Demos | Page 9

consumed a quarter
of what he has put out of sight.'
'Alfred, you are shockingly rude,' reproved his mother, though herself
laughing. 'Mr. Wyvern is absorbed in thought.'
'Well, he has taken the best means, I should say, to remind himself of
actualities,' rejoined the youth. 'But what a man he is! How did he
behave in church this morning?'
'You should have come to see,' said Mrs. Waltham, mildly censuring
her son's disregard of the means of grace.
'I like Mr. Wyvern,' observed Adela, who was standing at the window
looking out upon the dusking valley.
'Oh, you would like any man in parsonical livery,' scoffed her brother.

Alfred shortly betook himself to the garden, where, in spite of a
decided freshness in the atmosphere, he walked for half-an-hour
smoking a pipe. When he entered the house again, he met Adela at the
foot of the stairs.
'Mrs. Mewling has just come in,' she whispered.
'All right, I'll come up with you,' was the reply. 'Heaven defend me
from her small talk!'
They ascended to a very little room, which made a kind of boudoir for
Adela. Alfred struck a match and lit a lamp, disclosing a nest of
wonderful purity and neatness. On the table a drawing-board was
slanted; it showed a text of Scripture in process of 'illumination.'
'Still at that kind of thing!' exclaimed Alfred. 'My good child, if you
want to paint, why don't you paint in earnest? Really, Adela, I must
enter a protest! Remember that you are eighteen years of age.'
'I don't forget it, Alfred.'
'At eight-and-twenty, at eight-and-thirty, you propose still to be at the
same stage of development?'
'I don't think we'll talk of it,' said the girl quietly. 'We don't understand
each other.'
'Of course not, but we might, if only you'd read sensible books that I
could give you.'
Adela shook her head. The philosophical youth sank into his favourite
attitude--legs extended, hands in pockets, nose in air.
'So, I suppose,' he said presently, 'that fellow really has been ill?'
Adela was sitting in thought; she looked up with a shadow of
annoyance on her face.
'That fellow?'
'Eldon, you know.'
'I want to ask you a question,' said his sister, interlocking her fingers
and pressing them against her throat. 'Why do you always speak in a
contemptuous way of Mr. Eldon?'
'You know I don't like the individual.'
'What cause has "the individual" given you?'
'He's a snob.'
'I'm not sure that I know what that means,' replied Adela, after thinking
for a moment with downcast eyes.
'Because you never read anything. He's a fellow who raises a great

edifice of pretence on rotten foundations.'
'What can you mean? Mr. Eldon is a gentleman. What pretence is he
guilty of?'
'Gentleman!' uttered her brother with much scorn. 'Upon my word, that
is the vulgarest of denominations! Who doesn't call himself so
nowadays! A man's a man, I take it, and what need is there to lengthen
the name? Thank the powers, we don't live in feudal ages. Besides, he
doesn't seem to me to be what you imply.'
Adela had taken a book; in turning over the pages, she said--
'No doubt you mean, Alfred, that, for some reason, you are determined
to view him with prejudice.'
'The reason is obvious enough. The fellow's behaviour is detestable; he
looks at you from head to foot as if you were applying for a place in his
stable. Whenever I want an example of a contemptible aristocrat,
there's Eldon ready-made. Contemptible, because he's such a sham; as
if everybody didn't know his history and his circumstances!'
'Everybody doesn't regard them as you do. There is nothing whatever
dishonourable in his position.'
'Not in sponging on a rich old plebeian, a man he despises, and living in
idleness at his expense?'
'I don't believe Mr. Eldon does anything of the kind. Since his brother's
death he has had a sufficient income of his own, so mother says.'
'Sufficient income of his own! Bah! Five or six hundred a year; likely
he lives on that! Besides, haven't they soaped old Mutimer into leaving
them all his property? The whole affair is the best illustration one could
possibly have of what aristocrats are brought to in a democratic age.
First of all, Godfrey Eldon marries Mutimer's daughter; you are at
liberty to believe, if you like, that he would have married her just the
same if she hadn't had a penny. The old fellow is flattered. They see the
hold they have, and stick to him like leeches. All for want of money, of
course. Our aristocrats begin to see that they can't get on without
money nowadays; they can't live on family records, and they find that
people won't toady to them in