CHAPTER VI.
A few busy and eventful weeks, days never forgotten by Marcella in afteryears, passed quickly by. Parliament met in the third week of January.Ministers, according to universal expectation, found themselvesconfronted by a damaging amendment on the Address, and were defeated bya small majority. A dissolution and appeal to the country followedimmediately, and the meetings and speech-makings, already activethroughout the constituencies, were carried forward with redoubledenergy. In the Tudley End division, Aldous Raeburn was fighting asomewhat younger opponent of the same country-gentleman stock--a formerfag indeed of his at Eton--whose zeal and fluency gave him plenty to do.Under ordinary circumstances Aldous would have thrown himself with allhis heart and mind into a contest which involved for him the moststimulating of possibilities, personal and public. But, as these dayswent over, he found his appetite for the struggle flagging, and washarassed rather than spurred by his adversary's activity. The real truthwas that he could not see enough of Marcella! A curious uncertainty andunreality, moreover, seemed to have crept into some of their relations;and it had begun to gall and fever him that Wharton should be stayingthere, week after week, beside her, in her father's house, able tospend all the free intervals of the fight in her society, strengtheningan influence which Raeburn's pride and delicacy had hardly allowed himas yet, in spite of his instinctive jealousy from the beginning, to takeinto his thoughts at all, but which was now apparent, not only tohimself but to others.
In vain did he spend every possible hour at Mellor he could snatch froma conflict in which his party, his grandfather, and his own personalfortunes were all deeply interested. In vain--with a tardy instinct thatit was to Mr. Boyce's dislike of himself, and to the wilful fancy forWharton's society which this dislike had promoted, that Wharton's longstay at Mellor was largely owing--did Aldous subdue himself topropitiations and amenities wholly foreign to a strong character longaccustomed to rule without thinking about it. Mr. Boyce showed himselfnot a whit less partial to Wharton than before; pressed him at leasttwice in Raeburn's hearing to make Mellor his head-quarters so long asit suited him, and behaved with an irritable malice with regard to someof the details of the wedding arrangements, which neither Mrs. Boyce'sindignation nor Marcella's discomfort and annoyance could restrain.Clearly there was in him a strong consciousness that by his attentionsto the Radical candidate he was asserting his independence of theRaeburns, and nothing for the moment seemed to be more of an object withhim, even though his daughter was going to marry the Raeburns' heir.Meanwhile, Wharton was always ready to walk or chat or play billiardswith his host in the intervals of his own campaign; and his society hadthus come to count considerably among the scanty daily pleasures of asickly and disappointed man. Mrs. Boyce did not like her guest, and tookno pains to disguise it, least of all from Wharton. But it seemed to beno longer possible for her to take the vigorous measures she would oncehave taken to get rid of him.
In vain, too, did Miss Raeburn do her best for the nephew to whom shewas still devoted, in spite of his deplorable choice of a wife. She tookin the situation as a whole probably sooner than anybody else, and sheinstantly made heroic efforts to see more of Marcella, to get her tocome oftener to the Court, and in many various ways to procure the poordeluded Aldous more of his betrothed's society. She paid many chatteringand fussy visits to Mellor--visits which chafed Marcella--and beforelong, indeed, roused a certain suspicion in the girl's wilful mind.Between Miss Raeburn and Mrs. Boyce there was a curious understanding.It was always tacit, and never amounted to friendship, still less tointimacy. But it often yielded a certain melancholy consolation toAldous Raeburn's great-aunt. It was clear to her that this strangemother was just as much convinced as she was that Aldous was making agreat mistake, and that Marcella was not worthy of him. But theengagement being there--a fact not apparently to be undone--both ladiesshowed themselves disposed to take pains with it, to protect it againstaggression. Mrs. Boyce found herself becoming more of a _chaperon_ thanshe had ever yet professed to be; and Miss Raeburn, as we have said,made repeated efforts to capture Marcella and hold her for Aldous, herlawful master.
But Marcella proved extremely difficult to manage. In the first placeshe was a young person of many engagements. Her village scheme absorbeda great deal of time. She was deep in a varied correspondence, in theengagement of teachers, the provision of work-rooms, the collecting andregistering of workers, the organisation of local committees and soforth. New sides of the girl's character, new capacities andcapabilities were coming out; new forms of her natural power over herfellows were developing every day; she was beginning, under theincessant stimulus of Wharton's talk, to read and think on social andeconomic subjects, with some system and coherence, and it was evidentthat she took a passionate mental pleasure in it all. And the morepleasure these activities gave her, the less she had to spare for thoseaccompaniments of her engagement and her position that was to be, whichonce, as Mrs. Boyce's sharp eyes perceived, had been quite normallyattractive to her.
