CHAPTER XXXIV
Adela bad never seen him so smitten with grave trouble. She knew him in brutal anger and in surly ill-temper; but his present mood had nothing of either. He seemed to stagger beneath a blow which had all but crushed him and left him full of dread. He began to address her in a voice very unlike his own—thick, uncertain; he used short sentences, often incomplete.
‘Those men are on the committee. One of them got a letter this morning—anonymous. It said they were to be on their guard against me. Said the Company’s a swindle—that I knew it—that I’ve got money out of the people on false pretences. And Hilary’s gone—gone off—taking all he could lay hands on. The letter says so—I don’t know. It says I’m thick with the secretary—a man I never even saw. That he’s a well-known swindler—Delancey his name is. And these fellows believe it—demand that I shall prove I’m innocent. What proof can I give? They think I kept out of the way on purpose this morning.’
He ceased speaking, and Adela stood mute, looking him in the face. She was appalled on his account. She did not love him; too often his presence caused her loathing. But of late she had been surprised into thinking more highly of some of his qualities than it had hitherto been possible for her to do. She could never forget that he toiled first and foremost for his own advancement to a very cheap reputation; he would not allow her to lose sight of it had she wished. But during the present winter she had discerned in him a genuine zeal to help the suffering, a fervour in kindly works of which she had not believed him capable. Very slowly the conviction had come to her, but in the end she could not resist it. One evening, in telling her of the hideous misery he had been amongst, his voice failed and she saw moisture in his eyes. Was his character changing? Had she wronged him in attaching too much importance to a fault which was merely on the surface? Oh, but there were too many indisputable charges against him. Yet a man’s moral nature may sometimes be strengthened by experience of the evil he has wrought. All this rushed through her mind as she now stood gazing at him.
‘But how can they credit an anonymous letter?’ she said. ‘How can they believe the worst of you before making inquiries?’
‘They have been to the office of the Company. Everything is upside down. They say Hilary isn’t to be found.’
‘Who can have written such a letter?’
‘How do I know? I have enemies enough, no doubt. Who hasn’t that makes himself a leader?’
There was the wrong note again. It discouraged her; she was silent.