“That is just a bit of general overdoing. It was a sharp wisdom in Jesus Christ, when he told us not to love all humanity, but to love our neighbor. He knew that was about all we could manage. It is above what I can manage this afternoon, so I’ll take my leave of thee.”
Harry left the house almost stupefied by the storm of anger his vanity and his pride in his father’s probable honor, had caused him. But when he reached his room in The Yorkshire Club and had closed the door on all outside influences, a clear revelation came to him, and he audibly expressed it as he walked angrily about the floor:—
“I hate that pompous old squire! He never really liked me—thought I was not good enough for his daughter—and I’ll be glad if he hes to sit a bit lower—and I’m right glad father is going a bit higher. Father is full fit for it. So he is! but oh, Katherine! Oh, Kitty! Kitty! What shall I do without you?”
In the meantime, Dick had decided that he would say nothing about the squire’s probable rival for the new borough, until the speech to be made that evening had been delivered. It might cause him to say something premature and unadvised. When he came to this conclusion he was suddenly aware that he had left his lunch almost untouched on his sister’s table, and that he was naturally hungry.
“No wonder I feel out of sorts!” he thought. “I will go to The Yorkshire and have a decent lunch. Kitty might have known better than offer me anything out of a patty-pan. I’ll go and get some proper eating and then I’ll maybe have some sensible thinking.”
He put this purpose into action at once by going to The Yorkshire Club and ordering a beefsteak with fresh shalots, a glass of port wine, and bread and cheese, and having eaten a satisfying meal, he went to his room and wrote a long letter to Faith, illustrating it with his own suspicions and reflections. This letter he felt to be a very clever move. He told himself that Faith would relate the story to her father and that Mr. Foster would say and do the proper thing much more wisely and effectively than anyone else could.
He did not know the exact hour at which his father was to meet some of the weavers and workers of Annis locality, but he thought if he reached the rendezvous about nine o’clock he would be in time to hear any discussion there might be, and walk to the Clarendon with his father after it. This surmise proved correct, for as he reached the designated place, he saw the crowd, and heard his father speaking to it. Another voice appeared to be interrupting him.
Dick listened a moment, and then ejaculated, “Yes! Yes! That is father sure enough! He is bound to have a threep with somebody.” Then he walked quicker, and soon came in sight of the crowd of men surrounding the speaker, who stood well above them, on the highest step of a granite stairway leading into a large building.
Now Dick knew well that his father was a very handsome man, but he thought he had never before noticed it so clearly, for at this hour Antony Annis was something more than a handsome man—he was an inspired orator. His large, beautiful countenance was beaming and glowing with life and intellect; but it was also firm as steel, for he had a clear purpose before him, and he looked like a drawn sword. The faces of the crowd were lifted to him—roughly-sketched, powerful faces, with well-lifted foreheads, and thick brown hair, crowned in nearly every case with labor’s square, uncompromising, upright paper cap.
The squire had turned a little to the right, and was addressing an Annis weaver called Jonas Shuttleworth. “Jonas Shuttleworth!” he cried, “does tha know what thou art saying? How dare tha talk in this nineteenth century of Englishmen fighting Englishmen? They can only do that thing at the instigation of the devil. Why-a! thou might as well talk of fighting thy father and mother! As for going back to old ways, and old times, none of us can do it, and if we could do it, we should be far from suited with the result. You hev all of you now seen the power loom at work; would you really like the old cumbrous hand-loom in your homes again? You know well you wouldn’t stand it. A time is close at hand when we shall all of us hev to cut loose from our base. I know that. I shall hev to do it. You will hev to do it. Ivery man that hes any forthput in him will hev to do it. Those who won’t do it must be left behind, sticking in the mud made by the general stir up.”