by George Eliot
Day after day Esther had an arm offered her, had very beaming looks upon her, had opportunities for a great deal of light, airy talk, in which she knew herself to be charming, and had the attractive interest of noticing Harold’s practical cleverness – the masculine ease with which he governed everybody and administered everything about him, without the least harshness, and with a facile good-nature which yet was not weak. In the background, too, there was the ever-present consideration, that if Harold Transome wished to marry her, and she accepted him, the problem of her lot would be more easily solved than in any other way. It was difficult by any theory of Providence, or consideration of results, to see a course which she could call duty: if something would come and urge itself strongly as pleasure, and save her from the effort to find a clue of principle amid the labyrinthine confusions of right and possession, the promise could not but seem alluring. And yet, this life at Transome Court was not the life of her day-dreams: there was dulness already in its ease, and in the absence of high demand; and there was the vague consciousness that the love of this not unfascinating man who hovered about her gave an air of moral mediocrity to all her prospects. She would not have been able perhaps to define this impression; but somehow or other by this elevation of fortune it seemed that the higher ambition which had begun to spring in her was for ever nullified. All life seemed cheapened; as it might seem to a young student who, having believed that to gain a certain degree he must write a thesis in which he would bring his powers to bear with memorable effect, suddenly ascertained that no thesis was expected, but the sum (in English money) of twenty-seven pounds ten shillings and sixpence.
After all, she was a woman, and could not make her own lot. As she had once said to Felix, ‘A woman must choose meaner things, because only meaner things are offered to her.’ Her lot is made for her by the love she accepts. And Esther began to think that her lot was being made for her by the love that was surrounding her with the influence of a garden on a summer morning.
Harold, on his side, was conscious that the interest of his wooing was not standing still. He was beginning to think it a conquest, in which it would be disappointing to fail, even if this fair nymph had no claim to the estate. He would have liked – and yet he would not have liked – that just a slight shadow of doubt as to his success should be removed. There was something about Esther that he did not altogether understand. She was clearly a woman that could be governed; she was too charming for him to fear that she would ever be obstinate or interfering. Yet there was a lightning that shot out of her now and then, which seemed the sign of a dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more admirable than Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman should not see this.
One fine February day, when already the golden and purple crocuses were out on the terrace – one of those flattering days which sometimes precede the north-east winds of March, and make believe that the coming spring will be enjoyable – a very striking group, of whom Esther and Harold made a part, came out at mid-day to walk upon the gravel at Transome Court. They did not, as usual, go towards the pleasure-grounds on the eastern side, because Mr Lingon, who was one of them, was going home, and his road lay through the stone gateway into the park.
Uncle Lingon, who disliked painful confidences, and preferred knowing ‘no mischief of anybody’, had not objected to being let into the important secret about Esther, and was sure at once that the whole affair, instead of being a misfortune, was a piece of excellent luck. For himself, he did not profess to be a judge of women, but she seemed to have all the ‘points’, and to carry herself as well as Arabella did, which was saying a good deal. Honest Jack Lingon’s first impressions quickly became traditions, which no subsequent evidence could disturb. He was fond of his sister, and seemed never to be conscious of any change for the worse in her since their early time. He considered that man a beast who said anything unpleasant about the persons to whom he was attached. It was not that he winked; his wide-open eyes saw nothing but what his easy disposition inclined him to see. Harold was a good fellow; a clever chap; and Esther’s peculiar fitness for him, under all the circumstances, was extraordinary: it reminded him of something in the classics, though he couldn’t think exactly what – in fact, a memory was a nasty uneasy thing. Esther was always glad when the old Rector came. With an odd contrariety to her former niceties she liked his rough attire and careless frank speech; they were something not point device1 that seemed to connect the life of Transome Court with that rougher, commoner world where her home had been.
