GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede

Mary Ann Evans ("George Eliot") was born Nov. 22, 1819, at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, England, where her father was agent on the Newdigate estate. In her youth, she was adept at butter-making and similar rural work, but she found time to master Italian and German. Her first important literary work was the translation of Strauss's "Life of Jesus" in 1844, and shortly after her father's death in 1849 she was writing in the "Westminster Review." It was not until 1856 that George Eliot settled down to the writing of novels. "Scenes from Clerical Life" first appeared serially in "Blackwood's Magazine" during 1857 and 1858; "Adam Bede," the first and most popular of her long stories, in 1859. In May, 1880, eighteen months after the death of her friend George Henry Lewes (see PHILOSOPHY, Vol. XIV), George Eliot married Mr. J. W. Cross. She died on December 22 in the same year. With all her sense of humour there is a note of sadness in George Eliot's novels. She deals with ordinary, everyday people, and describes their joys and sorrows. In "Adam Bede," as in most of her work, the novelist drew from the ample stores of her early life in the Midlands, while the plot is unfolded with singular simplicity, purity, and power.

I.--The Two Brothers

In the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, on the eighteenth of June, 1799, five workmen were busy upon doors and window-frames.

The tallest of the five was a large-boned, muscular man, nearly six feet high. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long, supple hand, with its broad finger tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Adam Bede was a Saxon, and justified his name. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an expression of good-humoured, honest intelligence.

It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Adam's brother. He is nearly as tall; he has the same type of features. But Seth's broad shoulders have a slight stoop, and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benignant.

The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Seth; they scarcely ever spoke to Adam.

At six o'clock the men stopped working, and went out. Seth lingered, and looked wistfully at Adam, as if he expected him to say something.

"Shalt go home before thee go'st to the preaching?" Adam asked.

"Nay, I shan't be home before going for ten. I'll happen see Dinah Morris safe home, if she's willing. There's nobody comes with her from Poyser's, thee know'st."

Adam set off home, and at a quarter to seven Seth was on the village green where the Methodists were preaching. The people drew nearer when Dinah Morris mounted the cart which served as a pulpit. There was a total absence of self-consciousness in her demeanour; she walked to the cart as simply as if she were going to market. There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations. When Dinah spoke it was with a clear but not loud voice, and her sincere, unpremeditated eloquence held the attention of her audience without interruption.

When the service was over, Seth Bede walked by Dinah's side along the hedgerow path that skirted the pastures and corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm.

Seth could see an expression of unconscious placid gravity on her face--an expression that is most discouraging to a lover. He was timidly revolving something he wanted to say, and it was only when they were close to the yard-gates of the Hall Farm he had the courage to speak.

"It may happen you'll think me overbold to speak to you again after what you told me o' your thoughts. But it seems to me there's more texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it. St. Paul says, 'Two are better than one,' and that holds good with marriage as well as with other things. For we should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Dinah. I'd never be the husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out, to give you more liberty--more than you can have now; for you've got to get your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both."

When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and almost hurriedly. His voice trembled at the last sentence.

They had reached one of those narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the office of a stile in Loamshire. And Dinah paused, and said, in her tender but calm notes, "Seth Bede, I thank you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not free to marry, or to think of making a home for myself in this world. God has called me to speak His word, and He has greatly owned my work."

They said farewell at the yard-gate, for Seth wouldn't enter the farmhouse, choosing rather to turn back along the fields through which he and Dinah had already passed. It was ten o'clock when he reached home, and he heard the sound of tools as he lifted the latch.

"Why, mother," said Seth, "how is it as father's working so late?"

"It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'; it's thy brother as does iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'."

Lisbeth Bede was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth--who had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his mother--and usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by the awe which mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam.

But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop, and said, "Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?"

"Ay, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up. "Why, what's the matter with thee--thee'st in trouble?"

Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his mild face.

"Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed."

"No, lad; I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. The coffin's promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven o'clock to-morrow morning. I'll call thee up at sunrise, to help me to carry it when it's done. Go and eat thy supper and shut the door, so as I mayn't hear mother's talk."

Adam worked throughout the night, thinking of his childhood and its happy days, and then of the days of sadness that came later when his father began to loiter at public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home. He remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish.

The two brothers set off in the early sunlight, carrying the long coffin on their shoulders. By six o'clock they had reached Broxton, and were on their way home.

When they were coming across the valley, and had entered the pasture through which the brook ran, Seth said suddenly, beginning to walk faster, "Why, what's that sticking against the willow?"

They both ran forward, and dragged the tall, heavy body out of the water; and then looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before them.

Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity. Only a few hours ago, and the gray-haired father, of whom he had been thinking with a sort of hardness as certain to live to be a thorn in his side, was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death!

II.--The Hall Farm

It is a very fine old place of red brick, the Hall Farm--once the residence of a country squire, and the Hall.

Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year, just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day, too, for it is half-past three by Mrs. Poyser's handsome eight-day clock.

Mrs. Poyser, a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well shaped, light-footed, had just taken up her knitting, and was seated with her niece, Dinah Morris. Another motherless niece, Hetty Sorrel, a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, was busy in the adjoining dairy.

"You look the image o' your aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing," said Mrs. Poyser. "I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And it made no difference in her, as I could see, when she took to the Methodists; only she talked a bit different, and wore a different sort o' cap. If you'd only come and live i' this country you might get married to some decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor, wool-gathering Methodist, and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do for Hetty, though she's his own niece."

The arrival of Mr. Irwine, the rector of Hayslope, and Captain Donnithorne, Squire Donnithorne's grandson and heir, interrupted Mrs. Poyser's flow of talk.

"I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching on the Green, Dinah. It's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own niece. Folks must put up wi' their own kin as they put up wi' their own noses; it's their own flesh and blood."

