Felix Holt, the Radical

"Makepiece is a wonderful man, and so is Putty," said the glib Johnson, too vain not to be pleased with an opportunity of speaking, even when the situation was rather awkward. "Makepiece for scheming, but Putty for management. Putty knows men, sir," he went on, turning to Harold: "it's a thousand pities that you have not had his talents employed in your service. He's beyond any man for saving a candidate's money – does half the work with his tongue. He'll talk of anything, from the Areopagus, and that sort of thing, down to the joke about 'Where are you going, Paddy?' – you know what I mean, sir! 'Back again, says Paddy' – an excellent electioneering joke. Putty understands these things. He has said to me, 'Johnson, bear in mind there are two ways of speaking an audience will always like: one is to tell them what they don't understand; and the other is, to tell them what they're used to.' I shall never be the man to deny that I owe a great deal to Putty. I always say it was a most providential thing in the Mugham election last year that Putty was not on the Tory side. He managed the women; and, if you'll believe me, sir, one-fourth of the men would never have voted if their wives hadn't driven them to it for the good of their families. And as for speaking – it's currently reported in our London circles that Putty writes regularly for the Times. He has that kind of language; and I needn't tell you, Mr. Transome, that it's the apex, which, I take it, means the tiptop – and nobody can get higher than that, I think. I've belonged to a political debating society myself; I've heard a little language in my time; but when Mr. Jermyn first spoke to me about having the honor to assist in your canvass of North Loamshire" – here Johnson played with his watch-seals and balanced himself a moment on his toes – "the very first thing I said was, 'And there's Garstin has got Putty! No Whig could stand against a Whig,' I said, 'who had Putty on his side: I hope Mr. Transome goes in for something of a deeper color.' I don't say that, as a general rule, opinions go for much in a return, Mr. Transome; it depends on who are in the field before you, and on the skill of your agents. But as a Radical, and a moneyed Radical, you are in a fine position, sir; and with care and judgment – with care and judgment – "

It had been impossible to interrupt Johnson before, without the most impolitic rudeness. Jermyn was not sorry that he should talk, even if he made a fool of himself; for in that solid shape, exhibiting the average amount of human foibles, he seemed less of the alias which Harold had insinuated him to be, and had all the additional plausibility of a lie with a circumstance.

Harold had thrown himself with contemptuous resignation into a chair, had drawn off one of his buff gloves, and was looking at his hand. But when Johnson gave his iteration with a slightly slackened pace, Harold looked up at him and broke in —

"Well then, Mr. Johnson, I shall be glad if you will use your care and judgment in putting an end, as well as you can, to this Sproxton affair; else it may turn out an ugly business."

"Excuse me, sir; I must beg you to look at the matter a little more closely. You will see that it is impossible to take a single step backward at Sproxton. It was a matter of necessity to get the Sproxton men; else I know to a certainty the other side would have laid hold of them first, and now I've undermined Garstin's people. They'll use their authority, and give a little shabby treating, but I've taken all the wind out of their sails. But if, by your orders, I or Mr. Jermyn here were to break promise with the honest fellows, and offend Chubb the publican, what would come of it? Chubb would leave no stone unturned against you, sir; he would egg on his customers against you; the colliers and navvies would be at the nomination and the election all the same, or rather not all the same, for they would be there against us; and instead of hustling people good-humoredly by way of a joke, and counterbalancing Debarry's cheers, they'd help to kick the cheering and voting out of our men, and instead of being, let us say, half-a-dozen ahead of Garstin, you'd be half-a-dozen behind him, that's all. I speak plain English to you, Mr. Transome, though I've the highest respect for you as a gentleman of first-rate talents and position. But, sir, to judge of these things a man must know the English voter and the English publican; and it would be a poor tale indeed" – here Mr. Johnson's mouth took an expression at once bitter and pathetic – "that a gentleman like you, to say nothing of the good of the country, should have gone to the expense and trouble of a canvass for nothing but to find himself out of Parliament at the end of it. I've seen it again and again; it looks bad in the cleverest man to have to sing small."

