"They were friends? They took to one another?" the young man asked eagerly.
She hesitated.
"I am not sure about that. Graveling was in one of his tempers. He was rude, and he said things to me which I felt obliged to contradict."
"They did not quarrel?"
She laughed softly.
"Imagine Maraton quarrelling! I think that he is above such pettiness,Aaron."
"Graveling is a good fellow and a hard worker," Aaron declared. "The one thing which he lacks is enthusiasm. He doesn't really feel. He does his work well because it is his work, not because of what it leads to."
"You are right," Julia admitted. "He has no enthusiasm. That is why he never moves people when he speaks. I must go soon, Aaron. Will you lie down and rest for a time here?"
"Rest!" He looked at her scornfully. "How can one rest! Tell me where this house of his is? I shall go and wait outside. I must see him."
She glanced at the clock, and paused for a moment to think.
"Aaron," she decided, "I will be late for once. Come with me and I will take you to him. He was kind to me last night. We will go together to his house and wait till he is down. Then I will tell him how you have longed for his coming, and perhaps—"
"Perhaps what?" Aaron interrupted. "You can't escape from it! You have promised. You shall take me! I am ready to go. Perhaps what?"
"I was only thinking," she went on, "you find it, I know, impossible to settle down to work anywhere. But with him, if he could find something—"
Aaron sprang to his feet.
"I would work my fingers to the bone!" he cried. "It is a glorious idea, Julia. I have to give up the collecting—my bicycle has gone. Let us start."
They went out together into the streets, thinly peopled, as yet, for it was barely six o'clock. Julia would have loitered, but her brother forced her always onward. She laughed as they arrived at the Square where Maraton lived. Every house they passed was shuttered and silent.
"How absurd we are!" she murmured. "He will not be up for hours. Very likely even the servants will not be astir."
"Servants!"
Aaron repeated the word, frowning. She only smiled.
"You mustn't be foolish, dear. Don't have prejudices. Remember that we are walking along a very narrow way. We have climbed only a few steps of the hill. He is more than half-way to the top. Things are different with him. Don't judge; only wait."
She rang the bell of the house a little timidly. The door was opened without any delay by a man servant in sombre, every-day clothes.
"We wish to see Mr. Maraton," Julia announced. "He is not up yet, of course, but might we come in and wait?"
"Mr. Maraton is in his study, madam," the man answered.
He disappeared and beckoned them, a moment or so later, to follow him. They were shown into a much smaller apartment at the rear of the house. Maraton was sitting before a desk covered with papers, with a breakfast tray by his side. He looked up at their entrance, but his face was inexpressive. He did not even smile. The sunlight died out of Julia's face, and her heart sank.
"I am sorry," she began haltingly. "I ought not to have come again, I know. But it is my brother. Night and day he has thought of nothing else but your coming."
Aaron seemed to have forgotten his timidity. He crossed the room and stood before Maraton's desk. His face seemed to have caught some of the freshness of the early morning. He was no longer the sallow, pinched starveling. He was like a young prophet whose eyes are burning with enthusiasm.
"You have come to help us," he asserted. "You are Maraton!"
"I have come to help you," Maraton replied. "I have come to do what I can. It isn't an easy task in this country, you know, to do anything, but I think in the end we shall succeed. If you are Julia Thurnbrein's brother, you should know something of the work."
"I am only one of the multitude," Aaron sighed. "I haven't the brains to organise. I talk sometimes but I get too excited. There are others—many others—who speak more convincingly, but no one feels more than I feel, no one prays for the better times more fervently than I. It isn't for myself—it isn't for ourselves, even; it's for the children, it's for the next generation."
Maraton held out his hand suddenly.
"My young friend," he said, "you have spoken the words I like to hear. Some of my helpers I have found, at times, selfish. They are satisfied with the small things that lie close at hand, some material benefit which really is of no account at all. That isn't the work for us to engage in. Sit down. Sit down, Miss Julia. You have breakfasted?"
"Before we left," Julia assured him.
"Never mind, you shall breakfast again," Maraton declared. "It is a good augury that the first words I have heard from one of ourselves have been words such as your brother has spoken. To tell you the truth, I came over here in fear and trembling. Some of your leaders have frightened me a little."
"You mean—" Aaron began.
"That they don't hold their heads high enough. I am not for strikes that finish with a shilling a week more for the men; or for Acts of Parliament which dole out tardy charity. I am for the bigger things. Last night I lay awake, thinking—your friend Richard Graveling set me thinking. We must aim high. I am here for no man's individual good. I am here to plan not pinpricks but destruction."
The servant brought in more breakfast. They sat and talked, Maraton asking many questions concerning the men whom he would meet later in the day. Then he looked regretfully at the great pile of letters still before him.
"I shall need a secretary," he said slowly.
Aaron sprang to his feet.
"Take me," he begged. "I have been in a newspaper office. I am slow at shorthand but I can type like lightning. I will work morning and night. I want nothing but a little food if I may go about with you and hear you speak. Oh, take me!"
Maraton smiled.
"You are engaged," he declared. "Go out and hire a typewriter and bring it here in a cab. You can start at once, I hope?"
"This minute," Aaron agreed, his voice breaking with excitement.
Maraton passed him money and took them both to the door.
"Tell me about to-night?" Julia asked. "Will you go to the Clarion?Shall you speak?"
Maraton shook his head.
"No. I have written to the men whom I am anxious to meet here, and asked them to come to me. I should prefer not to speak at all until I go to Manchester. I have plans, but I must not speak of them for the moment."
"I had hoped so to hear you speak to-night," she murmured, and her face fell.
They stood together at the door and looked out across the green tree-tops towards the city.
"The time has gone by for speeches," he said quietly. "Perhaps before very long you may hear greater things than words."
They hurried off—Julia to the factory, Aaron to a typewriting depot inNew Oxford Street. At the corner of the Square they parted.
"Are you satisfied?" she asked.
His face was all aglow.
"Satisfied! Julia, you told me nothing! He is wonderful—splendid!"
She climbed on to a 'bus with a little smile upon her lips. The long day's work before her seemed like a holiday task. Then she laughed softly as she found herself repeating her brother's fervid words:
"Maraton has come!"
