Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (247 page)

‘I ought to be very much obliged to you for giving me your confidence so freely.’

‘Ah! now you are offended with me, and disgusted with me. I expected it would be so. A woman doesn’t like a man who tells her the truth.’

‘I think you boast a little too much of your truth-telling, Mr Holt,’ said Esther, flashing out at last. ‘That virtue is apt to be easy to people when they only wound others and not themselves. Telling the truth often means no more than taking a liberty.’

‘Yes, I suppose I should have been taking a liberty if I had tried to drag you back by the skirt when I saw you running into a pit.’

‘You should really found a sect. Preaching is your vocation. It is a pity you should ever have an audience of only one.’

‘I see; I have made a fool of myself. I thought you had a more generous mind - that you might be kindled to a better ambition. But I’ve set your vanity aflame - nothing else. I’m going. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ said Esther, not looking at him. He did not open the door immediately. He seemed to be adjusting his cap and pulling it down. Esther longed to be able to throw a lasso round him and compel him to stay, that she might say what she chose to him; her very anger made this departure irritating, especially as he had the last word, and that a very bitter one. But soon the latch was lifted and the door closed behind him. She ran up to her bedroom and burst into tears. Poor maiden! There was a strange contradiction of impulses in her mind in those first moments. She could not bear that Felix should not respect her, yet she could not bear that he should see her bend before his denunciation. She revolted against his assumption of superiority, yet she felt herself in a new kind of subjection to him. He was ill-bred, he was rude, he had taken an unwarrantable liberty; yet his indignant words were a tribute to her: he thought she was worth more pains than the women of whom he took no notice. It was excessively impertinent in him to tell her of his resolving not to love - not to marry - as if she cared about that; as if he thought himself likely to inspire an affection that would incline any woman to marry him after such eccentric steps as he had taken. Had he ever for a moment imagined that she had thought of him in the light of a man who would make love to her? . . . But did he love her one little bit, and was that the reason why he wanted her to change? Esther felt less angry at that form of freedom; though she was quite sure that she did not love him, and that she could never love any one who was so much of a pedagogue and a master, to say nothing of his oddities. But he wanted her to change. For the first time in her life Esther felt herself seriously shaken in her self-contentment. She knew there was a mind to which she appeared trivial, narrow, selfish. Every word Felix had said to her seemed to have burnt itself into her memory. She felt as if she should for evermore be haunted by self-criticism, and never do anything to satisfy those fancies on which she had simply piqued herself before without being dogged by inward questions. Her father’s desire for her conversion had never moved her; she saw that he adored her all the while, and he never checked her unregenerate acts as if they degraded her on earth, but only mourned over them as unfitting her for heaven. Unfitness for heaven (spoken of as ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘glory’), the prayers of a good little father, whose thoughts and motives seemed to her like the Life of Dr Doddridge, which she was content to leave unread, did not attack her self-respect and self-satisfaction. But now she had been stung - stung even into a new consciousness concerning her father. Was it true that his life was so much worthier than her own? She could not change for anything Felix said, but she told herself he was mistaken if he supposed her incapable of generous thoughts.

She heard her father coming into the house. She dried her tears, tried to recover herself hurriedly, and went down to him.

‘You want your tea, father; how your forehead burns!’ she said gently, kissing his brow, and then putting her cool hand on it.

Mr Lyon felt a little surprise; such spontaneous tenderness was not quite common with her; it reminded him of her mother.

‘My sweet child,’ he said gratefully, thinking with wonder of the treasures still left in our fallen nature.

CHAPTER 11

Truth is the precious harvest of the earth. But once, when harvest waved upon a land, The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar, Locusts, and all the swarming foul-born broods, Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws, And turned the harvest into pestilence, Until men said, What profits it to sow?

FELIX was going to Sproxton that Sunday afternoon. He always enjoyed his walk to that out-lying hamlet; it took him (by a short cut) through a corner of Sir Maximus Debarry’s park; then across a piece of common, broken here and there into red ridges below dark masses of furze; and for the rest of the way alongside the canal, where the Sunday peacefulness that seemed to rest on the bordering meadows and pastures was hardly broken if a horse pulled into sight along the towing-path, and a boat, with a little curl of blue smoke issuing from its tin chimney, came slowly gliding behind. Felix retained something of his boyish impression that the days in a canal-boat were all like Sundays; but the horse, if it had been put to him, would probably have preferred a more Judaic or Scotch rigour with regard to canal-boats, or at least that the Sunday towing should be done by asses, as a lower order.

This canal was only a branch of the grand trunk, and ended among the coal-pits, where Felix, crossing a network of black tram-roads, soon came to his destination - that public institute of Sproxton, known to its frequenters chiefly as Chubb’s, but less familiarly as the Sugar Loaf or the New Pits; this last being the name for the more modern and lively nucleus of the Sproxton hamlet. The other nucleus, known as the Old Pits, also supported its ‘public,’ but it had something of the forlorn air of an abandoned capital; and the company at the Blue Cow was of an inferior kind - equal, of course, in the fundamental attributes of humanity, such as desire for beer, but not equal in ability to pay for it.

