I also could speak as ye do; if your soul were in my soul's stead,
I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at
you.--_Book of Job._
In the interval since Esther parted with Felix Holt on the day of the
riot, she had gone through so much emotion, and had already had so
strong a shock of surprise, that she was prepared to receive any new
incident of an unwonted kind with comparative equanimity.
When Mr. Lyon had got home again from his preaching excursion, Felix was
already on his way to Loamford Jail. The little minister was terribly
shaken by the news. He saw no clear explanation of Felix Holt's conduct;
for the statements Esther had heard were so conflicting that she had not
been able to gather distinctly what had come out in the examination by
the magistrates. But Mr. Lyon felt confident that Felix was innocent of
any wish to abet a riot or the infliction of injuries; what he chiefly
feared was that in the fatal encounter with Tucker he had been moved by
a rash temper, not sufficiently guarded against by a prayerful and
humble spirit.
"My poor young friend is being taught with mysterious severity the evil
of a too confident self-reliance," he said to Esther, as they sat
opposite to each other, listening and speaking sadly.
"You will go and see him, father?"
"Verily will I. But I must straightway go and see that poor afflicted
woman, whose soul is doubtless whirled about in this trouble like a
shapeless and unstable thing driven by divided winds." Mr. Lyon rose and
took his hat hastily, ready to walk out, with his greatcoat flying open
and exposing his small person to the keen air.
"Stay, father, pray, till you have had some food," said Esther, putting
her hand on his arm. "You look quite weary and shattered."
"Child, I cannot stay. I can neither eat bread nor drink water till I
have learned more about this young man's deeds, what can be proved and
what cannot be proved against him. I fear he has none to stand by him in
this town, for even by the friends of our church I have been ofttimes
rebuked because he seemed dear to me. But, Esther, my beloved child----"
Here Mr. Lyon grasped her arm, and seemed in the need of speech to
forget his previous haste. "I bear in mind this: the Lord knoweth them
that are His; but we--we are left to judge by uncertain signs, that so
we may learn to exercise hope and faith toward one another; and in this
uncertainty I cling with awful hope to those whom the world loves not
because their conscience, albeit mistakenly, is at war with the habits
of the world. Our great faith, my Esther, is the faith of martyrs: I
will not lightly turn away from any man who endures harshness because he
will not lie; nay, though I would not wantonly grasp at ease of mind
through an arbitrary choice of doctrine, I cannot but believe that the
merits of the Divine Sacrifice are wider than our utmost charity. I once
believed otherwise--but not now, not now."
The minister paused, and seemed to be abstractedly gazing at some
memory: he was always liable to be snatched away by thoughts from the
pursuit of a purpose which had seemed pressing. Esther seized the
opportunity and prevailed on him to fortify himself with some of Lyddy's
porridge before he went out on his tiring task of seeking definite
trustworthy knowledge from the lips of various witnesses, beginning with
that feminine darkener of counsel, poor Mrs. Holt.
She, regarding all her trouble about Felix in the light of a fulfilment
of her own prophecies, treated the sad history with a preference for
edification above accuracy, and for mystery above relevance, worthy of a
commentator on the Apocalypse. She insisted chiefly, not on the
important facts that Felix had sat at his work till after eleven, like a
deaf man, had rushed out in surprise and alarm, had come back to report
with satisfaction that things were quiet, and had asked her to set by
his dinner for him--facts which would tell as evidence that Felix was
disconnected with any project of disturbances, and was averse to them.
These things came out incidentally in her long plaint to the minister;
but what Mrs. Holt felt it essential to state was, that long before
Michaelmas was turned, sitting in her chair, she had said to Felix that
there would be a judgment on him for being so certain sure about the
Pills and the Elixir.
"And now, Mr. Lyon," said the poor woman, who had dressed herself in a
gown previously cast off, a front all out of curl, and a cap with no
starch in it, while she held little coughing Job on her knee,--"and now
you see--my words have come true sooner than I thought they would. Felix
may contradict me if he will; but there he is in prison, and here am I,
with nothing in the world to bless myself with but half-a-crown a-week
as I've saved by my own scraping, and this house I've got to pay rent
for. It's not me has done wrong, Mr. Lyon; there's nobody can say it of
me--not the orphan child on my knee is more innicent o' riot and murder
and anything else as is bad. But when you've got a son so masterful and
stopping medicines as Providence has sent, and his betters have been
taking up and down the country since before he was a baby, it's o' no
use being good here below. But he _was_ a baby, Mr. Lyon, and I gave him
the breast,"--here poor Mrs. Holt's motherly love over-came her
expository eagerness, and she fell more and more to crying as she
spoke--"And to think there's folks saying now as he'll be transported,
and his hair shaved off, and the treadmill, and everything. Oh, dear!"
