 determined, if he got the opportunity, to
strike a good hard blow in defence of law and order. Already he was well on the
way to possess a solid stake in the country, and the native conservatism of his
temperament grew stronger as circumstances bent themselves to his will; a
proletarian conquering wealth and influence naturally prizes these things in
proportion to the effort their acquisition has cost him. When he heard of his
brother's death, he could in conscience say nothing more than »Serve him right!«
For all that, he paid the funeral expenses of the Chartist - angrily declining
an offer from Henry's co-zealots, who would have buried the martyr at their
common charges - and proceeded to inquire after the widow and son. Joseph
Mutimer, already one- or two-and-twenty, was in no need of help; he and his
mother, naturally prejudiced against the thriving uncle, declared themselves
satisfied with their lot, and desired no further connection with a relative who
was practically a stranger to them.
    So Richard went on his way and heaped up riches. When already middle-aged he
took to himself a wife, his choice being marked with characteristic prudence.
The woman he wedded was turned thirty, had no money, and few personal charms,
but was a lady. Richard was fully able to appreciate education and refinement;
to judge from the course of his later life, one would have said that he had
sought money only as a means, the end he really aimed at being the satisfaction
of instincts which could only have full play in a higher social sphere. No doubt
the truth was that success sweetened his character, and developed, as is so
often the case, those possibilities of his better nature which a fruitless
struggle would have kept in the germ or altogether crushed. His excellent wife
influenced him profoundly; at her death the work was continued by the daughter
she left him. The defects of his early education could not of course be
repaired, but it is never too late for a man to go to school to the virtues
which civilise. Remaining the sturdiest of Conservatives, he bowed in sincere
humility to those very claims which the Radical most angrily disallows: birth,
hereditary station, recognised gentility - these things made the strongest
demand upon his reverence. Such an attitude was a testimony to his own capacity
for culture, since he knew not the meaning of vulgar adulation, and did in truth
perceive the beauty of those qualities to which the uneducated Iconoclast is
wholly blind. It was a joyous day for him when he saw his daughter the wife