"Why do you take up her time so, with all these things?" said MissRaeburn impatiently to Lady Winterbourne, who was now Marcella'sobedient helper in everything she chose to initiate. "She doesn't carefor anything she _ought_ to care about at this time, and Aldous seesnothing of her. As for her trousseau, Mrs. Boyce declares she has had todo it all. Marcella won't even go up to London to have her wedding-dressfitted!"
Lady Winterbourne looked up bewildered.
"But I can't make her go and have her wedding-dress fitted, Agneta! AndI always feel you don't know what a fine creature she is. You don'treally appreciate her. It's splendid the ideas she has about this work,and the way she throws herself into it."
"I dare say!" said Miss Raeburn, indignantly. "That's just what I objectto. Why can't she throw herself into being in love with Aldous! That'sher business, I imagine, just now--if she were a young woman likeanybody else one had ever seen--instead of holding aloof from everythinghe does, and never being there when he wants her. Oh! I have no patiencewith her. But, of course, I must--" said Miss Raeburn, hastilycorrecting herself--"of course, I must have patience."
"It will all come right, I am sure, when they are married," said LadyWinterbourne, rather helplessly.
"That's just what my brother says," cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "Hewon't hear a word--declares she is odd and original, and that Aldouswill soon know how to manage her. It's all very well; nowadays men_don't_ manage their wives; that's all gone with the rest. And I amsure, my dear, if she behaves after she is married as she is doing now,with that most objectionable person Mr. Wharton--walking, and talking,and taking up his ideas, and going to his meetings--she'll be a handfulfor any husband."
"Mr. Wharton!" said Lady Winterbourne, astonished. Her absent blackeyes, the eyes of the dreamer, of the person who lives by a few intenseaffections, saw little or nothing of what was going on immediately underthem. "Oh! but that is because he is staying in the house, and he is aSocialist; she calls herself one--"
"My _dear_," said Miss Raeburn, interrupting emphatically;"if--you--had--now--an unmarried daughter at home--engaged or not--wouldyou care to have Harry Wharton hanging about after her?"
"Harry Wharton?" said the other, pondering; "he is the Levens' cousin,isn't he? he used to stay with them. I don't think I have seen him sincethen. But yes, I do remember; there was something--somethingdisagreeable?"
She stopped with a hesitating, interrogative air. No one talked lessscandal, no one put the uglinesses of life away from her with a hastierhand than Lady Winterbourne. She was one of the most consistent of moralepicures.
"Yes, _extremely_ disagreeable," said Miss Raeburn, sitting boltupright. "The man has no principles--never had any, since he was a childin petticoats. I know Aldous thinks him unscrupulous in politics andeverything else. And then, just when you are worked to death, and havehardly a moment for your own affairs, to have a man of that type alwaysat hand to spend odd times with your lady love--flattering her, engagingher in his ridiculo
us schemes, encouraging her in all the extravagancesshe has got her head twice too full of already, setting her against yourown ideas and the life she will have to live--you will admit that it isnot exactly soothing!"
"Poor Aldous!" said Lady Winterbourne, thoughtfully, looking far aheadwith her odd look of absent rigidity, which had in reality so little todo with a character essentially soft; "but you see he _did_ know allabout her opinions. And I don't think--no, I really don't think--I couldspeak to her."
In truth, this woman of nearly seventy--old in years, but wholly youngin temperament--was altogether under Marcella's spell--more at ease withher already than with most of her own children, finding in hersatisfaction for a hundred instincts, suppressed or starved by her ownenvironment, fascinated by the girl's friendship, and eagerly gratefulfor her visits. Miss Raeburn thought it all both incomprehensible andsilly.
"Apparently no one can!" cried that lady in answer to her friend'sdemurrer; "is all the world afraid of her?"
