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 Sevres 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."



CHAPTER VIII

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."



CHAPTER IX

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."



CHAPTER X

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 gate I 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.

"Armley," he said, "this is Mr. Maraton—Lord Armley."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Maraton," Lord Armley declared, as the two men shook hands, "in such peaceful surroundings. The Press over here has not been too kind to you. Our ideas of your personality are rather based, I am afraid, upon the Punch caricature. You've seen it, perhaps?"

Maraton's eyes lit up with mirth.

"Excellent!" he observed. "I have had one framed."

"He is standing," Lord Armley continued, turning to Mr. Foley, "on the topmost of three tubs, his hair flying in the wind, his mouth open to about twice its normal size, with fire and smoke coming out of it. And below, a multitude! It is a splendid caricature. They tell me, Mr. Maraton, that it is your intention to kindle the fires in England, too."

Maraton was suddenly grave.

"Lord Armley," he said, "all the world speaks of me as an apostle of destruction and death. It is because they see a very little distance. In my own thoughts, if ever I do think of myself, it is as a builder, not as a destroyer, that I picture myself. Only in this world, as in any other, one must destroy first to build upon a sound foundation."

"Good reasoning, sir," Lord Armley replied, "only one should be very sure, before one destroys, that the new order of things will be worthy of the sacrifice."

"After dinner," Mr. Foley remarked, as he lit a cigarette, "we are going to talk. At present, Maraton is under a solemn promise to play tennis."

Maraton looked towards the house.

"If I might be allowed," he said, "I will go and put on my flannels. Lady Elisabeth is making up a set, I think."

He turned towards the house. The two men stood watching him.

"Is he to be bought?" Lord Armley asked, in a low tone.

Mr. Foley shook his head.

"Not with money or place," he answered thoughtfully.

"There isn't a man breathing who hasn't his price, if you could only discover what it is," Lord Armley declared, as he took a cigarette from his case and lit it.

"A truism, my friend," Mr. Foley admitted, "which I have always considered a little nebulous. However, we shall see. We have a few hours' respite, at any rate."



CHAPTER XI

Lady Grenside's hospitable instincts were unquenchable. The small house-party to which her brother had reluctantly consented had grown by odd couples until the house was more than half full. Twenty-two people sat down to dinner that night. For the first time in his life, Mr. Foley interfered with the arrangement of the table. He sought his sister out just as the dressing-bell rang.

"My dear Catharine," he asked, a little reprovingly, "was it necessary to have such a crowd here—at any rate until after Monday? You know that I don't interfere as a rule, but there were special reasons why I wanted to be as quiet as possible until after Maraton had left."

Lady Grenside's expression was delightfully apologetic. It conveyed, also, a sense of helplessness.

"What was I to do?" she demanded. "Most of these people were asked, or half asked, weeks ago, and I hate putting any one off. It is quite a weakness of mine, that. And I am sure, Stephen, there isn't a soul who could possibly object to Mr. Maraton. Personally, I think he is altogether charming, and so distinguished-looking. He has quite the air of being used to good society."

Mr. Foley's eyes lit with joyful appreciation of his sister's naivete. Perhaps one reason why they got on so well together was because she was continually ministering to his sense of humour.

"It wasn't altogether that," he said, "but never mind. We can't send the people away now—that's certain. What I wanted to tell you was that Elisabeth must sit next Maraton to-night."

Lady Grenside was horrified.

"However could I explain such an arrangement to Jack Carton!" she protested. "Apart from a matter of precedence, you know that he is Elisabeth's declared admirer. It is perfectly certain that at a word of encouragement from her, he would propose. A most suitable match, too, in every way, and, you know, Elisabeth is beginning to be just a little anxiety to me. She is twenty-four, and girls marry so young, nowadays."

"Carton and she can make up for lost time later on," Mr. Foley insisted. "Maraton goes to-morrow. To-night I am relying upon Elisabeth to look after him. For some reason or other, they seem to get on together excellently."

Lady Grenside took Lord Carton into one of the corners of her brother's quaint and delightful drawing-room, to explain the matter.

"My dear Jack," she began, "never be a politician."

"I like that!" the young man answered. "Lady Elisabeth has been talking to me for half an hour before dinner, trying to get me to interest myself in what she calls serious objects."

"Oh, it's all right, so far as the man is concerned!" Lady Grenside amended. "I was thinking of my own position. Only an hour ago, my brother comes to me and tells me that I am to send Elisabeth in to dinner to-night with—with whom do you think?"

"With me, I hope," the young man replied promptly, "only I don't know why he should interfere."

"With Mr. Maraton."

"What, the anarchist fellow?"

Lady Grenside nodded several times.

"I can't refuse Stephen in his own house," she said, "and Mr. Maraton is leaving to-morrow."

The young man sighed.

"He is just one of those thoughtful chaps with plenty of gas, that Elisabeth likes to talk to," he complained. "Never mind, it's got to be put up with, I suppose."

"I am sending you in with Lily," Lady Grenside continued. "She'll keep you amused. Only I felt that I must explain."

"I can't think what the fellow's doing here, anyhow," Carton remarked discontentedly. "A few generations ago we should have hung him."

"Hush!" Lady Grenside whispered. "Don't let Elisabeth hear you talk like that. Here she comes. I wonder—"

Lady Grenside stopped short. She was looking steadily at her daughter and her expression of doubt had a genuine impulse behind it. Carton was not so reticent.

"By Jove, she does look stunning!" he murmured.

Elisabeth, who seldom wore colours, was dressed in blue, with a necklace of turquoises. On the threshold she paused to make some laughing rejoinder to a man who was holding open the door for her. Her eyes were brilliant, her face was full of animation. Lady Grenside's face darkened as the unseen man came into sight. It was Maraton.

"Never saw Elisabeth look so ripping," Carton repeated. "Just my luck, not to take her in."

"To-morrow night," Lady Grenside promised.

"That's all very well," Carton grumbled. "I wish she didn't look so thundering pleased with herself."

Lady Grenside leaned a little towards him.

"Elisabeth is a dear girl," she declared. "She is doing all this for her uncle's sake. Mr. Foley is very anxious indeed to conciliate this man, and Elisabeth is helping him. You know how keen she is on doing what she can in that way."

Carton nodded a little more hopefully. His eyes were fixed now upon Maraton.

"Can't think how the fellow learnt to turn himself out like that. I thought these sort of people dressed anyhow."

Lady Grenside shrugged her shoulders.

"I believe," she said, "that this man is full of queer contradictions. Some one once told me that he was enormously wealthy; that he had been to an English public school and changed his name out in America. Rubbish, I expect. . . . Run and find Lily, there's a dear boy. We are going in now."

