At eleven o’clock the next morning Richard presented himself at the door
of a house in Avenue Road, St. John’s Wood, and expressed a desire to
see Mr. Westlake. That gentleman was at home; he received the visitor
in his study--a spacious room luxuriously furnished, with a large
window looking upon a lawn. The day was sunny and warm, but a clear
fire equalised the temperature of the room. There was an odour of good
tobacco, always most delightful when it blends with the scent of rich
bindings.
It was Richard’s first visit to this house. A few days ago he would,
in spite of himself, have been somewhat awed by the man-servant at the
door, the furniture of the hall, the air of refinement in the room he
entered. At present he smiled on everything. Could he not command the
same as soon as he chose?
Mr. Westlake rose from his writing-table and greeted his visitor with a
hearty grip of the hand. He was a man pleasant to look upon; his face,
full of intellect, shone with the light of good-will, and the easy
carelessness of his attire prepared one for the genial sincerity which
marked his way of speaking. He wore a velvet jacket, a grey waistcoat
buttoning up to the throat, grey trousers, fur-bordered slippers; his
collar was very deep, and instead of the ordinary shirt-cuffs, his
wrists were enclosed in frills. Long-haired, full-bearded, he had
the forehead of an idealist and eyes whose natural expression was an
indulgent smile.
A man of letters, he had struggled from obscure poverty to success and
ample means; at three-and-thirty he was still hard pressed to make both
ends meet, but the ten subsequent years had built for him this pleasant
home and banished his long familiar anxieties to the land of nightmare.
‘It came just in time,’ he was in the habit of saying to those who had
his confidence. ‘I was at the point where a man begins to turn sour, and
I should have soured in earnest.’ The process had been most effectually
arrested. People were occasionally found to say that his books had a
tang of acerbity; possibly this was the safety-valve at work, a hint of
what might have come had the old hunger-demons kept up their goading. In
the man himself you discovered an extreme simplicity of feeling, a
frank tenderness, a noble indignation. For one who knew him it was not
difficult to understand that he should have taken up extreme social
views, still less that he should act upon his convictions. All his
writing foretold such a possibility, though on the other hand it
exhibited devotion to forms of culture which do not as a rule predispose
to democratic agitation. The explanation was perhaps too simple to be
readily hit upon; the man was himself so supremely happy that with his
disposition the thought of tyrannous injustice grew intolerable to him.
Some incidents happened to set his wrath blazing, and henceforth, in
spite of not a little popular ridicule and much shaking of the head
among his friends, Mr. Westlake had his mission.
‘I have come to ask your advice and help,’ began Mutimer with
directness. He was conscious of the necessity of subduing his voice, and
had a certain pleasure in the ease with which he achieved this feat. It
would not have been so easy a day or two ago.
‘Ah, about this awkward affair of yours,’ observed Mr. Westlake with
reference to Richard’s loss of his employment, of which, as editor of
the Union’s weekly paper, he had of course at once been apprised.
‘No, not about that. Since then a very unexpected thing has happened to
me.’
The story was once more related, vastly to Mr. Westlake’s satisfaction.
Cheerful news concerning his friends always put him in the best of
spirits.
He shook his head, laughing.
‘Come, come, Mutimer, this’ll never do! I’m not sure that we shall not
have to consider your expulsion from the Union.’
Richard went on to mention the matters of legal routine in which he
hoped Mr. Westlake would serve him. These having been settled--
‘I wish to speak of something more important,’ he said. ‘You take it
for granted, I hope, that I’m not going to make the ordinary use of this
fortune. As yet I’ve only been able to hit on a few general ideas; I’m
clear as to the objects I shall keep before me, but how best to serve
them wants more reflection. I thought if I talked it over with you in
the first place--’
The door opened, and a lady half entered the room.
‘Oh, I thought you were alone,’ she remarked to Mr. Westlake. ‘Forgive
me!’
‘Come in! Here’s our friend Mutimer. You know Mrs. Westlake?’
A few words had passed between this lady and Richard in the lecture-room
a few weeks before. She was not frequently present at such meetings,
but had chanced, on the occasion referred to, to hear Mutimer deliver an
harangue.
