On ordinary days Richard of necessity rose early; a holiday did not lead him to break the rule, for free hours were precious. He had his body well under control; six hours of sleep he found sufficient to keep him in health, and temptations to personal ease, in whatever form, he resisted as a matter of principle.
Easter Monday found him down-stairs at half-past six. His mother would to-day allow herself another hour. ‘Arry would be down just in time to breakfast, not daring to be late. The Princess might be looked for—some time in the course of the morning; she was licensed.
Richard, for purposes of study, used the front parlour. In drawing up the blind, he disclosed a room precisely resembling in essential features hundreds of front parlours in that neighbourhood, or, indeed, in any working-class district of London. Everything was clean; most things were bright-hued or glistening of surface. There was the gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece, with a yellow clock—which did not go—and glass ornaments in front. There was a small round table before the window, supporting wax fruit under a glass case. There was a hearthrug with a dazzling pattern of imaginary flowers. On the blue cloth of the middle table were four showily-bound volumes, arranged symmetrically. On the head of the sofa lay a covering worked of blue and yellow Berlin wools. Two arm-chairs were draped with long white antimacassars, ready to slip off at a touch. As in the kitchen, there was a smell of cleanlines—of furniture polish, hearthstone, and black-lead.
I should mention the ornaments of the walls. The pictures were: a striking landscape of the Swiss type, an engraved portrait of Garibaldi, an unframed view of a certain insurance office, a British baby on a large scale from the Christmas number of an illustrated paper.
The one singular feature of the room was a small, glass-doored bookcase, full of volumes. They were all of Richard’s purchasing; to survey them was to understand the man, at all events on his intellectual side. Without exception they belonged to that order of literature which, if studied exclusively and for its own sake,—as here it was,—brands a man indelibly, declaring at once the incompleteness of his education and the deficiency of his instincts. Social, political, religious,—under these three heads the volumes classed themselves, and each class was represented by productions of the ‘extreme’ school. The books which a bright youth of fair opportunities reads as a matter of course, rejoices in for a year or two, then throws aside for ever, were here treasured to be the guides of a lifetime. Certain writers of the last century, long ago become only historically interesting, were for Richard an armoury whence he girded himself for the battles of the day; cheap reprints or translations of Malthus, of Robert Owen, of Volney’s ‘Ruins,’ of Thomas Paine, of sundry works of Voltaire, ranked upon his shelves. Moreover, there was a large collection of pamphlets, titled wonderfully and of yet more remarkable contents, the authoritative utterances of contemporary gentlemen—and ladies—who made it the end of their existence to prove: that there cannot by any possibility be such a person as Satan; that the story of creation contained in the Book of Genesis is on no account to be received; that the begetting of children is a most deplorable oversight; that to eat flesh is wholly unworthy of a civilised being; that if every man and woman performed their quota of the world’s labour it would be necessary to work for one hour and thirty-seven minutes daily, no jot longer, and that the author, in each case, is the one person capable of restoring dignity to a down-trodden race and happiness to a blasted universe. Alas, alas! On this food had Richard Mutimer pastured his soul since he grew to manhood, on this and this only. English literature was to him a sealed volume; poetry he scarcely knew by name; of history he was worse than ignorant, having looked at this period and that through distorting media, and congratulating himself on his clear vision because he saw men as trees walking; the bent of his mind would have led him to natural science, but opportunities of instruction were lacking, and the chosen directors of his prejudice taught him to regard every fact, every discovery, asfororagainstsomething.
A library of pathetic significance, the individual alone considered. Viewed as representative, not without alarming suggestiveness to those who can any longer trouble themselves about the world’s future. One dreams of the age when free thought—in the popular sense—will have become universal, when art shall have lost its meaning, worship its holiness, when the Bible will only exist in ‘comic’ editions, and Shakespeare be down-cried by ‘most sweet voices as a mountebank of reactionary tendencies.
Richard was to lecture on the ensuing Sunday at one of the branch meeting-places of his society; he engaged himself this morning in collecting certain data of a statistical kind. He was still at his work when the sound of the postman’s knock began to be heard in the square, coming from house to house, drawing nearer at each repetition. Richard paid no heed to it; he expected no letter. Yet it seemed there was one for some member of the family; the letter-carrier’s regular tread ascended the five steps to the door, and then two small thunderclaps echoed through the house. There was no letter-box; Richard went to answer the knock. An envelope addressed to himself in a small, formal hand.
His thoughts still busy with other things, he opened the letter mechanically as he re-entered the room. He had never in his life been calmer; the early hour of study had kept his mind pleasantly active whilst his breakfast appetite sharpened itself. Never was man less prepared to receive startling intelligence.
He read, then raised his eyes and let them stray from the papers on the table to the wax-fruit before the window, thence to the young leafage of the trees around the Baptist Chapel. He was like a man whose face had been overflashed by lightning. He read again, then, holding the letter behind him, closed his right hand upon his beard with thoughtful tension. He read a third time, then returned the letter to its envelope, put it in his pocket, and sat down again to his book.
He was summoned to breakfast in ten minutes. His mother was alone in the kitchen; she gave him his bloater and his cup of coffee, and he cut himself a solid slice of bread and butter.
‘Was the letter for you?’ she asked.
He replied with a nod, and fell patiently to work on the dissection of his bony delicacy. In five minutes Henry approached the table with a furtive glance at his elder brother. But Richard had no remark to make. The meal proceeded in silence.
When Richard had finished, he rose and said to his mother—
‘Have you that railway-guide I brought home a week ago?’
‘I believe I have somewhere. Just look in the cupboard.’
The guide was found. Richard consulted it for a few moments.
‘I have to go out of London,’ he then observed. ‘It’s just possible I shan’t get back to-night.’
A little talk followed about the arrangements of the day, and whether anyone was likely to be at home for dinner. Richard did not show much interest in the matter; he went upstairs whistling, and changed the clothing he wore for his best suit. In a quarter of an hour he had left the house.
He did not return till the evening of the following day. It was presumed that he had gone ‘after a job.’
When he reached home his mother and Alice were at tea. He walked to the kitchen fireplace, turned his back to it, and gazed with a peculiar expression at the two who sat at table.
‘Dick’s got work,’ observed Alice, after a glance at him. ‘I can see that in his face.’.
‘Have you, Dick?’ asked Mrs. Mutimer.
‘I have. Work likely to last.’
‘So we’ll hope,’ commented his mother. ‘Where is it?’
‘A good way out of London. Pour me a cup, mother. Where’s ‘Arry?’
‘Gone out, as usual.’
