CHAPTER XLIV.
I'm sick at heart. The eye of day, The insistent summer noon, seems pitiless, Shining in all the barren crevices Of weary life, leaving no shade, no dark, Where I may dream that hidden waters lie.
Shortly after Mrs. Holt's striking presentation of herself at TransomeCourt, Esther went on a second visit to her father. The Loamford Assizeswere approaching; it was expected that in about ten days Felix Holt'strial would come on, and some hints in her father's letters had givenEsther the impression that he was taking a melancholy view of theresult. Harold Transome had once or twice mentioned the subject with afacile hopefulness as to "the young fellow's coming off easily," which,in her anxious mind, was not a counterpoise to disquieting suggestions,and she had not chosen to introduce another conversation about FelixHolt, by questioning Harold concerning the probabilities he relied on.Since those moments on the terrace, Harold had daily become more of thesolicitous and indirectly beseeching lover; and Esther, from the veryfact that she was weighed on by thoughts that were painfully bewilderingto her--by thoughts which, in their newness to her young mind, seemed toshake her belief that life could be anything else than a compromise withthings repugnant to the moral taste--had become more passive to hisattentions at the very time that she had begun to feel more profoundlythat in accepting Harold Transome she left the high mountain air, thepassionate serenity of perfect love forever behind her, and must adjusther wishes to a life of middling delights, overhung with the languoroushaziness of motiveless ease, where poetry was only literature, and thefine ideas had to be taken down from the shelves of the library when herhusband's back was turned. But it seemed as if all outward conditionsconcurred, along with her generous sympathy for the Transomes, and withthose native tendencies against which she had once begun to struggle, tomake this middling lot the best she could attain to. She was in thishalf-sad, half-satisfied resignation to something like what is calledworldly wisdom, when she went to see her father, and learn what shecould from him about Felix.
The little minister was much depressed, unable to resign himself to thedread which had begun to haunt him, that Felix might have to endure theodious penalty of transportation for the manslaughter, which was theoffence that no evidence in his favor could disprove.
"I had been encouraged by the assurances of men instructed in thisregard," said Mr. Lyon, while Esther sat on the stool near him, andlistened anxiously, "that though he were pronounced guilty in regard tothis deed whereunto he hath calamitously fallen, yet that a judge mildlydisposed, and with a due sense of that invisible activity of the soulwhereby the deeds which are the same in outward appearance and effect,yet differ as the knife-stroke of the surgeon, even though it kill,differs from the knife-stroke of a wanton mutilater, might use hisdiscretion in tempering the punishment, so that it would not be veryevil to bear. But now it is said that the judge who cometh is a severeman, and one nourishing a prejudice against the bolder spirits whostand not in the old paths."
"I am going to be present at the trial, father," said Esther, who waspreparing the way to express a wish, which she was timid about even withher father. "I mentioned to Mrs. Transome that I should like to do so,and she said that she used in old days always to attend the assizes, andthat she would take me. You will be there, father?"
"Assuredly I shall be there, having been summoned to bear witness toFelix's character, and to his having uttered remonstrances and warningslong beforehand whereby he proved himself an enemy to riot. In our ears,who know him, it sounds strangely that aught else should be credible;but he hath few to speak for him, though I trust that Mr. HaroldTransome's testimony will go far, if, as you say, he is disposed to setaside minor regards, and not to speak the truth grudgingly andreluctantly. For the very truth hath a color from the disposition of theutterer."
"He is kind; he is capable of being generous," said Esther.
"It is well. For I verily believe that evil-minded men have been at workagainst Felix. The _Duffield Watchman_ hath written continually inallusion to him as one of those mischievous men who seek to elevatethemselves through the dishonor of their party; and as one of those whogo not heart and soul with the needs of the people, but seek only to geta hearing for themselves by raising their voices in crotchety discord.It is these things that cause me heaviness of spirit: the dark secret ofthis young man's lot is a cross I carry daily."
