Felix Holt, The Radical Part 5

said Mr. Lyon, not without a little prejudice in favor of the young man, whose language about the preacher in Malthouse Yard did not seem to him to be altogether dreadful. "Meanwhile, my friend, I counsel you to send up a supplication, which I shall not fail to offer also, that you may receive a spirit of humility and submission, so that you may not be hindered from seeing and following the Divine guidance in this matter by any false lights of pride and obstinacy. Of this more when I have spoken with your son."

"I'm not proud or obstinate, Mr. Lyon. I never did say I was everything that was bad, and I never will. And why this trouble should be sent on me above everybody else--for I haven't told you all. He's made himself a journeyman to Mr. Prowd the watchmaker--after all this learning--and he says he'll go with patches on his knees, and he shall like himself the better. And as for him having little boys to teach, they'll come in all weathers with dirty shoes. If it's madness, Mr. Lyon, it's no use your talking to him."

"We shall see. Perhaps it may even be the disguised working of grace within him. We must not judge rashly. Many eminent servants of G.o.d have been led by ways as strange."

"Then I'm sorry for their mothers, that's all, Mr. Lyon; and all the more if they'd been well-spoken-on women. For not my biggest enemy, whether it's he or she, if they'll speak the truth, can turn round and say I've deserved this trouble. And when everybody gets their due, and people's doings are spoke of on the house-tops, as the Bible says they will be, it'll be known what I've gone through with those medicines--the pounding and the pouring, and the letting stand, and the weighing--up early and down late--there's n.o.body knows yet but One that's worthy to know; and the pasting o' the printed labels right side upwards. There's few women would have gone through with it; and it's reasonable to think it'll be made up to me; for if there's promised and purchased blessings, I should think this trouble is purchasing 'em. For if my son Felix doesn't have a strait-waistcoat put on him, he'll have his way. But I say no more. I wish you good-morning, Mr. Lyon, and thank you, though I well know it's your duty to act as you're doing. And I never troubled you about my own soul, as some do who look down on me for not being a church member."

"Farewell, Mistress Holt, farewell. I pray that a more powerful teacher than I am may instruct you."

The door was closed, and the much-tried Rufus walked about again, saying aloud, groaningly--

"This woman has sat under the Gospel all her life, and she is as blind as a heathen, and as proud and stiff-necked as a Pharisee; yet she is one of the souls I watch for. 'Tis true that even Sara, the chosen mother of G.o.d's people, showed a spirit of unbelief, and perhaps of selfish anger; and it is a pa.s.sage that bears the unmistakable signet, 'doing honor to the wife or woman, as unto the weaker vessel.' For therein is the greatest check put on the ready scorn of the natural man."

CHAPTER V.

1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth That makes a vice of virtue by excess.

2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins Be loss of virtue?

1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time-- The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find A general level, nowhere in excess.

2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought, That future middlingness.

In the evening, when Mr. Lyon was expecting the knock at the door that would announce Felix Holt, he occupied his cus.h.i.+onless arm-chair in the sitting-room, and was skimming rapidly, in his short-sighted way, by the light of one candle, the pages of a missionary report, emitting occasionally a slight "Hm-m" that appeared to be expressive of criticism rather than of approbation. The room was dismally furnished, the only objects indicating an intention of ornament being a bookcase, a map of the Holy Land, an engraved portrait of Dr. Doddridge, and a black bust with a colored face, which for some reason or other was covered with green gauze. Yet any one whose attention was quite awake must have been aware, even on entering, of certain things that were incongruous with the general air of sombreness and privation. There was a delicate scent of dried rose-leaves; the light by which the minister was reading was a wax-candle in a white earthenware candle-stick, and the table on the opposite side of the fireplace held a dainty work-basket frilled with blue satin.

Felix Holt, when he entered, was not in an observant mood; and when, after seating himself, at the minister's invitation, near the little table which held the work-basket, he stared at the wax-candle opposite to him, he did so without any wonder or consciousness that the candle was not of tallow. But the minister's sensitiveness gave another interpretation to the gaze which he divined rather than saw; and in alarm lest this inconsistent extravagance should obstruct his usefulness, he hastened to say--

"You are doubtless amazed to see me with a wax-light, my young friend; but this undue luxury is paid for with the earnings of my daughter, who is so delicately framed that the smell of tallow is loathsome to her."

"I heeded not the candle, sir. I thank Heaven I am not a mouse to have a nose that takes note of wax or tallow."

The loud abrupt tones made the old man vibrate a little. He had been stroking his chin gently before, with a sense that he must be very quiet and deliberate in his treatment of the eccentric young man; but now, quite unreflectingly, he drew forth a pair of spectacles, which he was in the habit of using when he wanted to observe his interlocutor more closely than usual.

"And I myself, in fact, am equally indifferent," he said, as he opened and adjusted his gla.s.ses, "so that I have a sufficient light on my book." Here his large eyes looked discerningly through the spectacles.