Maraton spent three hours and a half that morning in conclave with the committee appointed for his reception, and for that three hours and a half he was profoundly bored. Every one had a good deal to say except Richard Graveling, who sat at the end of the table with folded arms and a scowl upon his face. The only other man who scarcely opened his lips during the entire time, was Maraton himself. Peter Dale, Labour Member for Newcastle, was the first to make a direct appeal. He was a stalwart, grim-looking man, with heavy grey eyebrows and grey beard. He had been a Member of Parliament for some years and was looked upon as the practical leader of his party.
"We've heard a lot of you, Mr. Maraton," he declared, "of your fine fighting methods and of your gift of speech. We'll hear more of that, I hope, at Manchester. We are, so to speak, strangers as yet, but there's one thing I will say for you, and that is that you're a good listener. You've heard all that we've got to say and you've scarcely made a remark. You won't object to my saying that we're expecting something from you in the way of initiative, not to say leadership?"
Maraton glanced down the table. There were five men seated there, and, a little apart from all of them, David Ross, who had refused to be shaken off. Excepting him only, they were well-fed and substantial looking men. Maraton had studied them carefully through half-closed eyes during all the time of their meeting, and the more he had studied them, the more disappointed he had become. There was not one of them with the eyes of a dreamer. There was not one of them who appeared capable of dealing with any subject save from his own absolutely material and practical point of view.
Maraton from the first had felt a seal laid upon his lips. Now, when the time had come for him to speak, he did so with hesitation, almost with reluctance.
"As yet," he began, "there is very little for me to talk about. You are, I understand, you five, a committee appointed by the Labour Party to confer with me as to the best means of promulgating our beliefs. You have each told me your views. You would each, apparently, like me to devote myself to your particular district for the purpose of propagating a strike which shall result in a trifling increase of wages."
"And a coal strike, I say," Peter Dale interrupted, "is the logical first course. We've been threatening it for two years and it's time we brought it off. I can answer for the miners of the north country. We have two hundred and seventy thousand pounds laid by and the Unions are spoiling for a fight. Another eighteen-pence would make life a different thing for some of our pitmen. And the masters can afford it, too. Sixteen and a half per cent is the average dividend on the largest collieries around us."
A small man, with gimlet-like black eyes and a heavy moustache, at which he had been tugging nervously during Peter Dale's remarks, plunged into the discussion. His name was Abraham Weavel and he came from Sheffield.
"Coal's all very well," he declared, "but I speak for the ironfounders. There's orders enough in Leeds and Sheffield to keep the furnaces ablaze for two years, and the masters minting money at it. Our wages ain't to be compared with the miners. We've twenty thousand in Sheffield that aren't drawing twenty-five shillings a week and they're about fed up with it. We've our Unions, too, and money to spare, and I tell you they're beginning to ask what's the use of sending a Labour Member to Parliament and having nothing come of it."
A grey-whiskered man, who had the look of a preacher, struck the table before him with a sudden vigour.
"You remember who I am, Mr. Maraton? My name's Borden—Samuel Borden—and I am from the Potteries. It's all very well for Weavel and Dale there to talk, but there's no labour on God's earth so underpaid as the china and glass worker. We may not have the money saved—that's simply because it takes my people all they can do to keep from starvation. I've figures here that'll prove what I say. I'll go so far as this—there isn't a worse paid industry than mine in the United Kingdom."
There was a moment's silence. Abraham Weavel leaned back in his chair and yawned. Peter Dale made a grimace of dissent. Maraton turned to one of the little company who as yet had scarcely opened his lips—a thin, ascetic-looking, middle-aged man, who wore gold spectacles, and who had an air of refinement which was certainly not shared by any of the others.
"And you, Mr. Culvain," he enquired, "you represent no particular industry, I believe? You were a journalist, were you not, before you entered Parliament?"
"I was and am a journalist," Culvain assented. "Since you have asked my opinion, I must confess that I am all for more peaceful methods. These Labour troubles which inconvenience and bring loss upon the community, do harm to our cause. I am in favour of a vigorous course of platform education through all the country districts of England. I think that the principles of Socialism are not properly understood by the working classes."
"If one might make a comment upon all that you have said," Maraton remarked, "I might point out to you that there is a certain selfishness in your individual suggestions. Three of you are in favour of a gigantic strike, each in his own constituency. Mr. Culvain, who is a writer and an orator, prefers the methods which appeal most to him. Yet even these strikes which you propose are puny affairs. You want to wage war for the sake of a few shillings. We ought to fight, if at all, for a greater and more splendid principle. It isn't a shilling or two more a week that the people want. It's a share—a share to which they are, without the shadow of a doubt, entitled—in the direct product of their labour."
"That's sound enough," Peter Dale admitted. "How are you going to get it?"
"You ask for too much," Weavel observed, "and you get nothing."
"It is never wise," Culvain suggested quietly, "to have the public against one."
Maraton rose a little abruptly to his feet. He had the air of one eager to dismiss the subject.
"Gentlemen," he announced, "I've heard your views. In a few days' time you shall hear mine. Only let me tell you this. To me you all seem to be working and thinking on very narrow lines. Your object seems to be the securing of small individual benefits for your individual constituents. I think that if we get to work together in this country, there must be something more national in our aspirations. That is all I have to say for the present. As I think you know, I intend to make a pronouncement of my own views at Manchester."
They all took their leave a little later. Maraton himself saw them out and watched them across the Square. Somehow or other, his depression had visibly increased as he turned away. He had come into contact lately, on the other side of the world, with a different order of person—men and women, too, passionately, strenuously in earnest. They were well-fed, prosperous individuals, these whom he had just dismissed. Their politics were their business, their position as Members of Parliament a source of unmixed joy to all of them; hard-headed men, very likely, good each in his own department; beyond that, nothing.
He returned presently to his study, where Aaron was already at work, typing letters.
"So that is your committee of Labour Members," Maraton remarked, throwing himself into an easy chair.
Aaron looked up.
"They are all sound men," he declared. "Peter Dale, too, is a fine speaker."
Maraton sighed.
"Yet it isn't from them," he said quietly, "that I can take a mandate. I must go to the people. I couldn't even talk to them to-day. I couldn't take them into my confidence. I couldn't show them the things I have seen perhaps only in my dreams. I don't suppose they would have listened. . . . How many more letters, Aaron?"
"Thirty-seven, sir."
Maraton rose to his feet.
"I shall walk for an hour or so," he announced. "Get them ready for me to sign when I come in. Have you a home, young man?"
