[Illustration: ESTHER LYON.]
FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL
BY GEORGE ELIOT
Upon the midlands now the industrious muse doth fall,
The shires which we the heart of England well may call.
* * * * *
My native country thou, which so brave spirits hast bred,
If there be virtues yet remaining in the earth,
Or any good of thine thou bred'st into my birth,
Accept it as thine own, whilst now I sing of thee,
Of all thy later brood the unworthiest though I be.
--DRAYTON; _Polyolbion_.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
BOSTON
DE WOLFE, FISKE & COMPANY
361 AND 365 WASHINGTON STREET
FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL.
INTRODUCTION.
Five-and-thirty years ago the glory had not yet departed from the old
coach roads: the great roadside inns were still brilliant with
well-polished tankards, the smiling glances of pretty barmaids, and the
repartees of jocose hostlers; the mail still announced itself by the
merry notes of the horn; the hedge-cutter or the rick-thatcher might
still know the exact hour by the unfailing yet otherwise meteoric
apparition of the pea-green Tally-ho or the yellow Independent; and
elderly gentlemen in pony-chaises, quartering nervously to make way for
the rolling, swinging swiftness, had not ceased to remark that times
were finely changed since they used to see the pack-horses and hear the
tinkling of their bells on this very highway.
In those days there were pocket boroughs, a Birmingham unrepresented in
Parliament and compelled to make strong representations out of it,
unrepealed corn-laws, three-and-sixpenny letters, a brawny and
many-breeding pauperism, and other departed evils; but there were some
pleasant things, too, which have also departed. _Non omnia grandior ætas
quæ fugiamus habet_, says the wise goddess: you have not the best of it
in all things, O youngsters! the elderly man has his enviable memories,
and not the least of them is the memory of a long journey in mid-spring
or autumn on the outside of a stage coach. Posterity may be shot, like a
bullet through a tube, by atmospheric pressure, from Winchester to
Newcastle: that is a fine result to have among our hopes; but the slow,
old fashioned way of getting from one end of our country to the other is
the better thing to have in the memory. The tube-journey can never lend
much to picture and narrative; it is as barren as an exclamatory O!
Whereas, the happy outside passenger, seated on the box from the dawn to
the gloaming, gathered enough stories of English life, enough of English
labors in town and country, enough aspects of earth and sky, to make
episodes for a modern Odyssey. Suppose only that his journey took him
through that central plain, watered at one extremity by the Avon, at the
other by the Trent. As the morning silvered the meadows with their long
lines of bushy willows marking the water-courses, or burnished the
golden corn-ricks clustered near the long roofs of some midland
homestead, he saw the full-uddered cows driven from their pasture to the
early milking. Perhaps it was the shepherd, head-servant of the farm,
who drove them, his sheep-dog following with a heedless, unofficial air,
as of a beadle in undress. The shepherd, with a slow and slouching walk,
timed by the walk of grazing beasts, moved aside, as if unwillingly,
throwing out a monosyllabic hint to his cattle; his glance, accustomed
to rest on things very near the earth, seemed to lift itself with
difficulty to the coachman. Mail or stage coach for him belonged to the
mysterious distant system of things called "Gover'ment," which, whatever
it might be, was no business of his, any more than the most outlying
nebula or the coal-sacks of the southern hemisphere: his solar system
was the parish; the master's temper and the casualties of lambing-time
were his region of storms. He cut his bread and bacon with his
pocket-knife, and felt no bitterness except in the matter of pauper
laborers and the bad-luck that sent contrarious seasons and the
sheep-rot. He and his cows were soon left behind, and the homestead,
too, with its pond overhung by elder-trees, its untidy kitchen-garden
and cone-shaped yew-tree arbor. But everywhere the bushy hedgerows
wasted the land with their straggling beauty, shrouded the grassy
borders of the pastures with catkined hazels, and tossed their long
blackberry branches on the corn-fields. Perhaps they were white with
May, or starred with pale pink dog-roses; perhaps the urchins were
already nutting among them, or gathering the plenteous crabs. It was
worth the journey only to see those hedgerows, the liberal homes of
unmarketable beauty--of the purple blossomed, ruby-berried nightshade,
of the wild convolvulus climbing and spreading in tendriled strength
till it made a great curtain of pale-green hearts and white trumpets, of
the many-tubed honey-suckle which, in its most delicate fragrance, hid a
charm more subtle and penetrating than beauty. Even if it were winter,
the hedgerows showed their coral, the scarlet haws, the deep-crimson
hips, with lingering brown leaves to make a resting-place for the jewels
of the hoar-frost. Such hedgerows were often as tall as the laborers'
cottages dotted along the lanes, or clustered into a small hamlet, their
little dingy windows telling, like thick-filmed eyes, of nothing but the
darkness within. The passenger on the coach-box, bowled along above
such a hamlet, saw chiefly the roofs of it: probably it turned its back
on the road, and seemed to lie away from everything but its own patch of
earth and sky, away from the parish church by long fields and green
lanes, away from all intercourse except that of tramps. If its face
could be seen, it was most likely dirty; but the dirt was Protestant
dirt, and the big, bold, gin-breathing tramps were Protestant tramps.
There was no sign of superstition near, no crucifix or image to indicate
a misguided reverence: the inhabitants were probably so free from
superstition that they were in much less awe of the parson than of the
overseer. Yet they were saved from the excess of Protestantism by not
knowing how to read, and by the absence of handlooms and mines to be the
pioneers of Dissent: they were kept safely in the _via media_ of
indifference, and could have registered themselves in the census by a
big black mark as members of the Church of England.
