1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth
That makes a vice of virtue by excess.
2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins
Be loss of virtue?
1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time--
The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find
A general level, nowhere in excess.
2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought,
That future middlingness.
In the evening, when Mr. Lyon was expecting the knock at the door that
would announce Felix Holt, he occupied his cushionless arm-chair in the
sitting-room, and was skimming rapidly, in his short-sighted way, by the
light of one candle, the pages of a missionary report, emitting
occasionally a slight "Hm-m" that appeared to be expressive of criticism
rather than of approbation. The room was dismally furnished, the only
objects indicating an intention of ornament being a bookcase, a map of
the Holy Land, an engraved portrait of Dr. Doddridge, and a black bust
with a colored face, which for some reason or other was covered with
green gauze. Yet any one whose attention was quite awake must have been
aware, even on entering, of certain things that were incongruous with
the general air of sombreness and privation. There was a delicate scent
of dried rose-leaves; the light by which the minister was reading was a
wax-candle in a white earthenware candle-stick, and the table on the
opposite side of the fireplace held a dainty work-basket frilled with
blue satin.
Felix Holt, when he entered, was not in an observant mood; and when,
after seating himself, at the minister's invitation, near the little
table which held the work-basket, he stared at the wax-candle opposite
to him, he did so without any wonder or consciousness that the candle
was not of tallow. But the minister's sensitiveness gave another
interpretation to the gaze which he divined rather than saw; and in
alarm lest this inconsistent extravagance should obstruct his
usefulness, he hastened to say--
"You are doubtless amazed to see me with a wax-light, my young friend;
but this undue luxury is paid for with the earnings of my daughter, who
is so delicately framed that the smell of tallow is loathsome to her."
"I heeded not the candle, sir. I thank Heaven I am not a mouse to have a
nose that takes note of wax or tallow."
The loud abrupt tones made the old man vibrate a little. He had been
stroking his chin gently before, with a sense that he must be very
quiet and deliberate in his treatment of the eccentric young man; but
now, quite unreflectingly, he drew forth a pair of spectacles, which he
was in the habit of using when he wanted to observe his interlocutor
more closely than usual.
"And I myself, in fact, am equally indifferent," he said, as he opened
and adjusted his glasses, "so that I have a sufficient light on my
book." Here his large eyes looked discerningly through the spectacles.
"'Tis the quality of the page you care about, not of the candle," said
Felix, smiling pleasantly enough at his inspector. "You're thinking that
you have a roughly-written page before you now."
That was true. The minister, accustomed to the respectable air of
provincial townsmen, and especially to the sleek well-clipped gravity of
his own male congregation, felt a slight shock as his glasses made
perfectly clear to him the shaggy-headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed
person of this questionable young man, without waistcoat or cravat. But
the possibility, supported by some of Mrs. Holt's words, that a
disguised work of grace might be going on in the son of whom she
complained so bitterly, checked any hasty interpretations.
"I abstain from judging by the outward appearance only," he answered,
with his usual simplicity. "I myself have experienced that when the
spirit is much exercised it is difficult to remember neck-bands and
strings and such small accidents of our vesture, which are nevertheless
decent and needful so long as we sojourn in the flesh. And you, too, my
young friend, as I gather from your mother's troubled and confused
report, are undergoing some travail of mind. You will not, I trust,
object to open yourself fully to me, as to an aged pastor who has
himself had much inward wrestling, and has especially known much
temptation from doubt."
"As to doubt," said Felix, loudly and brusquely as before, "if it is
those absurd medicines and gulling advertisements that my mother has
been talking of to you--and I suppose it is--I've no more doubt about
_them_ than I have about pocket-picking. I know there's a stage of
speculation in which a man may doubt whether a pickpocket is
blameworthy--but I'm not one of your subtle fellows who keep looking at
the world through their own legs. If I allowed the sale of those
medicines to go on, and my mother to live out of the proceeds when I can
keep her by the honest labor of my hands, I've not the least doubt that
I should be a rascal."
