Felix Holt Read online

  ‘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 atta of rose, and something heavier than these – a duodecimo volume which fell close to him between the table and the fender.

  ‘O 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”13 – 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,14 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,15 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 a 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.’

  ‘O, your niceties – I know what they are,’ said Felix, in his usual fortissimo. ‘They all 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 euphuisms16 that dress up swindling till it looks as well as honesty, and shoot with boiled pease 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.’

  ‘O yes,’ said Felix, contemptuously. ‘And she reads Byron also, and admires Childe Harold17 – 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.’

  ‘O there is no danger of such misalliances,’ 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 towards those venerable pilgrims. They struggled and endured in order to cherish and plant anew the seeds of scriptural doctrine and of a pure discipline.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Esther, hastily, dreading a discourse on the pilgrim fathers.

  ‘O they were an ugly lot!’ Felix burst in, making Mr Lyon start. ‘Miss Medora18 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 coloured face.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Lyon; ‘that is the eminent George Whitfield,19 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 inquire too closely into minutiae 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 this infirmity.’

  ‘So 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 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.’

  ‘O, 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 a 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.20 From what you said but lately, it cannot be that you are given to tippling and to taverns.’

  ‘O, 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 great 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 towards 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 licence 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 she 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.’

  CHAPTER VI

  Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives,

  And feed my mind, that dies for want of her.

  MARLOWE: Tamburlaine the Great

  Hardly any one in Treby who thought at all of Mr Lyon and his daughter had not felt the same sort of wonder about Esther as Felix felt. She was not much liked by her father’s church and congregation. The less serious observed that she had too many airs and graces, and held her head much too high; the stricter sort feared greatly that Mr Lyon had not been sufficiently careful in placing his daughter among God-fearing people, and that, being led astray by the melancholy vanity of giving her exceptional accomplishments, he had sent her to a French school, and allowed her to take situations where she had contracted notions not only above her own rank, but of too worldly a kind to be safe in any rank. But no one knew what sort of a woman her mother had been, for Mr Lyon never spoke of his past domesticities. When he was chosen as pastor at Treby in 1825, it was understood that he had been a widower many years, and he had no companion but the tearful and much-exercised Lyddy, his daughter being still at school. It was only two years ago that Esther had come home to live permanently with her father, and take pupils in the town. Within that time she had excited a passion in two young Dissenting breasts that were clad in the best style of Treby waistcoat – a garment which at that period displayed much design both in the stuff and the wearer; and she had secured an astonished admiration of her cleverness from the girls of various ages who were her pupils; indeed, her knowledge of French was generally held to give a distinction to Treby itself as compared with other market-towns. But she had won little regard of any other kind. Wise Dissenting matrons were divided between fear lest their sons should want to marry her and resentment that she should treat those ‘undeniable’ young men with a distant scorn which was hardly to be tolerated in a minister’s daughter; not only because that parentage appeared to entail an obligation to show an exceptional degree of Christian humility, but because, looked at from a secular point of view, a poor minister must be below the substantial householders who kept him. For at that time the preacher who was paid under the Voluntary system was regarded by his flock with feelings not less mixed than the spiritual person who still took his tithe-pig or his modus.1 His gifts were admired, and tears were shed under best bonnets at his sermons; but the weaker tea was thought good enough for him; and even when he went to preach a charity sermon in a strange town, he was treated with home-made wine and the smaller bedroom. As the good Churchman’s reverence was often mixed with growling, and was apt to be given chiefly to an abstract parson who was what a parson ought to be, so the good Dissenter sometimes mixed his approval of ministerial gifts with considerable criticism and cheapening of the human vessel which contained those treasures. Mrs Muscat and Mrs Nuttwood applied the principle of Christian equality by remarking that Mr Lyon had his oddities, and that he ought not to allow his daughter to indulge in such unbecoming expenditure on her gloves, shoes, and hosiery, even if she did pay for them out of her earnings. As for the Church people who engaged Miss Lyon to give lessons in their families, their imaginations were altogether prostrated by the incongruity between accomplishments and Dissent, between weekly prayer-meetings and a conversance with so lively and altogether worldly a language as t
he French. Esther’s own mind was not free from a sense of irreconcilableness between the objects of her taste and the conditions of her lot. She knew that Dissenters were looked down upon by those whom she regarded as the most refined classes; her favourite companions, both in France and at an English school where she had been a junior teacher, had thought it quite ridiculous to have a father who was a Dissenting preacher; and when an ardently admiring schoolfellow induced her parents to take Esther as a governess to the younger children, all her native tendencies towards luxury, fastidiousness, and scorn of mock gentility, were strengthened by witnessing the habits of a well-born and wealthy family. Yet the position of servitude was irksome to her, and she was glad at last to live at home with her father; for though, throughout her girlhood, she had wished to avoid this lot, a little experience had taught her to prefer its comparative independence. But she was not contented with her life: she seemed to herself to be surrounded with ignoble, uninteresting conditions, from which there was no issue; for even if she had been unamiable enough to give her father pain deliberately, it would have been no satisfaction to her to go to Treby Church, and visibly turn her back on Dissent. It was not religious differences, but social differences, that Esther was concerned about, and her ambitious taste would have been no more gratified in the society of the Waces than in that of the Muscats. The Waces spoke imperfect English and played whist; the Muscats spoke the same dialect and took in the ‘Evangelical Magazine’.2 Esther liked neither of these amusements. She had one of those exceptional organizations which are quick and sensitive without being in the least morbid; she was alive to the finest shades of manner, to the nicest distinctions of tone and accent; she had a little code of her own about scents and colours, textures and behaviour, by which she secretly condemned or sanctioned all things and persons. And she was well satisfied with herself for her fastidious taste, never doubting that hers was the highest standard. She was proud that the best-born and handsomest girls at school had always said that she might be taken for a born lady. Her own pretty instep, clad in a silk stocking, her little heel, just rising from a kid slipper, her irreproachable nails and delicate wrist, were the objects of delighted consciousness to her; and she felt that it was her superiority which made her unable to use without disgust any but the finest cambric handkerchiefs and freshest gloves. Her money all went in the gratification of these nice tastes, and she saved nothing from her earnings. I cannot say that she had any pangs of conscience on this score; for she felt sure that she was generous: she hated all meanness, would empty her purse impulsively on some sudden appeal to her pity, and if she found out that her father had a want, she would supply it with some pretty device of a surprise. But then the good man so seldom had a want – except the perpetual desire, which she could never gratify, of seeing her under convictions, and fit to become a member of the church.