But there were trim cheerful villages too, with a neat or handsome
parsonage and gray church set in the midst; there was the pleasant
tinkle of the blacksmith's anvil, the patient cart horses waiting at his
door; the basket-maker peeling his willow wands in the sunshine; the
wheelwright putting his last touch to a blue cart with red wheels; here
and there a cottage with bright transparent windows showing pots full of
blooming balsams or geraniums, and little gardens in front all double
daisies or dark wallflowers; at the well, clean and comely women
carrying yoked buckets, and toward the free school small Britons
dawdling on, and handling their marbles in the pockets of unpatched
corduroys adorned with brass buttons. The land around was rich and
marly, great corn-stacks stood in the rick-yards--for the rick-burners
had not found their way hither; the homesteads were those of rich
farmers who paid no rent, or had the rare advantage of a lease, and
could afford to keep the corn till prices had risen. The coach would be
sure to overtake some of them on their way to their outlying fields or
to the market-town, sitting heavily on their well-groomed horses, or
weighing down one side of an olive-green gig. They probably thought of
the coach with some contempt, as an accommodation for people who had not
their own gigs, or who, wanting to travel to London and such distant
places, belonged to the trading and less solid part of the nation. The
passenger on the box could see that this was the district of protuberant
optimists, sure that old England was the best of all possible countries,
and that if there were any facts which had not fallen under their own
observation, they were facts not worth observing: the district of clean
little market-towns without manufactures, of fat livings, an
aristocratic clergy, and low poor-rates. But as the day wore on the
scene would change: the land would begin to be blackened with coal-pits,
the rattle of handlooms to be heard in hamlets and villages. Here were
powerful men walking queerly with knees bent outward from squatting in
the mine, going home to throw themselves down in their blackened flannel
and sleep through the daylight, then rise and spend much of their high
wages at the ale-house with their fellows of the Benefit Club; here the
pale eager faces of the handloom-weavers, men and women, haggard from
sitting up late at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till
the Wednesday. Everywhere the cottages and the small children were
dirty, for the languid mothers gave their strength to the loom; pious
Dissenting women, perhaps, who took life patiently, and thought that
salvation depended chiefly on predestination, and not at all on
cleanliness. The gables of Dissenting chapels now made a visible sign of
religion, and of a meeting-place to counterbalance the ale-house, even
in the hamlets; but if a couple of old termagants were seen tearing each
other's caps, it was a safe conclusion that, if they had not received
the sacraments of the Church, they had not at least given in to
schismatic rites, and were free from the errors of Voluntaryism. The
breath of the manufacturing town, which made a cloudy day and a red
gloom by night on the horizon, diffused itself over all the surrounding
country, filling the air with eager unrest. Here was a population not
convinced that old England was as good as possible; here were
multitudinous men and women aware that their religion was not exactly
the religion of their rulers, who might therefore be better than they
were, and who, if better, might alter many things which now made the
world perhaps more painful than it need be, and certainly more sinful.
Yet there were the gray steeples too, and the churchyards, with their
grassy mounds and venerable headstones, sleeping in the sunlight; there
were broad fields and homesteads, and fine old woods covering a rising
ground, or stretching far by the roadside, allowing only peeps at the
park and mansion which they shut in from the working-day world. In these
midland districts the traveller passed rapidly from one phase of English
life to another: after looking down on a village dingy with coal-dust,
noisy with the shaking of looms, he might skirt a parish all of fields,
high hedges, and deep rutted lanes; after the coach had rattled over the
pavement of a manufacturing town, the scenes of riots and trades-union
meetings, it would take him in another ten minutes into a rural region,
where the neighborhood of the town was only felt in the advantages of a
near market for corn, cheese, and hay, and where men with a considerable
banking account were accustomed to say that "they never meddled with
politics themselves." The busy scenes of the shuttle and the wheel, of
the roaring furnace, of the shaft and the pulley, seemed to make but
crowded nests in the midst of the large-spaced, slow-moving life of
homesteads and far-away cottages and oak-sheltered parks. Looking at the
dwellings scattered amongst the woody flats and the plowed uplands,
under the low gray sky which overhung them with an unchanging stillness
as if Time itself were pausing, it was easy for the traveller to
conceive that town and country had no pulse in common, except where the
handlooms made a far-reaching straggling fringe about the great centres
of manufacture; that till the agitation about the Catholics in '29,
rural Englishmen had hardly known more of Catholics than of the fossil
mammals; and that their notion of Reform was a confused combination of
rick-burners, trades-unions, Nottingham riots, and in general whatever
required the calling out of the yeomanry. It was still easier to see
that, for the most part, they resisted the rotation of crops and stood
by their fallows: and the coachman would perhaps tell how in one parish
an innovating farmer, who talked of Sir Humphrey Davy, had been fairly
driven out by popular dislike, as if he had been a confounded Radical;
and how, the parson having one Sunday preached from the words, "Break up
your fallow-ground," the people thought he had made the text out of his
own head, otherwise it would never have come "so pat" on a matter of
business; but when they found it in the Bible at home, some said it was
an argument for fallows (else why should the Bible mention fallows?),
but a few of the weaker sort were shaken, and thought it was an argument
that fallows should be done away with, else the Bible would have said,
"Let your fallows lie"; and the next morning the parson had a stroke of
apoplexy, which, as coincident with a dispute about fallows, so set the
parish against the innovating farmer and the rotation of crops, that he
could stand his ground no longer, and transferred his lease.
The coachman was an excellent travelling companion and commentator on
the landscape: he could tell the names of sites and persons, and explain
the meaning of groups, as well as the shade of Virgil in a more
memorable journey; he had as many stories about parishes, and the men
and women in them, as the Wanderer in the "Excursion," only his style
was different. His view of life had originally been genial, such as
became a man who was well warmed within and without, and held a position
of easy, undisputed authority; but the recent initiation of railways had
embittered him: he now, as in a perpetual vision, saw the ruined country
strewn with shattered limbs, and regarded Mr. Huskisson's death as a
proof of God's anger against Stephenson. "Why, every inn on the road
would be shut up!" and at that word the coachman looked before him with
the blank gaze of one who had driven his coach to the outermost edge of
the universe, and saw his leaders plunging into the abyss. Still he
would soon relapse from the high prophetic strain to the familiar one of
narrative. He knew whose the land was wherever he drove; what noblemen
had half-ruined themselves by gambling; who made handsome returns of
rent; and who was at daggers-drawn with his eldest son. He perhaps
remembered the fathers of actual baronets, and knew stories of their
extravagant or stingy housekeeping; whom they had married, whom they had
horsewhipped, whether they were particular about preserving their game,
and whether they had had much to do with canal companies. About any
actual landed proprietor he could also tell whether he was a Reformer or
an Anti-Reformer. That was a distinction which had "turned up" in latter
times, and along with it the paradox, very puzzling to the coachman's
mind, that there were men of old family and large estate who voted for
the Bill. He did not grapple with the paradox; he let it pass, with all
the discreetness of an experienced theologian or learned scholiast,
preferring to point his whip at some object which could raise no
questions.
No such paradox troubled our coachman when, leaving the town of Treby
Magna behind him, he drove between the hedges for a mile or so, crossed
the queer long bridge over the river Lapp, and then put his horses to a
swift gallop up the hill by the low-nestled village of Little Treby,
till they were on the fine level road, skirted on one side by grand
larches, oaks, and wych elms, which sometimes opened so far as to let
the traveller see that there was a park behind them.
