Demos

CHAPTER XV

Between the end of the village street and the gates of the Manor, Mutimer gave his sister hasty directions as to her behaviour before the servants.

‘Put on just a bit of the princess,’ he said. ‘Not too much, you know, but just enough to show that it isn’t the first time in your life that you’ve been waited on. Don’t always give a ‘thank you;’ one every now and then’ll do. I wouldn’t smile too much or look pleased, whatever you see. Keep that all till we’re alone together. We shall have lunch at once; I’ll do most of the talking whilst the servants are about; you just answer quietly.’

These instructions were interesting, but not altogether indispensable; Alice Maud had by this time a very pretty notion of how to conduct herself in the presence of menials. The trying moment was on entering the house; it was very hard indeed not to utter her astonishment and delight at the dimensions of the hall and the handsome staircase. This point safely passed, she resigned herself to splendour, and was conducted to her room in a sort of romantic vision. The Manor satisfied her idea of the ancestral mansion so frequently described or alluded to in the fiction of her earlier years. If her mind had just now reverted to Mr. Keene, which of course it did not, she would have smiled very royally indeed.

When she entered the drawing-room, clad in that best gown which her brother had needlessly requested her to bring, and saw that Richard was standing on the hearth-rug quite alone, she could no longer contain herself, but bounded towards him like a young fawn, and threw her arms on his neck.

‘Oh, Dick,’ she whispered, ‘what a thing it is to be rich! How ever did we live so long in the old way! If I had to go back to it now I should die of misery.’

‘Let’s have a look at you,’ he returned, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Yes, I think that’ll about do. Now mind you don’t let them see that you’re excited about it. Sit down here and pretend to be a bit tired. They may come and say lunch is ready any moment.’

‘Dick, I never felt so good in my life! I should like to go about the streets and give sovereigns to everybody I met.’

Richard laughed loudly.

‘Well, well, there’s better ways than that. I’ve been giving a good many sovereigns for a long time now. I’m only sorry you weren’t here when we opened the Hall.’

‘But you haven’t told me why you sent for me now.’

‘All right, we’ve got to have a long talk presently. It isn’t all as jolly as you think, but I can’t help that.’

‘Why, what can be wrong, Dick?’

‘Never mind; it’ll all come out in time.’

Alice came back upon certain reflections which had occupied her earlier in the morning; they kept her busy through luncheon. Whilst she ate, Richard observed her closely; on the whole he could not perceive a great difference between her manners and Adela’s. Difference there was, but in details to which Mutimer was not very sensitive. He kept up talk about the works for the most part, and described certain difficulties concerning rights of way which had of late arisen in the vicinity of the industrial settlement.

‘I think you shall come and sit with me in the library,’ he said as they rose from table. And he gave orders that coffee should be served to them in that room.

The library did not as yet quite justify its name. There was only one bookcase, and not more than fifty volumes stood on its shelves. But a large writing-table was well covered with papers. There were no pictures on the walls, a lack which was noticeable throughout the house. The effect was a certain severity; there was no air of home in the spacious chambers; the walls seemed to frown upon their master, the hearths were cold to him as to an intruding alien. Perhaps Alice felt something of this; on entering the library she shivered a little, and went to warm her hands at the fire.

‘Sit in this deep chair,’ said her brother. ‘I’ll have a cigarette. How’s mother?’

‘Well, she hasn’t been quite herself,’ Alice replied, gazing into the fire. ‘She can’t get to feel at home, that’s the truth of it. She goes. very often to the old house.’

‘Goes very often to the old house, does she?’

He repeated the words mechanically, watching smoke that issued from his lips. ‘Suppose she’ll get all right in time.’

When the coffee arrived a decanter of cognac accompanied it. Richard had got into the habit of using the latter rather freely of late. He needed a stimulant in view of the conversation that was before him. The conversation was difficult to begin. For a quarter of an hour he strayed over subjects, each of which, he thought, might bring him to the point. A question from Alice eventually gave him the requisite impulse.

‘What’s the bad news you’ve got to tell me, Dick?’ she asked shyly.

‘Bad news? Why, yes, I suppose it is bad, and it’s no use pretending anything else. I’ve brought you down here just to tell it you. Somebody must know first, and it had better be somebody who’ll listen patiently, and perhaps help me to get over it. I don’t know quite how you’ll take it, Alice. For anything I can tell you may get up and be off, and have nothing more to do with me.’