‘And why are you having tea with your hat on, Princess?’
‘Because I’m in a hurry, if you must know everything.’
Richard did not seek further information. He drank his tea standing. In five minutes Alice had bustled away for an evening with friends. Mrs. Mutimer cleared the table without speaking.
‘Now get your sewing, mother, and sit down,’ began Richard. ‘I want to have a talk with you.’
The mother cast a rather suspicious glance. There was an impressiveness in the young man’s look and tone which disposed her to obey without remark.
‘How long is it,’ Richard asked, when attention waited upon him, ‘since you heard anything of father’s uncle, my namesake?’
Mrs. Mutimer’s face exhibited the dawning of intelligence, an unwrinkling here and there, a slight rounding of the lips.
‘Why, what of him?’ she asked in an undertone, leaving a needle unthreaded.
‘The old man’s just dead.’
Agitation seized the listener, agitation of a kind most unusual in her. Her hands trembled, her eyes grew wide.
‘You haven’t heard anything of him lately?’ pursued Richard.
‘Heard? Not I. No more did your father ever since two years afore we was married. I’d always thought he was dead long ago. What of him, Dick?’
‘From what I’m told I thought you’d perhaps been keeping things to yourself. ‘Twouldn’t have been unlike you, mother. He knew all about us, so the lawyer tells me.’
‘The lawyer?’
‘Well, I’d better out with it. He’s died without a will. His real property—that means his houses and land—belongs to me; his personal property—that’s his money—‘ll have to be divided between me, and Alice, and ‘Arry. You’re out of the sharing, mother.’
He said it jokingly, but Mrs. Mutimer did not join in his laugh. Her palms were closely pressed together; still trembling, she gazed straight before her, with a far-off look.
‘His houses—his land?’ she murmured, as if she had not quite heard. ‘What did he want with more than one house?’
The absurd question was all that could find utterance. She seemed to be reflecting on that point.
‘Would you like to hear what it all comes to?’ Richard resumed. His voice was unnatural, forcibly suppressed, quivering at pauses. His eyes gleamed, and there was a centre of warm colour on each of his cheeks. He had taken a note-book from his pocket, and the leaves rustled under his tremulous fingers.
‘The lawyer, a man called Yottle, just gave me an idea of the different investments and so on. The real property consists of a couple of houses in Belwick, both let, and an estate at a place called Wanley. The old man had begun mining there; there’s iron. I’ve got my ideas about that. I didn’t go into the house; people are there still. Now the income.’
He read his notes: So much in railways, so much averaged yearly from iron-works in Belwick, so much in foreign securities, so much disposable at home. Total—
‘Stop, Dick, stop!’ uttered his mother, under her breath. ‘Them figures frighten me; I don’t know what they mean. It’s a mistake; they’re leading you astray. Now, mind what I say—there’s a mistake! No man with all that money ‘ud die without a will. You won’t get me to believe it, Dick.’
Richard laughed excitedly. ‘Believe it or not, mother; I’ve got my ears and eyes, I hope. And there’s a particular reason why he left no will. There was one, but something—I don’t know what—happened just before his death, and he was going to make a new one. The will was burnt. He died in church on a Sunday morning; if he’d lived another day, he’d have made a new will. It’s no more a mistake than the Baptist Chapel is in the square!’ A comparison which hardly conveyed all Richard’s meaning; but he was speaking in agitation, more and more quickly, at last almost angrily.
Mrs. Mutimer raised her hand. ‘Be quiet a bit, Dick. It’s took me too sudden. I feel queer like.’
There was silence. The mother rose as if with difficulty, and drew water in a tea-cup from the filter. When she resumed her place, her hands prepared to resume sewing. She looked up, solemnly, sternly.
‘Dick, it’s bad, bad news! I’m an old woman, and I must say what I think. It upsets me; it frightens me. I thought he might a’ left you a hundred pounds.’
‘Mother, don’t talk about it till you’ve had time to think,’ said Richard, stubbornly. ‘If this is bad news, what the deuce would you call good? Just because I’ve been born and bred a mechanic, does that say I’ve got no common sense or self-respect? Are you afraid I shall go and drink myself to death? You talk like the people who make it their business to sneer at us—the improvidence of the working classes, and such d—d slander. It’s good news for me, and it’ll be good news for many another man. Wait and see.’
The mother became silent, keeping her lips tight, and struggling to regain her calmness. She was not convinced, but in argument with her eldest son she always gave way, affection and the pride she had in him aiding her instincts of discretion. In practice she still maintained something of maternal authority, often gaining her point by merely seeming offended. To the two who had not yet reached the year of emancipation she allowed, in essentials, no appeal from her decision. Between her and Richard there had been many a sharp conflict in former days, invariably ending with the lad’s submission; the respect which his mother exacted he in truth felt to be her due, and it was now long since they had openly been at issue on any point. Mrs. Mutimer’s views were distinctly Conservative, and hitherto she had never taken Richard’s Radicalism seriously; on the whole she had regarded it as a fairly harmless recreation for his leisure hours—decidedly preferable to a haunting of public-houses and music-halls. The loss of his employment caused her a good deal of uneasiness, but she had not ventured to do more than throw out hints of her disapproval; and now, as it seemed, the matter was of no moment. Henceforth she had far other apprehensions, but this first conflict of their views made her reticent.
‘Just let me tell you how things stand,’ Richard pursued, when his excitement had somewhat subsided; and he went on to explain the relations between old Mr. Mutimer and the Eldons, which in outline had been described to him by Mr. Yottle. And then—
‘The will he had made left all the property to this young Eldon, who was to be trustee for a little money to be doled out to me yearly, just to save me from ruining myself, of course.’ Richard’s lips curled in scorn. ‘I don’t know whether the lawyer thought we ought to offer to give everything up; he seemed precious anxious to make me understand that the old man had never intended us to have it, and that hedidwant these other people to have it. Of course, we’ve nothing to do with that. Luck’s luck, and I think I know who’ll make best use of it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell all this when Alice was here?’ inquired his mother, seeming herself again, though very grave.
‘I’ll tell you. I thought it over, and it seems to me it’ll be better if Alice and ‘Arry wait a while before they know what’ll come to them. They can’t take anything till they’re twenty-one. Alice is a good girl, but—’
He hesitated, having caught his mother’s eye. He felt that this prudential course justified in a measure her anxiety.
