Demos Part 36

There must and should be an end of this suspense.

Mrs. Waltham had just come downstairs from her conversation with Adela, when she saw Mutimer approaching the door. She admitted him herself.

Surely Providence was on her side; she felt almost young in her satisfaction.

Richard remained in the house about twenty minutes. Then he walked down to the works as usual.

Shortly after his departure another visitor presented himself. This was Mr. Wyvern. The vicar's walk in Hubert's company the evening before had extended itself from point to point, till the two reached Agworth together. Mr. Wyvern was addicted to night-rambling, and he often covered considerable stretches of country in the hours when other mortals slept. To-night he was in the mood for such exercise; it worked off unwholesome acc.u.mulations of thought and feeling, and good counsel often came to him in what the Greeks called the kindly time. He did not hurry on his way back to Wanley, for just at present he was much in need of calm reflection.

On his arrival at the Vicarage about eleven o'clock the servant informed him of Miss Waltham's having called. Mr. Wyvern heard this with pleasure. He thought at first of writing a note to Adela, begging her to come to the Vicarage again, but by the morning he had decided to be himself the visitor.

He gathered at once from Mrs. Waltham's face that events of some agitating kind were in progress. She did not keep him long in uncertainty. Upon his asking if he might speak a few words with Adela, Mrs. Waltham examined him curiously.

'I am afraid,' she said, 'that I must ask you to excuse her this morning, Mr. Wyvern. She is not quite prepared to see anyone at present.

In fact,' she lowered her voice and smiled very graciously, 'she has just had an--an agitating interview with Mr. Mutimer--she has consented to be his wife.'

'In that case I cannot of course trouble her,' the vicar replied, with gravity which to Mrs. Waltham appeared excessive, rather adapted to news of a death than of a betrothal. The dark searching eyes, too, made her feel uncomfortable. And he did not utter a syllable of the politeness expected on these occasions.

'What a very shocking thing about Mr. Eldon!' the lady pursued. 'You have heard?'

'Shocking? Pray, what has happened?'

Hubert had left him in some depression the night before, and for a moment Mr. Wyvern dreaded lest some fatality had become known in Wanley.

'Ah, you have not heard? It is in this newspaper.'

The vicar examined the column indicated.

'But,' he exclaimed, with subdued indignation, 'this is the merest falsehood!'

'A falsehood! Are you sure of that, Mr. Wyvern?'

'Perfectly sure. There is no foundation for it whatsoever.'

'You don't say so! I am very glad to hear that, for poor Mrs. Eldon's sake.'

'Could you lend me this newspaper for to-day?'

'With pleasure. Really you relieve me, Mr. Wyvern. I had no means of inquiring into the story, of course. But how disgraceful that such a thing should appear in print!'

'I am sorry to say, Mrs. Waltham, that the majority of things which appear in print nowadays are more or less disgraceful. However, this may claim prominence, in its way.'

'And I may safely contradict it? It will be such a happiness to do so.'

'Contradict it by all means, madam. You may cite me as your authority.'

The vicar crushed the sheet into his pocket and strode homewards.

CHAPTER XIII

In the church of the Insurgents there are many orders. To rise to the supreme pa.s.sion of revolt, two conditions are indispensable: to possess the heart of a poet, and to be subdued by poverty to the yoke of ign.o.ble labour. But many who fall short of the priesthood have yet a share of the true spirit, bestowed upon them by circ.u.mstances of birth and education, developed here and there by the experience of life, yet rigidly limited in the upshot by the control of material ease, the fatal lords.h.i.+p of the comfortable commonplace. Of such was Hubert Eldon. In him, despite his birth and breeding, there came to the surface a rich vein of independence, obscurely traceable, no doubt, in the characters of certain of his ancestors, appearing at length where nineteenth-century influences had thinned the detritus of convention and cla.s.s prejudice. His nature abounded in contradictions, and as yet self-study--in itself the note of a mind striving for emanc.i.p.ation--had done little for him beyond making clear the manifold difficulties strewn in his path of progress.

You know already that it was no vulgar instinct of sensuality which had made severance between him and the respectable traditions of his family.

