Felix Holt, the Radical Page 9

  CHAPTER VIII.

  "Rumor doth double like the voice and echo."--_Shakespeare._

  The mind of a man is as a country which was once open to squatters, who have bred and multiplied and become masters of the land. But then happeneth a time when new and hungry comers dispute the land; and there is trial of strength, and the stronger wins. Nevertheless the first squatters be they who have prepared the ground, and the crops to the end will be sequent (though chiefly on the nature of the soil, as of light sand, mixed loam, or heavy clay, yet) somewhat on the primal labor and sowing.

  That talkative maiden, Rumor, though in the interest of art she isfigured as a youthful, winged beauty with flowing garments, soaringabove the heads of men, and breathing world-thrilling news through agracefully-curved trumpet, is in fact a very old maid, who puckers hersilly face by the fireside, and really does no more than chirp a wrongguess or a lame story into the ear of a fellow gossip; all the rest ofthe work attributed to her is done by the ordinary working of thosepassions against which men pray in the Litany, with the help of aplentiful stupidity against which we have never yet had any authorizedform of prayer.

  When Mr. Scales's strong need to make an impressive figure inconversation, together with his very slight need of any other premisethan his own sense of his wide general knowledge and probableinfallibility, led him to specify five hundred thousand as the lowestadmissible amount of Harold Transome's commercially-acquired fortune, itwas not fair to put this down to poor old Miss Rumor, who had only toldScales that the fortune was considerable. And again, when the curt Mr.Sircome found occasion at Treby to mention the five hundred thousand asa fact that folks seemed pretty sure about, this expansion of the butlerinto "folks" was entirely due to Mr. Sircome's habitual preference forwords which could not be laid hold of or give people a handle over him.It was in this simple way that the report of Harold Transome's fortunespread and was magnified, adding much lustre to his opinion in the eyesof Liberals, and compelling even men of the opposite party to admit thatit increased his eligibility as a member for North Loamshire. It wasobserved by a sound thinker in these parts that property was ballast;and when once the aptness of that metaphor had been perceived, itfollowed that a man was not fit to navigate the sea of politics withouta great deal of such ballast; and that, rightly understood, whateverincreased the expense of election, inasmuch as it virtually raised theproperty qualification, was an unspeakable boon to the country.

  Meanwhile the fortune that was getting larger in the imagination ofconstituents was shrinking a little in the imagination of its owner. Itwas hardly more than a hundred and fifty thousand; and there were notonly the heavy mortgages to be paid off, but also a large amount ofcapital was needed in order to repair the farm-buildings all over theestate, to carry out extensive drainage, and make allowances toin-coming tenants, which might remove the difficulties of newly lettingthe farms in a time of agricultural depression. The farms actuallytenanted were held by men who had begged hard to succeed their fathersin getting a little poorer every year, on land which was also gettingpoorer, where the highest rate of increase was in the arrears of rent,and where the master, in crushed hat and corduroys, looked pitiably leanand care-worn by the side of pauper laborers, who showed that superiorassimilating power often observed to attend nourishment by the publicmoney. Mr. Goffe, of Rabbit's End, had never had it explained to himthat, according to the true theory of rent, land must inevitably begiven up when it would not yield a profit equal to the ordinary rate ofinterest; so that from want of knowing what was inevitable, and not froma Titanic spirit of opposition, he kept on his land. He often said tohimself, with a melancholy wipe of his sleeve across his brow, that he"didn't know which-a-way to turn"; and he would have been still more ata loss on the subject if he had quitted Rabbit's End with a wagonful offurniture and utensils, a file of receipts, a wife with five children,and a shepherd dog in low spirits.

  It took no long time for Harold Transome to discover this state ofthings, and to see, moreover, that, except on the demesne immediatelyaround the house, the timber had been mismanaged. The woods had beenrecklessly thinned, and there had been insufficient planting. He had notyet thoroughly investigated the various accounts kept by his mother, byJermyn, and by Banks the bailiff; but what had been done with the largesums which had been received for timber was a suspicious mystery to him.He observed that the farm held by Jermyn was in first-rate order, that agood deal had been spent on the buildings, and that the rent had stoodunpaid. Mrs. Transome had taken an opportunity of saying that Jermyn hadhad some of the mortgage deeds transferred to him, and that his rent wasset against so much interest. Harold had only said, in his careless yetdecisive way, "Oh, Jermyn be hanged! It seems to me if Durfey hadn'tdied and made room for me, Jermyn would have ended by coming to livehere, and you would have had to keep the lodge and open the gate for hiscarriage. But I shall pay him off--mortgages and all--by-and-by. I'llowe him nothing--not even a curse!" Mrs. Transome said no more. Harolddid not care to enter fully into the subject with his mother. The factthat she had been active in the management of the estate--had riddenabout it continually, had busied herself with accounts, had beenhead-bailiff of the vacant farms, and had yet allowed things to gowrong--was set down by him simply to the general futility of women'sattempts to transact men's business. He did not want to say anything toannoy her: he was only determined to let her understand, as quietly aspossible, that she had better cease all interference.

