Demos

‘I don’t forget it, Alfred.’

‘At eight-and-twenty, at eight-and-thirty, you propose still to be at the same stage of development?’

‘I don’t think we’ll talk of it,’ said the girl quietly. ‘We don’t understand each other.’

‘Of course not, but we might, if only you’d read sensible books that I could give you.’

Adela shook her head. The philosophical youth sank into his favourite attitude—legs extended, hands in pockets, nose in air.

‘So, I suppose,’ he said presently, ‘that fellow really has been ill?’

Adela was sitting in thought; she looked up with a shadow of annoyance on her face.

‘That fellow?’

‘Eldon, you know.’

‘I want to ask you a question,’ said his sister, interlocking her fingers and pressing them against her throat. ‘Why do you always speak in a contemptuous way of Mr. Eldon?’

‘You know I don’t like the individual.’

‘What cause has “the individual” given you?’

‘He’s a snob.’

‘I’m not sure that I know what that means,’ replied Adela, after thinking for a moment with downcast eyes.

‘Because you never read anything. He’s a fellow who raises a great edifice of pretence on rotten foundations.’

‘What can you mean? Mr. Eldon is a gentleman. What pretence is he guilty of?’

‘Gentleman!’ uttered her brother with much scorn. ‘Upon my word, that is the vulgarest of denominations! Who doesn’t call himself so nowadays! A man’s a man, I take it, and what need is there to lengthen the name? Thank the powers, we don’t live in feudal ages. Besides, he doesn’t seem to me to be what you imply.’

Adela had taken a book; in turning over the pages, she said—

‘No doubt you mean, Alfred, that, for some reason, you are determined to view him with prejudice.’

‘The reason is obvious enough. The fellow’s behaviour is detestable; he looks at you from head to foot as if you were applying for a place in his stable. Whenever I want an example of a contemptible aristocrat, there’s Eldon ready-made. Contemptible, because he’s such a sham; as if everybody didn’t know his history and his circumstances!’

‘Everybody doesn’t regard them as you do. There is nothing whatever dishonourable in his position.’

‘Not in sponging on a rich old plebeian, a man he despises, and living in idleness at his expense?’

‘I don’t believe Mr. Eldon does anything of the kind. Since his brother’s death he has had a sufficient income of his own, so mother says.’

‘Sufficient income of his own! Bah! Five or six hundred a year; likely he lives on that! Besides, haven’t they soaped old Mutimer into leaving them all his property? The whole affair is the best illustration one could possibly have of what aristocrats are brought to in a democratic age. First of all, Godfrey Eldon marries Mutimer’s daughter; you are at liberty to believe, if you like, that he would have married her just the same if she hadn’t had a penny. The old fellow is flattered. They see the hold they have, and stick to him like leeches. All for want of money, of course. Our aristocrats begin to see that they can’t get on without money nowadays; they can’t live on family records, and they find that people won’t toady to them in the old way just on account of their name. Why, it began with Eldon’s father—didn’t he put his pride in his pocket, and try to make cash by speculation? Now I can respect him: he at all events faced the facts of the case honestly. The despicable thing in this Hubert Eldon is that, having got money once more, and in the dirtiest way, he puts on the top-sawyer just as if there was nothing to be ashamed of. If he and his mother were living in a small way on their few hundreds a year, he might haw-haw as much as he liked, and I should only laugh at him; he’d be a fool, but an honest one. But catch them doing that! Family pride’s too insubstantial a thing, you see. Well, as I said, they illustrate the natural course of things, the transition from the old age to the new. If Eldon has sons, they’ll go in for commerce, and make themselves, if they can, millionaires; but by that time they’ll dispense with airs and insolence—see if they don’t.’

Adela kept her eyes on the pages before her, but she was listening intently. A sort of verisimilitude in the picture drawn by her Radical-minded brother could not escape her; her thought was troubled. When she spoke it was without resentment, but gravely.

‘I don’t like this spirit in judging of people. You know quite well, Alfred, how easy it is to see the whole story in quite another way. You begin by a harsh and worldly judgment, and it leads you to misrepresent all that follows. I refuse to believe that Godfrey Eldon married Mrs. Mutimer’s daughter for her money.’

Alfred laughed aloud.