How many times in the year, as the coach rolled past the
neglected-looking lodges which interrupted the screen of trees, and
showed the river winding through a finely-timbered park, had the
coachman answered the same questions, or told the same things without
being questioned! That?--oh, that was Transome Court, a place there had
been a fine sight of lawsuits about. Generations back, the heir of the
Transome name had somehow bargained away the estate, and it fell to the
Durfeys, very distant connections, who only called themselves Transomes
because they had got the estate. But the Durfeys' claim had been
disputed over and over again; and the coachman, if he had been asked,
would have said, though he might have to fall down dead the next minute,
that property didn't always get into the right hands. However, the
lawyers had found their luck in it; and people who inherited estates
that were lawed about often lived in them as poorly as a mouse in a
hollow cheese; and, by what he could make out, that had been the way
with these present Durfeys, or Transomes, as they called themselves. As
for Mr. Transome, he was as poor, half-witted a fellow as you'd wish to
see; but _she_ was master, had come of a high family, and had a
spirit--you might see it in her eye and the way she sat her horse. Forty
years ago, when she came into this country, they said she was a pictur';
but her family was poor, and so she took up with a hatchet-faced fellow
like this Transome. And the eldest son had been just such another as his
father, only worse--a wild sort of half-natural, who got into bad
company. They said his mother hated him and wished him dead; for she'd
got another son, quite of a different cut, who had gone to foreign parts
when he was a youngster, and she wanted her favorite to be heir. But
heir or no heir, Lawyer Jermyn had had _his_ picking out of the estate.
Not a door in his big house but what was the finest polished oak, all
got off the Transome estate. If anybody liked to believe he paid for it,
they were welcome. However, Lawyer Jermyn had sat on that box-seat many
and many a time. He had made the wills of most people thereabout. The
coachman would not say that Lawyer Jermyn was not the man he would
choose to make his own will some day. It was not so well for a lawyer to
be over-honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks. And as
for the Transome business, there had been ins and outs in time gone by,
so that you couldn't look into it straight backward. At this Mr. Sampson
(everybody in North Loamshire knew Sampson's coach) would screw his
features into a grimace expressive of entire neutrality, and appear to
aim his whip at a particular spot on the horse's flank. If the passenger
was curious for further knowledge concerning the Transome affairs,
Sampson would shake his head and say there had been fine stories in his
time; but he never condescended to state what the stories were. Some
attributed this reticence to a wise incredulity, others to a want of
memory, others to simple ignorance. But at least Sampson was right in
saying that there had been fine stories--meaning, ironically, stories
not altogether creditable to the parties concerned.
And such stories often come to be fine in a sense that is not ironical.
For there is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it
some downfall of blindly-climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering,
some quickly-satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of
old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny--some
tragic mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life
that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has
raised the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern
between will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the
world; for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations
that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying
existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of
murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and
joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that
of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the
face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears.
Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into
no human ear.
The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under
world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human
histories hidden in them; the power of unuttered cries dwells in the
passionless-seeming branches, and the red warm blood is darkly feeding
the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory that watches through all
dreams. These things are a parable.
CHAPTER I.
He left me when the down upon his lip
Lay like the shadow of a hovering kiss.
"Beautiful mother, do not grieve," he said;
"I will be great, and build our fortunes high.
And you shall wear the longest train at court,
And look so queenly, all the lords shall say,
'She is a royal changeling: there is some crown
Lacks the right head, since hers wears naught but braids.'"
O, he is coming now--but I am gray:
And he----
On the first of September, in the memorable year 1832, some one was
expected at Transome Court. As early as two o'clock in the afternoon the
aged lodge-keeper had opened the heavy gate, green as the tree trunks
were green with nature's powdery paint, deposited year after year.
Already in the village of Little Treby, which lay on the side of a steep
hill not far off the lodge-gates, the elder matrons sat in their best
gowns at the few cottage doors bordering the road, that they might be
ready to get up and make their courtesy when a travelling carriage
should come in sight; and beyond the village several small boys were
stationed on the look-out, intending to run a race to the barn-like old
church, where the sexton waited in the belfry ready to set the one bell
in joyful agitation just at the right moment.
The old lodge-keeper had opened the gate and left it in the charge of
his lame wife, because he was wanted at the Court to sweep away the
leaves, and perhaps to help in the stables. For though Transome Court
was a large mansion, built in the fashion of Queen Anne's time, with a
park and grounds as fine as any to be seen in Loamshire, there were very
few servants about it. Especially, it seemed, there must be a lack of
gardeners; for, except on the terrace surrounded with a stone parapet in
front of the house, where there was a parterre, kept with some neatness,
grass had spread itself over the gravel walks, and over all the low
mounds once carefully cut as black beds for the shrubs and larger
plants. Many of the windows had the shutters closed, and under the grand
Scotch fir that stooped toward one corner, the brown fir-needles of many
years lay in a small stone balcony in front of two such darkened
windows. All round, both near and far, there were grand trees,
motionless in the still sunshine, and, like all large motionless things,
seemed to add to the stillness. Here and there a leaf fluttered down;
petals fell in a silent shower; a heavy moth fluttered by, and, when it
settled, seemed to fall wearily; the tiny birds alighted on the walks,
and hopped about in perfect tranquillity; even a stray rabbit sat
nibbling a leaf that was to its liking, in the middle of a grassy space,
with an air that seemed quite impudent in so timid a creature. No sound
was to be heard louder than a sleepy hum, and the soft monotony of
running water hurrying on to the river that divided the park. Standing
on the south or east side of the house, you would never have guessed
that an arrival was expected.
But on the west side, where the carriage entrance was, the gates under
the stone archway were thrown open; and so was the double door of the
entrance-hall, letting in the warm light on the scagliola pillars, the
marble statues, and the broad stone staircase, with its matting worn
into large holes. And, stronger sign of expectation than all, from one
of the doors that surrounded the entrance-hall, there came forth from
time to time a lady, who walked lightly over the polished stone floor,
and stood on the door-steps and watched and listened. She walked
lightly, for her figure was slim and finely formed, though she was
between fifty and sixty. She was a tall, proud-looking woman, with
abundant gray hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, and a somewhat eagle-like
yet not unfeminine face. Her tight-fitting black dress was much worn;
the fine lace of her cuffs and collar, and of the small veil that fell
backward over her high comb, was visibly mended; but rare jewels flashed
on her hands, which lay on her folded black-clad arms like finely-cut
onyx cameos.