"None, sir," Aaron admitted.
"Excellent!" Maraton declared cheerfully. "These people with homes lose sight of the real thing. What do you think of your Labour Members, honestly, Aaron? Ah, I can see that they have been little gods to you! Little tin gods, I am afraid, Aaron. Do they know what it is to go hungry, I wonder? Not often! . . . Get on with your letters. I am going out."
Maraton walked to the Park and sat down underneath the trees. There were a fair number of people about, notwithstanding the hot weather, and very soon he recognised Lady Elisabeth. She was walking back and forth along one of the side-walks, with a little, fussy woman, golden-haired, and wearing a gown of the brightest blue. Maraton watched them, at first idly and then with interest. Lady Elisabeth, in her cool muslin gown and simple hat, seemed to be moving in a world of her own, into which her companion's chatter but rarely penetrated. She walked with a slow and delicate grace, not without a characteristic touch of languor. Once or twice she looked around her—one might almost have imagined that she was seeking escape from her companion—and on one of these occasions her eyes met Maraton's. She stopped short. They were within a few feet of one another, and Maraton rose to his feet. She lowered her parasol and held out her hand.
"Only a very short time ago," she told him, "I was wondering what you were doing. You know that my uncle is expecting to see or hear from you this afternoon?"
"I know," he admitted. "To tell you the truth, I came out here to think. I could not quite make up my mind what to say to him."
"It is strange that we should meet here," she continued, "when Mr. Foley was talking to me about you for so long this morning. He wished that he had laid more emphasis upon the fact that your coming to us at Lyndwood committed you to nothing. No one is the worse off for hearing every point of view, is he? My uncle will feel so much happier if he really has had the opportunity of having a long, uninterrupted talk with you."
Maraton smiled pleasantly. They were standing in a crowded part of the walk and almost unconsciously they commenced to move slowly along together. Lady Elisabeth turned to her companion.
"You must let me introduce Mr. Maraton to you," she said. "This is Mr.Maraton—Mrs. Bollington-Watts."
The little woman leaned forward and looked at Maraton with undisguised curiosity.
"Forgive my starting at your name, won't you, Mr. Maraton?" she began. "It is uncommon, isn't it, and I'm only just over from the States. I dare say you read about all those awful doings in Chicago."
Maraton, without direct reply, inclined his head. Mrs.Bollington-Watts continued volubly.
"My brother is a judge out in Chicago. It was he who signed the warrant for Maraton's arrest. I'm afraid our people are getting much too scared, nowadays, about that sort of thing. We don't seem to be able to enforce our laws like you do over here. They are all saying now that it ought to have been served and the man shot if there had been any resistance."
"In which case," Maraton remarked, "I should not have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, Mrs. Bollington-Watts."
She stared at him for a moment, speechless through sheer lack of comprehension. Then she glanced at Lady Elisabeth and the truth dawned upon her. It was more than she could grapple with at first, however.
"You? But Lady Elisabeth—? But you, Mr. Maraton—are you really the man who mur—who was associated with all that trouble in Chicago?"
"I am, without a doubt, the man," Maraton assented cheerfully. "I am an enemy of your class, Mrs. Bollington-Watts. Your husband is the steel millionaire, isn't he? And I am also a Socialist of the most militant and modern type. Nevertheless, I can assure you, for these few moments you are perfectly safe."
Mrs. Bollington-Watts drew a little breath. The remarkable adaptability of her race came to her rescue; her point of view swung round.
"Why," she declared, "I have never been so interested in my life. This is perfectly thrilling. Mr. Maraton, I am having a few friends come in to-morrow evening. I should dearly love to give them a surprise. Couldn't you just drop in for an hour? Or, better still, if you could dine? I have taken Lenchester House for a year. My, it would be good to see their faces!"
Maraton shook his head.
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Bollington-Watts," he said, "but my visit to England is one of business only. To be frank with you, I have no social existence, nor any desire to cultivate one."
"But you know Lady Elisabeth," the little woman protested.
"I have the honour of knowing Lady Elisabeth incidentally," Maraton replied. "If you will excuse me now—"
Mrs. Bollington-Watts turned aside to talk vigorously to a passer-by.Lady Elisabeth laid her hand upon his arm.
"Mr. Maraton," she said softly, "do make up your mind. Please come toLyndwood."
Her blue eyes were raised to his, fearlessly, appealingly. Maraton was more than ever conscious of the delicate perfection of her person, her clear skin, her silky brown hair. She was something new to him in her sex. He knew quite well that a request from her was an unusual thing.
"I will come, Lady Elisabeth," he promised gravely. "Beyond that, of course, I can say nothing. But I will come to Lyndwood."
The slight anxiety passed from her face like a cloud. Her smile was positively brilliant.
"It is charming of you," she whispered.
Mrs. Bollington-Watts was once more free and by their side. They moved on to the corner and Maraton was on the point of taking his leave. Just at that moment Mrs. Bollington-Watts gave a little cry of amazement. A coach was drawn up by the side of the path, and a young man who was driving it, was looking down at them. Mrs. Bollington-Watts stopped and waved her hand at him almost frantically.
"Why, it's Freddy Lawes!" she exclaimed.. "Why, Freddy, what on earth are you doing here? If this isn't a surprise! They told me you never moved from Paris, and I thought I'd have to come right over there to see you. . . . Well, I declare! Freddy!—why, Freddy, what's the matter?"
The words of Mrs. Bollington-Watts seemed as though they had been spoken into empty air. The young man was leaning forward in his place, the reins loosely held in his hand, and a groom was already upon the path, recovering the whip which had slipped from his fingers. His eyes were fixed not upon Mrs. Bollington-Watts nor upon Lady Elisabeth, but upon Maraton. He was a young man of harmless and commonplace appearance but his features were at that moment transformed. His mouth was strained and quivering, his eyes were lit with something very much like horror. Some words certainly left his lips, but they did not carry to the hearing of any one of those three people. He looked at Maraton with the fierce, terrified intentness of one who looks upon a spectre!
Mrs. Bollington-Watts' shrill voice once more broke the silence, which, although it was a matter of seconds only, was not without a certain peculiar dramatic quality.
"Say, what's wrong with you, Freddy? You don't think I'm a ghost, do you? Can't you come down and talk?"
The spell, whatever it may have been, had passed. The young man lifted his hat and leaned over the side of the coach.
