Chapter 5

Harold Transome decided to act openly. With his mother, he drove to the minister's house and Mrs. Transome persuaded Esther to come and stay at Transome Court. Both mother and son found Esther to their liking, and it appeared to Harold that marriage with Esther would be a happy conclusion to the divided claim to the property. He was rich, and the Transome (or Bycliffe) property was heavily encumbered.

The Transomes, Esther and Mr. Lyon all agreed that no law-suit over the property should take place.

But while Esther stayed at Transome Court she never forgot her friend in prison. Mr. Lyon had visited Felix, and Esther herself obtained an interview with him just before the assizes began.

She had grown conscious that Harold Transome was making love to her, that Mrs. Transome really desired her for a daughter-in-law, and it seemed to her as she waited with the minister in the cheerless prison room, that she stood at the first and last parting of the ways.

Soon the door opened, and Felix Holt entered.

"Miss Lyon--Esther!" and her hand was in his grasp. He was just the same--no, something inexpressibly better, because of the distance and separation, which made him like the return of morning.

"Take no heed of me, children," said Mr. Lyon. "I have some notes to make." And the old man sat down at a window with his back to them, writing with his head bent close to the paper.

Felix had heard of Esther's change of fortune and felt sure she would marry Harold Transome. It was only when the time for parting came that he could bring himself to say:

"I had a horrible struggle, Esther. But you see I was right. There was a fitting lot in reserve for you." Esther felt too miserable for tears to come. She looked helplessly at Felix for a moment, then took her hands from his, and turning away mutely, said, "Father, I am ready--there is no more to say."

"Esther."

She heard Felix say the word, with an entreating cry, and went towards him swiftly. He clasped her, and they kissed each other.

When the trial came on Esther went under Mrs. Transome's protection to the court.

The case against Felix looked very black when the prosecution closed. Various respectable witnesses swore to the prisoner's leadership of the mob, to his fatal assault on Tucker, and to his attitude in front of the drawing-room window at the Manor.

Felix then gave a concise narrative of his motives and conduct on the day of the riot, and explained that in throwing the constable down he had not foreseen the possibility of death ensuing. It was a good, straightforward speech, not without a touch of defiant independence, which did the prisoner little good with judge or jury.

Mr. Lyon and Harold Transome both gave evidence in favour of Felix, stating that the prisoner had often expressed his hatred of rioting, and had protested with indignation against the treating that went on during the election by some of the Radical agents.

One or two witnesses were called who swore that Felix had tried to lead the mob in the opposite direction to Treby Manor, and it was understood that the case for the defence was closed.

Then it came to Esther that she must speak if Felix was to be saved. There had been no witness to tell what had been his behaviour just before the riot. There was time, but not too much time.

Before Harold Transome was aware of Esther's intention she was on her way to the witness-box.

A sort of gleam shot across the face of Felix Holt, and anyone close to the prisoner would have seen that his hand trembled, for the first time, at Esther's beautiful aspect. There was no blush on her face: she stood, divested of all personal consideration whether of vanity or shyness, and gave her story as if she had been making a confession of faith.

She knew Felix Holt well, she said. He came to see her on the day of the election, and told her he feared the men might collect again after drinking. "It was the last thing he would have done to join in riot or to hurt any man, if he could have helped it. He could never have had any intention that was not brave and good."

When she was back in her place Felix could not help looking towards her, and their eyes met in one solemn glance.

Esther stayed in court till the end. She heard the verdict, "Guilty of Manslaughter," followed by the judge's sentence, "Imprisonment for four years." But so great was the impression made by Esther's speech that a petition to the Home Secretary was at once set on foot by the leading men of the county.

_IV.--Felix and Esther_

One April day, when the sun shone on the lingering raindrops, Lyddy was gone out, and Esther chose to sit in the kitchen. She was not reading, but stitching, and as her fingers moved nimbly, something played about her lips like a ray.

A loud rap came at the door.

"Mr. Lyon at home?" said Felix in his firm tones. "No, sir," said Esther: "but Miss Lyon is, if you'll please to walk in."

"Esther!" exclaimed Felix, amazed.

They held each other by both hands, and looked into each other's faces with delight.

"You are out of prison?"

"Yes, till I do something bad again. But you--how is it all? Are you come back to live here then?"

"Yes."

"You are not going to be married to Harold Transome, or to be rich?"

"No."

"Why?" said Felix in rather a low tone, leaning his elbow on the table, and resting his head on his hand while he looked at her.

"I did not wish to marry him, or to be rich."

"You have given it all up?" said Felix, leaning forward a little and speaking in a still lower tone. "Could you share the life of a poor man, then, Esther?"

"If I thought well enough of him," she said, with a smile, and a pretty movement of her head.