‘Of course you do, sister Adela! Women won’t admit such things; that’s their aristocratic feeling!’

‘And that is, too, worthless and a sham? Will that, too, be done away with in the new age?’

‘Oh, depend upon it! When women are educated, they will take the world as it is, and decline to live on illusions.’

‘Then how glad I am to have been left without education!’

In the meantime a conversation of a very lively kind was in progress between Mrs. Waltham and her visitor, Mrs. Mewling. The latter was a lady whose position much resembled Mrs. Waltham’s: she inhabited a small house in the village street, and spent most of her time in going about to hear or to tell some new thing. She came in this evening with a look presageful of news indeed.

‘I’ve been to Belwick to-day,’ she began, sitting very close to Mrs. Waltham, whose lap she kept touching as she spoke with excited fluency. ‘I’ve seen Mrs. Yottle. My dear, what do you think she has told me?’

Mrs. Yottle was the wife of a legal gentleman who had been in Mr. Mutimer’s confidence. Mrs. Waltham at once divined intelligence affecting the Eldons.

‘What?’ she asked eagerly.

‘You’d never dream such a thing! what will come to pass! An unthought-of possibility!’ She went on crescendo. ‘My dear Mrs. Waltham, Mr. Mutimer has left no will!’

It was as if an electric shock had passed from the tips of her fingers into her hearer’s frame. Mrs. Waltham paled.

‘That cannot be true!’ she whispered, incapable of utterance above breath.

‘Oh, but there’s not a doubt of it!’ Knowing that the news would be particularly unpalatable to Mrs. Waltham, she proceeded to dwell upon it with dancing eyes. ‘Search has been going on since the day of the death: not a corner that hasn’t been rummaged, not a drawer that hasn’t been turned out, not a book in the library that hasn’t been shaken, not a wall that hasn’t been examined for secret doors! Mr. Mutimer has died intestate!’

The other lady was mute.

‘And shall I tell you how it came about? Two days before his death, he had his will from Mr. Yottle, saying he wanted to make change—probably to execute a new will altogether. My dear, he destroyed it, and death surprised him before he could make another.’

‘He wished to make changes?’

‘Ah!’ Mrs. Mewling drew out the exclamation, shaking her raised finger, pursing her lips. ‘And of that, too, I can tell you the reason. Mr. Mutimer was anything but pleased with young Eldon. That young man, let me tell you, has been conducting himself—oh, shockingly! Now you wouldn’t dream of repeating this?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘It seems that news came not so very long ago of a certain actress, singer,—something of the kind, you understand? Friends thought it their duty—rightly, of course,—to inform Mr. Mutimer. I can’t say exactly who did it; but we know that Hubert Eldon is not regarded affectionately by a good many people. My dear, he has been out of England for more than a month, living—oh, such extravagance! And the moral question, too? You know—those women! Someone, they say, of European reputation; of course no names are breathed. For my part, I can’t say I am surprised. Young men, you know; and particularly young men of that kind! Well, it has cost him a pretty penny; he’ll remember it as long as he lives.

‘Then the property will go—’

‘Yes, to the working people in London; the roughest of the rough, they say! What will happen? It will be impossible for us to live here if they come and settle at the Manor. The neighbourhood will be intolerable. Think of the rag-tag-and-bobtail they will bring with them!’

‘But Hubert!’ ejaculated Mrs. Waltham, whom this vision of barbaric onset affected little in the crashing together of a great airy castle.

‘Well, my dear, after all he still has more to depend upon than many we could instance. Probably he will take to the law,—that is, if he ever returns to England.’

‘He is at the Manor,’ said Mrs. Waltham, with none of the pleasure it would ordinarily have given her to be first with an item of news. ‘He came this afternoon.’

‘He did! Who has seen him?’

‘Alfred and Adela passed him on the road. He was in a cab.’

‘I feel for his poor mother. What a meeting it will be! But then we must remember that they had no actual claim on the inheritance. Of course it will be a most grievous disappointment, but what is life made of? I’m afraid some people will be anything but grieved. We must confess that Hubert has not been exactly popular; and I rather wonder at it; I’m sure he might have been if he had liked. Just a little too—too self-conscious, don’t you think? Of course it was quite a mistake, but people had an idea that he presumed on wealth which was not his own. Well, well, we quiet folk look on, don’t we? It’s rather like a play.’

