"Will their coming make any real difference?" the journalist persisted. "You hadn't much to say to delegates in America."

"The Labour Party over here is better organised, in some respects," Maraton told him. "I have nothing to say until after the conference."

His persistent visitor drew a little nearer to him.

"There's a report about that you've been staying with Foley."

"And how does that affect the matter?" Maraton enquired.

The journalist looked him in the face.

"The men never had a leader yet," he said, "whom Officialdom didn't spoil." All this time Maraton was standing with the door in one hand and his other hand upon the shoulder of the man whom he was endeavouring to get rid of. His grasp suddenly tightened. The door was closed and the reporter was outside. Maraton turned to Aaron, with whom, as yet, he had scarcely exchanged a word. The latter was sitting at a table, sorting letters.

"How long will those fellows be?" he asked.

Aaron glanced at the clock.

"On their way here by now, I should say," he replied. "They are all coming. They tried to leave David Ross behind, but he wouldn't have it."

Maraton nodded grimly.

"Too many," he muttered.

Aaron leaned a little forward in his place. His long, hatchet-shaped face was drawn and white. His eyes were full of a pitiful anxiety.

"They were talking like men beside themselves at the Clarion and up at Dale's house last night," he said. "They were mad about your having gone to Foley's. Graveling—he was the worst—he's telling them all that you're up to some mischief on your own account. They are all grumbling like a lot of sore heads. If they could stop your speaking here to-night, I believe they would. They're a rotten lot. Before they got their places in Parliament, they were perfect firebrands. Blast them!"

"And you, Aaron—"

Maraton suddenly paused. The door was softly opened, and Julia stood there. She was wearing her hat and coat, but her hands were gloveless; she had just returned from the street.

"Come in," Maraton invited. "So you're looking after Aaron, are you?"

"I couldn't keep away," Julia said simply. "I thought I'd better let you both know that the street below is filling up. They've heard that you are here. People were running away from before the Midland as I came round the corner."

Maraton glanced out of the window. There was a hurrying crowd fast approaching the front of the hotel. He drew back.

"I was just on the point of asking Aaron," he remarked, "exactly what it is that is expected from me to-night. Tell me what is in your mind?"

Her face lit up as she looked at him.

"We are like children," she replied, "all of us. We have too much faith. I think that what we are expecting is a miracle."

"Is it wise?" Maraton asked quietly. "Don't you think that it may lead to disappointment?"

She considered the thought for a moment and brushed it away.

"We are not afraid, Aaron and I."

"You are belligerents, both of you."

"And so are you," Julia retorted swiftly. "What was it you said in Chicago about the phrase-makers?—the Socialism that flourished in the study while women and children starved in the streets? Those are the sort of things that we remember, Aaron and I."

"This is a country of slow progress," Maraton reminded them. "One builds stone by stone. Listen to me carefully, you two. Since you have had understanding, your eyes have been fixed upon this one immense problem. I have a question to ask you concerning it. Shall I destroy for the sake of the unborn generations, or shall I use all my cunning and the power of the people to lead them a little further into the light during their living days? What would they say themselves, do you think? Would one in a hundred be content to sacrifice himself for a principle?"

"Who knows that the millennium would be so long delayed?" Julia exclaimed. "A few years might see Society reconstituted, with new laws and a new humanity."

Maraton shook his head.

"Don't make any mistake about that," he said. "If I press the levers upon which to-day my hand seems to rest, this country will be laid waste with famine and riot and conquest. An hour ago a little man was here, a little, black-bearded man with a quiet voice, charged with a great mission. He came to offer me, on behalf of a syndicate of foreign manufacturers, a million pounds towards our universal strike."

They both gasped. The thing was surely incredible!

"An incident like that," Maraton continued, "may show you what this country must lose, for her rivals do not give away a million pounds for nothing."

Julia's eyes were fixed upon his. Her face was full of strained anxiety.

"You talk," she murmured, "as though you had doubts, as though you were hesitating. Forgive me—we have waited so long for to-day—we and all the others."

"Could any one," he demanded, "stand in the position I stand in to-day and not have doubts?"

Her eyes flashed at him.

"Yes," she cried, "a prophet could! A real man could—the man we thought you were, could!"

Aaron leaned forward, aghast. His monosyllable was charged with terrified reproach.

"Julia!"

She turned upon him.

"You, too! You weren't at Lyndwood, were you? . . . Doubts!" she went on fiercely, her eyes flashing once more upon Maraton. "How can you fire their blood if there are doubts in your heart? So long these people have waited. No wonder their hearts are sick and their brains are clogged, their will is tired. Prophet after prophet they have followed blindly through the wilderness. Always it has been the prophet who has been caught up into the easier ways, and the people who have sunk back into misery."

She fell suddenly upon her knees. Before he could stop her, she was at his feet, her face straining up to his.

"Forgive me!" she cried. "For the love of the women and the little children, don't fail us now! If you don't say the word to-night, it will never be spoken, never in your day nor mine. It isn't legislation they want any more. It's revolution, the cleansing fires! The land where the sun shines lies on the other side of the terrible way. Lead them across. Don't try the devious paths. They have filled you with the poison of common sense. It isn't common sense that's wanted. It's only an earthquake can bring out the spirit of the people and make them see and hold what belongs to them."