"I won't get down just now, Amy," he said. "Tell me where you are andI'll come and see you. How's Richard?"
Maraton, obeying a gesture from Lady Elisabeth, moved away with her, leaving Mrs. Bollington-Watts absorbed in a flood of family questions and answers.
"Come back with me now, won't you?" she asked, a little abruptly. "My uncle is restless and unwell this afternoon, and it will perhaps relieve him to have your decision."
"What about Mrs. Bollington-Watts?"
Lady Elisabeth glanced at him for a moment. Her eyebrows were slightly lifted.
"If you can bear to lose her, I'm sure I can. She is really rather a dear person but she is very intense. She will meet a crowd of people she knows, directly, and quite forget that we have slipped away. Shall we go down Birdcage Walk, or if you are in a hurry, perhaps you would prefer a taxi?"
He shook his head.
"I prefer to walk."
He did not at first prove a very entertaining companion. They proceeded for some distance almost in silence.
"If I were a curious person," Lady Elisabeth remarked, "I should certainly be puzzling my brain as to what there could have been about that very frivolous young man to call such an expression into your face. And how terrified he was to see you!"
Maraton smiled grimly.
"You have observation, I perceive, Lady Elisabeth."
"Powers of observation but no curiosity, thank goodness," Lady Elisabeth declared. "Perhaps that is just as well, for I can see that you are going to turn out to be a very mysterious person."
"In some respects I believe that I am," he assented equably. "My peculiar beliefs are responsible for a good deal, you see—and certain circumstances. . . . But tell me—we have both agreed to be frank—why have you changed your attitude towards me so completely? I scarcely dared to hope even for your recognition this morning."
She was suddenly thoughtful.
"That was the very question I was asking myself when we crossed the street just now," she remarked, with a faint smile.
Maraton was conscious of a curious and undefined sense of pleasure in her words. In the act of crossing he had held her arm for a few moments, and though her assent to his physical guidance had been purely negative, there was yet something about it which had given him a vague pleasure. Instinctively he knew that she was of the order of women to whom the merest touch from a man whom they disliked would have been torture.
"I think," she went on, "that it is because I am trying to adopt my uncle's point of view towards you."
"And what is your uncle's point of view?"
"He believes you," she declared, "to be a very dangerous person, a rabid enthusiast with brains and also stability—the most difficult order of person in the world to deal with."
"Anything else?"
"He believes you," she continued, "to be harmless enough at a wholesome period of our country's history. Just now, he told me yesterday, that he considered it was within your power to bring something very much like ruin upon the country."
Maraton was silent. He felt singularly indisposed for argument. Every condition of life just then seemed too pleasant. They were walking in the shade, and a soft west wind was rustling in the trees above their heads.
"There are, after all," she said, "so many happy people in the world. Is it worth while to drag down the pillars, to bring so much misery into the world for the sake of a dream?"
"I am no dreamer," he insisted quietly. "It is possible to make absolute laws for the future with the same precision as one can extract examples from the history of the past."
"But human nature," she objected, "is always a shifting quality."
"Only in detail. The heart and lungs of it are the same in all ages."
They crossed the road and turned into St. James's Park. He paused for a moment to look at the front of Buckingham Palace.
"A hateful sight to you, of course," she murmured.
"Not in the least," he assured her. "On the contrary, I think that the actual government of this country is wonderful. I suppose my creed of life would command a halter from any one who heard it, but I raise my hat always to your King."
"It is going to take me ages," she sighed, "to understand you."
"I will supply you with the necessary signposts," he promised. "Perhaps you will find then that the task will become almost too easy. For me I am afraid it will prove too short."
She turned her head and looked at him curiously. There was something provocative in the curl of her lips and in her monosyllabic question.
"Why?"
"Because when you have arrived at a complete understanding," he declared, "I fear we shall have reached the parting of our ways."
She looked steadfastly ahead.
"Wouldn't that rather rest with you?" she asked.
They passed a flower-barrow wonderfully laden, and she half stopped with a little exclamation.
"Oh, I must have some of those white roses!" she begged. "They fit in at this moment with one of my only superstitions."
He bought her a great handful. She held them in both hands and gave him her parasol to carry.
"Mine is an inherited superstition, so I will not be ashamed of it," she told him. "We have always believed that white roses bring happiness, especially if they come accidentally at a critical moment."
He glanced behind at the retreating figure of the flower woman.
"If happiness is so easily purchased," he said, "what a pity it is thatI did not buy the barrowful!"
"It isn't a matter of quantity at all," she assured him. "One blossom would have been enough and you were really frightfully extravagant."
She drifted into silence. They were walking eastwards now, and before them was the great yellow haze which hung over the sun-enveloped city, a haze which stretched across the whole arc of the heavens, and underneath which were toiling the millions to whom his life was consecrated. For a moment the grim inappropriateness of these hours struck him with a pang of remorse. He felt almost like a traitor to be walking with this slim, beautiful girl whose face was hidden from him now in the mass of white blossoms. And then his sense of proportion came to the rescue. He knew that he had but one desire—to work out his ends by the most effective means. It did not even disturb him to reflect that for the first time for many years he had found pleasure in what was merely an interlude.
"We turn here," she directed. "You see, we are close to home now. My uncle will be so glad to see you, Mr. Maraton, and I cannot tell you how delighted I am that you are coming to Lyndwood."
"I only hope," he said a little gravely, "that your uncle will not expect too much from my coming. It seems churlish to refuse, and even though our views are as far apart as the poles, I know that your uncle means well."
She smiled at him delightfully.
"I refuse to be depressed even by your solemn looks," she declared. "It is my twenty-fourth birthday to-day and I am still young enough to cling to my optimism."
"Your birthday," he remarked. "I should have brought you an offering."
She held up the roses.
"Nothing in the world," she assured him softly, "could have given me more pleasure than these. Now I am going to take you first into a little den where you will not be disturbed, and then fetch my uncle," she added, as they passed into the house. "I shall pray for your mutual conversion. You won't mind a very feminine room, will you? Just now there are certain to be callers at any moment, and my uncle's rooms are liable to all manner of intrusions."
She threw open the door and ushered him into what seemed indeed to be a little fairy chamber, a chamber with yellow walls and yellow rug, white furniture, oddments of china and photographs, silver-grey etchings, water-colour landscapes, piles of books and magazines. On a small table stood a yellow Sèvres vase, full of roses.
