the perfect symbol of her mixed
susceptible nature, in which battle was inevitable, and the side of
victory uncertain.

She began to look on all that had passed between herself and Felix as
something not buried, but embalmed and kept as a relic in a private
sanctuary. The very entireness of her preoccupation about him, the
perpetual repetition in her memory of all that had passed between them,
tended to produce this effect. She lived with him in the past; in the
future she seemed shut out from him. He was an influence above her life,
rather than a part of it; some time or other, perhaps, he would be to
her as if he belonged to the solemn admonishing skies, checking her
self-satisfied pettiness with the suggestion of a wider life.

But not yet--not while her trouble was so fresh. For it was still _her_
trouble, and not Felix Holt's. Perhaps it was a subtraction from his
power over her, that she could never think of him with pity, because he
always seemed to her too great and strong to be pitied; he wanted
nothing. He evaded calamity by choosing privation. The best part of a
woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her
precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses too, that were let
fall ready to soothe the wearied feet.

While Esther was carrying these things in her heart, the January days
were beginning to pass by with their wonted wintry monotony, except that
there was rather more of good cheer than usual remaining from the feast
of Twelfth Night among the triumphant Tories, and rather more scandal
than usual excited among the mortified Dissenters by the wilfulness of
their minister. He had actually mentioned Felix Holt by name in his
evening sermon, and offered up a petition for him in the evening prayer,
also by name--not as "a young Ishmaelite, whom he would fain see brought
back from the lawless life of the desert, and seated in the same fold
even with the sons of Judah and of Benjamin," a suitable periphrasis
which Brother Kemp threw off without any effort, and with all the
felicity of a suggestive critic. Poor Mrs. Holt, indeed, even in the
midst of her grief, experienced a proud satisfaction; that though she
was not a church member she was now an object of congregational remark
and ministerial allusion. Feeling herself a spotless character standing
out in relief on a dark background of affliction, and a practical
contradiction to that extreme doctrine of human depravity which she had
never "given in to," she was naturally gratified and soothed by a notice
which must be a recognition. But more influential hearers were of
opinion, that in a man who had so many long sentences at command as Mr.
Lyon, so many parentheses and modifying clauses, this naked use of a
non-scriptural Treby name in an address to the Almighty was all the more
offensive. In a low unlettered local preacher of the Wesleyan persuasion
such things might pass; but a certain style in prayer was demanded from
Independents, the most educated body in the ranks of orthodox Dissent.
To Mr. Lyon such notions seemed painfully perverse, and the next morning
he was declaring to Esther his resolution stoutly to withstand them, and
to count nothing common or unclean on which a blessing could be asked,
when the tenor of his thoughts was completely changed by a great shock
of surprise which made both himself and Esther sit looking at each other
in speechless amazement.

The cause was a letter brought by a special messenger from Duffield; a
heavy letter addressed to Esther in a business-like manner, quite
unexampled in her correspondence. And the contents of the letter were
more startling than its exterior. It began:

    MADAM,--Herewith we send you a brief abstract of evidence which has
    come within our knowledge, that the right of remainder whereby the
    lineal issue of Edward Bycliffe can claim possession of the estates
    of which the entail was settled by John Justus Transome in 1729,
    now first accrues to you as the sole and lawful issue of Maurice
    Christian Bycliffe. We are confident of success in the prosecution
    of this claim, which will result to you in the possession of
    estates to the value, at the lowest, of from five to six thousand
    per annum----

It was at this point that Esther, who was reading aloud, let her hand
fall with the letter on her lap, and with a palpitating heart looked at
her father, who looked again in silence that lasted for two or three
minutes. A certain terror was upon them both, though the thoughts that
laid that weight on the tongue of each were different.

It was Mr. Lyon who spoke first.

"This, then, is what the man named Christian referred to. I distrusted
him, yet it seems he spoke truly."

"But," said Esther, whose imagination ran necessarily to those
conditions of wealth which she could best appreciate, "Do they mean that
the Transomes would be turned out of Transome Court, and that I should
go and live there? It seems quite an impossible thing."

"Nay, child, I know not. I am ignorant in these things, and the thought
of worldly grandeur for you hath more of terror than of gladness for me.
Nevertheless we must duly weigh all things, not considering aught that
befalls us as a bare event, but rather as an occasion for faithful
stewardship. Let us go to my study and consider this writing further."

How this announcement, which to Esther seemed as unprepared as if it had
fallen from the skies, came to be made to her by solicitors other than
Batt & Cowley, the old lawyers of the Bycliffes, was by a sequence as
natural, that is to say, as legally natural, as any in the world. The
secret worker of the apparent wonder was Mr. Johnson, who, on the very
day when he wrote to give his patron, Mr. Jermyn, the serious warning
that a bill was likely to be filed in Chancery against him, had carried
forward with added zeal the business already commenced, of arranging
with another firm his share in the profits likely to result from the
prosecution of Esther Bycliffe's claim.

Jermyn's star was certainly going down, and Johnson did not feel an
unmitigated grief. Beyond some troublesome declarations as to his actual
share in transactions in which his name had been used, Johnson saw
nothing formidable in prospect for himself. He was not going to be
ruined, though Jermyn probably was: he was not a high-flyer, but a mere
climbing-bird, who could hold on and get his livelihood just as well if
his wings were clipped a little. And, in the meantime, here was
something to be gained in this Bycliffe business, which, it was not
unpleasant to think, was a nut that Jermyn had intended to keep for his
own particular cracking, and which would be rather a severe astonishment
to Mr. Harold Transome, whose manners towards respectable agents were
such as leave a smart in a man of spirit.

Under the stimulus of small many-mixed motives like these, a great deal
of business has been done in the world by well-clad and, in 1833,
clean-shaven men, whose names are on charity lists, and who do not know
that they are base. Mr. Johnson's character was not much more
exceptional than his double chin.

No system, religious or political, I believe, has laid it down as a
principle that all men are alike virtuous, or even that all the people
rated for £80 houses are an honor to their species.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

    The down we rest on in our aëry dreams
    Has not been plucked from birds that live and smart;
    'Tis but warm snow, that melts not.


The story and the prospect revealed to Esther by the lawyer's letter,
which she and her father studied together, had made an impression on her
very different from what she had been used to figure to herself in her
many day-dreams as to the effect of a sudden elevation in rank and
fortune. In her day-dreams she had not traced out the means by which
such a change could be brought about; in fact, the change had seemed
impossible to her, except in her little private Utopia, which, like
other Utopias, was filled with delightful results, independent of
processes. But her mind had fixed itself habitually on the signs and
luxuries of ladyhood, for which she had the keenest perception. She had
seen the very mat in her carriage, had scented the dried rose-leaves in
her corridors, had felt the soft carpet under her pretty feet, and seen
herself, as she rose from her sofa cushions, in the crystal panel that
reflected a long drawing-room, where the conservatory flowers and the
pictures of fair women left her still with the supremacy of charm. She
had trodden the marble-firm gravel of her garden-walks and the soft deep
turf of her lawn; she had had her servants about her filled with adoring
respect, because of her kindness as well as her grace and beauty; but
she had had several accomplished cavaliers all at once sueing for her
hand--one of whom, uniting very high birth with long dark eyelashes and
the most distinguished talents, she secretly preferred, though his pride
and hers hindered an avowal, and supplied the inestimable interest of
retardation. The glimpses she had had in her brief life as a family
governess, supplied her ready faculty with details enough of delightful
still life to furnish her day-dreams; and no one who has not, like
Esther, a strong natural prompting and susceptibility toward such
things, and has at the same time suffered from the presence of opposite
conditions, can understand how powerfully those minor accidents of rank
which please the fastidious sense can preoccupy the imagination.

It seemed that almost everything in her day-dreams--cavaliers
apart--must be found at Transome Court. But now that fancy was becoming
real, and the impossible appeared possible, Esther found the balance of
her attention reversed: now that her ladyhood was not simply in Utopia,
she found herself arrested and painfully grasped by the means through
which the ladyhood was to be obtained. To her inexperience this strange
story of an alienated inheritance, of such a last representative of
pure-blooded lineage as old Thomas Transome the bill-sticker, above all
of the dispossession hanging over those who actually held, and had
expected always to hold, the wealth and position which were suddenly
announced to be rightly hers--all these things made a picture, not for
her own tastes and fancies to float in with Elysian indulgence, but in
which she was compelled to gaze on the degrading hard experience of
other human beings, and on a humiliating loss which was the obverse of
her own proud gain. Even in her times of most untroubled egoism, Esther
shrank from anything ungenerous; and the fact that she had a very lively
image of Harold Transome and his gypsy-eyed boy in her mind, gave
additional distinctness to the thought that if she entered they must
depart. Of the elder Transomes she had a dimmer vision, and they were
necessarily in the background to her sympathy.

She and her father sat with their hands locked, as they might have done
if they had been listening to a solemn oracle in the days of old
revealing unknown kinship and rightful heirdom. It was not that Esther
had any thought of renouncing her fortune; she was incapable, in these
moments, of condensing her vague ideas and feelings into any distinct
plan of action, nor indeed did it seem that she was called upon to act
with any promptitude. It was only that she was conscious of being
strangely awed by something that was called good fortune; and the awe
shut out any scheme of rejection as much as any triumphant joy in
acceptance. Her father, she learned, had died disappointed and in
wrongful imprisonment, and an undefined sense of Nemesis seemed half to
sanctify her inheritance, and counteract its apparent arbitrariness.

Felix Holt was present in her mind throughout; what he would say was an
imaginary commentary that she was constantly framing, and the words that
she most frequently gave him--for she dramatized under the inspiration
of a sadness slightly bitter--were of this kind: "That is clearly your
destiny--to be aristocratic, to be rich. I always saw that our lots lay
widely apart. You are not fit for poverty, or any work of difficulty.
But remember what I once said to you about a vision of consequences;
take care where your fortune leads you."

Her father had not spoken since they had ended their study and
discussion of the story and the evidence as it was presented to them.
Into this he had entered with his usual penetrating activity; but he was
so accustomed to the impersonal study of narrative, that even in these
exceptional moments the habit of half a century asserted itself, and he
seemed sometimes not to distinguish the case of Esther's inheritance
from a story in ancient history, until some detail recalled him to the
profound feeling that a great, great change might be coming over the
life of this child who was so close to him. At last he relapsed into
total silence, and for some time Esther was not moved to interrupt it.
He had sunk back in his chair with his hand locked in hers, and was
pursuing a sort of prayerful meditation: he lifted up no formal
petition, but it was as if his soul travelled again over the facts he
had been considering in the company of a guide ready to inspire and
correct him. He was striving to purify his feeling in this matter from
selfish or worldly dross--a striving which is that prayer without
ceasing, sure to wrest an answer by its sublime importunity.

There is no knowing how long they might have sat in this way, if it had
not been for the inevitable Lyddy reminding them dismally of dinner.

"Yes, Lyddy, we come," said Esther: and then, before moving--

"Is there any advice you have in your mind for me, father?" The sense of
awe was growing in Esther. Her intensest life was no longer in her
dreams, where she made things to her own mind: she was moving in a world
charged with forces.

"Not yet, my dear--save this; that you will seek special illumination in
this juncture, and, above all, be watchful that your soul be not lifted
up within you by what, rightly considered, is rather an increase of
charge, and a call upon you to walk along a path which is indeed easy to
the flesh, but dangerous to the spirit."

"You would always live with me, father?" Esther said, under a strong
impulse--partly affection, partly the need to grasp at some moral help.
But she had no sooner uttered the words than they raised a vision,
showing, as by a flash of lightning, the incongruity of that past which
had created the sanctities and affections of her life with that future
which was coming to her----The little rusty old minister, with the one
luxury of his Sunday evening pipe, smoked up the kitchen chimney, coming
to live in the midst of grandeur----but no! her father, with the
grandeur of his past sorrow and his long struggling labors, forsaking
his vocation, and vulgarly accepting an existence unsuited to
him.----Esther's face flushed with the excitement of this vision and its
reversed interpretation, which five months ago she would have been
incapable of seeing. Her question to her father seemed like a mockery;
she was ashamed. He answered slowly--

"Touch not that chord yet, my child. I must learn to think of thy lot
according to the demands of Providence. We will rest a while from the
subject; and I will seek calmness in my ordinary duties."

The next morning nothing more was said. Mr. Lyon was absorbed in his
sermon-making, for it was near the end of the week, and Esther was
obliged to attend to her pupils. Mrs. Holt came by invitation with
little Job to share their dinner of roast-meat; and, after much of what
the minister called unprofitable discourse, she was quitting the house
when she hastened back with an astonished face, to tell Mr. Lyon and
Esther, who were already in wonder at crashing, thundering sounds on the
pavement, that there was a carriage stopping and stamping at the entry
into Malthouse Yard, with "all sorts of fine liveries," and a lady and
gentleman inside. Mr. Lyon and Esther looked at each other, both having
the same name in their minds.

"If it's Mr. Transome or somebody else as is great, Mr. Lyon," urged
Mrs. Holt, "you'll remember my son, and say he's got a mother with a
character they may enquire into as much as they like. And never mind
what Felix says, for he's so masterful he'd stay in prison and be
transported whether or no, only to have his own way. For it's not to be
thought but what the great people could get him off if they would; and
it's very hard with a King in the country and all the texts in Proverbs
about the King's countenance, and Solomon and the live baby----"

Mr. Lyon lifted up his hand deprecatingly, and Mrs. Holt retreated from
the parlor-door to a corner of the kitchen, the outer doorway being
occupied by Dominic, who was enquiring if Mr. and Miss Lyon were at
home, and could receive Mrs. Transome and Mr. Harold Transome. While
Dominic went back to the carriage Mrs. Holt escaped with her tiny
companion to Zachary's, the new pew-opener, observing to Lyddy that she
knew herself, and was not that woman to stay where she might not be
wanted; whereupon Lyddy, differing fundamentally, admonished her parting
ear that it was well if she knew herself to be dust and ashes--silently
extending the application of this remark to Mrs. Transome, as she saw
the tall lady sweep in arrayed in her rich black and fur, with that fine
gentleman behind her whose thick top-knot of wavy hair, sparkling ring,
dark complexion, and general air of worldly exaltation unconnected with
chapel, were painfully suggestive to Lyddy of Herod, Pontius Pilate, or
the much-quoted Gallio.

Harold Transome, greeting Esther gracefully, presented his mother, whose
eagle-like glance, fixed on her from the first moment of entering,
seemed to Esther to pierce her through. Mrs. Transome hardly noticed Mr.
Lyon, not from studied haughtiness, but from sheer mental inability to
consider him--as a person ignorant of natural history is unable to
consider a fresh-water polyp otherwise than as a sort of animated weed,
certainly not fit for table. But Harold saw that his mother was
agreeably struck by Esther, who indeed showed to much advantage. She was
not at all taken by surprise, and maintained a dignified quietude; but
her previous knowledge and reflection about the possible dispossession
of these Transomes gave her a softened feeling toward them which tinged
her manners very agreeably.

Harold was carefully polite to the minister, throwing out a word to make
him understand that he had an important part in the important business
which had brought this unannounced visit; and the four made a group
seated not far off each other near the window, Mrs. Transome and Esther
being on the sofa.

"You must be astonished at a visit from me, Miss Lyon," Mrs. Transome
began; "I seldom come to Treby Magna. Now I see you, the visit is an
unexpected pleasure; but the cause of my coming is business of a serious
nature, which my son will communicate to you."

"I ought to begin by saying that what I have to announce to you is the
reverse of disagreeable, Miss Lyon," said Harold, with lively ease. "I
don't suppose the world would consider it very good news for me; but a
rejected candidate, Mr. Lyon," Harold went on, turning graciously to the
minister, "begins to be inured to loss and misfortune."

"Truly, sir," said Mr. Lyon, with a rather sad solemnity, "your allusion
hath a grievous bearing for me, but I will not retard your present
purpose by further remark."

"You will never guess what I have to disclose," said Harold, again
looking at Esther, "unless, indeed, you have already had some previous
intimation of it."

"Does it refer to law and inheritance?" said Esther, with a smile. She
was already brightened by Harold's manner. The news seemed to be losing
its chillness, and to be something really belonging to warm,
comfortable, interesting life.

"Then you have already heard of it?" said Harold, inwardly vexed, but
sufficiently prepared not to seem so.

"Only yesterday," said Esther, quite simply, "I received a letter from
some lawyers with a statement of many surprising things, showing that I
was an heiress"--here she turned very prettily to address Mrs.
Transome--"which, as you may imagine, is one of the last things I could
have supposed myself to be."

"My dear," said Mrs. Transome with elderly grace, just laying her hand
for an instant on Esther's, "it is a lot that would become you
admirably."

Esther blushed, and said playfully:

"Oh, I know what to buy with fifty pounds a-year, but I know the price
of nothing beyond that."

Her father sat looking at her through his spectacles, stroking his chin.
It was amazing to herself that she was taking so lightly now what had
caused her such deep emotion yesterday.

"I daresay, then," said Harold, "you are more fully possessed of
particulars than I am. So that my mother and I need only tell you what
no one else can tell you--that is, what are her and my feelings and
wishes under these new and unexpected circumstances."

"I am most anxious," said Esther, with a grave beautiful look of respect
to Mrs. Transome--"most anxious on that point. Indeed, being of course
in uncertainty about it, I have not yet known whether I could rejoice."
Mrs. Transome's glance had softened. She liked Esther to look at her.

"Our chief anxiety," she said, knowing what Harold wished her to say,
"is, that there may be no contest, no useless expenditure of money. Of
course we will surrender what can be rightfully claimed."

"My mother expresses our feeling precisely, Miss Lyon," said Harold.
"And I'm sure, Mr. Lyon, you will understand our desire."

"Assuredly, sir. My daughter would in any case have had my advice to
seek a conclusion which would involve no strife. We endeavor, sir, in
our body, to hold to the apostolic rule that one Christian brother
should not go to law with another; and I, for my part, would extend this
rule to all my fellow-men, apprehending that the practice of our courts
is little consistent with the simplicity that is in Christ."

"If it is to depend on my will," said Esther, "there is nothing that
would be more repugnant to me than any struggle on such a subject. But
can't the lawyers go on doing what they will in spite of me? It seems
that this is what they mean."

"Not exactly," said Harold, smiling. "Of course they live by such
struggles as you dislike. But we can thwart them by determining not to
quarrel. It is desirable that we should consider the affair together,
and put it into the hands of honorable solicitors. I assure you we
Transomes will not contend for what is not our own."

"And this is what I have come to beg of you," said Mrs. Transome. "It is
that you will come to Transome Court--and let us take full time to
arrange matters. Do oblige me: you shall not be teased more than you
like by an old woman: you shall do just as you please, and become
acquainted with your future home, since it is to be yours. I can tell
you a world of things that you will want to know; and the business can
proceed properly."

"Do consent," said Harold, with winning brevity.

Esther was flushed and her eyes were bright. It was impossible for her
not to feel that the proposal was a more tempting step toward her change
of condition than she could have thought of beforehand. She had
forgotten that she was in any trouble. But she looked toward her father,
who was again stroking his chin, as was his habit when he was doubting
or deliberating.

"I hope you do not disapprove of Miss Lyon's granting us this favor?"
said Harold to the minister.

"I have nothing to oppose to it, sir, if my daughter's own mind is clear
as to her course."

"You will come--now--with us," said Mrs. Transome, persuasively. "You
will go back with us now in the carriage."

Harold was highly gratified with the perfection of his mother's manner
on this occasion, which he had looked forward to as difficult. Since he
had come home again he had never seen her so much at her ease, or with
so much benignancy in her face. The secret lay in the charm of Esther's
sweet young deference, a sort of charm that had not before entered into
Mrs. Transome's elderly life. Esther's pretty behavior, it must be
confessed, was not fed entirely from lofty moral sources: over and above
her really generous feeling, she enjoyed Mrs. Transome's accent, the
high-bred quietness of her speech, the delicate odor of her drapery. She
had always thought that life must be particularly easy if one could pass
it among refined people; and so it seemed at this moment. She wished,
unmixedly, to go to Transome Court.

"Since my father has no objection," she said, "and you urge me so
kindly. But I must beg for time to pack up a few clothes."

"By all means," said Mrs. Transome. "We are not at all pressed."

When Esther had left the room, Harold said, "Apart from our immediate
reason for coming, Mr. Lyon, I could have wished to see you about these
unhappy consequences of the election contest. But you will understand
that I have been much preoccupied with private affairs."

"You have well said that the consequences are unhappy, sir. And but for
a reliance on something more than human calculation, I know not which I
should most bewail--the scandal which wrong-dealing has brought on right
principles or the snares which it laid for the feet of a young man who
is dear to me. 'One soweth, and another reapeth,' is a verity that
applies to evil as well as good."

"You are referring to Felix Holt. I have not neglected steps to secure
the best legal help for the prisoners: but I am given to understand that
Holt refuses any aid from me. I hope he will not go rashly to work in
speaking in his own defence without any legal instruction. It is an
opprobrium of our law that no counsel is allowed to plead for the
prisoner in cases of felony. A ready tongue may do a man as much harm as
good in a court of justice. He piques himself on making a display, and
displays a little too much."

"Sir, you know him not," said the little minister, in his deeper tone.
"He would not accept, even if it were accorded, a defense wherein the
truth was screened or avoided,--not from a vainglorious spirit of
self-exhibition, for he hath a singular directness and simplicity of
speech; but from an averseness to a profession wherein a man may without
shame seek to justify the wicked for reward, and take away the
righteousness of the righteous from him."

"It's a pity a fine young fellow should do himself harm by fanatical
notions of that sort. I could at least have procured the advantage of
first-rate consultation. He didn't look to me like a dreamy personage."

"Nor is he dreamy; rather, his excess lies in being too practical."

"Well, I hope you will not encourage him in such irrationality; the
question is not one of misrepresentation, but of adjusting fact, so as
to raise it to the power of evidence. Don't you see that?"

"I do, I do. But I distrust not Felix Holt's discernment in regard to
his own case. He builds not on doubtful things and hath no illusory
hopes; on the contrary, he is of a too-scornful incredulity where I
would fain see a more childlike faith. But he will hold no belief
without action corresponding thereto; and the occasion of his return to
this, his native place, at a time which has proved fatal, was no other
than his resolve to hinder the sale of some drugs, which had chiefly
supported his mother, but which his better knowledge showed him to be
pernicious to the human frame. He undertook to support her by his own
labor; but, sir, I pray you to mark--and old as I am, I will not deny
that this young man instructs me herein--I pray you to mark the
poisonous confusion of good and evil which is the wide-spreading effect
of vicious practices. Through the use of undue electioneering
means--concerning which, however, I do not accuse you farther than of
having acted the part of him who washes his hands when he delivers up to
others the exercise of an iniquitous power--Felix Holt is, I will not
scruple to say, the innocent victim of a riot; and that deed of strict
honesty, whereby he took on himself the charge of his aged mother, seems
now to have deprived her of sufficient bread, and is even an occasion of
reproach to him from the weaker brethren."

"I shall be proud to supply her as amply as you think desirable," said
Harold, not enjoying this lecture.

"I will pray you to speak of this question with my daughter, who, it
appears, may herself have large means at command, and would desire to
minister to Mrs. Holt's needs with all friendship and delicacy. For the
present I can take care that she lacks nothing essential."

As Mr. Lyon was speaking, Esther re-entered, equipped for her drive. She
laid her hand on her father's arm and said, "You will let my pupils know
at once, will you, father?"

"Doubtless, my dear," said the old man, trembling a little under the
feeling that this departure of Esther's was a crisis. Nothing again
would be as it had been in their mutual life. But he feared that he was
being mastered by a too tender self-regard, and struggled to keep
himself calm.

Mrs. Transome and Harold had both risen.

"If you are quite ready, Miss Lyon," said Harold, divining that the
father and daughter would like to have an unobserved moment, "I will
take my mother to the carriage and come back for you."

When they were alone, Esther put her hands on her father's shoulders and
kissed him.

"This will not be a grief to you, I hope, father? You think it is better
that I should go?"

"Nay, child, I am weak. But I would fain be capable of a joy quite apart
from the accidents of my aged earthly existence, which, indeed, is a
petty and almost dried-up fountain--whereas to the receptive soul the
river of life pauses not, nor is diminished."

"Perhaps you will see Felix Holt again and tell him all?"

"Shall I say aught to him for you?"

"Oh, no; only that Job Tudge has a little flannel shirt and a box of
lozenges," said Esther, smiling. "Ah, I hear Mr. Transome coming back. I
must say good-bye to Lyddy, else she will cry over my hard heart."

In spite of all the grave thoughts that had been, Esther felt it a very
pleasant as well as new experience to be led to the carriage by Harold
Transome, to be seated on soft cushions, and bowled along, looked at
admiringly and deferentially by a person opposite, whom it was agreeable
to look at in return, and talked to with suavity and liveliness. Toward
what prospect was that easy carriage really leading her? She could not
be always asking herself Mentor-like questions. Her young, bright nature
was rather weary of the sadness that had grown heavier in these last
weeks, like a chill white mist hopelessly veiling the day. Her fortune
was beginning to appear worthy of being called good fortune. She had
come to a new stage in her journey; a new day had arisen on new scenes,
and her young untired spirit was full of curiosity.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

    No man believes that many-textured knowledge and skill--as a just
    idea of the solar system, or the power of painting flesh, or of
    reading written harmonies--can come late and of a sudden; yet many
    will not stick at believing that happiness can come at any day and
    hour solely by a new disposition of events; though there is naught
    less capable of a magical production than a mortal's happiness,
    which is mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions
    not to be wrought by news from foreign parts, or any whirling of
    fortune's wheel for one on whose brow Time has written legibly.


Some days after Esther's arrival at Transome Court, Denner, coming to
dress Mrs. Transome before dinner--a labor of love for which she had
ample leisure now--found her mistress seated with more than ever of a
marble aspect of self-absorbed suffering, which to the waiting-woman's
keen observation had been gradually intensifying itself during the past
week. She had tapped at the door without having been summoned, and she
had ventured to enter though she had heard no voice saying, "Come in."