Maraton lifted her up. Her body was quivering. She lay, for a moment, passive in his arms. Then she sprang away. She stood with her back to him, looking out of the window.

"The streets are full of people," she said quietly. "Their eyes are all turned here. Poor people!"

Maraton crossed the room and stood by her side. He spoke very gently. He even took her hand, which lay like a lump of ice in his.

"Julia," he whispered, "you lose hope and trust too soon."

"You have spoken of doubts," she answered, in a low tone. "The prophet has no doubts."

There was a sound of voices outside, of heavy footsteps on the stairs. They heard Graveling's loud, unpleasant voice. The delegates had arrived!



CHAPTER XVI

Maraton, with the peculiar sensitiveness of the artist to an altered atmosphere, was keenly conscious of the change when Julia had left the room and the delegates had entered. One by one they shook hands with Maraton and took their places around the table. They had no appearance of men charged with a great mission. Henneford, who had met them at the station, was beaming with hospitality. Peter Dale was full of gruff good-humour and jokes. Graveling alone entered with a scowl and sat with folded arms and the air of a dissentient. Borden, who complained of feeling train-sick, insisted upon drinks being served, and Culvain, with a notebook upon his knee, ostentatiously sharpened a pencil. It was very much like a meeting of a parish council. Ross alone amongst the delegates had the absorbed air of a man on the threshold of great things, and Aaron, from his seat behind Maraton, watched his master all the time with strained and passionate attention.

"In the first place," Peter Dale began, "we've no wish to commence this meeting with any unpleasantness. At the same time, Mr. Maraton, we did think that after that letter of ours you'd have seen your way clear to come up to London and cut short that visit to Mr. Foley. We were all there waiting for you, and there were some of us that didn't take it altogether in what I might call a favourable spirit, that you chose to keep away."

"To tell you the truth," Maraton replied calmly, "I did not see the faintest reason why I should shorten my visit to Mr. Foley. We had arranged to meet here to-day and that seemed to me to be quite sufficient."

Peter Dale tugged at his beard for a moment.

"I am not wishful," he reiterated, "to commence a discussion which might lead to disagreement between us. We'll drop the matter for the present. Is that agreeable to everybody?"

There was a little murmur of assent. Graveling only was stolidly silent. Peter Dale struck the table with his fist.

"Now then, lads," he said, "let's get on with it."

"This being mainly my show," John Henneford declared, "I'll come and sit at your right hand, Mr. Maraton. You've got all the papers I've sent you about the cotton workers?"

"I have looked them through," Maraton replied, "but most of their contents were familiar to me. I made a study of the condition of all your industries so far as I could, last year."

"Between you and me," Peter Dale grumbled, "this meeting ought to have been held in Newcastle and not Manchester. These cotton chaps of yours, Henneford, ain't doing so badly. It's my miners that want another leg up."

Henneford struck the table with his fist.

"Rot!" he exclaimed. "Your miners have just had a turn. Half-a-crown a week extra, and a minimum wage—what more do you want? And a piece of plate and a nice fat cheque for Mr. Dale," he added, turning to the others and winking.

Peter Dale beamed good-humouredly upon them.

"Well," he retorted, "I earned it. You fellows should organise in the same way. It took me a good many years' hard work, I can tell you, to bring my lot up to the scratch. Anyway, here we are, and Manchester it's got to be this time. In an hour, Mr. Maraton, the secretary of the Manchester Labour Party will be here. He's got two demand scales made out for you to look through. Your job is to work the people up so that they drop their tools next Saturday night."

"There was an idea," Maraton reminded them quietly, "that I should speak to-night not only to the operatives of Manchester but to Labour throughout the Empire; that I should make a pronouncement which should have in it something of a common basis for all industries—which would, in short, unsettle Labour in every great centre."

They all looked a little blank. Henneford shook his head.

"It can't be done," he affirmed. "One job at a time's our way. You're going to speak to cotton to-night, and we want the mills emptied by the end of the week. We've got a scheme amongst the Unions, as you know, for helping one another, and as soon as we ye finished with cotton, then we'll go for iron."

"That's an old promise," Weavel declared sturdily.

"What about the potteries?" Mr. Borden exclaimed. "It's six years since we had any sort of a dust-up, and my majority was the smallest of the lot of you, last election. Something's got to be done down my way. My chaps won't go paying in and paying in forever. We've fifty-nine thousand pounds waiting, and the condition of our girl labour is beastly."

"Iron comes next," Weavel persisted stolidly. "That's been settled amongst ourselves. And as for your fifty-nine thousand, Borden, what about our hundred and thirty thousand? We shall all have to be lending up here, too, to work this thing properly."

"Let's get on," Peter Dale proposed, rapping on the table. "Now listen here, all of you. What I propose is, if we're satisfied with Mr. Maraton's address to-night, as I've no doubt we shall be," he added, bowing to Maraton with clumsy politeness, "that we appoint him kind of lecturer to the Unions, and we make out a sort of itinerary for him, to kind of pave the way, and then he gives one of these Chicago orations of his at the last moment in each of the principal centres. We'd fix a salary—no need to be mean about it—and get to work as soon as this affair's over. And meanwhile, while this strike's on, Mr. Maraton might address a few meetings in other centres on behalf of these fellows, and rope in some coin. There are one or two matters we shall have to have an understanding about, however, and one as had better be cleared up right now. I'll ask you, Mr. Maraton, to explain to us just what you meant down at the Clarion the other night? We weren't expecting you there and you rather took us aback, and we didn't find what you said altogether helpful or particularly lucid. Now what's this business about a universal strike?"

