by George Eliot
CHAPTER XXVII.
To hear with eyes is part of love's rare wit.
--SHAKESPEARE: _Sonnets_.
Custom calls me to't; What custom wills, in all things should we do't. The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heaped For truth to over-peer.--_Coriolanus._
In the afternoon Mr. Lyon went out to see the sick amongst his flock,and Esther, who had been passing the morning in dwelling on the memoriesand the few remaining relics of her parents, was left alone in theparlor amidst the lingering odors of the early dinner, not easily gotrid of in that small house. Rich people, who know nothing of thesevulgar details, can hardly imagine their significance in the history ofmultitudes of human lives in which the sensibilities are never adjustedto the external conditions. Esther always felt so much discomfort fromthose odors that she usually seized any possibility of escaping fromthem, and to-day they oppressed her the more because she was weary withlong-continued agitation. Why did she not put on her bonnet as usual andget out into the open air? It was one of those pleasant Novemberafternoons--pleasant in the wide country--when the sunshine is on theclinging brown leaves of the young oaks, and the last yellow leaves ofthe elms flutter down in the fresh but not eager breeze. But Esther satstill on the sofa--pale and with reddened eyelids, her curls all pushedback carelessly, and her elbow resting on the ridgy black horsehair,which usually almost set her teeth on edge if she pressed it eventhrough her sleeve--while her eyes rested blankly on the dull street.Lyddy had said, "Miss, you look sadly; if you can't take a walk, go andlie down." She had never seen the curls in such disorder, and shereflected that there had been a death from typhus recently. But theobstinate Miss only shook her head.
Esther was waiting for the sake of--not a probability, but--a merepossibility, which made the brothy odors endurable. Apparently, in lessthan half an hour, the possibility came to pass, for she changed herattitude, almost started from her seat, sat down again, and listenedeagerly. If Lyddy should send him away, could she herself rush out andcall him back? Why not? Such things were permissible where it wasunderstood, from the necessity of the case, that there was onlyfriendship. But Lyddy opened the door and said, "Here's Mr. Holt, Miss,wants to know if you'll give him leave to come in. I told him you wassadly."
"Oh, yes, Lyddy, beg him to come in."
"I should not have persevered," said Felix, as they shook hands, "only Iknow Lyddy's dismal way. But you do look ill," he went on, as he seatedhimself at the other end of the sofa. "Or rather--for that's a false wayof putting it--you look as if you had been very much distressed. Do youmind about my taking notice of it?"
He spoke very kindly, and looked at her more persistently than he hadever done before, when her hair was perfect.
"You are quite right. I am not at all ill. But I have been very muchagitated this morning. My father has been telling me things I neverheard before about my mother, and giving me things that belonged to her.She died when I was a very little creature."
"Then it is no new pain or trouble for you and Mr. Lyon? I could nothelp being anxious to know that."
Esther passed her hand over her brow before she answered. "I hardly knowwhether it is pain, or something better than pleasure. It has made mesee things I was blind to before--depths in my father's nature."
As she said this, she looked at Felix, and their eyes met very gravely.
"It is such a beautiful day," he said, "it would do you good to go intothe air. Let me take you along the river toward Little Treby, will you?"
"I will put my bonnet on," said Esther, unhesitatingly, though they hadnever walked out together before.
It is true that to get into the fields they had to pass through thestreet; and when Esther saw some acquaintances, she reflected that herwalking alone with Felix might be a subject of remark--all the morebecause of his cap, patched boots, no cravat, and thick stick. Estherwas a little amazed herself at what she had come to. So our lives glideon: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and there isno more jumping ashore.
When they were in the streets Esther hardly spoke. Felix talked with hisusual readiness, as easily as if he were not doing it solely to diverther thoughts, first about Job Tudge's delicate chest, and theprobability that the little white-faced monkey would not live long; andthen about a miserable beginning of a night-school, which was all hecould get together at Sproxton, and the dismalness of that hamlet, whichwas a sort of lip to the coalpit on one side and the "public" on theother--and yet a paradise compared with the wynds of Glasgow, wherethere was little more than a chink of daylight to show the hatred inwomen's faces.
But soon they got into the fields, where there was a right of way towardLittle Treby, now following the course of the river, now crossing towarda lane, and now turning into a cart-track through a plantation.
"Here we are!" said Felix, when they had crossed the wooden bridge, andwere treading on the slanting shadows made by the elm-trunks. "I thinkthis is delicious. I never feel less unhappy than in these late autumnafternoons when they are sunny."
"Less unhappy! There now!" said Esther, smiling at him with some of herhabitual sauciness, "I have caught you in self-contradiction. I haveheard you quite furious against puling, melancholy people. If I had saidwhat you have just said, you would have given me a long lecture, andtold me to go home and interest myself in the reason of therule-of-three."