‘She’s a girl,’ he pursued, ‘and we know that a girl with a lot o’ money gets run after by men who care nothing about her and a good deal about the money. Then it’s quite certain ‘Arry won’t be any the better for fancying himself rich. H’s going to give us trouble as it is, I can see that. We shall have to take another house, of course, and we can’t keep them from knowing that there’s money fallen to me. But there’s no need to talk about the figures, and if we can make them think it’s only me that’s better off, so much the better. Alice needn’t go to work, and I’m glad of it; a girl’s proper place is at home. You can tell her you want her to help in the new house. ‘Arry had better keep his place awhile. I shouldn’t wonder if I find work for him myself before long I’ve got plans, but I shan’t talk about them just yet.’
He spoke then of the legal duties which fell upon him as next-of-kin, explaining the necessity of finding two sureties on taking out letters of administration. Mr. Yottle had offered himself for one; the other Richard hoped to find in Mr. Westlake, a leader of the Socialist movement.
‘You want us to go into a big house?’ asked Mrs. Mutimer. She seemed to pay little attention to the wider aspects of the change, but to fix on the details she could best understand, those which put her fears in palpable shape.
‘I didn’t say a big one, but a larger than this. We’re not going to play the do-nothing gentlefolk; but all the same our life won’t and can’t be what it has been. There’s no choice. You’ve worked hard all your life, mother, and it’s only fair you should come in for a bit of rest. We’ll find a house somewhere out Green Lanes way, or in Highbury or Holloway.’
He laughed again.
‘So there’s the best of it—the worst of it, as you say. Just take a night to turn it over. Most likely I shall go to Belwick again to-morrow afternoon.’
He paused, and his mother, after bending her head to bite off an end of cotton, asked—
‘You’ll tell Emma?’
‘I shall go round to-night.’
A little later Richard left the house for this purpose. His step was firmer than ever, his head more upright Walking along the crowded streets, he saw nothing; there was a fixed smile on his lips, the smile of a man to whom the world pays tribute. Never having suffered actual want, and blessed with sanguine temperament, he knew nothing of that fierce exultation, that wrathful triumph over fate, which comes to men of passionate mood smitten by the lightning-flash of unhoped prosperity. At present he was well-disposed to all men; even against capitalists and ‘profitmongers’ he could not have railed heartily Capitalists? Was he not one himself? Aye, but he would prove himself such a one as you do not meet with every day; and the foresight of deeds which should draw the eyes of men upon him, which should shout his name abroad, softened his judgments with the charity of satisfied ambition. He would be the glorified representative of his class. He would show the world how a self-taught working man conceived the duties and privileges of wealth. He would shame those dunder-headed, callous-hearted aristocrats, those ravening bourgeois. Opportunity—what else had he wanted? No longer would his voice be lost in petty lecture-halls, answered only by the applause of a handful of mechanics. Ere many months had passed, crowds should throng to hear him; his gospel would be trumpeted over the land. To what might he not attain? The educated, the refined, men and women—
He was at the entrance of a dark passage, where his feet stayed themselves by force of habit. He turned out of the street, and walked more slowly towards the house in which Emma Vine and her sisters lived. Having reached the door, he paused, but again took a few paces forward. Then he came back and rang the uppermost of five bells. In waiting, he looked vaguely up and down the street.
It was Emma herself who opened to him. The dim light showed a smile of pleasure and surprise.
‘You’ve come to ask about Jane?’ she said. ‘She hasn’t been quite so bad since last night.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Can I come up?’
‘Will you?’
He entered, and Emma closed the door. It was pitch dark.
‘I wish I’d brought a candle down,’ Emma said, moving back along the passage. ‘Mind there’s a pram at the foot of the stairs.’
The perambulator was avoided successfully by both, and they ascended the bare boards of the staircase. On each landing prevailed a distinct odour; first came the damp smell of newly-washed clothes, then the scent of fried onions, then the workroom of some small craftsman exhaled varnish. The topmost floor seemed the purest; it was only stuffy.
Richard entered an uncarpeted room which had to serve too many distinct purposes to allow of its being orderly in appearance. In one corner was a bed, where two little children lay asleep; before the window stood a sewing-machine, about which was heaped a quantity of linen; a table in the midst was half covered with a cloth, on which was placed a loaf and butter, the other half being piled with several dresses requiring the needle. Two black patches on the low ceiling showed in what positions the lamp stood by turns.
Emma’s eldest sister was moving about the room. Hers were the children; her husband had been dead a year or more. She was about thirty years of age, and had a slatternly appearance; her face was peevish, and seemed to grudge the half-smile with which it received the visitor.
‘You’ve no need to look round you,’ she said. ‘We’re in & regular pig-stye, and likely to be. Where’s there a chair?’
She shook some miscellaneous articles on to the floor to provide a seat.
‘For mercy’s sake don’t speak too loud, and wake them children. Bertie’s had the earache; he’s been crying all day. What with him and Jane we’ve had a blessing, I can tell you. Can I put these supper things away, Emma?’
‘I’ll do it,’ was the other’s reply. ‘Won’t you have a bit more, Kate?’
‘I’ve got no mind for eating. Well, you may cut a slice and put it on the mantelpiece. I’ll go and sit with Jane.’
Richard sat and looked about the room absently. The circumstances of his own family had never fallen below the point at which it is possible to have regard for decency; the growing up of himself and of his brothers and sister had brought additional resources to meet extended needs, and the Mutimer characteristics had formed a safeguard against improvidence. He was never quite at his ease in this poverty-cumbered room, which he seldom visited.
‘You ought to have a fire,’ he said.
‘There’s one in the other room,’ replied Kate. ‘One has to serve us.’
‘But you can’t cook there.’
‘Cook? We can boil a potato, and that’s about all the cooking we can do now-a-days.’
She moved to the door as she spoke, and, before leaving the room, took advantage of Richard’s back being turned to make certain exhortatory signs to her sister. Emma averted her head.
Kate closed the door behind her. Emma, having removed the eatables to the cupboard, came near to Richard and placed her arm gently upon his shoulders. He looked at her kindly.
‘Kate’s been so put about with Bertie,’ she said, in a tone of excuse. ‘And she was up nearly all last night.’
‘She never takes things like you do,’ Richard remarked.
‘She’s got more to bear. There’s the children always making her anxious. She took Alf to the hospital this afternoon, and the doctor says he must have—I forget the name, somebody’s food. But it’s two-and-ninepence for ever such a little tin. They don’t think as his teeth ‘ll ever come.’
‘Oh, I daresay they will,’ said Richard encouragingly.
He had put his arm about her. Emma knelt down by him, and rested her head against his shoulder.
‘I’m tired,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had to go twice to the Minories to-day. I’m so afraid I shan’t be able to hold my eyes open with Jane, and Kate’s tireder still.’