Mrs. Transome had on a dark warm dressing-gown, hanging in thick folds
about her, and she was seated before a mirror which filled a panel from
the floor to the ceiling. The room was bright with the light of the fire
and of wax candles. For some reason, contrary to her usual practice,
Mrs. Transome had herself unfastened her abundant gray hair, which
rolled backward in a pale sunless stream over her dark dress. She was
seated before the mirror apparently looking at herself, her brow knit in
one deep furrow, and her jewelled hands laid one above the other on her
knee. Probably she had ceased to see the reflection in the mirror, for
her eyes had the fixed wide-open look that belongs not to examination,
but to reverie. Motionless in that way, her clear-cut features keeping
distinct record of past beauty, she looked like an image faded, dried,
and bleached by uncounted suns, rather than a breathing woman who had
numbered the years as they passed, and had a consciousness within her
which was the slow deposit of those ceaseless roiling years.

Denner, with all her ingrained and systematic reserve, could not help
showing signs that she was startled, when, peering from between her
half-closed eyelids, she saw the motionless image in the mirror opposite
to her as she entered. Her gentle opening of the door had not roused her
mistress, to whom the sensations produced by Denner's presence were as
little disturbing as those of a favorite cat. But the slight cry, and
the start reflected in the glass, were unusual enough to break the
reverie, Mrs. Transome moved, leaned back in her chair, and said--

"So you're come at last, Denner?"

"Yes, madam; it is not late. I'm sorry you should have undone your hair
yourself."

"I undid it to see what an old hag I am. These fine clothes you put on
me, Denner, are only a smart shroud."

"Pray don't talk so, madam. If there's anybody doesn't think it pleasant
to look at you, so much the worse for them. For my part, I've seen no
young ones fit to hold up your train. Look at your likeness down below;
and though you're older now, what signifies? I wouldn't be Letty in the
scullery because she's got red cheeks. She mayn't know she's a poor
creature, but I know it, and that's enough for me; I know what sort of a
dowdy draggletail she'll be in ten years' time. I would change with
nobody, madam. And if troubles were put up to market, I'd sooner buy old
than new. It's something to have seen the worst."

"A woman never has seen the worst till she is old, Denner," said Mrs.
Transome, bitterly.

The keen little waiting-woman was not clear as to the cause of her
mistress's added bitterness; but she rarely brought herself to ask
questions, when Mrs. Transome did not authorize them by beginning to
give her information. Banks the bailiff and the head-servant had nodded
and winked a good deal over the certainty that Mr. Harold was "none so
fond" of Jermyn, but this was a subject on which Mrs. Transome had never
made up her mind to speak, and Denner knew nothing definite. Again, she
felt quite sure that there was some important secret connected with
Esther's presence in the house; she suspected that the close Dominic
knew the secret, and was more trusted than she was, in spite of her
forty years' service; but any resentment on this ground would have been
an entertained reproach against her mistress, inconsistent with Denner's
creed and character. She inclined to the belief that Esther was the
immediate cause of the new discontent.

"If there's anything worse coming to you, I should like to know what it
is, madam," she said, after a moment's silence, speaking always in the
same low quick way, and keeping up her quiet labors. "When I awake at
cock-crow, I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false.
It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be
murdered."

"I believe you are the creature in the world that loves me best, Denner;
yet you will never understand what I suffer. It's of no use telling you.
There's no folly in you, and no heartache. You are made of iron. You
have never had any trouble."

"I've had some of your trouble, madam."

"Yes, you good thing. But as a sick-nurse, that never caught the fever.
You never even had a child."

"I can feel for things I never went through. I used to be sorry for the
poor French Queen when I was young; I'd have lain cold for her to lie
warm. I know people have feelings according to their birth and station.
And you always took things to heart, madam, beyond anybody else. But I
hope there's nothing new, to make you talk of the worst."

"Yes, Denner, there is--there is," said Mrs. Transome, speaking in a low
tone of misery, while she bent for her head-dress to be pinned on.

"Is it this young lady?"

"Why, what do you think about her, Denner?" said Mrs. Transome, in a
tone of more spirit, rather curious to hear what the old woman would
say.

"I don't deny she's graceful, and she has a pretty smile and very good
manners: it's quite unaccountable by what Banks says about her father. I
know nothing of those Treby townsfolk myself, but for my part I'm
puzzled. I'm fond of Mr. Harold. I always shall be, madam. I was at his
bringing into the world, and nothing but his doing wrong by you would
turn me against him. But the servants all say he's in love with Miss
Lyon."

"I wish it were true, Denner," said Mrs. Transome, energetically. "I
wish he were in love with her, so that she could master him, and make
him do what she pleased."

"Then it is not true--what they say?"

"Not true that she will ever master him. No woman ever will. He will
make her fond of him, and afraid of him. That's one of the things you
have never gone through, Denner. A woman's love is always freezing into
fear. She wants everything, she is secure of nothing. This girl has a
fine spirit--plenty of fire and pride and wit. Men like such captives,
as they like horses that champ the bit and paw the ground: they feel
more triumph in their mastery. What is the use of a woman's will?--if
she tries, she doesn't get it, and she ceases to be loved. God was cruel
when He made women."

Denner was used to such outbursts as this. Her mistress's rhetoric and
temper belonged to her superior rank, her grand person, and her piercing
black eyes. Mrs. Transome had a sense of impiety in her words which made
them all the more tempting to her impotent anger. The waiting-woman had
none of that awe which could be turned into defiance: the Sacred Grove
was a common thicket to her.

"It mayn't be good luck to be a woman," she said. "But one begins with
it from a baby: one gets used to it. And I shouldn't like to be a
man--to cough so loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day, and be
so wasteful with meat and drink. They're a coarse lot, I think. Then I
needn't make a trouble of this young lady, madam," she added, after a
moment's pause.

"No, Denner, I like her. If that were all--I should like Harold to marry
her. It would be the best thing. If the truth were known--and it will be
known soon--the estate is hers by law--such law as it is. It's a strange
story: she's a Bycliffe really."

Denner did not look amazed, but went on fastening her mistress's dress,
as she said--

"Well, madam, I was sure there was something wonderful at the bottom of
it. And turning the old lawsuits and everything else over in my mind, I
thought the law might have something to do with it. Then she is a born
lady?"

"Yes; she has good blood in her veins."

"We talked that over in the housekeeper's room--what a hand and an
instep she has, and how her head is set on her shoulders--almost like
your own, madam. But her lightish complexion spoils her, to my thinking.
And Dominic said Mr. Harold never admired that sort of woman before.
There's nothing that smooth fellow couldn't tell you if he would: he
knows the answer to riddles before they're made. However, he knows how
to hold his tongue; I'll say that for him. And so do I, madam."

"Yes, yes; you will not talk of it till other people are talking of it."

"And so, if Mr. Harold married her, it would save all fuss and
mischief?"

"Yes--about the estate."

"And he seems inclined; and she'll not refuse him, I'll answer for it.
And you like her, madam. There's everything to set your mind at rest."

Denner was putting the finishing-touch to Mrs. Transome's dress by
throwing an Indian scarf over her shoulders, and so completing the
contrast between the majestic lady in costume and the dishevelled
Hecuba-like woman whom she had found half an hour before.

"I am not at rest!" Mrs. Transome said, with slow distinctness, moving
from the mirror to the window, where the blind was not drawn down, and
she could see the chill white landscape and the far-off unheeding stars.

Denner, more distressed by her mistress's suffering than she could have
been by anything else, took up with the instinct of affection a gold
vinaigrette which Mrs. Transome often liked to carry with her, and going
up to her put it into her hand gently. Mrs. Transome grasped the little
woman's hand hard, and held it so.

"Denner," she said, in a low tone, "if I could choose at this moment, I
would choose that Harold should never have been born."

"Nay, my dear," (Denner had only once before in her life said "my dear"
to her mistress), "it was a happiness to you then."

"I don't believe I felt the happiness then as I feel the misery now. It
is foolish to say people can't feel much when they are getting old. Not
pleasure, perhaps--little comes. But they can feel they are
forsaken--why, every fibre in me seems to be a memory that makes a pang.
They can feel that all the love in their lives is turned to hatred or
contempt."

"Not mine, madam, not mine. Let what would be I should want to live for
your sake, for fear you should have nobody to do for you as I would."

"Ah, then you are a happy woman, Denner; you have loved somebody for
forty years who is old and weak now, and can't do without you."

The sound of the dinner-gong resounded below, and Mrs. Transome let the
faithful hand fall again.




CHAPTER XL.

    "She's beautiful; and therefore to be wooed:
    She is a woman; therefore to be won."

                                               --_Henry IV._


If Denner had had a suspicion that Esther's presence at Transome Court
was not agreeable to her mistress, it was impossible to entertain such a
suspicion with regard to the other members of the family. Between her
and little Harry there was an extraordinary fascination. This creature,
with the soft, broad, brown cheeks, low forehead, great black eyes,
tiny, well-defined nose, fierce, biting tricks toward every person and
thing he disliked, and insistence on entirely occupying those he liked,
was a human specimen such as Esther had never seen before, and she
seemed to be equally original in Harry's experience. At first sight her
light complexion and her blue gown, probably also her sunny smile and
her hands stretched out toward him, seemed to make a show for him as of
a new sort of bird: he threw himself backward against his "Gappa," as he
called old Mr. Transome, and stared at this new comer with the gravity
of a wild animal. But she had no sooner sat down on the sofa in the
library than he climbed up to her, and began to treat her as an
attractive object in natural history, snatched up her curls with his
brown fist, and, discovering that there was a little ear under them,
pinched it and blew into it, pulled at her coronet of plaits, and seemed
to discover with satisfaction that it did not grow at the summit of her
head, but could be dragged down and altogether undone. Then finding that
she laughed, tossed him back, kissed, and pretended to bite him--in
fact, was an animal that understood fun--he rushed off and made Dominic
bring a small menagerie of white mice, squirrels, and birds, with Moro,
the black spaniel, to make her acquaintance. Whomsoever Harry liked, it
followed that Mr. Transome must like: "Gappa," along with Nimrod the
retriever, was part of the menagerie, and perhaps endured more than all
the other live creatures in the way of being tumbled about. Seeing that
Esther bore having her hair pulled down quite merrily, and that she was
willing to be harnessed and beaten, the old man began to confide to her,
in his feeble, smiling, and rather jerking fashion, Harry's remarkable
feats: how he had one day, when Gappy was asleep, unpinned a whole
drawerful of beetles, to see if they would fly away; then, disgusted
with their stupidity, was about to throw them all on the ground and
stamp on them, when Dominic came in and rescued these valuable
specimens; also, how he had subtly watched Mrs. Transome at the cabinet
where she kept her medicines, and, when she had left it for a little
while without locking it, had gone to the drawers and scattered half the
contents on the floor. But what old Mr. Transome thought the most
wonderful proof of an almost preternatural cleverness was, that Harry
would hardly ever talk, but preferred making inarticulate noises, or
combining syllables after a method of his own.

"He can talk well enough if he likes," said Gappa, evidently thinking
that Harry, like the monkeys, had deep reasons for his reticence.

"You mind him," he added, nodding at Esther, and shaking with low-toned
laughter. "You'll hear: he knows the right names of things well enough,
but he likes to make his own. He'll give you one all to yourself before
long."

And when Harry seemed to have made up his mind distinctly that Esther's
name was "Boo," Mr. Transome nodded at her with triumphant satisfaction,
and then told her in a low whisper, looking round cautiously beforehand,
that Harry would never call Mrs. Transome "Gamma," but always "Bite."

"It's wonderful!" said he, laughing slyly.

The old man seemed so happy now in the new world created for him by
Dominic and Harry, that he would perhaps have made a holocaust of his
flies and beetles if it had been necessary in order to keep this living,
lively kindness about him. He no longer confined himself to the library,
but shuffled along from room to room, staying and looking on at what was
going forward whenever he did not find Mrs. Transome alone.

To Esther the sight of this feeble-minded, timid, paralytic man, who had
long abdicated all mastery over the things that were his, was something
piteous. Certainly this had never been part of the furniture she had
imagined for the delightful aristocratic dwelling in her Utopia; and the
sad irony of such a lot impressed her the more because in her father she
was accustomed to age accompanied with mental acumen and activity. Her
thoughts went back in conjecture over the past life of Mr. and Mrs.
Transome, a couple so strangely different from each other. She found it
impossible to arrange their existence in the seclusion of this fine park
and in this lofty large-roomed house, where it seemed quite ridiculous
to be anything so small as a human being, without finding it rather
dull. Mr. Transome had always had his beetles, but Mrs. Transome----? it
was not easy to conceive that the husband and wife had ever been very
fond of each other.

Esther felt at her ease with Mrs. Transome: she was gratified by the
consciousness--for on this point Esther was very quick--that Mrs.
Transome admired her, and looked at her with satisfied eyes. But when
they were together in the early days of her stay, the conversation
turned chiefly on what happened in Mrs. Transome's youth--what she wore
when she was presented at Court--who were the most distinguished and
beautiful women at that time--the terrible excitement of the French
Revolution--the emigrants she had known, and the history of various
titled members of the Lingon family. And Esther, from native delicacy,
did not lead to more recent topics of a personal kind. She was copiously
instructed that the Lingon family was better than that even of the elder
Transomes, and was privileged with an explanation of the various
quarterings, which proved that the Lingon blood had been continually
enriched. Poor Mrs. Transome, with her secret bitterness and dread,
still found a flavor in this sort of pride; none the less because
certain deeds of her own life had been in fatal inconsistency with it.
Besides, genealogies entered into her stock of ideas, and her talk on
such subjects was as necessary as the notes of the linnet or the
blackbird. She had no ultimate analysis of things that went beyond blood
and family--the Herons of Fenshore or the Badgers of Hillbury. She had
never seen behind the canvas with which her life was hung. In the dim
background there was the burning mount and the tables of the law; in the
foreground there was Lady Debarry privately gossipping about her, and
Lady Wyvern finally deciding not to send her invitations to dinner.
Unlike that Semiramis who made laws to suit her practical license, she
lived, poor soul, in the midst of desecrated sanctities, and of honors
that looked tarnished in the light of monotonous and weary suns.
Glimpses of the Lingon heraldry in their freshness were interesting to
Esther; but it occurred to her that when she had known about them a good
while they would cease to be succulent themes of converse or meditation,
and Mrs. Transome, having known them all along, might have felt a vacuum
in spite of them.

Nevertheless it was entertaining at present to be seated on soft
cushions with her netting before her, while Mrs. Transome went on with
her embroidery, and told in that easy phrase, and with that refined
high-bred tone and accent which she possessed in perfection, family
stories that to Esther were like so many novelettes; what diamonds were
in the Earl's family, own cousins to Mrs. Transome; how poor Lady Sara's
husband went off into jealous madness only a month after their marriage,
and dragged that sweet blue-eyed thing by the hair; and how the
brilliant Fanny, having married a country parson, became so niggardly
that she had gone about almost begging for fresh eggs from the farmers'
wives, though she had done very well with her six sons, as there was a
bishop and no end of interest in the family, and two of them got
appointments in India.

At present Mrs. Transome did not touch at all on her own time of
privation, or her troubles with her eldest son, or on anything that lay
very close to her heart. She conversed with Esther, and acted the part
of hostess, as she performed her toilet and went on with her embroidery:
these things were to be done whether one were happy or miserable. Even
the patriarch Job, if he had been a gentleman of the modern West, would
have avoided picturesque disorder and poetical laments; and the friends
who called on him, though not less disposed than Bildad the Shuhite to
hint that their unfortunate friend was in the wrong, would have sat on
chairs and held their hats in their hands. The harder problems of our
life have changed less than our manners; we wrestle with the old
sorrows, but more decorously. Esther's inexperience prevented her from
divining much about this fine gray-haired woman, whom she could not help
perceiving to stand apart from the family group, as if there were some
cause of isolation for her both within and without. To her young heart
there was a peculiar interest in Mrs. Transome. An elderly woman, whose
beauty, position, and graceful kindness toward herself, made deference
to her spontaneous, was a new figure in Esther's experience. Her quick
light movement was always ready to anticipate what Mrs. Transome wanted;
her bright apprehension and silvery speech were always ready to cap Mrs.
Transome's narratives or instructions even about doses and liniments,
with some lively commentary. She must have behaved charmingly; for one
day when she had tripped across the room to put the screen just in the
right place, Mrs. Transome said, taking her hand, "My dear, you make me
wish I had a daughter!"

That was pleasant; and so it was to be decked by Mrs. Transome's own
hands in a set of turquoise ornaments, which became her wonderfully,
worn with a white Cashmere dress, which was also insisted on. Esther
never reflected that there was a double intention in these pretty ways
toward her; with young generosity, she was rather preoccupied by the
desire to prove that she herself entertained no low triumph in the fact
that she had rights prejudicial to this family whose life she was
learning. And besides, through all Mrs. Transome's perfect manners,
there pierced some undefinable indications of a hidden anxiety much
deeper than anything she could feel about this affair of the estate--to
which she often alluded slightly as a reason for informing Esther of
something. It was impossible to mistake her for a happy woman; and young
speculation is always stirred by discontent for which there is no
obvious cause. When we are older, we take the uneasy eyes and the bitter
lips more as a matter of course.

But Harold Transome was more communicative about recent years than his
mother was. He thought it well that Esther should know how the fortune
of his family had been drained by law expenses, owing to suits
mistakenly urged by her family; he spoke of his mother's lonely life
and pinched circumstances, of her lack of comfort in her elder son, and
of the habit she had consequently acquired of looking at the gloomy side
of things. He hinted that she had been accustomed to dictate, and that,
as he had left her when he was a boy, she had perhaps indulged the dream
that he would come back a boy. She was still sore on the point of his
politics. These things could not be helped, but so far as he could, he
wished to make the rest of her life as cheerful as possible.

Esther listened eagerly, and took these things to heart. The claim to an
inheritance, the sudden discovery of a right to a fortune held by
others, was acquiring a very distinct and unexpected meaning for her.
Every day she was getting more clearly into her imagination what it
would be to abandon her own past, and what she would enter into in
exchange for it; what it would be to disturb a long possession, and how
difficult it was to fix a point at which the disturbance might begin, so
as to be contemplated without pain.

Harold Transome's thoughts turned on the same subject, but accompanied
by a different state of feeling and with more definite resolutions. He
saw a mode of reconciling all difficulties, which looked pleasanter to
him the longer he looked at Esther. When she had been hardly a week in
the house, he had made up his mind to marry her; and it had never
entered into that mind that the decision did not rest entirely with his
inclination. It was not that he thought slightly of Esther's demands; he
saw that she would require considerable attractions to please her, and
that there were difficulties to be overcome. She was clearly a girl who
must be wooed; but Harold did not despair of presenting the requisite
attractions, and the difficulties gave more interest to the wooing than
he could have believed. When he had said that he would not marry an
Englishwoman, he had always made a mental reservation in favor of
peculiar circumstances; and now the peculiar circumstances were come. To
be deeply in love was a catastrophe not likely to happen to him; but he
was readily amorous. No woman could make him miserable, but he was
sensitive to the presence of women, and was kind to them; not with
grimaces, like a man of mere gallantry, but beamingly, easily, like a
man of genuine good-nature. And each day he was near Esther, the
solution of all difficulties by marriage became a more pleasing
prospect; though he had to confess to himself that the difficulties did
not diminish on a nearer view, in spite of the flattering sense that
she brightened at his approach.

Harold was not one to fail in a purpose for want of assiduity. After an
hour or two devoted to business in the morning, he went to look for
Esther, and if he did not find her at play with Harry and old Mr.
Transome, or chatting with his mother, he went into the drawing-room,
where she was usually either seated with a book on her knee and "making
a bed for her cheek" with one little hand, while she looked out of the
window, or else standing in front of one of the full-length family
portraits with an air of rumination. Esther found it impossible to read
in these days; her life was a book which she seemed herself to be
constructing--trying to make character clear before her, and looking
into the ways of destiny.

The active Harold had almost always something definite to propose by way
of filling the time; if it were fine, she must walk out with him and see
the grounds; and when the snow melted and it was no longer slippery, she
must get on horseback and learn to ride. If they staid indoors, she must
learn to play at billiards, or she must go over the house and see the
pictures he had had hung anew, or the costumes he had brought from the
East; or come into his study and look at the map of the estate, and hear
what--if it had remained in his family--he had intended to do in every
corner of it in order to make the most of its capabilities.

About a certain time in the morning Esther had learned to expect him.
Let every wooer make himself strongly expected; he may succeed by dint
of being absent, but hardly in the first instance. One morning Harold
found her in the drawing-room, leaning against a console-table, and
looking at the full-length portrait of a certain Lady Betty Transome,
who had lived a century and a half before, and had the usual charm of
ladies in Sir Peter Lely's style.

"Don't move, pray," he said on entering; "you look as if you were
standing for your own portrait."

"I take that as an insinuation," said Esther, laughing, and moving
toward her seat on an ottoman near the fire, "for I notice almost all
the portraits are in a conscious, affected attitude. That fair Lady
Betty looks as if she had been drilled into that posture, and had not
will enough of her own ever to move again unless she had a little push
given to her."

"She brightens up that panel well with her long satin skirt," said
Harold, as he followed Esther, "but alive I dare say she would have been
less cheerful company."

"One would certainly think that she had just been unpacked from silver
paper. Ah, how chivalrous you are!" said Esther, as Harold, kneeling on
one knee, held her silken netting-stirrup for her to put her foot
through. She had often fancied pleasant scenes in which such homage was
rendered to her, and the homage was not disagreeable now it was really
come; but, strangely enough, a little darting sensation at that moment
was accompanied by the vivid remembrance of some one who had never paid
the least attention to her foot. There had been a slight blush, such as
often came and went rapidly, and she was silent a moment. Harold
naturally believed that it was he himself who was filling the field of
vision. He would have liked to place himself on the ottoman near Esther,
and behave very much more like a lover; but he took a chair opposite to
her at a circumspect distance. He dared not do otherwise. Along with
Esther's playful charm she conveyed an impression of personal pride and
high spirit which warned Harold's acuteness that in the delicacy of
their present position he might easily make a false move and offend her.
A woman was likely to be credulous about adoration, and to find no
difficulty in referring it to her intrinsic attractions; but Esther was
too dangerously quick and critical not to discern the least awkwardness
that looked like offering her marriage as a convenient compromise for
himself. Beforehand, he might have said that such characteristics as
hers were not loveable in a woman; but, as it was, he found that the
hope of pleasing her had a piquancy quite new to him.

"I wonder," said Esther, breaking the silence in her usual light silvery
tones--"I wonder whether the women who looked in that way ever felt any
troubles. I see there are two old ones up-stairs in the billiard-room
who have only got fat; the expression of their faces is just of the same
sort."

"A woman ought never to have any trouble. There should always be a man
to guard her from it. (Harold Transome was masculine and fallible; he
had incautiously sat down this morning to pay his addresses by talk
about nothing in particular; and, clever experienced man as he was, he
fell into nonsense.)

"But suppose the man himself got into trouble--you would wish her to
mind about that. Or suppose," added Esther, suddenly looking up merrily
at Harold, "the man himself was troublesome?"

"Oh, you must not strain probabilities in that way. The generality of
men are perfect. Take me, for example."

"You are a perfect judge of sauces," said Esther, who had her triumphs
in letting Harold know that she was capable of taking notes.

"That is perfection number one. Pray go on."

"Oh, the catalogue is too long--I should be tired before I got to your
magnificent ruby ring and your gloves always of the right color."

"If you would let me tell you your perfections, I should not be tired."

"That is not complimentary; it means that the list is short."

"No; it means that the list is pleasant to dwell upon."

"Pray don't begin," said Esther, with her pretty toss of the head; "it
would be dangerous to our good understanding. The person I liked best in
the world was one who did nothing but scold me and tell me of my
faults."

When Esther began to speak, she meant to do no more than make a remote
unintelligible allusion, feeling, it must be owned, a naughty will to
flirt and be saucy, and thwart Harold's attempts to be felicitous in
compliment. But she had no sooner uttered the words than they seemed to
her like a confession. A deep flush spread itself over her face and
neck, and the sense that she was blushing went on deepening her color.
Harold felt himself unpleasantly illuminated as to a possibility that
had never yet occurred to him. His surprise made an uncomfortable pause,
in which Esther had time to feel much vexation.

"You speak in the past tense," said Harold, at last; "yet I am rather
envious of that person. I shall never be able to win your regard in the
same way. Is it anyone at Treby? Because in that case I can enquire
about your faults."

"Oh, you know I have always lived among grave people," said Esther, more
able to recover herself now she was spoken to. "Before I came home to be
with my father I was nothing but a school-girl first, and then a teacher
in different stages of growth. People in those circumstances are not
usually flattered. But there are varieties in fault-finding. At our
Paris school the master I liked best was an old man who stormed at me
terribly when I read Racine, but yet showed that he was proud of me."

Esther was getting quite cool again. But Harold was not entirely
satisfied; if there was any obstacle in his way, he wished to know
exactly what it was.

"That must have been a wretched life for you at Treby," he said--"a
person of your accomplishments."

"I used to be dreadfully discontented," said Esther, much occupied with
mistakes she had made in her netting. "But I was becoming less so. I
have had time to get rather wise, you know; I am two-and-twenty."

"Yes," said Harold, rising and walking a few paces backward and forward,
"you are past your majority; you are empress of your own fortunes--and
more besides."

"Dear me," said Esther, letting her work fall, and leaning back against
the cushions; "I don't think I know very well what to do with my
empire."

"Well," said Harold, pausing in front of her, leaning one arm on the
mantelpiece, and speaking very gravely, "I hope that in any case, since
you appear to have no near relative who understands affairs, you will
confide in me, and trust me with all your intentions as if I had no
other personal concern in the matter than a regard for you. I hope you
believe me capable of acting as the guardian of your interest, even
where it turns out to be inevitably opposed to my own."

"I am sure you have given me reason to believe it," said Esther, with
seriousness, putting out her hand to Harold. She had not been left in
ignorance that he had had opportunities twice offered of stifling her
claims.

Harold raised the hand to his lips, but dared not retain it more than an
instant. Still the sweet reliance in Esther's manner made an
irresistible temptation to him. After standing still a moment or two,
while she bent over her work, he glided to the ottoman and seated
himself close by her, looking at her busy hands.

"I see you have made mistakes in your work," he said, bending still
nearer, for he saw that she was conscious, yet not angry.

"Nonsense! you know nothing about it," said Esther, laughing, and
crushing up the soft silk under her palms. "Those blunders have a design
in them."