Presently Mrs. Mewling leaned forward yet more confidentially.

‘My dear, you won’t be offended? You don’t mind a question? There wasn’t anything definite?—Adela, I mean.’

‘Nothing, nothing whatever!’ Mrs. Waltham asserted with vigour.

‘Ha!’ Mrs. Mewling sighed deeply. ‘How relieved I am! I did so fear!’

‘Nothing whatever,’ the other lady repeated.

‘Thank goodness! Then there is no need to breathe a word of those shocking matters. But they do get abroad so!’

A reflection Mrs. Mewling was justified in making.

CHAPTER II

The cab which had passed Adela and her brother at a short distance from Wanley brought faces to the windows or door of almost every house as it rolled through the village street. The direction in which it was going, the trunk on the roof, the certainty that it had come from Agworth station, suggested to everyone that young Eldon sat within. The occupant had, however, put up both windows just before entering the village, and sight of him was not obtained. Wanley had abundant matter for gossip that evening. Hubert’s return, giving a keener edge to the mystery of his so long delay, would alone have sufficed to wagging tongues; hut, in addition, Mrs. Mewling was on the warpath, and the intelligence she spread was of a kind to run like wildfire.

The approach to the Manor was a carriage-road, obliquely ascending the bill from a point some quarter of a mile beyond the cottages which once housed Belwick’s abbots. Of the house scarcely a glimpse could be caught till you were well within the gates, so thickly was it embosomed in trees. This afternoon it wore a cheerless face; most of the blinds were still down, and the dwelling might have been unoccupied, for any sign of human activity that the eye could catch. There was no porch at the main entrance, and the heavy nail-studded door greeted a visitor somewhat sombrely. On the front of a gable stood the words ‘Nisi Dominus.’

The vehicle drew up, and there descended a young man of pale countenance, his attire indicating long and hasty travel. He pulled vigorously at the end of a hanging bell-chain, and the door was immediately opened by a man-servant in black. Hubert, for he it was, pointed to his trunk, and, whilst it was being carried into the house, took some loose coin from his pocket. He handed the driver a sovereign.

‘I have no change, sir,’ said the man, after examining the coin. But Hubert had already turned away; he merely waved his hand, and entered the house. For a drive of two miles, the cabman held himself tolerably paid.

The hall was dusky, and seemed in need of fresh air. Hubert threw off his hat, gloves, and overcoat; then for the first time spoke to the servant, who stood in an attitude of expectancy.

‘Mrs. Eldon is at home?’

‘At home, sir, but very unwell. She desires me to say that she fears she may not be able to see you this evening.’

‘Is there a fire anywhere?’

‘Only in the library, sir.’

‘I will dine there. And let a fire be lit in my bedroom.’

‘Yes, sir. Will you dine at once, sir?’

‘In an hour. Something light; I don’t care what it is.’

‘Shall the fire be lit in your bedroom at once, sir?’

‘At once, and a hot bath prepared. Come to the library and tell me when it is ready.’

The servant silently departed. Hubert walked across the hall, giving a glance here and there, and entered the library. Nothing had been altered here since his father’s, nay, since his grandfather’s time. That grandfather—his name Hubert—had combined strong intellectual tendencies with the extravagant tastes which gave his already tottering house the decisive push. The large collection of superbly-bound books which this room contained were nearly all of his purchasing, for prior to his time the Eldons had not been wont to concern themselves with things of the mind. Hubert, after walking to the window and looking out for a moment on the side lawn, pushed a small couch near to the fireplace, and threw himself down at full length, his hands beneath his head. In a moment his position seemed to have become uneasy; he turned upon his side, uttering an exclamation as if of pain. A minute or two and again he moved, this time with more evident impatience. The next thing he did was to rise, step to the bell, and ring it violently.

The same servant appeared.

‘Isn’t the bath ready?’ Hubert asked. His former mode of speaking had been brief and decided; he was now almost imperious.

‘I believe it will be in a moment, sir,’ was the reply, marked, perhaps, by just a little failure in the complete subservience expected.

Hubert looked at the man for an instant with contracted brows, but merely said—‘Tell them to be quick.’

The man returned in less than three minutes with a satisfactory announcement, and Eldon went upstairs to refresh himself.