"It's a horrible place for a man to sit in," she said, looking around her. "You must take that wicker chair and throw away as many cushions as you like. Now I am going to fetch my uncle, and remember, please," she concluded, looking back at him from the door, "if I have seemed frivolous this morning, I am not always so. More than anything I am looking forward, down at Lyndwood, to have you, if you will, talk to me seriously."
"Shall I dare to argue with you, I wonder?" he asked.
She smiled at him.
"Why not? A matter of courage?"
"The bravest person in the world," he declared, "remembers always that little proverb about discretion."
The conference between Mr. Foley and Maraton was brief enough. The former arrived a few moments after his niece's departure.
"I have come," Maraton announced, as they shook hands, "to accept your invitation to Lyndwood. You understand, I am sure, that that commits me to nothing?"
Mr. Foley's expression was one of intense relief.
"Naturally," he replied. "I quite understand that. I am delighted to think that you are coming at all. May I ask whether you have conferred with your friends about the matter?"
Maraton shook his head.
"I have not even mentioned it to them. I met what I understand to be a committee of the Labour Party this morning—a Mr. Dale, Abraham Weavel, Culvain, Samuel Borden and David Ross. Those were the names so far as I can remember. I did not mention my proposed visit to you at all. There seemed to me to be no necessity. I am subject to no one here."
Mr. Foley smiled.
"They won't like it," he declared frankly.
"Their liking or disliking it will not affect the situation in the least," Maraton assured him. "I shall come, without a doubt. It will interest me to hear what you have to say, although unfortunately I cannot hold out the slightest hope—"
"That is entirely understood," Mr. Foley interrupted. "Now how will you come? Lyndwood Park is just sixty miles from London. To-day is Friday, isn't it? I shall motor down there sometime to-morrow. Why won't you come down with me?"
Maraton shook his head.
"If you will excuse me," he said, "I will not fix any time definitely. I have a good deal of correspondence still to attend to, and there is one little matter which might keep me in town till the afternoon."
"Let me send a car up for you," Mr. Foley suggested.
"Thank you," Maraton replied, "I have already hired one for a time."
"Then come just at what time suits you," Mr. Foley begged,—"the sooner the better, of course. Apart from that, I shall be about the place all day."
In Buckingham Gate, Maraton came slowly to a standstill. The coach which he had seen in the Park an hour ago was drawn up in front of a large hotel. The young man who was driving it had just come down the steps and was drawing on his gloves. They met almost face to face.
"Am I to speak to you?" the young man asked.
"You had better," Maraton assented. "Tell me what you are doing here?"
"I was bored with Paris," the young man answered. "My friends were all coming here. I had no idea that we were likely to meet."
Maraton looked at him thoughtfully. As they stood face to face at that moment, there was a certain strange likeness between them, a likeness of the husk only.
"I do not wish to interfere with your movements," Maraton said calmly. "Where you are is nothing to me. I proposed that you should remain away from London simply because I fancied that it would be easier for you to observe the conditions which exist between us. So long as you remember them, however, your whereabouts are indifferent to me."
The young man laughed a little nervously.
"You're not over-cordial!"
Maraton shrugged his shoulders.
"The world in which you live," he remarked, "is a training school, I suppose, for false sentiment. The slight kinship that there is between us is of no account to me. I simply remind you once more that it is to your advantage to neither know me or to know of me. Remember that, and it may be London or Paris or New York—wherever you choose."
The young man remounted his coach, and Maraton passed on. He walked without a pause to the square in which his house was situated. Here he found Aaron hard at work and, sitting down at once, he began to sign his letters.
"No end of people have been here," Aaron announced. "I have got rid of them all."
"Good!" Maraton said shortly. "By-the-bye, Aaron, isn't there a meeting to-night at the Clarion?"
Aaron nodded.
"David Ross is going to speak. He can move them when he starts. My sister is going to call here for me, and I thought if you didn't want me, I'd like to go."
"We will all go together," Maraton decided. "We can creep in somewhere at the back, I suppose. I want to hear how they do it."
The young man's face lit up with joy.
"There's sure to be lots of people there," he declared, "but we can find a seat at the back quite easily."
"What's it all about?" Maraton asked.
"The proposed boiler-maker's strike," Aaron replied eagerly. "The meeting is really a meeting of the workpeople at Boulding's. But are you sure you won't go on the platform, sir?"
Maraton shook his head.
"That is just what I don't want to do. I want to see what these meetings are like, what sort of arguments are used, what the spirit of the people is, if I can. That is what I would really like to find out, Aaron—the spirit of the people."
The young man looked up from his work. He was greatly changed during the last few hours. He was wearing a new suit of clothes and clean linen; his hair had been cut, his face shaved. Yet in some respects he was unaltered. His eyes still burned in their sockets, his lips still quivered.
"I will tell you what the people are like," he said. "They are like dumb animals, like sheep. They have suffered so long and so much that their nerve power is numbed. They lack will, they lack initiative. They are narrowed down to a daily life which makes of them something little different from an animal. Yet they can be roused. David Ross himself has done it, done it like none of those other M.P.'s. I have seen him carried out of himself. He is like some of these Welshmen and Salvation Army people when they're half drunk with religion—the words seem to come to them in a stream. That's how David Ross is sometimes. But it isn't often any one can get at them."
"That is what they say over on the other side," he remarked softly.
"They've got to be in such a state," Aaron continued, "that nothing appeals to them except some material benefit; a pipe of tobacco or a mug of beer will stir them more than any dream of freedom. Oh! it's sad to see them, often. I used to go to the gates at the shipbuilding yard and watch them come out. Ten years about does for a man there. It's a short spell."
Maraton sighed. "Yet they endure," he muttered to himself.
"Yet they endure," Aaron echoed. "Can't you see why? Don't you know that it is because they haven't heard the word—the one great word? That's what they're waiting for—for the prophet to open their eyes and lead them out of the wilderness. Only just at first it may be that even his voice will sound in vain. You are sure you won't mind my sister coming with us, sir? She is so interested and they all know her down there."
"It will be an advantage to have your sister," Maraton replied. "There are many things I should like to ask her."