Mr. Irwine, however, was the last man to feel any annoyance at the Methodist preaching, and young Arthur Donnithorne's visit was merely an excuse for exchanging a few words with Hetty Sorrel.

The rector mentioned before he left that Thias Bede had been found drowned in the Willow Brook; and Dinah Morris at once decided that she might be of some comfort to the widow, and set out for the village.

As for Hetty Sorrel, she was thinking more of the looks Captain Donnithorne had cast at her than of Adam and his troubles. Bright, admiring glances from a handsome young gentleman--those were the warm rays that set poor Hetty's heart vibrating.

Hetty was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her. She was aware that Mr. Craig, the gardener at Squire Donnithorne's, was over head-and-ears in love with her. She knew still better that Adam Bede--tall, upright, clever, brave Adam Bede--who carried such authority with all the people round about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an evening, saying that "Adam knew a fine sight more o' the natur o' things than those as thought themselves his betters"--she knew that this Adam, who was often rather stern to other people, and not much given to run after the lassies, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Hetty's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Adam was "something like" a man; always knew what to say about things; knew, with only looking at it, the value of a chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read, and could do figures in his head--a degree of accomplishment totally unknown among the richest farmers of that country-side.

Hetty was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage Adam, and would be pleased for her to marry him. For the last three years--ever since he had superintended the building of the new barn--Adam had always been made welcome at the Hall Farm, and for the last two years at least Hetty had been in the habit of hearing her uncle say, "Adam Bede may be working for a wage now, but he'll be a master-man some day, as sure as I sit in this chair. Master Burge is in the right on't to want him to go partners and marry his daughter, if it's true what they say. The woman as marries him 'ull have a good take, be't Lady Day or Michaelmas," a remark which Mrs. Poyser always followed up with her cordial assent.

"Ah," she would say, "it's all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but may happen he'll be a ready-made fool; and it's no use filling your pocket full of money if you've got a hole in the corner. It'll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own if you've got a soft to drive you; he'll soon turn you over into the ditch."

But Hetty had never given Adam any steady encouragement. She liked to feel that this strong, keen-eyed man was in her power; but as to marrying Adam, that was a very different affair.

Hetty's dreams were all of luxuries. She thought if Adam had been rich, and could have given the things of her dreams--large, beautiful earrings and Nottingham lace and a carpeted parlour--she loved him well enough to marry him.

The last few weeks a new influence had come over Hetty; she had become aware that Mr. Arthur Donnithorne would take a good deal of trouble for the chance of seeing her. And Dinah Morris was away, preaching and working in a manufacturing town.

III.--Adam's First Love

Adam Bede, like many other men, thought the signs of love for another were signs of love towards himself. The time had come to him that summer, as he helped Hetty pick currants in the orchard of the Hall Farm, that a man can least forget in after-life--the time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved is, at least, beginning to love him in return.

He was not wrong in thinking that a change had come over Hetty; the anxieties and fears of a first passion with which she was trembling had become stronger than vanity, and while Adam drew near to her she was absorbed in thinking and wondering about Arthur Donnithorne's possible return.

For the first time Hetty felt that there was something soothing to her in Adam's timid yet manly tenderness; she wanted to be treated lovingly. And Arthur was away from home; and, oh, it was very hard to bear the blank of absence. She was not afraid that Adam would tease her with love-making and flattering speeches; he had always been so reserved to her. She could enjoy without any fear the sense that this strong, brave man loved her and was near her. It never entered into her mind that Adam was pitiable, too, that Adam, too, must suffer one day.

It was from Adam that she found out that Captain Donnithorne would be back in a day or two, and this knowledge made her the more kindly disposed towards him. But for all the world Adam would not have spoken of his love to Hetty yet, till this commencing kindness towards him should have grown into unmistakable love. He did no more than pluck a rose for her, and walk back to the farm with her arm in his.

When Adam, after stopping a while to chat with the Poysers, had said good-night, Mr. Poyser remarked, "If you can catch Adam for a husband, Hetty, you'll ride i' your own spring-cart some day, I'll be your warrant."

Her uncle did not see the little toss of the head with which Hetty answered him. To ride in a spring-cart seemed a very miserable lot indeed to her now.

It was on August 18, when Adam, going home from some work he had been doing at one of the farms, passed through a grove of beeches, and saw, at the end of the avenue, about twenty yards before him, two figures. They were standing opposite to each other with clasped hands, and they separated with a start at a sharp bark from Adam Bede's dog. One hurried away through a gate out of the grove; the other, Arthur Donnithorne, looking flushed and excited, sauntered towards Adam. The young squire had been home for some weeks celebrating his twenty-first birthday, and he was leaving on the morrow to rejoin his regiment.

Hitherto there had been a cordial and sincere liking and a mutual esteem between the two young men; but now Adam stood as if petrified, and his amazement turned quickly to fierceness.

Arthur tried to pass the matter off lightly, as if it had been a chance meeting with Hetty; but Adam, who felt that he had been robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had trusted, would not so easily let him off. It came to blows, and Arthur sank under a well-planted blow of Adam's, as a steel rod is broken by an iron bar.

Before they separated, Arthur promised that he would write and tell Hetty there could be no further communication between them. And this promise he kept. Adam rested content with the assurance that nothing but an innocent flirtation had been stopped. As the days went by he found that the calm patience with which he had waited for Hetty's love had forsaken him since that night in the beech-grove. The agitations of jealousy had given a new restlessness to his passion.

Hetty, for her part, after the first misery caused by Arthur's letter, had turned into a mood of dull despair, and sought only for change. Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did so that it made some change in her life.

So, in November, when Mr. Burge offered Adam a share in his business, Adam not only accepted it, but decided that the time had come to ask Hetty to marry him.

Hetty did not speak when Adam got out the question, but his face was very close to hers, and she put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again.

Adam only said after that, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't I, Hetty?" And she said "Yes."

The red firelight on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces that evening when Adam took the opportunity of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser that he saw his way to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to have him.

