Demos

Mutimer was at a loss. If Adela had calculated her reply with the deepest art she could not have chosen words better fitted to silence him.

‘And you have told me every word that passed between you?’ he asked.

‘That would be impossible. I have told you the substance of the conversation.’

‘Why did you ask him to keep the works going on my plan?’

‘I can tell you no more.’

Her strength was spent. She put aside her sewing and moved towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t feel well. I must rest.’

‘Just stop a minute. I’ve something here I want to show you.’

She turned wearily. Mutimer took a letter from his pocket.

‘Will you read that?’

She took it. It was written in a very clear, delicate hand, and ran thus:—

‘DEAR SIR,—I who address you have lain for two years on a bed from which I shall never move till I am carried to my grave. My age is three-and-twenty; an accident which happened to me a few days after my twenty-first birthday left me without the use of my limbs; it often seems to me that it would have been better if I had died, but there is no arguing with fate, and the wise thing is to accept cheerfully whatever befalls us. I hoped at one time to take an active part in life, and my interest in the world’s progress is as strong as ever, especially in everything that concerns social reform. I have for some time known your name, and have constantly sought information about your grand work at New Wanley. Now I venture to write (by the hand of a dear friend), to express my admiration for your high endeavour, and my grief at the circumstances which have made you powerless to continue it.

‘I am possessed of means, and, as you see, can spend but little on myself. I ask you, with much earnestness, to let me be of some small use to the cause of social justice, by putting, in your hands the sum of five hundred pounds, to be employed as may seem good to you. I need not affect to be ignorant of your position, and it is my great fear lest you should be unable to work for Socialism with your undivided energies. Will you accept this money, and continue by means of public lecturing to spread the gospel of emancipation? That I am convinced is your first desire. If you will do me this great kindness, I shall ask your permission to arrange that the same sum be paid to you annually, for the next ten years, whether I still live or not. To be helping in this indirect way would cheer me more than you can think. I enclose a draft on Messrs.—.

‘As I do not know your private address, I send this to the office of the “Piery Cross.” Pardon me for desiring to remain anonymous; many reasons necessitate it. If you grant me this favour, will you advertise the word “Accepted” in the “Times” newspaper within ten days?

‘With heartfelt sympathy and admiration, ‘I sign myself, ‘A FRIEND.’

Adela was unmoved; she returned the letter as if it had no interest for her.

‘What do you think of that?’ said Mutimer, forgetting their differences in his exultation.

‘I am glad you can continue your work,’ Adela replied absently.

She was moving away when he again stopped her.

‘Look here, Adela.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you still angry with me?’

She was silent.

‘I am sorry I lost my temper. I didn’t mean all I said to you. Will you try and forget it?’

Her lips spoke for her.

‘I will try.’

‘You needn’t go on doing housework now,’ he said assuringly. ‘Are you going? Come and say good-night.’

He approached her and laid his hand upon her shoulder. Adela shrank from his touch, and for an instant gazed at him with wide eyes of fear.

He dropped his hands and let her go.

CHAPTER XXIX

The valley rested. On the morning of Mutimer’s departure from Wanley there was no wonted clank of machinery, no smoke from the chimneys, no roar of iron-smelting furnaces; the men and women of the colony stood idly before their houses, discussing prospects, asking each other whether it was seriously Mr. Eldon’s intention to raze New Wanley, many of them grumbling or giving vent to revolutionary threats. They had continued in work thus long since the property in fact changed hands, and to most of them it seemed unlikely, in spite of every thing, that they would have to go in search of new employments. This morning they would hear finally.

The valley rested. For several days there had been constant rain; though summer was scarcely over, it had turned cold and the sky was cheerless. Over Stanbury Hill there were always heavy, dripping clouds, and the leaves of Adela’s favourite wood were already falling. At the Manor there was once more disorder; before Mutimer and his wife took their departure the removal of furniture had commenced. Over the whole scene brooded a spirit of melancholy. It needed faith in human energy to imagine the pollutions swept away, and the seasons peacefully gliding as of old between the hillsides and amid meadows and garden closes.