She did not speak as if seeking for sympathy it was only the natural utterance of her thoughts in a moment of restful confidence. Uttermost weariness was a condition too familiar to the girl to be spoken of in any but a patient, matter-of-fact tone. But it was priceless soothing to let her forehead repose against the heart whose love was the one and sufficient blessing of her life. Her brown hair was very soft and fine; a lover of another kind would have pressed his lips upon it. Richard was thinking of matters more practical. At another time his indignation—in such a case right good and manful—would have boiled over at the thought of these poor women crushed in slavery to feed the world’s dastard selfishness; this evening his mood was more complaisant, and he smiled as one at ease.
‘Hadn’t you better give up your work?’ he said.
Emma raised her head. In the few moments of repose her eyelids had drooped with growing heaviness; she looked at him as if she had just been awakened to some great surprise.
‘Give up work? How can I?’
‘I think I would. You’d have more time to give to Jane, and you could sleep in the day. And Jane had better not begin again after this. Don’t you think it would be better if you left these lodgings and took a house, where there’d be plenty of room and fresh air?’
‘Richard, what are you talking about?’
He laughed, quietly, on account of the sleeping children.
‘How would you like,’ he continued, ‘to go and live in the country? Kate and Jane could have a house of their own, you know—in London, I mean, a house like ours; they could let a room or two if they chose. Then you and I could go where we liked. I was down in the Midland Counties yesterday; had to go on business; and I saw a house that would just suit us. It’s a bit large; I daresay there’s sixteen or twenty rooms. And there’s trees growing all about it; a big garden—’
Emma dropped her head again and laughed, happy that Richard should jest with her so good-humouredly; for he did not often talk in the lighter way. She had read of such houses in the weekly story-papers. It must be nice to live in them; it must be nice to be a denizen of Paradise.
‘I’m in earnest, Emma.’
His voice caused her to gaze at him again.
‘Bring a chair,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you something that’ll—keep you awake.’
The insensible fellow! Her sweet, pale, wondering face was so close to his, the warmth of her drooping frame was against his heart—and he bade her sit apart to listen.
She placed herself as he desired, sitting with her hands together in her lap, her countenance troubled a little, wishing to smile, yet not quite venturing. And he told his story, told it in all details, with figures that filled the mouth, that rolled forth like gold upon the bank-scales.
‘This is mine,’ he said, ‘mine and yours.’
Have you seen a child listening to a long fairy tale, every page a new adventure of wizardry, a story of elf, or mermaid, or gnome, of treasures underground guarded by enchanted monsters, of bells heard silverly in the depth of old forests, of castles against the sunset, of lakes beneath the quiet moon? Know you how light gathers in the eyes dreaming on vision after vision, ever more intensely realised, yet ever of an unknown world? How, when at length the reader’s voice is silent, the eyes still see, the ears still hear, until a movement breaks the spell, and with a deep, involuntary sigh the little one gazes here and there, wondering?
So Emma listened, and so she came back to consciousness, looking about the room, incredulous. Had she been overcome with weariness? Had she slept and dreamt?
One of the children stirred and uttered a little wailing sound. She stepped lightly to the bedside, bent for a moment, saw that all was well again, and came back on tip-toe. The simple duty had quieted her throbbing heart. She seated herself as before.
‘What about the country house now?’ said Richard.
‘I don’t know what to say. It’s more than I can take into my head.’
‘You’re not going to say, like mother did, that it was the worst piece of news she’d ever heard?’
‘Your mother said that?’
Emma was startled. Had her thought passed lightly over some danger? She examined her mind rapidly.
‘I suppose she said it,’ Richard explained, ‘just because she didn’t know what else to say, that’s about the truth. But there certainly is one thing I’m a little anxious about, myself. I don’t care for either Alice or ‘Arry to know the details of this windfall. They won’t come in for their share till they’re of age, and it’s just as well they should think it’s only a moderate little sum. So don’t talk about it, Emma.’
The girl was still musing on Mrs. Mutimer’s remark; she merely shook her head.
‘You didn’t think you were going to marry a man with his thousands and be a lady? Well, I shall have more to say in a day or two. But at present my idea is that mother and the rest of them shall go into a larger house, and that you and Kate and Jane shall take our place. I don’t know how long it’ll be before those Eldon people can get out of Wanley Manor, but as soon as they do, why then there’s nothing to prevent you and me going into it. Will that suit you, Em?’
‘We shall really live in that big house?’
‘Certainly we shall. I’ve got a life’s work before me there, as far as I can see at present. The furniture belongs to Mrs. Eldon, I believe; we’ll furnish the place to suit ourselves.’
‘May I tell my sisters, Richard?’
‘Just tell them that I’ve come in for some money and a house, perhaps that’s enough. And look here, I’ll leave you this five-pound note to go on with. You must get Jane whatever the doctor says. And throw all that sewing out of the windows; we’ll have no more convict labour. Tell Jane to get well just as soon as it suits her.’
‘But—all this money?’
‘I’ve plenty. The lawyer advanced me some for present needs. Now it’s getting late, I must go. I’ll write and tell you when I shall be home again.’
He held out his hand, but the girl embraced him with the restrained tenderness which in her spoke so eloquently.
‘Are you glad, Emma?’ he asked.
‘Very glad, for your sake.’
‘And just a bit for your own, eh?’
‘I never thought about money,’ she answered. ‘It was quite enough to be your wife.’
It was the simple truth.
At eleven o’clock the next morning Richard presented himself at the door of a house in Avenue Road, St. John’s Wood, and expressed a desire to see Mr. Westlake. That gentleman was at home; he received the visitor in his study—a spacious room luxuriously furnished, with a large window looking upon a lawn. The day was sunny and warm, but a clear fire equalised the temperature of the room. There was an odour of good tobacco, always most delightful when it blends with the scent of rich bindings.
It was Richard’s first visit to this house. A few days ago he would, in spite of himself, have been somewhat awed by the man-servant at the door, the furniture of the hall, the air of refinement in the room he entered. At present he smiled on everything. Could he not command the same as soon as he chose?
Mr. Westlake rose from his writing-table and greeted his visitor with a hearty grip of the hand. He was a man pleasant to look upon; his face, full of intellect, shone with the light of good-will, and the easy carelessness of his attire prepared one for the genial sincerity which marked his way of speaking. He wore a velvet jacket, a grey waistcoat buttoning up to the throat, grey trousers, fur-bordered slippers; his collar was very deep, and instead of the ordinary shirt-cuffs, his wrists were enclosed in frills. Long-haired, full-bearded, he had the forehead of an idealist and eyes whose natural expression was an indulgent smile.