"I would fain enquire more particularly into your objection to these
medicines," said Mr. Lyon, gravely. Notwithstanding his
conscientiousness and a certain originality in his own mental
disposition, he was too little used to high principle quite dissociated
from sectarian phraseology to be as immediately in sympathy with it as
he would otherwise have been. "I know they have been well reported of,
and many wise persons have tried remedies providentially discovered by
those who are not regular physicians, and have found a blessing in the
use of them. I may mention the eminent Mr. Wesley, who, though I hold
not altogether with his Arminian doctrine, nor with the usages of his
institutions, was nevertheless a man of God; and the journals of various
Christians whose names have left a sweet savor, might be cited in the
same sense. Moreover, your father, who originally concocted these
medicines and left them as a provision for your mother, was, as I
understand, a man whose walk was not unfaithful."
"My father was ignorant," said Felix, bluntly. "He knew neither the
complication of the human system, nor the way in which drugs counteract
each other. Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it
prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm. I know something about
these things. I was 'prentice for five miserable years to a stupid brute
of a country apothecary--my poor father left money for that--he thought
nothing could be finer for me. No matter: I know that the Cathartic
Pills are a drastic compound which may be as bad as poison to half the
people who swallow them; that the Elixir is an absurd farrago of a dozen
incompatible things; and that the Cancer Cure might as well be bottled
ditch-water."
Mr. Lyon rose and walked up and down the room. His simplicity was
strongly mixed with sagacity as well as sectarian prejudice, and he did
not rely at once on a loud-spoken integrity--Satan might have flavored
it with ostentation. Presently he asked, in a rapid, low tone, "How long
have you known this, young man?"
"Well put, sir," said Felix. "I've known it a good deal longer than I
have acted upon it, like plenty of other things. But you believe in
conversion?"
"Yea, verily."
"So do I. I was converted by six weeks' debauchery."
The minister started. "Young man," he said, solemnly, going up close to
Felix and laying a hand on his shoulder, "speak not lightly of the
Divine operations, and restrain unseemly words."
"I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was
making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could
have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have
looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I
laughed out loud at last to think that a poor devil like me, in a Scotch
garret, with my stockings out at heel and a shilling or two to be
dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and old
women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs--wanting to turn my
life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could be
turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place for
a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't be
the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter the
world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it,
and if I don't lie and filch somebody else will. Well then, somebody
else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion, Mr. Lyon,
if you want to know it."
Mr. Lyon removed his hand from Felix's shoulder and walked about again.
"Did you sit under any preacher at Glasgow, young man?"
"No: I heard most of the preachers once, but I never wanted to hear them
twice."
The good Rufus was not without a slight rising of resentment at this
young man's want of reverence. It was not yet plain whether he wanted to
hear twice the preacher in Malthouse Yard. But the resentful feeling was
carefully repressed: a soul in so peculiar a condition must be dealt
with delicately.
"And now, may I ask," he said, "what course you mean to take, after
hindering your mother from making and selling these drugs? I speak no
more in their favor after what you have said. God forbid that I should
strive to hinder you from seeking whatsoever things are honest and
honorable. But your mother is advanced in years; she needs comfortable
sustenance; you have doubtless considered how you may make her amends?
'He that provideth not for his own----' I trust you respect the
authority that so speaks. And I will not suppose that, after being
tender of conscience toward strangers, you will be careless toward your
mother. There be indeed some who, taking a mighty charge on their
shoulder, must perforce leave their households to Providence, and to the
care of humbler brethren, but in such a case the call must be clear."
"I shall keep my mother as well--nay, better--than she has kept herself.
She has always been frugal. With my watch and clock cleaning, and
teaching one or two little chaps that I've got to come to me, I can earn
enough. As for me, I can live on bran porridge. I have the stomach of a
rhinoceros."
"But for a young man so well furnished as you, who can questionless
write a good hand and keep books, were it not well to seek some higher
situation as clerk or assistant? I could speak to Brother Muscat, who is
well acquainted with all such openings. Any place in Pendrell's Bank, I
fear, is now closed against such as are not Churchmen. It used not to be
so, but a year ago he discharged Brother Bodkin, although he was a
valuable servant. Still, something might be found. There are ranks and
degrees--and those who can serve in the higher must not unadvisedly
change what seems to be a providential appointment. Your poor mother is
not altogether----"
"Excuse me, Mr. Lyon; I've had all that out with my mother, and I may as
well save you any trouble by telling you that my mind has been made up
about that a long while ago. I'll take no employment that obliges me to
prop up my chin with a high cravat, and wear straps, and pass the
livelong day with a set of fellows who spend their spare money on shirt
pins. That sort of work is really lower than many handicrafts; it only
happens to be paid out of proportion. That's why I set myself to learn
the watchmaking trade. My father was a weaver first of all. It would
have been better for him if he had remained a weaver. I came home
through Lancashire and saw an uncle of mine who is a weaver still. I
mean to stick to the class I belong to--people who don't follow the
fashions."