Meantime Mrs. Transome went to the door-steps, watching and listening in
vain. Each time she returned to the same room; it was a moderate-sized
comfortable room, with low ebony bookshelves round it, and it formed an
ante-room to a large library, of which a glimpse could be seen through
an open doorway, partly obstructed by a heavy tapestry curtain drawn on
one side. There was a great deal of tarnished gilding and dinginess on
the walls and furniture of this smaller room, but the pictures above the
bookcases were all of a cheerful kind: portraits in pastel of
pearly-skinned ladies with hair-powder, blue ribbons, and low bodices; a
splendid portrait in oils of a Transome in the gorgeous dress of the
Restoration; another of a Transome in his boyhood, with his hand on the
neck of a small pony; and a large Flemish battle-piece, where war seemed
only a picturesque blue-and-red accident in a vast sunny expanse of
plain and sky. Probably such cheerful pictures had been chosen because
this was Mrs. Transome's usual sitting-room: it was certainly for this
reason that, near the chair in which she seated herself each time she
re-entered, there hung a picture of a youthful face which bore a strong
resemblance to her own: a beardless but masculine face, with rich brown
hair hanging low on the forehead, and undulating beside each cheek down
to the loose white cravat. Near this same chair were her writing table,
with vellum-covered account-books on it, the cabinet in which she kept
her neatly-arranged drugs, her basket for her embroidery, a folio volume
of architectural engravings from which she took her embroidery-patterns,
a number of the "North Loamshire Herald," and the cushion for her fat
Blenheim, which was too old and sleepy to notice its mistress's
restlessness. For, just now, Mrs. Transome could not abridge the sunny
tedium of the day by the feeble interest of her usual indoor
occupations. Her consciousness was absorbed by memories and prospects,
and except that she walked to the entrance-door to look out, she sat
motionless with folded arms, involuntarily from time to time turning
toward the portrait close by her, and as often, when its young brown
eyes met hers, turning away again with self-checking resolution.
At last, prompted by some sudden thought or by some sound, she rose and
went hastily beyond the tapestry curtain into the library. She paused
near the door without speaking: apparently she only wished to see that
no harm was being done. A man nearer seventy than sixty was in the act
of ranging on a large library-table a series of shallow drawers, some of
them containing dried insects, others mineralogical specimens. His pale
mild eyes, receding lower jaw, and slight frame, could never have
expressed much vigor, either bodily or mental; but he had now the
unevenness of gait and feebleness of gesture which tell of a past
paralytic seizure. His threadbare clothes were thoroughly brushed: his
soft white hair was carefully parted and arranged: he was not a
neglected-looking old man; and at his side a fine black retriever, also
old, sat on its haunches, and watched him as he went to and fro. But
when Mrs. Transome appeared within the doorway, her husband paused in
his work and shrank like a timid animal looked at in a cage where flight
was impossible. He was conscious of a troublesome intention, for which
he had been rebuked before--that of disturbing all his specimens with a
view to a new arrangement.
After an interval, in which his wife stood perfectly still, observing
him, he began to put back the drawers in their places in the row of
cabinets which extended under the bookshelves at one end of the
library. When they were all put back and closed, Mrs. Transome turned
away, and the frightened old man seated himself with Nimrod the
retriever on an ottoman. Peeping at him again, a few minutes after, she
saw that he had his arm round Nimrod's neck, and was uttering his
thoughts to the dog in a loud whisper, as little children do to any
object near them when they believe themselves unwatched.
At last the sound of the church-bell reached Mrs. Transome's ear, and
she knew that before long the sound of wheels must be within hearing;
but she did not at once start up and walk to the entrance-door. She sat
still, quivering and listening; her lips became pale, her hands were
cold and trembling. Was her son really coming? She was far beyond fifty;
and since her early gladness in this best-loved boy, the harvest of her
life had been scanty. Could it be that now--when her hair was gray, when
sight had become one of the day's fatigues, when her young
accomplishments seemed almost ludicrous, like the tone of her first
harpsichord and the words of the song long browned with age--she was
going to reap an assured joy? to feel that the doubtful deeds of her
life were justified by the result, since a kind Providence had
sanctioned them?--to be no longer tacitly pitied by her neighbors for
her lack of money, her imbecile husband, her graceless eldest-born, and
the loneliness of her life; but to have at her side a rich, clever,
possibly a tender, son? Yes; but there were the fifteen years of
separation, and all that had happened in that long time to throw her
into the background of her son's memory and affection. And yet--did not
men sometimes become more filial in their feeling when experience had
mellowed them, and they had themselves become fathers? Still, if Mrs.
Transome had expected only her son, she would have trembled less; she
expected a little grandson also: and there were reasons why she had not
been enraptured when her son had written to her only when he was on the
eve of returning that he already had an heir born to him.
But the facts must be accepted as they stood, and, after all, the chief
thing was to have her son back again. Such pride, such affection, such
hopes as she cherished in this fifty-sixth year of her life, must find
their gratification in him--or nowhere. Once more she glanced at the
portrait. The young brown eyes seemed to dwell on her pleasantly; but,
turning from it with a sort of impatience, and saying aloud, "Of course
he will be altered!" she rose almost with difficulty, and walked more
slowly than before across the hall to the entrance-door.
Already the sound of wheels was loud upon the gravel. The momentary
surprise of seeing that it was only a post-chaise, without a servant or
much luggage, that was passing under the stone archway and then wheeling
round against the flight of stone steps, was at once merged in the sense
that there was a dark face under a red travelling-cap looking at her
from the window. She saw nothing else; she was not even conscious that
the small group of her own servants had mustered, or that old Hickes the
butler had come forward to open the chaise door. She heard herself
called "Mother!" and felt a light kiss on each cheek; but stronger than
all that sensation was the consciousness which no previous thought could
prepare her for, that this son who had come back to her was a stranger.
Three minutes before, she had fancied that, in spite of all changes
wrought by fifteen years of separation, she should clasp her son again
as she had done at their parting; but in the moment when their eyes met,
the sense of strangeness came upon her like a terror. It was not hard to
understand that she was agitated, and the son led her across the hall to
the sitting-room, closing the door behind them. Then he turned toward
her and said, smiling--
"You would not have known me, eh, mother?"
It was perhaps the truth. If she had seen him in a crowd, she might have
looked at him without recognition--not, however, without startled
wonder; for though the likeness to herself was no longer striking, the
years had overlaid it with another likeness which would have arrested
her. Before she answered him, his eyes, with a keen restlessness, as
unlike as possible to the lingering gaze of the portrait, had travelled
quickly over the room, alighting on her as she said--
"Everything is changed, Harold. I am an old woman, you see."
"But straighter and more upright than some of the young ones!" said
Harold; inwardly, however, feeling that age had made his mother's face
very anxious and eager. "The old women at Smyrna are like sacks. You've
not got clumsy and shapeless. How is it I have the trick of getting
fat?" (Here Harold lifted his arm and spread out his plump hand.) "I
remember my father was as thin as a herring. How is my father? Where is
he?"