At twenty minutes past eight, Maraton, with his two companions, reached the building in which the meeting was to take place—a plain, unimposing-looking edifice, built for a chapel, whitewashed inside, but with plastered walls and bare floors. The room was almost packed, and it was with some difficulty that they found seats in the back row. David Ross, Peter Dale and Graveling occupied chairs on the platform. Between them, Julia and Aaron kept Maraton informed as to the identity of each newcomer.
"That's Mr. Docker, who is going to speak now," the latter declared in an excited whisper. "He is a fighting man. It's he who has manoeuvred this strike, they say. Now he's off."
Mr. Docker has risen to his feet amidst a little hoarse cheering. For a quarter of an hour or more, he spoke fluently and convincingly. It appeared from his statements that boiler-makers were the worst paid mechanics in the universe, that it was he who had discovered this, that it was he who had drawn up the ultimatum which had been presented to the masters and refused. His peroration was friendly but appealing.
"There are some amongst Boulding's people," he wound up, "who, they tell me, are satisfied. If so, I hope they are not here. They haven't any place here. To them I would say—'If you are satisfied with twenty-four shillings a week, well, don't waste a penny in subscribing to the Unions, but go and spend your twenty-four shillings a week and live on it and enjoy it, and get fat on it if you can.' But to those others I want to say that it's just as easy to get twenty-eight. The masters don't want you to strike just now. You only have to be firm and you can get what's fair and right."
A man rose up in the hall.
"Is it true," he asked, "that Boulding's won't pay the advance?—that they are going to close the doors to-morrow if we insist upon it?"
"It is true," Mr. Docker answered. "Are you afraid of that?"
The man hesitated.
"I don't know as 'afraid' is exactly the word," he said, "but I don't fancy being out of work for a month or so, and perhaps losing my job at the end of it. Fifteen bob a week from the Union won't keep my little lot."
There was a murmur of applause. Docker pointed with threatening forefinger to the man who had just sat down.
"It's the likes of him," he declared, "who keep down wages, who make slaves of us! The likes of him, who haven't the pluck to ask for what they might get at any time!"
He plunged into facts and figures, and Maraton more than once yawned. He seemed to find more interest in watching the faces of the audience than in listening to the stock arguments which were being thrown at their heads. A little cloud of tobacco smoke hung about the room. There were few women present, and most of the men were smoking. On the whole they were a very earnest gathering. There were very few there who were not deeply interested. Julia was listening to every word, her head resting upon her hand, her lips a little parted, her eyes full of smouldering fires. At the end of Docker's speech, one of the Union officials got up on his feet. It was for the men themselves to decide, he said. They had subscribed the money; it was for them to say whether it should be used. Was the moment propitious for a blow on behalf of their rights? If they thought so, then let it be war. If they asked for his advice, they were welcome to it. His advice was to fight. The masters had refused their reasonable ultimatum. Let the masters try and carry out their contracts without work people! That was his way of looking at it.
There was a rumble of applause. The militants were certainly in the majority. A man got up from one of the front rows.
"I propose," he said, "that we strike to-morrow. They are working us as hard as they can in shifts on special jobs now, in case they should get left. Every hour we work makes it better for them. I say 'Strike!'"
There was a thunder of applause. A ballot box was brought and placed on a table in front of the platform.
"They will strike," Aaron muttered,—"three thousand of them!Splendid!"
Maraton shook his head.
"It is piecemeal work, this. They do not understand."
"They do not understand what?" Julia asked him, turning her head swiftly.
He shrugged his shoulders.
"They will ask for five shillings a week more and get half-a-crown," he said. "Half-a-crown a week! What difference can it make? Do you know what Boulding's put on one side for distribution to their shareholders last year?—what they put to their reserve fund? Why, it was a fortune!"
A man from somewhere at the back of the hall climbed on to a seat to get a better view and suddenly pointed out Maraton to his neighbours. A little murmur arose from the vicinity. Some one mentioned his name. The cry was taken up from the other side of the hall.
"Maraton!"
"Maraton!"
Maraton sat back, frowning. The cries, however, became more insistent. The occupants of the platform were leaning forward towards him. The chairman rose In his feet and beckoned. With obvious reluctance, Maraton moved a few steps to the front. From the far corners of the ill-lit hall, white-faced men climbed on to the benches, peering through the cloud of smoke which hung almost like fog about the place. They saluted him in all manner of ways—with cat-calls, hurrahs, stamping of feet, clapping of hands. Maraton, who had climbed up on to the platform, was soon surrounded.
Dale held out his hand.
"Thought you weren't going to honour us here, Mr. Maraton," he remarked gruffly.
"I had not meant to," Maraton replied. "I came as one of the audience.I wanted to hear, to understand if I could."
Dale stretched out his hand.
"This is Mr. Docker," he said, performing the introduction. "Mr.Docker—Mr. Maraton."
"Come to support us, sir, I hope?" the former remarked.
"I came to listen," Maraton answered. "To tell you the truth, it's against my views, this, an individual strike."
They were calling to him now from the front. Mr. Docker's reply was inaudible.
"You'll have to say a few words," Dale insisted. "They'll never leave off until you do."
Maraton nodded and turned towards the audience. He stood looking down at them for a moment or two, without speech. Even after silence had been established he seemed to be at a loss as to exactly what to say. When at last he did speak, it was in an easy and conversational manner. There was no sign of the fire or the frenzy with which he had kindled the enthusiasms of the people of the United States.
"I find it rather hard to know exactly what to say to you," he began. "I am glad to be here and I have come to this country to work for you, if I may. But, you know, I have views of my own, and it isn't a very auspicious occasion for me to stand for the first time upon an English platform. I came as one of the audience to-night and I have listened to all that has been said. I don't think that I am in favour of your strike."
There was a murmur of wonder, mingled with discontent.
"Why not?" some one shouted from the back.
"Aye, why not?" a dozen voices echoed.
"I'll try and tell you, if you like," Maraton continued. "I didn't mean to say anything until after Manchester, but I'll tell you roughly what my scheme is. These individual strikes such as you're planning are just like pinpricks on the hide of an elephant. How many are there of you? A thousand, say? Well, you thousand may get a shilling or two a week more. It won't alter your condition of life. It won't do much for you, any way. You will have spent your money, and in a year or two the masters will be taking it out of you some other way. A strike such as you are proposing causes inconvenience—no more. I'd bigger things in my mind for you."
He hesitated for a moment as though uncertain, even now, whether to go on. Glancing around the hall, his eyes for a moment met Julia's. Something in her still face, the almost passionate enquiry of her wonderful eyes, seemed to decide him. He lifted up his hands, his voice grew in volume.