Mr. Lyon was silent a few moments. This dialogue was far from plain
sailing; he was not certain of his latitude and longitude. If the
despiser of Glasgow preachers had been arguing in favor of gin and
Sabbath-breaking, Mr. Lyon's course would have been clearer. "Well,
well," he said, deliberately, "it is true that St. Paul exercised the
trade of tent-making, though he was learned in all the wisdom of the
Rabbis."
"St. Paul was a wise man," said Felix. "Why should I want to get into
the middle class because I have some learning? The most of the middle
class are as ignorant as the working people about everything that
doesn't belong to their own Brummagem life. That's how the workingmen
are left to foolish devices and keep worsening themselves: the best
heads among them forsake their boon comrades, and go in for a house with
a high door-step and a brass knocker."
Mr. Lyon stroked his mouth and chin, perhaps because he felt some
disposition to smile; and it would not be well to smile too readily at
what seemed but a weedy resemblance of Christian unworldliness. On the
contrary, there might be a dangerous snare in an unsanctified
outstepping of average Christian practice.
"Nevertheless," he observed, gravely, "it is by such self-advancement
that many have been enabled to do good service to the cause of liberty
and to the public well-being. The ring and the robe of Joseph were no
objects for a good man's ambition, but they were the signs of that
credit which he won by his divinely-inspired skill, and which enabled
him to act as a saviour to his brethren."
"Oh, yes, your ringed and scented men of the people!--I won't be one of
them. Let a man once throttle himself with a satin stock, and he'll get
new wants and new motives. Metamorphosis will have begun at his
neck-joint, and it will go on till it has changed his likings first and
then his reasoning, which will follow his likings as the feet of a
hungry dog follow his nose. I'll have none of your clerkly gentility. I
might end by collecting greasy pence from poor men to buy myself a fine
coat and a glutton's dinner, on pretence of serving the poor men. I'd
sooner be Paley's fat pigeon than a demagogue all tongue and stomach,
though"--here Felix changed his voice a little--"I should like well
enough to be another sort of demagogue, if I could."
"Then you have a strong interest in the great political movements of
these times?" said Mr. Lyon, with a perceptible flashing of the eyes.
"I should think so. I despise every man who has not--or, having it,
doesn't try to rouse it in other men."
"Right, my young friend, right," said the minister, in a deep cordial
tone. Inevitably his mind was drawn aside from the immediate
consideration of Felix Holt's spiritual interest by the prospect of
political sympathy. In those days so many instruments of God's cause in
the fight for religious and political liberty held creeds that were
painfully wrong, and, indeed, irreconcilable with salvation! "That is
my own view, which I maintain in the face of some opposition from
brethren who contend that a share in public movements is a hindrance to
the closer walk, and that the pulpit is no place for teaching men their
duties as members of the commonwealth. I have had much puerile blame
cast upon me because I have uttered such names as Brougham and
Wellington in the pulpit. Why not Wellington as well as Rabshakeh? and
why not Brougham as well as Balaam? Does God know less of men than He
did in the days of Hezekiah and Moses?--is His arm shortened, and is the
world become too wide for His providence? But, they say, there are no
politics in the New Testament----"
"Well, they're right enough there," said Felix, with his usual
unceremoniousness.
"What! you are of those who hold that a Christian minister should not
meddle with public matters in the pulpit?" said Mr. Lyon, coloring. "I
am ready to join issue on that point."
"Not I, sir," said Felix; "I should say, teach any truth you can,
whether it's in the Testament or out of it. It's little enough anybody
can get hold of, and still less what he can drive into the skulls of a
pence-counting, parcel-tying generation, such as mostly fill your
chapels."