She looked round, and saw a handsome face very near her. Harold was
looking, as he felt, thoroughly enamored of this bright woman, who was
not at all to his preconceived taste. Perhaps a touch of hypothetic
jealousy now helped to heighten the effect. But he mastered all
indiscretion, and only looked at her as he said--

"I am wondering whether you have any deep wishes and secrets that I
can't guess."

"Pray don't speak of my wishes," said Esther, quite overmastered by this
new and apparently involuntary manifestation in Harold; "I could not
possibly tell you one at this moment--I think I shall never find them
out again. Oh, yes," she said, abruptly, struggling to relieve herself
from the oppression of unintelligible feelings--"I do know one wish
distinctly. I want to go and see my father. He writes me word that all
is well with him, but still I want to see him."

"You shall be driven there when you like."

"May I go now--I mean as soon as it is convenient?" said Esther, rising.

"I will give the order immediately, if you wish it," said Harold,
understanding that the audience was broken up.




CHAPTER XLI.

    He rates me as the merchant does the wares
    He will not purchase--"quality not high
    'Twill lose its color opened to the sun,
    Has no aroma, and, in fine, is naught--
    I barter not for such commodities--
    There is no ratio betwixt sands and gems."
    'Tis wicked judgment! for the soul can grow,
    As embryos, that live and move but blindly,
    Burst from the dark, emerge, regenerate,
    And lead a life of vision and of choice.


Esther did not take the carriage into Malthouse Lane, but left it to
wait for her outside the town; and when she entered the house she put
her finger on her lip to Lyddy and ran lightly up-stairs. She wished to
surprise her father by this visit, and she succeeded. The little
minister was just then almost surrounded by a wall of books, with merely
his head peeping above them, being much embarrassed to find a substitute
for tables and desks on which to arrange the volumes he kept open for
reference. He was absorbed in mastering all those painstaking
interpretations of the Book of Daniel, which are by this time well gone
to the limbo of mistaken criticism; and Esther, as she opened the door
softly, heard him rehearsing aloud a passage in which he declared, with
some parenthetic provisoes, that he conceived not how a perverse
ingenuity could blunt the edge of prophetic explicitness, or how an open
mind could fail to see in the chronology of "the little horn" the
resplendent lamp of an inspired symbol searching out the germinal growth
of an anti-Christian power.

"You will not like me to interrupt you, father?" said Esther, slyly.

"Ah, my beloved child!" he exclaimed, upsetting a pile of books, and
thus unintentionally making a convenient breach in his wall, through
which Esther could get up to him and kiss him. "Thy appearing is as a
joy despaired of. I had thought of thee as the blinded think of the
daylight--which indeed is a thing to rejoice in, like all other good,
though we see it not nigh."

"Are you sure you have been as well and comfortable as you said you were
in your letters?" said Esther, seating herself close in front of her
father and laying her hand on his shoulder.

"I wrote truly, my dear, according to my knowledge at the time. But to
an old memory like mine the present days are but as a little water
poured on the deep. It seems now that all has been as usual, except my
studies, which have gone somewhat curiously into prophetic history. But
I fear you will rebuke me for my negligent apparel," said the little
man, feeling in front of Esther's brightness like a bat overtaken by the
morning.

"That is Lyddy's fault, who sits crying over her want of Christian
assurance instead of brushing your clothes and putting out your clean
cravat. She is always saying her righteousness is filthy rags, and
really I don't think that is a very strong expression for it. I'm sure
it is dusty clothes and furniture."

"Nay, my dear, your playfulness glances too severely on our faithful
Lyddy. Doubtless I am myself deficient, in that I do not aid her infirm
memory by admonition. But now tell me aught that you have left untold
about yourself. Your heart has gone out somewhat toward this family--the
old man and the child, whom I had not reckoned of?"

"Yes, father. It is more and more difficult to me to see how I can make
up my mind to disturb these people at all."

"Something should doubtless be devised to lighten the loss and the
change to the aged father and mother. I would have you in any case seek
to temper a vicissitude, which is nevertheless a providential
arrangement not to be wholly set aside."

"Do you think, father--do you feel assured that a case of inheritance
like this of mine is a sort of providential arrangement that makes a
command?"

"I have so held it," said Mr. Lyon, solemnly; "in all my meditations I
have so held it. For you have to consider, my dear, that you have been
led by a peculiar path, and into experience which is not ordinarily the
lot of those who are seated in high places, and what I have hinted to
you already in my letters on this head, I shall wish on a future
opportunity to enter into more at large."

Esther was uneasily silent. On this great question of her lot she saw
doubts and difficulties, in which it seemed as if her father could not
help her. There was no illumination for her in this theory of
providential arrangement. She said suddenly (what she had not thought of
at all suddenly)--

"Have you been again to see Felix Holt, father? You have not mentioned
him in your letters."

"I have been since I last wrote, my dear, and I took his mother with me,
who, I fear, made the time heavy to him with her plaints. But afterward
I carried her away to the house of a brother minister at Loamford, and
returned to Felix, and then we had much discourse."

"Did you tell him of everything that has happened--I mean about
me--about the Transomes?"

"Assuredly I told him, and he listened as one astonished. For he had
much to hear, knowing naught of your birth, and that you had any other
father than Rufus Lyon. 'Tis a narrative I trust I shall not be called
on to give to others; but I was not without satisfaction in unfolding
the truth to this young man, who hath wrought himself into my affection
strangely--I would fain hope for ends that will be a visible good in his
less way-worn life, when mine shall be no longer."

"And you told him how the Transomes had come, and that I was staying at
Transome Court?"

"Yes, I told these things with some particularity, as is my wont
concerning what hath imprinted itself on my mind."

"What did Felix say?"

"Truly, my dear, nothing desirable to recite," said Mr. Lyon, rubbing
his hand over his brow.

"Dear father, he did say something, and you always remember what people
say. Pray tell me; I want to know."

"It was a hasty remark, and rather escaped him than was consciously
framed. He said, 'Then she will marry Transome; that is what Transome
means.'"

"That was all?" said Esther, turning rather pale, and biting her lip
with the determination that the tears should not start.

"Yes, we did not go further into that branch of the subject. I apprehend
there is no warrant for his seeming prognostic, and I should not be
without disquiet if I thought otherwise. For I confess that in your
accession to this great position and property, I contemplate with
hopeful satisfaction your remaining attached to that body of
congregational Dissent, which, as I hold, hath retained most of pure and
primitive discipline. Your education and peculiar history would thus be
seen to have coincided with a long train of events in making this family
property a means of honoring and illustrating a purer form of
Christianity than that which hath unhappily obtained the pre-eminence in
this land. I speak, my child, as you know, always in the hope that you
will fully join our communion; and this dear wish of my heart--nay, this
urgent prayer--would seem to be frustrated by your marriage with a man,
of whom there is at least no visible indication that he would unite
himself to our body."

If Esther had been less agitated, she would hardly have helped smiling
at the picture her father's words suggested of Harold Transome "joining
the church" in Malthouse Yard. But she was too seriously preoccupied
with what Felix had said, which hurt her in a two-edged fashion that was
highly significant. First, she was very angry with him for daring to say
positively whom she would marry; and secondly, she was angry at the
implication that there was from the first a cool deliberate design in
Harold Transome to marry her. Esther said to herself that she was quite
capable of discerning Harold Transome's disposition, and judging of his
conduct. She felt sure he was generous and open. It did not lower him in
her opinion that since circumstances had brought them together he
evidently admired her--was in love with her--in short, desired to marry
her; and she thought that she discerned the delicacy which hindered him
from being more explicit. There is no point on which young women are
more easily piqued than this of their sufficiency to judge the men who
make love to them. And Esther's generous nature delighted to believe in
generosity. All these thoughts were making a tumult in her mind while
her father was suggesting the radiance her lot might cast on the cause
of congregational Dissent. She heard what he said, and remembered it
afterward, but she made no reply at present, and chose rather to start
up in search of a brush--an action which would seem to her father quite
a usual sequence with her. It served the purpose of diverting him from a
lengthy subject.

"Have you yet spoken with Mr. Transome concerning Mrs. Holt, my dear?"
he said, as Esther was moving about the room. "I hinted to him that you
would best decide how assistance should be tendered to her."

"No, father, we have not approached the subject. Mr. Transome may have
forgotten it, and, for several reasons, I would rather not talk of
this--of money matters to him at present. There is money due to me from
the Lukyns and the Pendrells."

"They have paid it," said Mr. Lyon, opening his desk. "I have it here
ready to deliver to you."

"Keep it, father, and pay Mrs. Holt's rent with it, and do anything else
that is wanted for her. We must consider everything temporary now," said
Esther, enveloping her father in a towel, and beginning to brush his
auburn fringe of hair, while he shut his eyes in preparation for this
pleasant passivity. "Everything is uncertain--what may become of
Felix--what may become of us all. Oh, dear!" she went on, changing
suddenly to laughing merriment, "I am beginning to talk like Lyddy, I
think."

"Truly," said Mr. Lyon, smiling, "the uncertainty of things is a text
rather too wide and obvious for fruitful application; and to discourse
of it is, as one may say, to bottle up the air, and make a present of it
to those who are already standing out of doors."

"Do you think," said Esther, in the course of their chat, "that the
Treby people know at all about the reasons of my being at Transome
Court?"

"I have had no sign thereof: and indeed there is no one, as it appears,
who could make the story public. The man Christian is away in London
with Mr. Debarry, Parliament now beginning; and Mr. Jermyn would
doubtless respect the confidence of the Transomes. I have not seen him
lately. I know nothing of his movements. And so far as my own speech is
concerned, and my strict command to Lyddy, I have withheld the means of
information even as to your having returned to Transome Court in the
carriage, not wishing to give any occasion to solicitous questioning
till time hath somewhat inured me. But it hath got abroad that you are
there, and is the subject of conjectures, whereof, I imagine, the chief
is, that you are gone as companion to Mistress Transome; for some of our
friends have already hinted a rebuke to me that I should permit your
taking a position so little likely to further your spiritual welfare."

"Now, father, I think I shall be obliged to run away from you, not to
keep the carriage too long," said Esther, as she finished her reforms on
the minister's toilet. "You look beautiful now, and I must give Lyddy a
little lecture before I go."

"Yes, my dear; I would not detain you, seeing that my duties demand me.
But take with you this Treatise, which I have purposely selected. It
concerns all the main questions between ourselves and the
Establishment--government, discipline, state-support. It is seasonable
that you should give a nearer attention to these polemics, lest you be
drawn aside by the fallacious association of a State Church with
elevated rank."

Esther chose to take the volume submissively, rather than to adopt the
ungraceful sincerity of saying that she was unable at present to give
her mind to the original functions of a bishop or the comparative merit
of Endowments and Voluntaryism. But she did not run her eyes over the
pages during her solitary drive to get a foretaste of the argument, for
she was entirely occupied with Felix Holt's prophecy that she would
marry Harold Transome.




CHAPTER XLII.

    Thou sayst it, and not I; for thou hast done
    The ugly deed that made these ugly words.

                                     --SOPHOCLES: _Electra_.

                       Yea, it becomes a man
    To cherish memory, where he had delight.
    For kindness is the natural birth of kindness.
    Whose soul records not the great debt of joy,
    Is stamped for ever an ignoble man.

                                        --SOPHOCLES: _Ajax_.


It so happened that, on the morning of the day when Esther went to see
her father, Jermyn had not yet heard of her presence at Transome Court.
One fact conducing to keep him in this ignorance was, that some days
after his critical interview with Harold--days during which he had been
wondering how long it would be before Harold made up his mind to
sacrifice the luxury of satisfied anger for the solid advantage of
securing fortune and position--he was peremptorily called away by
business to the south of England, and was obliged to inform Harold by
letter of his absence. He took care also to notify his return; but
Harold made no sign in reply. The days passed without bringing him any
gossip concerning Esther's visit, for such gossip was almost confined to
Mr. Lyon's congregation, her Church pupils, Miss Louisa Jermyn among
them, having been satisfied by her father's written statement that she
was gone on a visit of uncertain duration. But on this day of Esther's
call in Malthouse Yard, the Miss Jermyns in their walk saw her getting
into the Transomes' carriage, which they had previously observed to be
waiting, and which they now saw bowled along on the road toward Little
Treby. It followed that only a few hours later the news reached the
astonished ears of Matthew Jermyn.

Entirely ignorant of those converging indications and small links of
incident which had raised Christian's conjectures, and had gradually
contributed to put him in possession of the facts; ignorant too of some
busy motives in the mind of his obliged servant Johnson; Jermyn was not
likely to see at once how the momentous information that Esther was the
surviving Bycliffe could possibly have reached Harold. His daughters
naturally leaped, as others had done, to the conclusion that the
Transomes, seeking a governess for little Harry, had had their choice
directed to Esther, and observed that they must have attracted her by a
high salary to induce her to take charge of such a small pupil; though
of course it was important that his English and French should be
carefully attended to from the first. Jermyn, hearing this suggestion,
was not without a momentary hope that it might be true, and that Harold
was still safely unconscious of having under the same roof with him the
legal claimant of the family estate.

But a mind in the grasp of a terrible anxiety is not credulous of easy
solutions. The one stay that bears up our hopes is sure to appear frail,
and if looked at long will seem to totter. Too much depended on that
unconsciousness of Harold's; and although Jermyn did not see the course
of things that could have disclosed and combined the various items of
knowledge which he had imagined to be his own secret, and therefore his
safeguard, he saw quite clearly what was likely to be the result of the
disclosure. Not only would Harold Transome be no longer afraid of him,
but also, by marrying Esther (and Jermyn at once felt sure of this
issue), would be triumphantly freed from any unpleasant consequences,
and could pursue much at his ease the gratification of ruining Matthew
Jermyn. The prevision of an enemy's triumphant ease is in any case
sufficiently irritating to hatred, and there were reasons why it was
peculiarly exasperating here: but Jermyn had not the leisure now for
mere fruitless emotion; he had to think of a possible device which might
save him from imminent ruin--not an indefinite adversity, but a ruin in
detail, which his thoughts painted out with the sharpest, ugliest
intensity. A man of sixty, with an unsuspicious wife and daughters
capable of shrieking and fainting at a sudden revelation, and of looking
at him reproachfully in their daily misery under a shabby lot to which
he had reduced them--with a mind and with habits dried hard by the
years--with no glimpse of an endurable standing-ground except where he
could domineer and be prosperous according to the ambitions of pushing
middle-class gentility,--such a man is likely to find the prospect of
worldly ruin ghastly enough to drive him to the most uninviting means of
escape. He will probably prefer any private scorn that will save him
from public infamy, or that will leave him with money in his pocket, to
the humiliation and hardship of new servitude in old age, a shabby hat
and a melancholy hearth, where the firing must be used charily and the
women look sad. But though a man may be willing to escape through a
sewer, a sewer with an outlet into the dry air is not always at hand.
Running away, especially when spoken of as absconding, seems at a
distance to offer a good modern substitute for the right of sanctuary;
but seen closely, it is often found inconvenient and scarcely possible.

Jermyn, on thoroughly considering his position, saw that he had no very
agreeable resources at command. But he soon made up his mind what he
would do next. He wrote to Mrs. Transome requesting her to appoint an
hour in which he could see her privately: he knew she would understand
that it was to be an hour when Harold was not at home. As he sealed the
letter, he indulged a faint hope that in this interview he might be
assured of Esther's birth being unknown at Transome Court; but in the
worst case, perhaps some help might be found in Mrs. Transome. To such
uses may tender relations come when they have ceased to be tender! The
Hazaels of our world who are pushed on quickly against their
preconceived confidence in themselves to do doglike actions by the
sudden suggestion of a wicked ambition, are much fewer than those who
are led on through the years by the gradual demands of a selfishness
which has spread its fibres far and wide through the intricate vanities
and sordid cares of an everyday existence.

In consequence of that letter to Mrs. Transome, Jermyn was, two days
afterward, ushered into the smaller drawing-room at Transome Court. It
was a charming little room in its refurbished condition: it had two
pretty inlaid cabinets, great china vases with contents that sent forth
odors of paradise, groups of flowers in oval frames on the walls, and
Mrs. Transome's own portrait in the evening costume of =1800=, with a
garden in the background. That brilliant young woman looked smilingly
down on Mr. Jermyn as he passed in front of the fire; and at present
hers was the only gaze in the room. He could not help meeting the gaze
as he waited, holding his hat behind him--could not help seeing many
memories lit up by it; but the strong bent of his mind was to go on
arguing each memory into a claim, and to see in the regard others had
for him a merit of his own. There had been plenty of roads open to him
when he was a young man; perhaps if he had not allowed himself to be
determined (chiefly, of course, by the feelings of others, for of what
effect would his own feelings have been without them?) into the road he
actually took, he might have done better for himself. At any rate, he
was likely at last to get the worst of it, and it was he who had most
reason to complain. The fortunate Jason, as we know from Euripides,
piously thanked the goddess, and saw clearly that he was not at all
obliged to Medea; Jermyn was, perhaps, not aware of the precedent, but
thought out his own freedom from obligation and the indebtedness of
others toward him with a native faculty not inferior to Jason's.

Before three minutes had passed, however, as if by some sorcery, the
brilliant smiling young woman above the mantelpiece seemed to be
appearing at the doorway withered and frosted by many winters, and with
lips and eyes from which the smile had departed. Jermyn advanced, and
they shook hands, but neither of them said anything by way of greeting.
Mrs. Transome seated herself, and pointed to a chair opposite and near
her.

"Harold has gone to Loamford," she said, in a subdued tone. "You had
something particular to say to me?"

"Yes," said Jermyn, with his soft and deferential air. "The last time I
was here I could not take the opportunity of speaking to you. But I am
anxious to know whether you are aware of what has passed between me and
Harold?"

"Yes, he has told me everything."

"About his proceedings against me? and the reason he stopped them?"

"Yes: have you had notice that he has begun them again?"

"No," said Jermyn, with a very unpleasant sensation.

"Of course he will now," said Mrs. Transome. "There is no reason in his
mind why he should not."

"Has he resolved to risk the estate then?"

"He feels in no danger on that score. And if there were, the danger
doesn't depend on you. The most likely thing is, that he will marry this
girl."

"He knows everything then?" said Jermyn, the expression of his face
getting clouded.

"Everything. It's of no use for you to think of mastering him: you can't
do it. I used to wish Harold to be fortunate, and he is fortunate," said
Mrs. Transome, with intense bitterness. "It's not my star that he
inherits."

"Do you know how he came by the information about this girl?"

"No; but she knew it all before we spoke to her. It's no secret."

Jermyn was confounded by this hopeless frustration to which he had no
key. Though he thought of Christian, the thought shed no light; but the
more fatal point was clear: he held no secret that could help him.

"You are aware that these chancery proceedings may ruin me?"

"He told me they would. But if you are imagining I can do anything, pray
dismiss the notion. I have told him as plainly as I dare that I wish him
to drop all public quarrel with you, and that you could make an
arrangement without scandal. I can do no more. He will not listen to me;
he doesn't mind about my feelings. He cares more for Mr. Transome than
he does for me. He will not listen to me any more than if I were an old
ballad-singer."

"It's very hard on me, I know," said Jermyn, in the tone with which a
man flings out a reproach.

"I besought you three months ago to bear anything rather than quarrel
with him."

"I have not quarrelled with him. It is he who has been always seeking a
quarrel with me. I have borne a great deal--more than any one else
would. He set his teeth against me from the first."

"He saw things that annoyed him; and men are not like women," said Mrs.
Transome. There was bitter innuendo in that truism.

"It's very hard on me--I know that," said Jermyn, with an
intensification of his previous tone, rising and walking a step or two,
then turning and laying his hand on the back of the chair. "Of course
the law in this case can't in the least represent the justice of the
matter. I made a good many sacrifices in times past. I gave up a great
deal of fine business for the sake of attending to the family affairs,
and in that lawsuit they would have gone to rack and ruin if it hadn't
been for me."

He moved away again, laid down his hat, which he had been previously
holding, and thrust his hands into his pockets as he returned. Mrs.
Transome sat motionless as marble, and almost as pale. Her hands lay
crossed on her knees. This man, young, slim, and graceful, with a
selfishness which then took the form of homage to her, had at one time
kneeled to her and kissed those hands fervently, and she had thought
there was a poetry in such passion beyond any to be found in everyday
domesticity.

"I stretched my conscience a good deal in that affair of Bycliffe, as
you know perfectly well. I told you everything at the time. I told you I
was very uneasy about those witnesses, and about getting him thrown into
prison. I know it's the blackest thing anybody could charge me with, if
they knew my life from beginning to end; and I should never have done
it, if I had not been under an infatuation such as makes a man do
anything. What did it signify to me about the loss of the lawsuit? I was
a young bachelor--I had the world before me."

"Yes," said Mrs. Transome, in a low tone. "It was a pity you didn't make
another choice."

"What would have become of you?" said Jermyn, carried along a climax,
like other self-justifiers. "I had to think of you. You would not have
liked me to make another choice then."

"Clearly," said Mrs. Transome, with concentrated bitterness, but still
quietly; "the greater mistake was mine."

Egoism is usually stupid in a dialogue; but Jermyn's did not make him so
stupid that he did not feel the edge of Mrs. Transome's words. They
increased his irritation.

"I hardly see that," he replied, with a slight laugh of scorn. "You had
an estate and a position to save, to go no farther. I remember very well
what you said to me--'A clever lawyer can do anything if he has the
will; if it's impossible, he will make it possible. And the property is
sure to be Harold's some day.' He was a baby then."

"I remember most things a little too well; you had better say at once
what is your object in recalling them."

"An object that is nothing more than justice. With the relation I stood
in, it was not likely I should think myself bound by all the forms that
are made to bind strangers. I had often immense trouble to raise the
money necessary to pay off debts and carry on the affairs; and, as I
said before, I had given up other lines of advancement which would have
been open to me if I had not stayed in this neighborhood at a critical
time when I was fresh to the world. Anybody who knew the whole
circumstances would say that my being hunted and run down on the score
of my past transactions with regard to the family affairs, is an
abominably unjust and unnatural thing."

Jermyn paused a moment, and then added, "At my time of life----and with
a family about me----and after what has passed----I should have thought
there was nothing you would care more to prevent."

"I do care. It makes me miserable. That is the extent of my power--to
feel miserable."

"No, it is not the extent of your power. You could save me if you would.
It is not to be supposed that Harold would go on against me--if he knew
the whole truth."

Jermyn had sat down before he uttered the last words. He had lowered his
voice slightly. He had the air of one who thought that he had prepared
the way for an understanding. That a man with so much sharpness, with so
much suavity at command--a man who piqued himself on his persuasiveness
toward women--should behave just as Jermyn did on this occasion, would
be surprising but for the constant experience that temper and selfish
insensibility will defeat excellent gifts--will make a sensible person
shout when shouting is out of place, and will make a polished man rude
when his polish might be of eminent use to him.

As Jermyn, sitting down and leaning forward with an elbow on his knee,
uttered his last words--"if he knew the whole truth"--a slight shock
seemed to pass through Mrs. Transome's hitherto motionless body,
followed by a sudden light in her eyes, as in an animal's about to
spring.

"And you expect me to tell him?" she said, not loudly, but yet with a
clear metallic ring in her voice.

"Would it not be right for him to know?" said Jermyn, in a more bland
and persuasive tone than he had yet used.

Perhaps some of the most terrible irony of the human lot is this of a
deep truth coming to be uttered by lips that have no right to it.

"I will never tell him!" said Mrs. Transome, starting up, her whole
frame thrilled with a passion that seemed almost to make her young
again. Her hands hung beside her clenched tightly, her eyes and lips
lost the helpless repressed bitterness of discontent, and seemed
suddenly fed with energy. "You reckon up your sacrifices for me: you
have kept a good account of them, and it is needful: they are some of
them what no one else could guess or find out. But you made your
sacrifices when they seemed pleasant to you; when you told me they were
your happiness; when you told me that it was I who stooped, and I who
bestowed favors."

Jermyn rose too, and laid his hand on the back of the chair. He had
grown visibly paler, but seemed about to speak.

"Don't speak!" Mrs. Transome said peremptorily. "Don't open your lips
again. You have said enough; I will speak now. I have made sacrifices
too, but it was when I knew that they were not my happiness. It was
after I saw that I had stooped--after I saw that your tenderness had
turned into calculation--after I saw that you cared for yourself only,
and not for me. I heard your explanations--of your duty in life--of our
mutual reputation--of a virtuous young lady attached to you. I bore it;
I let everything go; I shut my eyes: I might almost have let myself
starve, rather than have scenes of quarrel with the man I had loved, in
which I must accuse him of turning my love into a good bargain." There
was a slight tremor in Mrs. Transome's voice in the last words, and for
a moment she paused: but when she spoke again it seemed as if the tremor
had frozen into a cutting icicle. "I suppose if a lover picked one's
pocket, there's no woman would like to own it. I don't say I was not
afraid of you: I was afraid of you, and I know now I was right."

"Mrs. Transome," said Jermyn, white to the lips, "it is needless to say
more. I withdraw any words that have offended you."

"You can't withdraw them. Can a man apologize for being a dastard?--And
I have caused you to strain your conscience, have I?--it is I who have
sullied your purity? I should think the demons have more honor--they are
not so impudent to one another. I would not lose the misery of being a
woman, now I see what can be the baseness of a man. One must be a
man--first to tell a woman that her love has made her your debtor, and
then ask her to pay you by breaking the last poor threads between her
and her son."

"I do not ask it," said Jermyn, with a certain asperity. He was
beginning to find this intolerable. The mere brute strength of a
masculine creature rebelled. He felt almost inclined to throttle the
voice out of this woman.

"You do ask it: it is what you would like. I have had a terror on me
lest evil should happen to you. From the first, after Harold came home,
I had a terrible dread. It seemed as if murder might come between you--I
didn't know what. I felt the horror of his not knowing the truth. I
might have been dragged at last, by my own feeling--by my own memory--to
tell him all, and make him as well as myself miserable, to save you."

Again there was a slight tremor, as if at the remembrance of womanly
tenderness and pity. But immediately she launched forth again.

"But now you have asked me, I will never tell him! Be ruined--no--do
something more dastardly to save yourself. If I sinned, my judgment went
beforehand--that I should sin for a man like you."

Swiftly upon those last words Mrs. Transome passed out of the room. The
softly padded door closed behind her making no noise, and Jermyn found
himself alone.