"Let me tell you what I want, then. Let me tell you the dream which others have had before me, which is laughed to scorn by the enemies of the people, but which grows in substance and shape, year by year. I want to teach you how to smash the individual capitalist. I want to teach you how to frame laws which will bring the wealth of this country into a new and saner distribution. I want to teach you the folly of the old ideas that because of the wretched conditions in which you live, the better educated man, the man better equipped mentally and physically for his job, must gather to himself the wealth and you must become his slaves. What do you suppose, in the course of three or four generations, produces men of different mental and physical calibre? I will tell you. The circumstances of their bringing-up, the life they have to lead, their education, their environment. What chance have you under present conditions? None! For very shame, as the years pass on, you operatives will be better paid. What will it amount to? A few shillings a week more, the same life, the same anxieties, the same daily grinding toil, brainless, machine-like, leading you nowhere because there isn't a way out. There will still remain your masters; there will still remain you, the men. Can't you see what it is that I am aiming at? I want to make a great machine of all the industries of this country. The man with the gift for figures will find himself in the office, and the man with lesser brain power will find himself before a machine. But the two will be working for one aim and one end. They will both be parts of the machine, and for their livelihood they will take what that machine produces, distributed in a scientific and exact ratio. It's co-operation over again, you say? Very well, call it that. Only I tell you why co-operation has failed up till now. It's because you've been in too much of a hurry. I am going to appeal to you presently, not for your own interests but in the interests of your children and your children's children, because the better days that are to come for you won't dawn yet awhile. It may be, even, that you will be called upon to make sacrifices, instead of finding yourselves better off. There are some great changes which time alone can govern."
"What about this strike?" some one shouted from the bottom of the hall.
"You are quite right, sir," Maraton replied swiftly. "I've wandered a little from my point. I think that the first thing I said to you was that this strike, if it took place, would be like the pinprick on an elephant's hide. I want to teach you how to stab!"
There was a murmur of voices—approving this time, at any rate.
"Can't you see," Maraton continued, "that Society can easily deal with one strike at a time? That isn't the way to make yourself felt. What I want to see in this country is a simultaneous strike of wharfingers, dock labourers, railways, and all the means of communication; a strike which will stop the pulses of the nation, a strike which will cost hundreds of millions, a strike which may cost this country its place amongst the nations, but which will mark the dawn of new conditions. I'd put out your forge fires from Glasgow to Sheffield and Sheffield to London. I'd take the big risks—the rioting, the revolutions, the starvation, the misery that will surely come. I'd do that for the sake of the new nation which would start again where the old one perished."
There was a sudden burst of applause. A little thrill seemed to have found its way, like zig-zag lightning, here and there amongst them. But there were many who sat and smoked in stolid silence. Maraton looked into their faces and sighed to himself. There were too many hungry people for his mission.
"We are half starved," a man called from the back of the ball. "My wage is a pound a week and four children to keep. It's fine talk, yours, but it won't feed 'em."
There was a murmur of sullen approval. Maraton's hand shot out, his finger quivered as it pointed to the man.
"I don't blame you," he said, "but it's the cry you've just raised which keeps you and a few other millions exactly in the places you occupy. There are many generations as yet unborn, to come from your children and your children's children. Are they, then, to suffer as you have suffered?"
There was a little stir at the back of the platform. A tall, broad-shouldered man pushed his way through to the front. His face was pitted with smallpox; he had black, wiry hair; small, narrow eyes; a large, brutal mouth. He took up his position in the middle of the platform, ignoring Maraton altogether.
"Listen, lads," he began; "you are here to-night to decide whether or not you want another half-crown on to your wages. This man who has been talking to you has done big things in America. I know nothing about him and I'm not rightly sure that I know what's at the back of his head. If he is your friend, he's our friend, and we shall soon fall into line, but to-night you're here to meet about that half-crown. It's for you to say whether or no you'll have it. We've saved the money for the fight, saved it from your wages, got it with your sweat. You've given up your beer for it—aye, and maybe your baccy. We've saved the money and the time's come to fight. All that he says"—jerking his elbow towards Maraton—"sounds good enough. That'll come in later. Are you for the strike?"
There was no doubt about the reply—a roar of approving voices. Maraton smiled at them and stepped down from the platform. For the moment he was forgotten. Only Julia whispered passionately in his ear as they moved out of the place.
"You should have gone on. They didn't understand. They have waited so long, they could have waited a little longer."
Maraton did not answer until they reached the street. Then he stood a few steps in the background, watching the people as they came out.
"I couldn't," he said simply. "I felt as though I were offering stones for bread. The stones were better, perhaps, but the cruelty was the same."
Maraton walked alone with Elisabeth on the following afternoon in the flower garden at Lyndwood. She was apologising for some unexpected additions to the number of their guests.
"Mother always forgets whom she has asked down for the week-end," she said, "and my uncle is far too sweet about it. I know that he wanted to have as much time as possible alone with you before Monday. It is on Monday you go to Manchester, isn't it?"
"On Monday," he answered, a little absently. "I have to make my bow to the democracy of your country in the evening."
"I wish I could make up my mind, Mr. Maraton," she continued, "whether you have come over here for good or for evil."
"For evil that good may come of it, I am afraid," he rejoined, "would be the kindest interpretation you could put upon my enterprise here."
"The Spectator calls you the Missionary of Unrest."
"The Spectator, I am afraid, will become more violent later on."
"Let us sit down here for a moment," she suggested, pointing to a seat. "You see, we are just at the top of this long pathway, and we get a view of the roses all the way down."
"It is very beautiful," he admitted,—"far too beautiful."
She raised her eyebrows.
"Too beautiful? Is that possible?"
"Without a doubt," he declared. "Too much beauty is as bad as too little."
"And why is that? Surely it must be good for one to be surrounded by inspiring things?"
"I am not sure that beauty does inspire anything except content," he answered, smiling. "I call this garden of yours, for instance, a most vicious place, a perfect lotus-eater's Paradise. Positively, I feel the energy slipping out of my bones as I sit here."
"Then you shall be chained to that seat," she threatened. "You will not be able to go to Manchester and make trouble, and my uncle will be able to sleep at nights."
