Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (251 page)

‘Give me your arm to the door, my friend. I feel ill. Doubtless I am over-wearied.’

The door was already open, and Lyddy was watching for her master’s return. Felix therefore said ‘Good-night’ and passed on, sure that this was what Mr Lyon would prefer. The minister’s supper of warm porridge was ready by the kitchen-fire, where he always took it on a Sunday evening, and afterwards smoked his weekly pipe up the broad chimney - the one great relaxation he allowed himself. Smoking, he considered, was a recreation of the travailed spirit, which, if indulged in, might endear this world to us by the ignoble bonds of mere sensuous ease. Daily smoking might be lawful, but it was not expedient. And in this Esther concurred with a doctrinal eagerness that was unusual in her. It was her habit to go to her own room, professedly to bed, very early on Sundays - immediately on her return from chapel - that she might avoid her father’s pipe. But this evening she had remained at home, under a true plea of not feeling well; and when she heard him enter, she ran out of the parlour to meet him.

‘Father, you are ill,’ she said, as he tottered to the wicker-bottomed arm-chair, while Lyddy stood by, shaking her head.

‘No, my dear,’ he answered feebly, as she took off his hat and looked in his face inquiringly; ‘I am weary.’

‘Let me lay these things down for you,’ said Esther, touching the bundle in the handkerchief.

‘No; they are matters which I have to examine,’ he said, laying them on the table, and putting his arm across them. ‘Go you to bed, Lyddy.’

‘Not me, sir. If ever a man looked as if he was struck with death, it’s you, this very night as here is.’

‘Nonsense, Lyddy,’ said Esther angrily. ‘Go to bed when my father desires it. I will stay with him.’

Lyddy was electrified by surprise at this new behaviour of Miss Esther’s. She took her candle silently and went.

‘Go you too, my dear,’ said Mr Lyon, tenderly, giving his hand to Esther, when Lyddy was gone. ‘It is your wont to go early. Why are you up?’

‘Let me lift your porridge from before the fire, and stay with you, father. You think I’m so naughty that I don’t like doing anything for you,’ said Esther, smiling rather sadly at him.

‘Child, what has happened? you have become the image of your mother to-night,’ said the minister, in a loud whisper. The tears came and relieved him, while Esther, who had stooped to lift the porridge from the fender, paused on one knee and looked up at him. ‘She was very good to you?’ asked Esther, softly.

‘Yes, dear. She did not reject my affection. She thought not scorn of my love. She would have forgiven me, if I had erred against her, from very tenderness. Could you forgive me, child?’

‘Father, I have not been good to you; but I will be, I will be,’ said Esther, laying her head on his knee.

He kissed her head. ‘Go to bed, my dear; I would be alone.’

When Esther was lying down that night, she felt as if the little incidents between herself and her father on this Sunday had made it an epoch. Very slight words and deeds may have a sacramental efficacy, if we can cast our self-love behind us, in order to say or do them. And it has been well believed through many ages that the beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life; that the mind which sees itself blameless may be called dead in trespasses - in trespasses on the love of others, in trespasses on their weakness, in trespasses on all those great claims which are the image of our own need.

But Esther persisted in assuring herself that she was not bending to any criticism from Felix. She was full of resentment against his rudeness, and yet more against his too harsh conception of her character. She was determined to keep as much at a distance from him as possible.

CHAPTER 14

This man’s metallic; at a sudden blow

His soul rings hard. I cannot lay my palm,

Trembling with life, upon that jointed brass.

I shudder at the cold unanswering touch;

But if it press me in response, I’m bruised.

THE next morning, when the Debarrys, including the rector, who had ridden over to the Manor early, were still seated at breakfast, Christian came in with a letter, saying that it had been brought by a man employed at the chapel in Malthouse Yard, who had been ordered by the minister to use aLi speed and care in the delivery. The letter was addressed to Sir Maximus.

‘Stay, Christian, it may possibly refer to the lost pocket-book,’ said Philip Debarry, who was beginning to feel rather sorry for his factotum, as a reaction from previous suspicions and indignation.

Sir Maximus opened the letter and felt for his glasses, but then said, ‘Here, you read it, Phil: the man writes a hand like small print.’

Philip cast his eyes over it, and then read aloud in a tone of satisfaction: --

Sir, - I send this letter to apprise you that I have now in my possession certain articles, which, last evening, at about half-past seven o’clock, were found lying on the grass at the western extremity of your park. The articles are - 1ø, a well-filled pocket-book, of brown leather, fastened with a black ribbon and with a seal of red wax; 2ø, a small note-book, covered with gilded vellum, whereof the clasp was burst, and from out whereof had partly escaped a small gold chain, with seals and a locket attached, the locket bearing on the back a device, and round the face a female name.