For a brief space he stood still. Human beings in moments of passionate
reproach and denunciation, especially when their anger is on their own
account, are never so wholly in the right that the person who has to
wince cannot possibly protest against some unreasonableness or
unfairness in their outburst. And if Jermyn had been capable of feeling
that he had thoroughly merited this infliction, he would not have
uttered the words that drew it down on him. Men do not become penitent
and learn to abhor themselves by having their backs cut open with the
lash; rather, they learn to abhor the lash. What Jermyn felt about Mrs.
Transome when she disappeared was, that she was a furious woman--who
would not do what he wanted her to do. And he was supported as to his
justifiableness by the inward repetition of what he had already said to
her; it was right that Harold should know the truth. He did not take
into account (how should he?) the exasperation and loathing excited by
his daring to urge the plea of right. A man who had stolen the pyx, and
got frightened when justice was at his heels, might feel the sort of
penitence which would induce him to run back in the dark and lay the pyx
where the sexton might find it; but if in doing so he whispered to the
Blessed Virgin that he was moved by considering the sacredness of all
property, and the peculiar sacredness of the pyx, it is not to be
believed that she would like him the better for it. Indeed, one often
seems to see why the saints should prefer candles to words, especially
from penitents whose skin is in danger. Some salt of generosity would
have made Jermyn conscious that he had lost the citizenship which
authorized him to plead the right; still more, that his self-vindication
to Mrs. Transome would be like the exhibition of a brand-mark, and only
show that he was shame-proof. There is heroism even in the circles of
hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind
and never recriminate. But these things, which are easy to discern when
they are painted for us on the large canvas of poetic story, become
confused and obscure even for well-read gentlemen when their affection
for themselves is alarmed by pressing details of actual experience. If
their comparison of instances is active at such times, it is chiefly in
showing them that their own case has subtle distinctions from all other
cases, which should free them from unmitigated condemnation.

And it was in this way with Matthew Jermyn. So many things were more
distinctly visible to him, and touched him more acutely, than the effect
of his acts or words on Mrs. Transome's feelings! In fact--he asked,
with a touch of something that makes us all akin--was it not
preposterous, this excess of feeling on points which he himself did not
find powerfully moving? She had treated him most unreasonably. It would
have been right for her to do what he had--not asked, but only hinted at
in a mild and interrogatory manner. But the clearest and most unpleasant
result of the interview was, that this right thing which he desired so
much would certainly not be done for him by Mrs. Transome.

As he was moving his arm from the chair-back, and turning to take his
hat, there was a boisterous noise in the entrance-hall; the door of the
drawing-room, which had closed without latching, was pushed open, and
old Mr. Transome appeared with a face of feeble delight, playing horse
to little Harry, who roared and flogged behind him, while Moro yapped in
a puppy voice at their heels. But when Mr. Transome saw Jermyn in the
room he stood still in the doorway, as if he did not know whether
entrance was permissible. The majority of his thoughts were but ravelled
threads of the past. The attorney came forward to shake hands with due
politeness, but the old man said, with a bewildered look, and in a
hesitating way--

"Mr. Jermyn?--why--why--where is Mrs. Transome?"

Jermyn smiled his way out past the unexpected group; and little Harry,
thinking he had an eligible opportunity, turned round to give a parting
stroke on the stranger's coat-tails.




CHAPTER XLIII.

    Whichever way my days decline,
      I felt and feel, though left alone,
      His being working in mine own,
    The footsteps of his life in mine.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Dear friend, far off, my lost desire
      So far, so near, in woe and weal;
      Oh, loved the most when most I feel
    There is a lower and a higher!

                                  --TENNYSON: _In Memoriam_.


After that morning on which Esther found herself reddened and confused
by the sense of having made a distant allusion to Felix Holt, she felt
it impossible that she should even, as she had sometimes intended, speak
of him explicitly to Harold, in order to discuss probabilities as to the
issue of his trial. She was certain she could not do it without
betraying emotion, and there were very complex reasons in Esther's mind
why she could not bear that Harold should detect her sensibility on this
subject. It was not only all the fibres of maidenly pride and reserve,
of a bashfulness undefinably peculiar toward this man, who, while much
older than herself, and bearing the stamp of an experience quite hidden
from her imagination, was taking strongly the aspect of a lover--it was
not only this exquisite kind of shame which was at work within her:
there was another sort of susceptibility in Esther, which her present
circumstances tended to encourage, though she had come to regard it as
not at all lofty, but rather as something which condemned her to
littleness in comparison with a mind she had learned to venerate. She
knew quite well that, to Harold Transome, Felix Holt was one of the
common people who could come into question in no other than a public
light. She had a native capability for discerning that the sense of
ranks and degrees has its repulsions corresponding to the repulsions
dependent on difference of race and color; and she remembered her own
impressions too well not to foresee that it would come on Harold
Transome as a shock, if he suspected there had been any love-passages
between her and this young man, who to him was of course no more than
any other intelligent member of the working class. "To him," said Esther
to herself, with a reaction of her newer, better pride, "who has not had
the sort of intercourse in which Felix Holt's cultured nature would have
asserted its superiority." And in her fluctuations on this matter, she
found herself mentally protesting that, whatever Harold might think,
there was a light in which he was vulgar compared with Felix. Felix had
ideas and motives which she did not believe Harold could understand.
More than all, there was this test: she herself had no sense of
inferiority and just subjection when she was with Harold Transome; there
were even points in him for which she felt a touch, not of anger, but of
playful scorn; whereas with Felix she had always a sense of dependence
and possible illumination. In those large, grave, candid gray eyes of
his, love seemed something that belonged to the high enthusiasm of life,
such as now might be forever shut out from her.

All the same, her vanity winced at the idea that Harold should discern
what, from his point of view, would seem like a degradation of her taste
and refinement. She could not help being gratified by all the
manifestations from those around her that she was thought thoroughly
fitted for a high position--could not help enjoying, with more or less
keenness, a rehearsal of that demeanor amongst luxuries and dignities
which had often been a part of her day-dreams, and the rehearsal
included the reception of more and more emphatic attentions from Harold,
and of an effusiveness in his manners, which, in proportion as it would
have been offensive if it had appeared earlier, became flattering as the
effect of a growing acquaintance and daily contact. It comes in so many
forms in this life of ours--the knowledge that there is something
sweetest and noblest of which we despair, and the sense of something
present that solicits us with an immediate and easy indulgence. And
there is a pernicious falsity in the pretence that a woman's love lies
above the range of such temptations.

Day after day Esther had an arm offered her, had very beaming looks upon
her, had opportunities for a great deal of light, airy talk, in which
she knew herself to be charming, and had the attractive interest of
noticing Harold's practical cleverness--the masculine ease with which he
governed everybody and administered everything about him, without the
least harshness, and with a facile good-nature which yet was not weak.
In the background, too, there was the ever-present consideration, that
if Harold Transome wished to marry her, and she accepted him, the
problem of her lot would be more easily solved than in any other way. It
was difficult, by any theory of Providence, or consideration of results,
to see a course which she could call duty: if something would come and
urge itself strongly as pleasure, and save her from the effort to find a
clue of principle amid the labyrinthine confusions of right and
possession, the promise could not but seem alluring. And yet, this life
at Transome Court was _not_ the life of her day-dreams: there was
dullness already in its ease, and in the absence of high demand; and
there was a vague consciousness that the love of this not unfascinating
man who hovered about her gave an air of moral mediocrity to all her
prospects. She would not have been able perhaps to define this
impression; but somehow or other by this elevation of fortune it seemed
that the higher ambition which had begun to spring in her was forever
nullified. All life seemed cheapened; as it might seem to a young
student who, having believed that to gain a certain degree he must write
a thesis in which he would bring his powers to bear with memorable
effect, suddenly ascertained that no thesis was expected, but the sum
(in English money) of twenty-seven pounds ten shillings and sixpence.

After all, she was a woman, and could not make her own lot. As she had
once said to Felix, "A woman must choose meaner things, because only
meaner things are offered to her." Her lot is made for her by the love
she accepts. And Esther began to think that her lot was being made for
her by the love that was surrounding her with the influence of a garden
on a summer morning.

Harold, on his side, was conscious that the interest of his wooing was
not standing still. He was beginning to think it a conquest, in which it
would be disappointing to fail, even if this fair nymph had no claim to
the estate. He would have liked--and yet he would not have liked--that
just a slight shadow of doubt as to his success should be removed. There
was something about Esther that he did not altogether understand. She
was clearly a woman that could be governed: she was too charming for him
to fear that she would ever be obstinate or interfering. Yet there was a
lightning that shot out of her now and then, which seemed the sign of a
dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more admirable than
Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman should not see
this.

One fine February day, when already the golden and purple crocuses were
out on the terrace--one of those flattering days which sometimes precede
the north-east winds of March, and make believe that the coming spring
will be enjoyable--a very striking group, of whom Esther and Harold made
a part, came out at midday to walk upon the gravel at Transome Court.
They did not, as usual, go toward the pleasure grounds on the eastern
side, because Mr. Lingon, who was one of them, was going home, and his
road lay through the stone gateway into the park.

Uncle Lingon, who disliked painful confidences, and preferred knowing
"no mischief of anybody," had not objected to be let into the important
secret about Esther, and was sure at once that the whole affair, instead
of being a misfortune, was a piece of excellent luck. For himself, he
did not profess to be a judge of women, but she seemed to have all the
"points," and to carry herself as well as Arabella did, which was saying
a good deal. Honest Jack Lingon's first impressions quickly became
traditions, which no subsequent evidence could disturb. He was fond of
his sister, and seemed never to be conscious of any change for the worse
in her since their early time. He considered that man a beast who said
anything unpleasant about the persons to whom he was attached. It was
not that he winked; his wide-open eyes saw nothing but what his easy
disposition inclined him to see. Harold was a good fellow, a clever
chap; and Esther's peculiar fitness for him, under all the
circumstances, was extraordinary; it reminded him of something in the
classics, though he couldn't think exactly what--in fact, a memory was a
nasty uneasy thing. Esther was always glad when the old rector came.
With an odd contrariety to her former niceties she liked his rough
attire and careless frank speech; they were something not point device
that seemed to connect the life of Transome Court with that rougher,
commoner world where her home had been.

She and Harold were walking a little in advance of the rest of the
party, who were retarded by various causes. Old Mr. Transome, wrapped in
a cloth cloak trimmed with sable, and with a soft warm cap also trimmed
with fur on his head, had a shuffling uncertain walk. Little Harry was
dragging a toy vehicle, on the seat of which he had insisted on tying
Moro with a piece of scarlet drapery round him, making him look like a
barbaric prince in a chariot. Moro, having little imagination, objected
to this, and barked with feeble snappishness as the tyrannous lad ran
forward, then whirled the chariot round, and ran back to "Gappa," then
came to a dead stop, which overset the chariot, that he might watch
Uncle Lingon's water-spaniel run for the hurled stick and bring it in
his mouth. Nimrod kept close to his old master's legs, glancing with
much indifference at this youthful ardor about sticks--he had "gone
through all that"; and Dominic walked by, looking on blandly, and
taking care both of young and old. Mrs. Transome was not there.

[Illustration: ESTHER LYON AND HAROLD TRANSOME.]

Looking back and seeing that they were a good deal in advance of the
rest, Esther and Harold paused.

"What do you think about thinning the trees over there?" said Harold,
pointing with his stick. "I have a bit of a notion that if they were
divided into clumps so as to show the oaks beyond it would be a great
improvement. It would give an idea of extent that is lost now. And there
might be some very pretty clumps got out of those mixed trees. What do
you think?"

"I should think it would be an improvement. One likes a 'beyond'
everywhere. But I never heard you express yourself so dubiously," said
Esther, looking at him rather archly: "you generally see things so
clearly, and are so convinced, that I shall begin to feel quite
tottering if I find you in uncertainty. Pray don't begin to be doubtful;
it is infectious."

"You think me a great deal too sure--too confident?" said Harold.

"Not at all. It is an immense advantage to know your own will, when you
always mean to have it."

"But suppose I couldn't get it, in spite of meaning?" said Harold, with
a beaming inquiry in his eyes.

"Oh, then," said Esther, turning her head aside, carelessly, as if she
were considering the distant birch-stems, "you would bear it quite
easily, as you did your not getting into Parliament. You would know you
could get it another time--or get something else as good."

"The fact is," said Harold, moving on a little, as if he did not want to
be quite overtaken by the others, "you consider me a fat, fatuous,
self-satisfied fellow."

"Oh, there are degrees," said Esther, with a silvery laugh; "you have
just as much of those qualities as is becoming. There are different
styles. You are perfect in your own."

"But you prefer another style, I suspect. A more submissive, tearful,
devout worshipper, who would offer his incense with more trembling."

"You are quite mistaken," said Esther, still lightly. "I find I am very
wayward. When anything is offered to me, it seems that I prize it less,
and don't want to have it."

Here was a very baulking answer, but in spite of it Harold could not
help believing that Esther was very far from objecting to the sort of
incense he had been offering just then.

"I have often read that that is in human nature," she went on, "yet it
takes me by surprise in myself. I suppose," she added, smiling, "I
didn't think of myself as human nature."

"I don't confess to the same waywardness," said Harold. "I am very fond
of things that I can get. And I never longed much for anything out of my
reach. Whatever I feel sure of getting I like all the better. I think
half those priggish maxims about human nature in the lump are no more to
be relied on than universal remedies. There are different sorts of human
nature. Some are given to discontent and longing, others to securing and
enjoying. And let me tell you, the discontented longing style is
unpleasant to live with."

Harold nodded with a meaning smile at Esther.

"Oh, I assure you I have abjured all admiration for it," she said,
smiling up at him in return.

She was remembering the schooling Felix had given her about her Byronic
heroes, and was inwardly adding a third sort of human nature to those
varieties which Harold had mentioned. He naturally supposed that he
might take the abjuration to be entirely in his own favor. And his face
did look very pleasant; she could not help liking him, although he was
certainly too particular about sauces, gravies, and wines, and had a way
of virtually measuring the value of everything by the contribution it
made to his own pleasure. His very good-nature was unsympathetic; it
never came from any thorough understanding or deep respect for what was
in the mind of the person he obliged or indulged; it was like his
kindness to his mother--an arrangement of his for the happiness of
others, which, if they were sensible, ought to succeed. And an
inevitable comparison which haunted her, showed her the same quality in
his political views: the utmost enjoyment of his own advantages was the
solvent that blended pride in his family and position, with the adhesion
to changes that were to obliterate tradition and melt down enchased gold
heirlooms into plating for the egg-spoons of "the people." It is
terrible--the keen bright eye of a woman when it has once been turned
with admiration on what is severely true; but then, the severely true
rarely comes within its range of vision. Esther had had an unusual
illumination; Harold did not know how, but he discerned enough of the
effect to make him more cautious than he had ever been in his life
before. That caution would have prevented him just then from following
up the question as to the style of person Esther would think pleasant to
live with, even if Uncle Lingon had not joined them, as he did, to talk
about soughing tiles, saying presently that he should turn across the
grass and get on to the Home Farm, to have a look at the improvements
that Harold was making with such racing speed.

"But you know, lad," said the rector, as they paused at the expected
parting, "you can't do everything in a hurry. The wheat must have time
to grow, even when you've reformed all us old Tories off the face of the
ground. Dash it! now the election's over, I'm an old Tory again. You
see, Harold, a Radical won't do for the county. At another election, you
must be on the look-out for a borough where they want a bit of blood. I
should have liked you uncommonly to stand for the county; and a Radical
of good family squares well enough with a new-fashioned Tory like young
Debarry; but you see, these riots--it's been a nasty business. I shall
have my hair combed at the sessions for a year to come. But, heyday!
What dame is this, with a small boy?--not one of my parishioners?"

Harold and Esther turned, and saw an elderly woman advancing with a tiny
red-haired boy, scantily attired as to his jacket, which merged into a
small sparrow-tail a little higher than his waist, but muffled as to his
throat with a blue woollen comforter. Esther recognized the pair too
well, and felt very uncomfortable. We are so pitiably in subjection to
all sorts of vanity--even the very vanities we are practically
renouncing! And in spite of the almost solemn memories connected with
Mrs. Holt, Esther's first shudder was raised by the idea of what things
this woman would say, and by the mortification of having Felix in any
way represented by his mother.

As Mrs. Holt advanced into closer observation, it became more evident
that she was attired with a view not to charm the eye, but rather to
afflict it with all that expression of woe which belongs to very rusty
bombazine and the limpest state of false hair. Still, she was not a
woman to lose the sense of her own value, or become abject in her
manners under any circumstances of depression; and she had a peculiar
sense on the present occasion that she was justly relying on the force
of her own character and judgment, in independence of anything that Mr.
Lyon or the masterful Felix would have said, if she had thought them
worthy to know of her undertaking. She courtesied once, as if to the
entire group, now including even the dogs, who showed various degrees of
curiosity, especially as to what kind of game the smaller animal Job
might prove to be after due investigation; and then she proceeded at
once toward Esther, who, in spite of her annoyance, took her arm from
Harold's, said, "How do you do, Mrs. Holt?" very kindly, and stooped to
pat little Job.

"Yes--you know him, Miss Lyon," said Mrs. Holt, in that tone which
implies that the conversation is intended for the edification of the
company generally; "you know the orphin child, as Felix brought home for
me that am his mother to take care of. And it's what I've done--nobody
more so--though it's trouble is my reward."

Esther had raised herself again, to stand in helpless endurance of
whatever might be coming. But by this time young Harry, struck even more
than the dogs by the appearance of Job Tudge, had come round dragging
his chariot, and placed himself close to the pale child, whom he
exceeded in height and breadth, as well as in depth of coloring. He
looked into Job's eyes, peeped round at the tail of his jacket and
pulled it a little, and then, taking off the tiny cloth-cap, observed
with much interest the tight red curls which had been hidden underneath
it. Job looked at his inspector with the round blue eyes of
astonishment, until Harry, purely by way of experiment, took a bon-bon
from a fantastic wallet which hung over his shoulder, and applied the
test to Job's lips. The result was satisfactory to both. Every one had
been watching this small comedy, and when Job crunched the bon-bon while
Harry looked down at him inquiringly and patted his back, there was
general laughter except on the part of Mrs. Holt, who was shaking her
head slowly, and slapping the back of her left hand with the painful
patience of a tragedian whose part is in abeyance to an ill-timed
introduction of the humorous.

"I hope Job's cough has been better lately," said Esther, in mere
uncertainty as to what it would be desirable to say or do.

"I dare say you hope so, Miss Lyon," said Mrs. Holt, looking at the
distant landscape. "I've no reason to disbelieve but what you wish well
to the child, and to Felix, and to me. I'm sure nobody has any occasion
to wish me otherways. My character will bear enquiry, and what you, as
are young, don't know, others can tell you. That was what I said to
myself when I made up my mind to come here and see you, and ask you to
get me the freedom to speak to Mr. Transome. I said, whatever Miss Lyon
may be now, in the way of being lifted up among great people, she's our
minister's daughter, and was not above coming to my house and walking
with my son Felix--though I'll not deny he made that figure on the
Lord's Day, that'll perhaps go against him with the judge, if anybody
thinks well to tell him."

Here Mrs. Holt paused a moment, as with a mind arrested by the painful
image it had called up.

Esther's face was glowing, when Harold glanced at her; and seeing this,
he was considerate enough to address Mrs. Holt instead of her.

"You are then the mother of the unfortunate young man who is in prison?"

"Indeed I am, sir," said Mrs. Holt, feeling that she was now in deep
water. "It's not likely I should claim him if he wasn't my own; though
it's not by my will, nor my advice, sir, that he ever walked; for I gave
him none but good. But if everybody's son was guided by their mothers,
the world 'ud be different; my son is not worse than many another
woman's son, and that in Treby, whatever they may say as haven't got
their sons in prison. And as to his giving up the doctoring, and then
stopping his father's medicines, I know it's bad--that I know--but it's
me has had to suffer, and it's me a king and Parliament 'ud consider, if
they meant to do the right thing, and had anybody to make it known to
'em. And as for the rioting and killing the constable--my son said most
plain to me he never meant it, and there was his bit of potato-pie for
dinner getting dry by the fire, the whole blessed time as I sat and
never knew what was coming on me. And it's my opinion as if great people
make elections to get themselves into Parliament, and there's riot and
murder to do it, they ought to see as the widow and the widow's son
doesn't suffer for it. I well know my duty: and I read my Bible; and I
know in Jude where it's been stained with the dried tulip-leaves this
many a year, as you're told not to rail at your betters if they was the
devil himself; nor will I; but this I do say, if it's three Mr.
Transomes instead of one as is listening to me, as there's them ought to
go to the king and get him to let off my son Felix."

This speech, in its chief points, had been deliberately prepared. Mrs.
Holt had set her face like a flint, to make the gentry know their duty
as she knew hers: her defiant defensive tone was due to the
consciousness, not only that she was braving a powerful audience, but
that she was daring to stand on the strong basis of her own judgment in
opposition to her son's. Her proposals had been waived off by Mr Lyon
and Felix; but she had long had the feminine conviction that if she
could "get to speak" in the right quarter, things might be different.
The daring bit of impromptu about the three Mr. Transomes was
immediately suggested by a movement of old Mr. Transome to the
foreground in a line with Mr. Lingon and Harold; his furred and unusual
costume appearing to indicate a mysterious dignity which she must hasten
to include in her appeal.

And there were reasons that none could have foreseen, which made Mrs.
Holt's remonstrance immediately effective. While old Mr. Transome
stared, very much like a waxen image in which the expression is a
failure, and the rector, accustomed to female parishioners and
complainants, looked on with a smile in his eyes, Harold said at once,
with cordial kindness--

"I think you are quite right, Mrs. Holt. And for my part, I am
determined to do my best for your son, both in the witness-box and
elsewhere. Take comfort; if it is necessary, the king shall be appealed
to. And rely upon it, I shall bear you in mind as Felix Holt's mother."

Rapid thoughts had convinced Harold that in this way he was best
commending himself to Esther.

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Holt, who was not going to pour forth
disproportionate thanks, "I am glad to hear you speak so becoming; and
if you had been the king himself, I should have made free to tell you my
opinion. For the Bible says the king's favor is toward a wise servant;
and it's reasonable to think he'd make all the more account of them as
have never been in service, or took wage, which I never did, and never
thought of my son doing; and his father left money, meaning otherways,
so as he might have been a doctor on horseback at this very minute,
instead of being in prison."

"What! was he regularly apprenticed to a doctor?" said Mr. Lingon, who
had not understood this before.

"Sir, he was, and most clever, like his father before him, only he
turned contrary. But as for harming anybody, Felix never meant to harm
anybody but himself and his mother, which he certainly did in respect of
his clothes, and taking to be a low workingman, and stopping my living
respectable, more particular by the pills, which had a sale, as you may
be sure they suited people's insides. And what folks can never have
boxes enough of to swallow, I should think you have a right to sell. And
there's many and many a text for it, as I've opened on without ever
thinking; for if it's true, 'Ask, and you shall have,' I should think
it's truer when you're willing to pay for what you have."

This was a little too much for Mr. Lingon's gravity; he exploded, and
Harold could not help following him. Mrs. Holt fixed her eyes on the
distance, and slapped the back of her left hand again; it might be that
this kind of mirth was the peculiar effect produced by forcible truth on
high and worldly people who were neither in the Independent nor the
General Baptist connection.

"I'm sure you must be tired with your long walk, and little Job too,"
said Esther, by way of breaking this awkward scene. "Aren't you, Job?"
she added, stooping to caress the child, who was timidly shrinking from
Harry's invitation to him to pull the little chariot--Harry's view being
that Job would make a good horse for him to beat, and would run faster
than Gappa.

"It's well you can feel for the orphin child, Miss Lyon," said Mrs.
Holt, choosing an indirect answer rather than to humble herself by
confessing fatigue before gentlemen who seemed to be taking her too
lightly. "I didn't believe but what you'd behave pretty, as you always
did to me, though everybody said you held yourself high. But I'm sure
you never did to Felix, for you let him sit by you at the Free School
before all the town, and him with never a bit of stock round his neck.
And it shows you saw _that_ in him worth taking notice of;--and it is
but right, if you know my words are true, as you should speak for him to
the gentlemen."

"I assure you, Mrs. Holt," said Harold, coming to the rescue--"I assure
you that enough has been said to make me use my best efforts for your
son. And now, pray, go on to the house with the little boy and take some
rest. Dominic, show Mrs. Holt the way, and ask Mrs. Hickes to make her
comfortable, and see that somebody takes her back to Treby in the
buggy."

"I will go back with Mrs. Holt," said Esther, making an effort against
herself.

"No, pray," said Harold, with that kind of entreaty which is really a
decision. "Let Mrs. Holt have time to rest. We shall have returned, and
you can see her before she goes. We will say good-by for the present,
Mrs. Holt."

The poor woman was not sorry to have the prospect of rest and food,
especially for "the orphin child," of whom she was tenderly careful.
Like many women who appear to others to have a masculine decisiveness of
tone, and to themselves to have a masculine force of mind, and who come
into severe collision with sons arrived at the masterful stage, she had
the maternal cord vibrating strongly within her toward all tiny
children. And when she saw Dominic pick up Job and hoist him on his arm
for a little while, by way of making acquaintance, she regarded him with
an approval which she had not thought it possible to extend to a
foreigner. Since Dominic was going, Harry and old Mr. Transome chose to
follow. Uncle Lingon shook hands and turned off across the grass, and
thus Esther was left alone with Harold.

But there was a new consciousness between them. Harold's quick
perception was least likely to be slow in seizing indications of
anything that might affect his position with regard to Esther. Some time
before, his jealousy had been awakened to the possibility that before
she had known him she had been deeply interested in some one else.
Jealousy of all sorts--whether for our fortune or our love--is ready at
combinations, and likely even to outstrip the fact. And Esther's renewed
confusion, united with her silence about Felix, which now first seemed
noteworthy, and with Mrs. Holt's graphic details as to her walking with
him and letting him sit by her before all the town were grounds not
merely for a suspicion, but for a conclusion in Harold's mind. The
effect of this which he at once regarded as a discovery, was rather
different from what Esther had anticipated. It seemed to him that Felix
was the least formidable person that he could have found as an object of
interest antecedent to himself. A young workman who had got himself
thrown into prison, whatever recommendations he might have had for a
girl at a romantic age in the dreariness of Dissenting society at Treby,
could hardly be considered by Harold in the light of a rival. Esther was
too clever and tasteful a woman to make a ballad heroine of herself, by
bestowing her beauty and her lands on this lowly lover. Besides, Harold
cherished the belief that, at the present time, Esther was more wisely
disposed to bestow these things on another lover in every way eligible.
But in two directions this discovery had a determining effect on him,
his curiosity was stirred to know exactly what the relation with Felix
had been, and he was solicitous that his behavior with regard to this
young man should be such as to enhance his own merit in Esther's eyes.
At the same time he was not inclined to any euphemisms that would seem
to bring Felix into the lists with himself.