"Very likely," said Felix, beating the weeds, according to the foible ofour common humanity when it has a stick in its hand. "But I don't thinkmyself a fine fellow because I'm melancholy. I don't measure my force bythe negations in me, and think my soul must be a mighty one because itis more given to idle suffering than to beneficent activity. That's whatyour favorite gentlemen do, of the Byronic-bilious style."
"I don't admit that those are my favorite gentlemen."
"I've heard you defend them--gentlemen like your Renes, who have noparticular talent for the finite, but a general sense that the infiniteis the right thing for them. They might as well boast of nausea as aproof of a strong inside."
"Stop, stop! You run on in that way to get out of my reach. I convictedyou of confessing that you are melancholy."
"Yes," said Felix, thrusting his left hand into his pocket, with ashrug; "as I could confess to a great many other things I'm not proudof. The fact is, there are not many easy lots to be drawn in the worldat present; and such as they are I am not envious of them. I don't saylife is not worth having to a man who has some sparks of sense andfeeling and bravery in him. And the finest fellow of all would be theone who could be glad to have lived because the world was chieflymiserable, and his life had come to help some one who needed it. Hewould be the man who had the most powers and the fewest selfish wants.But I'm not up to the level of what I see to be best. I'm often a hungrydiscontented fellow."
"Why have you made your life so hard then?" said Esther, ratherfrightened as she asked the question. "It seems to me you have tried tofind just the most difficult task."
"Not at all," said Felix, with curt decision. "My course was a verysimple one. It was pointed out to me by conditions that I saw as clearlyas I see the bars of this stile. It's a difficult stile too," addedFelix, striding over. "Shall I help you, or will you be left toyourself?"
"I can do without help, thank you."
"It was simple enough," continued Felix, as they walked on. "If I meantto put a stop to the sale of those drugs, I must keep my mother, and ofcourse at her age she would not leave the place she had been used to.And I had made up my mind against what they call genteel business."
"But suppose every one did as you do? Please to forgive me for sayingso; but I cannot see why you could not have lived as honorably with someemployment that presupposes education and refinement."
"Because you can't see my history or my nature," said Felix, bluntly. "Ihave to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don't blame them,or think I am
better than they; their circumstances are different. Iwould never choose to withdraw myself from the labor and common burdenof the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the push and thescramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me afool, and say that mankind are benefited by the push and the scramble inthe long-run. But I care for the people who live now and will not beliving when the long-run comes. As it is, I prefer going shares with theunlucky."
Esther did not speak, and there was silence between them for a minute ortwo, till they passed through a gate into a plantation where there wasno large timber, but only thin-stemmed trees and underwood, so that thesunlight fell on the mossy spaces which lay open here and there.
"See how beautiful those stooping birch-stems are with the light onthem!" said Felix. "Here is an old felled trunk they have not thoughtworth carrying away. Shall we sit down a little while?"
"Yes; the mossy ground with the dry leaves sprinkled over it isdelightful to one's feet." Esther sat down and took off her bonnet, thatthe light breeze might fall on her head. Felix, too, threw down his capand stick, lying on the ground with his back against the felled trunk.
"I wish I felt more as you do," she said, looking at the point of herfoot, which was playing with a tuft of moss. "I can't help caring verymuch what happens to me. And you seem to care so little about yourself."
"You are thoroughly mistaken," said Felix. "It is just because I'm avery ambitious fellow, with very hungry passions, wanting a great dealto satisfy me, that I have chosen to give up what people call worldlygood. At least that has been one determining reason. It all depends onwhat a man gets into his consciousness--what life thrusts into his mind,so that it becomes present to him as remorse is present to the guilty,or a mechanical problem to an inventive genius. There are two thingsI've got present in that way: one of them is the picture of what Ishould hate to be. I'm determined never to go about making my facesimpering or solemn, and telling professional lies for profit; or to gettangled in affairs where I must wink at dishonesty and pocket theproceeds, and justify that knavery as part of a system that I can'talter. If I once went into that sort of struggle for success I shouldwant to win--I should defend the wrong that I had once identified myselfwith. I should become everything that I see now beforehand to bedetestable. And what's more, I should do this, as men are doing it everyday, for a ridiculously small prize--perhaps for none at all--perhapsfor the sake of two parlors, a rank eligible for the churchwardenship, adiscontented wife, and several unhopeful children."
Esther felt a terrible pressure on her heart--the certainty of herremoteness from Felix--the sense that she was utterly trivial to him.
"The other thing that's got into my mind like a splinter," said Felix,after a pause, "is the life of the miserable--the spawning life of viceand hunger. I'll never be one of the sleek dogs. The old Catholics areright, with their higher rule and their lower. Some are called tosubject themselves to a harder discipline, and renounce thingsvoluntarily which are lawful for others. It is the old word--'necessity'is laid upon me.