Dinner was served at a round table, and a good deal of the conversation was general. On Maraton's left hand, however, was a lady whose horror at his presence, concealed out of deference to her host, reduced her to stolid and unbending silence. Elisabeth, quickly aware of the fact, made swift atonement. While the others talked all around them of general subjects, she conversed with Maraton almost in whispers, lightly enough at first, but with an undernote of seriousness always there. Maraton would have been less than human if he had not been susceptible to the charm of her conversation.

"I cannot tell you," she declared, towards the end of the meal, "how much I am hoping from this brief visit of yours. I know you feel that our class has little feeling for the people whom you represent. If only I could convince you how wrong that idea is! Nothing has interested me so much as the different measures which have been brought in for the sake of the people. And my uncle, too—he is the kindest of men and very broad. He would go even further than he does, but for his colleagues."

"He goes a long way," Maraton reminded her, "when he asks me to his home; invites me—well, why should I not say it?—invites me to join his party."

"He is doing what he believes is sensible," she went on eagerly. "He is doing what I know is right. It is the best, the most splendid idea he has ever had. I think that if nothing comes of it," she added, leaning forward so that her eyes met his, "I think that if nothing comes of it, it will break my heart."

Maraton was a little more serious for a few minutes. She waited in some anxiety for him to speak. When he did so, she realised that there was a new gravity in his face and in his tone.

"Lady Elisabeth," he said, "I am afraid that there is very little hope of our coming to any agreement. You must remember that when I promised to come here—"

"Oh, I know that!" she interrupted. "Only I wish that we had a little longer time. You think that my interest in the people is an amateurish affair, half sentimental and half freakish, don't you? You were probably surprised to hear that I had ever read a volume of political economy in my life. But I have. I have studied things. I have read dozens and dozens of books on Sociology, and Socialism, and Syndicalism, and every conceivable subject that bears upon the relations between your class and ours, and I can't come to any but one conclusion. There is only one logical conclusion. Violent methods are useless. The betterment of the poor must come about gradually. If religion hadn't interfered, things would have been far better now, even."

He looked at her, a little startled.

"It seems strange to hear you say that," he remarked.

"Strange only because you will think of me as a dilettante," she replied swiftly. "I have some sort of a brain. I have thought of these matters, talked of them with my uncle, with many others whom even you would admit to be clever men. I, too, see that charity and charitable impulses have perhaps been the greatest drawback of the day to a scientific betterment of the people. I, too, want to see the thing done by laws and not by impulses."

"You and how many more," he sighed, "and, alas! this is an age of majorities. People talk a good deal. I wonder how many of your hateful middle class would give up a tithe of their luxuries to add to the welfare of the others. There isn't a person breathing with so little real feeling for the slaves of the world, as your middle-class manufacturer, your tradesman. That is why, in the days to come, he will be the person who is going to suffer most."

Maraton was appealed to from across the table with reference to some of the art treasures which were reputed to have found their way from Italy to New York. He gave at once the information required, speaking fluently and with the appreciative air of a connoisseur, of many of the pictures which were under discussion. Soon afterwards, Lady Grenside rose and the men drew up their chairs. The evening papers had arrived and there was a general air of seriousness. Mr. Foley sent one to Maraton, who glanced at the opening page upon which his name was displayed in large type:

FIVE MILLION WORKERS WAIT FOR

MARATON!

WHAT THE STRIKE MAY MEAN.

HOME SECRETARY LEAVES POST MANCHESTER.

TO-MORROW.

ILLEGAL STRIKES BILL TO RE PROPOSED

ON MONDAY.

Maraton only glanced at the paper and put it on one side. There was a little constraint. One or two who had not known of his identity were glancing curiously in his direction. Mr. Foley smiled at him pleasantly.

"You may drink your port without fear, Mr. Maraton," he said. "We live in civilised ages. A thousand years ago, you would certainly have had some cause for suspicion!"

Maraton raised his glass to his lips and sipped the wine critically.

"I am afraid," he remarked, with a gleam in his eyes, "that there are a good many of you who may be wishing that they could set back time a thousand years!"

Mr. Foley shook his head.

"No," he decided, "to-day's principles are the best. We argue away what is wrong in the minds of our enemies, and we take unto ourselves what they bring us of good. If you would rather, Mr. Maraton, we will not talk politics at all. On the other hand, the news to-night is serious. Armley here is wondering what the actual results will be if Sheffield, Leeds, and Manchester stand together, and the railway strike comes at the same time."

"I do not know that I wonder at all," Lord Armley declared. "The result will be ruin.

"There is no such thing as permanent destruction," Maraton objected. "The springs of human life are never crushed. Sometimes a generation must suffer that succeeding ones may be blest."

"The question is," Mr. Foley said, holding up his wine-glass, "how far we are justified in experiments concerning which nothing absolute can be known, experiments of so disastrous a nature."

A servant entered and made a communication to Mr. Foley, who turned at once to Maraton.

"It is your secretary," he announced, "who has arrived from London with some letters."

Maraton at once followed the servant from the room. Mr. Foley, too, rose to his feet.

"In ten minutes or so," he declared, "I shall follow you. We can have our chat quietly in the study."

Maraton followed the butler across the hall and found himself ushered into a room at the back of the house—a room lined with books; with French windows, wide open, leading out on to the lawn; a room beautifully cool and odoriferous with the perfume of roses. A single lamp was burning upon a table; for the rest, the apartment seemed full of the soft blue twilight of the summer night. Maraton came to a standstill with an exclamation of surprise. A tall, very slim figure in plain dark clothes had turned from the French windows and was standing there now, her face turned towards him a little eagerly, a strange light upon her pale cheeks and in the eyes which seemed to shine at him almost feverishly out of the sensuous twilight.



CHAPTER XII

"Julia!" Maraton exclaimed.

"Aaron was run over just as he was starting," she explained quickly. "He is not hurt badly, but he wasn't able to catch the train. He had an important letter from Manchester and one from the committee for you. We thought it best that I should bring them. I hope we decided rightly."

She was standing out of the circle of the lamplight, in the shadows of the room. There was a queer nervousness about her manner, a strained anxiety in the way her eyes scarcely left his face, which puzzled him.

"It is very kind of you," he said, as he took the letters. "Please sit down while I look at them."

The first was dated from the House of Commons:

"Dear Mr. Maraton:

"At a committee meeting held this afternoon here, it was resolved that I should write to you to the following effect.

