Felix Holt, the Radical. George Eliot
to suit them."
"Esther, my dear," said Mr. Lyon, "let not your playfulness betray you into disrespect toward those venerable pilgrims. They struggled and endured in order to cherish and plant anew the seeds of a scriptural doctrine and of a pure discipline."
"Yes, I know," said Esther, hastily, dreading a discourse on the pilgrim fathers.
"Oh, they were an ugly lot!" Felix burst in, making Mr. Lyon start. "Miss Medora wouldn't have minded if they had all been put into the pillory and lost their ears. She would have said, 'Their ears did stick out so.' I shouldn't wonder if that's a bust of one of them." Here Felix, with sudden keenness of observation, nodded at the black bust with the gauze over its colored face.
"No," said Mr. Lyon, "that is the eminent George Whitfield, who, you well know, had a gift of oratory as of one on whom the tongue of flame had rested visibly. But Providence – doubtless for wise ends in relation to the inner man, for I would not enquire too closely into minutiæ which carry too many plausible interpretations for any one of them to be stable – Providence, I say, ordained that the good man should squint; and my daughter has not yet learned to bear with his infirmity."
"She has put a veil over it. Suppose you had squinted yourself?" said Felix, looking at Esther.
"Then, doubtless, you could have been more polite to me, Mr. Holt," said Esther, rising and placing herself at her work-table. "You seem to prefer what is unusual and ugly."
"A peacock!" thought Felix. "I should like to come and scold her every day, and make her cry and cut her fine hair off."
Felix rose to go, and said, "I will not take up any more of your valuable time, Mr. Lyon. I know that you have not many spare evenings."
"That is true, my young friend; for I now go to Sproxton one evening in the week. I do not despair that we may some day need a chapel there, though the hearers do not multiply save among the women, and there is no work as yet begun among the miners themselves. I shall be glad of your company in my walk thither to-morrow at five o'clock, if you would like to see how that population has grown of late years."
"Oh, I've been to Sproxton already several times. I had a congregation of my own there last Sunday evening."
"What! do you preach?" said Mr. Lyon, with brightened glance.
"Not exactly. I went to the ale-house."
Mr. Lyon started. "I trust you are putting a riddle to me, young man, even as Samson did to his companions. From what you said but lately, it cannot be that you are given to tippling and to taverns."
"Oh, I don't drink much. I order a pint of beer, and I get into talk with the fellows over their pots and pipes. Somebody must take a little knowledge and common-sense to them in this way, else how are they to get it? I go for educating the non-electors, so I put myself in the way of my pupils – my academy is the beer-house. I'll walk with you to-morrow with pleasure."
"Do so, do so," said Mr. Lyon, shaking hands with his odd acquaintance. "We shall understand each other better by-and-by, I doubt not."
"I wish you good-evening, Miss Lyon."
Esther bowed very slightly, without speaking.
"That is a singular young man, Esther," said the minister, walking about after Felix was gone. "I discern in him a love for whatsoever things are honest and true, which I would fain believe to be an earnest of further endowment with the wisdom that is from on high. It is true that, as the traveller in the desert is often lured, by a false vision of water and freshness, to turn aside from the track which leads to the tried and established fountains, so the Evil One will take advantage of a natural yearning toward the better, to delude the soul with a self-flattering belief in a visionary virtue, higher than the ordinary fruits of the Spirit. But I trust it is not so here. I feel a great enlargement in this young man's presence, notwithstanding a certain license in his language, which I shall use my efforts to correct."
"I think he is very coarse and rude," said Esther, with a touch of temper in her voice. "But he speaks better English than most of our visitors. What is his occupation?"
"Watch and clock making, by which, together with a little teaching, as I understand, he hopes to maintain his mother, not thinking it right that he should live by the sale of medicines whose virtues he distrusts. It is no common scruple."
"Dear me," said Esther, "I thought he was something higher than that." She was disappointed.
Felix, on his side, as he strolled out in the evening air, said to himself: "Now by what fine meshes of circumstance did that queer devout old man, with his awful creed, which makes this world a vestibule with double doors to hell, and a narrow stair on one side whereby the thinner sort may mount to heaven – by what subtle play of flesh and spirit did he come to have a daughter so little in his own likeness? Married foolishly, I suppose. I'll never marry, though I should have to live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I'll never look back and say, 'I had a fine purpose once – I meant to keep my hands clean and my soul upright, and to look truth in the face; but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children – I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve'; or 'My wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her feelings will be hurt if she is not thought genteel.' That is the lot Miss Esther is preparing for some man or other. I could grind my teeth at such self-satisfied minxes, who think they can tell everybody what is the correct thing, and the utmost stretch of their ideas will not place them on a level with the intelligent fleas. I should like to see if she could be made ashamed of herself."
CHAPTER VI
Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives,
And feed my mind, that dies for want of her.
Hardly any one in Treby who thought at all of Mr. Lyon and his daughter had not felt the same sort of wonder about Esther as Felix felt. She was not much liked by her father's church and congregation. The less serious observed that she had too many airs and graces and held her head much too high; the stricter sort feared greatly that Mr. Lyon had not been sufficiently careful in placing his daughter among God-fearing people, and that, being led astray by the melancholy vanity of giving her exceptional accomplishments, he had sent her to a French school, and allowed her to take situations where she had contracted notions not only above her own rank, but of too worldly a kind to be safe in any rank. But no one knew what sort of woman her mother had been, for Mr. Lyon never spoke of his past domesticities. When he was chosen as pastor at Treby in 1825, it was understood that he had been a widower many years, and he had no companion but the tearful and much-exercised Lyddy, his daughter being still at school. It was only two years ago that Esther had come home to live permanently with her father, and take pupils in the town. Within that time she had excited a passion in two young Dissenting breasts that were clad in the best style of Treby waistcoat – a garment which at that period displayed much design both in the stuff and the wearer; and she had secured an astonished admiration of her cleverness from the girls of various ages who were her pupils; indeed, her knowledge of French was generally held to give a distinction to Treby itself as compared with other market-towns. But she had won little regard of any other kind. Wise Dissenting matrons were divided between fear lest their sons should want to marry her and resentment that she should treat those "undeniable" young men with a distant scorn which was hardly to be tolerated in a minister's daughter; not only because that parentage appeared to entail an obligation to show an exceptional degree of Christian humility, but because, looked at from a secular point of view, a poor minister must be below the substantial householders who keep him. For at that time the preacher who was paid under the Voluntary system was regarded by his flock with feelings not less mixed than the spiritual person who still took his tithe-pig or his modus. His gifts were admired, and tears were shed under best bonnets at his sermons; but the weaker tea was thought good enough for him; and even when he went to preach a charity sermon in a strange town, he was treated with home-made wine and the smaller bedroom. As the good Churchman's reverence was often mixed with growling, and was apt to be given chiefly to an abstract parson who was what a parson ought to be, so the good Dissenter sometimes mixed his approval of ministerial gifts with considerable criticism and cheapening of the human vessel which contained those treasures.