"Have you considered well what it would be?--that it would be a very bare and simple life? and the people I shall live among, Esther? They have not just the same follies and vices as the rich, but they have their own forms of folly and vice. It is very serious, Esther."

"I know it is serious," said Esther, looking up at him. "Since I have been at Transome Court I have seen many things very seriously. If I had not, I should not have left what I did leave. I made a deliberate choice."

She could not tell him that at Transome Court, all that finally seemed balanced against her love for him, was the offer of a silken bondage that arrested all motive, and was nothing better than a well-cushioned despair. A vision of being restless amidst ease, of being languid among all appliances had quickened her resignation of the Transome estates.

Esther explained, however, that she thought of retaining a little of the wealth.

"How?" said Felix, anxiously. "What do you mean?"

"I think even of two pounds a week: one needn't live up to the splendour of all that, you know: we might live as simply as you liked. And then I think of a little income for your mother, and a little income for my father, to save him from being dependent when he is no longer able to preach!"

Felix put his hand on her shoulder, said, lifting up his eyes with a smile:

"Why, I shall be able to set up a great library, and lend the books!"

They laughed merrily, each holding the other's arms, like girl and boy. There was the ineffable sense of youth in common.

Then Felix leaned forward, that their lips might meet, and after that his eyes roved tenderly over her face and curls.

"I'm a rough, severe fellow, Esther. Shall you never repent?--never be inwardly reproaching me that I was not a man who could have shared your wealth? Are you quite sure?"

The very next May, Felix and Esther were married. Everyone in those days was married at the parish church; but Mr. Lyon was not satisfied without an additional private solemnity, "so that he might have a more enlarged utterance of joy and supplication."

It was a very simple wedding; but no wedding, even the gayest, ever raised so much interest and debate in Treby Magna. Even the very great people of the county went to the church to look at this bride, who had renounced wealth, and chosen to be the wife of a man who said he would always be poor.

Some few shook their heads; could not quite believe it; and thought there was more behind. But the majority of honest Trebians were affected somewhat in the same way as Mr. Wall, the brewer of the town, who observed to his wife as they walked home, "I feel somehow as if I believed more in everything that's good."

Felix and Esther did not take up their abode in Treby Magna; and after awhile Mr. Lyon left the town too, and joined them where they dwelt.

As to the town in which Felix Holt now resides I will keep that a secret.

I will only say that Esther has never repented. Felix, however, grumbles a little that she has made his life too easy.

There is a young Felix, who has a great deal more science than his father, but not much more money.

* * * * *

Romola

"Romola" was George Eliot's fifth book, and followed "Silas Marner," which was published in 1861. It is a story of Florence in the days of Savonarola, and was largely the outcome of a visit the novelist paid to Italy with her life-long friend, George Henry Lewes. With dim ideas for the story in her mind, she made exhaustive researches in the Florentine libraries, gathering historical and topographical details of the city and its life as they were in the mediæval period which she was setting herself to re-create. After much study there and at home, and after one false start, she made a serious beginning in January, 1862. She was engaged upon it for eighteen months, always in doubt and sometimes in despair of her ability to accomplish the task, and by June of the following year she had thankfully written the last words of what is regarded by some as her greatest book. Meanwhile, the romance had begun to appear serially in the "Cornhill" in July, 1862. The writing of "Romola" is said to have "ploughed into her" more than any of her other books.

_I.--Tito and Little Tessa_

Under the Loggia de Cerchi, in the heart of old Florence, in the early morning of April 9, 1492, two men had their eyes fixed on each other. One was looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity; the other, lying on the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a suddenly awakened dreamer.

"Young man," said the standing figure, pointing to a ring on the finger of the other, "when your chin has got a stiffer crop on it you'll know better than to take your nap in street corners with a ring like that on your forefinger. By the holy 'vangels, if it had been anybody but me standing over you--but Bratti Ferravecchi is not the man to steal! Three years ago, one San Giovanni, the saint, sent a dead body in my way--a blind beggar, with his cap well lined with pieces. But how comes a young man like you, with the face of Messer San Michele, to be sleeping on a stone bed? Your tunic and hose match ill with that jewel, young man. Anybody might say the saints had sent you a dead body; but if you took the jewels, I hope you buried him--and you can afford a mass or two for him into the bargain!"

Something like a painful thrill appeared to dart through the frame of the listener, and arrest the careless stretching of his arms. But he immediately recovered an air of indifference, took off the red Levantine cap which hung like a great purse over his left ear, and pushing back his long, dark brown curls, said smiling, "The fact is, I'm a stranger in Florence, and when I came in footsore last night, I preferred flinging myself in the corner of this hospitable porch to hunting for a chance hostelry, which might turn out to be a nest of bloodsuckers. Can you show me the way to a more lively quarter, where I can get a meal and a lodging?"

"That I can," said Bratti.