‘You have no objection to talk of your plans? Join our council, will
you?’ he added to his wife. ‘Our friend brings interesting news.’
Mrs. Westlake walked across the room to the curved window-seat. Her
age could scarcely be more than three- or four-and-twenty; she was very
dark, and her face grave almost to melancholy. Black hair, cut short at
its thickest behind her neck, gave exquisite relief to features of the
purest Greek type. In listening to anything that held her attention her
eyes grew large, and their dark orbs seemed to dream passionately. The
white swan’s down at her throat--she was perfectly attired--made the
skin above resemble rich-hued marble, and indeed to gaze at her long was
to be impressed as by the sad loveliness of a supreme work of art. As
Mutimer talked she leaned forward, her elbow on her knee, the back of
her hand supporting her chin.
Her husband recounted what Richard had told him, and the latter
proceeded to sketch the projects he had in view.
‘My idea is,’ he said, ‘to make the mines at Wanley the basis of great
industrial undertakings, just as any capitalist might, but to conduct
these undertakings in a way consistent with our views. I would begin by
building furnaces, and in time add engineering works on a large scale.
I would build houses for the men, and in fact make that valley an
industrial settlement conducted on Socialist principles. Practically
I can devote the whole of my income; my personal expenses will not be
worth taking into account. The men must be paid on a just scheme,
and the margin of profit that remains, all that we can spare from the
extension of the works, shall be devoted to the Socialist propaganda. In
fact, I should like to make the executive committee of the Union a sort
of board of directors--and in a very different sense from the usual--for
the Wanley estate. My personal expenditure deducted, I should like such
a committee to have the practical control of funds. All this wealth was
made by plunder of the labouring class, and I shall hold it as trustee
for them. Do these ideas seem to you of a practical colour?’
Mr. Westlake nodded slowly twice. His wife kept her listening attitude
unchanged; her eyes ‘dreamed against a distant goal.’
‘As I see the scheme,’ pursued Richard, who spoke all along somewhat in
the lecture-room tone, the result of a certain embarrassment, ‘it will
differ considerably from the Socialist experiments we know of. We shall
be working not only to support ourselves, but every bit as much set on
profit as any capitalist in Belwick. The difference is, that the profit
will benefit no individual, but the Cause. There’ll be no attempt
to carry out the idea of every man receiving the just outcome of his
labour; not because I shouldn’t be willing to share in that way, but
simply because we have a greater end in view than to enrich ourselves.
Our men must all be members of the Union, and their prime interest must
be the advancement of the principles of the Union. We shall be able to
establish new papers, to hire halls, and to spread ourselves over the
country. It’ll be fighting the capitalist manufacturers with their own
weapons. I can see plenty of difficulties, of course. All England ‘ll be
against us. Never mind, we’ll defy them all, and we’ll win. It’ll be the
work of my life, and we’ll see if an honest purpose can’t go as far as a
thievish one.’
The climax would have brought crashing cheers at Commonwealth Hall;
in Mr. Westlake’s study it was received with well-bred expressions of
approval.
‘Well, Mutimer,’ exclaimed the idealist, ‘all this is intensely
interesting, and right glorious for us. One sees at last a possibility
of action. I ask nothing better than to be allowed to work with you. It
happens very luckily that you are a practical engineer. I suppose
the mechanical details of the undertaking are entirely within your
province.’
‘Not quite, at present,’ Mutimer admitted, ‘but I shall have valuable
help. Yesterday I had a meeting with a man named Rodman, a mining
engineer, who has been working on the estate. He seems just the man I
shall want; a Socialist already, and delighted to join in the plans I
just hinted to him.’
‘Capital! Do you propose, then, that we shall call a special meeting of
the Committee? Or would you prefer to suggest a committee of your own?’
‘No, I think our own committee will do very well, at all events for the
present. The first thing, of course, is to get the financial details
of our scheme put into shape. I go to Belwick again this afternoon; my
solicitor must get his business through as soon as possible.’
‘You will reside for the most part at Wanley?’
‘At the Manor, yes. It is occupied just now, but I suppose will soon be
free.’