Mrs. Transome just pointed to the curtained doorway, and let her son
pass through it alone. She was not given to tears: but now, under the
pressure of emotion that could find no other vent, they burst forth. She
took care that they should be silent tears, and before Harold came out
of the library again they were dried. Mrs. Transome had not the feminine
tendency to seek influence through pathos; she had been used to rule in
virtue of acknowledged superiority. The consciousness that she had to
make her son's acquaintance, and that her knowledge of the youth of
nineteen might help her little in interpreting the man of thirty-four,
had fallen like lead on her soul; but in this new acquaintance of theirs
she cared especially that her son, who had seen a strange world, should
feel that he was come home to a mother who was to be consulted on all
things, and who could supply his lack of the local experience necessary
to an English landholder. Her part in life had been that of the clever
sinner, and she was equipped with the views, the reasons, and the habits
which belonged to that character; life would have little meaning for her
if she were to be gently thrust aside as a harmless elderly woman. And
besides, there were secrets which her son must never know. So, by the
time Harold came from the library again, the traces of tears were not
discernible, except to a very careful observer. And he did not observe
his mother carefully; his eyes only glanced at her on their way to the
_North Loamshire Herald_, lying on the table near her, which he took up
with his left hand, as he said--
"Gad! what a wreck poor father is! Paralysis, eh? Terribly shrunk and
shaken--crawls about among his books and beetles as usual, though. Well,
it's a slow and easy death. But he's not much over sixty-five, is he?"
"Sixty-seven, counting by birthdays; but your father was born old, I
think," said Mrs. Transome, a little flushed with the determination not
to show any unasked for feeling. Her son did not notice her. All the
time he had been speaking his eyes had been running down the columns of
the newspaper.
"But your little boy, Harold--where is he? How is it he has not come
with you?"
"Oh, I left him behind, in town," said Harold, still looking at the
paper. "My man Dominic will bring him, with the rest of the luggage. Ah,
I see it is young Debarry, and not my old friend Sir Maximus, who is
offering himself as candidate for North Loamshire."
"Yes. You did not answer me when I wrote to you to London about your
standing. There is no other Tory candidate spoken of, and you would
have all the Debarry interest."
"I hardly think that," said Harold, significantly.
"Why? Jermyn says a Tory candidate can never be got in without it."
"But I shall not be a Tory candidate."
Mrs. Transome felt something like an electric shock.
"What then?" she said, almost sharply. "You will not call yourself a
Whig?"
"God forbid! I'm a Radical."
Mrs. Transome's limbs tottered; she sank into a chair. Here was a
distinct confirmation of the vague but strong feeling that her son was a
stranger to her. Here was a revelation to which it seemed almost as
impossible to adjust her hopes and notions of a dignified life as if her
son had said that he had been converted to Mahometanism at Smyrna, and
had four wives, instead of one son, shortly to arrive under the care of
Dominic. For the moment she had a sickening feeling that it was of no
use that the long-delayed good fortune had come at last--all of no use
though the unloved Durfey was dead and buried, and though Harold had
come home with plenty of money. There were rich Radicals, she was aware,
as there were rich Jews and Dissenters, but she had never thought of
them as county people. Sir Francis Burdett had been generally regarded
as a madman. It was better to ask no questions, but silently to prepare
herself for anything else there might be to come.
"Will you go to your rooms, Harold, and see if there is anything you
would like to have altered?"
"Yes, let us go," said Harold, throwing down the newspaper, in which he
had been rapidly reading almost every advertisement while his mother had
been going through her sharp inward struggle. "Uncle Lingon is on the
bench still, I see," he went on, as he followed her across the hall; "is
he at home--will he be here this evening?"
"He says you must go to the rectory when you want to see him. You must
remember you have come back to a family with old-fashioned notions. Your
uncle thought I ought to have you to myself in the first hour or two. He
remembered that I had not seen my son for fifteen years."
"Ah, by Jove! fifteen years--so it is!" said Harold, taking his mother's
hand and drawing it under his arm; for he had perceived that her words
were charged with an intention. "And you are as straight as an arrow
still; you will carry the shawls I have brought you as well as ever."
They walked up the broad stone steps together in silence. Under the
shock of discovering her son's Radicalism, Mrs. Transome had no impulse
to say one thing rather than another; as in a man who had just been
branded on the forehead all wonted motives would be uprooted. Harold, on
his side, had no wish opposed to filial kindness, but his busy thoughts
were determined by habits which had no reference to any woman's
feelings; and even if he could have conceived what his mother's feeling
was, his mind, after that momentary arrest, would have darted forward on
its usual course.
"I have given you the south rooms, Harold," said Mrs. Transome, as they
passed along a corridor lit from above and lined with old family
pictures. "I thought they would suit you best, as they all open into
each other, and this middle one will make a pleasant sitting-room for
you."
"Gad! the furniture is in a bad state," said Harold, glancing around at
the middle room which they had just entered; "the moths seem to have got
into the carpets and hangings."
"I had no choice except moths or tenants who would pay rent," said Mrs.
Transome. "We have been too poor to keep servants for uninhabited
rooms."
"What! you've been rather pinched, eh?"
"You find us living as we have been living these twelve years."
"Ah, you've had Durfey's debts as well as the lawsuits--confound them!
It will make a hole in sixty thousand pounds to pay off the mortgages.
However, he's gone now, poor fellow; and I suppose I should have spent
more in buying an English estate some time or other. I always meant to
be an Englishman, and thrash a lord or two who thrashed me at Eton."
"I hardly thought you could have meant that, Harold, when I found you
had married a foreign wife."
"Would you have had me wait for a consumptive lackadaisical
Englishwoman, who would have hung all her relations around my neck? I
hate English wives; they want to give their opinion about everything.
They interfere with a man's life. I shall not marry again."
Mrs. Transome bit her lip, and turned away to draw up a blind. She would
not reply to words which showed how completely any conception of herself
and her feelings was excluded from her son's inward world.
As she turned round again she said, "I suppose you have been used to
great luxury; these rooms look miserable to you, but you can soon make
any alterations you like."
"Oh, I must have a private sitting-room fitted up for myself
down-stairs. And the rest are bedrooms, I suppose," he went on, opening
a side-door. "Ah, I can sleep here a night or two. But there's a bedroom
down-stairs, with an ante-room, I remember, that would do for my man
Dominic and the little boy. I should like to have that."
"Your father has slept there for years. He will be like a distracted
insect, and never know where to go, if you alter the track he has to
walk in."
"That's a pity. I hate going up-stairs."
"There is the steward's room: it is not used, and might be turned into a
bedroom. I can't offer you my room, for I sleep up-stairs." (Mrs.
Transome's tongue could be a whip upon occasion, but the lash had not
fallen on a sensitive spot.)