There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away about the possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in.

"Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything to-night. You canna think o' getting married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a bit o' time to make things comfortable."

This was in November.

Then in February came the full tragedy of Hetty Sorrel's life. She left home, and in a strange village, a child--Arthur Donnithorne's child--was born. Hetty left the baby in a wood, and returned to find it dead. Arrest and trial followed, and only at the last moment was the capital sentence commuted to transportation.

She died a few years later on her way home.

IV.--The Wife of Adam Bede

It was the autumn of 1801, and Dinah Morris was once more at the Hall Farm, only to leave it again for her work in the town. Mrs. Poyser noticed that Dinah, who never used to change colour, flushed when Adam said, "Why, I hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the notion o' going back to her old country."

"Thought! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser; "and so would anybody else ha' thought as had got their right ends up'ards. But I suppose you must be a Methodist to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's all guessing what the bats are flying after."

"Why, what have we done to you, Dinah, as you must go away from us?" said Mr. Poyser. "It's like breaking your word; for your aunt never had no thought but you'd make this your home."

"Nay, uncle," said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. "When I first came I said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my aunt."

"Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?" said Mrs. Poyser. "If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha' come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it."

Dinah set off with Adam, for Lisbeth was ailing and wanted Dinah to sit with her a bit. On the way he reverted to her leaving the Hall Farm. "You know best, Dinah, but if it had been ordered so that you could ha' been my sister, and lived wi' us all our lives, I should ha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now."

Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence, until presently, crossing the stone stile, Adam saw her face, flushed, and with a look of suppressed agitation.

It struck him with surprise, and then he said, "I hope I've not hurt or displeased you by what I've said, Dinah; perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different from what you see to be best; and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty miles off if you think it right."

Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder.

Lisbeth opened his eyes on the Sunday morning when Adam sat at home and read from his large pictured Bible.

For a long time his mother talked on about Dinah, and about how they were losing her when they might keep her, and Adam at last told her she must make up her mind that she would have to do without Dinah.

"Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an' nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her and send her here o' purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her being a Methody? It 'ud happen wear out on her wi' marryin'."

Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He understood now what her talk had been aiming at, and tried to chase away the notion from her mind.

He was amazed at the way in which this new thought of Dinah's love had taken possession of him with an overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. He spoke to Seth, who said quite simply that he had long given up all thoughts of Dinah ever being his wife, and would rejoice in his brother's joy. But he could not tell whether Dinah was for marrying.

"Thee might'st ask her," Seth said presently. "She took no offence at me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had."

When Adam did ask, Dinah answered that her heart was strongly drawn towards him, but that she must wait for divine guidance. So she left the Hall Farm and went back to the town, and Adam waited,--and then went after her to get his answer.

"Adam," she said when they had met and walked some distance together, "it is the divine will. My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love, I have a fullness of strength to bear and do our Heavenly Father's will that I had lost before."

Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes.

"Then we'll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us."

And they kissed each other with deep joy.

Felix Holt, the Radical

"Felix Holt, the Radical," was published in 1866. It has never been one of George Eliot's very popular books. There is less in it of her own life and experience than in most of her novels, less of the homely wit of agricultural England. The real value of the book is the picture it gives of the social and political life, and for this reason, it will always be read by those who want to know what English political methods and customs were like at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. The character of Mr. Rufus Lyon, the independent minister, is an admirable study of the non-conformist of that period. Esther's renunciation of a brilliant fortune for a humbler lot with the man she loved and admired, was quite in accord with the teaching George Eliot inculcated all her life. The scene of the story is laid in the Midlands, and the action, covering about nine months, begins in 1832.

I.--The Minister's Daughter

The Rev. Rufus Lyon, Minister of the Independent Chapel, in the old-fashioned market town of Treby Magna, in the County of Loumshire, lived in a small house, adjoining the entry which led to the Chapel Yard.

He sat this morning, as usual, in a low upstairs room, called his study, which served also as a sleeping-room, and from time to time got up to walk about between the piles of old books which lay around him on the floor. His face looked old and worn, yet the curtain of hair that fell from his bald crown and hung about his neck retained much of its original auburn tint, and his large, brown short-sighted eyes were still clear and bright. At the first glance, everyone thought him a very odd-looking, rusty old man, and the free-school boys often hooted after him, and called him "Revelations." But he was too short-sighted and too absent from the world of small facts and petty impulses to notice those who tittered at him.

He was meditating on the text for his Sunday morning sermon, when old Lyddy, the minister's servant, opened the door to tell him that Mrs. Holt was wanting to see him. "She says she comes out of season, but she's in trouble."

The minister bade her send Mistress Holt up, and a tall elderly woman dressed in black entered.

Mrs. Holt, Mr. Lyon said to himself, is a woman who darkens counsel by words without knowledge, and angers the reason of the natural man; and he prayed for patience while his visitor rambled on concerning her late husband and her son Felix.

The minister made out that Felix objected to the sale of his father's quack medicines, Holt's Elixir and Cancer Cure, and wanted Mr. Lyon to talk to him.

"For after we'd been to chapel, he spoke better of you than he does of most: he said you was a fine old fellow, and an old-fashioned Puritan--he uses dreadful language, Mr. Lyon; but I saw he didn't mean you ill, for all that; he calls most folks' religion rottenness."

Mrs. Holt departed, and in the evening, when Mr. Lyon was in the sitting-room, Felix Holt knocked at the door.

The minister, accustomed to the respectable air of provincial townsmen, felt a slight shock, when his spectacles made clear to him the shaggy-headed, large-eyed, strong-limbed person of this questionable young man, without waistcoat or cravat.

Felix spoke loudly and brusquely when the minister mentioned the subject of Mrs. Holt's visit.

"As to those absurd medicines and gulling advertisements that my mother has been talking of to you, I've no more doubt about them than I have about pocket-picking. 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 labour of hands, I've not the least doubt that I should be a rascal."