Maraton sat for a moment almost silent. He looked down the table, along the line of faces, coarse faces most of them, of varying strength, plebeian, forceful here and there, with one almost common quality of stubbornness. They were men of the people, all of them, men of the narrow ways. What words of his could take them into the further land? He raised his head. He felt curiously depressed, immeasurably out of touch with these who should have been his helpmates. The sight of Julia just then would have been a joy to him.

"Perhaps," Maraton began, with a little sigh, "I had better first explain my own position. You are each of you Members of Parliament for a particular district. The interests of each of you are bound up in the welfare of the operatives who send you to Parliament. It's your job to look after them, and I've no doubt you do it well. Only, you see, it's a piecemeal sort of business to call yourselves the representatives of Labour in its broadest sense. I belong more, I am afraid, to the school of theorists. In my mind I bring all Labour together, all the toilers of the world who are slaves to the great Moloch, Capital. You have an immense middle class here in England, who are living in fatness and content. The keynote of my creed is that these people have twice the incomes they ought to have, and Labour half as much. That, of course, is just the simple, oldfashioned, illogical Socialism with which you probably all started life, and which doubtless lies in some forgotten chamber of the minds of all of you. You've given it up because you've decided that it was unpractical. I haven't. I believe that if we were to pull down the pillars which hold up the greatness of this nation, I believe that if we were to lay her in ruins about us, that in the years to come—perhaps I ought to say the generations to come—the rebuilding, stone by stone, would be on the sane principle which, once established, would last for eternity, of an absolute partnership between Capital and Labour, a partnership which I say would be eternal because, in course of time, the two would become one."

They all looked at one another a little blankly. Peter Dale grunted with expressionless face and relit his pipe, which had gone out during these few moments of intense listening. Graveling reached out his hand and took a cigar from a box which had been placed upon the table. Henneford and his neighbour exchanged glances, which culminated in a stealthy wink. Alone at the table David Ross sat like a figure of stone, his mouth a little open, something of the light in his face.

"I'm too much of an Englishman, for one," Graveling said, "to want to pull the country down. Now where does this universal strike come in?"

"The universal strike," Maraton explained quietly, "is the doctrine I came to England to preach. It is the doctrine I meant to preach to-night. If your coal strike and your iron strike and your railway strike were declared within the next few days, the pillars would indeed be pulled down."

"Why, I should say so!" Peter Dale declared gruffly. "Half the people in the country would be starving; there'd be no subscriptions to the Unions; the blooming Germans would be over here in no time, and we should lose our jobs."

"It wouldn't do, Mr. Maraton," Borden said briskly. "It's our job to improve the position of our constituents, but it's jolly certain we shouldn't do that by bringing ruin upon the country."

David Ross suddenly struck the table with his fist.

"You are wrong, all of you," he cried hoarsely. "You are ignorant men, thick-headed, fat, narrow fools, full of self-interest and prejudice. You want your jobs; they come first. I tell you that the man's right. Purge the country; get rid of the poison of ill-distributed capital, start again a new nation and a new morning."

Dale looked across the table, pityingly.

"What you need, Ross, is a drink," he remarked. "I noticed you weren't doing yourself very well coming down."

David Ross rose heavily to his feet. His arm was stretched out towards Dale and it was the arm of an accuser.

"Doing myself well!" he repeated, with fierce contempt. "That's the keynote of your lives, you lazy, self-satisfied swine, who call yourselves people's men! What do you know or care about the people? how many of you have walked by day and night in the wilderness and felt your heart die away within you? How many of you have watched the people hour by hour—the broken people, the vicious people, the cripples, the white slaves of crueler days than the most barbarous countries in history have ever permitted to their children? You understand your jobs, and you do yourselves well; that's your motto and your epitaph. There's only one amongst you who's a people's man and that's him."

He pointed to Maraton and sat down. Peter Dale removed his pipe from his mouth.

"It's just as well, David Ross, for you to remember," he said gruffly, "that you're here on sufferance. Seems to me there's a bit of the dog in the manger about your whining. I don't know as it matters to any one particularly what your opinion is, but if you expect to be taken in along of us, you'll have to alter your style a bit. It's all very well for the platform, but it don't go down here. Now, lads, let's get on with business. What I say is this. If Mr. Maraton is going on the platform to-night to talk anarchy, why then we'd best stop it. We want subscriptions, we want the sympathy of the British public in this strike, and there's nothing would make them button up their pockets quicker than for Mr. Maraton there to go and talk about bringing ruin upon the Empire for the sake of the people who ain't born yet. That's what I call thinking in the clouds. There's nowt of good in it for us," he added, with a momentary and vigorous return into his own vernacular. "Get it out of thy head, lad, or pack thy bag and get thee back to America." There was a brief silence. Most of those present had drawn a little sigh of relief. It was obvious that they were entirely in agreement with Dale. Only Ross was leaning across the table, his eyes blinking, drumming upon the tablecloth with the palm of his hand.