Wherefore I request that you will further my effort to place these articles in the right hands, by ascertaining whether any person within your walls claims them as his property, and by sending that person to me (if such be found); for I will on no account let them pass from my care save into that of one who, declaring himself to be the owner, can state to me what is the impression on the seal, and what the device and name upon the locket. - I am, Sir, yours to command in all right dealing,

RUFUS LYON. Malthouse Yard, Oct. 3, 1832.

‘Well done, old Lyon,’ said the rector; ‘I didn’t think that any composition of his would ever give me so much pleasure.’

‘What an old fox it is!’ said Sir Maximus. ‘Why couldn’t he send the things to me at once along with the letter?’

‘No, no, Max; he uses a justifiable caution,’ said the rector, a refined and rather severe likeness of his brother, with a ring of fearlessness and decision in his voice which startled all flaccid men and unruly boys. ‘What are you going to do, Phil?’ seeing his nephew rise.

‘To write, of course. Those other matters are yours, I suppose?’ said Mr Debarry, looking at Christian.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall send you with a letter to the preacher. You can describe your own property. And the seal, uncle - was it your coat-of-arms?’

‘No, it was this head of Achilles. Here, I can take it off the ring, and you can carry it, Christian. But don’t lose that, for I’ve had it ever since eighteen hundred. I should like to send my compliments with it,’ the rector went on, looking at his brother, ‘and beg that since he has so much wise caution at command, he would exercise a little in more public matters, instead of making himself a firebrand in my parish, and teaching hucksters and tape-weavers that it’s their business to dictate to statesmen.’

‘How did Dissenters, and Methodists, and Quakers, and people of that sort first come up, uncle?’ said Miss Selina, a radiant girl of twenty, who had given much time to the harp.

‘Dear me, Selina,’ said her elder sister, Harriet, whose forte was general knowledge, ‘don’t you remember Woodstock? They were in Cromwell’s time.’

‘O! Holdenough, and those people? Yes; but they preached in the churches; they had no chapels. Tell me, uncle Gus; I like to be wise,’ said Selina, looking up at the face which was smiling down on her with a sort of severe benignity. ‘Phil says I’m an ignorant puss.’

‘The seeds of Nonconformity were sown at the Reformation, my dear, when some obstinate men made scruples about surplices and the place of the communion-table, and other trifles of that sort. But the Quakers came up about Cromwell’s time, and the Methodists only in the last century. The first Methodists were regular clergymen, the more’s the pity.’

‘But all those wrong things - why didn’t government put them down?’

‘Ah, to be sure,’ fell in Sir Maximus, in a cordial tone of corroboration.

‘Because error is often strong, and government is often weak, my dear. Well, Phil, have you finished your letter?’

‘Yes, I will read it to you,’ said Philip, turning and leaning over the back of his chair with the letter in his hand.

There is a portrait of Mr Philip Debarry still to be seen at Treby Manor, and a very fine bust of him at Rome, where he died fifteen years later, a convert to Catholicism. His face would have been plain but for the exquisite setting of his hazel eyes, which fascinated even the dogs of the household. The other features, though slight and irregular, were redeemed from triviality by the stamp of gravity and intellectual preoccupation in his face and bearing. As he read aloud, his voice was what his uncle’s might have been if it had been modulated by delicate health and a visitation of self-doubt.

Sir, - In reply to the letter with which you have favoured me this morning, I beg to state that the articles you describe were lost from the pocket of my servant, who is the bearer of this letter to you, and is the claimant of the vellum note-book and the gold chain. The large leathern pocket-book is my own property, and the impression on the wax, a helmeted head of Achilles, was made by my uncle, the Rev. Augustus Debarry, who allows me to forward his seal to you in proof that I am not making a mistaken claim.

I feel myself under deep obligation to you, sir, for the care and trouble you have taken in order to restore to its right owner a piece of property which happens to be of particular importance to me. And I shall consider myself doubly fortunate if at any time you can point out to me some method by which I may procure you as lively a satisfaction as I am now feeling, in that full and speedy relief from anxiety which I owe to your considerate conduct.

I remain, sir, your obliged and faithful servant, PHILIP DEBARRY.

‘You know best, Phil, of course,’ said Sir Maximus, pushing his plate from him, by way of interjection. ‘But it seems to me you exaggerate preposterously every little service a man happens to do for you. Why should you make a general offer of that sort? How do you know what he will be asking you to do? Stuff and nonsense! Tell Willis to send him a few head of game. You should think twice before you give a blank cheque of that sort to one of these quibbling, meddle-some Radicals.’

