"He made love neither with roses, nor with apples, nor with locks
of hair."--THEOCRITUS.
One Sunday afternoon Felix Holt rapped at the door of Mr. Lyon's house,
although he could hear the voice of the minister preaching in the
chapel. He stood with a book under his arm, apparently confident that
there was someone in the house to open the door for him. In fact, Esther
never went to chapel in the afternoon: that "exercise" made her head
ache.
In these September weeks Felix had got rather intimate with Mr. Lyon.
They shared the same political sympathies; and though, to Liberals who
had neither freehold nor copyhold nor leasehold, the share in a county
election consisted chiefly of that prescriptive amusement of the
majority known as "looking on," there was still something to be said on
the occasion, if not to be done. Perhaps the most delightful friendships
are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet
more personal liking; and the advent of the public-spirited,
contradictory, yet affectionate Felix, into Treby life, had made a
welcome epoch to the minister. To talk with this young man, who, though
hopeful, had a singularity which some might at once have pronounced
heresy, but which Mr. Lyon persisted in regarding as orthodoxy "in the
making," was like a good bite to strong teeth after a too plentiful
allowance of spoon meat. To cultivate his society with a view to
checking his erratic tendencies was a laudable purpose; but perhaps if
Felix had been rapidly subdued and reduced to conformity, little Mr.
Lyon would have found the conversation much flatter.
Esther had not seen so much of their new acquaintance as her father had.
But she had begun to find him amusing, and also rather irritating to her
woman's love of conquest. He always opposed and criticised her; and
besides that, he looked at her as if he never saw a single detail about
her person--quite as if she were a middle-aged woman in a cap. She did
not believe that he had ever admired her hands, or her long neck, or her
graceful movements, which had made all the girls at school call her
Calypso (doubtless from their familiarity with "Telémaque"). Felix ought
properly to have been a little in love with her--never mentioning it, of
course, because that would have been disagreeable, and his being a
regular lover was out of the question. But it was quite clear that,
instead of feeling any disadvantage on his own side, he held himself to
be immeasurably her superior: and, what was worse, Esther had a secret
consciousness that he was her superior. She was all the more vexed at
the suspicion that he thought slightly of her; and wished in her
vexation that she could have found more fault with him--that she had not
been obliged to admire more and more the varying expressions of his open
face and his deliciously good-humored laugh, always loud at a joke
against himself. Besides, she could not help having her curiosity roused
by the unusual combinations both in his mind and in his outward
position, and she had surprised herself as well as her father one day by
suddenly starting up and proposing to walk with him when he was going to
pay an afternoon visit to Mrs. Holt, to try and soothe her concerning
Felix. "What a mother he has!" she said to herself when they came away
again; "but, rude and queer as he is, I cannot say there is anything
vulgar about him. Yet--I don't know--if I saw him by the side of a
finished gentleman." Esther wished that finished gentleman were among
her acquaintances: he would certainly admire her, and make her aware of
Felix's inferiority.
On this particular Sunday afternoon, when she heard the knock at the
door, she was seated in the kitchen corner between the fire and the
window reading "Réné." Certainly in her well-fitting light-blue
dress--she almost always wore some shade of blue--with her delicate
sandaled slipper stretched toward the fire, her little gold watch, which
had cost her nearly a quarter's earnings, visible at her side, her
slender fingers playing with a shower of brown curls, and a coronet of
shining plaits, at the summit of her head, she was a remarkable
Cinderella. When the rap came, she colored, and was going to shut her
book and put it out of the way on the window ledge behind her; but she
desisted with a little toss, laid it open on the table beside her, and
walked to the outer door, which opened into the kitchen. There was
rather a mischievous gleam in her face: the rap was not a small one; it
came probably from a large personage with a vigorous arm.
"Good afternoon, Miss Lyon," said Felix, taking off his cloth cap: he
resolutely declined the expensive ugliness of a hat, and in a poked cap
and without a cravat, made a figure at which his mother cried every
Sunday, and thought of with a slow shake of the head at several passages
in the minister's prayer.
"Dear me, it is you, Mr. Holt! I fear you will have to wait some time
before you can see my father. The sermon is not ended yet, and there
will be the hymn and the prayer, and perhaps other things to detain
him."
"Well, will you let me sit down in the kitchen? I don't want to be a
bore."
"Oh, no," said Esther, with her pretty light laugh, "I always give you
credit for not meaning it. Pray come in, if you don't mind waiting. I
was sitting in the kitchen: the kettle is singing quite prettily. It is
much nicer than the parlor--not half so ugly."
"There I agree with you."
"How very extraordinary! But if you prefer the kitchen, and don't want
to sit with me, I can go into the parlor."
"I came on purpose to sit with you," said Felix, in his blunt way, "but
I thought it likely you might be vexed at seeing me. I wanted to talk to
you, but I've got nothing pleasant to say. As your father would have it,
I'm not given to prophesy smooth things--to prophesy deceit."