"It seems to me you are stricter than my father is."
"No; I quarrel with no delight that is not base or cruel, but one mustsometimes accommodate one's self to a small share. That is the lot ofthe majority. I would wish the minority joy, only they don't want mywishes."
Again there was silence. Esther's cheeks were hot in spite of the breezethat sent her hair floating backward. She felt an inward strain, ademand on her to see things in a light that was not easy or soothing.When Felix had asked her to walk he seemed so kind, so alive to whatmight be her feelings, that she had thought herself nearer to him thanshe had ever been before; but since they had come out he had appeared toforget all that. And yet she was conscious that this impatience of herswas very petty. Battling in this way with her own little impulses, andlooking at the birch-stems opposite till her gaze was too wide for herto see anything distinctly, she was unaware how long they had remainedwithout speaking. She did not know that Felix had changed his attitude alittle, and was resting his elbow on the tree-trunk, while he supportedhis head, which was turned toward her. Suddenly he said, in a lower tonethan was habitual to him:
"You are very beautiful."
She started and looked round at him, to see whether his face would givesome help to the interpretation of this novel speech. He was looking upat her quite calmly, very much as a reverential Protestant might look ata picture of the Virgin, with a devoutness suggested by the type ratherthan by the image. Esther's vanity was not in the least gratified: shefelt that, somehow or other, Felix was going to reproach her.
"I wonder," he went on, still looking at her, "whether the subtlemeasuring of forces will ever come to measuring the force there would bein one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face wasbeautiful--who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with allthe great aims of his life."
Esther's eyes got hot and smarting. It was no use trying to bedignified. She had turned away her head, and now said, rather bitterly,"It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be anything good when she isnot believed in--when it is always supposed that she must becontemptible."
"No, dear Esther"--it was the first time Felix had been prompted to callher by her Christian name, and as he did so he laid his large hand onher two little hands, which were clasped on her knees. "You don'tbelieve that I think you contemptible. When I first saw you----"
"I know, I know," said Esther, interrupting him impetuously, but stilllooking away. "You mean you did think me contemptible then. But it wasvery narrow of you to judge me in that way, when my life had been sodifferent from yours. I have great faults. I know I am selfish, andthink too much of my own small tastes and too little of what affectsothers. But I am not stupid. I am not unfeeling. I can see what isbetter."
"But I have not done you injustice since I knew more of you," saidFelix, gently.
"Yes, you have," said Esther, turning and smiling at him through hertears. "You talk to me like an angry pedagogue. Were _you_ always wise?Remember the time when you were foolish or naughty."
"That is not far off," said Felix, curtly, taking away his hand, andclasping it with the other at the back of his head. The talk, whichseemed to be introducing a mutual understanding, such as had not existedbefore, seemed to have undergone some check.
"Shall we get up and walk back now?" said Esther, after a few moments.
"No," said Felix, entreatingly. "Don't move yet. I dare say we shallnever walk together or sit here again."
"Why not?"
"Because I am a man who am warned by visions. Those old stories ofvisions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by makingthe future present to ourselves."
"I wish I could get visions, then," said Esther, smiling at him, with aneffort of playfulness, in resistance to something vaguely mournfulwithin her.
"That is what I want," said Felix, looking at her very earnestly. "Don'tturn your head. Do look at me, and then I shall know if I may go onspeaking. I do believe in you; but I want you to have such a vision ofthe future that you may never lose your best self. Some charm or othermay be flung about you--some of your attar-of-rose fascinations--andnothing but a good strong terrible vision will save you. And if it didsave you, you might be that woman I was thinking of a little while agowhen I looked at your face: the woman whose beauty makes a great taskeasier to men instead of turning them away from it. I am not likely tosee such fine issues; but they may come where a woman's spirit is finelytouched. I should like to be sure they would come to you."
"Why are you not likely to know what becomes of me?" said Esther,turning away her eyes in spite of his command. "Why should you notalways be my father's friend and mine?"
"Oh, I shall go away as soon as I can to some large town," said Felix,in his more usual tone--"some ugly, wicked, miserable place. I want tobe a demagogue of a new sort; an honest one, if possible, who will tellthe people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them norfatten on them. I have my h
eritage--an order I belong to. I have theblood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand upfor the lot of the handicraftsman as a good lot, in which a man may bebetter trained to all the best functions of his nature than if hebelonged to the grimacing set who have visiting-cards, and are proud tobe thought richer than their neighbors."
"Would nothing ever make it seem right to you to change your mind?" saidEsther (she had rapidly woven some possibilities out of the newuncertainties in her own lot, though she would not for the world havehad Felix know of her weaving). "Suppose, by some means or other, afortune might come to you honorably--by marriage, or in any otherunexpected way--would you see no change in your course?"