"Young man," said Mr. Lyon, pausing in front of Felix. He spoke rapidly,
as he always did, except when his words were specially weighted with
emotion: he overflowed with matter, and in his mind matter was always
completely organized into words. "I speak not on my own behalf, for not
only have I no desire that any man should think of me above that which
he seeth me to be, but I am aware of much that should make me patient
under a disesteem resting even on too hasty a construction. I speak not
as claiming reverence for my own age and office--not to shame you, but
to warn you. It is good that you should use plainness of speech, and I
am not of those who would enforce a submissive silence on the young,
that they themselves, being elders, may be heard at large; but Elihu was
the youngest of Job's friends, yet was there a wise rebuke in his words;
and the aged Eli was taught by a revelation to the boy Samuel. I have to
keep a special watch over myself in this matter, inasmuch as I have need
of utterance which makes the thought within me seem as a pent-up fire,
until I have shot it forth, as it were, in arrowy words, each one
hitting its mark. Therefore I pray for a listening spirit, which is a
great mark of grace. Nevertheless, my young friend, I am bound, as I
said, to warn you. The temptations that most beset those who have great
natural gifts, and are wise after the flesh, are pride and scorn, more
particularly toward those weak things of the world which have been
chosen to confound the things which are mighty. The scornful nostril and
the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth. The
mind that is too ready at contempt and reprobation is----"
Here the door opened, and Mr. Lyon paused to look around, but seeing
only Lyddy with the tea-tray, he went on--
"Is, I may say, as a clenched fist that can give blows, but is shut up
from receiving and holding aught that is precious--though it were
heaven-sent manna."
"I understand you, sir," said Felix, good-humoredly, putting out his
hand to the little man, who had come close to him as he delivered the
last sentence with sudden emphasis and slowness. "But I'm not inclined
to clench my fist at you."
"Well, well," said Mr. Lyon, shaking the proffered hand, "we shall see
more of each other, and I trust shall have much profitable communing.
You will stay and have a dish of tea with us: we take the meal late on
Thursdays, because my daughter is detained by giving a lesson in the
French tongue. But she is doubtless returned now, and will presently
come and pour out tea for us."
"Thank you, I'll stay," said Felix, not from any curiosity to see the
minister's daughter, but from a liking for the society of the minister
himself--for his quaint looks and ways, and the transparency of his
talk, which gave a charm even to his weakness. The daughter was probably
some prim Miss, neat, sensible, pious, but all in a small feminine way,
in which Felix was no more interested than in Dorcas meetings,
biographies of devout women, and that amount of ornamental knitting
which was not inconsistent with Non-conforming seriousness.
"I'm perhaps a little too fond of banging and smashing," he went on: "a
phrenologist at Glasgow told me I had large veneration; another man
there, who knew me, laughed out and said I was the most blasphemous
iconoclast living. 'That,' says my phrenologist, 'is because of his
large ideality, which prevents him from finding anything perfect enough
to be venerated.' Of course I put my ears down and wagged my tail at
that stroking."
"Yes, yes; I have had my own head explored with somewhat similar
results. It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen
precept, 'Know thyself,' and too often leads to a self-estimate which
will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of
the tree is made evident. Nevertheless----Esther, my dear, this is Mr.
Holt, whose acquaintance I have now been making with more than ordinary
interest. He will take tea with us."
Esther bowed slightly as she walked across the room to fetch the candle
and place it near her tray. Felix rose and bowed, also with an air of
indifference, which was perhaps exaggerated by the fact that he was
inwardly surprised. The minister's daughter was not the sort of person
he expected. She was quite incongruous with his notion of ministers'
daughters in general; and though he had expected something nowise
delightful, the incongruity repelled him. A very delicate scent, the
faint suggestion of a garden, was wafted as she went. He would not
observe her, but he had a sense of an elastic walk, the tread of small
feet, a long neck and a high crown of shining brown plaits and curls
that floated backward--things, in short, that suggested a fine lady to
him, and determined him to notice her as little as possible. A fine lady
was always a sort of spun-glass affair--not natural, and with no beauty
for him as art; but a fine lady as the daughter of this rusty old
Puritan was especially offensive.