Naturally when they were left alone, it was Harold who spoke first. "I
should think there's a good deal of worth in this young fellow--this
Holt, notwithstanding the mistakes he has made. A little queer and
conceited, perhaps; but that is usually the case with men of his class
when they are at all superior to their fellows."

"Felix Holt is a highly cultivated man; he is not at all conceited,"
said Esther. The different kinds of pride within her were coalescing
now. She was aware that there had been a betrayal.

"Ah?" said Harold, not quite liking the tone of this answer. "This
eccentricity is a sort of fanaticism, then?--this giving up being a
doctor on horseback, as the old woman calls it, and taking to--let me
see--watchmaking, isn't it?"

"If it is eccentricity to be very much better than other men, he is
certainly eccentric; and fanatical too, if it is fanatical to renounce
all small selfish motives for the sake of a great and unselfish one. I
never knew what nobleness of character really was before I knew Felix
Holt."

It seemed to Esther as if in the excitement of this moment, her own
words were bringing her a clearer revelation.

"God bless me!" said Harold, in a tone of surprised yet thorough belief,
and looking in Esther's face. "I wish you had talked to me about this
before."

Esther at that moment looked perfectly beautiful, with an expression
which Harold had never hitherto seen. All the confusion which had
depended on personal feeling had given way before the sense that she had
to speak the truth about the man whom she felt to be admirable.

"I think I didn't see the meaning of anything fine--I didn't even see
the value of my father's character, until I had been taught a little by
hearing what Felix Holt said, and seeing that his life was like his
words."

Harold looked and listened, and felt his slight jealousy allayed rather
than heightened. "This is not like love," he said to himself, with some
satisfaction. With all due regard to Harold Transome, he was one of
those men who are liable to make the greater mistakes about a particular
woman's feelings, because they pique themselves on a power of
interpretation derived from much experience. Experience is enlightening,
but with a difference. Experiments on live animals may go on for a long
period, and yet the fauna on which they are made may be limited. There
may be a passion in the mind of a woman which precipitates her, not
along the path of easy beguilement, but into a great leap away from it.
Harold's experience had not taught him this; and Esther's enthusiasm
about Felix Holt did not seem to him to be dangerous.

"He's quite an apostolic sort of fellow, then," was the self-quieting
answer he gave to her last words. "He didn't look like that; but I had
only a short interview with him, and I was given to understand that he
refused to see me in prison. I believe he's not very well inclined
toward me. But you saw a great deal of him, I suppose, and your
testimony to any one is enough for me," said Harold, lowering his voice
rather tenderly. "Now I know what your opinion is, I shall spare no
effort on behalf of such a young man. In fact, I had come to the same
resolution before, but your wish would make difficult things easy."

After that energetic speech of Esther's, as often happens, the tears had
just suffused her eyes. It was nothing more than might have been
expected in a tender-hearted woman, considering Felix Holt's
circumstances, and the tears only made more lovely the look with which
she met Harold's when he spoke so kindly. She felt pleased with him; she
was open to the fallacious delight of being assured that she had power
over him to make him do what she liked, and quite forgot the many
impressions which had convinced her that Harold had a padded yoke ready
for the neck of every man, woman, and child that depended on him.

After a short silence, they were getting near the stone gateway, and
Harold said, with an air of intimate consultation--

"What could we do for this young man, supposing he were let off? I shall
send a letter with fifty pounds to the old woman to-morrow. I ought to
have done it before, but it really slipped my memory, amongst the many
things that have occupied me lately. But this young man--what do you
think would be the best thing we could do for him, if he gets at large
again. He should be put in a position where his qualities could be more
telling."

Esther was recovering her liveliness a little, and was disposed to
encourage it for the sake of veiling other feelings, about which she
felt renewed reticence, now that the overpowering influence of her
enthusiasm was past. She was rather wickedly amused and scornful at
Harold's misconceptions and ill-placed intentions of patronage.

"You are hopelessly in the dark," she said, with a light laugh and toss
of her head. "What would you offer Felix Holt? a place in the Excise?
You might as well think of offering it to John the Baptist. Felix has
chosen his lot. He means always to be a poor man."

"Means? Yes," said Harold, slightly piqued, "but what a man means
usually depends on what happens. I mean to be a commoner; but a peerage
might present itself under acceptable circumstances."

"Oh, there is no sum in proportion to be done there," said Esther, again
gaily. "As you are to a peerage so is not Felix Holt to any offer of
advantage that you could imagine for him."

"You must think him fit for any position--the first in the county."

"No, I don't," said Esther, shaking her head mischievously. "I think him
too high for it."

"I see you can be ardent in your admiration."

"Yes, it is my champagne; you know I don't like the other kind."

"That would be satisfactory if one were sure of getting your
admiration," said Harold, leading her up to the terrace, and amongst the
crocuses, from whence they had a fine view of the park and river. They
stood still near the east parapet, and saw the dash of light on the
water, and the pencilled shadows of the trees on the grassy lawn.

"Would it do as well to admire you, instead of being worthy to be
admired?" said Harold, turning his eyes from that landscape to Esther's
face.

"It would be a thing to be put up with," said Esther, smiling at him
rather roguishly. "But you are not in that state of self-despair."

"Well, I am conscious of not having those severe virtues that you have
been praising."

"That is true. You are quite in another _genre_."

"A woman would not find me a tragic hero."

"Oh, no! She must dress for general comedy--such as your mother once
described to me--where the most thrilling event is the drawing of a
handsome check."

"You are a naughty fairy," said Harold, daring to press Esther's hand a
little more closely to him, and drawing her down the eastern steps into
the pleasure-ground, as if he were unwilling to give up the
conversation. "Confess that you are disgusted with my want of romance."

"I shall not confess to being disgusted. I shall ask you to confess that
you are not a romantic figure."

"I am a little too stout."

"For romance--yes. At least you must find security for not getting
stouter."

"And I don't look languishing enough?"

"Oh, yes--rather too much so--at a fine cigar."

"And I am not in danger of committing suicide?"

"No; you are a widower."

Harold did not reply immediately to this last thrust of Esther's. She
had uttered it with innocent thoughtlessness from the playful
suggestions of the moment; but it was a fact that Harold's previous
married life had entered strongly in her impressions about him. The
presence of Harry made it inevitable. Harold took this allusion of
Esther's as an indication that his quality of widower was a point that
made against him; and after a brief silence he said, in an altered, more
serious tone--

"You don't suppose, I hope, that any other woman has ever held the place
that you could hold in my life?"

Esther began to tremble a little, as she always did when the love-talk
between them seemed getting serious. She only gave the rather stumbling
answer, "How so?"

"Harry's mother had been a slave--was bought, in fact."

It was impossible for Harold to preconceive the effect this had on
Esther. His natural disqualification for judging of a girl's feelings
was heightened by the blinding effect of an exclusive object--which was
to assure her that her own place was peculiar and supreme. Hitherto
Esther's acquaintance with oriental love was derived chiefly from
Byronic poems, and this had not sufficed to adjust her mind to a new
story, where the Giaour concerned was giving her his arm. She was unable
to speak; and Harold went on--

"Though I am close on thirty-five, I never met with a woman at all like
you before. There are new eras in one's life that are equivalent to
youth--are something better than youth. I was never an aspirant till I
knew you."

Esther was still silent.

"Not that I dare to call myself that. I am not so confident a personage
as you imagine. I am necessarily in a painful position for a man who has
any feeling."

Here at last Harold had stirred the right fibre. Esther's generosity
seized at once the whole meaning implied in that last sentence. She had
a fine sensibility to the line at which flirtation must cease; and she
was now pale and shaken with feelings she had not yet defined for
herself.

"Do not let us speak of difficult things any more now," she said, with
gentle seriousness. "I am come into a new world of late, and have to
learn life all over again. Let us go in. I must see poor Mrs. Holt
again, and my little friend Job."

She paused at the glass door that opened on the terrace, and entered
there, while Harold went round to the stables.

When Esther had been up-stairs and descended again into the large
entrance-hall, she found its stony capaciousness made lively by human
figures extremely unlike the statues. Since Harry insisted on playing
with Job again, Mrs. Holt and her orphan, after dining, had just been
brought to this delightful scene for a game at hide-and-seek, and for
exhibiting the climbing powers of the two pet squirrels. Mrs. Holt sat
on a stool, in singular relief against the pedestal of the Apollo, while
Dominic and Denner (otherwise Mrs. Hickes) bore her company; Harry, in
his bright red and purple, flitted about like a great tropic bird after
the sparrow-tailed Job, who hid himself with much intelligence behind
the scagliola pillars and the pedestals; while one of the squirrels
perched itself on the head of the tallest statue, and the other was
already peeping down from among the heavy stuccoed angels on the
ceiling, near the summit of a pillar.

Mrs. Holt held on her lap a basket filled with good things for Job, and
seemed much soothed by pleasant company and excellent treatment. As
Esther, descending softly and unobserved, leaned over the stone
banisters and looked at the scene for a minute or two, she saw that Mrs.
Holt's attention, having been directed to the squirrel which had
scampered on to the head of the Silenus carrying the infant Bacchus, had
been drawn downward to the tiny babe looked at with so much affection by
the rather ugly and hairy gentleman, of whom she nevertheless spoke with
reserve as of one who possibly belonged to the Transome family.

"It's most pretty to see its little limbs, and the gentleman holding it.
I should think he was amiable by his look; but it was odd he should have
his likeness took without any clothes. Was he Transome by name?" (Mrs.
Holt suspected that there might be a mild madness in the family.)

Denner, peering and smiling quietly, was about to reply, when she was
prevented by the appearance of old Mr. Transome, who since his walk had
been having "forty winks" on the sofa in the library, and now came out
to look for Harry. He had doffed his fur cap and cloak, but in lying
down to sleep he had thrown over his shoulders a soft Oriental scarf
which Harold had given him, and this still hung over his scanty white
hair and down to his knees, held fast by his wooden-looking arms and
laxly-clasped hands, which fell in front of him.

This singular appearance of an undoubted Transome fitted exactly into
Mrs. Holt's thought at the moment. It lay in the probabilities of things
that gentry's intellects should be peculiar: since they had not to get
their own living, the good Lord might have economized in their case that
common-sense which others were so much more in need of; and in the
shuffling figure before her she saw a descendant of the gentleman who
had chosen to be represented without his clothes--all the more eccentric
where there were the means of buying the best. But these oddities "said
nothing" in great folks, who were powerful in high quarters all the
same. And Mrs. Holt rose and courtesied with a proud respect, precisely
as she would have done if Mr. Transome had looked as wise as Lord
Burleigh.

"I hope I'm in no way taking a liberty, sir," she began, while the old
gentleman looked at her with bland feebleness; "I'm not that woman to
sit anywhere out of my own home without inviting and pressing to. But I
was brought here to wait, because the little gentleman wanted to play
with the orphin child."

"Very glad, my good woman--sit down--sit down," said Mr. Transome,
nodding and smiling between his clauses. "Nice little boy. Your
grandchild?"

"Indeed, sir, no," said Mrs. Holt, continuing to stand. Quite apart from
any awe of Mr. Transome--sitting down, she felt, would be a too great
familiarity with her own pathetic importance on this extra and
unlooked-for occasion. "It's not me has any grandchild, nor ever shall
have, though most fit. But with my only son saying he'll never be
married, and in prison besides, and some saying he'll be transported,
you may see yourself--though a gentleman--as there isn't much chance of
my having grandchildren of my own. And this is old Master Tudge's
grandchild, as my own Felix took to for pity because he was sickly and
clemm'd, and I was noways against it, being of a tender heart. For I'm a
widow myself, and my son Felix, though big, is fatherless, and I know my
duty in consequence. And it's to be wished, sir, as others should know
it as are more in power and live in great houses, and can ride in a
carriage where they will. And if you're the gentleman as is the head of
everything--and it's not to be thought you'd give up to your son as a
poor widow's been forced to do--it behooves you to take the part of them
as are deserving; for the Bible says gray hairs should speak."

"Yes, yes--poor woman--what shall I say?" said old Mr. Transome, feeling
himself scolded, and, as usual, desirous of mollifying displeasure.

"Sir, I can tell you what to say fast enough; for it's what I should say
myself if I could get to speak to the king. For I've asked them that
know, and they say it's the truth, both out of the Bible, and in, as the
king can pardon anything and anybody. And judging by his countenance on
the new signs, and the talk there was a while ago about his being the
people's friend, as the minister once said it from the very pulpit--if
there's any meaning in words, he'll do the right thing by me and my son,
if he's asked proper."

"Yes--a very good man--he'll do anything right," said Mr. Transome,
whose own ideas about the king just then were somewhat misty, consisting
chiefly in broken reminiscences of George III. "I'll ask him anything
you like," he added, with a pressing desire to satisfy Mrs. Holt, who
alarmed him slightly.

"Then, sir, if you'll go in your carriage and say, this young man, Felix
Holt by name, as his father was known the country round, and his mother
most respectable--he never meant harm to anybody, and so far from bloody
murder and fighting, would part with his victual to them that needed it
more--and if you'd get other gentlemen to say the same, and if they're
not satisfied to enquire--I'll not believe but what the king 'ud let my
son out of prison. Or if it's true he must stand his trial, the king 'ud
take care no mischief happened to him. I've got my senses, and I'll
never believe as in a country where there's a God above and a king
below, the right thing can't be done if great people was willing to do
it."

Mrs. Holt, like all orators, had waxed louder and more energetic,
ceasing to propel her arguments, and being propelled by them. Poor old
Mr. Transome, getting more and more frightened at this severe-spoken
woman, who had the horrible possibility to his mind of being a novelty
that was to become permanent, seemed to be fascinated by fear, and stood
helplessly forgetful that if he liked he might turn round and walk away.

Little Harry, alive to anything that had relation to "Gappa," had paused
in his game, and discerning what he thought a hostile aspect in this
naughty black old woman, rushed toward her and proceeded first to beat
her with his mimic jockey's whip, and then, suspecting that her
bombazine was not sensitive, to set his teeth in her arm. While Dominic
rebuked him and pulled him off, Nimrod began to bark anxiously, and the
scene was become alarming even to the squirrels, which scrambled as far
off as possible.

Esther, who had been waiting for an opportunity of intervention, now
came up to Mrs. Holt to speak some soothing words; and old Mr. Transome,
seeing a sufficient screen between himself and his formidable suppliant,
at last gathered courage to turn round and shuffle away with unusual
swiftness into the library.

"Dear Mrs. Holt," said Esther, "do rest comforted. I assure you, you
have done the utmost that can be done by your words. Your visit has not
been thrown away. See how the children have enjoyed it! I saw little Job
actually laughing. I think I never saw him do more than smile before."
Then turning round to Dominic, she said, "Will the buggy come round to
this door?"

This hint was sufficient. Dominic went to see if the vehicle was ready,
and Denner, remarking that Mrs. Holt would like to mount it in the inner
court, invited her to go back into the housekeeper's room. But there was
a fresh resistance raised in Harry by the threatened departure of Job,
who had seemed an invaluable addition to the menagerie of tamed
creatures; and it was barely in time that Esther had the relief of
seeing the entrance hall cleared so as to prevent any further encounter
of Mrs. Holt with Harold, who was now coming up the flight of steps at
the entrance.




CHAPTER XLIV.

           I'm sick at heart. The eye of day,
    The insistent summer noon, seems pitiless,
    Shining in all the barren crevices
    Of weary life, leaving no shade, no dark,
    Where I may dream that hidden waters lie.


Shortly after Mrs. Holt's striking presentation of herself at Transome
Court, Esther went on a second visit to her father. The Loamford Assizes
were approaching; it was expected that in about ten days Felix Holt's
trial would come on, and some hints in her father's letters had given
Esther the impression that he was taking a melancholy view of the
result. Harold Transome had once or twice mentioned the subject with a
facile hopefulness as to "the young fellow's coming off easily," which,
in her anxious mind, was not a counterpoise to disquieting suggestions,
and she had not chosen to introduce another conversation about Felix
Holt, by questioning Harold concerning the probabilities he relied on.
Since those moments on the terrace, Harold had daily become more of the
solicitous and indirectly beseeching lover; and Esther, from the very
fact that she was weighed on by thoughts that were painfully bewildering
to her--by thoughts which, in their newness to her young mind, seemed to
shake her belief that life could be anything else than a compromise with
things repugnant to the moral taste--had become more passive to his
attentions at the very time that she had begun to feel more profoundly
that in accepting Harold Transome she left the high mountain air, the
passionate serenity of perfect love forever behind her, and must adjust
her wishes to a life of middling delights, overhung with the languorous
haziness of motiveless ease, where poetry was only literature, and the
fine ideas had to be taken down from the shelves of the library when her
husband's back was turned. But it seemed as if all outward conditions
concurred, along with her generous sympathy for the Transomes, and with
those native tendencies against which she had once begun to struggle, to
make this middling lot the best she could attain to. She was in this
half-sad, half-satisfied resignation to something like what is called
worldly wisdom, when she went to see her father, and learn what she
could from him about Felix.

The little minister was much depressed, unable to resign himself to the
dread which had begun to haunt him, that Felix might have to endure the
odious penalty of transportation for the manslaughter, which was the
offence that no evidence in his favor could disprove.

"I had been encouraged by the assurances of men instructed in this
regard," said Mr. Lyon, while Esther sat on the stool near him, and
listened anxiously, "that though he were pronounced guilty in regard to
this deed whereunto he hath calamitously fallen, yet that a judge mildly
disposed, and with a due sense of that invisible activity of the soul
whereby the deeds which are the same in outward appearance and effect,
yet differ as the knife-stroke of the surgeon, even though it kill,
differs from the knife-stroke of a wanton mutilater, might use his
discretion in tempering the punishment, so that it would not be very
evil to bear. But now it is said that the judge who cometh is a severe
man, and one nourishing a prejudice against the bolder spirits who
stand not in the old paths."

"I am going to be present at the trial, father," said Esther, who was
preparing the way to express a wish, which she was timid about even with
her father. "I mentioned to Mrs. Transome that I should like to do so,
and she said that she used in old days always to attend the assizes, and
that she would take me. You will be there, father?"

"Assuredly I shall be there, having been summoned to bear witness to
Felix's character, and to his having uttered remonstrances and warnings
long beforehand whereby he proved himself an enemy to riot. In our ears,
who know him, it sounds strangely that aught else should be credible;
but he hath few to speak for him, though I trust that Mr. Harold
Transome's testimony will go far, if, as you say, he is disposed to set
aside minor regards, and not to speak the truth grudgingly and
reluctantly. For the very truth hath a color from the disposition of the
utterer."

"He is kind; he is capable of being generous," said Esther.

"It is well. For I verily believe that evil-minded men have been at work
against Felix. The _Duffield Watchman_ hath written continually in
allusion to him as one of those mischievous men who seek to elevate
themselves through the dishonor of their party; and as one of those who
go not heart and soul with the needs of the people, but seek only to get
a hearing for themselves by raising their voices in crotchety discord.
It is these things that cause me heaviness of spirit: the dark secret of
this young man's lot is a cross I carry daily."

"Father," said Esther, timidly, while the eyes of both were filling with
tears, "I should like to see him again before his trial. Might I? Will
you ask him? Will you take me?"

The minister raised his suffused eyes to hers, and did not speak for a
moment or two. A new thought had visited him. But his delicate
tenderness shrank even from an inward enquiry that was too curious--that
seemed like an effort to peep at sacred secrets.

"I see naught against it, my dear child, if you arrived early enough,
and would take the elderly lady into your confidence, so that you might
descend from the carriage at some suitable place--the house of the
Independent minister, for example--where I could meet and accompany you.
I would forewarn Felix, who would doubtless delight to see your face
again; seeing that he may go away, and be, as it were, buried from you,
even though it may be only in prison, and not----"

This was too much for Esther. She threw her arms round her father's neck
and sobbed like a child. It was an unspeakable relief to her after all
the pent-up, stifling experience, all the inward incommunicable debate
of the last few weeks. The old man was deeply moved, too, and held his
arm close round the dear child, praying silently.

No word was spoken for some minutes, till Esther raised herself, dried
her eyes, and, with an action that seemed playful, though there was no
smile on her face, pressed her handkerchief against her father's cheeks.
Then, when she had put her hand in his, he said, solemnly--

"'Tis a great and mysterious gift, this clinging of the heart, my
Esther, whereby it hath often seemed to me that even in the very moment
of suffering our souls have the keenest foretaste of heaven. I speak not
lightly, but as one who hath endured. And 'tis a strange truth that only
in the agony of parting we look into the depths of love."

So the interview ended, without any question from Mr. Lyon concerning
what Esther contemplated as the ultimate arrangement between herself and
the Transomes.

After this conversation, which showed him that what happened to Felix
touched Esther more closely than he had supposed, the minister felt no
impulse to raise the images of a future so unlike anything that Felix
would share. And Esther would have been unable to answer any such
questions. The successive weeks, instead of bringing her nearer to
clearness and decision, had only brought that state of disenchantment
belonging to the actual presence of things which have long dwelt in the
imagination with all the factitious charms of arbitrary arrangement. Her
imaginary mansion had not been inhabited just as Transome Court was; her
imaginary fortune had not been attended with circumstances which she was
unable to sweep away. She, herself, in her Utopia, had never been what
she was now--a woman whose heart was divided and oppressed. The first
spontaneous offering of her woman's devotion, the first great
inspiration of her life, was a sort of vanished ecstasy which had left
its wounds. It seemed to her a cruel misfortune of her young life that
her best feeling, her most precious dependence, had been called forth
just where the conditions were hardest, and that all the easy
invitations of circumstance were toward something which that previous
consecration of her longing had made a moral descent for her. It was
characteristic of her that she scarcely at all entertained the
alternative of such a compromise as would have given her the larger
portion of the fortune to which she had a legal claim, and yet have
satisfied her sympathy by leaving the Transomes in possession of their
old home. Her domestication with this family had brought them into the
foreground of her imagination; the gradual wooing of Harold had acted on
her with a constant immediate influence that predominated over all
indefinite prospects; and a solitary elevation to wealth, which out of
Utopia she had no notion how she should manage, looked as chill and
dreary as the offer of dignities in an unknown country.

In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to be
alone, and for some women also. But Esther was not one of these women:
she was intensely of the feminine type, verging neither toward the saint
nor the angel. She was "a fair divided excellence, whose fullness of
perfection" must be in marriage. And, like all youthful creatures, she
felt as if the present conditions of choice were final. It belonged to
the freshness of her heart that, having had her emotions strongly
stirred by real objects, she never speculated on possible relations yet
to come. It seemed to her that she stood at the first and last parting
of the ways. And, in one sense she was under no illusion. It is only in
that freshness of our time that the choice is possible which gives unity
to life, and makes the memory a temple where all relics and all votive
offerings, all worship and all grateful joy, are an unbroken history
sanctified by one religion.




CHAPTER XLV.

    We may not make this world a paradise
    By walking it together with clasped hands
    And eyes that meeting feed a double strength.
    We must be only joined by pains divine,
    Of spirits blent in mutual memories.


It was a consequence of that interview with her father, that when Esther
stepped early on a gray March morning into the carriage with Mrs.
Transome, to go to the Loamford Assizes, she was full of an expectation
that held her lips in trembling silence, and gave her eyes that
sightless beauty which tells that the vision is all within.

Mrs. Transome did not disturb her with unnecessary speech. Of late,
Esther's anxious observation had been drawn to a change in Mrs.
Transome, shown in many small ways which only women notice. It was not
only that when they sat together the talk seemed more of an effort to
her: that might have come from the gradual draining away of matter for
discourse pertaining to most sorts of companionship, in which repetition
is not felt to be as desirable as novelty. But while Mrs. Transome was
dressed just as usual, took her seat as usual, trifled with her drugs
and had her embroidery before her as usual, and still made her morning
greetings with that finished easy politeness and consideration of tone
which to rougher people seems like affectation, Esther noticed a strange
fitfulness in her movements. Sometimes the stitches of her embroidery
went on with silent unbroken swiftness for a quarter of an hour, as if
she had to work out her deliverance from bondage by finishing a
scroll-patterned border; then her hands dropped suddenly and her gaze
fell blankly on the table before her, and she would sit in that way
motionless as a seated statue, apparently unconscious of Esther's
presence, till some thought darting within her seemed to have the effect
of an external shock and rouse her with a start, when she looked around
hastily like a person ashamed of having slept. Esther, touched with
wondering pity at signs of unhappiness that were new in her experience,
took the most delicate care to appear inobservant, and only tried to
increase the gentle attention that might help to soothe or gratify this
uneasy woman. But, one morning, Mrs. Transome had said, breaking a
rather long silence--

"My dear, I shall make this house dull for you. You sit with me like an
embodied patience. I am unendurable; I am getting into a melancholy
dotage. A fidgety old woman like me is as unpleasant to see as a rook
with its wing broken. Don't mind me, my dear. Run away from me without
ceremony. Every one else does, you see. I am part of the old furniture
with new drapery."

"Dear Mrs. Transome," said Esther, gliding to the low ottoman close by
the basket of embroidery, "do you dislike my sitting with you?"

"Only for your own sake, my fairy," said Mrs. Transome, smiling faintly,
and putting her hand under Esther's chin. "Doesn't it make you shudder
to look at me?"

"Why will you say such naughty things?" said Esther, affectionately. "If
you had had a daughter, she would have desired to be with you most when
you most wanted cheering. And surely every young woman has something of
a daughter's feeling toward an older one who has been kind to her."

"I should like you to be really my daughter," said Mrs. Transome,
rousing herself to look a little brighter. "That is something still for
an old woman to hope for."