Hubert Eldon drove over from Agworth, and was in the Public Hall at the appointed time. His business with the men was simple and brief. He had to inform them that their employment here was at an end, but that each one would receive a month’s wages and permission to inhabit their present abodes for yet a fortnight. After that they had no longer right of tenancy. He added that if any man considered himself specially aggrieved by this arrangement, he was prepared to hear and judge the individual case.

There was a murmur of discontent through the room, but no one took upon himself to rise and become spokesman of the community. Disregarding the manifestation, Hubert described in a few words how and when this final business would be transacted; then he left the hall by the door which led from the platform.

Then followed a busy week. Claims of all kinds were addressed to him, some reasonable, most of them not to be entertained. Mr. Yottle was constantly at the Manor; there he and Hubert held a kind of court. Hubert was not well fitted for business of this nature; he easily became impatient, and, in spite of humane intentions, often suffered from a tumult of his blood, when opposed by some dogged mechanic.

‘I can’t help it!’ he exclaimed to Mr. Wyvern one right, after a day of peculiar annoyance. ‘We are all men, it is true; but for the brotherhood—feel it who can! I am illiberal, if you like, but in the presence of those fellows I feel that I am facing enemies. It seems to me that I have nothing in common with them but the animal functions. Absurd? Yes, of course, it is absurd; but I speak of how intercourse with them affects me. They are our enemies, yours as well as mine; they are the enemies of every man who speaks the pure English tongue and does not earn a living with his hands. When they face me I understand what revolution means; some of them look at me as they would if they had muskets in their hands.’

‘You are not conciliating,’ remarked the vicar.

‘I am not, and cannot be. They stir the worst feelings in me; I grow arrogant, autocratic. As long as I have no private dealings with them I can consider their hardships and judge their characters dispassionately; but I must not come to close quarters.’

‘You have special causes of prejudice.’

‘True. If I were a philosopher I should overcome all that. However, my prejudice is good in one way; it enables me thoroughly to understand the detestation with which they regard me and the like of me. If I had been born one of them I should be the most savage anarchist. The moral is, that I must hold apart. Perhaps I shall grow cooler in time.’

The special causes of prejudice were quite as strong on the side of the workmen; Hubert might have been far less aristocratic in bearing, they would have disliked him as cordially. Most of them took it as a wanton outrage that they should be driven from the homes in which they had believed themselves settled for life. The man Redgrave—he of the six feet two who had presented the address to Mutimer—was a powerful agent of ill-feeling; during the first few days he was constantly gathering impromptu meetings in New Wanley and haranguing them violently on the principles of Socialism. But in less than a week he had taken his departure, and the main trouble seemed at an end.

Mrs. Eldon was so impatient to return to the Manor that a room was prepared for her as soon as possible, and she came from her house at Agworth before Mutimer had been gone a week. Through the summer her strength had failed rapidly; it was her own conviction that she could live but a short time longer. The extreme agitation caused by the discovery of the will had visibly enfeebled her; it was her one desire to find herself once more in her old home, and there to breathe her last. The journey from Agworth cost her extreme suffering; she was prostrate, almost lifeless, for three days after it. But her son’s society revived her. Knowing him established in his family possessions, she only cared to taste for a little while this unhoped-for joy. Lying on a couch in her familiar chamber, she delighted to have flowers brought to her from the garden, even leaves from the dear old trees, every one of which she knew as a friend. But she had constant thought for those upon whose disaster her own happiness was founded; of Adela she spoke often.

‘What will become of that poor child?’ she asked one evening, when Hubert had been speaking of Rodman’s impracticable attitude, and of the proceedings Mutimer was about to take. ‘Do you know anything of her life, Hubert?’

‘I met her in the wood here a few weeks ago,’ he replied, mentioning the incident for the first time. ‘She wanted to make a Socialist of me.’

‘Was that after the will came to light?’

‘The day after. She pleaded for New Wanley—hoped I should keep it up.’

‘Then she has really accepted her husband’s views?’

‘It seems so. I am afraid she thought me an obstinate tyrant.’

He spoke carelessly.

‘But she must not suffer, dear. How can they be helped?’

‘They can’t fall into absolute want. And I suppose his Socialist friends will do something for him. I have been as considerate as it was possible to be. I dare say he will make me a commonplace in his lectures henceforth, a type of the brutal capitalist.’