Two hours later he had dined, with obvious lack of appetite, and was deriving but slight satisfaction from a cigar, when the servant entered with a message from Mrs. Eldon: she desired to see her son.

Hubert threw his cigar aside, and made a gesture expressing his wish to be led to his mother’s room. The man conducted him to the landing at the head of the first flight of stairs; there a female servant was waiting, who, after a respectful movement, led the way to a door at a few yards’ distance. She opened it and drew back. Hubert passed into the room.

It was furnished in a very old-fashioned style—heavily, richly, and with ornaments seemingly procured rather as evidences of wealth than of taste; successive Mrs. Eldons had used it as a boudoir. The present lady of that name sat in a great chair near the fire. Though not yet fifty, she looked at least ten years older; her hair had streaks of white, and her thin delicate features were much lined and wasted. It would not be enough to say that she had evidently once been beautiful, for in truth she was so still, with a spiritual beauty of a very rare type. Just now her face was set in a sternness which did not seem an expression natural to it; the fine lips were much more akin to smiling sweetness, and the brows accepted with repugnance anything but the stamp of thoughtful charity.

After the first glance at Hubert she dropped her eyes. He, stepping quickly across the floor, put his lips to her cheek; she did not move her head, nor raise her hand to take his.

‘Will you sit there, Hubert?’ she said, pointing to a chair which was placed opposite hers. The resemblance between her present mode of indicating a wish and her son’s way of speaking to the servant below was very striking; even the quality of their voices had much in common, for Hubert’s was rather high-pitched. In face, however, the young man did not strongly evidence their relation to each other: he was not handsome, and had straight low brows, which made his aspect at first forbidding.

‘Why have you not come to me before this?’ Mrs. Eldon asked when her son had seated himself, with his eyes turned upon the fire.

‘I was unable to, mother. I have been ill.’

She cast a glance at him. There was no doubting the truth of what he said; at this moment he looked feeble and pain-worn.

‘Where did your illness come upon you?’ she asked, her tone unsoftened.

‘In Germany. I started only a few hours after receiving the letter in which you told me of the death.’

‘My other letters you paid no heed to?’

‘I could not reply to them.’

He spoke after hesitation, but firmly, as one does who has something to brave out.

‘It would have been better for you if you had been able, Hubert. Your refusal has best you dear.’

He looked up inquiringly.

‘Mr. Mutimer,’ his mother continued, a tremor in her voice, ‘destroyed his will a day or two before he died.’

Hubert said nothing. His fingers, looked together before him, twitched a little; his face gave no sign.

‘Had you come to me at once,’ Mrs. Eldon pursued, ‘had you listened to my entreaties, to my commands’—her voice rang right queenly—‘this would not have happened. Mr. Mutimer behaved as generously as he always has. As soon as there came to him certain news of you, he told me everything. I refused to believe what people were saying, and he too wished to do so. He would not write to you himself; there was one all sufficient test, he held, and that was a summons from your mother. It was a test of your honour, Hubert—and you failed under it.’

He made no answer.

‘You received my letters?’ she went on to ask. ‘I heard you had gone from England, and could only hope your letters would be forwarded. Did you get them?’

‘With the delay of only a day or two.’

‘And deliberately you put me aside?’

‘I did.’

She looked at him now for several moments. Her eyes grew moist. Then she resumed, in a lower voice—

‘I said nothing of what was at stake, though I knew. Mr. Mutimer was perfectly open with me. “I have trusted him implicitly,” he said, “because I believe him as staunch and true as his brother. I make no allowances for what are called young man’s follies: he must be above anything of that kind. If he is not—well, I have been mistaken in him, and I can’t deal with him as I wish to do.” You know what he was, Hubert, and you can imagine him speaking those words. We waited. The bad news was confirmed, and from you there came nothing. I would not hint at the loss you were incurring; of my own purpose I should have refrained from doing so, and Mr. Mutimer forbade me to appeal to anything but your better self. If you would not come to me because I wished it, I could not involve you and myself in shame by seeing you yield to sordid motives.’

Hubert raised his head. A choking voice kept him silent for a moment only.

‘Mother, the loss is nothing to you; you are above regrets of that kind; and for myself, I am almost glad to have lost it.’

