Felix Holt | Page 8

anxious and eager. 'The old women at Smyrna are like sacks.
You've not got clumsy and shapeless. How is it I have the trick of
getting fat?' (Here Harold lifted his arm and spread out his plump hand.)
'I remember my father was as thin as a herring. How is my father?
Where is he?'
Mrs Transome just pointed to the curtained doorway, and let her son
pass through it alone. She was not given to tears; but now, under the
pressure of emotion that could find no other vent, they burst forth. She
took care that they should be silent tears, and before Harold came out
of the library again they were dried. Mrs Transome had not the
ferninine tendency to seek influence through pathos; she had been used
to rule in virtue of acknowledged superiority. The consciousness that
she had to make her son's acquaintance, and that her knowledge of the
youth of nineteen might help her little in interpreting the man of
thirty-four, had fallen like lead on her soul; but in this new
acquaintance of theirs she cared especially that her son, who had seen a

strange world, should feel that he was come home to a mother who was
to be consulted on all things, and who could supply his lack of the local
experience necessary to an English land-holder. Her part in life had
been that of the clever sinner, and she was equipped with the views, the
reasons, and the habits which belonged to that character: life would
have little meaning for her if she were to be gently thrust aside as a
harmless elderly woman. And besides, there were secrets which her son
must never know. So, by the time Harold came from the library again,
the traces of tears were not discernible, except to a very careful
observer. And he did not observe his mother carefully; his eyes only
glanced at her on their way to the North Loamshire Herald, lying on the
table near her, which he took up with his left hand, as he said -
'Gad ! what a wreck poor father is ! Paralysis, eh? Terribly shrunk and
shaken - crawls about among his books and beetles as usual, though.
Well, it's a slow and easy death. But he's not much over sixty-five, is
he?'
'Sixty-seven, counting by birthdays; but your father was born old, I
think,' said Mrs Transome, a little flushed with the determination not to
show any unasked-for feeling.
Her son did not notice her. All the time he had been speaking his eyes
had been running down the columns of the newspaper.
'But your little boy, Harold - where is he? How is it he has not come
with you?'
'O, I left him behind, in town,' said Harold, still looking at the paper.
'My man Dominic will bring him, with the rest of the luggage. Ah, I see
it is young Debarry, and not my old friend Sir Maximus, who is
offering himself as candidate for North Loamshire.'
'Yes. You did not answer me when I wrote to you to London about
your standing. There is no other Tory candidate spoken of, and you
would have all the Debarry interest.'
'I hardly think that,' said Harold, significantly.

'Why? Jermyn says a Tory candidate can never be got in without it.'
'But I shall not be a Tory candidate.'
Mrs Transome felt something like an electric shock.
'What then?' she said, almost sharply. 'You will not call yourself a
Whig?'
'God forbid ! I'm a Radical.'
Mrs Transome's limbs tottered; she sank into a chair. Here was a
distinct confirmation of the vague but strong feeling that her son was a
stranger to her. Here was a revelation to which it seemed almost as
impossible to adjust her hopes and notions of a dignified life as if her
son had said that he had been converted to Mahometanism at Smyrna,
and had four wives, instead of one son, shortly to arrive under the care
of Dominic. For the moment she had a sickening feeling that it was all
of no use that the long-delayed good fortune had come at last - all of no
use though the unloved Durfey was dead and buried, and though
Harold had come home with plenty of money. There were rich Radicals,
she was aware, as there were rich Jews and Dissenters, but she had
never thought of them as county people. Sir Francis Burdett had been
generally regarded as a madman. It was better to ask no questions, but
silently to prepare herself for anything else there might be to come.
'Will you go to your rooms, Harold, and see if there is anything you
would like to have altered?'
'Yes, let us go,' said Harold, throwing down the