As Mrs. Holt broke off into sobbing, little Job also, who had got a
confused yet profound sense of sorrow, and of Felix being hurt and gone
away, set up a little wail of wondering misery.
"Nay, Mistress Holt," said the minister, soothingly, "enlarge not your
grief by more than warrantable grounds. I have good hope that my young
friend, your son, will be delivered from any severe consequences beyond
the death of the man Tucker, which I fear will ever be a sore burden on
his memory. I feel confident that a jury of his country-men will
discern between misfortune, or it may be misjudgment, and an evil will,
and that he will be acquitted of any grave offence."
"He never stole anything in his life, Mr. Lyon," said Mrs. Holt,
reviving. "Nobody can throw it in my face as my son ran away with money
like the young man at the bank--though he looked most respectable, and
far different on a Sunday to what Felix ever did. And I know it's very
hard fighting with constables; but they say Tucker's wife'll be a deal
better off than she was before, for the great folks'll pension her, and
she'll be put on all the charities, and her children at the Free School,
and everything. Your trouble's easy borne when everybody gives it a lift
for you; and if judge and jury wants to do right by Felix, they'll think
of his poor mother, with the bread took out of her mouth, all but
half-a-crown a-week and furniture--which, to be sure, is most excellent,
and of my own buying--and got to keep this orphin child as Felix himself
brought on me. And I might send him back to his old grandfather on
parish pay, but I'm not that woman, Mr. Lyon; I've a tender heart. And
here's his little feet and toes, like marbil; do but look"--here Mrs.
Holt drew off Job's sock and shoe, and showed a well-washed little
foot--"and you'll perhaps say I might take a lodger; but it's easy
talking; it isn't everybody at a loose-end wants a parlor and a bedroom;
and if anything bad happens to Felix, I may as well go and sit in the
parish pound, and nobody to buy me out; for it's beyond everything how
the church members find fault with my son. But I think they might leave
his mother to find fault; for queer and masterful he might be, and
flying in the face of the very Scripture about the physic, but he was
most clever beyond anything--that I _will_ say--and was his own father's
lawful child, and me his mother, that was Mary Wall thirty years before
ever I married his father." Here Mrs. Holt's feelings again became too
much for her, but she struggled on to say, sobbingly, "And if they're to
transport him, I should like to go to the prison and take the orphin
child; for he was most fond of having him on his lap, and said he'd
never marry; and there was One above overheard him, for he's been took
at his word."
Mr. Lyon listened with low groans, and then tried to comfort her by
saying that he would himself go to Loamford as soon as possible, and
would give his soul no rest till he had done all he could do for Felix.
On one point Mrs. Holt's plaint tallied with his own forebodings, and he
found them verified: the state of feeling in Treby among the Liberal
Dissenting flock was unfavorable to Felix. None who had observed his
conduct from the windows saw anything tending to excuse him, and his own
account of his motives, given on his examination, was spoken of with
head-shaking; if it had not been for his habit of always thinking
himself wiser than other people, he would never have entertained such a
wild scheme. He had set himself up for something extraordinary, and had
spoken ill of respectable trades-people. He had put a stop to the making
of saleable drugs, contrary to the nature of buying and selling, and to
a due reliance on what Providence might effect in the human inside
through the instrumentality of remedies unsuitable to the stomach,
looked at in a merely secular light; and the result was what might have
been expected. He had brought his mother to poverty, and himself into
trouble. And what for? He had done no good to "the cause"; if he had
fought about Church-rates, or had been worsted in some struggle in which
he was distinctly the champion of Dissent and Liberalism, his case would
have been one for gold, silver, and copper subscriptions, in order to
procure the best defence; sermons might have been preached on him, and
his name might have floated on flags from Newcastle to Dorchester. But
there seemed to be no edification in what had befallen Felix. The riot
at Treby, "turn it which way you would," as Mr. Muscat observed, was no
great credit to Liberalism; and what Mr. Lyon had to testify as to Felix
Holt's conduct in the matter of the Sproxton men, only made it clear
that the defence of Felix was the accusation of his party. The whole
affair, Mr. Nuttwood said, was dark and inscrutable, and seemed not to
be one in which the interference of God's servants would tend to give
the glory where the glory was due. That a candidate for whom the richer
church members had all voted should have his name associated with the
encouragement of drunkenness, riot, and plunder, was an occasion for the
enemy to blaspheme; and it was not clear how the enemy's mouth would be
stopped by exertions in favor of a rash young man, whose interference
had made things worse instead of better. Mr. Lyon was warned lest his
human partialities should blind him to the interests of truth: it was
God's cause that was endangered in this matter.