‘Do you know that part of the country, Stella?’ Mr. Westlake asked of
his wife.
She roused herself, drawing in her breath, and uttered a short negative.
‘As soon as I get into the house,’ Richard resumed to Mr. Westlake,
‘I hope you’ll come and examine the place. It’s unfortunate that the
railway misses it by about three miles, but Rodman tells me we can
easily run a private line to Agworth station. However, the first thing
is to get our committee at work on the scheme.’ Richard repeated this
phrase with gusto. ‘Perhaps you could bring it up at the Saturday
meeting?’
‘You’ll be in town on Saturday?’
‘Yes; I have a lecture in Islington on Sunday.’
‘Saturday will do, then. Is this confidential?’
‘Not at all. We may as well get as much encouragement out of it as we
can. Don’t you think so?’
‘Certainly.’
Richard did not give expression to his thought that a paragraph on the
subject in the Union’s weekly organ, the ‘Fiery Cross,’ might be the
best way of promoting such encouragement; but he delayed his departure
for a few minutes with talk round about the question of the prudence
which must necessarily be observed in publishing a project so
undigested. Mr. Westlake, who was responsible for the paper, was not
likely to transgress the limits of good taste, and when Richard, on
Saturday morning, searched eagerly the columns of the ‘Cross,’ he was
not altogether satisfied with the extreme discretion which marked a
brief paragraph among those headed: ‘From Day to Day.’ However, many
of the readers were probably by that time able to supply the missing
proper-name.
It was not the fault of Daniel Dabbs if members of the Hoxton and
Islington branch of the Union read the paragraph without understanding
to whom it referred. Daniel was among the first to hear of what had
befallen the Mutimer family, and from the circle of his fellow-workmen
the news spread quickly. Talk was rife on the subject of Mutimer’s
dismissal from Longwood Brothers’, and the sensational rumour
which followed so quickly found an atmosphere well prepared for its
transmission. Hence the unusual concourse at the meeting-place in
Islington next Sunday evening, where, as it became known to others
besides Socialists, Mutimer was engaged to lecture. Richard experienced
some vexation that his lecture was not to be at Commonwealth Hall, where
the gathering would doubtless have been much larger.
The Union was not wealthy. The central hall was rented at Mr. Westlake’s
expense; two or three branches were managing with difficulty to support
regular places of assembly, such as could not being obliged as yet to
content themselves with open-air lecturing. In Islington the leaguers
met in a room behind a coffee-shop, ordinarily used for festive
purposes; benches were laid across the floor, and an estrade at the
upper end exalted chairman and lecturer. The walls were adorned with
more or less striking advertisements of non-alcoholic beverages, and
with a few prints from the illustrated papers. The atmosphere was
tobaccoey, and the coffee-shop itself, through which the visitors had to
make their way, suggested to the nostrils that bloaters are the working
man’s chosen delicacy at Sunday tea. A table just within the door of the
lecture-room exposed for sale sundry Socialist publications, the latest
issue of the ‘Fiery Cross’ in particular.
Richard was wont to be among the earliest arrivals: to-night he was
full ten minutes behind the hour for which the lecture was advertised.
A group of friends were standing about the table near the door; they
received him with a bustle which turned all eyes thitherwards. He walked
up the middle of the room to the platform. As soon as he was well in
the eye of the meeting, a single pair of hands--Daniel Dabbs owned
them--gave the signal for uproar; feet made play on the boarding, and
one or two of the more enthusiastic revolutionists fairly gave tongue.
Richard seated himself with grave countenance, and surveyed the
assembly; from fifty to sixty people were present, among them three or
four women, and the number continued to grow. The chairman and one or
two leading spirits had followed Mutimer to the place of distinction,
where they talked with him.
Punctuality was not much regarded at these meetings; the lecture was
announced for eight, but rarely began before half-past The present being
an occasion of exceptional interest, twenty minutes past the hour saw
the chairman rise for his prefatory remarks. He was a lank man of jovial
countenance and jerky enunciation. There was no need, he observed, to
introduce a friend and comrade so well known to them as the lecturer of
the evening. ‘We’re always glad to hear him, and to-night, if I may
be allowed to ‘int as much, we’re _particularly_ glad to hear him.