Esther blushed: she had not foreseen this application of words that came
from pitying tenderness. To divert the train of thought as quickly as
possible, she at once asked what she had previously had in her mind to
ask. Before her blush had disappeared she said:

"Oh, you are so good; I shall ask you to indulge me very much. It is to
let us set out very early to Loamford on Wednesday, and put me down at a
particular house, that I may keep an appointment with my father. It is a
private matter, that I wish no one to know about, if possible. And he
will bring me back to you wherever you appoint."

In that way Esther won her end without needing to betray it; and as
Harold was already away at Loamford, she was the more secure.

The Independent minister's house at which she was set down, and where
she was received by her father, was in a quiet street not far from the
jail. Esther had thrown a dark cloak over the handsomer coverings which
Denner had assured her were absolutely required of ladies who sat
anywhere near the judge at a great trial; and as the bonnet of that day
did not throw the face into high relief, but rather into perspective, a
veil drawn down gave her a sufficiently inconspicuous appearance.

"I have arranged all things, my dear," said Mr. Lyon, "and Felix expects
us. We will lose no time."

They walked away at once, Esther not asking a question. She had no
consciousness of the road along which they passed; she could never
remember anything but a dim sense of entering within high walls and
going along passages, till they were ushered into a larger space than
she had expected, and her father said:

"It is here that we are permitted to see Felix, my Esther. He will
presently appear."

Esther automatically took off her gloves and bonnet, as if she had
entered the house after a walk. She had lost the complete consciousness
of everything except that she was going to see Felix. She trembled. It
seemed to her as if he too would look altered after her new life--as if
even the past would change for her and be no longer a steadfast
remembrance, but something she had been mistaken about, as she had been
about the new life. Perhaps she was growing out of that childhood to
which common things have rareness, and all objects look larger. Perhaps
from henceforth the whole world was to be meaner for her. The dread
concentrated in those few moments seemed worse than anything she had
known before. It was what the dread of the pilgrim might be who has it
whispered to him that the holy places are a delusion, or that he will
see them with a soul unstirred and unbelieving. Every minute that passes
may be charged with some such crisis in the little inner world of man or
woman.

But soon the door opened slightly; someone looked in; then it opened
wide, and Felix Holt entered.

"Miss Lyon--Esther!" and her hand was in his grasp.

He was just the same--no, something inexpressibly better, because of the
distance and separation, and the half-weary novelties, which made him
like the return of the morning.

"Take no heed of me, children," said Mr. Lyon. "I have some notes to
make, and my time is precious. We may remain here only a quarter of an
hour." And the old man sat down at a window with his back to them,
writing with his head bent close to the paper.

"You are very pale; you look ill, compared with your old self," said
Esther. She had taken her hand away, but they stood still near each
other, she looking up at him.

"The fact is, I'm not fond of prison," said Felix, smiling; "but I
suppose the best I can hope for is to have a good deal more of it."

"It is thought that in the worst case a pardon may be obtained," said
Esther, avoiding Harold Transome's name.

"I don't rely on that," said Felix, shaking his head. "My wisest course
is to make up my mind to the very ugliest penalty they can condemn me
to. If I can face that, anything less will seem easy. But you know," he
went on, smiling at her brightly, "I never went in for fine company and
cushions. I can't be very heavily disappointed in that way."

"Do you see things just as you used to do?" said Esther, turning pale as
she said it--"I mean--about poverty, and the people you will live among.
Has all the misunderstanding and sadness left you just as obstinate?"
She tried to smile, but could not succeed.

"What--about the sort of life I should lead if I were free again?" said
Felix.

"Yes. I can't help being discouraged for you by all these things that
have happened. See how you may fail!" Esther spoke timidly. She saw a
peculiar smile, which she knew well, gathering in his eyes. "Ah, I dare
say I am silly," she said, deprecatingly.

"No, you are dreadfully inspired," said Felix. "When the wicked Tempter
is tired of snarling that word failure in a man's cell, he sends a voice
like a thrush to say it for him. See now what a messenger of darkness
you are!" He smiled, and took her two hands between his, pressed
together as children hold them up in prayer. Both of them felt too
solemnly to be bashful. They looked straight into each other's eyes, as
angels do when they tell some truth. And they stood in that way while he
went on speaking.

"But I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only
failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he
sees to be best. As to just the amount of result he may see from his
particular work--that's a tremendous uncertainty: the universe has not
been arranged for the gratification of his feelings. As long as a man
sees and believes in some great good, he'll prefer working toward that
in the way he's best fit for, come what may. I put effects at their
minimum, but I'd rather have the maximum of effect, if it's of the sort
I care for, than the maximum of effect I don't care for--a lot of fine
things that are not to my taste--and if they were, the conditions of
holding them while the world is what it is, are such as would jar on me
like grating metal."

"Yes," said Esther, in a lone tone, "I think I understand that now,
better than I used to do." The words of Felix at last seemed strangely
to fit her own experience. But she said no more, though he seemed to
wait for it a moment or two, looking at her. But then he went on--

"I don't mean to be illustrious, you know, and make a new era, else it
would be kind of you to get a raven and teach it to croak 'failure' in
my ears. Where great things can't happen, I care for very small things,
such as will never be known beyond a few garrets and workshops. And
then, as to one thing I believe in, I don't think I can altogether fail.
If there's anything our people want convincing of, it is, that there's
some dignity and happiness for a man other than changing his station.
That's one of the beliefs I choose to consecrate my life to. If anybody
could demonstrate to me that I was a flat for it, I shouldn't think it
would follow that I must borrow money to set up genteelly and order new
clothes. That's not a rigorous consequence to my understanding."

They smiled at each other, with the old sense of amusement they had so
often had together.

"You are just the same," said Esther.

"And you?" said Felix. "My affairs have been settled long ago. But
yours--a great change has come in them--magic at work."

"Yes," said Esther, rather falteringly.

"Well," said Felix, looking at her gravely again, "it's a case of
fitness that seems to give a chance sanction to that musty law. The
first time I saw you your birth was an immense puzzle to me. However,
the appropriate conditions are come at last."

These words seemed cruel to Esther. But Felix could not know all the
reasons for their seeming so. She could not speak; she was turning cold
and feeling her heart beat painfully.

"All your tastes are gratified now," he went on innocently. "But you'll
remember the old pedagogue and his lectures?"

One thought in the mind of Felix was, that Esther was sure to marry
Harold Transome. Men readily believe these things of the women who love
them. But he could not allude to the marriage more directly. He was
afraid of this destiny for her, without having any very distinct
knowledge by which to justify his fear to the mind of another. It did
not satisfy him that Esther should marry Harold Transome.

"My children," said Mr. Lyon at this moment, not looking round, but only
looking close at his watch, "we have just two minutes more." Then he
went on writing.

Esther did not speak, but Felix could not help observing now that her
hands had turned to a deathly coldness, and that she was trembling. He
believed, he knew, that whatever prospects she had, this feeling was for
his sake. An overpowering impulse from mingled love, gratitude, and
anxiety, urged him to say--

"I had a horrible struggle, Esther. But you see I was right. There was a
fitting lot in reserve for you. But remember you have cost a great
price--don't throw what is precious away. I shall want the news that you
have a happiness worthy of you."

Esther felt too miserable for tears to come. She looked helplessly at
Felix for a moment, then took her hands from his, and, turning away
mutely, walked dreamily toward her father, and said, "Father, I am
ready--there is no more to say."

She turned back again, toward the chair where her bonnet lay, with a
face quite corpse-like above her dark garments.

"Esther!"

She heard Felix say the word, with an entreating cry, and went toward
him with the swift movement of a frightened child toward its protector.
He clasped her, and they kissed each other.

She never could recall anything else that happened, till she was in the
carriage again with Mrs. Transome.




CHAPTER XLVI.

    Why, there are maidens of heroic touch,
    And yet they seem like things of gossamer
    You'd pinch the life out of, as out of moths.
    Oh, it is not loud tones and mouthingness,
    'Tis not the arms akimbo and large strides,
    That make a woman's force. The tiniest birds,
    With softest downy breasts, have passions in them,
    And are brave with love.


Esther was so placed in the Court, under Mrs. Transome's wing, as to see
and hear everything without effort: Harold had received them at the
hotel, and had observed that Esther looked ill, and was unusually
abstracted in her manner; but this seemed to be sufficiently accounted
for by her sympathetic anxiety about the result of a trial in which the
prisoner at the bar was a friend, and in which both her father and
himself were important witnesses, Mrs. Transome had no reluctance to
keep a small secret from her son, and no betrayal was made of that
previous "engagement" of Esther's with her father. Harold was
particularly delicate and unobtrusive in his attentions to-day: he had
the consciousness that he was going to behave in a way that would
gratify Esther and win her admiration, and we are all of us made more
graceful by the inward presence of what we believe to be a generous
purpose; our actions move to a hidden music--"a melody that's sweetly
played in tune."

If Esther had been less absorbed by supreme feelings, she would have
been aware that she was an object of special notice. In the bare
squareness of a public hall, where there was not one jutting angle to
hang a guess or a thought upon, not an image or a bit of color to stir
the fancy, and where the only objects of speculation, of admiration, or
of any interest whatever were human beings, that occupied positions
indicating some importance, the notice bestowed on Esther would not have
been surprising, even if it had been merely a tribute to her youthful
charm, which was well championed by Mrs. Transome's elderly majesty. But
it was due also to whisperings that she was an hereditary claimant of
the Transome estates, whom Harold Transome was about to marry. Harold
himself had of late not cared to conceal either the fact or the
probability: they both tended rather to his honor than his dishonor. And
to-day, when there was a good proportion of Trebians present, the
whisperings spread rapidly.

The Court was still more crowded than on the previous day, when our poor
acquaintance Dredge and his two collier companions were sentenced to a
year's imprisonment with hard labor, and the more enlightened prisoner,
who stole the Debarry's plate, to transportation for life. Poor Dredge
had cried, had wished he'd "never heared of 'lection," and in spite of
sermons from the jail chaplain, fell back on the explanation that this
was a world in which Spratt and Old Nick were sure to get the best of
it; so that in Dredge's case, at least, most observers must have had the
melancholy conviction that there had been no enhancement of public
spirit and faith in progress from that wave of political agitation which
had reached the Sproxton Pits.

But curiosity was necessarily at a higher pitch to-day, when the
character of the prisoner and the circumstances of his offence were of a
highly unusual kind. Soon as Felix appeared at the bar, a murmur rose
and spread into a loud buzz, which continued until there had been
repeated authoritative calls for silence in the Court. Rather
singularly, it was now for the first time that Esther had a feeling of
pride in him on the ground simply of his appearance. At this moment,
when he was the centre of a multitudinous gaze, which seemed to act on
her own vision like a broad unmitigated daylight, she felt that there
was something pre-eminent in him, notwithstanding the vicinity of
numerous gentlemen. No apple-woman would have admired him; not only to
feminine minds like Mrs. Tiliot's, but to many minds in coat and
waistcoat, there was something dangerous and perhaps unprincipled in his
bare throat and great Gothic head; and his somewhat massive person would
doubtless have come out very oddly from the hands of a fashionable
tailor of that time. But as Esther saw his large gray eyes looking round
calmly and undefiantly, first at the audience generally, and then with a
more observant expression at the lawyers and other persons immediately
around him, she felt that he bore the outward stamp of a distinguished
nature. Forgive her if she needed this satisfaction; all of us, whether
men or women, are liable to this weakness of liking to have our
preference justified before others as well as ourselves. Esther said
inwardly, with a certain triumph, that Felix Holt looked as worthy to
be chosen in the midst of this large assembly, as he had ever looked in
their _tête-à-tête_ under the sombre light of the little parlor in
Malthouse Yard.

Esther had felt some relief in hearing from her father that Felix had
insisted on doing without his mother's presence; and since to Mrs.
Holt's imagination, notwithstanding her general desire to have her
character enquired into, there was no greatly consolatory difference
between being a witness and a criminal, and an appearance of any kind
"before the judge" could hardly be made to suggest anything definite
that would overcome the dim sense of unalleviated disgrace, she had been
less inclined than usual to complain of her son's decision. Esther had
shuddered beforehand at the inevitable farce there would be in Mrs.
Holt's testimony. But surely Felix would lose something for want of a
witness who could testify to his behavior in the morning before he
became involved in the tumult?

"He is really a fine young fellow," said Harold, coming to speak to
Esther after a colloquy with the prisoner's solicitor. "I hope he will
not make a blunder in defending himself."

"He is not likely to make a blunder," said Esther. She had recovered her
color a little, and was brighter than she had been all the morning
before.

Felix had seemed to include her in his general glance, but had avoided
looking at her particularly. She understood how delicate feeling for her
would prevent this, and that she might safely look at him, and toward
her father, whom she could see in the same direction. Turning to Harold,
to make an observation, she saw that he was looking toward the same
point, but with an expression on his face that surprised her.

"Dear me," she said, prompted to speak without any reflection; "--how
angry you look! I never saw you look so angry before. It is not my
father you are looking at?"

"Oh, no! I am angry at something I'm looking away from," said Harold,
making an effort to drive back the troublesome demon who would stare out
at window. "It's that Jermyn," he added, glancing at his mother as well
as Esther. "He will thrust himself under my eyes everywhere since I
refused him an interview and returned his letter. I'm determined never
to speak to him directly again, if I can help it."

Mrs. Transome heard with a changeless face. She had for some time been
watching, and had taken on her marble look of immobility. She said an
inward bitter "Of course!" to everything that was unpleasant.

After this Esther soon became impatient of all speech; her attention was
rivetted on the proceedings of the Court, and on the mode in which Felix
bore himself. In the case for the prosecution there was nothing more
than a reproduction, with irrelevancies added by witnesses, of the facts
already known to us. Spratt had retained consciousness enough, in the
midst of his terror, to swear that, when he was tied to the finger-post,
Felix was presiding over the actions of the mob. The landlady of the
Seven Stars, who was indebted to Felix for rescue from pursuit by some
drunken rioters, gave evidence that went to prove his assumption of
leadership prior to the assault on Spratt,--remembering only that he had
called away her pursuers to "better sport." Various respectable
witnesses swore to Felix's "encouragement" of the rioters who were
dragging Spratt in King Street; to his fatal assault on Tucker; and to
his attitude in front of the drawing-room window at the Manor.

Three other witnesses gave evidence of expressions used by the prisoner,
tending to show the character of the acts with which he was charged. Two
were Treby tradesmen, the third was a clerk from Duffield. The clerk had
heard Felix speak at Duffield; the Treby men had frequently heard him
declare himself on public matters; and they all quoted expressions which
tended to show that he had a virulent feeling against the respectable
shopkeeping class, and that nothing was likely to be more congenial to
him than the gutting of retailer's shops. No one else knew--the
witnesses themselves did not know fully--how far their strong perception
and memory on these points was due to a fourth mind, namely, that of Mr.
John Johnson, the attorney, who was nearly related to one of the Treby
witnesses, and a familiar acquaintance of the Duffield clerk. Man cannot
be defined as an evidence-giving animal; and in the difficulty of
getting up evidence on any subject, there is room for much unrecognized
action of diligent persons who have the extra stimulus of some private
motive. Mr. Johnson was present in Court to-day, but in a modest,
retired situation. He had come down to give information to Mr. Jermyn,
and to gather information in other quarters, which was well illuminated
by the appearance of Esther in company with the Transomes.

When the case for the prosecution closed, all strangers thought that it
looked very black for the prisoner. In two instances only Felix had
chosen to put a cross-examining question. The first was to ask Spratt if
he did not believe that his having been tied to the post had saved him
from a probably mortal injury? The second was to ask the tradesman who
swore to his having heard Felix tell the rioters to leave Tucker alone
and come along with him, whether he had not, shortly before, heard cries
among the mob summoning to an attack on the wine-vaults and brewery.

Esther had hitherto listened closely but calmly. She knew that there
would be this strong adverse testimony; and all her hopes and fears were
bent on what was to come beyond it. It was when the prisoner was asked
what he had to adduce in reply that she felt herself in the grasp of
that tremor which does not disable the mind, but rather gives keener
consciousness of a mind having a penalty of body attached to it.

There was a silence as of night when Felix Holt began to speak. His
voice was firm and clear: he spoke with simple gravity, and evidently
without any enjoyment of the occasion. Esther had never seen his face
look so weary.

"My Lord, I am not going to occupy the time of the Court with
unnecessary words. I believe the witnesses for the prosecution have
spoken the truth as far as a superficial observation would enable them
to do it; and I see nothing that can weigh with the jury in my favor,
unless they believe my statement of my own motives, and the testimony
that certain witnesses will give to my character and purposes as being
inconsistent with my willingly abetting disorder. I will tell the Court
in as few words as I can, how I got entangled in the mob, how I came to
attack the constable, and how I was led to take a course which seems
rather mad to myself, now I look back upon it."

Felix then gave a concise narrative of his motives and conduct on the
day of the riot, from the moment when he was startled into quitting his
work by the earlier uproar of the morning. He omitted, of course, his
visit to Malthouse Yard, and merely said that he went out to walk again
after returning to quiet his mother's mind. He got warmed by the story
of his experience, which moved him more strongly than ever, now he
recalled it in vibrating words before a large audience of his
fellow-men. The sublime delight of truthful speech to one who has the
great gift of uttering it, will make itself felt even through the pangs
of sorrow.

"That is all I have to say for myself, my Lord. I pleaded 'Not guilty'
to the charge of manslaughter, because I know that word may carry a
meaning which would not fairly apply to my act. When I threw Tucker
down, I did not see the possibility that he would die from a sort of
attack which ordinarily occurs in fighting without any fatal effect. As
to my assaulting a constable, it was a quick choice between two evils: I
should else have been disabled. And he attacked me under a mistake about
my intentions. I'm not prepared to say I never would assault a constable
where I had more chance of deliberation. I certainly should assault him
if I saw him doing anything that made my blood boil: I reverence the
law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it should be the
very object of law to hinder. I consider that I should be making an
unworthy defence, if I let the Court infer from what I say myself, or
from what is said by my witnesses, that because I am a man who hates
drunken, motiveless disorder, or any wanton harm, therefore I am a man
who would never fight against authority: I hold it blasphemy to say that
a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion
and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning. It would be
impertinent for me to speak of this now, if I did not need to say in my
own defence, that I should hold myself the worst sort of traitor if I
put my hand to either fighting or disorder--which must mean to injure
somebody--if I were not urged to it by what I hold to be sacred
feelings, making a sacred duty either to my own manhood or to my
fellow-man. And certainly," Felix ended, with a strong ring of scorn in
his voice, "I never held it a sacred duty to try and get a Radical
candidate returned for North Loamshire, by willingly heading a drunken
howling mob, whose public action must consist in breaking windows,
destroying hard-got produce, and endangering the lives of men and women.
I have no more to say, my Lord."

"I foresaw he would make a blunder," said Harold, in a low voice to
Esther. Then, seeing her shrink a little, he feared she might suspect
him of being merely stung by the allusion to himself. "I don't mean what
he said about the Radical candidate," he added, hastily, in correction.
"I don't mean the last sentence. I mean that whole peroration of his,
which he ought to have left unsaid. It has done him harm with the
jury--they won't understand it, or rather will misunderstand it. And
I'll answer for it, it has soured the judge. It remains to be seen what
we witnesses can say for him, to nullify the effect of what he has said
for himself. I hope the attorney has done his best in collecting the
evidence: I understand the expense of the witnesses is undertaken by
some Liberals at Glasgow and in Lancashire, friends of Holt's. But I
suppose your father has told you."

The first witness called to the defence was Mr. Lyon. The gist of his
statements was, that from the beginning of September last till the day
of the election he was in very frequent intercourse with the prisoner;
that he had become intimately acquainted with his character and views of
life, and his conduct with respect to the election, and that these were
totally inconsistent with any other supposition than his being involved
in the riot, and his fatal encounter with the constable, were due to the
calamitous failure of a bold but good purpose. He stated further that he
had been present when an interview had occurred in his own house between
the prisoner and Mr. Harold Transome, who was then canvassing for the
representation of North Loamshire. That the object of the prisoner in
seeking this interview had been to inform Mr. Transome of treating given
in his name to the workmen in the pits and on the canal at Sproxton, and
to remonstrate against its continuance; the prisoner fearing that
disturbance and mischief might result from what he believed to be the
end toward which this treating was directed--namely, the presence of
these men on the occasions of the nomination and polling. Several times
after this interview, Mr. Lyon said, he had heard Felix Holt recur to
the subject therein discussed with expressions of grief and anxiety. He
himself was in the habit of visiting Sproxton in his ministerial
capacity: he knew fully what the prisoner had done there in order to
found a night school, and was certain that the prisoner's interest in
the workingmen of that district turned entirely on the possibility of
converting them somewhat to habits of soberness and to a due care for
the instruction of their children. Finally, he stated that the prisoner,
in compliance with his request, had been present at Duffield on the day
of the nomination, and had on his return expressed himself with strong
indignation concerning the employment of the Sproxton men on that
occasion, and what he called the wickedness of hiring blind violence.

The quaint appearance and manner of the little Dissenting minister could
not fail to stimulate the peculiar wit of the bar. He was subjected to
a troublesome cross-examination, which he bore with wide-eyed
short-sighted quietude and absorption in the duty of truthful response.
On being asked rather sneeringly, if the prisoner was not one of his
flock? he answered, in that deeper tone which made one of the most
effective transitions of his varying voice--

"Nay--would to God he were! I should then feel that the great virtues
and the pure life I have beheld in him were a witness to the efficacy of
the faith I believe in and the discipline of the Church whereunto I
belong."

Perhaps it required a larger power of comparison than was possessed by
any of that audience to appreciate the moral elevation of an Independent
minister who could utter those words. Nevertheless there was a murmur
which was clearly one of sympathy.

The next witness, and the one on whom the interest of the spectators was
chiefly concentrated, was Harold Transome. There was a decided
predominance of Tory feeling in the Court, and the human disposition to
enjoy the infliction of a little punishment on an opposite party, was in
this instance, of a Tory complexion. Harold was keenly alive to this,
and to everything else that might prove disagreeable to him in his
having to appear in the witness-box. But he was not likely to lose his
self-possession, or to fail in adjusting himself gracefully, under
conditions which most men would find it difficult to carry without
awkwardness. He had generosity and candor enough to bear Felix Holt's
proud rejection of his advances without any petty resentment; he had all
the susceptibilities of a gentleman; and these moral qualities gave the
right direction to his acumen, in judging of the behavior that would
best secure his dignity. Everything requiring self-command was easier to
him because of Esther's presence; for her admiration was just then the
object which this well-tanned man of the world had it most at heart to
secure.

When he entered the witness-box he was much admired by the ladies
amongst the audience, many of whom sighed a little at the thought of his
wrong course in politics. He certainly looked like a handsome portrait
by Sir Thomas Lawrence, in which that remarkable artist had happily
omitted the usual excess of honeyed blandness mixed with alert
intelligence, which is hardly compatible with the state of man out of
paradise. He stood not far off Felix; and the two Radicals certainly
made a striking contrast. Felix might have come from the hands of a
sculptor in the later Roman period, when the plastic impulse was stirred
by the grandeur of barbaric forms--when rolled collars were not yet
conceived, and satin stocks were not.

Harold Transome declared he had had only one interview with the
prisoner: it was the interview referred to by the previous witness, in
whose presence and in whose house it was begun. The interview, however,
was continued beyond the observation of Mr. Lyon. The prisoner and
himself quitted the Dissenting minister's house in Malthouse Yard
together, and proceeded to the office of Mr. Jermyn, who was then
conducting electioneering business on his behalf. His object was to
comply with Holt's remonstrance by enquiring into the alleged
proceedings at Sproxton, and, if possible, to put a stop to them. Holt's
language, both in the Malthouse Yard and in the attorney's office, was
strong: he was evidently indignant, and his indignation turned on the
danger of employing ignorant men excited by drink on an occasion of
popular concourse. He believed that Holt's sole motive was the
prevention of disorder, and what he considered the demoralization of the
workmen by treating. The event had certainly justified his
remonstrances. He had not had any subsequent opportunities of observing
the prisoner; but if any reliance was to be placed on a rational
conclusion, it must, he thought, be plain that the anxiety thus
manifested by Holt was a guarantee of the statement he had made as to
his motives on the day of the riot. His entire impression from Holt's
manner in that single interview was that he was a moral and political
enthusiast, who, if he sought to coerce others, would seek to coerce
them into a difficult, and perhaps impracticable, scrupulosity.

Harold spoke with as noticeable directness and emphasis, as if what he
said could have no reaction on himself. He had of course not entered
unnecessarily into what occurred in Jermyn's office. But now he was
subjected to a cross-examination on this subject, which gave rise to
some subdued shrugs, smiles, and winks, among county gentlemen.

The questions were directed so as to bring out, if possible, some
indication that Felix Holt was moved to his remonstrance by personal
resentment against the political agents concerned in setting on foot the
treating at Sproxton, but such questioning is a sort of target-shooting
that sometimes hits about widely. The cross-examining counsel had close
connections among the Tories of Loamshire, and enjoyed his business
to-day. Under the fire of various questions about Jermyn and the agent
employed by him at Sproxton, Harold got warm, and in one of his replies
said, with rapid sharpness--

"Mr. Jermyn was my agent then, not now: I have no longer any but hostile
relations with him."

The sense that he had shown a slight heat would have vexed Harold more
if he had not got some satisfaction out of the thought that Jermyn heard
those words. He recovered his good temper quickly, and when,
subsequently, the question came--

"You acquiesced in the treating of the Sproxton men, as necessary to the
efficient working of the reformed constituency?" Harold replied, with
quiet fluency--"Yes; on my return to England, before I put up for North
Loamshire, I got the best advice from practised agents, both Whig and
Tory. They all agreed as to electioneering measures."

The next witness was Michael Brincey, otherwise Mike Brindle, who gave
evidence of the sayings and doings of the prisoner among the Sproxton
men. Mike declared that Felix went "uncommon again' drink, and
pitch-and-toss, and quarrelling, and sich," and was "all for schooling
and bringing up the little chaps"; but on being cross-examined, he
admitted that he "couldn't give much account"; that Felix did talk
again' idle folks, whether poor or rich, and that most like he meant the
rich, who had "a rights to be idle," which was what he, Mike, liked
himself sometimes, though for the most part he was "a hard-working
butty." On being checked for this superfluous allegation of his own
theory and practice, Mike became timidly conscious that answering was a
great mystery beyond the reach of a butty's soul, and began to err from
defect instead of excess. However, he reasserted that what Felix most
wanted was, "to get 'em to set up a school for the little chaps."