"That's right," he muttered, "that's right. Send him away, the only one who sees the truth. Send him away. It's dangerous; you might lose your jobs!"

Then Maraton spoke quietly from his place.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I gather one thing, at least, from our brief conference. You are not extremists. I will bear that in mind. But as to what I may or may not say to-night, I make no promises."

"If you're not going to support the strike," Peter Dale declared sturdily, "then thou shalt never set foot upon the platform. We've had our fears that this might be the result of your spending the week-end with Mr. Foley. There's six of us here, all accredited representatives of great industrial centres, and he's never thought fit to ask one of us to set foot under his roof. Never mind that. We, perhaps," he added, with a slow glance at Maraton, "haven't learnt the knack of wearing our Sunday coats. But just you listen. If Mr. Foley's been getting at you about this cotton strike, and you mean to throw cold water upon it to-night, then I tell ye that you're out for trouble. These Lancashire lads don't stick at a bit. They'll pull you limb from limb if you give them any of Mr. Foley's soft sawder. We're out to fight—in our own way, perhaps, but to fight."

"It is true that I have spent the week-end with Mr. Foley," Maraton admitted. "I had thought, perhaps, to have reported to you to-day the substance of our conversation. I feel now, though," he continued, "that it would be useless. You call yourselves Labour Members, and in your way you are no doubt excellent machines. I, too, call myself a Labour man, but we stand far apart in our ideas, in our methods. I think, Mr. Peter Dale and gentlemen, that we will go our own ways. We will fight for the people as seems best to us. I do not think that an alliance is possible."

They stared at him, a little amazed.

"Look here, young man," Peter Dale expostulated, "what's it all about? What do you want from us? I spoke of a job as lecturer just now. If you've really got the gift of speaking that they say you have, that'll bring you into Parliament in time, and I reckon you'll settle down fast enough with the rest of us then. Until then, what is it you want? We are sensible men. We all know you can't go spouting round the country for nothing, whether it's for the people, or woman's suffrage, or any old game. Open your mouth and let's hear what you have to say."

Maraton rose to his feet.

"I will, perhaps," he said, "come to you with an offer a little later on. For the present I must be excused. I have an appointment which Mr. Henneford has arranged for me with Mr. Preston, Secretary of the Union here. There are a good many facts I need to make sure of before to-night."

Mr. Dale moved his pipe to the other side of his mouth.

"That's all very well for a tale," he muttered, "but I'm not so sure about letting you go on to the platform at all to-night. We don't want our people fed up with the wrong sort of stuff."

Maraton smiled.

"Mr. Dale," he begged quietly, "listen." They were all, for a moment, silent. Maraton opened the window. From outside came a low roar of voices from the packed crowds who were even now blocking the street.

"These are my masters, Mr. Dale," Maraton said, "and I don't think there's any power you or your friends could make use of to-night, which will keep me from my appointment with them."



CHAPTER XVII

In the roar of applause which followed Maraton's brilliant but wholly unprepared peroration, a roar which broke and swelled like the waves of the sea, different people upon the platform heard different things. Peter Dale and his little band of coadjutors were men enough to know that a new force had come amongst them. It is possible, even, that they, hardened as they were by time and circumstances, felt some thrill of that erstwhile enthusiasm which in their younger days had brought them out from the ranks of their fellows. To Aaron, listening with quivering attention to every sentence, it seemed like the consummation of all his dreams. Julia alone was conscious of a certain restraint, knew that behind all the deep feeling and splendid hopefulness of Maraton's words, there was a sense of something kept back. It wasn't what he had meant to say. Something had come between Maraton and his passionate dreams of freedom. He, too, had become a particularist. He, too, was content to preach salvation piecemeal. He had spoken to them at first simply, as one worker to another. Then he had drifted out into the larger sea, and for those few moments he had been, at any rate, vigorously in earnest as he had attacked with scorpion-like bitterness the hideous disproportions which existed between the capitalized corporation and the labour which supported it. Yet afterwards he had gone back within himself. Almost she had expected to see him with his hands upraised, bidding them tear down these barriers for themselves. Instead he showed them the legalized way, not to free humanity, but to ensure for themselves a more comfortable place in life. It was all very magnificent. The strike was assured now, almost the success of it.

It was long before they let him leave the platform. In the droning impotence of the men who followed him, the vast audience seemed to realise once more the splendid perfection of his wholly natural and inspiring oratory. They rose and shouted for him, and once again, as he said a few words, the spell of silence lay upon them. Julia sat telling herself passionately that all was well, that nothing more than this was to have been hoped for, that indeed the liberator had come. More than once she felt Aaron's hands gripping her arm, as Maraton's words seemed to cleave a way towards the splendid truth. Ross, on her other side, was like a man carried into another s world.

"It is the Messiah," he muttered, "the Messiah of suffering men and women! No longer will they cry aloud for bread and be given stones."

Everything that happened afterwards seemed, in a way, commonplace. When at last they succeeded in leaving the platform, they had to wait for a long time in an anteroom while some portion of the immense crowd dispersed. Peter Dale, as soon as he had lit his pipe, came up to Maraton and patted him on the shoulder.

"There's no doubt about thy gift, lad," he said condescendingly. "A man who can talk as you do has no need to look elsewhere for a living."