"We understood that you were coming over here entirely in the interests of the great cause of labour, of which we, the undersigned, are the accredited representatives in this country. Since your arrival, however, you have preserved an independent attitude which has given cause to much anxiety on our part. After declining to attend a meeting at the Clarion Hall, we find you there amongst the audience, and you address them in direct opposition to the advice which we were giving them authoritatively. We specially invited you to be present at a meeting of this committee to-day, in order that a definite plan of campaign might be formulated before your visit to Manchester. You have not accepted our invitation, and we understand that you are now staying at the private house of the Prime Minister, notwithstanding our request that you should not interview, or be interviewed by any representative of the Government without one of our committee being present.

"We wish to express our dissatisfaction with the state of affairs, and to say that should you be still intending to address the meeting at Manchester on Monday night, we demand an explanation with you before you go on to the platform. We understand that the residence of Mr. Foley is only sixty miles from London. If you are still desirous of acting with us, we beg you, upon receipt of this letter, to ask for a motor car and to return here to London. We shall all be at number 17, Notting Hill, until midnight or later, telephone number 178, so that you can telephone that you are on the way. Failing your coming, some of us will be at the Midland Hotel, Manchester, from mid-day on Monday.

"I am,

"Faithfully yours,

"RICHARD GRAVELING,

"Secretary.

"For

PETER DALE, Chairman,

ABRAHAM WEAVEL,

SAMUEL BORDEN,

HENRY CULVAIN.

The second one was from Manchester:

"Dear Sir:

"We understand that you will be arriving in Manchester about mid-day on Monday. We think it would be best if you were to descend from the train either at Derby or any adjacent station, as no police force which could possibly be raised in the county, will be sufficient to control the crowds of people who will gather in the streets to welcome you.

"We beg that you will send us a telegram, informing us by what, train you are travelling, and we will send a messenger to Derby, who will confer with you as to the best means of reaching the rooms which we are providing for you.

"Anticipating your visit,

"I am,

"Faithfully yours,

"WILLIAM PRESTON,

"Secretary Manchester Labour Party."

Maraton replaced the letters in their envelopes and turned with them in his hand, towards Julia. She had moved a little towards the open French windows. Every one seemed to have made their way out on to the lawn. Chinese lanterns were hanging from some of the trees and along the straight box hedge that led to the rose gardens. The women were strolling about in their evening gowns, without wraps or covering, and the men had joined them. Servants were passing coffee around, served from a table on which stood a little row of bottles, filled with various liqueurs. Some one in the drawing-room was singing, but the voice was suddenly silenced. Every one turned their heads. A little further back in the woods, a nightingale had commenced to sing.

"You are tired," Maraton whispered.

She shook her head. The strained, anxious look was still in her face.

"No," she replied in a low tone, "I am not tired."

"There is something the matter," he insisted, "something, I am sure. Won't you sit down, and may I not order some refreshment for you? The people here are very hospitable."

Her gesture of dissent was almost peremptory.

"No!"

The monosyllable had a sting which surprised him.

"Tell me what it is?" he begged.

She opened her lips and closed them again. He saw then the rising and falling of her bosom underneath that black stuff gown. She stretched out her hand towards the gardens. Somehow or other, she seemed to grow taller.

"I do not understand this," she said. "I do not understand your being here, one of them, dressed like them, speaking their language, sharing their luxuries. It is a great blow to me. It is perhaps because I am foolish, but it tortures me!"

"But isn't that a little unreasonable?" he asked her quietly. "To accomplish anything in this world, it is necessary to know more than one side of life."

"But this—this," she cried hysterically, "is the side which has made our blood boil for generations! These women in silk and laces, these idle, pleasure-loving men, this eating and drinking, this luxury in beautiful surroundings, with ears deafened to all the mad, sobbing cries of the world! This is their life day by day. You have been in the wilderness, you have seen the life of those others, you have the feeling for them in your heart. Can you sit at table with these people and wear their clothes, and not feel like a hypocrite?"

"I assure you," Maraton replied, "that I can."

She was trembling slightly. She had never seemed to him so tall. Her eyes now were ablaze. She had indeed the air of a prophetess.

"They are ignorant men, they who sent you that letter," she continued, pointing to it, "but they have the truth. Do you know what they are saying?"

Maraton inclined his head gravely. He felt that he knew very well what they were saying. She did not give him time, however, to interrupt.

"They are saying that you are to be bought, that that is why you are here, that Mr. Foley will pay a great price for you. They are saying that all those hopes we had built upon your coming, are to be dashed away. They say that you are for the flesh-pots. I daren't breathe a word of this to Aaron," she added hurriedly, "or I think that he would go mad. He is blind with passionate love for you. He does not see the danger, he will not believe that you are not as a god."

Maraton looked past her into the gardens, away into the violet sky. The nightingale was singing now clearly and wonderfully. Perhaps, for a moment, his thoughts strayed from the great battle of life. Perhaps his innate sense and worship of beauty, the artist in the man, which was the real thing making him great in his daily work, triumphed apart from any other consideration. The music of life was in his veins. Soft and stately, Elisabeth, standing a little apart, was looking in upon them, an exquisite figure with a background of dark green trees.

"When you faced death in Chicago," Julia went on, her voice quivering with the effort she was making to keep it low, "when you offered your body to the law and preached fire and murder with your lips, you did it for the sake of the people. There was nothing in life so glorious to you, then, as the one great cause. That was the man we hoped to see. Are you that man?"

Maraton's thoughts came back. He moved a little towards her. Her hand shot out as though to keep him at a distance.

"Are you that man?" she repeated.

Her thin form was shaken with stifled sobs.

"I hope so," he answered gravely. "My ways are not the ways to which you have been accustomed. In my heart I believe that I see further into the real truth than some of those very ignorant friends of yours who have been sent into Parliament by the operatives they represent; further even than you, Julia, handicapped by your sex, with your eyes fixed, day by day, only upon the misery of life. You blame me because I am here amongst these people as an equal. Listen. Is one responsible for their birth and instincts? I tell you now what I have told to no one, for no one has ever ventured to ask me twice of my parentage. I was born, in a sense, as these people were born. I cannot help it if, finding it advisable to come amongst them, I find their ways easy. That is all. I came here to keep a promise to a man who is, in his way, a great statesman. He is Prime Minister of our country. He has, without a doubt, so far as it is possible for such a man to have it there at all, the cause of the people at his heart. Is it for me to ignore him, to leave what he would say to me unsaid, to pull down the pillars which have kept this a proud country for many hundreds of years, without even listening? Remember that if I speak at Manchester the things that are in my heart, this country, for your time and mine, must perish. Of that I am sure. That has been made clear to me. Do you wonder, Julia, that, before I take that last step, I lift every stone, I turn over every page, I listen to every word which may be spoken by those who have the right to speak? That is why I am here. On Monday morning I leave. On Monday night I speak to the people in Manchester."