And she departed in wrath. But she knew, nevertheless, that she was justas much afraid of Marcella as anybody else. In her own sphere at theCourt, or in points connected with what was due to the family, or toLord Maxwell especially, as the head of it, this short, capable old ladycould hold her own amply with Aldous's betrothed, could maintain,indeed, a sharp and caustic dignity, which kept Marcella very much inorder. Miss Raeburn, on the defensive, was strong; but when it came toattacking Marcella's own ideas and proceedings, Lord Maxwell's sisterbecame shrewdly conscious of her own weaknesses. She had no wish tomeasure her wits on any general field with Marcella's. She said toherself that the girl was too clever and would talk you down.
Meanwhile, things went untowardly in various ways. Marcella disciplinedherself before the Gairsley meeting, and went thither resolved to giveAldous as much sympathy as she could. But the performance only repelleda mind over which Wharton was every day gaining more influence. Therewas a portly baronet in the chair; there were various Primrose Dames onthe platform and among the audience; there was a considerablerepresentation of clergy; and the labourers present seemed to Marcellathe most obsequious of their kind. Aldous spoke well--or so the audienceseemed to think; but she could feel no enthusiasm for anything that hesaid. She gathered that he advocated a Government inspection ofcottages, more stringent precautions against cattle disease, bettertechnical instruction, a more abundant provision of allotments and smallfreeholds, &c.; and he said many cordial and wise-sounding things inpraise of a progress which should go safely and wisely from step tostep, and run no risks of dangerous reaction. But the assumptions onwhich, as she told herself rebelliously, it all went--that the rich andthe educated must rule, and the poor obey; that existing classes andrights, the forces of individualism and competition, must and would goon pretty much as they were; that great houses and great people, theEnglish land and game system, and all the rest of our odious classparaphernalia were in the order of the universe; these ideas, conceivedas the furniture of Aldous's mind, threw her again into a ferment ofpassionate opposition. And when the noble baronet in the chair--to hereye, a pompous, frock-coated stick, sacrificing his after-dinner sleepfor once, that he might the more effectually secure it in thefuture--proposed a vote of confidence in the Conservative candidate;when the vote was carried with much cheering and rattling of feet; whenthe Primrose Dames on the platform smiled graciously down upon themeeting as one smiles at good children in their moments of prettybehaviour; and when, finally, scores of toil-stained labourers, youngand old, went up to have a word and a hand-shake with "Muster Raeburn,"Marcella held herself aloof and cold, with a look that threatenedsarcasm should she be spoken to. Miss Raeburn, glancing furtively roundat her, was outraged anew by her expression.
"She will be a thorn in all our sides," thought that lady. "Aldous is afool!--a poor dear noble misguided fool!"
Then on the way home, she and Aldous drove together. Marcella tried toargue, grew vehement, and said bitter things for the sake of victory,till at last Aldous, tired, worried, and deeply wounded, could bear itno longer.
"Let it be, dear, let it be!" he entreated, snatching at her hand asthey rolled along through a stormy night. "We grope in a dark world--yousee some points of light in it, I see others--won't you give me creditfor doing what I can--seeing what I can? I am sure--_sure_--you willfind it easier to bear with differences when we are quite together--whenthere are no longer all these hateful duties and engagements--andpersons--between us."
"Persons! I don't know what you mean!" said Marcella.
Aldous only just restrained himself in time. Out of sheer fatigue andslackness of nerve he had been all but betrayed into some angry speechon the subject of Wharton, the echoes of whose fantastic talk, as itseemed to him, were always hanging about Mellor when he went there. Buthe did refrain, and was thankful. That he was indeed jealous anddisturbed, that he had been jealous and disturbed from the moment HarryWharton had set foot in Mellor, he himself knew quite well. But to playthe jealous part in public was more than the Raeburn pride could bear.There was the dread, too, of defining the situation--of striking somevulgar irrevocable note.
So he parried Marcella's exclamation by asking her whether she had anyidea how many human hands a parliamentary candidate had to shake betweenbreakfast and bed; and then, having so slipped into another tone, hetried to amuse himself and her by some of the daily humours of thecontest. She lent herself to it and laughed, her look mostly turned awayfrom him, as though she were following the light of the carriage lampsas it slipped along the snow-laden hedges, her hand lying limply in his.But neither were really gay. His soreness of mind grew as in the pausesof talk he came to realise more exactly the failure of the evening--ofhis very successful and encouraging meeting--from his own private pointof view.