Observant friends naturally cast him in the category of young men whom the prospect of a fortune seduces to a life of riot; his mother had no means of forming a more accurate judgment. Mr. Wyvern alone had seen beneath the surface, aided by a liberal study of the world, and no doubt also by that personal sympathy which is so important an ally of charity and truth. Mr. Wyvern's early life had not been in smooth waters; in him too revolt was native, tempered also by spiritual influences of the most opposite kind. He felt a deep interest in the young man, and desired to keep him in view. It was the first promise of friends.h.i.+p that had been held out to Hubert, who already suffered from a sense of isolation, and was wondering in what cla.s.s of society he would have to look for his kith and kin. Since boyhood he had drawn apart to a great extent from the companions.h.i.+ps which most readily offered. The turn taken by the circ.u.mstances of his family affected the pride which was one of his strongest characteristics; his house had fallen, and it seemed to him that a good deal of pity, if not of contempt, mingled with his reception by the more fortunate of his own standing. He had never overcome a natural hostility to old Mr. Mutimer: the _bourgeois_ virtues of the worthy ironmaster rather irritated than attracted him, and he suffered intensely in the thought that his mother brought herself to close friends.h.i.+p with one so much her inferior just for the sake of her son's future. In this matter he judged with tolerable accuracy. Mrs. Eldon, finding in the old man a certain unexpected refinement over and above his goodness of heart, consciously or unconsciously encouraged herself in idealising him, that the way of interest might approach as nearly as might be to that of honour. Hubert, with no understanding for the craggy facts of life, inwardly rebelled against the whole situation. He felt that it laid him open to ridicule, the mere suspicion of which always stung him to the quick. When, therefore, he declared to his mother, in the painful interview on his return to Wanley, that it was almost a relief to him to have lost the inheritance, he spoke with perfect truth.

Amid the tempest which had fallen on his life there rose in that moment the semblance of a star of hope. The hateful conditions which had weighed upon his future being finally cast off, might he not look forward to some n.o.bler activity than had hitherto seemed possible? Was he not being saved from his meaner self, that part of his nature which tended to conventional ideals, which was subject to empty pride and ign.o.ble apprehensions? Had he gone through the storm without companion, hope might have overcome every weakness, but sympathy with his mother's deep distress troubled his self-control. At her feet he yielded to the emotions of childhood, and his misery increased until bodily suffering brought him the relief of unconsciousness.

To his mother perhaps he owed that strain of idealism which gave his character its significance. In Mrs. Eldon it affected only the inner life; in Hubert spiritual strivings naturally sought the outlet of action. That his emanc.i.p.ation should declare itself in some exaggerated way was quite to be expected: impatience of futilities and insincerities made common cause with the fiery spirit of youth and spurred him into reckless pursuit of that abiding rapture which is the dream and the despair of the earth's purest souls. The pistol bullet checked his course, happily at the right moment. He had gone far enough for experience and not too far for self-recovery. The wise man in looking back upon his endeavours regrets nothing of which that can be said.

By the side of a pa.s.sion such as that which had opened Hubert's intellectual manhood, the mild, progressive attachments sanctioned by society show so colourless as to suggest illusion. Thinking of Adela Waltham as he lay recovering from his illness, he found it difficult to distinguish between the feelings a.s.sociated with her name and those which he had owed to other maidens of the same type. A week or two at Wanley generally resulted in a conviction that he was in love with Adela; and had Adela been entirely subject to her mother's influences, had she fallen but a little short of the innocence and delicacy which were her own, whether for happiness or the reverse, she would doubtless have been pledged to Hubert long ere this. The merest accident had in truth prevented it. At home for Christmas, the young man had made up his mind to speak and claim her: he postponed doing so till he should have returned from a visit to a college friend in the same county. His friend had a sister, five or six years older than Adela, and of a warmer type of beauty, with the finished graces of the town. Hubert found himself once more without guidance, and so left Wanley behind him, journeying to an unknown land.

Hubert could not remember a time when he had not been in love. The objects of his devotion had succeeded each other rapidly, but each in her turn was the perfect woman. His imagination cast a halo about a beautiful head, and hastened to see in its possessor all the poetry of character which he aspired to wors.h.i.+p. In his loves, as in every other circ.u.mstance of life, he would have nothing of compromise; for him the world contained nothing but his pa.s.sion, and existence had no other end.

Between that past and this present more intervened than Hubert could yet appreciate; but he judged the change in himself by the light in which that early love appeared to him. Those were the restless ardours of boyhood: he could not henceforth trifle so with solemn meanings. The ideal was harder of discovery than he had thought; perhaps it was not to be found in the world at all. But what less perfect could henceforth touch his heart?

Yet throughout his convalescence he thought often of Adela, perhaps because she was so near, and because she doubtless often thought of him.

His unexpected meeting with her on Stanbury Hill affected him strangely: the world was new to his eyes, and the girl's face seemed to share in the renewal; it was not quite the same face that he had held in memory, but had a fresh significance. He read in her looks more than formerly he had been able to see. This impression was strengthened by his interview with her on the following day. Had she too grown much older in a few months?

After spending a fortnight with his mother at Agworth, he went to London, and for a time thought as little of Adela as of any other woman.