"Gave it to 'em straight," Mr. Weavel assented, "and what I propose is a meeting at Sheffield—say this day month—and an appeal to the ironfounders. It's all very well, Borden," he went on, a little angrily, "but my people are looking for something from me, in return for their cash. What with these strikes here and strikes there, and a bit out of it for everybody, why, it's time Sheffield spoke."

"There's a question I should like to ask," Graveling intervened, plunging into the discussion, "and that is, why are you so cocksure, Mr. Maraton, of Government support in favour of the men? You said in your speech to-night, so far as I remember, that if the masters wouldn't give in without, Government must force them to see the rights of the matter. And not only that, but Government should compel them to recognise the Union and to deal with it. Now you've only been in this country a few days, and it seemed to me you were talking on a pretty tall order."

"Not at all," Maraton replied. "I have a scheme of my own, scarcely developed as yet, a scheme which I wasn't sure, when I came here, that I should ever make use of, which justified me in saying what I did."

They looked at him jealously.

"Is it an arrangement with Mr. Foley that you're speaking of?" Peter Dale enquired.

"Perhaps so," Maraton assented.

There was a dead silence. Maraton was leaning slightly against a table. Julia was talking to the wife of one of the delegates, a little way off. The others were all spread around, smoking and helping themselves to drinks which had just been brought in. Graveling's face was dark and angry.

"Are we to gather," he demanded, "that there's some sort of an understanding between you and Mr. Foley?"

"If there is," Maraton asked easily, "to whom am I responsible?"

There was a silence, brief but intense. Julia had turned her head; the others, too, were listening. Peter Dale was blowing tobacco smoke from his mouth, Borden was breathing heavily. Graveling's small eyes were bright with anger and distrust. They were all of them realising the presence of a new force which had come amongst them, and already, with the immeasurable selfishness of their class, they were speculating as to its personal effect upon themselves. Peter Dale, with his hands in his trousers pockets, and his pipe between his teeth, elbowed his way to Maraton's side.

"Young man," he began solemnly, "we'd best have an understanding. Ask any of these others and they'll tell you I'm the leader of the Labour Party. Are you one of us or aren't you?"

"One of you, in a sense, I hope, Mr. Dale," Maraton answered simply. "Only you must put me down as an Independent. I don't understand conditions over here yet. Where my own way seems best, I am used to following it."

Peter Dale removed his pipe from his mouth and spoke with added distinctness.

"Politics over here," he said, "are a simpler game than in the States, but there's one class of person we've got to do without, and that's the Independent Member. You can't do anything over here except by sticking together. If you'll come under the standard, you're welcome. I'll say nothing about Parliament for a time, but we'll find you all the talking you want and see that you're well paid for it."

Looking past the speaker's hard, earnest face, Maraton was conscious of the scorn flashing in Julia's I eyes. Intuitively he felt her appreciation of the coarse selfishness of these men, terrified at his gifts, resisting stubbornly the unwelcome conviction of a new mastership. Her lips even moved, as though she were signalling to him. At that moment, indeed, he would have been glad of her guidance. He needed the machinery which these men controlled, distasteful though their ideals and methods might be to him.

"Mr. Dale," he declared, "I am a people's man. I cannot enroll myself in your party because I fancy that in many ways we should think differently. But with so many objects in common, it is surely possible for us to be friends?"

Ross leaned suddenly forward in his chair, his grey face passion-stirred, the sweat upon his forehead.

"Aye!" he cried, "it's the greatest friend or the bitterest enemy of the people you'll be. You'll do more with that tongue of yours than a library of books or a century of Parliament, and may it wither in your mouth if they buy you—those others! God meant you for a people's man. It'll be hell for you and for us if they buy you away."

Maraton changed his position a little. He was facing them all now.

"My friends," he said, "that is one thing of which you need have no fear. Our methods may be different, we may work in different ways, but we shall work towards the same goal. Remember this, and remember always that whether we fight under the same banner or not, I have told it to you solemnly and from the bottom of my heart. I am a people's man!"

He turned towards the door and laid his hand upon Aaron's shoulder. Julia, too, rose and followed him.

"I think," he added, "that the people will have cleared off by now. I am going to try and get back to the hotel. I have messages to send away, and an early train to catch in the morning."

They were passing out of the room almost in silence, but Henneford struck the table with his fist.

"Come," he exclaimed, "we seem in a queer humour to-night! Don't let Mr. Maraton think too hardly of us. Wherever his place may be in the future, he's done us a grand service to-night, and don't let's forget it. He's waked these people up as none other of us could have done. He's started this strike in such a fashion as none other of us could. Don't let's forget to be grateful. The education and the oratory isn't all on the other side now. If we don't see you again to-night, Mr. Maraton, or before you leave for London, here's my thanks, for one, for to-night's work, and I'll lay odds that the others are with me."

They crowded around him after that, and though Graveling stood on one side and Peter Dale still maintained his attitude of doubt, they all parted cordially enough. They reached the back door of the hall and found the shelter of a four-wheeled cab. Before they could start, however, they were discovered. People came running from all directions. Looking through the window, they could see nothing but a sea of white faces. The crazy vehicle rocked from side to side. The driver was lifted from his seat, the horse unharnessed. Slowly, and surrounded by a cheering multitude, they dragged the cab through the streets. Julia, sitting by Maraton's side, felt herself impelled to hold on to his arm. Her body, her every sense was thrilled with the hoarse, dramatic roll of their voices, the forest of upraised caps, the strange calm of the man, who glanced sometimes almost sadly from side to side. She clutched at him once passionately.