Our friend and comrade is going to talk to us about the Land. It’s a
question we can’t talk or think too much about, and Comrade Mutimer has
thought about it as much and more than any of us, I think I may say.
I don’t know,’ the chairman added, with a sly look across the room,
‘whether our friend’s got any new views on this subject of late. I
shouldn’t wonder if he had.’ Here sounded a roar of laughter, led off by
Daniel Dabbs. ‘Hows’ever, be that as it may, we can answer for it as
any views he may hold is the right views, and the honest views, and
the views of a man as means to do a good deal more than talk about his
convictions!’
Again did the stentor-note of Daniel ring forth, and it was amid
thunderous cheering that Richard left his chair and moved to the front
of the platform. His Sunday suit of black was still that with which his
friends were familiar, but his manner, though the audience probably did
not perceive the detail, was unmistakably hanged. He had been wont to
begin his address with short, stinging periods, with sneers and such
bitterness of irony as came within his compass. To-night he struck quite
another key, mellow, confident, hinting at personal satisfaction; a
smile was on his lips, and not a smile of scorn. He rested one hand
against his side, holding in the other a scrap of paper with jotted
items of reasoning. His head was thrown a little back; he viewed the
benches from beneath his eyelids. True, the pose maintained itself but
for a moment. I mention it because it was something new in Richard.
He spoke of the land; he attacked the old monopoly, and visioned a time
when a claim to individual ownerships of the earth’s surface would be as
ludicrous as were now the assertion of title to a fee-simple
somewhere in the moon. He mustered statistics; he adduced historic and
contemporary example of the just and the unjust in land-holding; he
gripped the throat of a certain English duke, and held him up for
flagellation; he drifted into oceans of economic theory; he sat down
by the waters of Babylon; he climbed Pisgah. Had he but spoken of
backslidings in the wilderness! But for that fatal omission, the lecture
was, of its kind, good. By degrees Richard forgot his pose and the
carefully struck note of mellowness; he began to believe what he was
saying, and to say it with the right vigour of popular oratory. Forget
his struggles with the h-fiend; forget his syntactical lapses; you saw
that after all the man had within him a clear flame of conscience; that
he had felt before speaking that speech was one of the uses for which
Nature had expressly framed him. His invective seldom degenerated into
vulgar abuse; one discerned in him at least the elements of what we call
good taste; of simple manliness he disclosed not a little; he had some
command of pathos. In conclusion, he finished without reference to his
personal concerns.
The chairman invited questions, preliminary to debate.
He rose half-way down the room,--the man who invariably rises on
these occasions. He was oldish, with bent shoulders, and wore
spectacles--probably a clerk of forty years’ standing. In his hand was
a small note-book, which he consulted. He began with measured utterance,
emphatic, loud.
‘I wish to propose to the lecturer seven questions. I will read them in
order; I have taken some pains to word them clearly.’
Richard has his scrap of paper on his knee. He jots a word or two after
each deliberate interrogation, smiling.
Other questioners succeeded. Richard replies to them. He fails to
satisfy the man of seven queries, who, after repeating this and the
other of the seven, professes himself still unsatisfied, shakes his head
indulgently, walks from the room.
The debate is opened. Behold a second inevitable man; he is not
well-washed, his shirt-front shows a beer-stain; he is angry before he
begins.
‘I don’t know whether a man as doesn’t ‘old with these kind o’ theories
‘ll be allowed a fair ‘earin--’
Indignant interruption. Cries of ‘Of course he will!’--‘Who ever refused
to hear you?’--and the like.
He is that singular phenomenon, that self-contradiction, that expression
insoluble into factors of common-sense--the Conservative working man.
What do they want to be at? he demands. Do they suppose as this kind of
talk ‘ll make wages higher, or enable the poor man to get his beef and
beer at a lower rate? What’s the d--d good of it all? Figures, oh? He
never heered yet as figures made a meal for a man as hadn’t got one; nor
yet as they provided shoes and stockings for his young ‘uns at ‘ome. It
made him mad to listen, that it did! Do they suppose as the rich man ‘ll
give up the land, if they talk till all’s blue? Wasn’t it human natur to
get all you can and stick to it?