"I would fain inquire more particularly into your objection to these medicines," said Mr. Lyon gravely.

"My father was ignorant," said Felix, bluntly. "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 may be as bad as poison to half the people who swallow them, and that the cancer cure might as well be bottled ditch-water. I can keep my mother, as well, nay, better, than she keeps herself. 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."

Mr. Lyon's suggestion that some situation might be obtained as clerk or assistant was brushed aside.

"Why should I want to get into the middle class because I have some learning? The most of the middle class are as ignorant as the working people about everything that doesn't belong to their own Brummagem life."

The entrance of Lyddy with the tea tray disturbed the conversation, but the minister, interested in his visitor, asked Felix to stay for a dish of tea, and Felix accepted.

"My daughter, who has been detained in giving a lesson in the French tongue, has doubtless returned now," said the minister. On the entrance of the young lady, Felix was conscious she was not the sort of person he had expected the minister's daughter to be, and the incongruity repelled him. There were things about her, her walk, the long neck and high crown of shining brown hair, that suggested a fine lady to him. A fine lady was always a sort of spun glass affair; but a fine lady as the daughter of this rusty old Puritan was especially offensive.

The discovery that Miss Lyon read Byron set Felix off on a tirade against the poet, and his works, and throughout the meal no agreement on any topic seemed possible between Esther and the guest.

Felix noted that Mr. Lyon was devoted to his daughter and stood in some fear of her.

"That is a singular young man, Esther," said the minister, when Felix had gone. "I discern in him a love for whatever things are honest and true, and I feel a great enlargement in his presence."

"I think he is very coarse and rude," said Esther, with a touch of temper. "But he speaks better English than most of our visitors. What is his occupation?"

"Watch and clock making, my dear."

Esther was disappointed, she thought he was something higher than that.

Felix on his side wondered how the queer old minister had a daughter so little in his own likeness. He decided that nothing should make him marry.

II.--The Election Riot

The return of Mr. Harold Transome, to Transome Court, after fifteen years' absence, and his adoption as Radical Candidate for the county created no little stir and excitement in Treby. It also assisted the growing intimacy between Mr. Lyon and Felix Holt, for though neither possessed votes in that memorable year 1832, they shared the same liberal sympathies. Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking; and the advent of the public-spirited, contradictory, yet affectionate Felix, into Treby life had made a welcome epoch to the minister.

Esther had not seen so much of their new acquaintance as her father had. But she had begun to find him amusing, though he always opposed and criticised her, and looked at her as if he never saw a single detail about her person. It seemed to Esther that he thought slightly of her. "But, rude and queer as he is, I cannot say there is anything vulgar about him," she said to herself.

One Sunday afternoon Felix Holt rapped at the door of Mr. Lyon's house, although he could hear the voice of the minister in the chapel.

Esther was in the kitchen alone, reading a French romance, and she opened the door and invited him in.

He scoffed at her book, and as the talk went on, upbraided her for her vanity. Finally he told her that he wanted her to change. "Of course, I am a brute to say so," he added. "I ought to say you are perfect. Another man would, perhaps; I can't bear to see you going the way of the foolish women who spoil men's lives."

Mortification and anger filled Esther's mind, and when Felix got up to say he was going, she returned his "good-bye" without even looking at him.

Only, when the door closed she burst into tears. She revolted against his assumption of superiority.... Did he love her one little bit, and was that the reason why he wanted her to change? But Esther was quite sure she could never love anyone who was so much of a pedagogue and a master.

Yet, a few weeks later, and Esther accepted willingly when Felix proposed a walk for the first time together. That same afternoon he told her that she was very beautiful, and that he would never be rich: he intended going away to some manufacturing town to lead the people to better things and this meant a life of poverty.

Something Esther said made Felix ask suddenly, "Can you imagine yourself choosing hardship as the better lot?"

"Yes, I can," she answered, flushing over neck and brow. They walked home very silently after that. Felix struggling as a firm man struggles with a temptation, Esther struggling as a woman struggles with the yearning for some expression of love.

On the day of the election a mob of miners, primed with liquor by an unscrupulous agent of Transome's, came into the town to hoot the Tory voters; and as the disturbance increased, Felix knowing that Mr. Lyon was away preaching went round to the minister's house to reassure Esther.

"I am so thankful to see you," she said eagerly. He mentioned that the magistrates and constables were coming and that the town would be quieter. His only fear was that drinking might inflame the mob again.

Again Felix told her of his renunciation of the ordinary hopes and ambitions of men, and at the same time tried to prove that he thought very highly of her. He wanted her to know that her love was dear to him, and he felt that they must not marry--to do so would be to ruin each other's lives.

When Felix went out into the streets in the afternoon, the crowd was larger and more mischievous. The constables were quite unable to cope with the mob, the polling booth was closed for the day, and the magistrates had sent to the neighbouring town of Duffield for the military.

There were proofs that the predominant will of the crowd was in favour of Transome for several shops were attacked and they were all of them "Tory shops."

Felix was soon hotly occupied trying to save a wretched publican named Spratt from the fury of the crowd. The man had been dragged out into the streets, and Felix had got as near him as he could when a young constable armed with a sabre rushed upon him. It was a choice of two evils, and quick as lightning Felix frustrated him, the constable fell undermost and Felix got his weapon. Tucker did not rise immediately, but Felix did not imagine that he was much hurt, and bidding the crowd follow him tried to lead them away from the town. He hoped that the soldiers would soon arrive, and felt confident that there would be no resistance to a military force.

Suddenly a cry was raised, "Let us go to Treby Manor," the residence of Sir Maximus Debarry, whose son was the Tory candidate.