A man of letters, he had struggled from obscure poverty to success and ample means; at three-and-thirty he was still hard pressed to make both ends meet, but the ten subsequent years had built for him this pleasant home and banished his long familiar anxieties to the land of nightmare. ‘It came just in time,’ he was in the habit of saying to those who had his confidence. ‘I was at the point where a man begins to turn sour, and I should have soured in earnest.’ The process had been most effectually arrested. People were occasionally found to say that his books had a tang of acerbity; possibly this was the safety-valve at work, a hint of what might have come had the old hunger-demons kept up their goading. In the man himself you discovered an extreme simplicity of feeling, a frank tenderness, a noble indignation. For one who knew him it was not difficult to understand that he should have taken up extreme social views, still less that he should act upon his convictions. All his writing foretold such a possibility, though on the other hand it exhibited devotion to forms of culture which do not as a rule predispose to democratic agitation. The explanation was perhaps too simple to be readily hit upon; the man was himself so supremely happy that with his disposition the thought of tyrannous injustice grew intolerable to him. Some incidents happened to set his wrath blazing, and henceforth, in spite of not a little popular ridicule and much shaking of the head among his friends, Mr. Westlake had his mission.
‘I have come to ask your advice and help,’ began Mutimer with directness. He was conscious of the necessity of subduing his voice, and had a certain pleasure in the ease with which he achieved this feat. It would not have been so easy a day or two ago.
‘Ah, about this awkward affair of yours,’ observed Mr. Westlake with reference to Richard’s loss of his employment, of which, as editor of the Union’s weekly paper, he had of course at once been apprised.
‘No, not about that. Since then a very unexpected thing has happened to me.’
The story was once more related, vastly to Mr. Westlake’s satisfaction. Cheerful news concerning his friends always put him in the best of spirits.
He shook his head, laughing.
‘Come, come, Mutimer, this’ll never do! I’m not sure that we shall not have to consider your expulsion from the Union.’
Richard went on to mention the matters of legal routine in which he hoped Mr. Westlake would serve him. These having been settled—
‘I wish to speak of something more important,’ he said. ‘You take it for granted, I hope, that I’m not going to make the ordinary use of this fortune. As yet I’ve only been able to hit on a few general ideas; I’m clear as to the objects I shall keep before me, but how best to serve them wants more reflection. I thought if I talked it over with you in the first place—’
The door opened, and a lady half entered the room.
‘Oh, I thought you were alone,’ she remarked to Mr. Westlake. ‘Forgive me!’
‘Come in! Here’s our friend Mutimer. You know Mrs. Westlake?’
A few words had passed between this lady and Richard in the lecture-room a few weeks before. She was not frequently present at such meetings, but had chanced, on the occasion referred to, to hear Mutimer deliver an harangue.
‘You have no objection to talk of your plans? Join our council, will you?’ he added to his wife. ‘Our friend brings interesting news.’
Mrs. Westlake walked across the room to the curved window-seat. Her age could scarcely be more than three- or four-and-twenty; she was very dark, and her face grave almost to melancholy. Black hair, cut short at its thickest behind her neck, gave exquisite relief to features of the purest Greek type. In listening to anything that held her attention her eyes grew large, and their dark orbs seemed to dream passionately. The white swan’s down at her throat—she was perfectly attired—made the skin above resemble rich-hued marble, and indeed to gaze at her long was to be impressed as by the sad loveliness of a supreme work of art. As Mutimer talked she leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, the back of her hand supporting her chin.
Her husband recounted what Richard had told him, and the latter proceeded to sketch the projects he had in view.
‘My idea is,’ he said, ‘to make the mines at Wanley the basis of great industrial undertakings, just as any capitalist might, but to conduct these undertakings in a way consistent with our views. I would begin by building furnaces, and in time add engineering works on a large scale. I would build houses for the men, and in fact make that valley an industrial settlement conducted on Socialist principles. Practically I can devote the whole of my income; my personal expenses will not be worth taking into account. The men must be paid on a just scheme, and the margin of profit that remains, all that we can spare from the extension of the works, shall be devoted to the Socialist propaganda. In fact, I should like to make the executive committee of the Union a sort of board of directors—and in a very different sense from the usual—for the Wanley estate. My personal expenditure deducted, I should like such a committee to have the practical control of funds. All this wealth was made by plunder of the labouring class, and I shall hold it as trustee for them. Do these ideas seem to you of a practical colour?’
Mr. Westlake nodded slowly twice. His wife kept her listening attitude unchanged; her eyes ‘dreamed against a distant goal.’
‘As I see the scheme,’ pursued Richard, who spoke all along somewhat in the lecture-room tone, the result of a certain embarrassment, ‘it will differ considerably from the Socialist experiments we know of. We shall be working not only to support ourselves, but every bit as much set on profit as any capitalist in Belwick. The difference is, that the profit will benefit no individual, but the Cause. There’ll be no attempt to carry out the idea of every man receiving the just outcome of his labour; not because I shouldn’t be willing to share in that way, but simply because we have a greater end in view than to enrich ourselves. Our men must all be members of the Union, and their prime interest must be the advancement of the principles of the Union. We shall be able to establish new papers, to hire halls, and to spread ourselves over the country. It’ll be fighting the capitalist manufacturers with their own weapons. I can see plenty of difficulties, of course. All England ‘ll be against us. Never mind, we’ll defy them all, and we’ll win. It’ll be the work of my life, and we’ll see if an honest purpose can’t go as far as a thievish one.’
The climax would have brought crashing cheers at Commonwealth Hall; in Mr. Westlake’s study it was received with well-bred expressions of approval.
‘Well, Mutimer,’ exclaimed the idealist, ‘all this is intensely interesting, and right glorious for us. One sees at last a possibility of action. I ask nothing better than to be allowed to work with you. It happens very luckily that you are a practical engineer. I suppose the mechanical details of the undertaking are entirely within your province.’
‘Not quite, at present,’ Mutimer admitted, ‘but I shall have valuable help. Yesterday I had a meeting with a man named Rodman, a mining engineer, who has been working on the estate. He seems just the man I shall want; a Socialist already, and delighted to join in the plans I just hinted to him.’
‘Capital! Do you propose, then, that we shall call a special meeting of the Committee? Or would you prefer to suggest a committee of your own?’
‘No, I think our own committee will do very well, at all events for the present. The first thing, of course, is to get the financial details of our scheme put into shape. I go to Belwick again this afternoon; my solicitor must get his business through as soon as possible.’