She and Harold were walking a little in advance of the rest of the party, who were retarded by various causes. Old Mr Transome, wrapped in a cloth cloak trimmed with sable, and with a soft warm cap also trimmed with fur on his head, had a shuffling uncertain walk. Little Harry was dragging a toy-vehicle, on the seat of which he had insisted on tying Moro, with a piece of scarlet drapery round him, making him look like a barbaric prince in a chariot. Moro, having little imagination, objected to this, and barked with feeble snappishness as the tyrannous lad ran forward, then whirled the chariot round, and ran back to ‘Gappa’, then came to a dead stop, which overset the chariot, that he might watch Uncle Lingon’s water-spaniel run for the hurled stick and bring it in his mouth. Nimrod kept close to his old master’s legs, glancing with much indifference at this youthful ardour about sticks – he had ‘gone through all that’; and Dominic walked by, looking on blandly, and taking care both of young and old. Mrs Transome was not there.
Looking back and seeing that they were a good deal in advance of the rest, Esther and Harold paused.
‘What do you think about thinning the trees over there?’ said Harold, pointing with his stick. ‘I have a bit of a notion that if they were divided into clumps so as to show the oaks beyond, it would be a great improvement. It would give an idea of extent that is lost now. And there might be some very pretty clumps got out of those mixed trees. What do you think?’
‘I should think it would be an improvement. One likes a “beyond” everywhere. But I never heard you express yourself so dubiously,’ said Esther, looking at him rather archly: ‘you generally see things so clearly, and are so convinced, that I shall begin to feel quite tottering if I find you in uncertainty. Pray don’t begin to be doubtful; it is so infectious.’
‘You think me a great deal too sure – too confident?’ said Harold.
‘Not at all. It is an immense advantage to know your own will, when you always mean to have it.’
‘But suppose I couldn’t get it, in spite of meaning?’ said Harold, with a beaming inquiry in his eyes.
‘O then,’ said Esther, turning her head aside, carelessly, as if she were considering the distant birch-stems, ‘you would bear it quite easily, as you did your not getting into Parliament. You would know you could get it another time – or get something else as good.’
‘The fact is,’ said Harold, moving on a little, as if he did not want to be quite overtaken by the others, ‘you consider me a fat, fatuous, self-satisfied fellow.’
‘O there are degrees,’ said Esther, with a silvery laugh; ‘you have just as much of those qualities as is becoming. There are different styles. You are perfect in your own.’
‘But you prefer another style, I suspect. A more submissive, tearful, devout worshipper, who would offer his incense with more trembling.’
‘You are quite mistaken,’ said Esther, still lightly. ‘I find I am very wayward. When anything is offered to me, it seems that I prize it less, and don’t want to have it.’
Here was a very baulking answer, but in spite of it Harold could not help believing that Esther was very far from objecting to the sort of incense he had been offering just then.
‘I have often read that that is in human nature,’ she went on, ‘yet it takes me by surprise in myself. I suppose,’ she added, smiling, ‘I didn’t think of myself as human nature.’
‘I don’t confess to the same waywardness,’ said Harold. ‘I am very fond of
things that I can get. And I never longed much for anything out of my reach. Whatever I feel sure of getting I like all the better. I think half those priggish maxims about human nature in the lump are no more to be relied on than universal remedies. There are different sorts of human nature. Some are given to discontent and longing, others to securing and enjoying. And let me tell you, the discontented longing style is unpleasant to live with.’
Harold nodded with a meaning smile at Esther.
‘O, I assure you I have abjured all admiration for it,’ she said, smiling up at him in return.