‘Why, what ever can it be, Dick? Don’t talk nonsense. You’re not afraid of me, I should think.’

‘Yes, I am a bit afraid of you, old girl. It isn’t a nice thing to tell you, and there’s the long and short of it. I’m hanged if I know how to begin.’

He laughed in an irresolute way. Trying to light a new cigarette from the remnants of the one he had smoked, his hands shook. Then he had recourse again to cognac.

Alice was drumming with her foot on the floor. She sat forward, her arms crossed upon her lap. Her eyes were still on the fire.

‘Is it anything about Emma, Dick?’ she asked, after a disconcerting silence.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Hadn’t you better tell me at once? It isn’t at all nice to feel like this.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you. I can’t marry Emma; I’m going to marry someone else.’

Alice was prepared, but the plain words caused her a moment’s consternation.

‘Oh, what ever will they all say, Dick?’ she exclaimed in a low voice.

‘That’s bad enough, to be sure, but I think more about Emma herself. I feel ashamed of myself, and that’s the plain truth. Of course I shall always give her and her sisters all the money they want to live upon, but that isn’t altogether a way out. If only I could have hinted something to her before now. I’ve let it go on so long. I’m going to be married in a fortnight.’

He could not look Alice in the face, nor she him. His shame made him angry; he flung the half-smoked cigarette violently into the fire-place, and began to walk about the room. Alice was speaking, but he did not heed her, and continued with impatient loudness.

‘Who the devil could imagine what was going to happen? Look here, Alice; if it hadn’t been for mother, I shouldn’t have engaged myself to Emma. I shouldn’t have cared much in the old kind of life; she’d have suited me very well. You can say all the good about her you like, I know it’ll be true. It’s a cursed shame to treat her in this way, I don’t need telling that. But it wouldn’t do as things are; why, you can see for yourself—would it now? And that’s only half the question: I’m going to marry somebody I do really care for. What’s the good of keeping my word to Emma, only to be miserable myself and make her the same? It’s the hardest thing ever happened to a man. Of course I shall be blackguarded right and left. Do I deserve it now? Can I help it?’

It was not quite consistent with the tone in which he had begun, but it had the force of a genuine utterance. To this Richard had worked himself in fretting over his position; he was the real sufferer, though decency compelled him to pretend it was not so. He had come to think of Emma almost angrily; she was a clog on him, and all the more irritating because he knew that his brute strength, if only he might exert it, could sweep her into nothingness at a blow. The quietness with which Alice accepted his revelation encouraged him in self-defence. He talked on for several minutes, walking about and swaying his arms, as if in this way he could literally shake himself free of moral obligations. Then, finding his throat dry, he had recourse to cognac, and Alice could at length speak.

‘You haven’t told me, Dick, who it is you’re going to marry.’

‘A lady called Miss Waltham—Adela Waltham. She lives here in Wanley.’

‘Does she know about Emma?’

The question was simply put, but it seemed to affect Richard very disagreeably.

‘No, of course she doesn’t. What would be the use?’

He threw himself into a chair, crossed his feet, and kept silence.

‘I’m very sorry for Emma,’ murmured his sister.

Richard said nothing.

‘How shall you tell her, Dick?’

‘I can’t tell her!’ he replied, throwing out an arm. ‘How is it likely I can tell her?’

‘And Jane’s so dreadfully bad,’ continued Alice in the undertone. ‘She’s always saying she cares for nothing but to see Emma married. What shall we do? And everything seemed so first-rate. Suppose she summonses you, Dick?’

The noble and dignified legal process whereby maidens right themselves naturally came into Alice’s thoughts. Her brother scouted the suggestion.

‘Emma’s not that kind of girl. Besides, I’ve told you I shall always send her money. She’ll find another husband before long. Lots of men ‘ud be only too glad to marry her.’

Alice was not satisfied with her brother. The practical aspects of the rupture she could consider leniently, but the tone he assumed was jarring to her instincts. Though nothing like a warm friendship existed between her and Emma, she sympathised, in a way impossible to Richard, with the sorrows of the abandoned girl. She was conscious of what her judgment would be if another man had acted thus; and though this was not so much a matter of consciousness, she felt that Richard might have spoken in a way more calculated to aid her in taking his side. She wished, in fact, to see only his advantage, and was very much tempted to see everything but that.

