"We want a leader," said Tora, with pretty earnestness.
"Haven't you one?"
"Sir Harry Fulmer is our leader, but we're not contented with him. He's a very mild Radical. Won't you come to our help?"
"I expect I should be too extreme the other way."
"Oh, I love people who are extreme—in my direction, I mean."
"Well, then, try the Doctor."
"Mr. Roberts? Oh, he's hardly prominent enough; we must have somebody of position. Now, what are you laughing at, Mr. Bannister?"
The gentleman to whom they referred sat looking on at them with no great pleasure, though they found one another entertaining enough to prevent them noticing him. Dale Bannister said that his new friend took life seriously, and the charge was too true for the Doctor's happiness. Dale Bannister had taken hold of his imagination. He expected Dale to do all he would give his life to see done, but could not do himself. The effect of Dale was to be instantaneous, enormous, transforming Denborough and its inhabitants. He regarded the poet much as a man might look upon a benevolent volcano, did such a thing exist in the order of nature. His function was, in the Doctor's eyes, to pour forth the burning lava of truth and justice, wherewith the ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty of the present order should be consumed and smothered; let the flood be copious, scorching, and unceasing! The Doctor could do little more than hail the blessed shower and declare its virtues; but that he was ready to do at any cost. And the volcano would not act! The eruptions were sadly intermittent. The hero, instead of going forth to war, was capering nimbly in a lady's chamber, to the lascivious pleasing of a lute; that is to say, he was talking trifles to Tora Smith, with apparent enjoyment, forgetful of his mission, ignoring the powers of darkness around. No light-spreading saying, no swordflash had come from him all the evening. He was fiddling while Rome was—waiting for the burning it needed so badly.
Perhaps it was a woebegone look about the Doctor that made Philip Hume take the chair next him after dinner, while Dale was, still as if in play, emitting anarchist sparks for the Colonel's entertainment.
"Is it possible," asked the Doctor in low, half-angry tones, "that he thinks these people are any good—that they are sincere or thorough in the matter? He's wasting his time."