"I feel that everything in life is slipping away from me," he protested. "I ought to be thinking over what lam going to say to your country people, and instead of that I am wondering whether there is anything more beautiful in the world than the blue haze over your meadows."
She laughed, and moved her parasol a little so that she could see him better.
"You know," she said, "my uncle declares that if only you could be taught to imbibe a little more of the real philosophy of living, you would become quite a desirable person."
"And what is the real philosophy of living?"
"Just now, with him, it is the laissez faire, the non-interference with the essential forces of life, especially the forces that concern other people," she explained.
He looked at her, a little startled. What instinct, he wondered, had led her to place her finger upon the one poison spot in his thoughts?
"I can see," he remarked, "that I have found my way into a dangerous neighbourhood."
She changed her position a little, so as to face him. Her blue eyes were lit with laughter, her lips mocked him. Usually reserved, she seemed at that moment to be inspired with an instinct which was something almost more than coquetry. She leaned a little towards him. The aloofness of her carriage and manner had suddenly disappeared. He was conscious of the perfection of her white muslin gown, of the shape of her neck, the delicate lines and grace of her slim young body.
"You shall be chained here," she repeated. "My uncle has a new theory of individualism. He thinks that if no one tried to improve anybody, the world would be so much more livable a place. Shall we sit at his feet?"
He shook his head.
"I am not brave," he said, "but I am at least discreet."
"Do you think that you are?" she asked him quietly. "Do you think that you are discreet in the sense of being wise? Are you sure that you are using your gifts for the best purpose, for yourself—and other people?"
"No one can be sure," he replied. "I only follow my star."
"Then are you sure that it is your star?"
"No one can ever mistake that," he declared. "Sometimes one may lose one's way, and one may even falter if the path is rugged. But the star remains."
She sighed. Her eyes seemed to have wandered away. He felt that it was a trick to avoid looking at him for the moment.
"I do not want you to go to Manchester on Monday in your present mood," she said. "I hate to think of you up there, the stormy petrel, the apostle of unrest and sedition. If I were a Roman woman, I think that I would poison you to-night at dinner-time."
"Quite an idea," he remarked. "I am not at all sure that our having become too civilised for crime is a healthy sign of the times."
"I do wish," she persisted, "that you would try and see things a little more humanly. My uncle is full of enthusiasms about you. You have had some conversation already, haven't you?"
"We talked for an hour after luncheon," Maraton admitted. "Your uncle's is a very sane point of view. I know just how he regards me—a sort of dangerous enthusiast, a firebrand with the knack of commanding attention. The worst of it is that when I am with him, he almost makes me feel like that myself."
She laughed.
"All men of genius," she declared, "must be impressionable. We ought to set ourselves to discover your weak point."
He smiled at her with upraised eyebrows. There were times when he seemed to her like a boy.
"Haven't you discovered it?"
She made a little face and swung her parasol around. When she spoke again, she was very grave.
"Mr. Maraton," she begged, "please will you promise that before you go away, you will talk to me again for a few minutes?"
"It is a promise easily made!" he replied.
"But I mean seriously."
"I will talk to you at any time, anyhow you wish," he promised.
She rose to her feet then.
"For the present you have promised to play tennis," she reminded him."Please go and change your things."
"I must have a yellow rosebud for my button-hole," he begged.
She arranged it herself in his coat. He laughed as she swept aside a wisp of her hair which brushed his cheek.
"What a picture for the photographic Press of America!" he exclaimed."The anarchist of Chicago and the Prime Minister's niece!"
"What is an anarchist?" she asked him abruptly. He opened the little iron gate which led out of the garden.
"A sower of fire and destruction," he answered, "a highly unpleasant person to meet when he's in earnest."
She looked into his face for a moment with a wistfulness which was almost passionate.
"Please tell me at once, that you aren't—"
He pointed back to the garden.
"We have come out of the land of confessions. On this side of the gateI am your uncle's guest, and I mustn't be teased with questions."
"Before you go," she threatened, "I shall take you back into the rose-garden."
From their wicker chairs drawn under a great cedar tree, Mr. Foley and Lord Armley, perhaps the most distinguished of his colleagues, watched the slow approach of the two from the flower gardens. Lord Armley, who had only arrived during the last half hour, was recovering from a fit of astonishment. He had just been told of his fellow guest.
"Granted, even, that the man is as dangerous as you say," he remarked, "it is certainly creating a new precedent for you to bring him into the bosom of your family. Is it conversion, bribery, or poison that you have in your thoughts?"
"Influence, if possible," Mr. Foley answered. "Somehow or other, I have always detected in his writing a vein of common sense."
"What the dickens is common sense!" Lord Armley growled.
"Shall I say a sense of the fitness of things?" the Prime Minister replied,—"a sense of proportion, perhaps? Notwithstanding his extraordinary speeches in America, I believe that to some extent Maraton possesses it. Anyhow, it seemed to me to be worth trying. One couldn't face the idea of letting him go up north just now without making an effort."
"Things are really serious there," Lord Armley muttered.
"Worse than any of us know," Mr. Foley agreed. "If you hadn't been coming here, I should have sent for you last night. The French Ambassador was with me for an hour after dinner."
"No fresh trouble?"
"It was a general conversation, but his visit had its purpose—a very definite and threatening purpose, too. I do not blame France. We are under great obligations to her already. Half her fleet is there to watch over our possessions. She naturally must be sure of her quid pro quo. Everywhere, all over the Continent, the idea seems to be spreading that we are going to be plunged into what really amounts to a civil war. The coming of Maraton has strengthened the people's belief. A country without the sinews of movement, a country in which the working classes laid down their tools, a country whose forges had flickered out and whose railroad tracks were deserted, would simply be the helpless prey of any country who cared to pay off old scores."
Lord Armley was looking curiously at the approaching couple.
"Never saw a man," he said, half to himself, "who looked the part so little. Fellow must be well-bred, Foley."
Mr. Foley nodded.
"No one knows who his people were. It doesn't really matter, does it? Accident has made him a gentleman—accident or fate. Perhaps that is why he has gained such an ascendency over the people. The working classes of the country are most of them sick of their own Labour Members. The practical men can see no further than their noses, and the theorists are too far above their heads. Maraton is the only one who seems to understand. You must have a talk with him, Armley."
Lady Elisabeth, with a little smile, had turned towards the tennis courts, and Maraton came on alone. Mr. Foley turned to his companion.