‘Pig’s nature!’ cries someone from the front benches.
‘There!’ comes the rejoinder. ‘Didn’t I say as there was no fair ‘earing
for a man as didn’t say just what suits you?’
The voice of Daniel Dabbs is loud in good-tempered mockery. Mockery
comes from every side, an angry note here and there, for the most part
tolerant, jovial.
‘Let him speak! ‘Ear him! Hoy! Hoy!’
The chairman interposes, but by the time that order is restored the
Conservative working man has thrust his hat upon his head and is off to
the nearest public-house, muttering oaths.
Mr. Cullen rises, at the same time rises Mr. Cowes. These two gentlemen
are fated to rise simultaneously. They scowl at each other. Mr. Cullen
begins to speak, and Mr. Cowes, after a circular glance of protest,
resumes his seat. The echoes tell that we are in for oratory with a
vengeance. Mr. Cullen is a short, stout man, very seedily habited, with
a great rough head of hair, an aquiline nose, lungs of vast power. His
vein is King Cambyses’; he tears passion to tatters; he roars leonine;
he is your man to have at the pamper’d jades of Asia! He has got hold
of a new word, and that the verb to ‘exploit.’ I am exploited, thou art
exploited,--_he_ exploits! Who? Why, such men as that English duke whom
the lecturer gripped and flagellated. The English duke is Mr. Cullen’s
bugbear; never a speech from Mr. Cullen but that duke is most horribly
mauled. His ground rents,--yah! Another word of which Mr. Cullen is
fond is ‘strattum,’--usually spelt and pronounced with but one t midway.
You and I have the misfortune to belong to a social ‘strattum’ which is
trampled flat and hard beneath the feet of the landowners. Mr. Cullen
rises to such a point of fury that one dreads the consequences--to
himself. Already the chairman is on his feet, intimating in dumb show
that the allowed ten minutes have elapsed; there is no making the orator
hear. At length his friend who sits by him fairly grips his coat-tails
and brings him to a sitting posture, amid mirthful tumult. Mr. Cullen
joins in the mirth, looks as though he had never been angry in his life.
And till next Sunday comes round he will neither speak nor think of the
social question.
Mr. Cowes is unopposed. After the preceding enthusiast, the voice of
Mr. Cowes falls soothingly as a stream among the heather. He is tall,
meagre, bald; he wears a very broad black necktie, his hand saws up
and down. Mr. Cowes’ tone is the quietly venomous; in a few minutes you
believe in his indignation far more than in that of Mr. Cullen. He makes
a point and pauses to observe the effect upon his hearers. He prides
himself upon his grammar, goes back to correct a concord, emphasises
eccentricities of pronunciation; for instance, he accents ‘capitalist’
on the second syllable, and repeats the words with grave challenge to
all and sundry. Speaking of something which he wishes to stigmatise as a
misnomer, he exclaims: ‘It’s what I call a misnomy!’ And he follows the
assertion with an awful suspense of utterance. He brings his speech to
a close exactly with the end of the tenth minute, and, on sitting down,
eyes his unknown neighbour with wrathful intensity for several moments.
Who will follow? A sound comes from the very back of the room, such a
sound that every head turns in astonished search for the source of it.
Such voice has the wind in garret-chimneys on a winter night. It is a
thin wail, a prelude of lamentation; it troubles the blood. The speaker
no one seems to know; he is a man of yellow visage, with head sunk
between pointed shoulders, on his crown a mere scalp-lock. He seems to
be afflicted with a disease of the muscles; his malformed body quivers,
the hand he raises shakes paralytic. His clothes are of the meanest;
what his age may be it is impossible to judge. As his voice gathers
strength, the hearers begin to feel the influence of a terrible
earnestness. He does not rant, he does not weigh his phrases; the
stream of bitter prophecy flows on smooth and dark. He is supplying the
omission in Mutimer’s harangue, is bidding his class know itself and
chasten itself, as an indispensable preliminary to any great change in
the order of things. He cries vanity upon all these detailed schemes of
social reconstruction. Are we ready for it? he wails. Could we bear it,
if they granted it to us? It is all good and right, but hadn’t we
better first make ourselves worthy of such freedom? He begins a terrible
arraignment of the People,--then, of a sudden, his voice has ceased. You
could hear a pin drop. It is seen that the man has fallen to the ground;
there arises a low moaning; people press about him.