"No; I'm determined not to sleep up-stairs. We'll see about the
steward's room to-morrow, and I dare say I shall find a closet of some
sort for Dominic. It's a nuisance he had to stay behind, for I shall
have nobody to cook for me. Ah, there's the old river I used to fish in.
I often thought, when I was at Smyrna, that I would buy a park with a
river through it as much like the Lapp as possible. Gad, what fine oaks
those are opposite! Some of them must come down, though."
"I've held every tree sacred on the demesne, as I told you, Harold. I
trusted to your getting the estate some time, and releasing it; and I
determined to keep it worth releasing. A park without fine timber is no
better than a beauty without teeth and hair."
"Bravo, mother!" said Harold, putting his hand on her shoulder. "Ah,
you've had to worry yourself about things that don't properly belong to
a woman--my father being weakly. We'll set all that right. You shall
have nothing to do now but to be grandmamma on satin cushions."
"You must excuse me from the satin cushions. That is a part of the old
woman's duty I am not prepared for. I am used to be chief bailiff, and
to sit in the saddle two or three hours every day. There are two farms
on our hands besides the Home Farm."
"Phew-ew! Jermyn manages the estate badly, then. That will not last
under _my_ reign," said Harold, turning on his heel and feeling in his
pockets for the keys of his portmanteaus, which had been brought up.
"Perhaps when you've been in England a little longer," said Mrs.
Transome, coloring as if she had been a girl, "you will understand
better the difficulty there is in letting farms these times."
"I understand the difficulty perfectly, mother. To let farms, a man must
have the sense to see what will make them inviting to farmers, and to
get sense supplied on demand is just the most difficult transaction I
know of. I suppose if I ring there's some fellow who can act as valet
and learn to attend to my hookah?"
"There is Hickes the butler, and there is Jabez the footman; those are
all the men in the house. They were here when you left."
"Oh, I remember Jabez--he was a dolt. I'll have old Hickes. He was a
neat little machine of a butler; his words used to come like the clicks
of an engine. He must be an old machine now, though."
"You seem to remember some things about home wonderfully well, Harold."
"Never forget places and people--how they look and what can be done with
them. All the country round here lies like a map in my brain. A deuced
pretty country too; but the people were a stupid set of old Whigs and
Tories. I suppose they are much as they were."
"I am, at least, Harold. You are the first of your family that ever
talked of being a Radical. I did not think I was taking care of our old
oaks for that. I always thought Radicals' houses stood staring above
poor sticks of young trees and iron hurdles."
"Yes, but the Radical sticks are growing, mother, and half the Tory oaks
are rotting," said Harold, with gay carelessness. "You've arranged for
Jermyn to be early to-morrow?"
"He will be here to breakfast at nine. But I leave you to Hickes now; we
dine in an hour."
Mrs. Transome went away and shut herself in her own dressing-room. It
had come to pass now--this meeting with the son who had been the object
of so much longing; whom she had longed for before he was born, for whom
she had sinned, from whom she had wrenched herself with pain at their
parting, and whose coming again had been the one great hope of her
years. The moment was gone by; there had been no ecstasy, no gladness
even; hardly half an hour had passed, and few words had been spoken,
yet with that quickness in weaving new futures which belongs to women
whose actions have kept them in habitual fear of consequences, Mrs.
Transome thought she saw with all the clearness of demonstration that
her son's return had not been a good for her in the sense of making her
any happier.
She stood before a tall mirror, going close to it and looking at her
face with hard scrutiny, as if it were unrelated to herself. No elderly
face can be handsome, looked at in that way; every little detail is
startlingly prominent, and the effect of the whole is lost. She saw the
dried-up complexion, and the deep lines of bitter discontent about the
mouth.
"I am a hag!" she said to herself (she was accustomed to give her
thoughts a very sharp outline), "an ugly old woman who happens to be his
mother. That is what he sees in me, as I see a stranger in him. I shall
count for nothing. I was foolish to expect anything else."
She turned away from the mirror and walked up and down her room.
"What a likeness!" she said, in a loud whisper; "yet, perhaps, no one
will see it besides me."
She threw herself into a chair, and sat with a fixed look, seeing
nothing that was actually present, but inwardly seeing with painful
vividness what had been present with her a little more than thirty years
ago--the little round-limbed creature that had been leaning against her
knees, and stamping tiny feet, and looking up at her with gurgling
laughter. She had thought that the possession of this child would give
unity to her life, and make some gladness through the changing years
that would grow as fruit out of these early maternal caresses. But
nothing had come just as she had wished. The mother's early raptures had
lasted but a short time, and even while they lasted there had grown up
in the midst of them a hungry desire, like a black poisonous plant
feeding in the sunlight,--the desire that her first, rickety, ugly,
imbecile child should die, and leave room for her darling, of whom she
could be proud. Such desires make life a hideous lottery, where every day
may turn up a blank; where men and women who have the softest beds and
the most delicate eating, who have a very large share of that sky and
earth which some are born to have no more of than the fraction to be got
in a crowded entry, yet grow haggard, fevered, and restless, like those
who watch in other lotteries. Day after day, year after year, had
yielded blanks; new cares had come, bringing other desires for results
quite beyond her grasp, which must also be watched for in the lottery;
and all the while the round-limbed pet had been growing into a strong
youth, who liked many things better than his mother's caresses, and who
had a much keener consciousness of his independent existence than of his
relation to her: the lizard's egg, that white rounded passive
prettiness, had become a brown, darting, determined lizard. The mother's
love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities;
it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined
range for self to move in: but in after years it can only continue to be
joy on the same terms as other long-lived love--that is, by much
suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another.
Mrs. Transome had darkly felt the pressure of that unchangeable fact.
Yet she had clung to the belief that somehow the possession of this son
was the best thing she lived for; to believe otherwise would have made
her memory too ghastly a companion. Some time or other, by some means,
the estate she was struggling to save from the grasp of the law would be
Harold's. Somehow the hated Durfey, the imbecile eldest, who seemed to
have become tenacious of a despicable squandering life, would be got rid
of; vice might kill him. Meanwhile the estate was burdened: there was no
good prospect for any heir. Harold must go and make a career for himself
and this was what he was bent on, with a precocious clearness of
perception as to the conditions on which he could hope for any
advantages in life. Like most energetic natures, he had a strong faith
in his luck; he had been gay at their parting, and had promised to make
his fortune; and in spite of past disappointments, Harold's possible
fortune still made some ground for his mother to plant her hopes in. His
luck had not failed him; yet nothing had turned out according to her
expectations. Her life had been like a spoiled shabby pleasure-day, in
which the music and the processions are all missed, and nothing is left
at evening but the weariness of striving after what has been failed of.