"I understand," said Esther, sitting down. "Pray be seated. You thought
I had no afternoon sermon, so you came to give me one."
"Yes," said Felix, seating himself sideways in a chair not far off her,
and leaning over the back to look at her with his large, clear, gray
eyes, "and my text is something you said the other day. You said you
didn't mind about people having right opinions so that they had good
taste. Now I want you to see what shallow stuff that is."
"Oh, I don't doubt it if you say so. I know you are a person of right
opinions."
"But by opinions you mean men's thoughts about great subjects, and by
taste you mean their thoughts about small ones: dress, behavior,
amusements, ornaments."
"Well--yes--or rather, their sensibilities about those things."
"It comes to the same thing; thoughts, opinions, knowledge, are only a
sensibility to facts and ideas. If I understand a geometrical problem,
it is because I have a sensibility to the way in which lines and figures
are related to each other; and I want you to see that the creature who
has the sensibilities that you call taste, and not the sensibilities
that you call opinions, is simply a lower, pettier sort of thing--an
insect that notices the shaking of the table, but never notices the
thunder."
"Very well, I am an insect; yet I notice that you are thundering at me."
"No, you are not an insect. That is what exasperates me at your making a
boast of littleness. You have enough understanding to make it wicked
that you should add one more to the women who hinder men's lives from
having any nobleness in them."
Esther colored deeply: she resented this speech, yet she disliked it
less than many Felix had addressed to her.
"What is my horrible guilt?" she said, rising and standing, as she was
wont, with one foot on the fender, and looking at the fire. If it had
been any one but Felix who was near her, it might have occurred to her
that this attitude showed her to advantage; but she had only a mortified
sense that he was quite indifferent to what others praised her for.
"Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?" he said,
snatching up "Réné," and running his eye over the pages.
"Why don't you always go to chapel, Mr. Holt, and read Howe's 'Living
Temple,' and join the church?"
"There's just the difference between us--I know why I don't do those
things. I distinctly see that I can do something better. I have other
principles, and should sink myself by doing what I don't recognize as
the best."
"I understand," said Esther, as lightly as she could, to conceal her
bitterness. "I am a lower kind of being, and could not so easily sink
myself."
"Not by entering into your father's ideas. If a woman really believes
herself to be a lower kind of being, she should place herself in
subjection: she should be ruled by the thoughts of her father or
husband. If not, let her show her power of choosing something better.
You must know that your father's principles are greater and worthier
than what guides your life. You have no reason but idle fancy and
selfish inclination for shirking his teaching and giving your soul up to
trifles."
"You are kind enough to say so. But I am not aware that I have ever
confided my reasons to you."
"Why, what worth calling a reason could make any mortal hang over this
trash?--idiotic immorality dressed up to look fine, with a little bit of
doctrine tacked to it, like a hare's foot on a dish, to make believe the
mess is not cat's flesh. Look here! 'Est-ce ma faute, si je trouve
partout les bornes, si ce qui est fini n'a pour moi aucune valeur?' Yes,
sir, distinctly your fault, because you're an ass. Your dunce who can't
do his sums always has a taste for the infinite. Sir, do you know what a
rhomboid is? Oh, no, I don't value these things with limits. 'Cependant,
j'aime la monotonie des sentimens de la vie, et si j'avais encore la
folie de croire au bonheur----'"
"Oh, pray, Mr. Holt, don't go on reading with that dreadful accent; it
sets one's teeth on edge." Esther, smarting helplessly under the
previous lashes, was relieved by this diversion of criticism.
"There it is!" said Felix, throwing the book on the table, and getting
up to walk about. "You are only happy when you can spy a tag or a tassel
loose to turn the talk, and get rid of any judgment that must carry
grave action after it."
"I think I have borne a great deal of talk without turning it."
"Not enough, Miss Lyon--not all that I came to say. I want you to
change. Of course I am a brute to say so. I ought to say you are
perfect. Another man would, perhaps. But I say I want you to change."
"How am I to oblige you? By joining the Church?"
"No; but by asking yourself whether life is not as solemn a thing as
your father takes it to be--in which you may be either a blessing or a
curse to many. You know you have never done that. You don't care to be
better than a bird trimming its feathers, and pecking about after what
pleases it. You are discontented with the world because you can't get
just the small things that suit your pleasure, not because it's a world
where myriads of men and women are ground by wrong and misery, and
tainted with pollution."
Esther felt her heart swelling with mingled indignation at this liberty,
wounded pride at this depreciation, and acute consciousness that she
could not contradict what Felix said. He was outrageously ill-bred; but
she felt that she should be lowering herself by telling him so, and
manifesting her anger; in that way she would be confirming his
accusation of a littleness that shrank from severe truth; and, besides,
through all her mortification there pierced a sense that this
exasperation of Felix against her was more complimentary than anything
in his previous behavior. She had self-command enough to speak with her
usual silvery voice.
