In her letters from Wanley there was never a word of what was going on in the valley. Week after week she looked eagerly for some hint, yet was relieved when she found none. For it had become her habit to hand over to Mutimer every letter she received. He read them.
Shortly after their return from the seaside, ‘Arry’s term of imprisonment came to an end. He went to his mother’s house, and Richard first saw him there. Punishment had had its usual effect; ‘Arry was obstinately taciturn, conscious of his degradation, inwardly at war with all his kind.
‘There’s only one thing I can do for you now,’ his brother said to him. ‘I’ll pay your passage to Australia. Then you must shift for yourself.’
‘Arry refused the offer.
‘Give me the money instead,’ was his reply.
Argument was vain; Richard and the old woman passed to entreaty, but with as little result.
‘Give me ten pounds and let me go about my business,’ ‘Arry exclaimed irritably. ‘I want no more from you, and you won’t get any good out o’ me by jawin’.’
The money was of course refused, in the hope that a week or two would change the poor fellow’s mind. But two days after he went out and did not return. Nothing was heard of him. Mrs. Mutimer sat late every night, listening for a knock at the door. Sometimes she went and stood on the steps, looking hither and thither in the darkness. But ‘Arry came no more to Wilton Square.
Mutimer had been pressing on his scheme for five months. Every night he addressed a meeting somewhere or other in the East End; every Sunday he lectured morning and evening at his head-quarters in Clerkenwell. Ostensibly he was working on behalf of the Union, but in reality he was forming a party of his own, and would have started a paper could he have commanded the means. The ‘Tocsin’ was savagely hostile, the ‘Fiery Gross.’ grew more and more academical, till it was practically an organ of what is called in Germany Katheder-Sozialismus. Those who wrote for it were quite distinct from the agitators of the street and of the Socialist halls; men—and women—with a turn for ‘advanced’ speculation, with anxiety for style. At length the name of the paper was changed, and it appeared as the ‘Beacon,’ adorned with a headpiece by the well-known artist, Mr. Boscobel. Mutimer glanced through the pages and flung it aside in scornful disgust.
‘I knew what this was coming to,’ he said to Adela ‘A deal of good they’ll do! You don’t find Socialism in drawing rooms. I wonder that fellow Westlake has the impudence to call himself a Socialist at all, living in the way he does. Perhaps he thinks he’ll be on the safe side when the Revolution comes. Ha, ha! We shall see.’