She listened to him very much as a prisoner at the bar might listen to a judge who reasons before he pronounces sentence, and her face became as the face of that prisoner might become, who detects some leniency of tone, some softening of manner, on the part of the arbiter of his fate. She ceased to tremble, her lips relaxed, her eyes grew softer and softer. She came a step nearer, resting her finger-tips upon a little table, her body leaning towards him. He had a queer vision of her for a moment—no longer the prophetess, a touch of the Delilah in the soft sweetness of her eyes.

"Oh, forgive me!" she begged. "I was foolish. Forgive me!"

He smiled at her reassuringly.

"There is nothing to forgive," he insisted. "You asked for an explanation to which you had a right. I have tried to give it to you. Indeed, Julia, you need have no fear. Whatever I decide in life will be what I think best for our cause."

The shadow of fear once more trembled in her tone.

"Whatever you decide," she repeated. "You will not—you will not let them call you a deserter? You couldn't do that."

"There isn't anything in the world," he told her quietly, "which has the power to tempt me from doing the thing which I think best. I cannot promise that it will be always the thing which seems right to this committee of men," he added, touching the envelope with his forefinger. "I cannot promise you that, but it should not worry you. You yourself are different. It is my hope that soon you will understand me better. I think that when that time comes you will cease to fear."

The light in her face was wonderful.

"Oh, I want to!" she murmured. "I want to understand you better. There hasn't been anything in life to me like the sound of your name, like the thought of you, since first I understood. Perhaps I am as bad as Aaron," she sighed. "I, too, alas! am your hopeless slave."

He moved a step nearer. This time she made no effort to retreat. Once more she was trembling a little, but her face was soft and sweet. All the pallor, the hard lines, the suffering seemed to have passed miraculously out of it. A soul—a woman's soul—was shining at him out of her eyes. It wasn't her physical self that spoke—in a way he knew that. Yet she was calling to him, calling to him with all she possessed, calling to him as to her master.

He succeeded in persuading her to eat and drink, and she departed, a little grim and unpleased, in the motor car which Mr. Foley had insisted upon ordering round. Then Maraton strolled into the garden to take his delayed coffee. Elisabeth came noiselessly across the turf to his side.

"I hope there was nothing disturbing in your letters?" she said.

"Not very," he replied. "It is only what I expected."

"Every one," she continued, "has been admiring your secretary. We all thought that she had such a beautiful face."

"She is not my secretary," he explained. "She came in place of her brother, who met with a slight accident just as he was starting."

Somehow or other, he fancied that Elisabeth was pleased.

"I didn't think that it was like you to have a woman secretary," she remarked.

He smiled as he replied:

"Miss Thurnbrein is a very earnest worker and a real humanitarian. She has written articles about woman labour in London."

"Julia Thurnbrein!" Elisabeth exclaimed. "Yes, I have read them. If only I had known that that was she! I should have liked so much to have talked to her. Do you think that she would come and see me, or let me come and see her? We really do want to understand these things, and it seems to me, somehow, that people like Julia Thurnbrein, and all those who really understand, keep away from us wilfully. They won't exchange thoughts. They believe that we are their natural enemies. And we aren't, you know. There isn't any one I'd like to meet and talk with so much as Julia Thurnbrein."

He nodded sympathetically.

"They are prejudiced," he admitted. "All of them are disgusted with me for being down here. They look with grave suspicion upon my ability to wear a dress suit. It is just that narrowness which has set back the clock a hundred years. . . . How I like your idea of an open-air drawing-room! Mr. Foley hasn't been looking for me, has he? I am due in his study in three minutes."

Her finger touched his arm.

"Come with me for one moment," she insisted, a little abruptly.

She led him down one of the walks—a narrow turf path, leading through great clumps of rhododendrons. At the bottom was the wood where the nightingale had his home. After a few paces she stopped.

"Mr. Maraton," she said, "this may be our last serious word together, for when you have talked with my uncle you will have made your decision. Look at me, please."

He looked at her. Just then the nightingale began to sing again, and curiously enough it seemed to him that a different note had crept into the bird's song. It was a cry for life, an absolutely pagan note, which came to him through the velvety darkness.

"Isn't it your theory," she whispered, "to destroy for the sake of the future? Don't do it. Theory sometimes sounds so sublime, but the present is actually here. Be content to work piecemeal, to creep upwards inch by inch. Life is something, you know. Life is something for all of us. No man has the right to destroy it for others. He has not even the right to destroy it for himself."

Maraton was suddenly almost giddy. For a moment he had relaxed and that moment was illuminating. Perhaps she saw the fire which leapt into his eyes. If she did, she never quailed. Her head was within a few inches of his, his arms almost touching her. She saw but she never moved. If anything, she drew a little nearer.

"Speak to me," she begged. "Give me some promise, some hope."

He was absolutely speechless. A wave of reminiscence had carried him back into the study, face to face with an accuser. He read meaning in Julia's words now, a meaning which at the time they had not possessed. It was true that he was being tempted. It was true that there was such a thing in the world as temptation, a live thing to the strong as well as to the weak.

"You could be great," she murmured. "You could be a statesman of whom we should all be proud. In years to come, people would understand, they would know that you had chosen the nobler part. And then for yourself—"

"For myself," he interrupted, "for myself—what?"

Her lips parted and closed again. She looked at him very steadily.

"Don't you think," she asked quietly, "that you are, more than most men, the builder of your own life, the master of your own fate, the conqueror—if, indeed, you desired to possess?"

She was gone, disappearing through a winding path amongst the bushes which he had never noticed. He heard the trailing of her skirts; the air around him was empty save for a breath of the perfume shaken from her gown, and the song of the bird. Then he heard her call to him.

"This way, Mr. Maraton—just a little to your left. The path leads right out on to the lawn."

"Is it a maze?" he asked.

"A very ordinary one," she called back gaily. "Follow me and I will lead you out."



CHAPTER XIII

Mr. Foley and Lord Armley were waiting together in the library—not the smaller apartment into which Julia had been shown, but a more spacious, almost a stately room in the front part of the house. Upon Maraton's entrance, Lord Armley changed his position, sitting further back amongst the shadows in a low easy-chair. Maraton took his place so that he was between the two men. It was Lord Armley who asked the first question.

"Mr. Maraton," he enquired, "are you an Englishman?"

"I think that I may call myself so," Maraton replied, with a smile. "I was born in America, but my parents were English."

"I asked," Lord Armley continued, "whether you were an Englishman, for two reasons. One was—well, perhaps you might call it curiosity; the other because, if you are an Englishman, Mr. Foley and I are going to make a strong and I hope successful appeal to your patriotism."