‘But you can’t keep her in the dark any longer,’ she urged. ‘Why, it’s cruel!’

‘I can’t tell her,’ he repeated monotonously.

Alice drew in her feet. It symbolised retiring within her defences. She saw what he was aiming at, and felt not at all disposed to pleasure him. There was a long silence; Alice was determined not to be the first to break it.

‘You refuse to help me?’ Richard asked at length, between his teeth.

‘I think it would be every bit as bad for me as for you,’ she replied.

‘That you can’t think,’ he argued. ‘She can’t blame you; you’ve only to say I’ve behaved like a blackguard, and you’re out of it.’

‘And when do you mean to tell mother?’

‘She’ll have to hear of it from other people. I can’t tell her.’

Richard had a suspicion that he was irretrievably ruining himself in his sister’s opinion, and it did not improve his temper. It was a foretaste of the wider obloquy to come upon him, possibly as hard to bear as any condemnation to which he had exposed himself. He shook himself out of the chair.

‘Well, that’s all I’ve got to tell you. Perhaps you’d better think over it. I don’t want to keep you away from home longer than you care to stay. There’s a train at a few minutes after nine in the morning.’

He shuffled for a few moments about the writing-table, then went from the room.

Alice was unhappy. The reaction from her previous high spirits, as soon as it had fully come about, brought her even to tears. She cried silently, and, to do the girl justice, at least half her sorrow was on Emma’s account. Presently she rose and began to walk about the room; she went to the window, and looked out on to the white garden. The sky beyond the thin boughs was dusking; the wind, which sang so merrily a few hours ago, had fallen to sobbing.

It was too wretched to remain alone; she resolved to go into the drawing-room; perhaps her brother was there. As she approached the door somebody knocked on the outside, then there entered a dark man of spruce appearance, who drew back a step as soon as he saw her.

‘Pray excuse me,’ he said, with an air of politeness. ‘I supposed I should find Mr. Mutimer here.’

‘I think he’s in the house,’ Alice replied.

Richard appeared as they were speaking.

‘What is it, Rodman?’ he asked abruptly, passing into the library.

‘I’ll go to the drawing-room,’ Alice said, and left the men together.

In half an hour Richard again joined her. He seemed in a better frame of mind, for he came in humming. Alice, having glanced at him, averted her face again and kept silence. She felt a hand smoothing her hair. Her brother, leaning over the back of her seat, whispered to her,—

‘You’ll help me, Princess?’

She did not answer.

‘You won’t be hard, Alice? It’s a wretched business, and I don’t know what I shall do if you throw me over. I can’t do without you, old girl.’

‘I can’t tell mother, Dick. You know very well what it’ll be. I daren’t do that.’

But even that task Alice at last took upon herself, after another half-hour’s discussion. Alas! she would never again feel towards her brother as before this necessity fell upon her. Her life had undergone that impoverishment which is so dangerous to elementary natures, the loss of an ideal.

‘You’ll let me stay over to-morrow?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing very pleasant to go back to, and I don’t see that a day ‘ll matter.’

‘You can stay if you wish. I’m going to take you to have tea with Adela now. If you stay we’ll have her to dinner to-morrow.’

‘I wonder whether we shall get along?’ Alice mused.

‘I don’t see why not. You’ll get lots of things from her, little notions of all kinds.’

This is always a more or less dangerous form of recommendation, even in talking to one’s sister. To suggest that Adela would benefit by the acquaintance would have been a far more politic procedure.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ Alice inquired, still depressed by the scene she had gone through.

‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong. It’s only that you’ll see differences at first; from the people you’ve been used to, I mean. But I think you’ll have to go and get your things on; it’s nearly five.’

In Alice’s rising from her chair there was nothing of the elasticity that had marked her before luncheon. Before moving away she spoke a thought that was troubling her.

‘Suppose mother tries to stop it?’

Richard looked to the ground moodily.

‘I meant to tell you,’ he said. ‘You’d better say that I’m already married.’

‘You’re giving me a nice job,’ was the girl’s murmured rejoinder.

‘Well, it’s as good as true. And it doesn’t make the job any worse.’