Harold had gone with the Embassy to Constantinople, under the patronage
of a high relative, his mother's cousin; he was to be diplomatist, and
work his way upward in public life. But his luck had taken another
shape: he had saved the life of an Armenian banker, who in gratitude had
offered him a prospect which his practical mind had preferred to the
problematic promises of diplomacy and high-born cousinship. Harold had
become a merchant and banker at Smyrna; and let the years pass without
caring to find the possibility of visiting his early home, and had shown
no eagerness to make his life at all familiar to his mother, asking for
letters about England, but writing scantily about himself. Mrs. Transome
had kept up the habit of writing to her son, but gradually the
unfruitful years had dulled her hopes and yearnings; increasing
anxieties about money had worried her, and she was more sure of being
fretted by bad news about her dissolute eldest son than of hearing
anything to cheer her from Harold. She had begun to live merely in small
immediate cares and occupations, and like all eager-minded women who
advance in life without any activity of tenderness or any large
sympathy, she had contracted small rigid habits of thinking and acting,
she had her "ways" which must not be crossed, and had learned to fill up
the great void of life with giving small orders to tenants, insisting on
medicines for infirm cottagers, winning small triumphs in bargains and
personal economies, and parrying ill-natured remarks of Lady Debarry's
by lancet-edged epigrams. So her life had gone on till more than a year
ago, when that desire which had been so hungry when she was a blooming
young mother, was at last fulfilled--at last, when her hair was gray,
and her face looked bitter, restless, and unenjoying, like her life. The
news came from Jersey that Durfey, the imbecile son, was dead. _Now_
Harold was heir to the estate; now the wealth he had gained could
release the land from its burdens; now he would think it worth while to
return home. A change had come over her life, and the sunlight breaking
the clouds at evening was pleasant, though the sun must sink before
long. Hopes, affections, the sweeter part of her memories, started from
their wintry sleep, and it once more seemed a great good to have had a
second son who in some ways had cost her dearly. But again there were
conditions she had not reckoned on. When the good tidings had been sent
to Harold, and he had announced that he would return so soon as he could
wind up his affairs, he had for the first time informed his mother that
he had been married, that his Greek wife was no longer living, but that
he should bring home a little boy, the finest and most desirable of
heirs and grandsons. Harold seated in his distant Smyrna home considered
that he was taking a rational view of what things must have become by
this time at the old place in England, when he figured his mother as a
good elderly lady, who would necessarily be delighted with the
possession on any terms of a healthy grandchild, and would not mind
much about the particulars of a long-concealed marriage.
Mrs. Transome had torn up that letter in a rage. But in the months which
had elapsed before Harold could actually arrive, she had prepared
herself as well as she could to suppress all reproaches or queries which
her son might resent, and to acquiesce in his evident wishes. The return
was still looked for with longing; affection and satisfied pride would
again warm her later years. She was ignorant what sort of man Harold had
become now, and of course he must be changed in many ways; but though
she told herself this, still the image that she knew, the image fondness
clung to, necessarily prevailed over the negatives insisted on by her
reason.
And so it was, that when she had moved to the door to meet him, she had
been sure that she should clasp her son again, and feel that he was the
same who had been her boy, her little one, the loved child of her
passionate youth. An hour seemed to have changed everything for her. A
woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them. The
shadow which had fallen over Mrs. Transome in this first interview with
her son was the presentiment of her powerlessness. If things went wrong,
if Harold got unpleasantly disposed in a certain direction where her
chief dread had always lain, she seemed to foresee that her words would
be of no avail. The keenness of her anxiety in this matter had served as
insight; and Harold's rapidity, decision, and indifference to any
impressions in others, which did not further or impede his own purposes,
had made themselves felt by her as much as she would have felt the
unmanageable strength of a great bird which had alighted near her, and
allowed her to stroke its wing for a moment because food lay near her.
Under the cold weight of these thoughts Mrs. Transome shivered. That
physical reaction roused her from her reverie, and she could now hear
the gentle knocking at the door to which she had been deaf before.
Notwithstanding her activity and the fewness of her servants, she had
never dressed herself without aid; nor would that small, neat,
exquisitely clean old woman who now presented herself have wished that
her labor should be saved at the expense of such a sacrifice on her
lady's part. The small old woman was Mrs. Hickes, the butler's wife, who
acted as housekeeper, lady's-maid, and superintendent of the
kitchen--the large stony scene of inconsiderable cooking. Forty years
ago she had entered Mrs. Transome's service, when that lady was
beautiful Miss Lingon, and her mistress still called her Denner, as she
had done in the old days.
"The bell has rung, then, Denner, without my hearing it?" said Mrs.
Transome, rising.
"Yes, madam," said Denner, reaching from a wardrobe an old black velvet
dress trimmed with much-mended point, in which Mrs. Transome was wont to
look queenly of an evening.
Denner had still strong eyes of that short-sighted kind which sees
through the narrowest chink between the eyelashes. The physical contrast
between the tall, eagle-faced, dark-eyed lady, and the little peering
waiting woman, who had been round-featured and of pale mealy complexion
from her youth up, had doubtless had a strong influence in determining
Denner's feeling toward her mistress, which was of that worshipful sort
paid to a goddess in ages when it was not thought necessary or likely
that a goddess should be very moral. There were different orders of
beings--so ran Denner's creed--and she belonged to another order than
that to which her mistress belonged. She had a mind as sharp as a
needle, and would have seen through and through the ridiculous
pretensions of a born servant who did not submissively accept the rigid
fate which had given her born superiors. She would have called such
pretensions the wrigglings of a worm that tried to walk on its tail.
There was a tacit understanding that Denner knew all her mistress's
secrets, and her speech was plain and unflattering; yet with wonderful
subtlety of instinct she never said anything which Mrs. Transome could
feel humiliated by, as by familiarity from a servant who knew too much.
Denner identified her own dignity with that of her mistress. She was a
hard-headed godless little woman, but with a character to be reckoned on
as you reckon on the qualities of iron.
Peering into Mrs. Transome's face she saw clearly that the meeting with
the son had been a disappointment in some way. She spoke with a refined
accent, in a low quick, monotonous tone--
"Mr. Harold is dressed; he shook me by the hand in the corridor, and was
very pleasant."
"What an alteration, Denner! No likeness to me now."
"Handsome, though, spite of his being so browned and stout. There's a
fine presence about Mr. Harold. I remember you used to say, madam, there
were some people you would always know were in the room though they
stood round a corner, and others you might never see till you ran
against them. That's as true as truth. And as for likenesses,
thirty-five and sixty are not much alike, only to people's memories."