"No," said Felix, peremptorily; "I will never be rich. I don't countthat as any peculiar virtue. Some men do well to accept riches, but thatis not my inward vocation: I have no fellow-feeling with the rich as aclass; the habits of their lives are odious to me. Thousands of men havewedded poverty because they expect to go to heaven for it; I don'texpect to go to heaven for it, but I wed it because it enables me to dowhat I most want to do on earth. Whatever the hopes for the world maybe--whether great or small--I am a man of this generation I will try tomake life less bitter for a few within my reach. It is held reasonableenough to toil for the fortunes of a family, though it may turn toimbecility in the third generation. I choose a family with more chancesin it."
Esther looked before her dreamily till she said, "That seems a hard lot;yet it is a great one." She rose to walk back.
"Then you don't think I'm a fool," said Felix, loudly, starting to hisfeet, and then stooping to gather up his cap and stick.
"Of course you suspected me of that stupidity."
"Well--women, unless they are Saint Theresas or Elizabeth Frys,generally think this sort of thing madness, unless when they read of itin the Bible."
"A woman can hardly ever choose in that way; she is dependent on whathappens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner thingsare within her reach."
"Why, can you imagine yourself choosing hardship as the better lot?"said Felix, looking at her with a sudden question in his eyes.
"Yes, I can," she said, flushing over neck and brow.
Their words were charged with a meaning dependent entirely on the secretconsciousness of each. Nothing had been said which was necessarilypersonal. They walked a few yards along the road by which they had come,without further speech, till Felix said gently, "Take my arm." She tookit, and they walked home so, entirely without conversation. Felix wasstruggling as a firm man struggles with a temptation, seeing beyond itand disbelieving its lying promise. Esther was struggling as a womanstruggles with the yearning for some expression of love, and withvexation under that subjection to a yearning which is not likely to besatisfied. Each was conscious of a silence which each was unable tobreak, till they entered Malthouse Lane, and were within a few yards ofthe minister's door.
"It is getting dusk," Felix then said; "will Mr. Lyon be anxious aboutyou?"
"No, I think not. Lyddy would tell him that I went out with you, andthat you carried a large stick," said Esther, with a light laugh.
Felix went in with Esther to take tea, but the conversation was entirelybetween him and Mr. Lyon about the tricks of canvassing, the foolishpersonality of the placards, and the probabilities of Transome's return,as to which Felix declared himself to have become indifferent. Thisscepticism made the minister uneasy: he had great belief in the oldpolitical watchwords, had preached that universal suffrage and no ballotwere agreeable to the will of God, and liked to believe that a visible"instrument" was forthcoming in the Radical candidate who had pronouncedemphatically against Whig finality. Felix, being in a perverse mood,contended that universal suffrage would be equally agreeable to thedevil; that he would change his politics a little, have a largertraffic, and see himself more fully represented in Parliament.
"Nay, my friend," said the minister, "you are again sporting withparadox; for you will not deny that you glory in the name of Radical, orRoot-and-branch man, as they said in the great times when Nonconformitywas in its giant youth."
"A Radical--yes; but I want to go to some roots a good deal lower downthan the franchise."
"Truly there is a work within which cannot be dispensed with; but it isour preliminary work to free men from the stifled life of politicalnullity, and bring them into what Milton calls 'the liberal air,'wherein alone can be wrought the final triumphs of the Spirit."
"With all my heart. But while Caliban is Caliban, though you multiplyhim by a million, he'll worship every Trinculo that carries a bottle. Iforget, though--you don't read Shakespeare, Mr. Lyon."
"I am bound to confess that I have so far looked into a volume ofEsther's as to conceive your meaning; but the fantasies therein were solittle to be reconciled with a steady contemplation of that divineeconomy which is hidden from sense and revealed to faith, that I forborethe reading, as likely to perturb my ministrations."
Esther sat by in unusual silence. The conviction that Felix willed herexclusion from his life was making it plain that something more thanfriendship between them was not so thoroughly out of the question as shehad always inwardly asserted. In her pain that his choice lay aloof fromher, she was compelled frankly to admit to herself the longing that ithad been otherwise, and that he had entreated her to share his difficultlife. He was like no one else to her: he had seemed to bring at once alaw, and the love that gave strength to obey the law. Yet the nextmoment, stung by his independence of her, she denied that she loved him;she had only longed for a moral support under the negations of her life.If she were not to have that support, all effort seemed useless.
Esther had been so long used to hear the formulas of her father's beliefwithout feeling or understanding them, that they had lost all power totouch her. The first religious experience of her life--the firstself-questioning, the first voluntary subjection, the first longing toacquire the strength of greater motives and obey the more strenuousrule--had come to her through Felix Holt. No wonder that she felt as ifthe loss of him were inevitable backsliding.
But was it certain that she should lose him? She did not believe that hewas really indifferent to her.