When Felix arrived, the great Chubb was standing at the door. Mr Chubb was a remarkable publican; none of your stock Bonifaces, red, bloated, jolly, and joking. He was thin and sallow, and was never, as his constant guests observed, seen to be the worse (or the better) for liquor; indeed, as among soldiers an eminent general was held to have a charmed life, Chubb was held by the members of the Benefit Club to have a charmed sobriety, a vigilance over his own interest that resisted all narcotics. His very dreams, as stated by himself, had a method in them beyond the waking thoughts of other men. Pharaoh’s dream, he observed, was nothing to them; and, as lying so much out of ordinary experience, they were held particularly suitable for narration on Sunday evenings, when the listening colliers, well washed and in their best coats, shook their heads with a sense of that peculiar edification which belongs to the inexplicable. Mr Chubb’s reasons for becoming landlord of the Sugar Loaf were founded on the severest calculation. Having an active mind, and being averse to bodily labour, he had thoroughly considered what calling would yield him the best livelihood with the least possible exertion, and in that sort of line he had seen that a ‘public’ amongst miners who earned high wages was a fine opening. He had prospered according to the merits of such judicious calculation, was already a forty-shilling freeholder, and was conscious of a vote for the county. He was not one of those mean-spirited men who found the franchise embarrassing, and would rather have been without it: he regarded his vote as part of his investment, and meant to make the best of it. He called himself a straightforward man, and at suitable moments expressed his views freely; in fact, he was known to have one fundamental division for all opinion - ‘my idee’ and ‘humbug’.

When Felix approached, Mr Chubb was standing, as usual, with his hands nervously busy in his pockets, his eyes glancing round with a detective expression at the black landscape, and his lipless mouth compressed yet in constant movement. On a superficial view it might be supposed that so eager-seeming a personality was unsuited to the publican’s business; but in fact it was a great provocative to drinking. Like the shrill biting talk of a vixenish wife, it would have compelled you to ‘take a little something’ by way of dulling your sensibility.

Hitherto, notwithstanding Felix drank so little ale, the publican had treated him with high civility. The coming election was a great opportunity for applying his political ‘idee,’ which was, that society existed for the sake of the individual, and that the name of that individual was Chubb. Now, from a conjunction of absurd circumstances inconsistent with that idea, it happened that Sproxton had been hitherto somewhat neglected in the canvass. The head member of the company that worked the mines was Mr Peter Garstin, and the same company received the rent for the Sugar Loaf. Hence, as the person who had the most power of annoying Mr Chubb, and being of detriment to him, Mr Garstin was naturally the candidate for whom he had reserved his vote. But where there is this intention of ultimately gratifying a gentleman by voting for him in an open British manner on the day of the poll, a man, whether publican or pharisee (Mr Chubb used this generic classification of mankind as one that was sanctioned by Scripture), is all the freer in his relations with those deluded persons who take him for what he is not, and imagine him to be a waverer. But for some time opportunity had seemed barren. There were but three dubious votes besides Mr Chubb’s in the small district of which the Sugar Loaf could be regarded as the centre of intelligence and inspiration: the colliers, of course, had no votes, and did not need political conversion; consequently, the interests of Sproxton had only been tacitly cherished in the breasts of candidates. But ever since it had been known that a Radical candidate was in the field, that in consequences of this Mr Debarry had coalesced with Mr Garstin, and that Sir James Clement, the poor baronet, had

retired, Mr Chubb had been occupied with the most ingenious mental combinations in order to ascertain what possibilities of profit to the Sugar Loaf might lie in this altered state of the canvass.

He had a cousin in another county, also a publican, but in a larger way, and resident in a borough, and from him Mr Chubb had gathered more detailed political information than he could find in the Loamshire newspapers. He was now enlightened enough to know that there was a way of using voteless miners and navvies at nominations and elections. He approved of that; it entered into his political ‘idee’; and indeed he would have been for extending the franchise to this class - at least in Sproxton. If any one had observed that you must draw a line somewhere, Mr Chubb would have concurred at once, and would have given permission to draw it at a radius of two miles from his own tap.

From the first Sunday evening when Felix had appeared at the Sugar Loaf, Mr Chubb had made up his mind that this ‘cute man who kept himself sober was an electioneering agent. That he was hired for some purpose or other there was not a doubt; a man didn’t come and drink nothing without a good reason. In proportion as Felix’s purpose was not obvious to Chubb’s mind, it must be deep; and this growing conviction had even led the publican on the last Sunday evening privately to urge his mysterious visitor to let a little alc be chalked up for him - it was of no consequence. Felix knew his man, and had taken care not to betray too soon that his real object was so to win the ear of the best fellows about him as to induce them to meet him on a Saturday evening in the room where Mr Lyon, or one of his deacons, habitually held his Wednesday preachings. Only women and children, three old men, a journeyman tailor, and a consumptive youth, attended those preachings; not a collier had been won from the strong ale of the Sugar Loaf, not even a navvy from the muddier drink of the Blue Cow. Felix was sanguine; he saw some pleasant faces among the miners when they were washed on Sundays; they might be taught to spend their wages better. At all events, he was going to try: he had great confidence in his powers of appeal, and it was quite true that he never spoke without arresting attention. There was nothing better than a dame school in the hamlet; he thought that if he could move the fathers, whose blackened week-day persons and flannel caps, ornamented with tallow candles by way of plume, were a badge of hard labour for which he had a more sympathetic fibre than for any ribbon in the button-hole - if he could move these men to save something from their drink and pay a schoolmaster for their boys, a greater service would be done them than if Mr Garstin and his company were persuaded to establish a school.