They carry him into the coffee-shop. It was a fit. In five minutes he is
restored, but does not come back to finish his speech.
There is an interval of disorder. But surely we are not going to let the
meeting end in this way. The chairman calls for the next speaker, and
he stands forth in the person of a rather smug little shopkeeper, who
declares that he knows of no single particular in which the working
class needs correction. The speech undeniably falls fiat. Will no one
restore the tone of the meeting?
Mr. Kitshaw is the man! Now we shall have broad grins. Mr. Kitshaw
enjoys a reputation for mimicry; he takes off music-hall singers in the
bar-parlour of a Saturday night. Observe, he rises, hems, pulls down
his waistcoat; there is bubbling laughter. Mr. Kitshaw brings back the
debate to its original subject; he talks of the Land. He is a little
haphazard at first, but presently hits the mark in a fancy picture of
a country still in the hands of aborigines, as yet unannexed by the
capitalist nations, knowing not the meaning of the verb ‘exploit.’
‘Imagine such a happy land, my friends; a land, I say, which nobody
hasn’t ever thought of “developing the resources” of,--that’s the
proper phrase, I believe. There are the people, with clothing enough for
comfort and--ahem!--good manners, but, mark you, no more. No manufacture
of luxurious skirts and hulsters and togs o’ that kind by the exploited
classes. No, for no exploited classes don’t exist! All are equal, my
friends. Up an’ down the fields they goes, all day long, arm-in-arm,
Jack and Jerry, aye, and Liza an’ Sairey Ann; for they have equality of
the sexes, mind you! Up an’ down the fields, I say, in a devil-may-care
sort of way, with their sweethearts and their wives. No factory smoke,
dear no! There’s the rivers, with tropical plants a-shading the banks,
O my! There they goes up an’ down in their boats, devil-may-care,
a-strumming on the banjo,’--he imitated such action,--‘and a-singing
their nigger minstrelsy with light ‘earts. Why? ‘Cause they ain’t got
no work to get up to at ‘arf-past five next morning. Their time’s their
own! _That’s_ the condition of an unexploited country, my friends!’
Mr. Kitshaw had put everyone in vast good humour. You might wonder that
his sweetly idyllic picture did not stir bitterness by contrast; it were
to credit the English workman with too much imagination. Resonance
of applause rewarded the sparkling rhetorician. A few of the audience
availed themselves of the noise to withdraw, for the clock showed that
it was close upon ten, and public-houses shut their doors early on
Sunday.
But Richard Mutimer was on his feet again, and this time without regard
to effect; there was a word in him strongly demanding utterance. It was
to the speech of the unfortunate prophet that he desired to reply. He
began with sorrowful admissions. No one speaking honestly could deny
that--that the working class had its faults; they came out plainly
enough now and then. Drink, for instance (Mr. Cullen gave a resounding
‘Hear, hear!’ and a stamp on the boards). What sort of a spectacle would
be exhibited by the public-houses in Hoxton and Islington at closing
time to-night? [‘True!’ from Mr. Cowes, who also stamped on the boards.)
Yes, but--Richard used the device of aposiopesis; Daniel Dabbs took it
for a humorous effect and began a roar, which was summarily interdicted.
‘But,’ pursued Richard with emphasis, ‘what is the meaning of these
vices? What do they come of? Who’s to blame for them? Not the working
class--never tell me! What drives a man to drink in his spare hours?