The little minister's soul was bruised; he himself was keenly alive to
the complication of public and private regards in this affair, and
suffered a good deal at the thought of Tory triumph in the demonstration
that, excepting the attack on the Seven Stars, which called itself a
Whig house, all damage to property had been borne by Tories. He cared
intensely for his opinions, and would have liked events to speak for
them in a sort of picture-writing that everybody could understand. The
enthusiasms of the world are not to be stimulated by a commentary in
small and subtle characters which alone can tell the whole truth; and
the picture writing in Felix Holt's troubles was of an entirely puzzling
kind: if he were a martyr, neither side wanted to claim him. Yet the
minister, as we have seen, found in his Christian faith a reason for
clinging the more to one who had not a large party to back him. That
little man's heart was heroic; he was not one of those Liberals who make
their anxiety for "the cause" of Liberalism a plea for cowardly
desertion.
Besides himself, he believed there was no one who could bear testimony
to the remonstrances of Felix concerning the treating of the Sproxton
men, except Jermyn, Johnson, and Harold Transome. Though he had the
vaguest idea of what could be done in the case, he fixed his mind on the
probability that Mr. Transome would be moved to the utmost exertion, if
only as an atonement; but he dared not take any step until he had
consulted Felix, who he foresaw was likely to have a very strong
determination as to the help he would accept or not accept.
This last expectation was fulfilled. Mr. Lyon returned to Esther, after
his day's journey to Loamford and back, with less of trouble and
perplexity in his mind: he had at least got a definite course marked
out, to which he must resign himself. Felix had declared that he would
receive no aid from Harold Transome, except the aid he might give as an
honest witness. There was nothing to be done for him but what was
perfectly simple and direct. Even if the pleading of counsel had been
permitted (and at that time it was not) on behalf of a prisoner on trial
for felony, Felix would have declined it: he would in any case have
spoken in his own defence. He had a perfectly simple account to give,
and needed not to avail himself of any legal adroitness. He consented to
accept the services of a respectable solicitor in Loamford, who offered
to conduct his case without any fees. The work was plain and easy, Felix
said. The only witnesses who had to be hunted up at all were some who
could testify that he had tried to take the crowd down Hobb's Lane, and
that they had gone to the Manor in spite of him.
"Then he is not so much cast down as you feared, father?" said Esther.
"No, child; albeit he is pale and much shaken for one so stalwart. He
hath no grief, he says, save for the poor man Tucker, and for his
mother; otherwise his heart is without a burden. We discoursed greatly
on the sad effect of all this for his mother, and on the perplexed
condition of human things, whereby even right action seems to bring evil
consequences, if we have respect only to our own brief lives, and not to
that larger rule whereby we are stewards of the eternal dealings, and
not contrivers of our own success."
"Did he say nothing about me, father?" said Esther, trembling a little,
but unable to repress her egoism.
"Yes; he asked if you were well, and sent his affectionate regards. Nay,
he bade me say something which appears to refer to your discourse
together when I was not present. 'Tell her,' he said, 'whatever they
sentence me to, she knows they can't rob me of my vocation. With poverty
for my bride, and preaching and pedagoguy for my business, I am sure of
a handsome establishment.' He laughed--doubtless bearing in mind some
playfulness of thine."
Mr. Lyon seemed to be looking at Esther as he smiled, but she was not
near enough for him to discern the expression of her face. Just then it
seemed made for melancholy rather than for playfulness. Hers was not a
childish beauty; and when the sparkle of mischief, wit and vanity was
out of her eyes, and the large look of abstracted sorrow was there, you
would have been surprised by a certain grandeur which the smiles had
hidden. That changing face was the perfect symbol of her mixed
susceptible nature, in which battle was inevitable, and the side of
victory uncertain.
She began to look on all that had passed between herself and Felix as
something not buried, but embalmed and kept as a relic in a private
sanctuary. The very entireness of her preoccupation about him, the
perpetual repetition in her memory of all that had passed between them,
tended to produce this effect. She lived with him in the past; in the
future she seemed shut out from him. He was an influence above her life,
rather than a part of it; some time or other, perhaps, he would be to
her as if he belonged to the solemn admonishing skies, checking her
self-satisfied pettiness with the suggestion of a wider life.
But not yet--not while her trouble was so fresh. For it was still _her_
trouble, and not Felix Holt's. Perhaps it was a subtraction from his
power over her, that she could never think of him with pity, because he
always seemed to her too great and strong to be pitied; he wanted
nothing. He evaded calamity by choosing privation. The best part of a
woman's love is worship; but it is hard to her to be sent away with her
precious spikenard rejected, and her long tresses too, that were let
fall ready to soothe the wearied feet.