‘I’ll lay hold of them by their fatherhood,’ said Felix; ‘I’ll take one of their little fellows and set him in the midst. Till they can show there’s something they love better than swilling themselves with ale, extension of the suffrage can never mean anything for them but extension of boozing. One must begin somewhere: I’ll begin at what is under my nose. I’ll begin at Sproxton. That’s what a man would do if he had a red-hot superstition. Can’t one work for sober truth as hard as for megrims?’

Felix Holt had his illusions, like other young men, though they were not of a fashionable sort; referring neither to the impression his costume and horsemanship might make on beholders, nor to the ease with which he would pay the Jews when he gave a loose to his talents and applied himself to work. He had fixed his choice on a certain Mike Brindle (not that Brindle was his real name - each collier had his sobriquet) as the man whom he would induce to walk part of the way home with him this very evening, and get to invite some of his comrades for the next Saturday. Brindle was one of the head miners; he had a bright good-natured face, and had given especial attention to certain performances with a magnet which Felix carried in his pocket.

Mr Chubb, who had also his illusions, smiled graciously as the enigmatic customer came up to the door-step.

‘Well, sir, Sunday seems to be your day: I begin to look for you on a Sunday now.’

‘Yes, I’m a working man; Sunday is my holiday,’ said Felix, pausing at the door since the host seemed to expect this.

‘Ah, sir, there’s many ways of working. I look at it you’re one of those as work with your brains. That’s what I do myself.’

‘One may do a good deal of that and work with one’s hands too.’

‘Ah, sir,’ said Mr Chubb, with a certain bitterness in his smile, ‘I’ve that sort of head that I’ve often wished I was stupider. I use things up, sir; I see into things a deal too quick. I eat my dinner, as you may say, at breakfast-time. That’s why I hardly ever smoke a pipe. No sooner do I stick a pipe in my mouth than I puff and puff till it’s gone before other folks are well lit; and then, where am I? I might as well have let it alone. In this world it’s better not to be too quick. But you know what it is, sir.’

‘Not I,’ said Felix, rubbing the back of his head, with a grimace. ‘I generally feel myself rather a blockhead. This world’s a largish place, and I haven’t turned everything inside out yet.’

‘Ah, that’s your deepness. I think we understand one another. And about this here election, I lay two to one we should agree if we was to come to talk about it.’

‘Ah ! ‘ said Felix, with an air of caution.

‘You’re none of a Tory, eh, sir? You won’t go to vote for Debarry? That was what I said at the very first go-off. Says I, he’s no Tory. I think I was right, sir - eh?’

‘Certainly; I’m no Tory.’

‘No, no, you don’t catch me wrong in a hurry. Well, between you and me, I care no more for the Debarrys than I care for Johnny Groats. I live on none o’ their land, and not a pot’s worth did they ever send to the Sugar Loaf. I’m not frightened at the Debarrys: there’s no man more independent than me. I’ll plump or I’ll split for them as treat me the handsomest and are the most of what I call gentlemen; that’s my idee. And in the way of hacting for any man, them are fools that don’t employ me.’

We mortals sometimes cut a pitiable figure in our attempts at display. We may be sure of our own merits, yet fatally ignorant of the point of view from which we are regarded by our neighbour. Our fine patterns in tattooing may be far from throwing him into a swoon of admiration, though we turn ourselves all round to show them. Thus it was with Mr Chubb.

‘Yes,’ said Felix, dryly; ‘I should think there are some sorts of work for which you are just fitted.’

‘Ah, you see that? Well, we understand one another. You’re no Tory; no more am I. And if I’d got four hands to show at a nomination, the Debarry’s shouldn’t have one of ‘em. My idee is, there’s a deal too much of their scutchins and their moniments in Treby church. What’s their scutchins mean? They’re a sign with little liquor behind ‘em; that’s how I take it. There’s nobody can give account of ‘em as I ever heard.’

Mr Chubb was hindered from further explaining his views as to the historical element in society by the arrival of new guests, who approached in two groups. The foremost group consisted of well-known colliers, in their good Sunday beavers and coloured handkerchiefs serving as cravats, with the long ends floating. The second group was a more unusual one, and caused Mr Chubb to compress his mouth and agitate the muscles about it in rather an excited manner.