As is wont to be the case when two persons come to mutual understanding on a piece of baseness, the tone of brother and sister had suffered in the course of their dialogue. At first meeting they had both kept a certain watch upon their lips, feeling that their position demanded it; a moral limpness was evident in them by this time.

They set forth to walk to the Walthams’. Exercise in the keen air, together with the sense of novelty in her surroundings, restored Alice’s good humour before the house was reached. She gazed with astonishment at the infernal glare over New Wanley. Her brother explained the sight to her with gusto.

‘It used to be all fields and gardens over there,’ he said. ‘See what money and energy can do! You shall go over the works in the morning. Perhaps Adela will go with us, then we can take her back to the Manor.’

‘Why do they call the house that, Dick?’ Alice inquired. ‘Is it because people who live there are supposed to have good manners?’

‘May be, for anything I know,’ was the capitalist’s reply. ‘Only it’s spelt different, you know. I say, Alice, you must be careful about your spelling; there were mistakes in your last letter. Won’t do, you know, to make mistakes if you write to Adela.’

Alice gave a little shrug of impatience. Immediately after, they stopped at the threshold sacred to all genteel accomplishments—so Alice would have phrased it if she could have fully expressed her feeling—and they speedily entered the sitting-room, where the table was already laid for tea. Mrs. Waltham and her daughter rose to welcome them.

‘We knew of your arrival,’ said the former, bestowing on Alice a maternal salute. ‘Not many things happen in Wanley that all the village doesn’t hear of, do they, Mr. Mutimer? Of course we expected you to tea.’

Adela and her future sister-in-law kissed each other. Adela was silent, but she smiled.

‘You’ll take your things off, my dear?’ Mrs. Waltham continued. ‘Will you go upstairs with Miss Mutimer, Adela?’

But for Mrs. Waltham’s persistent geniality the hour which followed would have shown many lapses of conversation. Alice appreciated at once those ‘differences’ at which her brother had hinted, and her present frame of mind was not quite consistent with patient humility. Naturally, she suffered much from self-consciousness; Mrs. Waltham annoyed her by too frequent observation, Adela by seeming indifference. The delicacy of the latter was made perhaps a little excessive by strain of feelings. Alice at once came to the conclusion that Dick’s future wife was cold and supercilious. She was not predisposed to like Adela. The circumstances were in a number of ways unfavourable. Even had there not existed the very natural resentment at the painful task which this young lady had indirectly imposed upon her, it was not in Alice’s blood and breeding to take kindly at once to a girl of a class above her own. Alice had warm affections; as a lady’s maid she might very conceivably have attached herself with much devotion to an indulgent mistress, but in the present case too much was asked of her, Richard was proud of his sister; he saw her at length seated where he had so often imagined her, and in his eyes she bore herself well. He glanced often at Adela, hoping for a return glance of congratulation; when it failed to come, he consoled himself with the reflection that such silent interchange of sentiments at table would be ill manners. In his very heart he believed that of the two maidens his sister was the better featured. Adela and Alice sat over against each other; their contrasted appearances were a chapter of social history. Mark the difference between Adela’s gently closed lips, every muscle under control; and Alice’s, which could never quite close without forming a saucy pout or a self-conscious primness. Contrast the foreheads; on the one hand that tenderly shadowed curve of brow, on the other the surface which always seemed to catch too much of the light, which moved irregularly with the arches above the eyes. The grave modesty of the one face, the now petulant, now abashed, now vacant expression of the other. Richard in his heart preferred the type he had 80 long been familiar with; a state of feeling of course in no way inconsistent with the emotions excited in him by continual observation of Adela.

The two returned to the Manor at half-past seven, Alice rising with evident relief when he gave the signal. It was agreed that the latter part of the next morning should be spent in going over the works. Adela was very willing to be of the party.

‘They haven’t much money, have they?’ was Alice’s first question as soon as she got away from the door.

‘No, they are not rich,’ replied the brother. ‘You got on very nicely, old girl.’

‘Why shouldn’t I? You talk as if I didn’t know how to behave myself, Dick.’

‘No, I don’t. I say that you did behave yourself.’

‘Yes, and you were surprised at it.’

‘I wasn’t at all. What do you think of her?’

‘She doesn’t say much.’

‘No, she’s always very quiet. It’s her way.’

‘Yes.’