"Didn't you like that last speech?" he broke out suddenly--"thatlabourer's speech? I thought you would. It was entirely his ownidea--nobody asked him to do it."
In reality Gairsley represented a corner of the estate which Aldous hadspecially made his own. He had spent much labour and thought on theimprovement of what had been a backward district, and in particular hehad tried a small profit-sharing experiment upon a farm there which hehad taken into his own hands for the purpose. The experiment had metwith fair success, and the labourer in question, who was one of theworkers in it, had volunteered some approving remarks upon it at themeeting.
"Oh! it was very proper and respectful!" said Marcella, hastily.
The carriage rolled on some yards before Aldous replied. Then he spokein a drier tone than he had ever yet used to her.
"You do it injustice, I think. The man is perfectly independent, and anhonest fellow. I was grateful to him for what he said."
"Of course, I am no judge!" cried Marcella, quickly--repentantly. "Whydid you ask me? I saw everything crooked, I suppose--it was yourPrimrose Dames--they got upon my nerves. Why did you have them? I didn'tmean to vex and hurt you--I didn't indeed--it was all the other way--andnow I have."
She turned upon him laughing, but also half crying, as he could tell bythe flutter of her breath.
He vowed he was not hurt, and once more changed both talk and tone. Theyreached the drive's end without a word of Wharton. But Marcella went tobed hating herself, and Aldous, after his solitary drive home, sat uplong and late, feverishly pacing and thinking.
* * * * *
Then next evening how differently things fell!
Marcella, having spent the afternoon at the Court, hearing all thefinal arrangements for the ball, and bearing with Miss Raeburn in a waywhich astonished herself, came home full of a sense of duty done, andannounced to her mother that she was going to Mr. Wharton's meeting inthe Baptist chapel that evening.
"Unnecessary, don't you think?" said Mrs. Boyce, lifting her eyebrows."However, if you go, I shall go with you."
Most mothers, dealing with a girl of twenty-one, under thecircumstances, would have said, "I had rather you stayed at home." Mrs.Boyce never emp
loyed locutions of this kind. She recognised with perfectcalmness that Marcella's bringing up, and especially her independentyears in London, had made it impossible.
Marcella fidgeted.
"I don't know why you should, mamma. Papa will be sure to want you. Ofcourse, I shall take Deacon."
"Please order dinner a quarter of an hour earlier, and tell Deacon tobring down my walking things to the hall," was all Mrs. Boyce said inanswer.
Marcella walked upstairs with her head very stiff. So her mother, andMiss Raeburn too, thought it necessary to keep watch on her. Howpreposterous! She thought of her free and easy relations with herKensington student-friends, and wondered when a more reasonable idea ofthe relations between men and women would begin to penetrate Englishcountry society.
Mr. Boyce talked recklessly of going too.
"Of course, I know he will spout seditious nonsense," he said irritablyto his wife, "but it's the fellow's power of talk that is soastonishing. _He_ isn't troubled with your Raeburn heaviness."
Marcella came into the room as the discussion was going on.
"If papa goes," she said in an undertone to her mother as she passedher, "it will spoil the meeting. The labourers will turn sulky. Ishouldn't wonder if they did or said something unpleasant. As it is,_you_ had much better not come, mamma. They are sure to attack thecottages--and other things."
Mrs. Boyce took no notice as far as she herself was concerned, but herquiet decision at last succeeded in leaving Mr. Boyce safely settled bythe fire, provided as usual with a cigarette and a French novel.
The meeting was held in a little iron Baptist chapel, erected some fewyears before on the outskirts of the village, to the grief and scandalof Mr. Harden. There were about a hundred and twenty labourers present,and at the back some boys and girls, come to giggle and make anoise--nobody else. The Baptist minister, a smooth-faced young man,possessed, as it turned out, of opinions little short of Wharton's ownin point of vigour and rigour, was already in command. A few latecomers, as they slouched in, stole side looks at Marcella and the veiledlady in black beside her, sitting in the corner of the last bench; andMarcella nodded to one or two of the audience, Jim Hurd amongst them.Otherwise no one took any notice of them. It was the first time thatMrs. Boyce had been inside any building belonging to the village.
Wharton arrived late. He had been canvassing at a distance, and neitherof the Mellor ladies had seen him all day. He slipped up the bench witha bow and a smile to greet them. "I am done!" he said to Marcella, as hetook off his hat. "My voice is gone, my mind ditto. I shall drivel forhalf an hour and let them go. Did you ever see such a stolid set?"