Mrs. Transome knew perfectly that Denner had divined her thoughts.
"I don't know how things will go on now, but it seems something too good
to happen that they will go on well. I am afraid of ever expecting
anything good again."
"That's weakness, madam. Things don't happen because they're bad or
good, else all eggs would be addled or none at all, and at the most it
is but six to the dozen. There's good chances and bad chances, and
nobody's luck is pulled only by one string."
"What a woman you are, Denner! You talk like a French infidel. It seems
to me you are afraid of nothing. I have been full of fears all my
life--always seeing something or other hanging over me that I couldn't
bear to happen."
"Well, madam, put a good face on it, and don't seem to be on the look-out
for crows, else you'll set other people watching. Here you have a rich
son come home, and the debts will all be paid, and you have your health
and can ride about, and you've such a face and figure, and will have if
you live to be eighty, that everybody is cap in hand to you before they
know you who are; let me fasten up your veil a little higher: there's a
good deal of pleasure in life for you yet."
"Nonsense! there's no pleasure for old women, unless they get it out of
tormenting other people. What are your pleasures, Denner--besides being
a slave to me?"
"Oh, there's pleasure in knowing one's not a fool, like half the people
one sees about. And managing one's husband is some pleasure; and doing
all one's business well. Why, if I've only got some orange flowers to
candy, I shouldn't like to die till I see them all right. Then there's
the sunshine now and then; I like that as the cats do. I look upon it,
life is like our game at whist, when Banks and his wife come to the
still-room of an evening. I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to
play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it; and I want to
see you make the best of your hand, madam, for your luck has been mine
these forty years now. But I must go and see how Kitty dishes up the
dinner, unless you have any more commands."
"No, Denner; I am going down immediately."
As Mrs. Transome descended the stone staircase in her old black velvet
and point, her appearance justified Denner's personal compliment. She
had that high-born, imperious air which would have marked her as an
object of hatred and reviling by a revolutionary mob. Her person was too
typical of social distinctions to be passed by with indifference by any
one: it would have fitted an empress in her own right, who had had to
rule in spite of faction, to dare the violation of treaties and dread
retributive invasions, to grasp after new territories, to be defiant in
desperate circumstances, and to feel a woman's hunger of the heart
forever unsatisfied. Yet Mrs. Transome's cares and occupations had not
been at all of an imperial sort. For thirty years she had led the
monotonous, narrowing life which used to be the lot of our poorer
gentry; who never went to town, and were probably not on speaking terms
with two out of the five families whose parks lay within the distance of
a drive. When she was young she had been thought wonderfully clever and
accomplished, and had been rather ambitious of intellectual
superiority--had secretly picked out for private reading the higher
parts of dangerous French authors--and in company had been able to talk
of Mr. Burke's style, or of Chateaubriand's eloquence--had laughed at
the Lyrical Ballads, and admired Mr. Southey's Thalaba. She always
thought that the dangerous French writers were wicked and that her
reading of them was a sin; but many sinful things were highly agreeable
to her, and many things which she did not doubt to be good and true were
dull and meaningless. She found ridicule of Biblical characters very
amusing, and she was interested in stories of illicit passion; but she
believed all the while that truth and safety lay in due attendance on
prayers and sermons, in the admirable doctrines and ritual of the Church
of England, equally remote from Puritanism and Popery; in fact, in such
a view of this world and the next as would preserve the existing
arrangements of English society quite unshaken, keeping down the
obtrusiveness of the vulgar and the discontent of the poor. The history
of the Jews, she knew, ought to be preferred to any profane history; the
Pagans, of course, were vicious, and their religions quite nonsensical,
considered as religions--but classical learning came from the Pagans;
the Greeks were famous for sculpture; the Italians for painting; the
middle ages were dark and Papistical; but now Christianity went hand in
hand with civilization, and the providential government of the world,
though a little confused and entangled in foreign countries, in our
favored land was clearly seen to be carried forward on Tory and Church
of England principles, sustained by the succession of the House of
Brunswick, and by sound English divines. For Miss Lingon had had a
superior governess, who held that a woman should be able to write a good
letter, and to express herself with propriety on general subjects. And
it is astonishing how effective this education appeared in a handsome
girl, who sat supremely well on horseback, sang and played a little,
painted small figures in water-colors, had a naughty sparkle in her eyes
when she made a daring quotation, and an air of serious dignity when she
recited something from her store of correct opinions. But however such a
stock of ideas may be made to tell in elegant society, and during a few
seasons in town, no amount of bloom and beauty can make them a perennial
source of interest in things not personal; and the notion that what is
true and, in general, good for mankind, is stupid and drug-like, is not
a safe theoretic basis in circumstances of temptation and difficulty.
Mrs. Transome had been in her bloom before this century began, and in
the long painful years since then, what she had once regarded as her
knowledge and accomplishments had become as valueless as old-fashioned
stucco ornaments, of which the substance was never worth anything, while
the form is no longer to the taste of any living mortal. Crosses,
mortifications, money-cares, conscious blame-worthiness, had changed the
aspect of the world for her; there was anxiety in the morning sunlight;
there was unkind triumph or disapproving pity in the glances of greeting
neighbors; there was advancing age, and a contracting prospect in the
changing seasons as they came and went. And what could then sweeten the
days to a hungry, much-exacting self like Mrs. Transome's? Under
protracted ill every living creature will find something that makes a
comparative ease, and even when life seems woven of pain, will convert
the fainter pang into a desire. Mrs. Transome, whose imperious will had
availed little to ward off the great evils of her life, found the opiate
for her discontent in the exertion of her will about smaller things. She
was not cruel, and could not enjoy thoroughly what she called the old
woman's pleasure of tormenting; but she liked every little sign of power
her lot had left her. She liked that a tenant should stand bareheaded
below her as she sat on horseback. She liked to insist that work done
without her orders should be undone from beginning to end. She liked to
be courtesied and bowed to by all the congregation as she walked up the
little barn of a church. She liked to change a laborer's medicine
fetched from the doctor, and substitute a prescription of her own. If
she had only been more haggard and less majestic, those who had glimpses
of her outward life might have said she was a tyrannical, griping
harridan, with a tongue like a razor. No one said exactly that; but they
never said anything like the full truth about her, or divined what was
hidden under that outward life--a woman's keen sensibility and dread,
which lay screened behind all her petty habits and narrow notions, as
some quivering thing with eyes and throbbing heart may lie crouching
behind withered rubbish. The sensibility and dread had palpitated all
the faster in the prospect of her son's return; and now that she had
seen him, she said to herself, in her bitter way, "It is a lucky eel
that escapes skinning. The best happiness I shall ever know, will be to
escape the worst misery."