"Nevertheless," continued Mr. Lyon, who rarely let drop any thread of
discourse, "that phrenological science is not irreconcilable with the
revealed dispensations. And it is undeniable that we have our varying
native dispositions which even grace will not obliterate. I myself, from
my youth up, have been given to question too curiously concerning the
truth--to examine and sift the medicine of the soul rather than to apply
it."
"If your truth happens to be such medicine as Holt's Pills and Elixir,
the less you swallow of it the better," said Felix. "But truth-vendors
and medicine-vendors usually recommend swallowing. When a man sees his
livelihood in a pill or a proposition, he likes to have orders for the
dose, and not curious enquiries."
This speech verged on rudeness, but it was delivered with a brusque
openness that implied the absence of any personal intention. The
minister's daughter was now for the first time startled into looking at
Felix. But her survey of this unusual speaker was soon made, and she
relieved her father from the need to reply by saying--
"The tea is poured out, father."
That was the signal for Mr. Lyon to advance toward the table, raise his
right hand, and ask a blessing at sufficient length for Esther to glance
at the visitor again. There seemed to be no danger of his looking at
her: he was observing her father. She had time to remark that he was a
peculiar looking person, but not insignificant, which was the quality
that most hopelessly consigned a man to perdition. He was massively
built. The striking points in his face were large clear gray eyes and
full lips.
"Will you draw up to the table, Mr. Holt?" said the minister.
In the act of rising, Felix pushed back his chair too suddenly against
the rickety table close by him, and down went the blue-frilled
work-basket, flying open, and dispersing on the floor reels, thimble,
muslin-work, a small sealed bottle of attar of rose, and something
heavier than these--a duodecimo volume which fell near him between the
table and the fender.
"Oh, my stars!" said Felix, "I beg your pardon." Esther had already
started up, and with wonderful quickness had picked up half the small
rolling things while Felix was lifting the basket and the book. This
last had opened, and had its leaves crushed in falling; and, with the
instinct of a bookish man, he saw nothing more pressing to be done than
to flatten the corners of the leaves.
"Byron's Poems!" he said, in a tone of disgust, while Esther was
recovering all the other articles. "'The Dream'--he'd better have been
asleep and snoring. What! do you stuff your memory with Byron, Miss
Lyon?"
Felix on his side, was led at last to look straight at Esther, but it
was with a strong denunciatory and pedagogic intention. Of course he saw
more clearly than ever that she was a fine lady.
She reddened, drew up her long neck, and said, as she retreated to her
chair again--
"I have a great admiration for Byron."
Mr. Lyon had paused in the act of drawing his chair to the tea table,
and was looking on at this scene, wrinkling the corners of his eyes with
a perplexed smile. Esther would not have wished him to know anything
about the volume of Byron, but she was too proud to show any concern.
"He is a worldly and vain writer, I fear," said Mr. Lyon. He knew
scarcely anything of the poet, whose books embodied the faith and ritual
of many young ladies and gentlemen.
"A misanthropic debauchee," said Felix, lifting a chair with one hand,
and holding the book open in the other, "whose notion of a hero was
that he should disorder his stomach and despise mankind. His corsairs
and renegades, his Alps and Manfreds, are the most paltry puppets that
were ever pulled by the strings of lust and pride."
"Hand the book to me," said Mr. Lyon.
"Let me beg of you to put it aside till after tea, father," said Esther.
"However objectionable Mr. Holt may find its pages, they would certainly
be made worse by being greased with bread-and-butter."
"That is true, my dear," said Mr. Lyon, laying down the book on the
small table behind him. He saw that his daughter was angry.
"Ho, ho!" thought Felix, "her father is frightened at her. How came he
to have such a nice-stepping, long-necked peacock for his daughter? but
she shall see that I am not frightened." Then he said aloud, "I should
like to know how you will justify your admiration for such a writer,
Miss Lyon."
"I should not attempt it with you, Mr. Holt," said Esther. "You have
such strong words at command that they make the smallest argument seem
formidable. If I had ever met the giant Cormoran, I should have made a
point of agreeing with him in his literary opinions."
Esther had that excellent thing in woman, a soft voice with clear fluent
utterance. Her sauciness was always charming because it was without
emphasis, and was accompanied with graceful little turns of the head.