With the two succeeding witnesses, who swore to the fact that Felix had
tried to lead the mob along Hobb's Lane instead of toward the Manor, and
to the violently threatening character of Tucker's attack on him, the
case for the defence was understood to close.

Meanwhile Esther had been looking on and listening with growing misery,
in the sense that all had not been said which might have been said on
behalf of Felix. If it was the jury who were to be acted on, she argued
to herself, there might have been an impression made on their feelings
which would determine their verdict. Was it not constantly said and seen
that juries pronounced Guilty or Not Guilty from sympathy for or against
the accused? She was too inexperienced to check her own argument by
thoroughly representing to herself the course of things: how the counsel
for the prosecution would reply, and how the judge would sum up, with
the object of cooling down sympathy into deliberation. What she had
painfully pressing on her inward vision was that the trial was coming to
an end, and that the voice of right and truth had not been strong
enough.

When a woman feels purely and nobly, that ardor of hers which breaks
through formulas too rigorously urged on men by daily practical needs,
makes one of her most precious influences: she is the added impulse that
shatters the stiffening crust of cautious experience. Her inspired
ignorance gives a sublimity to actions so incongruously simple, that
otherwise they would make men smile. Some of that ardor which has
flashed out and illuminated all poetry and history was burning to-day in
the bosom of sweet Esther Lyon. In this, at least, her woman's lot was
perfect: that the man she loved was her hero; that her woman's passion
and her reverence for rarest goodness rushed together in an undivided
current. And to-day they were making one danger, one terror, one
irresistible impulse for her heart. Her feelings were growing into a
necessity for action, rather than a resolve to act. She could not
support the thought that the trial would come to an end, that sentence
would be passed on Felix, and that all the while something had been
omitted which might have been said for him. There had been no witness to
tell what had been his behavior and state of mind just before the riot.
She must do it. It was possible. There was time. But not too much time.
All other agitation became merged in eagerness not to let the moment
escape. The last witness was being called. Harold Transome had not been
able to get back to her on leaving the witness-box, but Mr. Lingon was
close by her. With firm quickness she said to him--

"Pray tell the attorney that I have evidence to give for the
prisoner--lose no time."

"Do you know what you are going to say, my dear?" said Mr. Lingon,
looking at her in astonishment.

"Yes--I entreat you, for God's sake," said Esther, in that low tone of
urgent beseeching which is equivalent to a cry; and with a look of
appeal more penetrating still, "I would rather die than not do it."

The old rector, always leaning to the good-natured view of things, felt
chiefly that there seemed to be an additional chance for the poor fellow
who had got himself into trouble. He disputed no farther, but went to
the attorney.

Before Harold was aware of Esther's intention she was on her way to the
witness-box. When she appeared there, it was as if a vibration, quick as
light, had gone through the Court and had shaken Felix himself, who had
hitherto seemed impassive. A sort of a gleam seemed to shoot across his
face, and any one close to him would have seen that his hand, which lay
on the edge of the dock, trembled.

At the first moment Harold was startled and alarmed; the next, he felt
delight in Esther's beautiful aspect, and in the admiration of the
Court. There was no blush on her face: she stood, divested of all
personal considerations whether of vanity or shyness. Her clear voice
sounded as it might have done if she had been making a confession of
faith. She began and went on without query or interruption. Every face
looked grave and respectful.

"I am Esther Lyon, the daughter of Mr. Lyon, the Independent minister at
Treby, who has been one of the witnesses for the prisoner. I know Felix
Holt well. On the day of the election at Treby, when I had been much
alarmed by the noises that reached me from the main street, Felix Holt
came to call upon me. He knew that my father was away, and he thought
that I should be alarmed by the sounds of disturbance. It was about the
middle of the day, and he came to tell me that the disturbance was
quieted, and that the streets were nearly emptied. But he said he feared
that the men would collect again after drinking, and that something
worse might happen later in the day. And he was in much sadness at this
thought. He stayed a little while, and then he left me. He was very
melancholy. His mind was full of great resolutions that came from his
kind feeling toward others. It was the last thing he would have done to
join in riot or to hurt any man, if he could have helped it. His nature
is very noble; he is tender-hearted; he could never have had any
intention that was not brave and good."

There was something so naive and beautiful in this action of Esther's,
that it conquered every low or petty suggestion even in the commonest
minds. The three men in that assembly who knew her best--even her father
and Felix Holt--felt a thrill of surprise mingling with their
admiration. This bright, delicate, beautiful-shaped thing that seemed
most like a toy or ornament--some hand had touched the chords, and there
came forth music that brought tears. Half a year before, Esther's dread
of being ridiculous spread over the surface of her life; but the depth
below was sleeping.

Harold Transome was ready to give her his hand and lead her back to her
place. When she was there, Felix, for the first time, could not help
looking toward her, and their eyes met in one solemn glance.

Afterward Esther found herself unable to listen so as to form any
judgment on what she heard. The acting out of that strong impulse had
exhausted every energy. There was a brief pause, filled with a murmur, a
buzz, and much coughing. The audience generally felt as if dull weather
was setting in again. And under those auspices the counsel for the
prosecution got up to make his reply. Esther's deed had its effect
beyond the momentary one, but the effect was not visible in the rigid
necessities of legal procedure. The counsel's duty of restoring all
unfavorable facts to due prominence in the minds of the jurors, had its
effect altogether reinforced by the summing-up of the judge. Even the
bare discernment of facts, much more their arrangement with a view to
inferences, must carry a bias: human impartiality, whether judicial or
not, can hardly escape being more or less loaded. It was not that the
judge had severe intentions; it was only that he saw with severity. The
conduct of Felix was not such as inclined him to indulgent
consideration, and, in his directions to the jury, that mental attitude
necessarily told on the light in which he placed the homicide. Even to
many in the Court who were not constrained by judicial duty, it seemed
that though this high regard felt for the prisoner by his friends, and
especially by a generous-hearted woman, was very pretty, such conduct as
his was not the less dangerous and foolish, and assaulting and killing a
constable was not the less an offence to be regarded without leniency.

Esther seemed now so tremulous, and looked so ill, that Harold begged
her to leave the Court with his mother and Mr. Lingon. He would come and
tell her the issue. But she said, quietly, that she would rather stay;
she was only a little overcome by the exertion of speaking. She was
inwardly resolved to see Felix to the last moment before he left the
Court.

Though she could not follow the address of the counsel or the judge, she
had a keen ear for what was brief and decisive. She heard the verdict,
"Guilty of manslaughter." And every word uttered by the judge in
pronouncing sentence fell upon her like an unforgetable sound that would
come back in dreaming and in waking. She had her eyes on Felix, and at
the words, "Imprisonment for four years," she saw his lip tremble. But
otherwise he stood firm and calm.

Esther gave a start from her seat. Her heart swelled with a horrible
sensation of pain; but, alarmed lest she should lose her self-command,
she grasped Mrs. Transome's hand, getting some strength from that human
contact.

Esther saw that Felix had turned. She could no longer see his face.
"Yes," she said, drawing down her veil, "let us go."




CHAPTER XLVII.

    The devil tempts us not--'tis we tempt him,
    Beckoning his skill with opportunity.


The more permanent effect of Esther's action in the trial was visible in
a meeting which took place the next day in the principal room of the
White Hart of Loamford. To the magistrates and other county gentlemen
who were drawn together about noon, some of the necessary impulse might
have been lacking but for that stirring of heart in certain
just-spirited men and good fathers among them, which had been raised to
a high pitch of emotion by Esther's maidenly fervor. Among these one of
the foremost was Sir Maximus Debarry, who had come to the assizes with a
mind, as usual, slightly rebellious under an influence which he never
ultimately resisted--the influence of his son. Philip Debarry himself
was detained in London, but in his correspondence with his father he had
urged him, as well as his uncle Augustus, to keep eyes and interest
awake on the subject of Felix Holt, whom, from all the knowledge of the
case he had been able to obtain, he was inclined to believe peculiarly
unfortunate rather than guilty. Philip had said he was the more anxious
that his family should intervene benevolently in this affair, if it were
possible, because he understood that Mr. Lyon took the young man's case
particularly to heart, and he should always regard himself as obliged to
the old preacher. At this superfineness of consideration Sir Maximus had
vented a few "pshaws!" and, in relation to the whole affair, had
grumbled that Phil was always setting him to do he didn't know
what--always seeming to turn nothing into something by dint of words
which hadn't so much substance as a mote behind them. Nevertheless he
was coerced; and in reality he was willing to do anything fair or
good-natured which had a handle that his understanding could lay hold
of. His brother, the rector, desired to be rigorously just; but he had
come to Loamford with a severe opinion concerning Felix, thinking that
some sharp punishment might be a wholesome check on the career of a
young man disposed to rely too much on his own crude devices.

Before the trial commenced, Sir Maximus had naturally been one of those
who had observed Esther with curiosity, owing to the report of her
inheritance, and her probable marriage to his once welcome but now
exasperating neighbor, Harold Transome; and he had made the emphatic
comment--"A fine girl! something thoroughbred in the look of her. Too
good for a Radical; that's all I have to say." But during the trial Sir
Maximus was wrought into a state of sympathetic ardor that needed no
fanning. As soon as he could take his brother by the buttonhole, he
said--

"I tell you what, Gus! we must exert ourselves to get a pardon for this
young fellow. Confound it! what's the use of mewing him up for four
years? Example? Nonsense. Will there be a man knocked down the less for
it? That girl made me cry. Depend upon it, whether she's going to marry
Transome or not, she's been fond of Holt--in her poverty, you know.
She's a modest, brave, beautiful woman. I'd ride a steeple-chase, old as
I am, to gratify her feelings. Hang it! the fellow's a good fellow if
she thinks so. And he threw out a fine sneer, I thought, at the Radical
candidate. Depend upon it, he's a good fellow at bottom."

The rector had not exactly the same kind of ardor, nor was he open too
precisely that process of proof which appeared to have convinced Sir
Maximus; but he had been so far influenced as to be inclined to unite in
an effort on the side of mercy, observing also that he "knew Phil would
be on that side." And by the co-operation of similar movements in the
minds of other men whose names were of weight, a meeting had been
determined on to consult about getting up a memorial to the Home
Secretary on behalf of Felix Holt. His case had never had the sort of
significance that could rouse political partisanship; and such interest
as was now felt in him was still more unmixed with that inducement. The
gentlemen who gathered in the room at the White Hart were--not as the
large imagination of the _North_ _Loamshire Herald_ suggested, "of all
shades of political opinion," but--of as many shades as were to be found
among the gentlemen of that county.

Harold Transome had been energetically active in bringing about this
meeting. Over and above the stings of conscience and a determination to
act up to the level of all recognized honorableness, he had the powerful
motive of desiring to do what would satisfy Esther. His gradually
heightened perception that she had a strong feeling toward Felix Holt
had not made him uneasy. Harold had a conviction that might have seemed
like fatuity if it had not been that he saw the effect he produced on
Esther by the light of his opinions about women in general. The
conviction was, that Felix Holt could not be his rival in any formidable
sense. Esther's admiration for this eccentric young man was, he thought,
a moral enthusiasm, a romantic fervor, which was one among those many
attractions quite novel in his own experience; her distress about the
trouble of one who had been a familiar object in her former home, was no
more than naturally followed from a tender woman's compassion. The place
young Holt had held in her regard had necessarily changed its relations
now that her lot was so widely changed. It is undeniable, that what most
conduced to the quieting nature of Harold's conclusions was the
influence on his imagination of the more or less detailed reasons that
Felix Holt was a watchmaker, that his home and dress were of a certain
quality, that his person and manners--that, in short (for Harold, like
the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of
distinct ideas), Felix Holt was not the sort of a man a woman would be
in love with when she was wooed by Harold Transome.

Thus, he was sufficiently at rest on this point not to be exercising any
painful self-conquest in acting as the zealous advocate of Felix Holt's
cause with all persons worth influencing; but it was by no direct
intercourse between him and Sir Maximus that they found themselves in
co-operation, for the old baronet would not recognize Harold by more
than the faintest bow, and Harold was not a man to expose himself to a
rebuff. Whatever he in his inmost soul regarded as nothing more than a
narrow prejudice, he could defy, not with airs of importance, but with
easy indifference. He could bear most things good-humoredly where he
felt that he had the superiority. The object of the meeting was
discussed, and the memorial agreed upon without any clashing. Mr.
Lingon was gone home, but it was expected that his concurrence and
signature would be given, as well as those of other gentlemen who were
absent. The business gradually reached that stage at which the
concentration of interest ceases--when the attention of all but a few
who are more practically concerned drops off and disperses itself in
private chat, and there is no longer any particular reason why everybody
stays except that everybody is there. The room was rather a long one,
and invited to a little movement; one gentleman drew another aside to
speak in an undertone about Scotch bullocks; another had something to
say about the North Loamshire hunt to a friend who was the reverse of
good-looking, but who, nevertheless, while listening, showed his
strength of mind by giving a severe attention also to his full-length
reflection in the handsome tall mirror that filled the space between two
windows. And in this way the groups were continually shifting.

But in the meantime there were moving toward this room at the White Hart
the footsteps of a person whose presence had not been invited, and who,
very far from being drawn thither by the belief that he would be
welcome, knew well that his entrance would, to one person at least, be
bitterly disagreeable. They were the footsteps of Mr. Jermyn, whose
appearance that morning was not less comely and less carefully tended
than usual, but who was suffering the torment of a compressed rage,
which, if not impotent to inflict pain on another, was impotent to avert
evil from himself. After his interview with Mrs. Transome there had been
for some reasons a delay of positive procedures against him by Harold,
of which delay Jermyn had twice availed himself; first, to seek an
interview with Harold, and then to send him a letter. The interview had
been refused; and the letter had been returned, with the statement that
no communication could take place except through Harold's lawyers. And
yesterday Johnson had brought Jermyn the information that he would
quickly hear of the proceedings in Chancery being resumed: the watch
Johnson kept in town had given him secure knowledge on this head. A
doomed animal, with every issue earthed up except that where its enemy
stands, must, if it has teeth and fierceness, try its one chance without
delay. And a man may reach a point in his life in which his impulses are
not distinguished from those of a hunted brute by any capability of
scruples. Our selfishness is so robust and many-clutching, that, well
encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little
scruples.

Since Harold would not give Jermyn access to him, that vigorous attorney
was resolved to take it. He knew all about the meeting at the White
Hart, and he was going thither with the determination of accosting
Harold. He thought he knew what he should say, and the tone in which he
should say it. It would be a vague intimation, carrying the effect of a
threat, which should compel Harold to give him a private interview. To
any counter-consideration that presented itself in his mind--to anything
that an imagined voice might say--the imagined answer arose, "That's all
very fine, but I'm not going to be ruined if I can help it--least of
all, ruined in that way." Shall we call it degeneration or gradual
development--this effect of thirty additional winters on the
soft-glancing, versifying young Jermyn?

When Jermyn entered the room at the White Hart he did not immediately
see Harold. The door was at the extremity of the room, and the view was
obstructed by groups of gentlemen with figures broadened by overcoats.
His entrance excited no particular observation: several persons had come
in late. Only one or two, who knew Jermyn well, were not too much
preoccupied to have a glancing remembrance of what had been chatted
about freely the day before--Harold's irritated reply about his agent,
from the witness box. Receiving and giving a slight nod here and there,
Jermyn pushed his way, looking round keenly, until he saw Harold
standing near the other end of the room. The solicitor who had acted for
Felix was just then speaking to him, but having put a paper into his
hand turned away; and Harold, standing isolated, though at no great
distance from others, bent his eyes on the paper. He looked brilliant
that morning; his blood was flowing prosperously. He had come in after a
ride, and was additionally brightened by rapid talk and the excitement
of seeking to impress himself favorably, or at least powerfully, on the
minds of neighbors nearer or more remote. He had just that amount of
flush which indicates that life is more enjoyable than usual; and as he
stood with his left hand caressing his whisker, and his right holding
the paper and his riding-whip, his dark eyes running rapidly along the
written lines, and his lips reposing in a curve of good-humor which had
more happiness in it than a smile, all beholders might have seen that
his mind was at ease.

Jermyn walked quickly and quietly close up to him. The two men were of
the same height, and before Harold looked round Jermyn's voice was
saying, close to his ear, not in a whisper, but in a hard, incisive,
disrespectful and yet not loud tone--

"Mr. Transome, I must speak to you in private."

The sound jarred through Harold with a sensation all the more
insufferable because of the revulsion from the satisfied, almost elated,
state in which it had seized him. He started and looked round into
Jermyn's eyes. For an instant, which seemed long, there was no sound
between them, but only angry hatred gathering in the two faces. Harold
felt himself going to crush this insolence: Jermyn felt that he had
words within him that were fangs to clutch this obstinate strength, and
wring forth the blood and compel submission. And Jermyn's impulse was
the more urgent. He said, in a tone that was rather lower, but yet
harder and more biting--

"You will repent else--for your mother's sake."

At that sound, quick as a leaping flame, Harold had struck Jermyn across
the face with his whip. The brim of the hat had been a defense. Jermyn,
a powerful man, had instantly thrust out his hand and clutched Harold
hard by the clothes just below the throat, pushing him slightly so as to
make him stagger.

By this time everybody's attention had been called to this end of the
room, but both Jermyn and Harold were beyond being arrested by any
consciousness of spectators.

"Let me go, you scoundrel!" said Harold, fiercely, "or I'll be the death
of you."

"Do," said Jermyn, in a grating voice; "_I am your father_."

In the thrust by which Harold had been made to stagger backward a
little, the two men had got very near the long mirror. They were both
white; both had anger and hatred in their faces; the hands of both were
upraised. As Harold heard the last terrible words he started at a
leaping throb that went through him, and in the start turned his eyes
away from Jermyn's face. He turned them on the same face in the glass
with his own beside it, and saw the hated fatherhood reasserted.

The strong man reeled with a sick faintness. But in the same moment
Jermyn released his hold, and Harold felt himself supported by the arm.
It was Sir Maximus Debarry who had taken hold of him.

"Leave the room, sir!" the baronet said to Jermyn, in a voice of
imperious scorn. "This is a meeting of gentlemen."

"Come, Harold," he said, in the old friendly voice, "come away with
me."




CHAPTER XLVIII.

    'Tis law as steadfast as the throne of Zeus--
    Our days are heritors of days gone by.

                                  ÆSCHYLUS: _Agamemnon_.


A little after five o'clock that day, Harold arrived at Transome Court.
As he was winding along the broad road of the park, some parting gleams
of the March sun pierced the trees here and there, and threw on the
grass a long shadow of himself and the groom riding, and illuminated a
window or two of the home he was approaching. But the bitterness in his
mind made these sunny gleams almost as odious as an artificial smile. He
wished he had never come back to this pale English sunshine.

In the course of his eighteen miles' drive he had made up his mind what
he would do. He understood now, as he had never understood before, the
neglected solitariness of his mother's life, the allusions and
innuendoes which had come out during the election. But with a proud
insurrection against the hardship of an ignominy which was not of his
own making, he inwardly said, that if the circumstances of his birth
were such as to warrant any man in regarding his character of gentleman
with ready suspicion, that character should be the more strongly
asserted in his conduct. No one should be able to allege with any show
of proof that he had inherited meanness.

As he stepped from the carriage and entered the hall, there were the
voice and the trotting feet of little Harry as usual, and the rush to
clasp his father's leg and make his joyful puppy-like noises. Harold
just touched the boy's head, and then said to Dominic in a weary voice--

"Take the child away. Ask where my mother is."

Mrs. Transome, Dominic said, was up-stairs. He had seen her go up after
coming in from her walk with Miss Lyon, and she had not come down again.

Harold throwing off his hat and greatcoat, went straight to his mother's
dressing-room. There was still a hope in his mind. He might be suffering
simply from a lie. There is much misery created in the world by mere
mistake or slander, and he might have been stunned by a lie suggested by
such slander. He rapped at his mother's door.

Her voice said immediately, "Come in."

Mrs. Transome was resting in her easy-chair, as she often did between an
afternoon walk and dinner. She had taken off her walking-dress and
wrapped herself in a soft dressing-gown. She was neither more nor less
empty of joy than usual. But when she saw Harold, a dreadful certainty
took possession of her. It was as if a long expected letter, with a
black seal, had come at last.

Harold's face told her what to fear the more decisively, because she had
never before seen it express a man's deep agitation. Since the time of
its pouting childhood and careless youth she had seen only the confident
strength and good-humored imperiousness of maturity. The last five hours
had made a change as great as illness makes. Harold looked as if he had
been wrestling, and had had some terrible blow. His eyes had that sunken
look which, because it is unusual, seems to intensify expression.

He looked at his mother as he entered, and her eyes followed him as he
moved, till he came and stood in front of her, she looking up at him,
with white lips.

"Mother," he said, speaking with a distinct slowness, in strange
contrast with his habitual manner, "tell me the truth, that I may know
how to act."

He paused a moment, and then said, "Who is my father?"

She was mute: her lips only trembled. Harold stood silent for a few
moments, as if waiting. Then he spoke again.

"_He_ has said--said it before others--that _he_ is my father."

He looked still at his mother. She seemed as if age were striking her
with a sudden wand--as if her trembling face were getting haggard before
him. She was mute. But her eyes had not fallen; they looked up in
helpless misery at her son.

Her son turned away his eyes from her, and left her. In that moment
Harold felt hard: he could show no pity. All the pride of his nature
rebelled against his sonship.




CHAPTER XLIX.

    Nay, falter not--'tis an assured good
    To seek the noblest--'tis your only good
    Now you have seen it; for that higher vision
    Poisons all meaner choice forevermore.


That day Esther dined with old Mr. Transome only. Harold sent word that
he was engaged and had already dined, and Mrs. Transome that she was
feeling ill. Esther was much disappointed that any tidings Harold might
have brought relating to Felix were deferred in this way; and, her
anxiety making her fearful, she was haunted by the thought that if there
had been anything cheering to tell, he would have found time to tell it
without delay. Old Mr. Transome went as usual to his sofa in the library
to sleep after dinner, and Esther had to seat herself in the small
drawing-room, in a well-lit solitude that was unusually dispiriting to
her. Pretty as this room was, she did not like it. Mrs. Transome's
full-length portrait, being the only picture there, urged itself too
strongly on her attention: the youthful brilliancy it represented
saddened Esther by its inevitable association with what she daily saw
had come instead of it--a joyless, embittered age. The sense that Mrs.
Transome was unhappy, affected Esther more and more deeply as the
growing familiarity which relaxed the efforts of the hostess revealed
more and more the threadbare tissue of this majestic lady's life. Even
the flowers and the pure sunshine and the sweet waters of Paradise would
have been spoiled for a young heart, if the bowered walks had been
haunted by an Eve gone gray with bitter memories of an Adam who had
complained. "The woman----she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." And
many of us know how, even in our childhood, some blank discontented face
on the background of our home has marred our summer mornings. Why was
it, when the birds were singing, when the fields were a garden, and when
we were clasping another little hand just larger than our own, there was
somebody who found it hard to smile? Esther had got far beyond that
childhood to a time and circumstances when this daily presence of
elderly dissatisfaction amidst such outward things as she had always
thought must greatly help to satisfy, awaked, not merely vague
questioning emotion, but strong determining thought. And now, in these
hours since her return from Loamford, her mind was in that state of
highly-wrought activity, that large discourse, in which we seem to stand
aloof from our own life--weighing impartially our own temptations and
the weak desires that most habitually solicit us. "I think I am getting
that power Felix wished me to have: I shall soon see strong visions,"
she said to herself, with a melancholy smile flitting across her face,
as she put out her wax lights that she might get rid of the oppressive
urgency of walls and upholstery and that portrait smiling with deluded
brightness, unwitting of the future.

Just then Dominic came to say that Mr. Harold sent his compliments, and
begged that she would grant him an interview in his study. He disliked
the small drawing-room: if she would oblige him by going to the study at
once, he would join her very soon. Esther went, in some wonder and
anxiety. What she most feared or hoped in these moments related to Felix
Holt, and it did not occur to her that Harold could have anything
special to say to her that evening on other subjects.

Certainly the study was pleasanter than the small drawing-room. A quiet
light shone on nothing but greenness and dark wood, and Dominic had
placed a delightful chair for her opposite to his master's, which was
still empty. All the little objects of luxury around indicated Harold's
habitual occupancy; and as Esther sat opposite all these things along
with the empty chair which suggested the coming presence, the
expectation of his beseeching homage brought with it an impatience and
repugnance which she had never felt before. While these feelings were
strongly upon her, the door opened and Harold appeared.

He had recovered his self-possession since his interview with his
mother: he had dressed and was perfectly calm. He had been occupied with
resolute thoughts, determining to do what he knew that perfect honor
demanded, let it cost him what it would. It is true he had a tacit hope
behind, that it might not cost him what he prized most highly: it is
true he had a glimpse even of reward; but it was not less true that he
would have acted as he did without that hope or glimpse. It was the most
serious moment in Harold Transome's life; for the first time the iron
had entered into his soul, and he felt the hard pressure of our common
lot, the yoke of that mighty resistless destiny laid upon us by the acts
of other men as well as our own.

When Esther looked at him she relented, and felt ashamed of her
gratuitous impatience. She saw that his mind was in some way burdened.
But then immediately sprang the dread that he had to say something
hopeless about Felix.

They shook hands in silence, Esther looking at him with anxious
surprise. He released her hand, but it did not occur to her to sit down,
and they both continued standing on the hearth.

"Don't let me alarm you," said Harold, seeing that her face gathered
solemnity from his. "I suppose I carry the marks of a past agitation. It
relates entirely to troubles of my own--of my own family. No one beyond
is involved in them."

Esther wondered still more, and felt still more relenting.

"But," said Harold, after a slight pause, and in a voice that was
weighted with new feeling, "it involves a difference in my position with
regard to you; and it is on this point that I wished to speak to you at
once. When a man sees what ought to be done, he had better do it
forthwith. He can't answer for himself to-morrow."

While Esther continued to look at him, with eyes widened by anxious
expectation, Harold turned a little, leaned on the mantelpiece, and
ceased to look at her as he spoke.