  Mrs. Transome did understand this; and it was very little that she daredto say on business, though there was a fierce struggle of her anger andpride with a dread which was nevertheless supreme. As to the oldtenants, she only observed, on hearing Harold burst forth about theirwretched condition, "that with the estate so burdened, the yearly lossby arrears could better be borne than the outlay and sacrifice necessaryin order to let the farms anew."

  "I was really capable of calculating, Harold," she ended, with a touchof bitterness. "It seems easy to deal with farmers and their affairswhen you only see them in print, I dare say; but it's not quite so easywhen you live among them. You have only to look at Sir Maximus's estate:you will see plenty of the same thing. The times have been dreadful andold families like to keep their old tenants. But I dare say that isToryism."

  "It's a hash of odds and ends, if that is Toryism, my dear mother.However, I wish you had kept three more old tenants; for then I shouldhave had three more fifty-pound voters. And, in a hard run, one may bebeaten by a head. But," Harold added, smiling and handing her a ball ofworsted which had fallen, "a woman ought to be a Tory, and graceful, andhandsome, like you. I should hate a woman who took up my opinions andtalked for me. I'm an Oriental, you know. I say, mother, shall we havethis room furnished with rose-color? I notice that it suits your brightgray hair."

  Harold thought it was only natural that his mother should have been in asort of subjection to Jermyn throughout the awkward circumstances of thefamily. It was the way of women, and all weak minds, to think that whatthey had been used to was unalterable, and any quarrel with a man whomanaged private affairs was necessarily a formidable thing. He himselfwas proceeding very cautiously, and preferred not even to know too muchjust at present, lest a certain personal antipathy he was conscious oftoward Jermyn, and an occasional liability to exasperation, should getthe better of a calm and clear-sighted resolve not to quarrel with theman while he could be of use. Harold would have been disgusted withhimself if he had helped to frustrate his own purpose. And his strongestpurpose now was to get returned for Parliament, to make a figure thereas a Liberal member, and to become on all grounds a personage of weightin North Loamshire.

  How Howard Transome came to be a Liberal in opposition to all thetraditions of his family, was a more subtle enquiry than he had evercared to follow out. The newspapers undertook to explain it. The _NorthLoamshire Herald_ witnessed with a grief and disgust certain to beshared by all persons who were actuated by wholesome British feeling, anexample of de
fection in the inheritor of a family name which in timespast had been associated with attachment to right principle, and withthe maintenance of our constitution in Church and State; and pointed toit as an additional proof that men who had passed any large portion oftheir lives beyond the limits of our favored country, usually contractednot only a laxity of feeling toward Protestantism, nay, toward religionitself--a latitudinarian spirit hardly distinguishable from atheism--butalso a levity of disposition, inducing them to tamper with thoseinstitutions by which alone Great Britain had risen to her pre-eminenceamong the nations. Such men, infected with outlandish habits,intoxicated with vanity, grasping at momentary power by flattery of themultitude, fearless because godless, Liberal because un-English, wereready to pull one stone from under another in the national edifice, tillthe great structure tottered to its fall. On the other hand, the_Duffield Watchman_ saw in this signal instance of self-liberation fromthe trammels of prejudice, a decisive guarantee of intellectualpre-eminence, united with a generous sensibility to the claims of man asman, which had burst asunder, and cast off, by a spontaneous exertion ofenergy, the cramping out-worn shell of hereditary bias and classinterest.

  But these large-minded guides of public opinion argued from wider datathan could be furnished by any knowledge of the particular caseconcerned. Harold Transome was neither the dissolute cosmopolitan sovigorously sketched by the Tory _Herald_, nor the intellectual giant andmoral lobster suggested by the Liberal imagination of the _Watchman_.Twenty years ago he had been a bright, active, good-tempered lad, withsharp eyes and a good aim; he delighted in success and in predominance;but he did not long for an impossible predominance, and become sour andsulky because it was impossible. He played at the games he was cleverin, and usually won all other games he let alone, and thought them oflittle worth. At home and at Eton he had been side by side with hisstupid elder brother Durfey, whom he despised; and he very early beganto reflect that since this Caliban in miniature was older than himself,he must carve out his own fortune. That was a nuisance; and on the wholethe world seemed rather ill-arranged, at Eton especially, where therewere many reasons why Harold made no great figure. He was not sorry themoney was wanting to send him to Oxford; he did not see the good ofOxford; he had been surrounded by many things during his short life, ofwhich he had distinctly said to himself that he did not see the good,and he was not disposed to venerate on the strength of any good thatothers saw. He turned his back on home very cheerfully, though he wasrather fond of his mother, and very fond of Transome Court, and theriver where he had been used to fish; but he said to himself as hepassed the lodge-gates, "I'll get rich somehow, and have an estate of myown, and do what I like with it." This determined aiming at somethingnot easy but clearly possible, marked the direction in which Harold'snature was strong; he had the energetic will and muscle, theself-confidence, the quick perception, and the narrow imagination whichmake what is admiringly called the practical mind.