What about the poisonous air of garrets and cellars? What about
excessive toil and inability to procure healthy recreation? What
about defects of education, due to poverty? What about diseased bodies
inherited from over-slaved parents?’ Messrs. Cowes and Cullen had
accompanied these queries with a climax of vociferous approval; when
Richard paused, they led the tumult of hands and heels. ‘Look at that
poor man who spoke to us!’ cried Mutimer. ‘He’s gone, so I shan’t hurt
him by speaking plainly. He spoke well, mind you, and he spoke from his
heart; but what sort of a life has his been, do you think? A wretched
cripple, a miserable weakling no doubt from the day of his birth, cursed
in having ever seen the daylight, and, such as he is, called upon to
fight for his bread. Much of it he gets! Who would blame that man if he
drank himself into unconsciousness every time he picked up a sixpence?’
Cowes and Cullen bellowed their delight. ‘Well, he doesn’t do it; so
much you can be sure of. In some vile hole here in this great city of
ours he drags on a life worse--aye, a thousand times worse!--than that
of the horses in the West-end mews. Don’t clap your hands so much,
fellow-workers. Just think about it on your way home; talk about it to
your wives and your children. It’s the sight of objects like that that
makes my blood boil, and that’s set me in earnest at this work of ours.
I feel for that man and all like him as if they were my brothers. And I
take you all to witness, all you present and all you repeat my words
to, that I’ll work on as long as I have life in me, that I’ll use
every opportunity that’s given me to uphold the cause of the poor and
down-trodden against the rich and selfish and luxurious, that if I live
another fifty years I shall still be of the people and with the people,
that no man shall ever have it in his power to say that Richard Mutimer
misused his chances and was only a new burden to them whose load he
might have lightened!’
There was nothing for it but to leap on to the very benches and yell as
long as your voice would hold out.
After that the meeting was mere exuberance of mutual congratulations.
Mr. Cullen was understood to be moving the usual vote of thanks, but
even his vocal organs strove hard for little purpose. Daniel Dabbs
had never made a speech in his life, but excitement drove him on the
honourable post of seconder. The chairman endeavoured to make certain
announcements; then the assembly broke up. The estrade was invaded;
everybody wished to shake hands with Mutimer. Mr. Cullen tried to obtain
Richard’s attention to certain remarks of value; failing, he went off
with a scowl. Mr. Cowes attempted to button-hole the popular hero;
finding Richard conversing with someone else at the same time, he turned
away with a covert sneer. The former of the two worthies had desired to
insist upon every member of the Union becoming a teetotaller; the latter
wished to say that he thought it would be well if a badge of temperance
were henceforth worn by Unionists. On turning away, each glanced at the
clock and hurried his step.
In a certain dark street not very far from the lecture-room Mr. Cullen
rose on tip-toe at the windows of a dull little public-house. A Unionist
was standing at the bar; Mr. Cullen hurried on, into a street yet
darker. Again he tip-toed at a window. The glimpse reassured him; he
passed quickly through the doorway, stepped to the bar, gave an order.
Then he turned, and behold, on a seat just under the window sat Mr.
Cowes, & short pipe in his mouth, a smoking tumbler held on his knee.
The supporters of total abstinence nodded to each other, with a slight
lack of spontaneity. Mr. Cullen, having secured his own tumbler, came by
his comrade’s side.
‘Deal o’ fine talk to wind up with,’ he remarked tentatively.
‘He means what he says,’ returned the other gravely.
‘Oh yes,’ Mr. Cullen hastened to admit. ‘Mutimer means what he says!
Only the way of saying it, I meant--I’ve got a bit of a sore throat.’
‘So have I. After that there hot room.’
They nodded at each other sympathetically. Mr. Cullen filled a little
black pipe.
‘Got alight?’
Mr. Cowes offered the glowing bowl of his own clay; they put their noses
together and blew a cloud.
‘Of course there’s no saying what time ‘ll do,’ observed tall Mr. Cowes,
sententiously, after a gulp of warm liquor.
‘No more there is,’ assented short Mr. Cullen with half a wink.
‘It’s easy to promise.’
‘As easy as tellin’ lies.’
Another silence.
‘Don’t suppose you and me ‘ll get much of it,’ Mr. Cowes ventured to
observe.
‘About as much as you can put in your eye without winkin’,’ was the
other’s picturesque agreement.
They talked till closing time.