From that moment Felix was powerless, and was carried along with the rush. All he could hope to do was to get to the front terrace of the house, and assure the inmates that the soldiers would arrive quickly. Just as he approached a large window he heard the horses of the troopers, and then came the words, "Halt! Fire!" Before he had time to move a bullet whizzed, and passed through Felix Holt's shoulder--the shoulder of the arm that bore the sabre.

Felix fell. The rioters ran confusedly, like terrified sheep.

It was a weary night for Felix, and the next day his wound was declared trivial, and he was lodged in Loumford Jail. There were three charges against him; that he had assaulted a constable, that he had committed manslaughter (Tucker was dead from spinal concussion), and that he had led a riotous onslaught on a dwelling house.

Four other men were arrested, one for theft, and three others for riot and assault.

III.--The Trial

A great change took place in the fortunes of Esther in the interval between the riot and the opening of the assizes. It was found that she, and not Harold Transome, was the rightful owner of the Transome estates. For Esther's real name was Bycliffe and not Lyon, and she was the step-daughter only of the minister. Mr. Lyon had found Esther's mother, a French woman of great beauty, in destitution--her husband, an Englishman, lying in some unknown prison. This Englishman was a Bycliffe--and heir to the Transome property, and on the proof of his death Mr. Lyon, knowing nothing of Bycliffe's family, married his widow, who, however, died while Esther was still a tiny child. Not till the time of the election did Esther learn that her real father was dead.

Mr. Transome's lawyer--Jermyn--was fully aware of the claim of the Bycliffes, but knew they were powerless without money to enforce the claim, and that Esther and her step-father alike were ignorant of all the facts. It was only when Harold Transome, on his return, quarrelled with Jermyn on the management of the estates, and, after the Election (which Transome lost) threatened him with a law-suit, that Jermyn turned round and told Harold the truth. At the same time, another lawyer, formerly in Jermyn's confidence, thought the more profitable course could be found in throwing Jermyn over, and wrote to Esther informing her of her inheritance.

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.

"Romola," her brother began to speak, "in the deep night, as I lay awake, I saw my father's room, and I saw you ... And at the leggio where I used to stand stood a man whose face I could not see. I saw him move and take thee, Romola, by the hand, and then I saw thee take my father by the hand, and you all three went down the stone steps into the streets, the man, whose face was a blank to me, leading the way. And you stood at the altar of Santa Croce, and the priest who married you had the face of death; and the graves opened and the dead in their shrouds followed you like a bridal train. And it seemed to me that at last you came to a stony place where there was no water, and no trees or herbage; but instead of water I saw written parchment unrolling itself everywhere, and instead of trees and herbage I saw men of bronze and marble springing up and crowding round you. And my father was faint, and fell to the ground; and the man loosed thy hand and departed; and as he went I could see his face, and it was the face of the Great Tempter.... Thrice have I had that vision, Romola. I believe it is a revelation meant for thee--to warn thee against marriage as a temptation of the enemy...."

The words died away.

"Frate," said the dying voice. "Give her----"

"The crucifix," said the voice of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was standing in the shadows behind her.

"Dino!" said Romola, with a low but piercing cry.

"Take the crucifix, my daughter," said Fra Girolamo, after a few minutes. "His eyes behold it no more."

But, heedless of the distrust and opposition of Messer Bernardo del Nero, and with this vision of Dino's menacing his highest hope, Tito went gaily on his triumphant way.

Also he had renewed acquaintance with the little Tessa. He came upon her in the thronged streets during carnival time, and seeing her, a timorous, tearful little contadin, terrified by the burlesque threats of a boisterous conjurer, took her under his protection.

Thereafter, he met her again at intervals, finding her naive love and humble adoration and obedience very pleasant; and, meeting her once at a peasant's fair, he jestingly yielded to the burlesque solicitations of a mountebank in a white mitre, paid a small fee, and went through an absurd ceremony of mock-marriage with her.

Tessa herself believed the marriage to be real enough, and he would not mar her delight by undeceiving her. Later, since she was wretched at home with her scolding mother and a brutal step-father, and there were dangers in allowing her to go on waylaying him in streets when too long a period elapsed between his visits to her, he quietly took her away and established her in a small house on the outskirts of the city, with the deaf, discreet old Monna Lisa as her servant and companion.

Neither this nor the darker secret of his treachery to his adoptive father cast any cloud over his habitual cheerfulness. His love for Romola was a higher and deeper passion than anything he felt for the child-like, submissive little Tessa, and when she told him frankly of her brother's warning vision, he set himself to convince her it was the mere nightmare of a diseased imagination, and the perfect love and trust she had for him made the task easy.

For a while after their marriage she was ideally happy; she was not even separated from her father, for Tito came to live with them, and was to Bardo, in his scholastic labours, all that he had wished his own son to be. Then came the first cloud.

On November 17, 1494, more than eighteen months after the marriage of Tito and Romola, the King of France marched his army into Florence on his way to take possession of Naples and impose peace on the warring little states into which Italy was divided. There were those in Florence who were prepared to welcome the invaders, but the majority, the common people in particular, resented their coming.

With the soldiery came three wretched prisoners; they were led in ropes by their captors, and with blows from knotted cords were stimulated to beg. Two, as they passed, held out their hands, crying piteously, "For the love of God and the Holy Madonna, give us something towards our ransom!"

But the third remained obstinately silent. He was old, white-haired, emaciated, with a thick-set figure that seemed to express energy in spite of age; yet there was something fitful in his eyes.

This sight was witnessed by the Florentines with growing exasperation, and presently from jeering at the French soldiers and hustling them, they became bent upon rescuing this third prisoner from his tormentors; one venturesome youth suddenly dashed in, cut the old man's bonds and urged him to run; and the next moment he had plunged into the crowd, which closed behind him and hampered the pursuit.

With one soldier struggling desperately on his track, the fugitive sped towards the Duomo, to seek refuge in that sanctuary, but in mounting the steps his foot slipped, he was precipitated towards a group of signori who stood there with their backs to him, and clutched one to save himself.