"You will rouse them," said Marcella.
Her eyes were animated, her colour high, and she took no account at allof his plea of weariness.
"You challenge me? I must rouse them--that was what you came to see? Isthat it?"
She laughed and made no answer. He left her and went up to theminister's desk, the men shuffling their feet a little, and rattling astick here and there as he did so.
The young minister took the chair and introduced the speaker. He had astrong Yorkshire accent, and his speech was divided between the mostvehement attacks, couched in the most Scriptural language, upon capitaland privilege--that is to say, on landlords and the land system, onState churches and the "idle rich," interspersed with quavering returnsupon himself, as though he were scared by his own invective. "Mybrothers, let us be _calm_!" he would say after every burst of passion,with a long deep-voiced emphasis on the last word; "let us, above allthings, be _calm_!"--and then bit by bit voice and denunciation wouldbegin to mount again towards a fresh climax of loud-voiced attack, onlyto sink again to the same lamb-like refrain. Mrs. Boyce's thin liptwitched, and Marcella bore the good gentleman a grudge for providingher mother with so much unnecessary amusement.
As for Wharton, at the opening of his speech he spoke both awkwardly andflatly; and Marcella had a momentary shock. He was, as he said, tired,and his wits were not at command. He began with the general politicalprogramme of the party to which--on its extreme left wing--he proclaimedhimself to belong. This programme was, of course, by now a newspapercommonplace of the stalest sort. He himself recited it withoutenthusiasm, and it was received without a spark, so far as appeared, ofinterest or agreement. The minister gave an "hear, hear," of a loudofficial sort; the men made no sign.
"They might be a set of Dutch cheeses!" thought Marcella, indignantly,after a while. "But, after all, why should they care for all this? Ishall have to get up in a minute and stop those children romping."
But through all this, as it were, Wharton was only waiting for hissecond wind. There came a moment when, dropping his quasi-official andhigh political tone, he said suddenly with another voice and emphasis:
"Well now, my men, I'll be bound you're thinking, 'That's all prettyenough!--we haven't got anything against it--we dare say it's all right;but we don't care a brass ha'porth about any of it! If that's all you'dgot to say to us, you might have let us bide at home. We don't have nonetoo much time to rest our bones a bit by the fire, and talk to themissus and the kids. Why didn't you let us alone, instead of bringing usout in the cold?'
"Well, but it _isn't_ all I've got to say--and you know it--becauseI've spoken to you before. What I've been talking about is all true, andall important, and you'll see it some day when you're fit. But what canmen in your position know about it, or care about it? What do any of youwant, but _bread_--"
--He thundered on the desk--
"--a bit of decent _comfort_--a bit of _freedom_--freedom from tyrantswho call themselves your betters!--a bit of rest in your old age, a homethat's something better than a dog-hole, a wage that's something betterthan starvation, an honest share in the wealth you are making every dayand every hour for other people to gorge and plunder!"
He stopped a moment to see how _that_ took. A knot of young men in acorner rattled their sticks vigorously. The older men had begun at anyrate to look at the speaker. The boys on the back benches instinctivelystopped scuffling.
Then he threw himself into a sort of rapid question-and-answer. Whatwere their wages?--eleven shillings a week?
"Not they!" cried a man from the middle of the chapel. "Yer mus' reckonit wet an' dry. I wor turned back two days las' week, an' two days this,_fower_ shillin' lost each week--that's what I call skinnin' ov yer."
Wharton nodded at him approvingly. By now he knew the majority of themen in each village by name, and never forgot a face or a biography."You're right there, Watkins. Eleven shillings, then, when it isn'tless, never more, and precious often less; and harvest money--thepeople that are kind enough to come round and ask you to vote Tory forthem make a deal of that, don't they?--and a few odds and ends here andthere--precious few of them! There! that's about it for wages, isn't it?Thirty pounds a year, somewhere about, to keep a wife and childrenon--and for ten hours a day work, not counting meal times--that's it, Ithink. Oh, you _are_ well off!--aren't you?"
He dropped his arms, folded, on the desk in front of him, and paused tolook at them, his bright kindling eye running over rank after rank. Achuckle of rough laughter, bitter and jeering, ran through the benches.Then they broke out and applauded him.