"Pray go on, Mr. Holt. Relieve yourself of these burning truths. I am
sure they must be troublesome to carry unuttered."
"Yes, they are," said Felix, pausing, and standing not far off her. "I
can't bear to see you going the way of the foolish women who spoil men's
lives. Men can't help loving them, and so they make themselves slaves to
the petty desires of petty creatures. That's the way those who might do
better spend their lives for nought--get checked in every great
effort--toil with brain and limb for things that have no more to do with
a manly life than tarts and confectionery. That's what makes women a
curse; and life is stunted to suit their littleness. That's why I'll
never love, if I can help it; and if I love, I'll bear it, and never
marry."
The tumult of feeling in Esther's mind--mortification, anger, the sense
of a terrible power over her that Felix seemed to have as his angry
words vibrated through her--was getting almost too much for her
self-control. She felt her lips quivering; but her pride, which feared
nothing so much as the betrayal of her emotion, helped her to a
desperate effort. She pinched her own hand hard to overcome her tremor,
and said, in a tone of scorn--
"I ought to be very much obliged to you for giving me your confidence so
freely."
"Ah! now you are offended with me, and disgusted with me. I expected it
would be so. A woman doesn't like a man who tells her the truth."
"I think you boast a little too much of your truth-telling, Mr. Holt,"
said Esther, flashing out at last. "That virtue is apt to be easy to
people when they only wound others and not themselves. Telling the truth
often means no more than taking a liberty."
"Yes, I suppose I should have been taking a liberty if I had tried to
drag you back by the skirt when I saw you running into a pit."
"You should really found a sect. Preaching is your vocation. It is a
pity you should ever have an audience of only one."
"I see I have made a fool of myself. I thought you had a more generous
mind--that you might be kindled to a better ambition. But I've set your
vanity aflame--nothing else. I'm going. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Esther, not looking at him. He did not open the door
immediately. He seemed to be adjusting his cap and pulling it down.
Esther longed to be able to throw a lasso round him and compel him to
stay, that she might say what she chose to him; her very anger made this
departure irritating, especially as he had the last word, and that a
very bitter one. But soon the latch was lifted and the door closed
behind him. She ran up to her bedroom and burst into tears. Poor maiden!
There was a strange contradiction of impulses in her mind in those first
moments. She could not bear that Felix should not respect her, yet she
could not bear that he should see her bend before his denunciation. She
revolted against his assumption of superiority, yet she felt herself in
a new kind of subjection to him. He was ill-bred, he was rude, he had
taken an unwarrantable liberty; yet his indignant words were a tribute
to her: he thought she was worth more pains than the women of whom he
took no notice. It was excessively impertinent in him to tell her of his
resolving not to love--not to marry--as if she cared about that; as if
he thought himself likely to inspire an affection that would incline any
woman to marry him after such eccentric steps as he had taken. Had he
ever for a moment imagined that she had thought of him in the light of a
man who would make love to her?----But did he love her one little bit,
and was that the reason why he wanted her to change? Esther felt less
angry at that form of freedom; though she was quite sure that she did
not love him, and that she could never love any one who was so much of a
pedagogue and master, to say nothing of his oddities. But he wanted her
to change. For the first time in her life Esther felt herself seriously
shaken in her self-contentment. She knew there was a mind to which she
appeared trivial, narrow, selfish. Every word Felix had said to her
seemed to have burned itself into her memory. She felt as if she should
forevermore be haunted by self-criticism, and never do anything to
satisfy those fancies on which she had simply piqued herself before
without being dogged by inward questions. Her father's desire for her
conversion had never moved her; she saw that he adored her all the
while, and he never checked her unregenerate acts as if they degraded
her on earth, but only mourned over them as unfitting her for heaven.
Unfitness for heaven (spoken of as "Jerusalem" and "glory"), the prayers
of a good little father, whose thoughts and motives seemed to her like
the "Life of Dr. Doddridge," which she was content to leave unread, did
not attack her self-respect and self-satisfaction. But now she had been
stung--stung even into a new consciousness concerning her father. Was it
true that his life was so much worthier than her own? She could not
change for anything Felix said, but she told herself he was mistaken if
he supposed her incapable of generous thoughts.
She heard her father coming into the house. She dried her tears, tried
to recover herself hurriedly, and went down to him.
"You want your tea, father; how your forehead burns!" she said gently,
kissing his brow, and then putting her cool hand on it.
Mr. Lyon felt a little surprise; such spontaneous tenderness was not
quite common with her; it reminded him of her mother.
"My sweet child," he said gratefully, thinking with wonder of the
treasures still left in our fallen nature.