New interests claimed him, interests purely intellectual, the stronger that his mind seemed just aroused from a long sleep. He threw himself into various studies with more zeal than he had hitherto devoted to such interests; not that he had as yet any definite projects, but solely because it was his nature to be in pursuit of some excellence and to scorn mere acquiescence in a life of every-day colour. He lived all but in loneliness, and when the change had had time to work upon him his thoughts began to revert to Adela, to her alone of those who stood on the other side of the gulf. She came before his eyes as a vision of purity; it was soothing to picture her face and to think of her walking in the spring meadows. He thought of her as of a white rose, dew-besprent, and gently swayed by the sweet air of a sunny morning; a white rose newly spread, its heart virgin from the hands of shaping Nature. He could not decide what quality, what absence of thought, made Adela so distinct to him. Was it perhaps the exquisite delicacy apparent in all she did or said? Even the most reverent thought seemed gross in touching her; the mind flitted round about her, kept from contact by a supreme modesty, which she alone could inspire If her head were painted, it must be against the tenderest eastern sky; all a.s.sociations with her were of the morning, when heatless rays strike level across the moist earth, of simple devoutness which renders thanks for the blessing of a new day, of mercy robed like the zenith at dawn.

His study just now was of the early Italians, in art and literature.

There was more of Adela than he perceived in the impulse which guided him in that direction. When he came to read the 'Vita Nuova,' it was of Adela expressly that he thought. The poet's pa.s.sion of wors.h.i.+p entered his heart; transferring his present feeling to his earlier self, he grew to regard his recent madness as a lapse from the true love of his life.

He persuaded himself that he had loved Adela in a far more serious way than any of the others who from time to time had been her rivals, and that the love was now returning to him, strengthened and exalted. He began to write sonnets in Dante's manner, striving to body forth in words the new piety which illumined his life. Whereas love had been to him of late a glorification of the senses, he now cleansed himself from what he deemed impurity and adored in mere ecstasy of the spirit. Adela soon became rather a symbol than a living woman; he identified her with the ends to which his life darkly aspired, and all but convinced himself that memory and imagination would henceforth suffice to him.

In the autumn he went down to Agworth, and spent a few days with his mother. The temptation to walk over to Wanley and call upon the Walthams proved too strong to be resisted. His rejection at their door was rather a shock than a surprise; it had never occurred to him that the old friendly relations had been in any way disturbed; he explained Mrs.

Waltham's behaviour by supposing that his silence had offended her, and perhaps his failure to take leave of her before quitting Wanley.

Possibly she thought he had dealt lightly with Adela. Offence on purely moral grounds did not even suggest itself.

He returned to London anxious and unhappy. The glimpse of Adela sitting at the window had brought him back to reality; after all it was no abstraction that had become the constant companion of his solitude; his love was far more real for that moment's vision of the golden head, and had a very real power of afflicting him with melancholy. He faltered in his studies, and once again had lost the motive to exertion. Then came the letter from his mother, telling of Adela's rumoured engagement. It caused him to set forth almost immediately.

The alternation of moods exhibited in his conversation with Mr. Wyvern continued to agitate him during the night. Now it seemed impossible to approach Adela in any way; now he was prepared to defy every consideration in order to save her and secure his own happiness. Then, after dwelling for awhile on the difficulties of his position, he tried to convince himself that once again he had been led astray after beauty and goodness which existed only in his imagination, that in losing Adela he only dismissed one more illusion. Such comfort was unsubstantial; he was, in truth, consumed in wretchedness at the thought that she once might easily have been his, and that he had pa.s.sed her by. What matter whether we love a reality or a dream, if the love drive us to frenzy?

Yet how could he renew his relations with her? Even if no actual engagement bound her, she must be prejudiced against him by stories which would make it seem an insult if he addressed her. And if the engagement really existed, what shadow of excuse had he for troubling her with his love?

When he entered his mother's room in the morning, Mrs. Eldon took a small volume from the table at her side.

'I found this a few weeks ago among the books you left with me,' she said. 'How long have you had it, Hubert?'

It was a copy of the 'Christian Year,' and writing on the fly-leaf showed that it belonged, or had once belonged, to Adela Waltham.

Hubert regarded it with surprise.

'It was lent to me a year ago,' he said. 'I took it away with me. I had forgotten that I had it.'

The circ.u.mstances under which it had been lent to him came back very clearly now. It was after that visit to his friend which had come so unhappily between him and Adela. When he went to bid her good-bye he found her alone, and she was reading this book. She spoke of it, and, in surprise that he had never read it, begged him to take it to Oxford.

'I have another copy,' Adela said. 'You can return that any time.'