"I am afraid," Maraton replied, "that you will be appealing to a sentiment of which I am ignorant."

"Do you mean," Mr. Foley asked, "that you have no impulse of affection for your own country?"

"For my country as she exists at present, none at all," Maraton answered. "That is where I am afraid we shall find this conference so unsatisfactory. I am not subject to any of the ordinary convictions of life."

"That certainly makes the task of arguing with you a little difficult," Mr. Foley admitted. "We had hoped that the vision of this country overrun by a triumphant enemy, our towns and our pleasant places in the hands of an alien race, our women subject to insults from them, our men treated with scorn—we had an idea that the vision of these things might count with you for something."

"For nothing at all," Maraton replied. "I am not sure that a successful invasion of this country would not be one of the best medicines she could possibly have."

"Are you serious, sir?" Lord Armley asked grimly.

"Absolutely," Maraton answered, without a second's hesitation. "You people have, after all, only an external feeling for the deficiencies of your social system. You don't feel, really—you don't understand. To me, England at the present day—the whole of civilization, indeed, but we are speaking now only of England—is suffering from an awful disease. To me she is like a leper. I cannot think that any operation which could cure her is too severe. She may have to spend centuries in the hospital, but some day the light will come."

"When you talk like that," Mr. Foley declared, "you seem to us, Mr. Maraton, to pass outside the pale of logical argument. But we want to understand you. You mean that for the sake of altering our social conditions, you would, if you thought it necessary, let this country be conquered, plunge her for a hundred years or more into misery deeper than any she has yet known? What good do you suppose could come of this? The poor who are poor now would starve then. From whom would come the mammoth war indemnity we should have to pay?"

"Not from the poor," Maraton replied. "That is one of my theories. It would come from the very class whom I would willingly see enfeebled—the greedy, grasping, middle class. The poor must exist automatically. They could not exist on lower wages; therefore, they will not get lower wages. If there is no employment for them, they will help themselves to the means for life. If there is money in the country, they have a right to a part of it and they will take it. The unfit amongst them will die. The unfit are better dead."

"This is a dangerous doctrine, Mr. Maraton," Lord Armley remarked.

"It is a primitive law," Maraton answered. "Put yourself down amongst the people, with a wife by your side and children crying to you for bread. Would you call yourself a man if you let them starve, if you sent your children sobbing away from you when there was bread to be had for the fighting, bread to be taken from those who had also meat? I think not. I am not afraid of plunging the country into disaster. It is my belief that the sufferings and the loss which would ensue would not fall upon the class who are already dwelling in misery."

Mr. Foley moved nervously to the mantelpiece and helped himself to a cigarette.

"Mr. Maraton," he said, "we will not argue on these lines. I like to feel my feet upon the earth. I like to deal with the things one knows about. Grant me this, at least; that it is possible to reach the end at which you are striving, by milder means?"

"It may be," Maraton admitted. "I am not sure. Milder means have been tried for a good many generations. I tell you frankly that I do not believe it is possible by legislation to redistribute the wealth of the world."

Lord Armley, from his seat amongst the shadows, smiled sarcastically.

"You, too, Mr. Maraton," he murmured. "What is your answer, I wonder, to the oft quoted question? You may redistribute wealth, but how do you propose to keep it in a state of equilibrium?"

Maraton smiled.

"There would have to be three, perhaps half-a-dozen—who can tell how many?—redistributions by violent means," he replied, "but remember that all this time, education, clean living, freedom from sordid anxieties, would be telling upon the lower orders. As their physical condition improved, so would their minds. As the conditions under which men live become more equal, so will their brains become more equal and their power of acquiring wealth. This, remember, may be the work of a hundred years—perhaps more—but it is the end at which we should aim."

"You absolutely mean, then," Mr. Foley persisted, "to destroy the welfare of the country for this generation and perhaps the next, in order that a new people may arise, governed according to your methods, in ages which neither you nor I nor any of us will ever see?"

"That is what I mean," Maraton assented. "Need I remind you that if we had not possessed in the past men who gave their lives for the sake of posterity, the nations of the world would be even in a more backward condition than they are to-day?"

Mr. Foley smiled.

"Mr. Maraton," he said, "now I am going to ask you this question. To-morrow you go to Manchester to pronounce your doctrines. To-morrow you are going to incite the working people of England practically to revolt. Are you going to tell them that it is for posterity they must strike? Do you mean, when you thunder at them from the platforms, to tell them the truth?—to tell them that the good which you promise is not for them nor for their children, nor their children's children, but for the unborn generations? Do you mean to tell them this?"

Maraton was silent. Lord Armley was watching him closely. Mr. Foley's eyes were bright, and a little flush had stained the parchment pallor of his cheeks. He was feeling all the thrill of the fencer who has touched.

"I cannot convince you, Mr. Maraton," he went on, "that yours is not a splendid dream, an idyllic vision, which would fade from the canvas before even the colours were dry, but you have common sense, and I hope at least I can persuade you to see this. You won't rally the working men of England to your standard under that motto. That's why their leaders are ignorant and commonplace men. They know very well that it's to the pockets of their hearers they must appeal. A shilling a week more now is what they want, not to have their children born to a better life, and their children's children move on the upward plane. Human nature isn't like that, especially the human nature which I admit has suffered from the selfishness and greediness of the middle classes through all these years. The people aren't ready to dream dreams. They want money in their pockets, cash, so much a week—nothing else. I tell you that self-interest is before the eyes of every one of those Lancashire operatives to whom you are going to speak. An hour or so less work a week, an ounce more of tobacco, a glass of beer when he feels inclined, a little more money in the bank—that's what he wants."

"You may be speaking the truth, Mr. Foley," Maraton confessed quietly. "At any rate, you have voiced some of my deepest fears. I know that I cannot bring the people to my standard by showing them the whole of my mind. But why should I? If I know that my cause is just, if I know that it is for the good of the world, isn't it my duty to conceal as much as I find it wise to conceal, to keep my hand to the plough, even though I drive it through the fields of devastation?"

"Then your mission is not an honest one," Lord Armley declared suddenly. "It is dishonest that good things may come of it."

"It is possible to reason like that," Maraton admitted.

