Demos

‘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 he did want 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.

CHAPTER VI

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.