"'Tis the quality of the page you care about, not of the candle," said Felix, smiling pleasantly enough at his inspector. "You're thinking that you have a roughly-written page before you now."

That was true. The minister, accustomed to the respectable air of provincial townsmen, and especially to the sleek well-clipped gravity of his own male congregation, felt a slight shock as his gla.s.ses made perfectly clear to him the s.h.a.ggy-headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed person of this questionable young man, without waistcoat or cravat. But the possibility, supported by some of Mrs. Holt's words, that a disguised work of grace might be going on in the son of whom she complained so bitterly, checked any hasty interpretations.

"I abstain from judging by the outward appearance only," he answered, with his usual simplicity. "I myself have experienced that when the spirit is much exercised it is difficult to remember neck-bands and strings and such small accidents of our vesture, which are nevertheless decent and needful so long as we sojourn in the flesh. And you, too, my young friend, as I gather from your mother's troubled and confused report, are undergoing some travail of mind. You will not, I trust, object to open yourself fully to me, as to an aged pastor who has himself had much inward wrestling, and has especially known much temptation from doubt."

"As to doubt," said Felix, loudly and brusquely as before, "if it is those absurd medicines and gulling advertis.e.m.e.nts that my mother has been talking of to you--and I suppose it is--I've no more doubt about _them_ than I have about pocket-picking. I know there's a stage of speculation in which a man may doubt whether a pickpocket is blameworthy--but I'm not one of your subtle fellows who keep looking at the world through their own legs. If I allowed the sale of those medicines to go on, and my mother to live out of the proceeds when I can keep her by the honest labor of my hands, I've not the least doubt that I should be a rascal."

"I would fain enquire more particularly into your objection to these medicines," said Mr. Lyon, gravely. Notwithstanding his conscientiousness and a certain originality in his own mental disposition, he was too little used to high principle quite dissociated from sectarian phraseology to be as immediately in sympathy with it as he would otherwise have been. "I know they have been well reported of, and many wise persons have tried remedies providentially discovered by those who are not regular physicians, and have found a blessing in the use of them. I may mention the eminent Mr. Wesley, who, though I hold not altogether with his Arminian doctrine, nor with the usages of his inst.i.tutions, was nevertheless a man of G.o.d; and the journals of various Christians whose names have left a sweet savor, might be cited in the same sense. Moreover, your father, who originally concocted these medicines and left them as a provision for your mother, was, as I understand, a man whose walk was not unfaithful."

"My father was ignorant," said Felix, bluntly. "He knew neither the complication of the human system, nor the way in which drugs counteract each other. Ignorance is not so d.a.m.nable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm. I know something about these things. I was 'prentice for five miserable years to a stupid brute of a country apothecary--my poor father left money for that--he thought nothing could be finer for me. No matter: I know that the Cathartic Pills are a drastic compound which may be as bad as poison to half the people who swallow them; that the Elixir is an absurd farrago of a dozen incompatible things; and that the Cancer Cure might as well be bottled ditch-water."

Mr. Lyon rose and walked up and down the room. His simplicity was strongly mixed with sagacity as well as sectarian prejudice, and he did not rely at once on a loud-spoken integrity--Satan might have flavored it with ostentation. Presently he asked, in a rapid, low tone, "How long have you known this, young man?"

"Well put, sir," said Felix. "I've known it a good deal longer than I have acted upon it, like plenty of other things. But you believe in conversion?"

"Yea, verily."

"So do I. I was converted by six weeks' debauchery."

The minister started. "Young man," he said, solemnly, going up close to Felix and laying a hand on his shoulder, "speak not lightly of the Divine operations, and restrain unseemly words."

"I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I laughed out loud at last to think that a poor devil like me, in a Scotch garret, with my stockings out at heel and a s.h.i.+lling or two to be dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and old women breathing gin as they pa.s.sed me on the stairs--wanting to turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter the world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, and if I don't lie and filch somebody else will. Well then, somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion, Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it."

Mr. Lyon removed his hand from Felix's shoulder and walked about again.

"Did you sit under any preacher at Glasgow, young man?"

"No: I heard most of the preachers once, but I never wanted to hear them twice."

The good Rufus was not without a slight rising of resentment at this young man's want of reverence. It was not yet plain whether he wanted to hear twice the preacher in Malthouse Yard. But the resentful feeling was carefully repressed: a soul in so peculiar a condition must be dealt with delicately.

"And now, may I ask," he said, "what course you mean to take, after hindering your mother from making and selling these drugs? I speak no more in their favor after what you have said. G.o.d forbid that I should strive to hinder you from seeking whatsoever things are honest and honorable. But your mother is advanced in years; she needs comfortable sustenance; you have doubtless considered how you may make her amends?

'He that provideth not for his own----' I trust you respect the authority that so speaks. And I will not suppose that, after being tender of conscience toward strangers, you will be careless toward your mother. There be indeed some who, taking a mighty charge on their shoulder, must perforce leave their households to Providence, and to the care of humbler brethren, but in such a case the call must be clear."