"My feelings drag me another way. I need not tell you that your regard
has become very important to me--that if our mutual position had been
different--that, in short, you must have seen--if it had not seemed to
be a matter of worldly interest, I should have told you plainly already
that I loved you, and that my happiness could be complete only if you
would consent to marry me."

Esther felt her heart beginning to beat painfully. Harold's voice and
words moved her so much that her own task seemed more difficult than she
had before imagined. It seemed as if the silence, unbroken by anything
but the clicking of the fire, had been long, before Harold turned round
toward her again and said--

"But to-day I have heard something that affects my own position. I
cannot tell you what it is. There is no need. It is not any culpability
of my own. But I have not just the same unsullied name and fame in the
eyes of the world around us, as I believed that I had when I allowed
myself to entertain that wish about you. You are very young, entering on
a fresh life with bright prospects--you are worthy of everything that is
best. I may be too vain in thinking it was at all necessary; but I take
this precaution against myself. I shut myself out from the chance of
trying, after to-day, to induce you to accept anything which others may
regard as specked and stained by any obloquy, however slight."

Esther was keenly touched. With a paradoxical longing, such as often
happens to us, she wished at that moment that she could have loved this
man with her whole heart. The tears came into her eyes; she did not
speak, but, with an angel's tenderness in her face, she laid her hand on
his sleeve. Harold commanded himself strongly and said--

"What is to be done now is, that we should proceed at once to the
necessary legal measures for putting you in possession of your own, and
arranging mutual claims. After that I shall probably leave England."

Esther was oppressed by an overpowering difficulty. Her sympathy with
Harold at this moment was so strong, that it spread itself like a mist
over all previous thought and resolve. It was impossible now to wound
him afresh. With her hand still resting on his arm, she said, timidly--

"Should you be urged--obliged to go--in any case?"

"Not in every case, perhaps," Harold said, with an evident movement of
the blood toward his face; "at least not for long, not for always."

Esther was conscious of the gleam in his eyes. With terror at herself,
she said, in difficult haste, "I can't speak. I can't say anything
to-night. A great decision has to be made: I must wait--till to-morrow."

She was moving her hand from his arm, when Harold took it reverentially
and raised it to his lips. She turned toward her chair, and as he
released her hand she sank down on the seat with a sense that she needed
that support. She did not want to go away from Harold yet. All the while
there was something she needed to know, and yet she could not bring
herself to ask it. She must resign herself to depend entirely on his
recollection of anything beyond his own immediate trial. She sat
helpless under contending sympathies while Harold stood at some distance
from her, feeling more harassed by weariness and uncertainty, now that
he had fulfilled his resolve, and was no longer under the excitement of
actually fulfilling it.

Esther's last words had forbidden his revival of the subject that was
necessarily supreme with him. But still she sat there, and his mind,
busy as to the probabilities of her feeling, glanced over all she had
done and said in the later days of their intercourse. It was this
retrospect that led him to say at last--

"You will be glad to hear that we shall get a very powerfully signed
memorial to the Home Secretary about young Holt. I think your speaking
for him helped a great deal. You made all the men wish what you wished."

This was what Esther had been yearning to hear and dared not ask, as
well from respect for Harold's absorption in his own sorrow, as from the
shrinking that belongs to our dearest need. The intense relief of
hearing what she longed to hear, affected her whole frame: her color,
her expression, changed as if she had been suddenly freed from some
torturing constraint. But we interpret signs of emotion as we interpret
other signs--often quite erroneously, unless we have the right key to
what they signify. Harold did not gather that this was what Esther had
waited for, or that the change in her indicated more than he had
expected her to feel at this allusion to an unusual act which she had
done under a strong impulse.

Besides the introduction of a new subject after very momentous words
have passed, and are still dwelling on the mind, is necessarily a sort
of concussion, shaking us into a new adjustment of ourselves.

It seemed natural that soon afterward Esther put out her hand and said,
"Good-night."

Harold went to his bedroom on the same level with his study, thinking of
the morning with an uncertainty that dipped on the side of hope. This
sweet woman, for whom he felt a passion newer than any he had expected
to feel, might possibly make some hard things more bearable--if she
loved him. If not--well, he had acted so that he could defy anyone to
say he was not a gentleman.

Esther went up-stairs to her bedroom, thinking that she should not sleep
that night. She set her light on a high stand, and did not touch her
dress. What she desired to see with undisturbed clearness were things
not present: the rest she needed was the rest of a final choice. It was
difficult. On each side there was renunciation.

She drew up her blinds, liking to see the gray sky, where there were
some veiled glimmerings of moonlight, and the lines of the forever
running river, and the bending movement of the black trees. She wanted
the largeness of the world to help her thought. This young creature, who
trod lightly backward and forward, and leaned against the window-frame,
and shook back her brown curls as she looked at something not visible,
had lived hardly more than six months since she saw Felix Holt for the
first time. But life is measured by the rapidity of change, the
succession of influences that modify the being; and Esther had undergone
something little short of an inward revolution. The revolutionary
struggle, however, was not quite at an end.

There was something which she now felt profoundly to be the best thing
that life could give her. But--if it was to be had at all--it was not to
be had without paying a heavy price for it, such as we must pay for all
that is greatly good. A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime
rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the
soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know
that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread,
and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true that
love makes all things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult.
Esther's previous life had brought her into close acquaintance with many
negations, and with many positive ills too, not of the acutely painful,
but of the distasteful sort. What if she chose the hardship, and had to
bear it alone, with no strength to lean upon--no other better self to
make a place for trust and joy? Her past experience saved her from
illusions. She knew the dim life of the back street, the contact with
sordid vulgarity, the lack of refinement for the senses, the summons to
a daily task; and the gain that was to make that life of privation
something on which she dreaded to turn her back, as if it were
heaven--the presence and the love of Felix Holt--was only a quivering
hope, not a certainty. It was not in her woman's nature that the hope
should not spring within her and make a strong impulse. She knew that he
loved her: had he not said how a woman might help a man if she were
worthy? and if she proved herself worthy? But still there was the dread
that after all she might find herself on the stony road alone, and faint
and be weary. Even with the fulfillment of her hope, she knew that she
pledged herself to meet high demands.

And on the other side there was a lot where everything seemed easy--but
for the fatal absence of those feelings which, now she had once known
them, it seemed nothing less than a fall and degradation to do without.
With a terrible prescience which a multitude of impressions during her
stay at Transome Court had contributed to form, she saw herself in a
silken bondage that arrested all motive, and was nothing better than a
well-cushioned despair. To be restless amidst ease, to be languid among
all appliances for pleasure, was a possibility that seemed to haunt the
rooms of this house, and wander with her under the oaks and elms of the
park. And Harold Transome's love, no longer a hovering fancy with which
she played, but become a serious fact, seemed to threaten her with a
stifling oppression. The homage of a man may be delightful until he asks
straight for love, by which a woman renders homage. Since she and Felix
had kissed each other in the prison, she felt as if she had vowed
herself away, as if memory lay on her lips like a seal of possession.
Yet what had happened that very evening had strengthened her liking for
Harold, and her care for all that regarded him: it had increased her
repugnance to turning him out of anything he had expected to be his, or
to snatching anything from him on the ground of an arbitrary claim. It
had even made her dread, as a coming pain, the task of saying anything
to him that was not a promise of the utmost comfort under this
newly-disclosed trouble of his.

It was already near midnight, but with these thoughts succeeding and
returning in her mind like scenes through which she was living, Esther
had a more intense wakefulness than any she had known by day. All had
been stillness hitherto, except the fitful wind outside. But her ears
now caught a sound within--slight, but sudden. She moved near her door,
and heard the sweep of something on the matting outside. It came closer,
and paused. Then it began again, and seemed to sweep away from her. Then
it approached, and paused as it had done before. Esther listened,
wondering. The same thing happened again and again, till she could bear
it no longer. She opened the door, and in the dim light of the corridor,
where the glass above seemed to make a glimmering sky, she saw Mrs.
Transome's tall figure pacing slowly, with her cheek upon her hand.




CHAPTER L.

    The great question in life is the suffering we cause: and the
    utmost ingenuity of metaphysics cannot justify the man who has
    pierced the heart that loved him.

                                                --BENJAMIN CONSTANT.


When Denner had gone up to her mistress's room to dress her for dinner,
she had found her seated just as Harold had found her, only with eyelids
drooping and trembling over slowly-rolling tears--nay, with a face in
which every sensitive feature, every muscle, seemed to be quivering with
a silent endurance of some agony.

Denner went and stood by the chair a minute without speaking, only
laying her hand gently on Mrs. Transome's. At last she said
beseechingly, "Pray, speak, madam. What has happened?"

"The worst, Denner--the worst."

"You are ill. Let me undress you, and put you to bed."

"No, I am not ill. I am not going to die! I shall live--I shall live!"

"What may I do?"

"Go and say I shall not dine. Then you may come back, if you will."

The patient waiting-woman came back and sat by her mistress in
motionless silence, Mrs. Transome would not let her dress be touched,
and waved away all proffers with a slight movement of her hand. Denner
dared not even light a candle without being told. At last, when the
evening was far gone, Mrs. Transome said:

"Go down, Denner, and find out where Harold is, and come back and tell
me."

"Shall I ask him to come to you, madam?"

"No; don't dare to do it, if you love me. Come back."

Denner brought word that Mr. Harold was in his study, and that Miss Lyon
was with him. He had not dined, but had sent later to ask Miss Lyon to
go into his study.

"Light the candles and leave me."

"Mayn't I come again?"

"No. It may be that my son will come to me."

"Mayn't I sleep on the little bed in your bedroom?"

"No, good Denner; I am not ill. You can't help me."

"That's the hardest word of all, madam."

"The time will come--but not now. Kiss me. Now go."

The small quiet old woman obeyed, as she had always done. She shrank
from seeming to claim an equal's share in her mistress's sorrow.

For two hours Mrs. Transome's mind hung on what was hardly a
hope--hardly more than the listening for a bare possibility. She began
to create the sounds that her anguish craved to hear--began to imagine a
footfall, and a hand upon the door. Then, checked by continual
disappointment, she tried to rouse a truer consciousness by rising from
her seat and walking to her window, where she saw streaks of light
moving and disappearing on the grass, and heard the sound of bolts and
closing doors. She hurried away and threw herself into her seat again,
and buried her head in the deafening down of the cushions. There was no
sound of comfort to her.

Then her heart cried out within her against the cruelty of this son.
When he turned from her in the first moment, he had not had time to feel
anything but the blow that had fallen on himself. But afterward--was it
possible that he should not be touched with a son's pity--was it
possible that he should not have been visited by some thought of the
long years through which she had suffered? The memory of those years
came back to her now with a protest against the cruelty that had all
fallen on _her_. She started up with a new restlessness from this spirit
of resistance. She was not penitent. She had borne too hard a
punishment. Always the edge of calamity had fallen on _her_. Who had
felt for her? She was desolate. God had no pity, else her son would not
have been so hard. What dreary future was there after this dreary past?
She, too, looked out into the dim night; but the black boundary of trees
and the long line of the river seemed only part of the loneliness and
monotony of her life.

Suddenly she saw a light on the stone balustrades of the balcony that
projected in front of Esther's window, and the flash of a moving candle
falling on a shrub below. Esther was still awake and up. What had Harold
told her--what had passed between them? Harold was fond of this young
creature, who had been always sweet and reverential to her. There was
mercy in her young heart; she might be a daughter who had no impulse to
punish and to strike her whom fate had stricken. On the dim loneliness
before her she seemed to see Esther's gentle look; it was possible still
that the misery of this night might be broken by some comfort. The proud
woman yearned for the caressing pity that must dwell in that young
bosom. She opened her door gently, but when she had reached Esther's she
hesitated. She had never yet in her life asked for compassion--had never
thrown herself in faith on an unproffered love. And she might have gone
on pacing the corridor like an uneasy spirit without a goal, if Esther's
thought, leaping toward her, had not saved her from the need to ask
admission.

Mrs. Transome was walking toward the door when it opened. As Esther saw
that image of restless misery, it blent itself by a rapid flash with all
that Harold had said in the evening. She divined that the son's new
trouble must be one with the mother's long sadness. But there was no
waiting. In an instant Mrs. Transome felt Esther's arm round her neck,
and a voice saying softly--

"Oh, why didn't you call me before?"

They turned hand and hand into the room, and sat down on a sofa at the
foot of the bed. The disordered gray hair--the haggard face--the
reddened eyelids under which the tears seemed to be coming again with
pain, pierced Esther to the heart. A passionate desire to soothe this
suffering woman came over her. She clung round her again, and kissed her
poor quivering lips and eyelids, and laid her young cheek against the
pale and haggard one. Words could not be quick or strong enough to utter
her yearning. As Mrs. Transome felt that soft clinging, she said--

"God has some pity on me."

"Rest on my bed," said Esther. "You are so tired. I will cover you up
warmly, and then you will sleep."

"No--tell me, dear--tell me what Harold said."

"That he has had some new trouble."

"He said nothing hard about me?"

"No--nothing. He did not mention you."

"I have been an unhappy woman, dear."

"I feared it," said Esther, pressing her gently.

"Men are selfish. They are selfish and cruel. What they care for is
their own pleasure and their own pride."

"Not all," said Esther, on whom these words fell with a painful jar.

"All I have ever loved," said Mrs. Transome. She paused a moment or two,
and then said, "For more than twenty years I have not had an hour's
happiness. Harold knows it, and yet he is hard to me."

"He will not be. To-morrow he will not be. I am sure he will be good,"
said Esther, pleadingly. "Remember--he said to me his trouble was
new--he has not had time."

"It is too hard to bear, dear," Mrs. Transome said, a new sob rising as
she clung fast to Esther in return. "I am old, and expect so little
now--a very little thing would seem great. Why should I be punished any
more?"

Esther found it difficult to speak. The dimly-suggested tragedy of this
woman's life, the dreary waste of years empty of sweet trust and
affection, afflicted her even to horror. It seemed to have come as a
last vision to urge her toward the life where the draughts of joy sprang
from the unchanging fountains of reverence and devout love.

But all the more she longed to still the pain of this heart that beat
against hers.

"Do let me go to your own room with you, and let me undress you, and let
me tend upon you," she said, with a woman's gentle instinct. "It will be
a very great thing to me. I shall seem to have a mother again. Do let
me."

Mrs. Transome yielded at last, and let Esther soothe her with a
daughter's tendance. She was undressed and went to bed; and at last
dozed fitfully, with frequent starts. But Esther watched by her till the
chills of morning came, and then she only wrapped more warmth around
her, and slept fast in the chair till Denner's movement in the room
roused her. She started out of a dream in which she was telling Felix
what had happened to her that night.

Mrs. Transome was now in the sounder morning sleep which sometimes
comes after a long night of misery. Esther beckoned Denner into the
dressing-room, and said:

"It is late, Mrs. Hickes. Do you think Mr. Harold is out of his room?"

"Yes, a long while; he was out earlier than usual."

"Will you ask him to come up here? Say I begged you."

When Harold entered Esther was leaning against the back of the empty
chair where yesterday he had seen his mother sitting. He was in a state
of wonder and suspense, and when Esther approached him and gave him her
hand, he said, in a startled way--

"Good God! how ill you look! Have you been sitting up with my mother?"

"Yes. She is asleep now," said Esther. They had merely pressed hands by
way of greeting, and now stood apart looking at each other solemnly.

"Has she told you anything?" said Harold.

"No, only that she is wretched. Oh, I think I would bear a great deal of
unhappiness to save her from having any more."

A painful thrill passed through Harold, and showed itself in his face
with that pale rapid flash which can never be painted. Esther pressed
her hands together, and said, timidly, though it was from an urgent
prompting--

"There is nothing in all this place--nothing since ever I came here--I
could care for so much as that you should sit down by her now, and that
she should see you when she wakes."

Then with delicate instinct, she added, just laying her hand on his
sleeve, "I know you would have come. I know you meant it. But she is
asleep now. Go gently before she wakes."

Harold just laid his right hand for an instant on the back of Esther's
as it rested on his sleeve, and then stepped softly to his mother's
bedside.

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour afterward, when Harold had laid his mother's pillow afresh, and
sat down again by her, she said--

"If that dear thing will marry you, Harold, it will make up to you for a
great deal."

But before the day closed Harold knew that this was not to be. That
young presence, which had flitted like a white new-winged dove over all
the saddening relics and new finery of Transome Court, could not find
its home there. Harold heard from Esther's lips that she loved some one
else, and that she resigned all claim to the Transome estates. She
wished to go back to her father.




CHAPTER LI.

    The maiden said, I wis the londe
      Is very fair to see,
    But my true-love that is in bonde
      Is fairer still to me.


One April day, when the sun shone on the lingering raindrops, Lyddy was
gone out, and Esther chose to sit in the kitchen, in the wicker-chair
against the white table, between the fire and the window. The kettle was
singing, and the clock was ticking steadily toward four o'clock.

She was not reading, but stitching; and as her fingers moved nimbly,
something played about her parted lips like a ray. Suddenly she laid
down her work, pressed her hands together on her knees, and bent forward
a little. The next moment there came a loud rap at the door. She started
up and opened it, but kept herself hidden behind it.

"Mr. Lyon at home?" said Felix, in his firm tones.

"No, sir," said Esther from behind her screen; "but Miss Lyon is, if
you'll please to walk in."

"Esther!" exclaimed Felix, amazed.

They held each other by both hands, and looked into each other's faces
with delight.

"You are out of prison?"

"Yes, till I do something bad again. But you?--how is it all?"

"Oh, it is," said Esther, smiling brightly as she moved toward the
wicker chair, and seated herself again, "that everything is as usual: my
father is gone to see the sick; Lyddy is gone in deep despondency to buy
the grocery; and I am sitting here, with some vanity in me, needing to
be scolded."

Felix had seated himself on a chair that happened to be near her, at the
corner of the table. He looked at her still with questioning eyes--he
grave, she mischievously smiling.

"Are you come back to live here then?"

"Yes."

"You are not going to be married to Harold Transome, or to be rich?"

"No." Something made Esther take up her work again, and begin to stitch.
The smiles were dying into a tremor.

"Why?" said Felix, in rather a low tone, leaning his elbow on the table,
and resting his head on his hand while he looked at her.

"I did not wish to marry him, or to be rich."

"You have given it all up?" said Felix, leaning forward a little, and
speaking in a still lower tone. Esther did not speak. They heard the
kettle singing and the clock loudly ticking. There was no knowing how it
was: Esther's work fell, their eyes met; and the next instant their arms
were round each other's necks, and once more they kissed each other.

When their hands fell again, their eyes were bright with tears. Felix
laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Could you share the life of a poor man, then, Esther?"

"If I thought well enough of him," she said, the smile coming again,
with the pretty saucy movement of her head.

"Have you considered well what it would be?--that it would be a very
bare and simple life?"

"Yes--without atta of rose."

Felix suddenly removed his hand from her shoulder, rose from his chair,
and walked a step or two; then he turned round and said, with deep
gravity--

"And the people I shall live among, Esther? They have not just the same
follies and vices as the rich, but they have their own forms of folly
and vice; and they have not what are called the refinements of the rich
to make their faults more bearable. I don't say more bearable to me--I'm
not fond of those refinements; but you are."

Felix paused an instant, and then added--

"It is very serious, Esther."

"I know it is serious," said Esther, looking up at him. "Since I have
been at Transome Court I have seen many things very seriously. If I had
not, I should not have left what I did leave. I made a deliberate
choice."

Felix stood a moment or two, dwelling on her with a face where the
gravity gathered tenderness.

"And these curls?" he said, with a sort of relenting, seating himself
again, and putting his hand on them.

"They cost nothing--they are natural."

"You are such a delicate creature."

"I am very healthy. Poor women, I think, are healthier than the rich.
Besides," Esther went on, with a mischievous meaning, "I think of having
some wealth."

"How?" said Felix, with an anxious start. "What do you mean?"

"I think even of two pounds a week: one needn't live up to the splendor
of all that, you know; we might live as simply as you liked: there would
be money to spare, and you could do wonders, and be obliged to work too,
only not if sickness came. And then I think of a little income for your
mother, enough for her to live as she has been used to live; and a
little income for my father, to save him from being dependent when he is
no longer able to preach."

Esther said all this in a playful tone, but she ended, with a grave look
of appealing submission----

"I mean--if you approve. I wish to do what you think it will be right to
do."

Felix put his hand on her shoulder again and reflected a little while,
looking on the hearth: then he said, lifting up his eyes, with a smile
at her----

"Why, I shall be able to set up a great library, and lend the books to
be dog's-eared and marked with bread-crumbs."

Esther said, laughing, "You think you are to be everything. You don't
know how clever I am. I mean to go on teaching a great many things."

"Teaching me?"

"Oh, yes," she said, with a little toss; "I shall improve your French
accent."

"You won't want me to wear a stock," said Felix, with a defiant shake of
the head.

"No; and you will not attribute stupid thoughts to me before I've
uttered them."

They laughed merrily, each holding the other's arms, like girl and boy.
There was the ineffable sense of youth in common.

Then Felix leaned forward, that their lips might meet again, and after
that his eyes roved tenderly over her face and curls.

"I'm a rough, severe fellow, Esther. Shall you never repent?--never be
inwardly reproaching me that I was not a man who could have shared your
wealth? Are you quite sure?"

"Quite sure!" said Esther, shaking her head; "for then I should have
honored you less. I am weak--my husband must be greater and nobler than
I am."

"Oh, I tell you what, though!" said Felix, starting up, thrusting his
hands into his pockets, and creasing his brow playfully, "if you take me
in that way I shall be forced to be a much better fellow than I ever
thought of being."

"I call that retribution," said Esther, with a laugh as sweet as the
morning thrush.




EPILOGUE.

    Our finest hope is finest memory;
    And those who love in age think youth is happy,
    Because it has a life to fill with love.


The very next May, Felix and Esther were married. Every one in those
days was married at the parish church; but Mr. Lyon was not satisfied
without an additional private solemnity, "wherein there was no bondage
to questionable forms, so that he might have a more enlarged utterance
of joy and supplication."

It was a very simple wedding; but no wedding, even the gayest, ever
raised so much interest and debate in Treby Magna. Even very great
people, like Sir Maximus and his family, went to the church to look at
this bride, who had renounced wealth, and chosen to be the wife of a man
who said he would always be poor.

Some few shook their heads; could not quite believe it; and thought
there was "more behind." But the majority of honest Trebians were
affected somewhat in the same way as happy-looking Mr. Wace was, who
observed to his wife, as they walked from under the churchyard
chestnuts, "It's wonderful how things go through you--you don't know
how. I feel somehow as if I believed more in everything that's good."

Mrs. Holt, that day, said she felt herself to be receiving "some
reward," implying that justice certainly had much more in reserve.
Little Job Tudge had an entirely new suit, of which he fingered every
separate brass button in a way that threatened an arithmetical mania;
and Mrs. Holt had out her best tea-trays and put down her carpet again,
with the satisfaction of thinking that there would no more be boys
coming in all weathers with dirty shoes.

For Felix and Esther did not take up their abode in Treby Magna; and
after a while Mr. Lyon left the town too, and joined them where they
dwelt. On his resignation the church in Malthouse Yard chose a successor
to him whose doctrine was rather higher.

There were other departures from Treby. Mr. Jermyn's establishment was
broken up, and he was understood to have gone to reside at a great
distance: some said "abroad," that large home of ruined reputations. Mr.
Johnson continued blonde and sufficiently prosperous till he got gray
and rather more prosperous. Some persons who did not think highly of
him, held that his prosperity was a fact to be kept in the background,
as being dangerous to the morals of the young; judging that it was not
altogether creditable to the Divine Providence that anything but virtue
should be rewarded by a front and back drawing-room in Bedford Row.

As for Mr. Christian, he had no more profitable secrets at his disposal.
But he got his thousand pounds from Harold Transome.

The Transome family were absent some time from Transome Court. The place
was kept up and shown to visitors, but not by Denner, who was away with
her mistress. After a while the family came back, and Mrs. Transome died
there. Sir Maximus was at her funeral, and throughout that neighborhood
there was silence about the past.

Uncle Lingon continued to watch over the shooting on the Manor and the
covers until that event occurred which he had predicted as a part of
Church reform sure to come. Little Treby had a new rector, but others
were sorry besides the old pointers.

As to all that wide parish of Treby Magna, it has since prospered as the
rest of England has prospered. Doubtless there is more enlightenment
now. Whether the farmers are all public-spirited, the shopkeepers nobly
independent, the Sproxton men entirely sober and judicious, the
Dissenters quite without narrowness or asperity in religion and
politics, and the publicans all fit, like Gaius, to be the friends of an
apostle--these things I have not heard; not having correspondence in
those parts. Whether any presumption may be drawn from the fact that
North Loamshire does not yet return a Radical candidate, I leave to the
all-wise--I mean the newspapers.

As to the town in which Felix Holt now resides, I will keep that a
secret, lest he should be troubled by any visitor having the
insufferable motive of curiosity.

I will only say that Esther has never repented. Felix, however, grumbles
a little that she has made his life too easy, and that, if it were not
for much walking, he should be a sleek dog.

There is a young Felix, who has a great deal more science than his
father, but not much more money.


THE END.


       *       *       *       *       *


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Transcriber's notes:

  P.  13. 'put pack' is 'put back'.
  P.  55. 'repectable' is 'respectable'.
  P.  55. 'those absurb' is 'those absurd'.
  P.  61. 'blashemous' is 'blasphemous'.
  P.  92. 'Sir Maxum's' is 'Sir Maximus's'.
  P. 122. '"Won t you please' is '"Won't you please'.
  P. 167. 'responsibilty' is 'responsibility'.
  P. 167. 'Jermym' is 'Jermyn'.
  P. 181. Closing single quotation mark should be double quotation mark
          in chapter quote, and the comma has been replaced by period.
  P. 317. 'apparant' is 'apparent'.
  P. 355. 'explicity' is 'explicitly'. Changed.
  P. 357. 'shillihgs' is 'shillings'. Changed.
  P. 386. 'tete-à-tete' is 'tête-à-tête', changed accents.
  P. 409. 'at this illusion' is 'at this allusion'. Changed.
  P. 413. 'carressing' is 'caressing'. Changed.
  P. 417. 'attaa' is 'atta'. Changed.

  The underscore displays italics in the text:
    _her_

  The equals sign displays bold:
    =1800=

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Felix Holt, the Radical - Part 2
