CHAPTER IX

Richard Mutimer had strong domestic affections.  The English artisan is not demonstrative in such matters, and throughout his life Richard had probably exchanged no word of endearment with any one of his kin, whereas language of the tempestuous kind was common enough from him to one and all of them; for all that he clung closely to the hearth, and nothing in truth concerned him so nearly as the well-being of his mother, his sister, and his brother.  For them he had rejoiced as much as for himself in the blessing of fortune.  Now that the excitement of change had had time to subside, Richard found himself realising the fact that capital creates cares as well as removes them, and just now the centre of his anxieties lay in the house at Highbury to which his family had removed from Wilton Square.

He believed that as yet both the Princess and ’Arry were ignorant of the true state of affairs.  It had been represented to them that he had ‘come in for’ a handsome legacy from his relative in the Midlands, together with certain business responsibilities which would keep him much away from home; they were given to understand that the change in their own position and prospects was entirely of their brother’s making.  If Alice Maud was allowed to give up her work, to wear more expensive gowns, even to receive lessons on the pianoforte, she had to thank Dick for it.  And when ’Arry was told that his clerkship at the drain-pipe manufactory was about to terminate, that he might enter upon a career likely to be more fruitful of distinction, again it was Dick’s brotherly kindness.  Mrs. Mutimer did her best to keep up this deception.

But Richard was well aware that the deception could not be lasting, and had the Princess alone been concerned he would probably never have commenced it.  It was about his brother that he was really anxious.  ’Arry might hear the truth any day, and Richard gravely feared the result of such a discovery.  Had he been destined to future statesmanship, he could not have gone through a more profitable course of experience and reasoning than that into which he was led by brotherly solicitude.  For ’Arry represented a very large section of Demos, alike in his natural characteristics and in the circumstances of his position; ’Arry, being ’Arry, was on the threshold of emancipation, and without the smallest likelihood that the event would change his nature.  Hence the nut to crack:  Given ’Arry, by what rapid process of discipline can he be prepared for a state in which the ’Arrian characteristics will surely prove ruinous not only to himself but to all with whom he has dealings?