"Father," said Esther, timidly, while the eyes of both were filling withtears, "I should like to see him again before his trial. Might I? Willyou ask him? Will you take me?"
The minister raised his suffused eyes to hers, and did not speak for amoment or two. A new thought had visited him. But his delicatetenderness shrank even from an inward enquiry that was too curious--thatseemed like an effort to peep at sacred secrets.
"I see naught against it, my dear child, if you arrived early enough,and would take the elderly lady into your confidence, so that you mightdescend from the carriage at some suitable place--the house of theIndependent minister, for example--where I could meet and accompany you.I would forewarn Felix, who would doubtless delight to see your faceagain; seeing that he may go away, and be, as it were, buried from you,even though it may be only in prison, and not----"
This was too much for Esther. She threw her arms round her father's neckand sobbed like a child. It was an unspeakable relief to her after allthe pent-up, stifling experience, all the inward incommunicable debateof the last few weeks. The old man was deeply moved, too, and held hisarm close round the dear child, praying silently.
No word was spoken for some minutes, till Esther raised herself, driedher eyes, and, with an action that seemed playful, though there was nosmile on her face, pressed her handkerchief against her father's cheeks.Then, when she had put her hand in his, he said, solemnly--
"'Tis a great and mysterious gift, this clinging of the heart, myEsther, whereby it hath often seemed to me that even in the very momentof suffering our souls have the keenest foretaste of heaven. I speak notlightly, but as one who hath endured. And 'tis a strange truth that onlyin the agony of parting we look into the depths of love."
So the interview ended, without any question from Mr. Lyon concerningwhat Esther contemplated as the ultimate arrangement between herself andthe Transomes.
After this conversation, which showed him that what happened to Felixtouched Esther more closely than he had supposed, the minister felt noimpulse to raise the images of a future so unlike anything that Felixwould share. And Esther would have been unable to answer any suchquestions. The successive weeks, instead of bringing her nearer toclearness and decision, had only brought that state of disenchantmentbelonging to the actual presence of things which have long dwelt in theimagination with all the factitious charms of arbitrary arrangement. Herimaginary mansion had not been inhabited just as Transome Court was; herimaginary fortune had not been attended with circumstances which she wasunable to sweep away. She, herself, in her Utopia, had never been whatshe was now--a woman whose heart was divided and oppressed. The firstspontaneous offering of her woman's devotion, the first greatinspiration of her life, was a sort of vanished ecstasy which had leftits wounds. It seemed to her a cruel misfortune of her young life thather best feeling, her most precious dependence, had been called forthjust where the conditions were hardest, and that all the easyinvitations of circumstance were toward something which that previousconsecration of her longing had made a moral descent for her. It wascharacteristic of her that she scarcely at all entertained thealternative of such a compromise as would have given her the largerportion of the fortune to which she had a legal claim, and yet havesatisfied her sympathy by leaving the Transomes in possession of theirold home. Her domestication with this family had brought them into theforeground of her imagination the gradual wooing of Harold had acted onher with a constant immediate influence that predominated over allindefinite prospects; and a solitary elevation to wealth, which out ofUtopia she had no notion how she should manage, looked as chill anddreary as the o
ffer of dignities in an unknown country.
In the ages since Adam's marriage, it has been good for some men to bealone, and for some women also. But Esther was not one of these women:she was intensely of the feminine type, verging neither toward the saintnor the angel. She was "a fair divided excellence, whose fullness ofperfection" must be in marriage. And, like all youthful creatures, shefelt as if the present conditions of choice were final. It belonged tothe freshness of her heart that, having had her emotions stronglystirred by real objects, she never speculated on possible relations yetto come. It seemed to her that she stood at the first and last partingof the ways. And, in one sense she was under no illusion. It is only inthat freshness of our time that the choice is possible which gives unityto life, and makes the memory a temple where all relics and all votiveofferings, all worship and all grateful joy, are an unbroken historysanctified by one religion.