Demos. George Gissing
knew it would grieve you,’ she said.
‘And what is your own feeling? Do you rejoice in the change as a sign of progress?’
‘Indeed, no. I am very, very sorry to have our beautiful valley so spoilt. It is only—’
Hubert eyed her with sudden sharpness of scrutiny; the look seemed to check her words.
‘Only what?’ he asked. ‘You find compensations?’
‘My brother won’t hear of such regrets,’ she continued with a little embarrassment ‘He insists on the good that will be done by the change.’
‘From such a proprietor as I should have been to a man of Mr. Mutimer’s activity. To be sure, that is one point of view.’
Adela blushed.
‘That is not my meaning, Mr. Eldon, as you know. I was speaking of the change without regard to who brings it about. And I was not giving my own opinion; Alfred’s is always on the side of the working people; he seems to forget everybody else in his zeal for their interests. And then, the works are going to be quite a new kind of undertaking. You have heard of Mr. Mutimer’s plans of course?’
‘I have an idea of them.’
‘You think them mistaken?’
‘No. I would rather say they don’t interest me. That seems to disappoint you, Miss Waltham. Probably you are interested in them?’
At the sound of her own name thus formally interjected, Adela just raised her eyes from their reflective gaze on the near landscape; then she became yet more thoughtful.
‘Yes, I think I am,’ she replied, with deliberation. ‘The principle seems a just one. Devotion to a really unselfish cause is rare, I am afraid.’
‘You have met Mr. Mutimer?
‘Once. My brother made his acquaintance, and he called on us.’
‘Did he explain his scheme to you in detail?’
‘Not himself. Alfred has told me all about it. He, of course, is delighted with it; he has joined what he calls the Union.’
‘Are you going to join?’ Hubert asked, smiling.
‘I? I doubt whether they would have me.’
She laughed silverly, her throat tremulous, like that of a bird that sings. How significant the laugh was! the music of how pure a freshet of life!
‘All the members, I presume,’ said Hubert, ‘are to be speedily enriched from the Wanley Mines and Iron Works?’
It was jokingly uttered, but Adela replied with some earnestness, as if to remove a false impression.
‘Oh, that is quite a mistake. Mr. Eldon. There is no question of anyone being enriched, least of all Mr. Mutimer himself. The workmen will receive just payment, not mere starvation wages, but whatever profit there is will be devoted to the propaganda.’
‘Propaganda! Starvation wages! Ah, I see you have gone deeply into these matters. How strangely that word sounds on your lips—propaganda!’
Adela reddened.
‘Why strangely, Mr. Eldon?’
‘One associates it with such very different speakers; it has such a terrible canting sound. I hope you will not get into the habit of using it—for your own sake.’
‘I am not likely to use it much. I suppose I have heard it so often from Alfred lately. Please don’t think,’ she added rather hastily, ‘that I have become a Socialist. Indeed, I dislike the name; I find it implies so many things that I could never approve of.’
Her way of speaking the last sentence would have amused a dispassionate critic, it was so distinctively the tone of Puritan maidenhood. From lips like Adela’s it is delicious to hear such moral babbling. Oh, the gravity of conviction in a white-souled English girl of eighteen! Do you not hear her say those words: ‘things that I could never approve of’?
As her companion did not immediately reply, she again raised the field-glass to her eyes and swept the prospect.
‘Can you see your brother on the road?’ Hubert inquired.
‘No, not yet. There is a trap driving this way. Why, Alfred sitting in it! Oh, it is Mr. Mutimer’s trap I see. He must have met Alfred at the station and have given him a ride.’
‘Evidently they are great friends,’ commented Eldon.
Adela did not reply. After gazing a little longer, she said—
‘He will be home before I can get there.’
She screwed up the glasses and turned as if to take leave. But Hubert prepared to walk by her side, and together they reached the lane.
‘Now I am going to run down the hill,’ Adela said, laughing. ‘I can’t ask you to join in such childishness, and I suppose you are not going this way, either?’
‘No, I am walking back to the Manor,’ the other replied soberly. ‘We had better say good-bye. On Monday we shall leave Wanley, my mother and I.’
‘On Monday?’
The girl became graver.
‘But only to go to Agworth?’ she added.
‘I shall not remain at Agworth. I am going to London.’
‘To—to study?’
‘Something or other, I don’t quite know what. Good-bye!’
‘Won’t you come to say good-bye to us—to mother?’
‘Shall you be at home to-morrow afternoon, about four o’clock say?’
‘Oh, yes; the very time.’
‘Then I will come to say good-bye.’
‘In that case we needn’t say it now, need we? It is only good afternoon.’
She began to walk down the lane.
‘I thought you were going to run,’ cried Hubert.
She looked back, and her silver laugh made chorus with the joyous refrain of a yellow-hammer, piping behind the hedge. Till the turn of the road she continued walking, then Hubert had a glimpse of white folds waving in the act of flight, and she was beyond his vision.
CHAPTER VIII
Adela reached the house door at the very moment that Mutimer’s trap drove up. She had run nearly all the way down the hill, and her soberer pace during the last ten minutes had not quite reduced the flush in her cheeks. Mutimer raised his hat with much aplomb before he had pulled up his horse, and his look stayed on her whilst Alfred Waltham was descending and taking leave.
‘I was lucky enough to overtake your brother in Agworth,’ he said.
‘Ah, you have deprived him of what he calls his constitutional,’ laughed Adela.
‘Have I? Well, it isn’t often I’m here over Saturday, so he can generally feel safe.’
The hat was again aired, and Richard drove away to the Wheatsheaf Inn, where he kept his horse at present.
Brother and sister went together into the parlour, where Mrs. Waltham immediately joined them, having descended from an upper room.
‘So Mr. Mutimer drove you home!’ she exclaimed, with the interest which provincial ladies, lacking scope for their energies, will display in very small incidents.
‘Yes. By the way, I’ve asked him to come and have dinner with us to-morrow. He hadn’t any special reason for going to town, and was uncertain whether to do so or not, so I thought I might as well have him here.’
Mr. Alfred always spoke in a somewhat emphatic first person singular when domestic arrangements were under, discussion; occasionally the habit led to a passing unpleasantness of tone between himself and Mrs. Waltham. In the present instance, however, nothing of the kind was to be feared; his mother smiled very graciously.
‘I’m