‘You will reside for the most part at Wanley?’
‘At the Manor, yes. It is occupied just now, but I suppose will soon be free.’
‘Do you know that part of the country, Stella?’ Mr. Westlake asked of his wife.
She roused herself, drawing in her breath, and uttered a short negative.
‘As soon as I get into the house,’ Richard resumed to Mr. Westlake, ‘I hope you’ll come and examine the place. It’s unfortunate that the railway misses it by about three miles, but Rodman tells me we can easily run a private line to Agworth station. However, the first thing is to get our committee at work on the scheme.’ Richard repeated this phrase with gusto. ‘Perhaps you could bring it up at the Saturday meeting?’
‘You’ll be in town on Saturday?’
‘Yes; I have a lecture in Islington on Sunday.’
‘Saturday will do, then. Is this confidential?’
‘Not at all. We may as well get as much encouragement out of it as we can. Don’t you think so?’
‘Certainly.’
Richard did not give expression to his thought that a paragraph on the subject in the Union’s weekly organ, the ‘Fiery Cross,’ might be the best way of promoting such encouragement; but he delayed his departure for a few minutes with talk round about the question of the prudence which must necessarily be observed in publishing a project so undigested. Mr. Westlake, who was responsible for the paper, was not likely to transgress the limits of good taste, and when Richard, on Saturday morning, searched eagerly the columns of the ‘Cross,’ he was not altogether satisfied with the extreme discretion which marked a brief paragraph among those headed: ‘From Day to Day.’ However, many of the readers were probably by that time able to supply the missing proper-name.
It was not the fault of Daniel Dabbs if members of the Hoxton and Islington branch of the Union read the paragraph without understanding to whom it referred. Daniel was among the first to hear of what had befallen the Mutimer family, and from the circle of his fellow-workmen the news spread quickly. Talk was rife on the subject of Mutimer’s dismissal from Longwood Brothers’, and the sensational rumour which followed so quickly found an atmosphere well prepared for its transmission. Hence the unusual concourse at the meeting-place in Islington next Sunday evening, where, as it became known to others besides Socialists, Mutimer was engaged to lecture. Richard experienced some vexation that his lecture was not to be at Commonwealth Hall, where the gathering would doubtless have been much larger.
The Union was not wealthy. The central hall was rented at Mr. Westlake’s expense; two or three branches were managing with difficulty to support regular places of assembly, such as could not being obliged as yet to content themselves with open-air lecturing. In Islington the leaguers met in a room behind a coffee-shop, ordinarily used for festive purposes; benches were laid across the floor, and an estrade at the upper end exalted chairman and lecturer. The walls were adorned with more or less striking advertisements of non-alcoholic beverages, and with a few prints from the illustrated papers. The atmosphere was tobaccoey, and the coffee-shop itself, through which the visitors had to make their way, suggested to the nostrils that bloaters are the working man’s chosen delicacy at Sunday tea. A table just within the door of the lecture-room exposed for sale sundry Socialist publications, the latest issue of the ‘Fiery Cross’ in particular.
Richard was wont to be among the earliest arrivals: to-night he was full ten minutes behind the hour for which the lecture was advertised. A group of friends were standing about the table near the door; they received him with a bustle which turned all eyes thitherwards. He walked up the middle of the room to the platform. As soon as he was well in the eye of the meeting, a single pair of hands—Daniel Dabbs owned them—gave the signal for uproar; feet made play on the boarding, and one or two of the more enthusiastic revolutionists fairly gave tongue. Richard seated himself with grave countenance, and surveyed the assembly; from fifty to sixty people were present, among them three or four women, and the number continued to grow. The chairman and one or two leading spirits had followed Mutimer to the place of distinction, where they talked with him.
Punctuality was not much regarded at these meetings; the lecture was announced for eight, but rarely began before half-past The present being an occasion of exceptional interest, twenty minutes past the hour saw the chairman rise for his prefatory remarks. He was a lank man of jovial countenance and jerky enunciation. There was no need, he observed, to introduce a friend and comrade so well known to them as the lecturer of the evening. ‘We’re always glad to hear him, and to-night, if I may be allowed to ‘int as much, we’reparticularlyglad to hear him. Our friend and comrade is going to talk to us about the Land. It’s a question we can’t talk or think too much about, and Comrade Mutimer has thought about it as much and more than any of us, I think I may say. I don’t know,’ the chairman added, with a sly look across the room, ‘whether our friend’s got any new views on this subject of late. I shouldn’t wonder if he had.’ Here sounded a roar of laughter, led off by Daniel Dabbs. ‘Hows’ever, be that as it may, we can answer for it as any views he may hold is the right views, and the honest views, and the views of a man as means to do a good deal more than talk about his convictions!’
Again did the stentor-note of Daniel ring forth, and it was amid thunderous cheering that Richard left his chair and moved to the front of the platform. His Sunday suit of black was still that with which his friends were familiar, but his manner, though the audience probably did not perceive the detail, was unmistakably hanged. He had been wont to begin his address with short, stinging periods, with sneers and such bitterness of irony as came within his compass. To-night he struck quite another key, mellow, confident, hinting at personal satisfaction; a smile was on his lips, and not a smile of scorn. He rested one hand against his side, holding in the other a scrap of paper with jotted items of reasoning. His head was thrown a little back; he viewed the benches from beneath his eyelids. True, the pose maintained itself but for a moment. I mention it because it was something new in Richard.
He spoke of the land; he attacked the old monopoly, and visioned a time when a claim to individual ownerships of the earth’s surface would be as ludicrous as were now the assertion of title to a fee-simple somewhere in the moon. He mustered statistics; he adduced historic and contemporary example of the just and the unjust in land-holding; he gripped the throat of a certain English duke, and held him up for flagellation; he drifted into oceans of economic theory; he sat down by the waters of Babylon; he climbed Pisgah. Had he but spoken of backslidings in the wilderness! But for that fatal omission, the lecture was, of its kind, good. By degrees Richard forgot his pose and the carefully struck note of mellowness; he began to believe what he was saying, and to say it with the right vigour of popular oratory. Forget his struggles with the h-fiend; forget his syntactical lapses; you saw that after all the man had within him a clear flame of conscience; that he had felt before speaking that speech was one of the uses for which Nature had expressly framed him. His invective seldom degenerated into vulgar abuse; one discerned in him at least the elements of what we call good taste; of simple manliness he disclosed not a little; he had some command of pathos. In conclusion, he finished without reference to his personal concerns.
The chairman invited questions, preliminary to debate.
