The Revolution.... In the meantime the cry was ‘Democratic Capitalism.’ That was the name Mutimer gave to his scheme! The ‘Fiery Gross’ had only noticed his work in a brief paragraph, a few words of faint and vague praise. ‘Our comrade’s noteworthy exertions in the East End.... The gain to temperance and self-respecting habits which must surely result....’ The ‘Beacon,’ however, dealt with the movement more fully, and on the whole in a friendly spirit.
‘Damn their patronage!’ cried Mutimer.
You should have seen him addressing a crowd collected by chance in Hackney or Poplar. The slightest encouragement, even one name to inscribe in the book which he carried about with him, was enough to fire his eloquence; nay, it was enough to find himself standing on his chair above the heads of the gathering. His voice had gained in timbre; he grew more and more perfect in his delivery, like a conscientious actor who plays night after night in a part that he enjoys. And it was well that he had this inner support, this brio of the born demagogue, for often enough he spoke under circumstances which would have damped the zeal of any other man. The listeners stood with their hands in their pockets, doubting whether to hear him to the end or to take their wonted way to the public-house. One moment their eyes would be fixed upon him, filmy, unintelligent, then they would look at one another with a leer of cunning, or at best a doubtful grin. Socialism, forsooth! They were as ready for translation to supernal spheres. Yet some of them were attracted: ‘percentage,’ ‘interest,’ ‘compound interest,’ after all, there might be something in this! And perhaps they gave their names and their threepenny bits, engaging to make the deposit regularly on the day and at the place arranged for in Mutimer’s elaborate scheme. What is there a man cannot get if he asks for it boldly and persistently enough?
The year had come full circle; it was time that Mutimer received another remittance from his anonymous supporter. He needed it, for he had been laying out money without regard to the future. Not only did he need it for his own support; already he and his committee held sixty pounds of trust money, and before long he might be called upon to fulfil his engagement and contribute a hundred pounds—the promised hundred which had elicited more threepences than all the rest of his eloquence. A week, a month, six weeks, and he had heard nothing. Then there came one day a communication couched in legal terms, signed by a solicitor. It was to the effect that his benefactor—name and address given in full—had just died. The decease was sudden, and though the draft of a will had been discovered, it had no signature, and was consequently inoperative. But—pursued the lawyer—it having been the intention of the deceased to bequeath to Mutimer an annuity of five hundred pounds for nine years, the administrators were unwilling altogether to neglect their friend’s wish, and begged to make an offer of the one year’s payment which it seemed was already due. For more than that they could not hold themselves responsible.
Before speaking to Adela, Mutimer made searching inquiries. He went to the Midland town where his benefactor had lived, and was only too well satisfied of the truth of what had been told him. He came back with his final five hundred pounds.
Then he informed his wife of what had befallen. He was not cheerful, but with five hundred pounds in his pocket he could not be altogether depressed. What might not happen in a year? He was becoming prominent; there had been mention of him lately in London journals. Pooh! as if he would ever really want!
‘The great thing,’ he exclaimed, ‘is that I can lay down the hundred pounds! If I’d failed in that it would have been all up. Come, now, why can’t you give me a bit of encouragement, Adela? I tell you what it is. There’s no place where I’m thought so little of as in my own home, and that’s a fact.’
She did not worship him, she made no pretence of it. Her cold, pale beauty had not so much power over him as formerly, but it still chagrined him keenly as often as he was reminded that he had no high place in his wife’s judgment. He knew well enough that it was impossible for her to: admire him; he was conscious of the thousand degrading things he had said and done, every one of them stored in her memory. Perhaps not once since that terrible day in the Pentonville lodgings had he looked her straight in the eyes. Yes, her beauty appealed to him less than even a year ago; Adela knew it, and it was the one solace in her living death. Perhaps occasion could again have stung him into jealousy, but Adela was no longer a vital interest in his existence. He lived in external things, his natural life. Passion had been an irregularity in his development. Yet he would gladly have had his wife’s sympathy. He neither loved nor hated her, but she was for ever above him, and, however unconsciously, he longed for her regard. Irreproachable, reticent, it might be dying, Adela would no longer affect interests she did not feel. To these present words of his she replied only with a grave, not unkind, look; a look he could not under stand, yet which humbled rather than irritated him.
The servant opened the door and announced a visitor—‘Mr. Hilary.’
Mutimer seemed struck with a thought as he heard the name.