Well, and about their cottages?
His glance caught Marcella, passed to her mother sitting stifflymotionless under her veil. He drew himself up, thought a moment, thenthrew himself far forward again over the desk as though the better tolaunch what he had to say, his voice taking a grinding determined note.
He had been in all parts of the division, he said; seen everything,inquired into everything. No doubt, on the great properties there hadbeen a good deal done of late years--public opinion had effectedsomething, the landlords had been forced to disgorge some of the gainswrested from labour, to pay for the decent housing of the labourer. Butdid anybody suppose that _enough_ had been done? Why, he had seen_dens_--aye, on the best properties--not fit for the pigs that thefarmers wouldn't let the labourers keep, lest
they should steal theirstraw for the littering of them!--where a man was bound to live thelife of a beast, and his children after him--
A tall thin man of about sixty rose in his place, and pointed a longquavering finger at the speaker.
"What is it, Darwin? speak up!" said Wharton, dropping at once into thecolloquial tone, and stooping forward to listen.
"My sleepin' room's six foot nine by seven foot six. We have to shiftour bed for the rain's comin' in, an' yer may see for yoursels therain't much room to shift it in. An' beyont us ther's a room for thechillen, same size as ourn, an' no window, nothin' but the door into us.Ov a summer night the chillen, three on 'em, is all of a sweat aforethey're asleep. An' no garden, an' no chance o' decent ways nohow. An'if yer ask for a bit o' repairs yer get sworn at. An' that's all thatmost on us can get out of Squire Boyce!"
There was a hasty whisper among some of the men round him, as theyglanced over their shoulders at the two ladies on the back bench. One ortwo of them half rose, and tried to pull him down. Wharton looked atMarcella; it seemed to him he saw a sort of passionate satisfaction onher pale face, and in the erect carriage of her head. Then she stoopedto the side and whispered to her mother. Mrs. Boyce shook her head andsat on, immovable. All this took but a second or two.
"Ah, well," said Wharton, "we won't have names; that'll do us no good.It's not the _men_ you've got to go for so much--though we shall go forthem too before long when we've got the law more on our side. It's thesystem. It's the whole way of dividing the wealth that _you_ made, youand your children--by your work, your hard, slavish, incessantwork--between you and those who _don't_ work, who live on your labourand grow fat on your poverty! What we want is _a fair division_. There_ought_ to be wealth enough--there _is_ wealth enough for all in thisblessed country. The earth gives it; the sun gives it: labour extractsand piles it up. Why should one class take three-fourths of it and leaveyou and your fellow-workers in the cities the miserable pittance whichis all you have to starve and breed on? Why?--_why_? I say.Why!--because you are a set of dull, jealous, poor-spirited _cowards_,unable to pull together, to trust each other, to give up so much as apot of beer a week for the sake of your children and your liberties andyour class--there, _that's_ why it is, and I tell it you straight out!"
He drew himself up, folded his arms across his chest, and looked atthem--scorn and denunciation in every line of his young frame, and theblaze of his blue eye. A murmur ran through the room. Some of the menlaughed excitedly. Darwin sprang up again.
"You keep the perlice off us, an' gie us the cuttin' up o' theirbloomin' parks an' we'll do it fast enough," he cried.
"Much good that'll do you, just at present," said Wharton,contemptuously. "Now, you just listen to me."
And, leaning forward over the desk again, his finger pointed at theroom, he went through the regular Socialist programme as it affects thecountry districts--the transference of authority within the villagesfrom the few to the many, the landlords taxed more and more heavilyduring the transition time for the provision of house room, water,light, education and amusement for the labourer; and ultimately land andcapital at the free disposal of the State, to be supplied to the workeron demand at the most moderate terms, while the annexed rent andinterest of the capitalist class relieves him of taxes, and thedisappearance of squire, State parson, and plutocrat leaves him masterin his own house, the slave of no man, the equal of all. And, as a firststep to this new Jerusalem--_organisation_!--self-sacrifice enough toform and maintain a union, to vote for Radical and Socialist candidatesin the teeth of the people who have coals and blankets to give away.