"Now, listen," Mr. Foley continued. "I will show you the other way. I will look with you into the future. I cannot agree with all your views but I, too, would like to see the diminution of capital from the hands of the manufacturers and the middle classes, and an increase of prosperity to the operatives. I would like to see the gulf between them narrowed year by year. I would like to see the working man everywhere established in quarters where life is wholesome and pleasant. I would like to see his schools better, even, than they are at present. I would like to see him, in the years to come, a stronger, a more capable, a more dignified unit of the Empire. He can only be made so by prosperity. Therefore, I wish for him prosperity. You want to sow the country red with ruin and fire, and there isn't any man breathing, not even you, can tell exactly what the outcome of it all might be. I want to work at the same thing more gently. Last year for the first time, I passed a Bill in Parliament which interfered between the relations of master and man. In a certain trade dispute I compelled the employers, by Act of Parliament, to agree to a vital principle upon which the men insisted. The night I drove home from the House I said to Lady Elisabeth, my niece, that that measure, small though it was, marked a new era in the social conditions of the country. It did. What I have commenced, I am prepared to go on with. I am prepared by every logical and honest means to legislate for labour. I am prepared to legislate in such a way that the prosperity of the manufacturer, all the manufacturers in this country, must be shared by the workpeople. I am prepared to fight, tooth and nail, against twenty per cent dividends on capital and twenty-five shillings a week wages for the operative. There are others in the Cabinet of my point of view. In a couple of years we must go to the country. I am going to the country to ask for a people's government. Go to Manchester, if you must, but talk common sense to the people. Let them strike where they are subject to wrongs, and I promise you that I am on their side, and every pressure that my Government can bring to bear upon the employers, shall be used in their favour. You shall win—you as the champion of the men, shall win all along the line. You shall improve the conditions of every one of those industries in the north. But—it must be done legitimately and without sinister complications. I know what is in your mind, Mr. Maraton, quite well. I know your proposal. It is in your mind to have the railway strike, the coal strike, the ironfounders' strike, and the strike of the Lancashire operatives, all take place on the same day. You intend to lay the country pulseless and motionless. You won't accept terms. You court disaster—disaster which you refer to as an operation. Don't do it. Try my way. I offer you certain success. I offer you my alliance, a seat in Parliament at once, a place in my Government in two years' time. What more can you ask for? What more can you do for the people than fight for them side by side with me?"

Maraton had moved a little nearer to the window. He was looking out into the night. Very faintly now in the distant woods he could still catch the song of the nightingale. Almost he fancied in the shadows that he could catch sight of Julia's strained face leaning towards him, the face of the prophetess, warning him against the easy ways, calling to him to remember. His principles had been to him a part of his life. What if he should be wrong? What if he should bring misery and suffering upon millions upon millions, for the sake of a generation which might never be born? There was something practical about Mr. Foley's offer, an offer which could have been made only by a great man. His brain moved swiftly. As he stood there, he seemed to look out upon a vast plain of misery, a country of silent furnaces, of smokeless chimneys, a country drooping and lifeless, dotted with the figures of dying men and women. What an offering! What a sacrifice? Would the people still believe in him when the blow fell? Could he himself pass out of life with the memory of it all in his mind, and feel that his life's work had been good? He remained speechless.

"Let me force one more argument upon you," Mr. Foley continued. "You must know a little what type of mind is most common amongst Labour. I ask you what will be the attitude of Labour towards the starvation of the next ten or twenty years, if you should bring the ruin you threaten upon the country? I ask you to use your common sense. Of what use would you be? Who would listen to you? If they left you alive, would any audience of starving men and women, looking back upon the comparative prosperity of the past, listen to a word from your lips. Believe me, they would not. They would be more likely, if they found you, to rend you limb from limb. The operatives of this country are not dreamers. They don't want to give their wives and children, and their own selves, body and soul, for a dream. Therefore, I come back to the sane common sense of the whole affair. By this time next year, if you use your power to bring destruction upon this country, your name will be loathed and detested amongst the very people for whose sake you do it."

Maraton turned away.

"You have put some of my own fears before me, Mr. Foley," he confessed, "in a new and very impressive light. If I thought that I myself were the only one who could teach, you would indeed terrify me. The doctrines in which I believe, however, will endure, even though I should pass."

"Endure to be discarded and despised by all thinking men!" Lord Armley exclaimed.

"You may be right," Maraton admitted, slowly. "I cannot say. Will you forgive me if I make you no answer at all to-night? My thoughts are a little confused. You have made me see myself with your eyes, and I wish to reconsider certain matters. Before I go, perhaps you will give me ten minutes more to discuss them?"

Mr. Foley was still a little flushed as they shook hands.

"I am glad," he declared, "very glad that you are at least going to think over what I have said. You must have common sense. I have read your book, backwards and forwards. I have read your articles in the American reviews and in the English papers. There is nothing more splendid than the visions you write of, but there is no gangway across from this world into the world of dreams, Mr. Maraton. Remember that, and remember, too, how great your responsibility is. I have never tried to hide from you what I believe your real power to be. I have always said that the moment a real leader was found, the country would be in danger. You are that leader. For God's sake, Mr. Maraton, realise your responsibility! . . . Now shall we go back into the gardens or into the drawing-room? My niece will sing to us, if you are fond of music."

Maraton excused himself and slipped out into the gardens alone. For more than an hour he walked restlessly about, without relief, without gaining any added clearness of vision. The atmosphere of the place seemed to him somehow enervating. The little 'walk amongst the rhododendrons was still fragrant 'with perfume, reminiscent of that strange moment of emotion. The air was still languorous. Although the nightingale's song had ceased, the atmosphere seemed still vibrating with the music of his past song. He stood before the window of the room where he had talked with Julia. What would she say, he wondered? Would she think that he had sold his soul if he chose the more peaceful way? It was a night of perplexed thoughts, confused emotions. One thing only was clear. For the first time in his life certain dreams, which had been as dear to him as life itself, had received a shattering blow. Always he had spoken and acted from conviction. It was that which had given his words their splendid force. It was that which had made the words which he had spoken live as though they had been winged with fire. Perhaps it was his own fault. Perhaps he should have avoided altogether this house of the easier ways.



CHAPTER XIV

From the atmosphere of Lyndwood Park and its surroundings—fragrant, almost epicurean—Maraton passed to the hard squalor of the great smoke-hung city of the north. There were no beautiful women or cultured men to bid him welcome. The Labour Member and his companion, who hastened him out of the train at Derby and into an open motor-car, were hard-featured Lancashire men, keen on their work and practical as the day. As they talked together in that long, ugly ride, Maraton almost smiled as he thought of those perfervid dreams of his which had always been at the back of his head; that creed of life, some part of which he had intended to unfold to the people during these few days.

"Plain-speaking is what our folk like," John Henneford assured him, as they sat side by side in the small open car driven by one of the committee; "plain, honest words; sound advice, with a bit o' grit in it."