He rose half-way down the room,—the man who invariably rises on these occasions. He was oldish, with bent shoulders, and wore spectacles—probably a clerk of forty years’ standing. In his hand was a small note-book, which he consulted. He began with measured utterance, emphatic, loud.
‘I wish to propose to the lecturer seven questions. I will read them in order; I have taken some pains to word them clearly.’
Richard has his scrap of paper on his knee. He jots a word or two after each deliberate interrogation, smiling.
Other questioners succeeded. Richard replies to them. He fails to satisfy the man of seven queries, who, after repeating this and the other of the seven, professes himself still unsatisfied, shakes his head indulgently, walks from the room.
The debate is opened. Behold a second inevitable man; he is not well-washed, his shirt-front shows a beer-stain; he is angry before he begins.
‘I don’t know whether a man as doesn’t ‘old with these kind o’ theories ‘ll be allowed a fair ‘earin—’
Indignant interruption. Cries of ‘Of course he will!’—‘Who ever refused to hear you?’—and the like.
He is that singular phenomenon, that self-contradiction, that expression insoluble into factors of common-sense—the Conservative working man. What do they want to be at? he demands. Do they suppose as this kind of talk ‘ll make wages higher, or enable the poor man to get his beef and beer at a lower rate? What’s the d—d good of it all? Figures, oh? He never heered yet as figures made a meal for a man as hadn’t got one; nor yet as they provided shoes and stockings for his young ‘uns at ‘ome. It made him mad to listen, that it did! Do they suppose as the rich man ‘ll give up the land, if they talk till all’s blue? Wasn’t it human natur to get all you can and stick to it?
‘Pig’s nature!’ cries someone from the front benches.
‘There!’ comes the rejoinder. ‘Didn’t I say as there was no fair ‘earing for a man as didn’t say just what suits you?’
The voice of Daniel Dabbs is loud in good-tempered mockery. Mockery comes from every side, an angry note here and there, for the most part tolerant, jovial.
‘Let him speak! ‘Ear him! Hoy! Hoy!’
The chairman interposes, but by the time that order is restored the Conservative working man has thrust his hat upon his head and is off to the nearest public-house, muttering oaths.
Mr. Cullen rises, at the same time rises Mr. Cowes. These two gentlemen are fated to rise simultaneously. They scowl at each other. Mr. Cullen begins to speak, and Mr. Cowes, after a circular glance of protest, resumes his seat. The echoes tell that we are in for oratory with a vengeance. Mr. Cullen is a short, stout man, very seedily habited, with a great rough head of hair, an aquiline nose, lungs of vast power. His vein is King Cambyses’; he tears passion to tatters; he roars leonine; he is your man to have at the pamper’d jades of Asia! He has got hold of a new word, and that the verb to ‘exploit.’ I am exploited, thou art exploited,—heexploits! Who? Why, such men as that English duke whom the lecturer gripped and flagellated. The English duke is Mr. Cullen’s bugbear; never a speech from Mr. Cullen but that duke is most horribly mauled. His ground rents,—yah! Another word of which Mr. Cullen is fond is ‘strattum,’—usually spelt and pronounced with but one t midway. You and I have the misfortune to belong to a social ‘strattum’ which is trampled flat and hard beneath the feet of the landowners. Mr. Cullen rises to such a point of fury that one dreads the consequences—to himself. Already the chairman is on his feet, intimating in dumb show that the allowed ten minutes have elapsed; there is no making the orator hear. At length his friend who sits by him fairly grips his coat-tails and brings him to a sitting posture, amid mirthful tumult. Mr. Cullen joins in the mirth, looks as though he had never been angry in his life. And till next Sunday comes round he will neither speak nor think of the social question.
Mr. Cowes is unopposed. After the preceding enthusiast, the voice of Mr. Cowes falls soothingly as a stream among the heather. He is tall, meagre, bald; he wears a very broad black necktie, his hand saws up and down. Mr. Cowes’ tone is the quietly venomous; in a few minutes you believe in his indignation far more than in that of Mr. Cullen. He makes a point and pauses to observe the effect upon his hearers. He prides himself upon his grammar, goes back to correct a concord, emphasises eccentricities of pronunciation; for instance, he accents ‘capitalist’ on the second syllable, and repeats the words with grave challenge to all and sundry. Speaking of something which he wishes to stigmatise as a misnomer, he exclaims: ‘It’s what I call a misnomy!’ And he follows the assertion with an awful suspense of utterance. He brings his speech to a close exactly with the end of the tenth minute, and, on sitting down, eyes his unknown neighbour with wrathful intensity for several moments.
Who will follow? A sound comes from the very back of the room, such a sound that every head turns in astonished search for the source of it. Such voice has the wind in garret-chimneys on a winter night. It is a thin wail, a prelude of lamentation; it troubles the blood. The speaker no one seems to know; he is a man of yellow visage, with head sunk between pointed shoulders, on his crown a mere scalp-lock. He seems to be afflicted with a disease of the muscles; his malformed body quivers, the hand he raises shakes paralytic. His clothes are of the meanest; what his age may be it is impossible to judge. As his voice gathers strength, the hearers begin to feel the influence of a terrible earnestness. He does not rant, he does not weigh his phrases; the stream of bitter prophecy flows on smooth and dark. He is supplying the omission in Mutimer’s harangue, is bidding his class know itself and chasten itself, as an indispensable preliminary to any great change in the order of things. He cries vanity upon all these detailed schemes of social reconstruction. Are we ready for it? he wails. Could we bear it, if they granted it to us? It is all good and right, but hadn’t we better first make ourselves worthy of such freedom? He begins a terrible arraignment of the People,—then, of a sudden, his voice has ceased. You could hear a pin drop. It is seen that the man has fallen to the ground; there arises a low moaning; people press about him.
They carry him into the coffee-shop. It was a fit. In five minutes he is restored, but does not come back to finish his speech.
There is an interval of disorder. But surely we are not going to let the meeting end in this way. The chairman calls for the next speaker, and he stands forth in the person of a rather smug little shopkeeper, who declares that he knows of no single particular in which the working class needs correction. The speech undeniably falls fiat. Will no one restore the tone of the meeting?
Mr. Kitshaw is the man! Now we shall have broad grins. Mr. Kitshaw enjoys a reputation for mimicry; he takes off music-hall singers in the bar-parlour of a Saturday night. Observe, he rises, hems, pulls down his waistcoat; there is bubbling laughter. Mr. Kitshaw brings back the debate to its original subject; he talks of the Land. He is a little haphazard at first, but presently hits the mark in a fancy picture of a country still in the hands of aborigines, as yet unannexed by the capitalist nations, knowing not the meaning of the verb ‘exploit.’
