CHAPTER XII
The New Wanley Lecture Hall had been publicly dedicated to the service of the New Wanley Commonwealth, and only in one respect did the day’s proceedings fall short of Mutimer’s expectations. He had hoped to have all the Waltham family at his luncheon party, but in the event Alfred alone felt himself able to accept the invitation. Mutimer had even nourished the hope that something might happen before that day to allow of Adela’s appearing not merely in the character of a guest, but, as it were, ex officio. By this time he had resolutely forbidden his eyes to stray to the right hand or the left, and kept them directed with hungry, relentless steadiness straight along the path of his desires. He had received no second letter from his mother, nor had Alice anything to report of danger-signals at home; from Emma herself came a letter regularly once a week, a letter of perfect patience, chiefly concerned with her sister’s health. He had made up his mind to declare nothing till the irretrievable step was taken, when reproaches only could befall him; to Alice as little as to any one else had he breathed of his purposes. And he could no longer even take into account the uncertainty of his success; to doubt of that would have been insufferable at the point which he had reached in self-abandonment. Yet day after day saw the postponement of the question which would decide his fate. Between him and Mrs. Waltham the language of allusion was at length put aside; he spoke plainly of his wishes, and sought her encouragement. This was not wanting, but the mother begged for time. Let the day of the ceremony come and go.
Richard passed through it in a state of exaltation and anxiety which bordered on fever. Mr. Westlake and his wife came down from London by an early train, and he went over New Wanley with them before luncheon. The luncheon itself did not lack festive vivacity; Richard, in surveying his guests from the head of the board, had feelings not unlike those wherein King Polycrates lulled himself of old; there wanted, in truth, one thing to complete his self-complacence, but an extra glass or two of wine enrubied his imagination, and he already saw Adela’s face smiling to him from the table’s unoccupied end. What was such conquest in comparison with that which fate had accorded him?
There was a satisfactory gathering to hear Mr. Westlake’s address; Richard did not fail to note the presence of a few reporters, only it seemed to him that their pencils might have been more active. Here, too, was Adela at length; every time his name was uttered, perforce she heard; every encomium bestowed upon him by the various speakers was to him like a new bud on the tree of hope. After all, why should he feel this humility towards her? What man of prominence, of merit, at all like his own would ever seek her hand? The semblance of chivalry which occasionally stirred within him was, in fact, quite inconsistent with his reasoned view of things; the English working class has, on the whole, as little of that quality as any other people in an elementary stage of civilisation. He was a man, she a woman. A lady, to be sure, but then—
After Mutimer, Alfred Waltham had probably more genuine satisfaction in the ceremony than any one else present. Mr. Westlake he was not quite satisfied with; there was a mildness and restraint about the style of the address which to Alfred’s taste smacked of feebleness; he was for Cambyses’ vein. Still it rejoiced him to hear the noble truths of democracy delivered as it were from the bema. To a certain order of intellect the word addressed by the living voice to an attentive assembly is always vastly impressive; when the word coincides with private sentiment it excites enthusiasm. Alfred hated the aristocratic order of things with a rabid hatred. In practice he could be as coarsely overbearing with his social inferiors as that scion of the nobility—existing of course somewhere—who bears the bell for feebleness of the pia mater; but that made him none the less a sound Radical. In thinking of the upper classes he always thought of Hubert Eldon, and that name was scarlet to him. Never trust the thoroughness of the man who is a revolutionist on abstract principles; personal feeling alone goes to the root of the matter.
Many were the gentlemen to whom Alfred had the happiness of being introduced in the course of the day. Among others was Mr. Keene the journalist. At the end of a lively conversation Mr. Keene brought out a copy of the ‘Belwick Chronicle,’ that day’s issue.
‘You’ll find a few things of mine here,’ he said. ‘Put it in your pocket, and look at it afterwards. By-the-by, there is a paragraph marked; I meant it for Mutimer. Never mind, give it him when you’ve done with it.’
Alfred bestowed the paper in the breast pocket of his greatcoat, and did not happen to think of it again till late that evening. His discovery of it at length was not the only event of the day which came just too late for the happiness of one with whose fortunes we are concerned.
A little after dark, when the bell was ringing which summoned Mutimer’s workpeople to the tea provided for them, Hubert Eldon was approaching the village by the road from Agworth: he was on foot, and had chosen his time in order to enter Wanley unnoticed. His former visit, when he was refused at the Walthams’ door, had been paid at an impulse; he had come down from London by an early train, and did not even call to see his mother at her new house in Agworth. Nor did ho visit her on his way back; he walked straight to the railway station and took the first train townwards. To-day he came in a more leisurely way. It was certain news contained in a letter from his mother which brought him, and with her he spent some hours before starting to walk towards Wanley.