Mr. Johnson's argument was not the less stringent because his idioms were vulgar. It requires a conviction and resolution amounting to heroism not to wince at phrases that class our foreshadowed endurance among those common and ignominious troubles which the world is more likely to sneer at than to pity. Harold remained a few minutes in angry silence looking at the floor, with one hand on his knee and the other on his hat, as if he were preparing to start up.

"As to undoing anything that's been done down there," said Johnson, throwing in this observation as something into the bargain, "I must wash my hands of it, sir. I couldn't work knowingly against your interest. And that young man who is just gone out, – you don't believe that he need be listened to, I hope? Chubb, the publican, hates him. Chubb would guess he was at the bottom of your having the treating stopped, and he'd set half-a-dozen of the colliers to duck him in the canal, or break his head by mistake. I'm an experienced man, sir. I hope I've put it clear enough."

"Certainly, the exposition befits the subject," said Harold, scornfully, his dislike of the man Johnson's personality being stimulated by causes which Jermyn more than conjectured. "It's a damned, unpleasant, ravelled business that you and Mr. Jermyn have knit up between you. I've no more to say."

"Then, sir, if you've no more commands, I don't wish to intrude. I shall wish you good-morning, sir," said Johnson, passing out quickly.

Harold knew that he was indulging his temper, and he would probably have restrained it as a foolish move if he had thought there was great danger in it. But he was beginning to drop much of his caution and self-mastery where Jermyn was concerned, under the growing conviction that the attorney had very strong reasons for being afraid of him; reasons which would only be reinforced by any action hostile to the Transome interest. As for a sneak like this Johnson, a gentleman had to pay him, not to please him. Harold had smiles at command in the right place, but he was not going to smile when it was neither necessary nor agreeable. He was one of those good-humored, yet energetic men, who have the gift of anger, hatred, and scorn upon occasion, though they are too healthy and self-contented for such feelings to get generated in them without external occasion. And in relation to Jermyn the gift was coming into fine exercise.

"A – pardon me, Mr. Harold," said Jermyn, speaking as soon as Johnson went out, "but I am sorry – a – you should behave disobligingly to a man who has it in his power to do much service – who, in fact, holds many threads in his hands. I admit that – a —nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, as we say – a – "

"Speak for yourself," said Harold. "I don't talk in tags of Latin, which might be learned by a school-master's foot-boy. I find the King's English expresses my meaning better."

"In the King's English, then," said Jermyn, who could be idiomatic enough when he was stung, "a candidate should keep his kicks till he's a member."

"Oh, I suppose Johnson will bear a kick if you bid him. You're his principal, I believe."

"Certainly, thus far – a – he is my London agent. But he is a man of substance, and – "

"I shall know what he is if it's necessary, I dare say. But I must jump into the carriage again. I've no time to lose; I must go to Hawkins at the factory. Will you go?"

When Harold was gone, Jermyn's handsome face gathered blackness. He hardly ever wore his worst expression in the presence of others, and but seldom when he was alone, for he was not given to believe that any game would ultimately go against him. His luck had been good. New conditions might always turn up to give him new chances; and if affairs threatened to come to an extremity between Harold and himself, he trusted to finding some sure resource.

"He means to see to the bottom of everything if he can, that's quite plain," said Jermyn to himself. "I believe he has been getting another opinion; he has some new light about those annuities on the estate that are held in Johnson's name. He has inherited a deuced faculty for business – there's no denying that. But I shall beg leave to tell him that I've propped up the family. I don't know where they would have been without me; and if it comes to balancing, I know into which scale the gratitude ought to go. Not that he's likely to feel any – but he can feel something else; and if he makes signs of setting the dogs on me, I shall make him feel it. The people named Transome owe me a good deal more than I owe them."

In this way Mr. Jermyn inwardly appealed against an unjust construction which he foresaw that his old acquaintance the law might put on certain items in his history.

I have known persons who have been suspected of under-valuing gratitude, and excluding it from the list of virtues; but on closer observation it has been seen that, if they have never felt grateful, it has been for want of an opportunity; and that, far from despising gratitude, they regard it as the virtue most of all incumbent – on others toward them.

CHAPTER XVIII

The little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.

– Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey.