"Then I suppose you think you'd be turned out of your cottages,dismissed your work, made to smart for it somehow. Just you try! Thereare people all over the country ready to back you, if you'd only backyourselves. But you _won't_. You won't fight--that's the worst of you;that's what makes all of us _sick_ when we come down to talk to you. Youwon't spare twopence halfpenny a week from boozing--not you!--tosubscribe to a union, and take the first little step towards fillingyour stomachs and holding your heads up as free men. What's the good ofyour grumbling? I suppose you'll go on like that--grumbling and starvingand cringing--and talking big of the things you could do if youwould:--and all the time not one honest effort--not one!--to betteryourselves, to pull the yoke off your necks! By the Lord! I tell youit's a _damned_ sort of business talking to fellows like you!"
Marcella started as he flung the words out with a bitter, nay, a brutal,emphasis. The smooth-faced minister coughed loudly with a suddenmovement, half got up to remonstrate, and then thought better of it.Mrs. Boyce for the first time showed some animation under her veil. Hereyes followed the speaker with a quick attention.
As for the men, as they turned clumsily to stare at, to laugh, or talkto each other, Marcella could hardly make out whether they were angeredor fascinated. Whichever it was, Wharton cared for none of them. Hisblood was up; his fatigue thrown off. Standing there in front of them,his hands in his pockets, pale with the excitement of speaking, hiscurly head thrown out against the whitened wall of the chapel, he lashedinto the men before him, talking their language, their dialect even;laying bare their weaknesses, sensualities, indecisions; painting in thesombrest colours the grim truths of their melancholy lives.
Marcella could hardly breathe. It seemed to her that, among thesecottagers, she had never lived till now--under the blaze of theseeyes--within the vibration of this voice. Never had she so realised thepower of this singular being. He was scourging, dissecting, theweather-beaten men before him, as, with a difference, he had scourged,dissected her. She found herself exulting in his powers of tyranny, inthe naked thrust of his words, so nervous, so pitiless. And then by asudden flash she thought of him by Mrs. Hurd's fire, the dying child onhis knee, against his breast. "Here," she thought, while her pulsesleapt, "is the leader for me--for these. Let him call, I will follow."
It was as though he followed the ranging of her thought, for suddenly,when she and his hearers least expected it, his tone changed, his stormof speech sank. He fell into a strain of quiet sympathy, encouragement,hope; dwelt with a good deal of homely iteration on the immediatepractical steps which each man before him could, if he would, taketowards the common end; spoke of the help and support lying ready forthe country labourers throughout democratic England if they would butput forward their own energies and quit themselves like men; pointedforward to a time of plenty, education, social peace; and so--with somegood-tempered banter of his opponent, old Dodgson, and some preciseinstructions as to how and where they were to record their votes on theday of election--came to an end. Two or three other speeches followed,and among them a few stumbling words from Hurd. Marcella approvedherself and applauded him, as she recognised a sentence or two takenbodily from the _Labour Clarion_ of the preceding week. Then aresolution pledging the meeting to support the Liberal candidate waspassed unanimously amid evident excitement. It was the first time thatsuch a thing had ever happened in Mellor.
* * * * *
Mrs. Boyce treated her visitor on their way home with a new respect,mixed, however, as usual, with her prevailing irony. For one who knewher, her manner implied, not that she liked him any more, but that aman so well trained to his own profession must always hold his own.
As for Marcella, she said little or nothing. But Wharton, in the dark ofthe carriage, had a strange sense that her eye was often on him, thather mood marched with his, and that if he could have spoken her responsewould have been electric.
When he had helped her out of the carriage, and they stood in thevestibule--Mrs. Boyce having walked on into the hall--he said to her,his voice hoarse with fatigue:
"Did I do your bidding, did I rouse them?"
Marcella was seized with sudden shyness.
"You rated them enough."
"Well, did you disapprove?"
"Oh, no! it seems to be your way."
"My proof of friendship? Well, can there be a greater? Will
you show mesome to-morrow?"
"How can I?"
"Will you criticise?--tell me where you thought I was a fool to-night,or a hypocrite? Your mother would."
"I dare say!" said Marcella, her breath quickening; "but don't expect itfrom me."
"Why?"
"Because--because I don't pretend. I don't know whether you roused them,but you roused _me_."
She swept on before him into the dark hall, without giving him a momentfor reply, took her candle, and disappeared.
Wharton found his own staircase, and went up to bed. The light hecarried showed his smiling eyes bent on the ground, his mouth stillmoving as though with some pleasant desire of speech.