While Esther was carrying these things in her heart, the January days
were beginning to pass by with their wonted wintry monotony, except that
there was rather more of good cheer than usual remaining from the feast
of Twelfth Night among the triumphant Tories, and rather more scandal
than usual excited among the mortified Dissenters by the wilfulness of
their minister. He had actually mentioned Felix Holt by name in his
evening sermon, and offered up a petition for him in the evening prayer,
also by name--not as "a young Ishmaelite, whom he would fain see brought
back from the lawless life of the desert, and seated in the same fold
even with the sons of Judah and of Benjamin," a suitable periphrasis
which Brother Kemp threw off without any effort, and with all the
felicity of a suggestive critic. Poor Mrs. Holt, indeed, even in the
midst of her grief, experienced a proud satisfaction; that though she
was not a church member she was now an object of congregational remark
and ministerial allusion. Feeling herself a spotless character standing
out in relief on a dark background of affliction, and a practical
contradiction to that extreme doctrine of human depravity which she had
never "given in to," she was naturally gratified and soothed by a notice
which must be a recognition. But more influential hearers were of
opinion, that in a man who had so many long sentences at command as Mr.
Lyon, so many parentheses and modifying clauses, this naked use of a
non-scriptural Treby name in an address to the Almighty was all the more
offensive. In a low unlettered local preacher of the Wesleyan persuasion
such things might pass; but a certain style in prayer was demanded from
Independents, the most educated body in the ranks of orthodox Dissent.
To Mr. Lyon such notions seemed painfully perverse, and the next morning
he was declaring to Esther his resolution stoutly to withstand them, and
to count nothing common or unclean on which a blessing could be asked,
when the tenor of his thoughts was completely changed by a great shock
of surprise which made both himself and Esther sit looking at each other
in speechless amazement.
The cause was a letter brought by a special messenger from Duffield; a
heavy letter addressed to Esther in a business-like manner, quite
unexampled in her correspondence. And the contents of the letter were
more startling than its exterior. It began:
MADAM,--Herewith we send you a brief abstract of evidence which has
come within our knowledge, that the right of remainder whereby the
lineal issue of Edward Bycliffe can claim possession of the estates
of which the entail was settled by John Justus Transome in 1729,
now first accrues to you as the sole and lawful issue of Maurice
Christian Bycliffe. We are confident of success in the prosecution
of this claim, which will result to you in the possession of
estates to the value, at the lowest, of from five to six thousand
per annum----
It was at this point that Esther, who was reading aloud, let her hand
fall with the letter on her lap, and with a palpitating heart looked at
her father, who looked again in silence that lasted for two or three
minutes. A certain terror was upon them both, though the thoughts that
laid that weight on the tongue of each were different.
It was Mr. Lyon who spoke first.
"This, then, is what the man named Christian referred to. I distrusted
him, yet it seems he spoke truly."
"But," said Esther, whose imagination ran necessarily to those
conditions of wealth which she could best appreciate, "Do they mean that
the Transomes would be turned out of Transome Court, and that I should
go and live there? It seems quite an impossible thing."
"Nay, child, I know not. I am ignorant in these things, and the thought
of worldly grandeur for you hath more of terror than of gladness for me.
Nevertheless we must duly weigh all things, not considering aught that
befalls us as a bare event, but rather as an occasion for faithful
stewardship. Let us go to my study and consider this writing further."
How this announcement, which to Esther seemed as unprepared as if it had
fallen from the skies, came to be made to her by solicitors other than
Batt & Cowley, the old lawyers of the Bycliffes, was by a sequence as
natural, that is to say, as legally natural, as any in the world. The
secret worker of the apparent wonder was Mr. Johnson, who, on the very
day when he wrote to give his patron, Mr. Jermyn, the serious warning
that a bill was likely to be filed in Chancery against him, had carried
forward with added zeal the business already commenced, of arranging
with another firm his share in the profits likely to result from the
prosecution of Esther Bycliffe's claim.
Jermyn's star was certainly going down, and Johnson did not feel an
unmitigated grief. Beyond some troublesome declarations as to his actual
share in transactions in which his name had been used, Johnson saw
nothing formidable in prospect for himself. He was not going to be
ruined, though Jermyn probably was: he was not a high-flyer, but a mere
climbing-bird, who could hold on and get his livelihood just as well if
his wings were clipped a little. And, in the meantime, here was
something to be gained in this Bycliffe business, which, it was not
unpleasant to think, was a nut that Jermyn had intended to keep for his
own particular cracking, and which would be rather a severe astonishment
to Mr. Harold Transome, whose manners towards respectable agents were
such as leave a smart in a man of spirit.
Under the stimulus of small many-mixed motives like these, a great deal
of business has been done in the world by well-clad and, in 1833,
clean-shaven men, whose names are on charity lists, and who do not know
that they are base. Mr. Johnson's character was not much more
exceptional than his double chin.
No system, religious or political, I believe, has laid it down as a
principle that all men are alike virtuous, or even that all the people
rated for £80 houses are an honor to their species.