‘You are afraid of my committing myself to “the bottomless perjury of an et cetera”,’ said Philip, smiling, as he turned to fold his letter. ‘But I think I am not doing any mischief; at all events I could not be content to say less. And I have a notion that he would regard a present of game just now as an insult. I should, in his place.’

‘Yes, yes, you; but you don’t make yourself a measure of dissenting preachers, I hope,’ said Sir Maximus, rather wrathfully. ‘What do you say, Gus?’

‘Phil is right,’ said the rector, in an absolute tone. ‘I would not deal with a Dissenter, or put profits into the pocket of a Radical which I might put into the pocket of a good churchman and a quiet subject. But if the greatest scoundrel in the world made way for me, or picked my hat up, I would thank him. So would you, Max.’

‘Pooh! I didn’t mean that one shouldn’t behave like a gentleman,’ said Sir Maximus, in some vexation. He had great pride in his son’s superiority even to himself; but he did not enjoy having his own opinion argued down as it always was, and did not quite trust the dim vision opened by Phil’s new words and new notions. He could only submit in silence while the letter was delivered to Christian, with the order to start for Malthouse Yard immediately.

Meanwhile, in that somewhat dim locality the possible claimant of the note-book and the chain was thought of and expected with palpitating agitation. Mr Lyon was seated in his study, looking haggard and already aged from a sleepless night. He was so afraid lest his emotion should deprive him of the presence of mind necessary to the due attention to particulars in the coming interview, that he continued to occupy his sight and touch with the objects which had stirred the depths, not only of memory, but of dread. Once again he unlocked a small box which stood beside his desk, and took from it a little oval locket, and compared this with one which hung with the seals on the stray gold chain. There was the same device in enamel on the back of both: clasped hands surrounded with blue flowers. Both had round the face a name in gold italics on a blue ground: the name on the locket taken from the drawer was Maurice; the name on the locket which hung with the seals was Annette, and within the circle of this name there was a lover’s knot of light-brown hair, which matched a curl that lay in the box. The hair in the locket which bore the name of Maurice was of a very dark brown, and before returning it to the drawer Mr Lyon noted the colour and quality of this hair more carefully than ever. Then he recurred to the note-book: undoubtedly there had been something, probably a third name, beyond the names Maurice Christian, which had themselves been rubbed and slightly smeared as if by accident; and from the very first examination in the vestry, Mr Lyon could not prevent himself from transferring the mental image of the third name in faint lines to the rubbed leather. The leaves of the note-book seemed to have been recently inserted; they were of fresh white paper, and only bore some abbreviations in pencil with a notation of small sums. Nothing could be gathered from the comparison of the writing in the book with that of the yellow letters which lay in the box: the smeared name had been carefully printed, and so bore no resemblance to the signature of those letters; and the pencil abbreviations and figures had been made too hurriedly to bear any decisive witness. ‘I will ask him to write - to write a description of the locket,’ had been one of Mr Lyon’s thoughts; but he faltered in that intention. His power of fulfilling it must depend on what he saw in this visitor, of whose coming he had a horrible dread, at the very time he was writing to demand it. In that demand he was obeying the voice of his rigid conscience, which had never left him perfectly at rest under his one act of deception - the concealment from Esther that he was not her natural father, the assertion of a false claim upon her. ‘Let my path be henceforth simple,’ he had said to himself in the anguish of that night; ‘let me seek to know what is, and if possible to declare it.’ If he was really going to find himself face to face with the man who had been Annette’s husband, and who was Esther’s father - if that wandering of his from the light had brought the punishment of a blind sacrilege as the issue of a conscious transgression, - he prayed that he might be able to accept all consequences of pain to himself. But he saw other possibilities concerning the claimant of the book and chain. His ignorance and suspicions as to the history and character of Annette’s husband made it credible that he had laid a plan for convincing her of his death as a means of freeing himself from a burthensome tie; but it seemed equally probable that he was really dead, and that these articles of property had been a bequest, or a payment, or even a sale, to their present owner. Indeed, in all these years there was no knowing into how many hands such pretty trifles might have passed. And the claimant might, after all, have no connection with the Debarrys; he might not come on this day or the next. There might be more time left for reflection and prayer.

All these possibilities, which would remove the pressing need for difficult action, Mr Lyon represented to himself, but he had no effective belief in them; his belief went with his strongest feeling, and in these moments his strongest feeling was dread. He trembled under the weight that seemed already added to his own sin; he felt himself already confronted by Annette’s husband and Esther’s father. Perhaps the father was a gentleman on a visit to the Debarrys. There was no hindering the pang with which the old man said to himself -

‘The child will not be sorry to leave this poor home, and I shall be guilty in her sight.’