"'To hell with the masters!' is the motto they like best," Preston remarked, moving his pipe to the corner of his mouth. "It's an old text but it's an ever popular one. There's the mill where I work, now, fourteen hundred of us. The girls average from eighteen bob to a pound a week, men twenty-four to twenty-eight, foremen thirty-five to two pounds. It's not much of wages. The house rent's high in these parts, and food, too. The business has just been turned into a company—capital three hundred thousand pounds, profits last year forty-two thousand. That's after paying us our bit. That's the sort of thing turns the blood of the people sour up here. It was the aristocrats brought about the revolution in France. It will be the manufacturers who do it here, and do it quick unless things are altered. They tell me you're a bit of a revolutionist, Mr. Maraton."

"I'm anything," Maraton answered, "that will do away with such profits as you've been speaking of. I am anything which will bring a fair share of the profits of his labour to the operative who now gets none. I hate capital. It's a false quantity, a false value. It's got to come back to the people. It belongs to them."

"You're right, man," Henneford declared grimly. "How are you going to get it back, eh? Show us. We are powerful up here. We could paralyse trade from the Clyde to the Thames, if we thought it would do any good. What's your text to-night, Mr. Maraton?"

"I haven't thought," Maraton replied. "I have plenty to say to the people though."

"You gave 'em what for in Chicago," Preston remarked, with a grin.

"I haven't been used to mince words," Maraton admitted.

"There's four thousand policemen told off to look after you," Henneford informed him. "By-the-bye, is it true that Dale and all of them are coming up to-night?"

Maraton nodded.

"I wired for some of them," he assented. "So long as I am going to make a definite pronouncement, they may as well hear it."

"Been spending the week-end with Foley, haven't you?" Preston enquired, closing his eyes a little.

Maraton nodded. "Yes," he confessed, "I have been there."

"There are many that don't think much of Foley," Henneford remarked. "Myself I am not sure what to make of him. I think he'd be a people's man, right enough, if it wasn't for the Cabinet."

"I believe, in my heart," Maraton said, "that he is a people's man."

They sped on through deserted spaces, past smoke-stained factories, across cobbled streets, past a wilderness of small houses, grimy, everywhere repellent. Soon they entered Manchester by the back way and pulled up presently at a small and unimposing hotel.

"We've taken a room for you here," Henneford announced. "It's close to the hall, and it's quiet and clean enough. The big hotels I doubt whether you'd ever be able to get out of, when once they found where you were."

"As a matter of fact," Preston added, "there's a room taken in your name at the Midland, to put folks off a bit. We'll have to smuggle you out here if there's any trouble to-night. The people are rare and restless."

"It will do very nicely, I am sure," Maraton replied.

The place was an ordinary commercial hotel, clean apparently but otherwise wholly unattractive. Henneford led the way up-stairs and with some pride threw open the door of a room on the first floor. "We've got you a sitting-room," he said. "Thought you might want to talk to these Press people, perhaps, or do a bit of work. Your secretary's somewhere about the place—turned up with a typewriter early this morning. And there's a young woman—"

"A what?" Maraton asked.

"A young woman," Henneford continued,—"secretary's sister or something."

Maraton smiled.

"Miss Thurnbrein."

"What, the tailoress?" Preston replied. "She's a good sort. Wrote rare stuff, she did, about her trade. They are out together, seeing the sights. Didn't expect you quite so soon, I expect."

Maraton looked around the little sitting-room. It was furnished with a carpet of bright green thrown over a foundation of linoleum, a suite of stamped magenta plush, an overmantel, gilt cornices over the windows, a piano, a table covered with a gaudy tablecloth. On the walls were hung some oleographs. The lighting of the room was of gas with incandescent mantles. There had been, apparently, judging by an odour which still remained, a great deal of beer consumed in the apartment at one time or another.

"Nice room, this," Mr. Henneford remarked approvingly. "Slap up, ain't it? Your bedroom's next door, and your secretary's just round the corner. Done you proud, I reckon. Like a royal suite, eh?"

He laughed good-humouredly. Mr. Preston removed his pipe and rang the bell.

"One drink, I think," he suggested, "and we'll leave Mr. Maraton alone for a bit. You and I'll go down to the station and meet the chaps from London, and we'll have a meeting up here—say at five o'clock. That suit you, Mr. Maraton?"

"Excellently," Maraton assented. "What shall I order?" he asked, as the waiter entered.

Beer, whiskey and cigars were brought. Maraton asked a few eager questions about the condition of one of the industries, and followed Henneford to the door, talking rapidly.

"I know so little about the state of woman labour over here," he said. "In America they are better paid in proportion. Perhaps, if Miss Thurnbrein is here, she will be able to give me some information."

"You'll soon get posted up," Mr. Henneford declared. "I can see you've got a quick way of dealing with things. So long till five o'clock, then. There's a dozen chaps waiting down-stairs to see you. We'll leave it to your judgment just what you want to say to the Press. Ring the bell and have the waiter bring their cards up."

They departed and Maraton returned to his sitting-room. He stood for a moment looking out over the city, the roar of which came to him clearly enough through the open window. He forgot the depressing tawdriness of his surroundings in the exhilaration of the sound. He was back again amongst the people, back again where the wheels of life were crashing. The people! He drew himself up and his eyes sought the furthest limits of that dim yellow haze. Somehow, notwithstanding a vague uneasiness which hung about him like an effort of wounded conscience, he had a still greater buoyancy of thought when he considered his possibly altered attitude towards the multitude who waited for his message. He felt his feet upon the earth with more certainty, with more implicit realism, than in those days when he had spoken to them of the future and had perhaps forgotten to tell them how far away that future must be. There was something more practical about his present attitude. What would they say here in Manchester, expecting fire and thunder from his lips and finding him hold out the olive branch? He shrugged his shoulders;—a useless speculation, after all. He rang the bell and glanced through the cards which the waiter brought him.

"I have nothing of importance to say to any reporters," he declared, "but I will see them all for two minutes. You can show them up in the order in which they came."

The waiter withdrew and Maraton was left for a few moments alone. Then the door was opened and closed again by the waiter, who made no announcement. A man came forward—a small man, very neatly dressed, with gold spectacles and a little black beard. Maraton welcomed him and pointed to a chair.

"I have nothing whatever to say to the newspapers," he explained, "until after I have addressed my first few meetings. You probably will have nothing to ask me then. All the same, I am very pleased to see you, and since you have been waiting, I thought I had better have you come up, if it were only for a moment. No one who has a great cause at their backs, you know, can afford to disregard the Press."

The man laid his hat upon the table. Maraton, glancing across the room at him, was instantly conscious that this newcomer was no ordinary person. He had a strong, intellectual forehead, a well-shaped mouth. His voice, when he spoke, was pleasant, although his accent was peculiar—almost foreign.