Felix laughed at her thrust with young heartiness.
"My daughter is a critic of words, Mr. Holt," said the minister, smiling
complacently, "and often corrects mine on the ground of niceties, which
I profess are as dark to me as if they were the reports of a sixth sense
which I possess not. I am an eager seeker for precision, and would fain
find language subtle enough to follow the utmost intricacies of the
soul's pathways, but I see not why a round word that means some object,
made and blessed by the Creator, should be branded and banished as a
malefactor."
"Oh, your niceties--I know what they are," said Felix, in his usual
_fortissimo_. "They'll go on your system of make-believe. 'Rottenness'
may suggest what is unpleasant, so you'd better say 'sugar-plums,' or
something else such a long way off the fact that nobody is obliged to
think of it. Those are your roundabout euphuisms that dress up swindling
till it looks as well as honesty, and shoot with boiled peas instead of
bullets. I hate your gentlemanly speakers."
"Then you would not like Mr. Jermyn, I think," said Esther. "That
reminds me, father, that to-day, when I was giving Miss Louisa Jermyn
her lesson, Mr. Jermyn came in and spoke to me with grand politeness,
and asked me at what times you were likely to be disengaged, because he
wished to make your better acquaintance, and consult you on matters of
importance. He never took the least notice of me before. Can you guess
the reason of his sudden ceremoniousness?"
"Nay, child," said the minister, ponderingly.
"Politics, of course," said Felix. "He's on some committee. An election
is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere
interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. Eh, Mr. Lyon? Isn't
that it?"
"Nay, not so. He is the close ally of the Transome family, who are blind
hereditary Tories like the Debarrys, and will drive their tenants to the
poll as if they were sheep, and it has even been hinted that the heir
who is coming from the East may be another Tory candidate, and coalesce
with the younger Debarry. It is said that he has enormous wealth, and
could purchase every vote in the county that has a price."
"He is come," said Esther. "I heard Miss Jermyn tell her sister that she
had seen him going out of her father's room."
"'Tis strange," said Mr. Lyon.
"Something extraordinary must have happened," said Esther, "for Mr.
Jermyn to intend courting us. Miss Jermyn said to me only the other day
that she could not think how I came to be so well educated and ladylike.
She always thought Dissenters were ignorant, vulgar people. I said, so
they were, usually, and Church people also in small towns. She considers
herself a judge of what is ladylike, and she is vulgarity
personified--with large feet, and the most odious scent on her
handkerchief, and a bonnet that looks like 'The Fashion' printed in
capital letters."
"One sort of fine-ladyism is as good as another," said Felix.
"No, indeed. Pardon me," said Esther. "A real fine-lady does not wear
clothes that flare in people's eyes, or use importunate scents, or make
a noise as she moves: she is something refined and graceful, and
charming, and never obtrusive."
"Oh, yes," said Felix, contemptuously. "And she reads Byron also, and
admires Childe Harold--gentlemen of unspeakable woes, who employ a
hairdresser, and look seriously at themselves in the glass."
Esther reddened, and gave a little toss. Felix went on triumphantly. "A
fine-lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs, and small
notions, about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of
tweezers to the clearing of a forest. Ask your father what those old
persecuted emigrant Puritans would have done with fine-lady wives and
daughters."
"Oh, there is no danger of such _mésalliances_," said Esther. "Men who
are unpleasant companions and make frights of themselves, are sure to
get wives tasteless enough to suit them."
"Esther, my dear," said Mr. Lyon, "let not your playfulness betray you
into disrespect toward those venerable pilgrims. They struggled and
endured in order to cherish and plant anew the seeds of a scriptural
doctrine and of a pure discipline."
"Yes, I know," said Esther, hastily, dreading a discourse on the pilgrim
fathers.
"Oh, they were an ugly lot!" Felix burst in, making Mr. Lyon start.
"Miss Medora wouldn't have minded if they had all been put into the
pillory and lost their ears. She would have said, 'Their ears did stick
out so.' I shouldn't wonder if that's a bust of one of them." Here
Felix, with sudden keenness of observation, nodded at the black bust
with the gauze over its colored face.