The monosyllable meant more than Richard gathered from it. They walked on in silence, and were met presently by a gentleman who was coming along the village street at a sharp pace. A lamp discovered Mr. Willis Rodman. Richard stopped.

‘Seen to that little business?’ he asked, in a cheerful voice.

‘Yes,’ was Rodman’s reply. ‘We shall hear from Agworth in the morning.’

‘All right.—Alice, this is Mr. Rodman.—My sister, Rodman.’

Richard’s right-hand man performed civilities with decidedly more finish than Richard himself had at command.

‘I am very happy to meet Miss Mutimer. I hope we shall have the pleasure of showing her New Wanley to-morrow.’

‘She and Miss Waltham will walk down in the morning. Good night, Rodman. Cold, eh?’

‘Why didn’t you introduce him this afternoon?’ Alice asked as she walked on.

‘I didn’t think of it—I was bothered.’

‘He seems very gentlemanly.’

‘Oh, Rodman’s seen a deal of life. He’s a useful fellow—gets through work in a wonderful way.’

‘But is he a gentleman? I mean, was he once?’

Richard laughed.

‘I suppose you mean, had he ever money? No, he’s made himself what he is.’

Tea having supplied the place of the more substantial evening meal, Richard and his sister had supper about ten o’clock. Alice drank champagne; a few bottles remained from those dedicated to the recent festival, and Mutimer felt the necessity of explaining the presence in his house of a luxury which to his class is more than anything associated with the bloated aristocracy. Alice drank it for the first time in her life, and her spirits grew as light as the foam upon her glass. Brother and sister were quietly confidential as midnight drew near.

‘Shall you bring her to London?’ Alice inquired, without previous mention of Adela.

‘For a week, I think. We shall go to an hotel, of course. She’s never seen London since she was a child.’

‘She won’t come to Highbury?’

‘No. I shall avoid that somehow. You’ll have to come and see us at the hotel. We’ll go to the theatre together one night.’

‘What about ‘Arry?’

‘I don’t know. I shall think about it.’

Digesting much at his ease, Richard naturally became dreamful.

‘I may have to take a house for a time now and then,’ he said.

‘In London?’

He nodded.

‘I mustn’t forget you, you see, Princess. Of course you’ll come here sometimes, but that’s not much good. In London I dare say I can get you to know some of the right kind of people. I want Adela to be thick with the Westlakes; then your chance’ll come. See, old woman?’

Alice, too, dreamed.

‘I wonder you don’t want me to marry a Socialist working man,’ she said presently, as if twitting him playfully.

‘You don’t understand. One of the things we aim at is to remove the distinction between classes. I want you to marry one of those they call gentlemen. And you shall too, Alice!’

‘Well, but I’m not a working girl now, Dick.’

He laughed, and said it was time to go to bed.

The same evening conversation continued to a late hour between Hubert Eldon and his mother. Hubert was returning to London the next morning.

Yesterday there had come to him two letters from Wanley, both addressed in female hand. He knew Adela’s writing from her signature in the ‘Christian Year,’ and hastily opened the letter which came from her. The sight of the returned sonnets checked the eager flow of his blood; he was prepared for what he afterwards read.

‘Then let her meet her fate,’—so ran his thoughts when he had perused the cold note, unassociable with the Adela he imagined in its bald formality. ‘Only life can teach her.’

The other letter he suspected to be from Letty Tew, as it was.

‘DEAR MR. ELDON,—I cannot help writing a line to you, lest you should think that I did not keep my promise in the way you understood it. I did indeed. You will hear from her; she preferred to write herself, and perhaps it was better; I should only have had painful things to say. I wish to ask you to have no unkind or unjust thoughts; I scarcely think you could have. Please do not trouble to answer this, but believe me, yours sincerely,

‘L. TEW.’

‘Good little girl!’ he said to himself, smiling sadly. ‘I feel sure she did her best.’

But his pride was asserting itself, always restive under provocation. To rival with a man like Mutimer! Better that the severance with old days should be complete.

He talked it all over very frankly with his mother, who felt that her son’s destiny was not easily foreseen.

‘And what do you propose to do, Hubert?’ she asked, when they spoke of the future.

‘To study, principally art. In a fortnight I go to Rome.’

Mrs. Eldon had gone thither thirty years ago.

‘Think of me in my chair sometimes,’ she said, touching his hands with her wan fingers.