She was remembering the schooling Felix had given her about her Byronic heroes, and was inwardly adding a third sort of human nature to those varieties which Harold had mentioned. He naturally supposed that he might take the abjuration to be entirely in his own favour. And his face did look very pleasant; she could not help liking him, although he was certainly too particular about sauces, gravies, and wines, and had a way of virtually measuring the value of everything by the contribution it made to his own pleasure. His very good-nature was unsympathetic: it never came from any thorough understanding or deep respect for what was in the mind of the person he obliged or indulged; it was like his kindness to his mother – an arrangement of his for the happiness of others, which, if they were sensible, ought to succeed. And an inevitable comparison which haunted her, showed her the same quality in his political views: the utmost enjoyment of his own advantages was the solvent that blended pride in his family and position, with the adhesion to changes that were to obliterate tradition and melt down enchased gold heirlooms into plating for the egg-spoons of ‘the people’. It is terrible – the keen bright eye of a woman when it has once been turned with admiration on what is severely true; but then, the severely true rarely comes within its range of vision. Esther had had an unusual illumination; Harold did not know how, but he discerned enough of the effect to make him more cautious than he had ever been in his life before. That caution would have prevented him just then from following up the question as to the style of person Esther would think pleasant to live with, even if Uncle Lingon had not joined them, as he did, to talk about soughing tiles;2 saying presently that he should turn across the grass and get on to the Home Farm, to have a look at the improvements that Harold was making with such racing speed.
‘But you know, lad,’ said the Rector, as they paused at the expected parting, ‘you can’t do everything in a hurry. The wheat must have time to grow, even when you’ve reformed all us old Tories off the face of the ground. Dash it! now the election’s over: I’m an old Tory again. You see, Harold, a Radical won’t do for the county. At another election, you must be on the look-out for a borough where they want a bit of blood. I should have liked you uncommonly to stand for the county; and a Radical of good family squares well enough with a new-fashioned Tory like young Debarry; but you see, these riots – it’s been a nasty business. I shall have my hair combed at the sessions for a year to come. But, heyday! What dame is this, with a small boy? – not one of my parishioners?’
Harold and Esther turned, and saw an elderly woman advancing with a tiny red-haired boy, scantily attired as to his jacket, which merged into a small sparrow-tail a little higher than his waist, but muffled as to his throat with a blue woollen comforter. Esther recognized the pair too well, and felt very uncomfortable. We are so pitiably in subjection to all sorts of vanity – even the very vanities we are practically renouncing! And in spite of the almost solemn memories connected with Mrs Holt, Esther’s first shudder was raised by the idea of what things this woman would say, and by the mortification of having Felix in any way represented by his mother.
As Mrs Holt advanced into closer observation, it became more evident that she was attired with a view not to charm the eye, but rather to afflict it with all that expression of woe which belongs to very rusty bombazine and the limpest state of false hair. Still, she was not a woman to lose the sense of her own value, or become abject in her manners under any circumstances of depression; and she had a peculiar sense on the present occasion that she was justly relying on the force of her own character and judgment, in independence of anything that Mr Lyon or the masterful Felix would have said, if she had thought them worthy to know of her undertaking. She curtsied once, as if to the entire group, now including even the dogs, who showed various degrees of curiosity, especially as to what kind of game the smaller animal Job might prove to be after due investigation; and then she proceeded at once towards Esther, who, in spite of her annoyance, took her arm from Harold’s, said, ‘How do you do, Mrs Holt?’ very kindly, and stooped to pat little Job.
‘Yes – you know him, Miss Lyon,’ said Mrs Holt, in that tone which implies that the conversation is intended for the edification of the company generally; ‘you know the orphin child, as Felix brought home for me that am his mother to take care of. And it’s what I’ve done – nobody more so – though it’s trouble is my reward.’
Esther had raised herself again, to stand in helpless endurance of whatever might be coming. But by this time young Harry, struck even more than the dogs by the appearance of Job Tudge, had come round dragging his chariot, and placed himself close to the pale child, whom he exceeded in height and breadth, as well as in depth of colouring. He looked into Job’s eyes, peeped round at the tail of his jacket and pulled it a little, and then, taking off the tiny cloth-cap, observed with much interest the tight red curls which had been hidden underneath it. Job looked at his inspector with the round blue eyes of astonishment, until Harry, purely by way of experiment, took a bon-bon from a fantastic wallet which hung over his shoulder, and applied the test to Job’s lips. The result was satisfactory to both. Every one had been watching this small comedy, and when Job crunched the bon-bon while Harry looked down at him inquiringly and patted his back, there was general laughter except on the part of Mrs Holt, who was shaking her head slowly, and slapping the back of her left hand with the painful patience of a tragedian whose part is in abeyance to an ill-timed introduction of the humorous.