"Mr. Maraton," his visitor began, "I thank you very much for your courtesy, but I have nothing to do with the Press. My name is Beldeman. I have come to Manchester especially to see you."

Maraton nodded.

"We are strangers, I believe?" he asked.

"Strangers personally. No thinking man to-day is a stranger to Mr. Maraton in any other way."

"You are very kind," Maraton replied. "What can I do for you?"

Beldeman glanced towards the door so as to be sure that it was closed.

"Mr. Maraton," he enquired, "are you a bad-tempered man?"

"At times," Maraton admitted.

"I regret to see," his visitor proceeded, "that you are a man of superior physique to mine. I am here to make you an offer which you may consider an insult. If you are a narrow, ordinary Englishman, obstinate, with cast-iron principles and the usual prejudices, you will probably try to throw me down-stairs. It is part of my living to run the risk of being thrown down-stairs."

"I will do my best," Maraton promised him, "to restrain myself. You have at least succeeded in exciting my curiosity."

"I am, to look at," Mr. Beldeman continued, "an unimportant person. As a matter of fact, I represent a very great country, and I come to you charged with a great mission."

Maraton became a little graver. "Go on," he said.

"I am anxious—perhaps over-anxious," Mr. Beldeman proceeded, "that I should put this matter before you in the most favourable light. I must confess that I have spent hours trying to make up my mind exactly how I should tell you my business. I have changed my mind so many times that there is nothing left of my original intention. I speak now as the thoughts come to me. I am here on behalf of a syndicate of manufacturers—foreign manufacturers—to offer you a bribe."

Maraton stood quite still upon the hearth-rug. His face showed no emotion whatever.

"You are, I believe," Mr. Beldeman went on, "only half an Englishman. That is why I am hoping that you will behave like a reasonable being, and that my person may be saved from violence. Upon your word rests the industrial future of this country for the next ten years. If your forges burn out and your factories are emptied, it will mean an era of prosperity for my country, indescribable. We are great trade rivals. We need just the opening. What we get we may not be able to hold altogether, when trade is once more good here, but that is of no consequence. We shall have it for a year or two, and that year or two will mean a good many millions to us."

Maraton's eyes began to twinkle.

"The matter," he remarked, "becomes clearer to me. You are either the most ingenuous person I ever met, or the most subtle. Tell me, is it a personal bribe you have brought?"

"It is not," Mr. Beldeman replied. "It did not occur to those in whose employment I am, or to me, to offer you a single sixpence. I am here to offer you, if you send your people out on strike within the next week—the coal strike, the railway strike, the ironfounders, the smelters, from the Clyde southwards—one million pounds as a subscription to your strike funds."

"You have it with you?" Maraton enquired, after a moment.

"I have four drafts for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds each, in my pocket-book at the present moment," Mr. Beldeman declared. "They are payable to your order. You can accept my offer and pay them into your private banking account or the banking account of any one of your Trades' Unions. There is not the slightest doubt but that they will be met."

"Are there any terms at all connected with this little subscription?"

"None," Beldeman replied.

"And your object," Maraton added, "is to benefit through our loss of trade?"

"Entirely," Mr. Beldeman assented, without a quiver upon his face.

Maraton was silent for a moment.

"I do not see my way absolutely clear," he announced, "to recommending a railway strike at the present moment. If I acceded to all the others, what would your position be? The railway strike is of little consequence to a foreign nation. The coal strike, and the iron and steel works of Sheffield and Leeds closed—that's where English trade would suffer most, especially if the cotton people came out."

Mr. Beldeman shook his head slowly. "My conditions," he said, "embrace the railways."

"Somehow, I fancied that they would," Maraton remarked. "Tell me why?"

Beldeman rose slowly to his feet.

"Are you an Englishman?" he asked.

"I can't deny it," Maraton replied. "I was born abroad. Why are you so interested in my nationality?"

Beldeman shrugged his shoulders.

"I cannot tell you. Just an idea. I do not wish to say too much. I wish you only to consider what a million pounds will do to help your work people. You, they say, are one of those who love the people as your own children. A million pounds may enable them to hold out until they can secure practically what terms they like. Those million pounds are yours to-day, yours for the people, if you pledge your word to a universal strike."

"Including the railways?"

"Including the railways," Mr. Beldeman assented.

Maraton smiled quietly.

"I do not ask you," he said, "what country you represent. I think that it is not necessary. You have come to me rather as though I were a dictator. There are others besides myself with whom influence rests."

"It is you only who count," Mr. Beldeman declared. "I am thankful that at any rate you have met my offer in a reasonable spirit. Accept it, Mr. Maraton. What concern have you for other things save only for the welfare of the people?"

"I have considered this matter," Maraton remarked, "many, many times. A universal strike, absolutely universal so far as regards transport and coal, would place the country in a paralytic and helpless condition. Still, so many people have assured us that an onslaught from any foreign country is never seriously to be considered, that I have come to believe it myself. What is your opinion?"

Mr. Beldeman remained silent for a few moments.

"One cannot tell," he said. "The stock of coal available for your home fleet happens to be rather low just now. One cannot tell what might happen. Do you greatly care? Wasn't it you who, in one of your speeches, pointed out that a war in your country would be welcome? That the class who would suffer would be the class who are your great oppressors—the manufacturers, the middle classes—and that with their downfall the working man would struggle upwards? Do you believe, Mr. Maraton, that a war would hurt your own people?"

"My own ideas," Maraton replied, "are in a state of transition. However, your offer is declined."

"Declined without conditions?" Mr. Beldeman enquired, taking up his hat.

"For the present it is declined without conditions. I will be quite frank with you. Your offer doesn't shock me as it might do if I were a right-feeling Imperialist of the proper Jingo type. I believe that a week ago I should have considered it very seriously indeed. Its acceptance would have been in accordance with my beliefs. And yet, since you have made it, you have made me wonder more than ever whether I have been right. I find a revulsion of feeling in considering it, which I cannot understand."

"I may approach you again," Mr. Beldeman asked, "if circumstances should change? Possibly you yourself may, upon reflection, appreciate my suggestion more thoroughly."

Maraton was silent for a moment. When he looked up he was alone. Mr. Beldeman had not waited for his reply.



CHAPTER XV

One by one, Maraton got rid at last of the little crowd of journalists who had been waiting for him below. The last on the list was perhaps the most difficult. He pressed very hard for an answer to his direct question.

"War or peace, Mr. Maraton? Which is it to be? Just one word, that's all."

Maraton shook his head.

"In less than an hour, the delegates from London will be here," he announced. "We shall hold a conference and come to our decision then."