"No," said Mr. Lyon, "that is the eminent George Whitfield, who, you
well know, had a gift of oratory as of one on whom the tongue of flame
had rested visibly. But Providence--doubtless for wise ends in relation
to the inner man, for I would not enquire too closely into minutiæ which
carry too many plausible interpretations for any one of them to be
stable--Providence, I say, ordained that the good man should squint; and
my daughter has not yet learned to bear with his infirmity."
"She has put a veil over it. Suppose you had squinted yourself?" said
Felix, looking at Esther.
"Then, doubtless, you could have been more polite to me, Mr. Holt," said
Esther, rising and placing herself at her work-table. "You seem to
prefer what is unusual and ugly."
"A peacock!" thought Felix. "I should like to come and scold her every
day, and make her cry and cut her fine hair off."
Felix rose to go, and said, "I will not take up any more of your
valuable time, Mr. Lyon. I know that you have not many spare evenings."
"That is true, my young friend; for I now go to Sproxton one evening in
the week. I do not despair that we may some day need a chapel there,
though the hearers do not multiply save among the women, and there is no
work as yet begun among the miners themselves. I shall be glad of your
company in my walk thither to-morrow at five o'clock, if you would like
to see how that population has grown of late years."
"Oh, I've been to Sproxton already several times. I had a congregation
of my own there last Sunday evening."
"What! do you preach?" said Mr. Lyon, with brightened glance.
"Not exactly. I went to the ale-house."
Mr. Lyon started. "I trust you are putting a riddle to me, young man,
even as Samson did to his companions. From what you said but lately, it
cannot be that you are given to tippling and to taverns."
"Oh, I don't drink much. I order a pint of beer, and I get into talk
with the fellows over their pots and pipes. Somebody must take a little
knowledge and common-sense to them in this way, else how are they to get
it? I go for educating the non-electors, so I put myself in the way of
my pupils--my academy is the beer-house. I'll walk with you to-morrow
with pleasure."
"Do so, do so," said Mr. Lyon, shaking hands with his odd acquaintance.
"We shall understand each other better by-and-by, I doubt not."
"I wish you good-evening, Miss Lyon."
Esther bowed very slightly, without speaking.
"That is a singular young man, Esther," said the minister, walking about
after Felix was gone. "I discern in him a love for whatsoever things are
honest and true, which I would fain believe to be an earnest of further
endowment with the wisdom that is from on high. It is true that, as the
traveller in the desert is often lured, by a false vision of water and
freshness, to turn aside from the track which leads to the tried and
established fountains, so the Evil One will take advantage of a natural
yearning toward the better, to delude the soul with a self-flattering
belief in a visionary virtue, higher than the ordinary fruits of the
Spirit. But I trust it is not so here. I feel a great enlargement in
this young man's presence, notwithstanding a certain license in his
language, which I shall use my efforts to correct."
"I think he is very coarse and rude," said Esther, with a touch of
temper in her voice. "But he speaks better English than most of our
visitors. What is his occupation?"
"Watch and clock making, by which, together with a little teaching, as I
understand, he hopes to maintain his mother, not thinking it right that
he should live by the sale of medicines whose virtues he distrusts. It
is no common scruple."
"Dear me," said Esther, "I thought he was something higher than that."
She was disappointed.
Felix, on his side, as he strolled out in the evening air, said to
himself: "Now by what fine meshes of circumstance did that queer devout
old man, with his awful creed, which makes this world a vestibule with
double doors to hell, and a narrow stair on one side whereby the thinner
sort may mount to heaven--by what subtle play of flesh and spirit did he
come to have a daughter so little in his own likeness? Married
foolishly, I suppose. I'll never marry, though I should have to live on
raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I'll never look back and say, 'I had a
fine purpose once--I meant to keep my hands clean and my soul upright,
and to look truth in the face; but pray excuse me, I have a wife and
children--I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve'; or 'My
wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her feelings
will be hurt if she is not thought genteel.' That is the lot Miss Esther
is preparing for some man or other. I could grind my teeth at such
self-satisfied minxes, who think they can tell everybody what is the
correct thing, and the utmost stretch of their ideas will not place them
on a level with the intelligent fleas. I should like to see if she could
be made ashamed of herself."