‘Imagine such a happy land, my friends; a land, I say, which nobody hasn’t ever thought of “developing the resources” of,—that’s the proper phrase, I believe. There are the people, with clothing enough for comfort and—ahem!—good manners, but, mark you, no more. No manufacture of luxurious skirts and hulsters and togs o’ that kind by the exploited classes. No, for no exploited classes don’t exist! All are equal, my friends. Up an’ down the fields they goes, all day long, arm-in-arm, Jack and Jerry, aye, and Liza an’ Sairey Ann; for they have equality of the sexes, mind you! Up an’ down the fields, I say, in a devil-may-care sort of way, with their sweethearts and their wives. No factory smoke, dear no! There’s the rivers, with tropical plants a-shading the banks, O my! There they goes up an’ down in their boats, devil-may-care, a-strumming on the banjo,’—he imitated such action,—‘and a-singing their nigger minstrelsy with light ‘earts. Why? ‘Cause they ain’t got no work to get up to at ‘arf-past five next morning. Their time’s their own!That’sthe condition of an unexploited country, my friends!’
Mr. Kitshaw had put everyone in vast good humour. You might wonder that his sweetly idyllic picture did not stir bitterness by contrast; it were to credit the English workman with too much imagination. Resonance of applause rewarded the sparkling rhetorician. A few of the audience availed themselves of the noise to withdraw, for the clock showed that it was close upon ten, and public-houses shut their doors early on Sunday.
But Richard Mutimer was on his feet again, and this time without regard to effect; there was a word in him strongly demanding utterance. It was to the speech of the unfortunate prophet that he desired to reply. He began with sorrowful admissions. No one speaking honestly could deny that—that the working class had its faults; they came out plainly enough now and then. Drink, for instance (Mr. Cullen gave a resounding ‘Hear, hear!’ and a stamp on the boards). What sort of a spectacle would be exhibited by the public-houses in Hoxton and Islington at closing time to-night? (‘True!’ from Mr. Cowes, who also stamped on the boards.) Yes, but—Richard used the device of aposiopesis; Daniel Dabbs took it for a humorous effect and began a roar, which was summarily interdicted. ‘But,’ pursued Richard with emphasis, ‘what is the meaning of these vices? What do they come of? Who’s to blame for them? Not the working class—never tell me! What drives a man to drink in his spare hours? What about the poisonous air of garrets and cellars? What about excessive toil and inability to procure healthy recreation? What about defects of education, due to poverty? What about diseased bodies inherited from over-slaved parents?’ Messrs. Cowes and Cullen had accompanied these queries with a climax of vociferous approval; when Richard paused, they led the tumult of hands and heels. ‘Look at that poor man who spoke to us!’ cried Mutimer. ‘He’s gone, so I shan’t hurt him by speaking plainly. He spoke well, mind you, and he spoke from his heart; but what sort of a life has his been, do you think? A wretched cripple, a miserable weakling no doubt from the day of his birth, cursed in having ever seen the daylight, and, such as he is, called upon to fight for his bread. Much of it he gets! Who would blame that man if he drank himself into unconsciousness every time he picked up a sixpence?’ Cowes and Cullen bellowed their delight. ‘Well, he doesn’t do it; so much you can be sure of. In some vile hole here in this great city of ours he drags on a life worse—aye, a thousand times worse!—than that of the horses in the West-end mews. Don’t clap your hands so much, fellow-workers. Just think about it on your way home; talk about it to your wives and your children. It’s the sight of objects like that that makes my blood boil, and that’s set me in earnest at this work of ours. I feel for that man and all like him as if they were my brothers. And I take you all to witness, all you present and all you repeat my words to, that I’ll work on as long as I have life in me, that I’ll use every opportunity that’s given me to uphold the cause of the poor and down-trodden against the rich and selfish and luxurious, that if I live another fifty years I shall still be of the people and with the people, that no man shall ever have it in his power to say that Richard Mutimer misused his chances and was only a new burden to them whose load he might have lightened!’
There was nothing for it but to leap on to the very benches and yell as long as your voice would hold out.
After that the meeting was mere exuberance of mutual congratulations. Mr. Cullen was understood to be moving the usual vote of thanks, but even his vocal organs strove hard for little purpose. Daniel Dabbs had never made a speech in his life, but excitement drove him on the honourable post of seconder. The chairman endeavoured to make certain announcements; then the assembly broke up. The estrade was invaded; everybody wished to shake hands with Mutimer. Mr. Cullen tried to obtain Richard’s attention to certain remarks of value; failing, he went off with a scowl. Mr. Cowes attempted to button-hole the popular hero; finding Richard conversing with someone else at the same time, he turned away with a covert sneer. The former of the two worthies had desired to insist upon every member of the Union becoming a teetotaller; the latter wished to say that he thought it would be well if a badge of temperance were henceforth worn by Unionists. On turning away, each glanced at the clock and hurried his step.
In a certain dark street not very far from the lecture-room Mr. Cullen rose on tip-toe at the windows of a dull little public-house. A Unionist was standing at the bar; Mr. Cullen hurried on, into a street yet darker. Again he tip-toed at a window. The glimpse reassured him; he passed quickly through the doorway, stepped to the bar, gave an order. Then he turned, and behold, on a seat just under the window sat Mr. Cowes, & short pipe in his mouth, a smoking tumbler held on his knee. The supporters of total abstinence nodded to each other, with a slight lack of spontaneity. Mr. Cullen, having secured his own tumbler, came by his comrade’s side.
‘Deal o’ fine talk to wind up with,’ he remarked tentatively.
‘He means what he says,’ returned the other gravely.
‘Oh yes,’ Mr. Cullen hastened to admit. ‘Mutimer means what he says! Only the way of saying it, I meant—I’ve got a bit of a sore throat.’
‘So have I. After that there hot room.’
They nodded at each other sympathetically. Mr. Cullen filled a little black pipe.
‘Got alight?’
Mr. Cowes offered the glowing bowl of his own clay; they put their noses together and blew a cloud.
‘Of course there’s no saying what time ‘ll do,’ observed tall Mr. Cowes, sententiously, after a gulp of warm liquor.
‘No more there is,’ assented short Mr. Cullen with half a wink.
‘It’s easy to promise.’
‘As easy as tellin’ lies.’
Another silence.
‘Don’t suppose you and me ‘ll get much of it,’ Mr. Cowes ventured to observe.
‘About as much as you can put in your eye without winkin’,’ was the other’s picturesque agreement.
They talked till closing time.