"Isn't it wonderful!" she murmured. "All the time they call to you—their liberator!"

He smiled, and there was a shadow still of sadness in his eyes.

"It is a moment's frenzy," he said. "They have seen a gleam of the truth. When the light goes out, the old burden will seem all the heavier. It is so little that man can do for them."

They had flung open the top of the cab, and Maraton's eyes were fixed far ahead at the dull glow which hung over the city, the haze of smoke and heat, stretching like a sulphurous pall southwards. The roar of voices was always in his ears, but for a moment his thoughts seemed to have passed away, his eyes seemed to be seeking for some message beyond the clouds. He alone knew the full meaning of the hour which had passed.

They were sitting alone in the library, the French windows wide open, the languorous night air heavy with the perfume of roses and the sweetness of the cedars, drawn out by the long day's sunshine. Mr. Foley was sitting with folded arms, silent and pensive—a man waiting. And by his side was Elisabeth, standing for a moment with her fingers upon his shoulder.

"Is that eleven o'clock?" she asked.

"A quarter past," he answered. "We shall hear in a few minutes now."

She moved restlessly away. There was something spectral about her in her light muslin frock, as she vanished through the windows and reappeared almost immediately, threading her way amongst the flower beds. Suddenly the telephone bell at Mr. Foley's elbow rang. He raised the receiver. She came swiftly to his side.

"Manchester?" she heard him say. . . . "Yes, this is Lyndwood Park. It is Mr. Foley speaking. Go on."

There was silence then. Elisabeth stood with parted lips and luminous eyes, her hand upon his shoulder. She watched him,—watched the slow movement of his head, the relaxing of his hard, thin lips, the flash in his eyes. She knew—from the first she knew!

"Thank you very much, and good night," Mr. Foley said, as he replaced the receiver.

Then he turned quickly to Elisabeth and caught her hand. "They say that Maraton's speech was wonderful," he announced. "He declared war, but a man's war. Cotton first, and cotton alone."

She gave a little sobbing breath. Her hands were locked together.

"England will never know," Mr. Foley added, in a voice still trembling with emotion, "what she has escaped!"



CHAPTER XVIII

Those wonderful few days at Manchester had passed, and oppressed by the inevitable reaction, Julia was back at work in the clothing factory.

She had given up her place by the window to an anaemic-looking child of seventeen, who had a habit of fainting during these long, summer afternoons. Her own fingers were weary and she was conscious of an increasing fatigue as the hours of toil passed on. No breath of air came in from the sun-baked streets through the wide-flung windows. The atmosphere of the long, low room, in which over a hundred girls closely huddled together, were working, was sickly with the smell of cloth. There was no conversation. The click of the machines seemed sometimes to her partially dulled senses like the beating out of their human lives. It seemed impossible that the afternoon would ever end. The interval for tea came and passed—tea in tin cans, with thick bread and melting butter. The respite was worse almost than the mechanical toil. Julia's eyes ranged over the housetops, westwards. There was another world of trees, flowers, and breezes; another world altogether. She set her teeth. It was hard to have no place in it. A little time ago she had been content, content even to suffer, because she was toiling with these others whom she loved, and for whom, in her profound pity, she poured out her life and her talents. And now there was a change. Was it the spell of this cruel summer, she wondered, or was it something else—some new desire in her incomplete life, something from which for so many years she had been free? She let her thoughts, momentarily, go adrift. She was back again in the cab, her fingers clutching his arm, her heart thrilling with the wonderful passionate splendour of those few hours. She recalled his looks, his words, his little acts of kindness. She realised in those few moments how completely he filled her thoughts. She began to tremble.

"Better have your place by the window back again, Miss Thurnbrein," the girl at her side said suddenly. "You're looking like Clara, just before she popped off. My, ain't it awful!"

Julia came back to herself and refused the child's offer.

"I shall be all right directly," she declared. "This weather can't last much longer."

"If only the storm would come!" the child muttered, as she turned back to her work.

If only the storm would come! Julia seemed to take these words with her as she passed at last into the streets, at the stroke of the hour. It was like that with her, too. There was something inside, something around her heart, which was robbing her of her rest, haunting her through the long, lonely nights, torturing her through these miserable days. Soon she would have to turn and face it. She shivered with fear at the thought.

In the street a man accosted her. She looked up with an almost guilty start. A little cry broke from her lips. It was one of disappointment, and Graveling's unpleasant lips were twisted into a sneer as he raised his cap.

"Thought it was some one else, eh?" he remarked. "Well, it isn't, you see; it's me. There's no one else with a mind to come down here this baking afternoon to fetch you."

"I thought it might be Aaron," she faltered.

"Never mind whom you thought it might have been," he answered gruffly. "Aaron's busy, I expect, typing letters to all the lords and ladies your Mr. Maraton hobnobs with. I'm here, and I want to talk with you."

"I am too tired," she pleaded. "I am going straight home to lie down."