It was Tito Melema who felt the clutch. He turned, and saw the face of his adoptive father, Baldassarre Calvo, close to his own. The two men looked at each other silent as death; Tito with cheeks and lips all bloodless, fascinated by terror. The next instant the grasp on his arm relaxed, and Baldassarre disappeared within the church.

IV.--Romola's Ordeal

With Baldassarre lurking in Florence, Tito went in hourly fear. At any moment the story of his baseness might be blown abroad; at any moment, worse still, he might be struck down by the old man, in whose wild eyes he had read only a fierce yearning for vengeance.

As a precaution, Tito took to wearing a coat of fine chain-mail under his doublet, and the discovery of this alarmed Romola for his safety, and shocked her with a suspicion that he was something of a coward.

But by now Tito was deeply involved in Florentine politics, and easily persuaded her that it was against secret political intriguers that he thus shielded himself. He went on to confess that his life was no longer safe in Florence, and he was resolved to leave the city for good. But to this she demurred; her father had died and left his library and his collection as a sacred trust to her and Tito, and until they had carried out his wish and made them over to the city authorities, she felt she could not go.

Tito made light of her scruples. Her father's wish, he said, had been a mere foolish vanity; they had need of money, and he intended to sell both the library and collection, and when, for the first time in her life, she spoke bitterly, in scorn and anger of his faithlessness, he told her flatly it was useless to bandy words for he had sold them already, and they were to be removed that day.

Frantic with grief and resentment, she thought of desperate ways of preventing the accomplishment of his heartless plans, even to borrowing of her godfather and buying back the treasures, so that Tito might keep his ill-gotten gain and her father's last wish still be fulfilled; but he convinced her that all interference was too late, for the things had been purchased by the Count di San Severino and the Seneschal de Beaucaire, who were already on their way with the French king to Sienna.

Latterly, in many ways, Romola had been disappointed in her husband's character; she had found that his handsome face and gay air masked a cowardice, a cunning meanness, a sordid selfishness of disposition that were all at variance with her high ideal of him; but that final unspeakable treachery of the dead man who had trusted him so implicitly shattered her love for Tito utterly.

As soon as her father's library was dismantled and his treasures taken away, Romola went from the house with the old man-servant, Maso, and would never have looked upon Tito's face again, but that Fra Girolamo intercepted her.

"I have a command to call you back," he said. "My daughter, you must return to your place. You are flying from your debts; the debt of a Florentine woman to her fellow citizens; the debt of a wife. You are turning your back on the lot that has been appointed for you--you are going to choose another. My daughter, you are fleeing from the presence of God into the wilderness. My daughter, if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be a wife."

There was hunger and misery in the streets, and he urged upon her that if she had no other purpose in life she could stay, and help the poor of her own city. Her pride was broken, and she yielded.

V.--Baldassarre is Avenged

Meanwhile, Baldassarre, lurking about Florence, had armed himself with a knife, and was ravenous for revenge. Being homeless, he called by chance at Tessa's little house, and she, not knowing who he was, took pity on his age and misery, gave him shelter in a shed, and food and drink.

Whilst he was there, Tito came, and, too frankly simple to keep anything from him, Tessa confessed that she had disobeyed his injunctions against holding converse with strangers, and was sheltering a strange, weary old man in the shed without. Her description of this guest left Tito in no doubt as to his identity, and, subduing his first perturbation, he conceived that he might turn the situation to his own advantage. He went out to the shed, and looking down upon Baldassarre in the moonlight, sought to propitiate him with honeyed words, specious explanations, and a plea for pardon. But the old man answered nothing, till his smouldering fury burst into a flame, then he precipitated himself upon the intruder and struck with all his force; but the blade of the knife broke off short against the hidden coat of mail.

Tito insisted that he was welcome to remain there, and said what he could to soothe him, but Baldassarre would stay no longer when he knew whose roof covered him. Presently, he armed himself anew, and waited for another opportunity. He learned all that was to be known of Tito's career since his arrival in Florence; ascertained that he was married, and had thoughts of winning his wife's sympathy and telling her of Tessa. Then one night he contrived to get into the Rucellai Gardens, where Tito was at supper with a gathering of Florentine notabilities, and, seized in time and held back from assassinating him, he passionately denounced him before the company as a scoundrel, a liar, and a robber.

There were those present who had been on the church steps that day when Baldassarre had clutched Tito by the arm, and Tito had then explained away his momentary panic. Questioned now by one of these, he declared that though when first he encountered his accuser he did not recognise him, he now saw that he was the servant who years ago accompanied him and his adoptive father to Greece, and was dismissed on account of misdemeanours, and that the story of his being rescued from beggary was the vision of a disordered brain.

Baldassarre was given a chance to prove that he was not the servant, but the great scholar to whom Tito was indebted for his learning.

"The ring I possess," said Rucellai, "is a fine sard that I myself purchased from Messer Tito. It is engraved with a subject from Homer. Will you turn to the passage in Homer from which that subject was taken?"

But sitting to look over the book, Baldassarre realised that the sufferings through which he had passed had unhinged his mind and his memory; the words he stared at had no meaning for him, and he lifted his hands to his head in despair.

The consequence of this fresh failure was that Baldassarre was cast into prison, and Tito was at liberty to pursue his political ambitions unhaunted by that dogging shadow that was to him as the shadow of death. He managed his affairs so cleverly that whichever party came uppermost he was secure of favour and money.

But by-and-by the tide began to turn against him. Baldassarre was at large again, and met Romola and told her not only of his own wrongs, but of Tessa. She saw Tessa and her two children, and befriended them, and was so far from blaming that innocent little creature that she did not even disclose the truth to her; but she was importunate with Tito that he should make atonement to the man who had been a father to him. Then came a day when Tito's treacheries were discovered by the party he was supposed to serve, and he had to flee for his life through Florence. Scattering jewels and gold to delay his pursuers, he leaped from the bridge into the river, and swam in the darkness, leaving the bellowing mob to think he was drowned.