Jermyn did not forget to pay his visit to the minister in Malthouse Yard that evening. The mingled irritation, dread and defiance which he was feeling toward Harold Transome in the middle of the day depended on too many and far-stretching causes to be dissipated by eight o'clock; but when he left Mr. Lyon's house he was in a state of comparative triumph in the belief that he, and he alone, was now in possession of facts which, once grouped together, made a secret that gave him new power over Harold.

Mr. Lyon, in his need for help from one who had that wisdom of the serpent which, he argued, is not forbidden, but is only of hard acquirement to dovelike innocence, had been gradually led to pour out to the attorney all the reasons which made him desire to know the truth about the man who called himself Maurice Christian: he had shown all the precious relics, the locket, the letters, and the marriage certificate. And Jermyn had comforted him by confidently promising to ascertain, without scandal or premature betrayals, whether this man were really Annette's husband, or Maurice Christian Bycliffe.

Jermyn was not rash in making this promise, since he had excellent reasons for believing that he had already come to a true conclusion on the subject. But he wished both to know a little more of this man himself, and to keep Mr. Lyon in ignorance – not a difficult precaution – in an affair which it cost the minister so much pain to speak of. An easy opportunity of getting an interview with Christian was sure to offer itself before long – might even offer itself to-morrow. Jermyn had seen him more than once, though hitherto without any reason for observing him with interest; he had heard that Philip Debarry's courier was often busy in the town, and it seemed specially likely that he would be seen there when the market was to be agitated by politics, and the new candidate was to show his paces.

The world of which Treby Magna was the centre was, naturally, curious to see the young Transome, who had come from the East, was as rich as a Jew, and called himself a Radical – characteristics all equally vague in the minds of various excellent ratepayers, who drove to market in their taxed carts or in their hereditary gigs. Places at convenient windows had been secured beforehand for a few best bonnets; but, in general, a Radical candidate excited no ardent feminine partisanship, even among the Dissenters in Treby, if they were of the prosperous and long-resident class. Some chapel-going ladies were fond of remembering that "their family had been Church"; others objected to politics altogether as having spoiled old neighborliness, and sundered friends who had kindred views as to cowslip wine and Michaelmas cleaning; others, of the melancholy sort, said it would be well if people would think less of reforming Parliament and more of pleasing God. Irreproachable Dissenting matrons, like Mrs. Muscat, whose youth had been passed in a short-waisted bodice and tight skirt, had never been animated by the struggle for liberty, and had a timid suspicion that religion was desecrated by being applied to the things of this world. Since Mr. Lyon had been in Malthouse Yard there had been far too much mixing up of politics with religion; but, at any rate, these ladies had never yet been to hear speechifying in the market-place, and they were not going to begin that practice.

Esther, however, had heard some of her feminine acquaintances say that they intended to sit at the druggist's upper window, and she was inclined to ask her father if he could think of a suitable place where she also might see and hear. Two inconsistent motives urged her. She knew that Felix cared earnestly for public questions, and she supposed that he held it one of her deficiencies not to care about them: well, she would try to learn the secret of this ardor, which was so strong in him that it animated what she thought the dullest form of life. She was not too stupid to find it out. But this self-correcting motive was presently displaced by a motive of a different sort. It had been a pleasant variety in her monotonous days to see a man like Harold Transome, with a distinguished appearance and polished manners, and she would like to see him again: he suggested to her that brighter and more luxurious life on which her imagination dwelt without the painful effort it required to conceive the mental condition which would place her in complete sympathy with Felix Holt. It was this less unaccustomed prompting of which she was chiefly conscious when she awaited her father's coming down to breakfast. Why, indeed, should she trouble herself so much about Felix?

Mr. Lyon, more serene now that he had unbosomed his anxieties and obtained a promise of help, was already swimming so happily in the deep water of polemics in expectation of Philip Debarry's answer to his challenge, that, in the occupation of making a few notes lest certain felicitous inspirations should be wasted, he had forgotten to come down to breakfast. Esther, suspecting his abstraction, went up to his study, and found him at his desk looking up with wonder at her interruption.

"Come, father, you have forgotten your breakfast."