  Since then his character had been ripened by a various experience, andalso by much knowledge which he had set himself deliberately to gain.But the man was no more than the boy writ large, with an extensivecommentary. The years had nourished an inclination to as much oppositionas would enable him to assert his own independence and power withoutthrowing himself into that tabooed condition which robs power of itstriumph. And this inclination had helped his shrewdness in formingjudgments which were at once innovating and moderate. He was addicted atonce to rebellion and to conformity, and only an intimate personalknowledge could enable any one to predict where his conformity wouldbegin. The limit was not defined by theory, but was drawn in anirregular zigzag by early disposition and association and hisresolution, of which he had never lost hold, to be a thorough Englishmanagain some day, had kept up the habit of considering all his conclusionswith reference to English politics and English social conditions. Hemeant to stand up for every change that the economical condition of thecountry required, and he had an angry contempt for men with coronets ontheir coaches, but too small a share of brains to see when they hadbetter make a virtue of necessity. His respect was rather for men whohad no coronets, but who achieved a just influence by furthering allmeasures which the common-sense of the country, and the increasingself-assertion of the majority, peremptorily demanded. He could be sucha man himself.

  In fact Harold Transome was a clever, frank, good-natured egoist; notstringently consistent, but without any disposition to falsity; but witha pride that was moulded in an individual rather than an hereditaryform; unspeculative, unsentimental, unsympathetic; fond of sensualpleasures, but disinclined to all vice, and attached as a healthy,clear-sighted person, to all conventional morality, construed with acertain freedom, like doctrinal articles to which the public order mayrequire subscription. A character is apt to look but indifferently,written out in this way. Reduced to a map, our premises seeminsignificant, but they make, nevertheless, a very pretty freehold tolive in and walk over; and so, if Harold Transome had been among youracquaintances, and you had observed his qualities through the medium ofhis agreeable person, bright smile, and a certain easy charm whichaccompanies sensuousness when unsullied by coarseness--through themedium also of the many opportunities in which he would have madehimself useful or pleasant to you--you would have thought him a goodfellow, highly acceptable as a guest, a colleague, or a brother-in-law.Whether all mothers would have liked him as a son is another question.

  It is a fact perhaps kept a little too much in the background, thatmothers have a self larger than their maternity, and that when theirsons have become taller than themselves, and are gone from them tocollege or into the world, there are wide spaces of their time which arenot filled with praying for their boys, reading old letters, and envyingyet blessing those who are attending to their shirt-buttons. Mrs.Transome was certainly not one of those bland, adoring, and gentlytearful women. After sharing the common dream that when a beautifulman-child was born to her, her cup of happiness would be full, she hadtravelled through long years apart from that child to find herself atlast in the presence of a son of whom she was afraid, who was utterlyunmanageable by her, and to whose sentiments in any given case shepossessed no key. Yet Harold was a kind son: he kissed his mother'sbrow, offered her his arm, let her choose what she liked for the houseand garden, asked her whether she would have bays or grays for her newcarriage, and was bent on seeing her make as good a figure in theneighborhood as any other woman of her rank. She trembled under thiskindness: it was not enough to satisfy her; still, if it should evercease and give place to something else--she was too uncertain aboutHarold's feelings to imagine clearly what that something would be. Thefinest threads, such as no eye sees, if bound cunningly about thesensitive flesh, so that the movement to break them would bring torture,may make a worse bondage than any fetters. Mrs. Transome felt the fatalthread about her, and the bitterness of this helpless bondage mingleditself with the new elegancies of the dining and drawing-rooms, and allthe household changes which Harold had ordered to be brought about withmagical quickness. Nothing was as she had once expected it would be. IfHarold had shown the least care to have her stay in the room withhim--if he had really cared for her opinion--if he had been what she haddreamed he would be in the eyes of those people who had made herworld--if all the past could be dissolved, and leave no solid trace ofitself--mighty _ifs_ that were all impossible--she would have tastedsome joy; but now she began to look back with regret to the days whenshe sat in loneliness among the old drapery, and still longed forsomething that might happen. Yet, save in a bitter little speech, or ina deep sigh, heard by no one besides Denner, she kept all these thingshidden in her heart, and went out in the autumn sunshine to overlook thealterations in the pleasure-grounds very much as a happy woman mighthave done. One day, however, when she was occupied in this way, anoccasion came on which she chose to express indirectly a part of herinward care.

  She was standing on the broad gravel in the afternoon the long shadowslay on the grass; the light seemed the more glorious bec
ause of thereddened and golden trees. The gardeners were busy at their pleasantwork; the newly-turned soil gave out an agreeable fragrance; and littleHarry was playing with Nimrod round old Mr. Transome, who sat placidlyon a low garden-chair. The scene would have made a charming picture ofEnglish domestic life, and the handsome, majestic, gray-haired woman(obviously grandmamma) would have been especially admired. But theartist would have felt it requisite to turn her face toward her husbandand little grandson, and to have given her an elderly amiability ofexpression which would have divided remark with his exquisite renderingof her Indian shawl. Mrs. Transome's face was turned the other way, andfor this reason she only heard an approaching step, and did not seewhose it was; yet it startled her: it was not quick enough to be herson's step, and besides, Harold was away at Duffield. It was Mr.Jermyn's.