And, talking volubly as they went, Bratti led the way to the Mercato Vecchio, or the Old Market, promising to conduct him to the prettiest damsel in the Mercato for a cup of milk.

But as soon as they emerged from the narrow streets into the Old Market, they found the place packed with excited groups of men and women humming with gossip.

"Diavolo!" said Bratti. "The Mercato has gone as mad as if the Holy Father had excommunicated us again! I must know what this is."

He pushed about among the crowd, inquiring and disputing, and was presently absorbed in discussing the newest development of Florentine politics, the death of Lorenzo de Medici, and whether or not this death was the beginning of the time of tribulation that Savonarola had been seeing in visions and foretelling in sermons.

Indifferent to this general agitation, the young stranger became tired of waiting for Bratti's escort, and strolling on round the piazza, felt, on a sudden thought, in the wallet that hung at his waist.

"Not an obolus, by Jupiter!" he murmured, in a language that was not Tuscan or even Italian. "I must get my breakfast for love, then!"

In a corner, away from any group of talkers, two mules were standing. One carried wooden milk vessels, the other a pair of panniers filled with herbs and salads. Resting her elbow on the mule that carried the milk, there leaned a young girl, apparently not more than sixteen, with a red hood surrounding her face, which was all the more baby-like in its prettiness from the entire concealment of her hair. The poor child was weary, and it seemed to have gone to sleep in that half-standing, half-leaning posture. Nevertheless, our stranger had no compunction in awaking her. She opened her baby-blue eyes, and stared up with astonishment and confusion.

"Forgive me, pretty one, for awaking you," he said. "I'm dying with hunger, and the scent of milk makes breakfast seem more desirable than ever."

She bestirred herself, and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk was held out to him; and by the time he set the cup down she had brought bread from a bag which hung by the side of the mule, and shyly and mutely insisted on his taking it, even though he told her he had nothing to pay her with; and just as he was leaning down to kiss her he was harshly interrupted by Monna Ghita, Tessa's mother, who had come upon them unobserved.

The handsome presence of the stranger and his charm of manner were of no avail with Monna Ghita; her noisy rating of him drew Bratti and the barber, Nello, to the spot, and with these he was glad to make good his escape, having waived a furtive adieu to the pretty Tessa.

It was not until after Bratti, having business at home, had handed the young stranger over to Nello, and in the barber's shop he had been shaved and trimmed, and made to look presentable, that Tito Melema became more confidential, and explained that he was a Greek; that he was returning from adventures abroad, had suffered shipwreck, and found himself in Florence with nothing saved from the disaster but some few rare old gems for which he was anxious to obtain a purchaser.

"Let us see, let us see," said Nello, walking up and down his shop. "What you want is a man of wealth and influence and scholarly tastes; and that man is Bartolommeo Scala, the Secretary of our Republic. He came to Florence as a poor adventurer himself, a miller's son; and that may be a reason why he may be the more ready to do a good turn to a strange scholar. I could take you to a man who, if he has a mind, can help you to a chance of a favourable interview with Scala--a man worth seeing for his own sake, too, to say nothing of his collections, or of his daughter Romola, who is as fair as the Florentine lily before it got quarrelsome and turned red."

"But if the father of this beautiful Romola makes collections, why should he not like to buy some of my gems himself?"

Nello shrugged his shoulders. "For two good reasons--want of sight to look at the gems and want of money to pay for them."

_II.--"More than a Man's Ransom"_

He was a moneyless, blind old scholar, the Bardo de Bardi, to whom Nello introduced Tito Melema; a man who came of a proud, energetic stock, whose ancestors had loved to play the signor, had been merchants and usurers of keen daring, and conspicuous among those who clutched the sword in the earliest world-famous quarrels of Florentine with Florentine. The family passions lived on in Bardo under altered conditions; he was a man with a deep-veined hand cramped by much copying of manuscripts, who ate sparing dinners, and wore threadbare clothes, at first from choice, and at last from necessity; who sat among his books and manuscripts, and saw them only by the light of those far-off younger days which still shone in his memory.

And among his books and antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him; Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce hatred towards this recreant son of his, and none dared so much as to name him within his hearing.

Maso, the old serving-man ushered in the two visitors he had announced a few minutes previously, and Nello introduced Tito to Bardo and his daughter as a scholar of considerable learning.

Romola's astonishment could hardly have been greater if the stranger had worn a panther-skin and carried a thyrsus, for the cunning barber had said nothing of the Greeks age or appearance, and among her father's scholarly visitors she had hardly ever seen any but gray-headed men.