‘I hope Job’s cough has been better lately,’ said Esther, in mere uncertainty as to what it would be desirable to say or do.
‘I daresay you hope so, Miss Lyon,’ said Mrs Holt, looking at the distant landscape. ‘I’ve no reason to disbelieve but what you wish well to the child, and to Felix, and to me. I’m sure nobody has any occasion to wish me otherways. My character will bear inquiry, and what you, as are young, don’t know, others can tell you. That was what I said to myself when I made up my mind to come here and see you, and ask you to get me the freedom to speak to Mr Transome. I said, whatever Miss Lyon may be now, in the way of being lifted up among great people, she’s our minister’s daughter, and was not above coming to my house and walking with my son Felix – though I’ll not deny he made that figure on the Lord’s Day, that’ll perhaps go against him with the judge, if anybody thinks well to tell him.’
Here Mrs Holt paused a moment, as with a mind arrested by the painful image it had called up.
Esther’s face was glowing, when Harold glanced at her; and seeing this, he was considerate enough to address Mrs Holt instead of her.
‘You are then the mother of the unfortunate young man who is in prison?’
‘Indeed, I am, sir,’ said Mrs Holt, feeling that she was now in deep water. ‘It’s not likely I should claim him if he wasn’t my own; though it’s not by my will, nor my advice, sir, that he ever walked; for I gave him none but good. But if everybody’s son was guided by their mothers, the world ’ud be different; my son is not worse than many another woman’s son, and that in Treby, whatever they may say as haven’t got their sons in prison. And as to his giving up the doctoring, and then stopping his father’s medicines, I know it’s bad – that I know – but it’s me has had to suffer, and it’s me a king and Parliament ’ud consider, if they meant to do the right thing, and had anybody to make it known to ’em. And as for the rioting and killing the constable – my son said most plain to me he never mean
t it, and there was his bit of potato-pie for his dinner getting dry by the fire, the whole blessed time as I sat and never knew what was coming on me. And it’s my opinion as if great people make elections to get themselves into Parliament, and there’s riot and murder to do it, they ought to see as the widow and the widow’s son doesn’t suffer for it. I well know my duty: and I read my Bible; and I know in Jude where it’s been stained with the dried tulip-leaves this many a year, as you’re told not to rail at your betters if they was the devil himself;3 nor will I; but this I do say, if it’s three Mr Transomes instead of one as is listening to me, as there’s them ought to go to the king and get him to let off my son Felix.’
This speech, in its chief points, had been deliberately prepared. Mrs Holt had set her face like a flint, to make the gentry know their duty as she knew hers: her defiant, defensive tone was due to the consciousness, not only that she was braving a powerful audience, but that she was daring to stand on the strong basis of her own judgment in opposition to her son’s. Her proposals had been waived off by Mr Lyon and Felix; but she had long had the feminine conviction that if she could ‘get to speak’ in the right quarter, things might be different. The daring bit of impromptu about the three Mr Transomes was immediately suggested by a movement of old Mr Transome to the foreground in a line with Mr Lingon and Harold; his furred and unusual costume appearing to indicate a mysterious dignity which she must hasten to include in her appeal.
And there were reasons that none could have foreseen, which made Mrs Holt’s remonstrance immediately effective. While old Mr Transome stared, very much like a waxen image in which the expression is a failure, and the Rector, accustomed to female parishioners and complainants, looked on with a smile in his eyes, Harold said at once, with cordial kindness –