"I shall keep my mother as well--nay, better--than she has kept herself.

She has always been frugal. With my watch and clock cleaning, and teaching one or two little chaps that I've got to come to me, I can earn enough. As for me, I can live on bran porridge. I have the stomach of a rhinoceros."

"But for a young man so well furnished as you, who can questionless write a good hand and keep books, were it not well to seek some higher situation as clerk or a.s.sistant? I could speak to Brother Muscat, who is well acquainted with all such openings. Any place in Pendrell's Bank, I fear, is now closed against such as are not Churchmen. It used not to be so, but a year ago he discharged Brother Bodkin, although he was a valuable servant. Still, something might be found. There are ranks and degrees--and those who can serve in the higher must not unadvisedly change what seems to be a providential appointment. Your poor mother is not altogether----"

"Excuse me, Mr. Lyon; I've had all that out with my mother, and I may as well save you any trouble by telling you that my mind has been made up about that a long while ago. I'll take no employment that obliges me to prop up my chin with a high cravat, and wear straps, and pa.s.s the livelong day with a set of fellows who spend their spare money on s.h.i.+rt pins. That sort of work is really lower than many handicrafts; it only happens to be paid out of proportion. That's why I set myself to learn the watchmaking trade. My father was a weaver first of all. It would have been better for him if he had remained a weaver. I came home through Lancas.h.i.+re and saw an uncle of mine who is a weaver still. I mean to stick to the cla.s.s I belong to--people who don't follow the fas.h.i.+ons."

Mr. Lyon was silent a few moments. This dialogue was far from plain sailing; he was not certain of his lat.i.tude and longitude. If the despiser of Glasgow preachers had been arguing in favor of gin and Sabbath-breaking, Mr. Lyon's course would have been clearer. "Well, well," he said, deliberately, "it is true that St. Paul exercised the trade of tent-making, though he was learned in all the wisdom of the Rabbis."

"St. Paul was a wise man," said Felix. "Why should I want to get into the middle cla.s.s because I have some learning? The most of the middle cla.s.s are as ignorant as the working people about everything that doesn't belong to their own Brummagem life. That's how the workingmen are left to foolish devices and keep worsening themselves: the best heads among them forsake their boon comrades, and go in for a house with a high door-step and a bra.s.s knocker."

Mr. Lyon stroked his mouth and chin, perhaps because he felt some disposition to smile; and it would not be well to smile too readily at what seemed but a weedy resemblance of Christian unworldliness. On the contrary, there might be a dangerous snare in an unsanctified outstepping of average Christian practice.

"Nevertheless," he observed, gravely, "it is by such self-advancement that many have been enabled to do good service to the cause of liberty and to the public well-being. The ring and the robe of Joseph were no objects for a good man's ambition, but they were the signs of that credit which he won by his divinely-inspired skill, and which enabled him to act as a saviour to his brethren."

"Oh, yes, your ringed and scented men of the people!--I won't be one of them. Let a man once throttle himself with a satin stock, and he'll get new wants and new motives. Metamorphosis will have begun at his neck-joint, and it will go on till it has changed his likings first and then his reasoning, which will follow his likings as the feet of a hungry dog follow his nose. I'll have none of your clerkly gentility. I might end by collecting greasy pence from poor men to buy myself a fine coat and a glutton's dinner, on pretence of serving the poor men. I'd sooner be Paley's fat pigeon than a demagogue all tongue and stomach, though"--here Felix changed his voice a little--"I should like well enough to be another sort of demagogue, if I could."

"Then you have a strong interest in the great political movements of these times?" said Mr. Lyon, with a perceptible flas.h.i.+ng of the eyes.

"I should think so. I despise every man who has not--or, having it, doesn't try to rouse it in other men."

"Right, my young friend, right," said the minister, in a deep cordial tone. Inevitably his mind was drawn aside from the immediate consideration of Felix Holt's spiritual interest by the prospect of political sympathy. In those days so many instruments of G.o.d's cause in the fight for religious and political liberty held creeds that were painfully wrong, and, indeed, irreconcilable with salvation! "That is my own view, which I maintain in the face of some opposition from brethren who contend that a share in public movements is a hindrance to the closer walk, and that the pulpit is no place for teaching men their duties as members of the commonwealth. I have had much puerile blame cast upon me because I have uttered such names as Brougham and Wellington in the pulpit. Why not Wellington as well as Rabshakeh? and why not Brougham as well as Balaam? Does G.o.d know less of men than He did in the days of Hezekiah and Moses?--is His arm shortened, and is the world become too wide for His providence? But, they say, there are no politics in the New Testament----"

"Well, they're right enough there," said Felix, with his usual unceremoniousness.

"What! you are of those who hold that a Christian minister should not meddle with public matters in the pulpit?" said Mr. Lyon, coloring. "I am ready to join issue on that point."