CHAPTER XXXVI
A deep breath of country air. It is springtime, and the valley of Wanley is bursting into green and flowery life, peacefully glad as if the foot of Demos had never come that way. Incredible that the fume of furnaces ever desecrated that fleece-sown sky of tenderest blue, that hammers clanged and engines roared where now the thrush utters his song so joyously. Hubert Eldon has been as good as his word. In all the valley no trace is left of what was called New Wanley. Once more we can climb to the top of Stanbury Hill and enjoy the sense of remoteness and security when we see that dark patch on the horizon, the cloud that hangs over Belwick.
Hubert and the vicar of Wanley stood there together one morning in late April, more than a year after the death of Richard Mutimer. Generally there was a strong breeze on this point, but to-day the west was breathing its gentlest, warm upon the cheek.
‘Well, it has gone,’ Hubert said. ‘May will have free playing-ground.’
‘In one sense,’ replied the vicar, ‘I fear it will never be gone. Its influence on the life of the people in Wanley and in some of the farms about has been graver than you imagine. I find discontent where it was formerly unknown. The typical case is that lad of Bolton’s. They wanted him sadly at home; by this time he would have been helping his unfortunate father. Instead of that he’s the revolutionary oracle of Belwick pot-houses, and appears on an average once a fortnight before the magistrates for being drunk and disorderly.’
‘Yes, the march of progress has been hastened a little, doubtless,’ said Hubert. ‘I have to content myself with the grass and the trees. Well, I have done all I could, now other people must enjoy the results. Ah, look! there is a van of the Edgeworths’ furniture coming to the Manor. They are happy people! Something like an ideal married couple, and with nothing to do but to wander about the valley and enjoy themselves.’
‘I am rather surprised you gave them so long a lease,’ remarked Mr. Wyvern.
‘Why not? I shall never live here again. As long as I had work to do it was all right; but to continue to live in that house was impossible. And in twenty years it would be no less impossible. I should fall into a monomania, and one of a very loathsome kind.’
Mr. Wyvern pondered. They walked on a few paces before Hubert again spoke.
‘There was a letter from her in the “Belwick Chronicle” yesterday morning Something on the placard in Agworth station caused me to buy a copy. The Tory paper, it seems, had a leader a day or two ago on Socialism, and took occasion to sneer at Mutimer, not by name, but in an unmistakable way—the old scandal of course. She wrote a letter to the editor, and he courteously paid no attention to it. So she wrote to the “Chronicle.” They print her in large type, and devote a leader to the subject—party capital, of course.’