"It is true, child, I will come," he said, lingering to make some final strokes.

"Oh, you naughty father!" said Esther, as he got up from his chair, "your coat-collar is twisted, your waistcoat is buttoned all wrong, and you have not brushed your hair. Sit down and let me brush it again as I did yesterday."

He sat down obediently, while Esther took a towel, which she threw over his shoulders, and then brushed the thick, long fringe of soft auburn hair. This very trifling act, which she had brought herself to for the first time yesterday, meant a great deal in Esther's little history. It had been her habit to leave the mending of her father's clothes to Lyddy; she had not liked even to touch his cloth garments; still less had it seemed a thing she would willingly undertake to correct his toilette, and use a brush for him. But having once done this, under her new sense of faulty omission, the affectionateness that was in her flowed so pleasantly, as she saw how much her father was moved by what he thought a great act of tenderness, that she quite longed to repeat it. This morning, as he sat under her hands, his face had such a calm delight in it that she could not help kissing the top of his bald head; and afterward, when they were seated at breakfast, she said, merrily —

"Father, I shall make a petit maître of you by-and-by; your hair looks so pretty and silken when it is well brushed."

"Nay, child, I trust that while I would willingly depart from my evil habit of a somewhat slovenly forgetfulness in my attire, I shall never arrive at the opposite extreme. For though there is that in apparel which pleases the eye, and I deny not that your neat gown and the color thereof – which is that of certain little flowers that spread themselves in the hedgerows, and make a blueness there as of the sky when it is deepened in the water – I deny not, I say, that these minor strivings after a perfection which is, as it were, an irrecoverable yet haunting memory, are a good in their proportion. Nevertheless, the brevity of our life, and the hurry and crush of the great battle with error and sin, often oblige us to an advised neglect of what is less momentous. This, I conceive, is the principle on which my friend Felix Holt acts; and I cannot but think the light comes from the true fount, though it shines through obstructions."

"You have not seen Mr. Holt since Sunday, have you, father?"

"Yes, he was here yesterday. He sought Mr. Transome, having a matter of some importance to speak upon with him. And I saw him afterward in the street, when he agreed that I should call for him this morning before I go into the market-place. He will have it," Mr. Lyon went on, smiling, "that I must not walk about in the crowd without him to act as my special constable."

Esther felt vexed with herself that her heart was suddenly beating with unusual quickness, and that her last resolution not to trouble herself about what Felix thought had transformed itself with magic swiftness into mortification that he evidently avoided coming to the house when she was there, though he used to come on the slightest occasion. He knew that she was always at home until the afternoon on market-days: that was the reason why he would not call for her father. Of course it was because he attributed such littleness to her that he supposed she would retain nothing else than a feeling of offence toward him for what he had said to her. Such distrust of any good in others, such arrogance of immeasurable superiority, was extremely ungenerous. But presently she said —

"I should have liked to hear Mr. Transome speak, but I suppose it is too late to get a place now."

"I am not sure, I would fain have you go if you desire it, my dear," said Mr. Lyon, who could not bear to deny Esther any lawful wish. "Walk with me to Mrs. Holt's, and we will learn from Felix, who will doubtless already have been out, whether or not he could lead you in safety to Friend Lambert's."

Esther was glad of the proposal, because, if it answered no other purpose, it would be an easy way of obliging Felix to see her, and of showing him that it was not she who cherished offence. But when, later in the morning, she was walking toward Mrs. Holt's with her father, they met Mr. Jermyn, who stopped them to ask, in his most affable manner, whether Miss Lyon intended to hear the candidate, and whether she had secured a suitable place. And he ended by insisting that his daughters, who were presently coming in an open carriage, should call for her if she would permit them. It was impossible to refuse this civility, and Esther turned back to await the carriage, pleased with the certainty of hearing and seeing, yet sorry to miss Felix. There was another day for her to think of him with unsatisfied resentment, mixed with some longings for a better understanding: and in our spring-time every day has its hidden growths in the mind, as it has in the earth when the little folded blades are getting ready to pierce the ground.

CHAPTER XIX

Consistency? – I never changed my mind,

Which is, and always was, to live at ease.

