Felix Holt | Page 8

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 newspaper, in which he had been rapidly reading almost every advertisement while his mother had been going through her sharp inward struggle. 'Uncle Lingon is on the