"I'd thought of that," he answered stubbornly. "I've got a taxicab waiting at the corner. Not often I treat myself to anything of that sort. I'm going to take you up to one of those parks in the West End we've paid so much for and see so little of, and when I get you there I'm going to talk to you. You can rest on the way up. There's a breeze blowing when you get out of these infernally hot streets."

She was only too glad to sink back amongst the hard, shiny leather cushions of the taxicab, and half close her eyes. The first taste of the breeze, as they neared Westminster Bridge, was almost ecstatic. Graveling had lit a pipe, and smoked by her side in silence. "We are coming out of our bit of the earth now, to theirs," he remarked presently, as they reached Piccadilly, brilliant with muslin-clad women and flower-hung windows. "It isn't often I dare trust myself up here. Makes me feel as though I'd like to go amongst those sauntering swells and mincing ladies in their muslins and laces, and parasols, and run amuck amongst them—send them down like a pack of ninepins. Aye, I'd send them into hell if I could!"

She was still silent. She felt that she needed all her strength. They drove on to the Achilles statue, where he dismissed the taxicab. The man stared at the coin which he was offered, and looked at the register.

"'Ere!" he exclaimed. "You're a nice 'Un, you are!"

Graveling turned upon him almost fiercely.

"If you want a tip," he said, "go and drive some of these fine ladies and gentlemen about, who've got the money to give. I'm a working man, and luxuries aren't for me. Be off with you, or I'll call a policeman!"

He shouldered his way across the pavement, and Julia followed him. Soon they found a seat in the shade of the trees. She leaned back with a little sigh of content.

"Five minutes!" she begged. "Just five minutes!"

He glanced at his watch, relit his pipe, and relapsed once more into sombre silence. Julia's thoughts went flitting away. She closed her eyes and leaned back. She had only one fear now. Would he find out! He was thick enough, in his way, but he was no fool, and he was already coarsely jealous.

"Ten minutes you've had," he announced at last. "Look here, Julia, I've brought you out to ask you a plain question. Are you going to marry me or are you not?"

"I am not," she answered steadily.

He had been so certain of her reply that his face betrayed no disappointment. Only he turned a little in his chair so that he could watch her face. She was conscious of the cruelty of his action.

"Then I want to know what you are going to do," he continued. "You are thin and white and worn out. You're fit for something better than a tailoress and you know it. And you're killing yourself at it. You're losing your health, and with your health you're losing your power of doing any work worth a snap of the fingers."

"It isn't so bad, except this very hot weather," she protested. "Then I'm secretary to the Guild, you know. I can do my work so much better when I'm really one of themselves. Besides, they always listen to me at the meetings, because I come straight from the benches."

"You've done your whack," he declared. "No need to go on any longer, and you know it. I can make a little home for you right up in Hampstead, and you can go on with your writing and lecturing and give up this slavery. You know you were thinking of it a short time back. You've no one to consider but yourself. You're half promised to me and I want you."

"I am sorry, Richard," she said, "if I have ever misled you, but I hope that from now onward, at any rate, there need be no shadow of misunderstanding. I do not intend to marry. My work is the greatest thing in life to me, and I can continue it better unmarried."

"It's the first time you've talked like this," he persisted. "Amy Chatterton, Rachael Weiss, and most of 'em are married. They stick at it all right, don't they? What's the matter with your doing the same?"

"Different people have different ideas," she pronounced. "Please be my friend, Richard, and do not worry me about this. You can easily find some one else. There are any number of girls, I'm sure, who'd be proud to be your wife. As for me, it is impossible."

"And why is it impossible?" he demanded, in a portentous tone.

"Because I do not care for you in that way," she answered, "and because I have no desire to marry at all."

He smoked sullenly at his pipe for several moments. All the time his eyes were filled with smouldering malevolence.

"Now I am going to begin to talk," he said. "Don't look as though you were going to run away, because you're not. I am going to talk to you about that fellow Maraton."

"Why do you mention his name?" she asked, stiffening. "What has he to do with it?"

"A good deal, to my thinking," was the grim reply. "It's my belief that you've a fancy for him, and that's why you've turned against me."

"You've no right to say anything of the sort!" she exclaimed.

"And, by God, why haven't I?" he insisted, striking his knee with his clenched fist. "Haven't you been my girl for six years before he came? You were kind of shy, but you'd have been mine in the end, and you know it. Waiting was all I had to do, and I was content to wait. And now he's come along, and I know very well that I haven't a dog's chance. You're a working lass, Julia, fit mate for a working man. Do you think he's one of our sort? Not he! Do you think he's for marrying a girl who works for her bread? If you do, you're a bigger fool than I think you. He's forever nosing around amongst these swell ladies and gentlemen with handles to their names, ladies and gentlemen who live on the other side of the earth to us. He can talk like a prophet, I grant you, but that's all there is of the prophet about him. People's man, indeed! He'll be the people's man so long as it pays him and not a second longer."

"Have you finished?" she asked quietly.

"No, nor never shall have finished," he continued, raising his voice, "while he's playing the rotten game he's at now, and you're mooning around after him as though he were a god. I'll never stop speaking until I've knocked the bottom out of that, Julia. You never used to think anything of fine clothes and all these gentlemen's tricks, it's all come of a sudden."

"Have you finished?" she asked again.