It was only in the time of summer fairs that the market-place had ever looked more animated than it did under that autumn midday sun. There were plenty of blue cockades and streamers, faces at all the windows, and a crushing buzzing crowd, urging each other backward and forward round the small hustings in front of the Ram Inn, which showed its more plebeian sign at right angles with the venerable Marquis of Granby. Sometimes there were scornful shouts, sometimes a rolling cascade of cheers, sometimes the shriek of a penny whistle; but above all these fitful and feeble sounds, the fine old church-tower, which looked down from above the trees on the other side of the narrow stream, sent vibrating, at every quarter, the sonorous tones of its great bell, the Good Queen Bess.

Two carriages, with blue ribbons on the harness, were conspicuous near the hustings. One was Jermyn's, filled with the brilliantly-attired daughters, accompanied by Esther, whose quieter dress helped to mark her out for attention as the most striking of the group. The other was Harold Transome's; but in this there was no lady – only the olive-skinned Dominic, whose acute yet mild face was brightened by the occupation of amusing little Harry and rescuing from his tyrannies a King Charles puppy, with big eyes, much after the pattern of the boy's.

This Trebian crowd did not count for much in the political force of the nation, but it was not the less determined as to lending or not lending its ears. No man was permitted to speak from the platform except Harold and his uncle Lingon, though, in the interval of expectation, several Liberals had come forward. Among these ill-advised persons the one whose attempt met the most emphatic resistance was Rufus Lyon. This might have been taken for resentment at the unreasonableness of the cloth, that, not content with pulpits, from whence to tyrannize over the ears of men, wishes to have the larger share of the platforms; but it was not so, for Mr. Lingon was heard with much cheering, and would have been welcomed again.

The rector of Little Treby had been a favorite in the neighborhood since the beginning of the century. A clergyman thoroughly unclerical in his habits had a piquancy about him which made him a sort of practical joke. He had always been called Jack Lingon, or Parson Jack – sometimes, in older and less serious days, even "Cock-fighting Jack." He swore a little when the point of a joke seemed to demand it, and was fond of wearing a colored bandana tied loosely over his cravat, together with large brown leather leggings; he spoke in a pithy familiar way that people could understand, and had none of that frigid mincingness called dignity, which some have thought a peculiar clerical disease. In fact, he was "a charicter – " something cheerful to think of, not entirely out of connection with Sunday and sermons. And it seemed in keeping that he should have turned sharp round in politics, his opinions being only part of the excellent joke called Parson Jack. When his red eagle face and white hair were seen on the platform, the Dissenters hardly cheered this questionable Radical; but to make amends, all the Tory farmers gave him a friendly "hurray." "Let's hear what old Jack will say for himself," was the predominant feeling among them; "he'll have something funny to say, I'll bet a penny."

It was only Lawyer Labron's young clerks and their hangers-on who were sufficiently dead to Trebian traditions to assail the parson with various sharp-edged interjections, such as broken shells, and cries of "Cock-a-doodle-doo."

"Come now, my lads," he began, in his full, pompous, yet jovial tones, thrusting his hands into the stuffed-out pockets of his greatcoat, "I'll tell you what; I'm a parson you know; I ought to return good for evil. So here are some good nuts for you to crack in return for your shells."

There was a roar of laughter and cheering as he threw handfuls of nuts and filberts among the crowd.

"Come now, you'll say I used to be a Tory; and some of you, whose faces I know as well as I know the head of my own crab-stick, will say that's why I'm a good fellow. But now I'll tell you something else. It's for that very reason – that I used to be a Tory, and am a good fellow – that I go along with my nephew here, who is a thorough-going Liberal. For will anybody here come forward and say, 'A good fellow has no need to tack about and change his road?' No, there's not one of you such a Tom-noddy. What's good for one time is bad for another. If anybody contradicts that, ask him to eat pickled pork when he's thirsty, and to bathe in the Lapp there when the spikes of ice are shooting. And that's the reason why the men who are the best Liberals now are the very men who used to be the best Tories. There isn't a nastier horse than your horse that'll jib and back and turn round when there is but one road for him to go, and that's the road before him.