But far down the stream there were certain eyes that saw him from the banks of the river, and when he landed and fell, faint and helpless, Baldassarre's hands closed on his throat; and next evening a passer-by found the two dead bodies there.

Silas Marner

"Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe," begun about November, 1860, and published early in 1861, is in many respects the most admirable of all George Eliot's works. It is not a long story, but it is a most carefully finished novel--"a perfect gem, a pure work of art," Mr. Oscar Browning describes it. Mr. Blackwood, the publisher, found it rather sombre, and George Eliot replied to him, "I hope you will not find it at all a sad story as a whole, since it sets--or is intended to set--in a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural, human relations. I have felt all through as if the story would have lent itself best to metrical rather than to prose fiction, especially in all that relates to the psychology of Silas; except that, under that treatment, there could not be an equal play of humour." No novel of George Eliot's has received more praise from men of letters than "Silas Marner."

I.--Why Silas Came to Raveloe

In the early years of the nineteenth century a linen-weaver named Silas Marner worked at his vocation in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit.

It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe; he was then simply a pallid young man with prominent, short-sighted brown eyes. To the villagers among whom he had come to settle he seemed to have mysterious peculiarities, chiefly owing to his advent from an unknown region called "North'ard." He invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint at the Rainbow, or to gossip at the wheel-wrights'; he sought no man or woman, save for the purposes of his calling, or in order to supply himself with necessaries.

At the end of fifteen years the Raveloe men said just the same things about Silas Marner as at the beginning. There was only one important addition which the years had brought; it was that Master Marner had laid by a fine sight of money somewhere, and that he could buy up "bigger men than himself."

But while his daily habits presented scarcely any visible change, Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis as that of every fervid nature must be when it has been condemned to solitude. His life, before he came to Raveloe, had been filled with the close fellowship of a narrow religious sect, where the poorest layman had the chance of distinguishing himself by gifts of speech; and Marner was highly thought of in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern Yard. He was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith, and a peculiar interest had been centred in him ever since he had fallen at a prayer-meeting into a trance or cataleptic fit, which lasted for an hour.

Among the members of his church there was one young man, named William Dane, with whom he lived in close friendship; and it seemed to the unsuspecting Silas that the friendship suffered no chill, even after he had formed a closer attachment, and had become engaged to a young servant-woman.

At this time the senior deacon was taken dangerously ill, and Silas and William, with others of the brethren, took turns at night-watching. On the night the old man died, Silas fell into one of his trances, and when he awoke at four o'clock in the morning death had come, and, further, a little bag of money had been stolen from the deacon's bureau, and Silas's pocket-knife was found inside the bureau. For some time Silas was mute with astonishment, then he said, "God will clear me; I know nothing about the knife being there, or the money being gone. Search me and my dwelling."

The search was made, and it ended in William Dane finding the deacon's bag, empty, tucked behind the chest of drawers in Silas's chamber.

According to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard prosecution was forbidden to Christians. But the members were bound to take other measures for finding out the truth, and they resolved on praying and drawing lots; there was nothing unusual about such proceedings a hundred years ago. Silas knelt with his brethren, relying on his own innocence being certified by immediate Divine interference. The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty. He was solemnly suspended from church-membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money; only on confession and repentance could he be received once more within the fold of the church. Marner listened in silence. At last, when everyone rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by agitation, "The last time I remember using my knife was when I took it out to cut a strap for you. I don't remember putting it in my pocket again. You stole the money, and you have woven a plot to lay the sin at my door. But you may prosper for all that; there is no just God, but a God of lies, that bears witness against the innocent!"

There was a general shudder at this blasphemy. Poor Marner went out with that despair in his soul--that shaken trust in God and man which is little short of madness to a loving nature. In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, "She will cast me off, too!" and for a whole day he sat alone, stunned by despair.

The second day he took refuge from benumbing unbelief by getting into his loom and working away as usual, and, before many hours were past, the minister and one of the deacons came to him with a message from Sarah, the young woman to whom he had been engaged, that she held her engagement at an end. In little more than a month from that time Sarah was married to William Dane, and not long afterwards it was known to the brethren in Lantern Yard that Silas Marner had departed from the town.

II.--The Second Blow

When Silas Marner first came to Raveloe he seemed to weave like a spider, from pure impulse, without reflection. Then there were the calls of hunger, and Silas, in his solitude, had to provide his own breakfast, dinner, and supper, to fetch his own water from the well, and put his own kettle on the fire; and all these immediate promptings helped to reduce his life to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect. He hated the thought of the past; there was nothing that called out his love and fellowship towards the strangers he had come amongst; and the future was all dark, for there was no Unseen Love that cared for him.

It was then, when all purpose of life was gone, that Silas got into the habit of looking towards the money he received for his weaving, and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort. Gradually, the guineas, the crowns, and the half-crowns, grew to a heap, and Marner drew less and less for his own wants, trying to solve the problem of keeping himself strong enough to work sixteen hours a day on as small an outlay as possible. He handled his coins, he counted them, till their form and colour were like the satisfaction of a thirst to him; but it was only in the night, when his work was done, that he drew them out, to enjoy their companionship. He had taken up some bricks in his floor underneath his loom, and here he had made a hole in which he set the iron pot that contained his guineas and silver coins, covering the bricks with sand whenever he replaced them.

So, year after year, Silas Marner lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more as it became reduced to the functions of weaving and hoarding.

This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. Then, about the Christmas of that year, a second great change came over his life.

It was a raw, foggy night, with rain, and Silas was returning from the village, plodding along, with a sack thrown round his shoulders, and with a horn lantern in his hand. His legs were weary, but his mind was at ease with the sense of security that springs from habit. Supper was his favourite meal, because it was his time of revelry, when his heart warmed over his gold.

