Leigh was struck by these words into silence. For the first time she had made him realise that she was a rich woman, though he had heard from Cardington that the bishop merely held his wife's large property in trust for the daughter. Now he detected in her a shrewd and practical strain, perhaps an inheritance from some ancestor who had laid the foundations of her fortune. He saw also that her revolt against the moribund spirituality of the wealthy class to which she belonged was offset by a consciousness of possession, so that she could support Emmet one moment and condemn his theories the next. On one side of their natures, Leigh and Miss Wycliffe touched in sympathetic understanding; on the other, they were as far apart as the poles. No poor man, however civilised he may be, can range himself on the side of wealth, unless he is either a fortune hunter or a sycophant, and Leigh was neither. At the present moment he merely felt, with a sinking of spirit, the existence of an artificial barrier between them of which he had previously been but dimly conscious.
"I 'm something of a socialist myself," he said, "only, I 'm waiting for a great leader and a reasonable propaganda."
"You 'll never find either," she retorted with spirit. Then her face softened into the expression of a listener to a good story. "But don't let us discuss these endless and stupid questions. What I want is the personal and spectacular side of it. How did the two men compare? And with which of them did the people side?"
"With their own representative, naturally. I was impressed with the tenseness of the feeling. The audience cheered Emmet until he had to remind them that they were cutting into his twenty-minute allowance. Then they kept silent, but more like animals held in leash, I thought, and I could n't help wondering what would happen if the cork should suddenly pop off and let out all that bottled sense of ill usage. When Judge Swigart got up, he did n't mend matters by referring continually to Emmet as his 'distinguished antagonist,' in a tone that suggested irony rather than respect. He said he was pained and astonished to hear Mr. Emmet declare that there was class feeling in Warwick; he himself had never detected any; he objected to the setting off of aristocrat against democrat, when all were democratic; he denied that the city was run by a clique."
"Really," Miss Wycliffe remarked, laughing, "he could n't expect them to swallow that. Of course Warwick is run by a clique—it always has been—and I 'd like to see them turned out for once."
Leigh was no longer astonished at the sudden swinging of the pendulum. "They did n't swallow it," he said grimly, "and it took Emmet's personal appeal for fair play to make them stop their hissing and catcalls. I thought there 'd be a riot at one time, but instead, the men began to get up and walk out, leaving Swigart talking to their backs. I was swept along with the crowd, and that was the last I saw or heard."
He caught the flash of her eyes at the vivid picture he had drawn, and could no longer conceal his bitterness. "When I saw Emmet standing there, whipping up the mob and then holding it in check, and thought of his scanty schooling, I felt the handicap of professorial pursuits"—
"Oh, eloquence!" she interrupted, with a quick and tactful understanding of his hurt. "There's nothing easier in the world, if you only have the knack. I think I may say so, as the daughter of a bishop. Mr. Emmet moved them merely because he voiced their own hatreds and prejudices in a clear and convincing way, not that he said anything so very remarkable." There was undisguised scorn in her tone, and he understood that this was the heiress speaking. "A trumpet makes more noise of a certain kind than a telescope," she went on, "and the noise is what the people like. Have you ever read 'Numa Roumestan'? At the risk of preventing you from doing so, I must recommend it."
She lifted the flowers as if to throw them away, preparatory to a return to the house, but he defeated her intention by deftly reaching forward and taking them from her hand.
"You must allow me to save them, Miss Wycliffe," he explained, in answer to the quick inquiry of her sidelong glance. "Let me indulge a romantic impulse to-night, though we have had such an interesting conversation on other matters." He thrust the lilies of the valley into an inside pocket of his coat, and sat looking at her with a speculative sadness that made a light or flippant comment on her part impossible. She said nothing, though her poise conveyed the suggestion of intended flight. She doubtless appreciated the fact that this was what she might have anticipated, that she could not lead a young man who was in love with her to such a place without this result. Her purpose in so doing was best known to herself. In his mind there was evidently a doubt whether it was wanton cruelty, or a desire for information concerning her protégé. He began to wonder, in view of the persistence of her interest in Emmet, whether she had not divined the cause of his late arrival from the first.