Part 41 (1/2)

He spoke laughingly, only thinking how he could make his mother smile.

But she looked at him seriously and said, ”Do you mean that, Harold?”

”Am I not capable of making a conquest? Not too fat yet--a handsome, well-rounded youth of thirty-four?”

She was forced to look straight at the beaming face, with its rich dark color, just bent a little over her. Why could she not be happy in this son whose future she had once dreamed of, and who had been as fortunate as she had ever hoped? The tears came, not plenteously, but making her dark eyes as large and bright as youth had once made them without tears.

”There, there!” said Harold, coaxingly. ”Don't be afraid. You shall not have a daughter-in-law unless she is a pearl. Now we will get ready to go.”

In half an hour from that time Mrs. Transome came down, looking majestic in sables and velvet, ready to call on ”the girl in Malthouse Yard.” She had composed herself to go through this task. She saw there was nothing better to be done. After the resolutions Harold had taken, some sort of compromise with this oddly-placed heiress was the result most to be hoped for; if the compromise turned out to be a marriage--well, she had no reason to care much: she was already powerless. It remained to be seen what this girl was.

The carriage was to be driven round the back way, to avoid too much observation. But the late election affairs might account for Mr. Lyon's receiving a visit from the unsuccessful Radical candidate.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 sc.r.a.ping, and this house I've got to pay rent for. It's not me has done wrong, Mr. Lyon; there's n.o.body 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. ”n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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.