He reached his door in much satisfaction that his errand was done; he opened it, and to his short-sighted eyes everything remained as he had left it, except that the fire sent out a welcome increase of heat.

As soon as he was warm he began to think it would be a long while to wait till after supper before he drew out his guineas, and it would be pleasant to see them on the table before him as he ate his food.

He rose and placed his candle unsuspectingly on the floor near his loom, swept away the sand, without noticing any change, and removed the bricks. The sight of the empty hole made his heart leap violently, but the belief that his gold was gone could not come at once--only terror, and the eager effort to put an end to the terror. He passed his trembling hand all about the hole, then he held the candle and examined it curiously, trembling more and more. He searched in every corner, he turned his bed over, and shook it, and kneaded it; he looked in his brick oven; and when there was no other place to be searched, he felt once more all round the hole.

He could see every object in his cottage, and his gold was not there. He put his trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild, ringing scream--the cry of desolation. Then the idea of a thief began to present itself, and he entertained it eagerly, because a thief might be caught and made to restore the gold. The robber must be laid hold of. Marner's ideas of legal authority were confused, but he felt that he must go and proclaim his loss; and the great people in the village--the clergyman, the constable, and Squire Cass--would make the thief deliver up the stolen money.

It was to the village inn Silas Marner went, where the parish clerk and a select company were assembled, and told the story of his loss--£272 12s. 6d. in all. The machinery of the law was set in motion, but no thief was ever captured, nor could grounds be found for suspicion against any persons.

What had really happened was that Dunsey Cass, Squire Cass's second son--a mean, boastful rascal--on his way home on foot from hunting, saw the light in the weaver's cottage, and knocked, hoping to borrow a lantern, for the lane was unpleasantly slippery, and the night dark. But all was silence in the cottage, for the weaver at that moment had not yet reached home. For a minute Dunsey thought that old Marner might be dead, fallen over into the stone pits. And from that came the decision that he must be dead. If so, the question arose, what would become of the money that everybody said the old miser had put by?

Dunstan Cass was in difficulties for want of money, and he had killed his brother's horse that day on the hunting-field. Who would know, if Marner was dead, that anybody had come to take his hoard of money away?

There were only three hiding-places where he had heard of cottagers' hoards being found: the thatch, the bed, and a hole in the floor. His eyes travelling eagerly over the floor, noted a spot where the sand had been more carefully spread.

Dunstan found the hole and the money, now hidden in two leathern bags. From their weight he judged they must be filled with guineas. Quickly he hastened out into the darkness with the bags, and Dunstan Cass was seen no more alive.

At the very moment when he turned his back on the cottage Silas Marner was not more than a hundred yards away.

III.--Silas Marner's Visitor

It was New Year's Eve, and Squire Cass was giving a dance to the neighbouring gentry of Raveloe. There had been snow in the afternoon, but at seven o'clock it had ceased, and a freezing wind had sprung up.

A woman, shabbily dressed, with a child in her arms, was making her way towards Raveloe, seeking the Red House, where Squire Cass lived. It was not the squire she wanted, but his eldest son, Godfrey, to whom she was secretly married. The marriage--the result of rash impulse--had been an unhappy one from the first, for Godfrey's wife was the slave of opium. The squire had long desired that his son should marry Miss Nancy Lammeter, and would have turned him out of house and home had he known of the unfortunate marriage already contracted. Cold and weariness drove the woman, even while she walked, to the only comfort she knew. She raised the black remnant to her lips, and then flung the empty phial away. Now she walked, always more and more drowsily, and clutched more and more automatically the sleeping child at her bosom. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme longing to lie down and sleep; and so sank down against a straggling furze-bush, an easy pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft. The cold was no longer felt, but her arms did not at once relax their instinctive clutch, and the little one slumbered on.

The complete torpor came at last; the fingers lost their tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the blue eyes of the child opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a little peevish cry of "Mammy," as the child rolled downward; and then, suddenly, its eyes were caught by a bright gleaming light on the white ground, and with the ready transition of infancy it decided the light must be caught.

In an instant the child had slipped on all fours, and, after making out that the cunning gleam came from a very bright place, the little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow--toddled on to the open door of Silas Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where was a bright fire.

The little one, accustomed to be left to itself for long hours without notice, squatted down on the old sack spread out before the fire, in perfect contentment. Presently the little golden head sank down, and the blue eyes were veiled by their delicate half-transparent lids.

But where was Silas Marner while this strange visitor had come to his hearth? He was in the cottage, but he did not see the child. Since he had lost his money he had contracted the habit of opening his door, and looking out from time to time, as if he thought that his money might, somehow, be coming back to him.

That morning he had been told by some of his neighbours that it was New Year's Eve, and that he must sit up and hear the old year rung out, and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his money back again. Perhaps this friendly Raveloe way of jesting had helped to throw Silas into a more than usually excited state. Certainly he opened his door again and again that night, and the last time, just as he put out his hand to close it, the invisible wand of catalepsy arrested him, and there he stood like a graven image, powerless to resist either the good or evil that might enter.

When Marner's sensibility returned he was unaware of the break in his consciousness, and only noticed that he was chilled and faint.

Turning towards the hearth it seemed to his blurred vision as if there was a heap of gold on the floor; but instead of hard coin his fingers encountered soft, warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child, a round, fair thing, with soft, yellow rings all over its head. Could this be the little sister come back to him in a dream--his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died? That was the first thought. Was it a dream? It was very much like his little sister. How and when had the child come in without his knowledge?

But there was a cry on the hearth; the child had awakened, and Marner stooped to lift it on to his knee. He had plenty to do through the next hour. The porridge, sweetened with some dry brown sugar, stopped the cries of the little one for "mammy." Then it occurred to Silas's dull bachelor mind that the child wanted its wet boots off, and this having been done, the wet boots suggested that the child had been walking on the snow.