Nevertheless, she returned Tito's bow with the same pale, proud face as ever; but as he approached the snow melted, and when he ventured to look towards her again a pink flush overspread her face, to vanish again almost immediately, as if her imperious will had recalled it. Tito's glance, on the other hand, as he looked at this tall maiden of seventeen or eighteen, as she stood at the reading-desk with one hand on the back of her father's chair, had that gentle, beseeching admiration in it which is the most propitiating of appeals to a proud, shy woman, and is perhaps the only atonement a man can make for being too handsome.

"Messere, I give you welcome," said Bardo with some condescension; "misfortune wedded to learning, and especially to Greek learning, is a letter of credit that should win the ear of every instructed Florentine."

He proceeded to question Tito as to what part of Greece he came from, learned that he was a young man of unusual scholastic attainments, and that he had a father who was himself a scholar.

"At least," said Tito, "a father by adoption. He was a Neapolitan, but," he added, after another slight pause, "he is lost to me--was lost on a voyage he too rashly undertook to Delos."

Bardo forbore to speak further on so painful a topic; he discoursed freely upon his own studies, his past hopes, and the one great ambition that remained to him--that his library and his magnificent collection of treasures should not be dissipated on his death, but should become the property of the public, and be honourably housed in Florence for all time, with his name over the door.

In his eagerness he made passing reference to his son, of how Romola had been filling his place to the best of her power, and plainly hinted--and Tito was not slow to profit by the opportunity--that if he could have the young Greek scholar to work with him instead of her, he might yet look to fulfill some of the notable designs he had abandoned when his blindness came upon him.

"But," he resumed, in his original tone of condescension, "we are departing from what I believe is your most important business. Nello informed me that you had certain gems which you would fain dispose of."

"I have one or two intagli of much beauty," said Tito. "But they are now in the keeping of Messer Domenico Cennini, who has a strong and safe place for such things. He estimates them as worth at least five hundred ducats."

"Ah, then, they are fine intagli!" said Bardo. "Five hundred ducats! Ah, more than a man's ransom!"

Tito gave a slight, almost imperceptible start, and opened his long, dark eyes with questioning surprise at Bardo's blind face, as if his words--a mere phrase of common parlance at a time when men were often being ransomed from slavery or imprisonment--had some special meaning for him.

But Bardo had used the words in all innocence, and went on to talk of superstitions that attached to certain gems, and to undertake that he would use his influence with the Secretary of the Republic in Tito's behalf. Both Romola and her father were attracted by the charm and freshness and apparent simplicity of the young man; but just as he was making ready to depart they were interrupted by the entrance of Bernardo del Nero, one of the chief citizens of Florence, Bardo's oldest friend, and Romola's godfather; and Bernardo felt an instant, instinctive distrust of the handsome, ingratiating stranger, and did not hesitate to say so after Tito had left them.

"Remember, Bardo," he said at length, "thou hast a rare gem of thy own; take care no one gets it who is not like to pay a worthy price. That pretty Greek has a sleekness about him that seems marvelously fitted for slipping into any nest he fixes his mind on."

_III.--The Man who was Wronged_

It was undeniable that Tito's coming had been the dawn of a new life for both father and daughter, and he grew to care for Romola supremely--to wish to have her for his beautiful and loving wife.

He took her place as Bardo's assistant, and served him with an easy efficiency that had been beyond her; and she, happier in her father's happiness, had given her love to Tito even before he ventured to offer her his own. He was thus sailing under the fairest breeze, and besides convincing fair judges that his talents squared with his good fortune, he wore that fortune so unpretentiously that no one seemed to be offended by it.

And that was not the whole of Tito's good fortune, for he had sold his jewels, and was master of full five hundred gold florins. Yet the moment when he first had this sum in his possession was the crisis of the first serious struggle his facile, good-humoured nature had known.

"A man's ransom!" Who was it that had said five hundred florins was more than a man's ransom? If, now, under this mid-day sun, on some hot coast far away, a man somewhat stricken in years--a man not without high thoughts, and with the most passionate heart--a man who long years ago had rescued a little boy from a life of beggary, filth, and cruel wrong, and had reared him tenderly, if that man were now, under this summer sun, toiling as a slave, hewing wood and drawing water? If he were saying to himself, "Tito will find me. He had but to carry our gems to Venice; he will have raised money, and will never rest till he finds me out?" If that were certain, could he--Tito--see the price of the gems lying before him, and say, "I will stay at Florence, where I am fanned by soft airs of love and prosperity; I will not risk myself for his sake?" No, surely not _if it were certain_. But the galley had been taken by a Turkish vessel; that was known by the report of the companion galley which had escaped; and there had been resistance and probable bloodshed, a man had been seen falling overboard.

He quieted his conscience with such reasonings as these, and when definite tidings reached him that his father was still a prisoner, he contrived to keep the knowledge to himself, and still did nothing. The death of the exhausted, emaciated monk who had brought these tidings freed him of one fear; but this monk was Romola's brother, Dino, and obeying his summons she had been in secret to see him as he lay dying.