‘In very truth,’ answered the mother, ‘I care little about the wealth you might have possessed. What I do care for is the loss of all the hopes I had built upon you. I thought you honour itself; I thought you high-minded. Young as you are, I let you go from me without a fear. Hubert, I would have staked my life that no shadow of disgrace would ever fall upon your head! You have taken from me the last comfort of my age.’

He uttered words she could not catch.

‘The purity of your soul was precious to me,’ she continued, her accents struggling against weakness; ‘I thought I had seen in you a love of that chastity without which a man is nothing; and I ever did my best to keep your eyes upon a noble ideal of womanhood. You have fallen. The simpler duty, the point of every-day honour, I could not suppose that you would fail in. From the day when you came of age, when Mr. Mutimer spoke to you, saying that in every respect you would be as his son, and you, for your part, accepted what he offered, you owed it to him to respect the lightest of his reasonable wishes. The wish which was supreme in him you have utterly disregarded. Is it that you failed to understand him? I have thought of late of a way you had now and then when you spoke to me about him; it has occurred to me that perhaps you did him less than justice. Regard his position and mine, and tell me whether you think he could have become so much to us if he had not been a gentleman in the highest sense of the word. When Godfrey first of all brought me that proposal from him that we should still remain in this house, it seemed to me the most impossible thing. You know what it was that induced me to assent, and what led to his becoming so intimate with us. Since then it has been hard for me to remember that he was not one of our family. His weak points it was not difficult to discover; but I fear you did not understand what was noblest in his character. Uprightness, clean-heartedness, good faith—these things he prized before everything. In you, in one of your birth, he looked to find them in perfection. Hubert, I stood shamed before him.’

The young man breathed hard, as if in physical pain. His eyes were fixed in a wide absent gaze. Mrs. Eldon had lost all the severity of her face; the profound sorrow of a pure and noble nature was alone to be read there now.

‘What,’ she continued—‘what is this class distinction upon which we pride ourselves? What does it mean, if not that our opportunities lead us to see truths to which the eyes of the poor and ignorant are blind? Is there nothing in it, after all—in our pride of birth and station? That is what people are saying nowadays: you yourself have jested to me about our privileges. You almost make me dread that you were right. Look back at that man, whom I came to honour as my own father. He began life as a toiler with his hands. Only a fortnight ago he was telling me stories of his boyhood, of seventy years since. He was without education; his ideas of truth and goodness he had to find within his own heart. Could anything exceed the noble simplicity of his respect for me, for you boys? We were poor, but it seemed to him that we had from nature what no money could buy. He was wrong; his faith misled him. No, not wrong with regard to all of us; my boy Godfrey was indeed all that he believed. But think of himself; what advantage have we over him? I know no longer what to believe. Oh, Hubert!’

He left his chair and walked to a more distant part of the room, where he was beyond the range of lamp and firelight. Standing here, he pressed his hand against his side, still breathing hard, and with difficulty suppressing a groan.

He came a step or two nearer.

‘Mother,’ he said, hurriedly, ‘I am still far from well. Let me leave you: speak to me again to-morrow.’

Mrs. Eldon made an effort to rise, looking anxiously into the gloom where he stood. She was all but standing upright—a thing she had not done for a long time—when Hubert sprang towards her, seizing her hands, then supporting her in his arms. Her self-command gave way at length, and she wept.

Hubert placed her gently in the chair and knelt beside her. He could find no words, but once or twice raised his face and kissed her.

‘What caused your illness?’ she asked, speaking as one wearied with suffering. She lay back, and her eyes were closed.

‘I cannot say,’ he answered. ‘Do not speak of me. In your last letter there was no account of how he died.’

‘It was in church, at the morning service. The pew-opener found him sitting there dead, when all had gone away.’

‘But the vicar could see into the pew from the pulpit? The death must have been very peaceful.’

‘No, he could not see; the front curtains were drawn.’

‘Why was that, I wonder?’

Mrs. Eldon shook her head.

‘Are you in pain?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Why do you breathe so strangely?’

‘A little pain. Oh, nothing; I will see Manns to-morrow.’

His mother gazed long and steadily into his eyes, and this time he bore her look.

‘Mother, you have not kissed me,’ he whispered.

‘And cannot, dear. There is too much between us.’