"Never in this life!" he replied fiercely. "I tell you he shan't have you, and you shan't have him. I'm there between, and I'm not to be got rid of. I'll take one of you or both of you by the throat and strangle the life out of you, before I quit. It isn't," he went on, his face once more disfigured by that ample sneer, "it isn't that I'm afraid of his wanting to marry you. He won't do that. But he's one of those who are fond of messing about—philanderer's the word. If he tries it on with you, he'll find hell before his time! Sit down!"

She had risen to her feet. He clutched at her skirt. The sense of his touch—she was peculiarly sensitive to touch—gave her the strength she needed. She snatched it away.

"Now," she declared', "you have had your say. This is what you get for it. You have offended me. Our friendship is forgotten. The less I see of you, the more content I shall be. And as to what I do or what becomes of me, it isn't your business. I shall do with myself exactly as I choose—exactly as I choose, Richard Graveling! You hear that?" she reiterated, with blazing eyes and tone cruelly deliberate. "I haven't much in the world, but my body and my soul are my own. I shall give them where I choose, and on what terms I please. If you try to follow me, you'll put me to the expense of a cab home. That's all!"

She walked away with firm footsteps. She felt stronger, more of a woman than she had done all day. Graveling made no attempt to follow her. He sat and smoked in stolid silence.



CHAPTER XIX

Julia was conscious of a new vitality as she left the Park. She was her own mistress now; her half tie to Graveling was permanently broken. So much the better! The man's personality had always been distasteful to her. She had suffered him only as a fellow worker. His overtures in other directions had kept her in a continual state of embarrassment, but in her ignorance as to her own feelings, she had hesitated to speak out. She put sedulously behind her the question of what had brought this new enlightenment.

She took the Tube to the British Museum and went round to see Aaron. The house was busier than she had ever seen it before; taxicabs were coming and going, and four or five people sat in the waiting-room. Aaron looked up and waved his hand as she entered. He was alone in the study where he worked.

"Come in," he cried eagerly. "Sit down. It's a joy to see you, Julia, but I daren't stop working. I've forty or fifty letters to type before he comes in, and he'll be off again in half-an-hour."

She sank into an easy chair. The atmosphere of the cool room, with its opened windows and drawn Venetian blinds, was most restful.

"Is everything going well, Aaron?" she asked him.

He nodded.

"Better than well. There's a telegram just in from Manchester. We are bound to win there. Did you read Foley's speech?"

"Yes. Did he mean it all, do you think?" she asked doubtfully.

"Every word," he replied confidently. "We've got it here in black and white. There has been a commission appointed. Members of the Government, if you please—nothing less. The masters have got an ultimatum. If they refuse, Mr. Foley has asked Maraton to frame a bill. We've got the sketch of it here already. What do you think of that, Julia?"

"I only wish that I knew," she murmured. "What can have happened to Mr. Foley?"

"They all do as Maraton bids them!" Aaron ex-claimed triumphantly. "If only I had four hands! I can't finish, Julia. It's impossible."

She sprang up and tore off her gloves.

"Let me help," she cried eagerly. "You have another typewriter in the corner there. I can work it, and you know I could always read your shorthand."

He accepted her help a little grudgingly.

"You must be careful, then," he enjoined, with the air of one who confers a favour. "There must be no mistakes. Begin here and do those letters. One carbon copy of each. I'll lift the machine on to the table for you."

She propped up the book and very soon there was silence in the room, except for the click of the two typewriters. Presently she stopped short and uttered a little cry.

"What is it?" he demanded, without looking up from his work.

"This letter to the Secretary of the Unionist Association, Nottingham!"

"Well?"

"Mr. Maraton is to go there Thursday, to address a meeting,—a Unionist meeting."

Aaron glowered at her from over his typewriter.

"Why not? It's Mr. Foley's idea. He wants Mr. Maraton in Parliament. Why not?"

"But as a Unionist!" she gasped. "Nottingham isn't a Labour constituency at all."

"He is coming in as a Unionist, so as to have a free hand. We don't want any interference from Peter Dale and that lot."

She looked at him aghast. Peter Dale and his colleagues had been gods a few weeks ago!

"Can't you see," Aaron continued irritably, "that the coming of Maraton has changed many things? A man like that can't serve under anybody, and no man could come as a stranger and lead the Labour Party. He has to be outside. This is a working man's constituency. He is pledged to fight Capital, fight it tooth and nail."

"I suppose it's all right," Julia said. "It seems different, somehow, from what we had expected, and he never goes to the Clarion at all."

"Why should he?" Aaron demanded. "They are all jealous of him, every one of 'em; Peter Dale is the worst of the lot. Didn't you hear how they talked to him at Manchester?"

She nodded, and for a time they went on with their work. She found herself, however, continually returning to the subject of those vital differences; the Maraton as they had dreamed of him—the prophet with the flaming sword, and this wonderfully civilised person.

"Tell me honestly, Aaron," she asked presently, "what do you think of it all?—of him—of his methods? You are with him all the time. Haven't you ever any doubts?"

She watched him closely. She would have been conscious of the slightest tremor in his reply, the slightest hesitation. There was nothing of the sort. He was merely tolerant of her ignorance.

"No one who knows Maraton," he pronounced, "could fail to trust him."

After that she asked no more questions. They worked steadily for another half hour or so. Messages were sometimes brought in to Aaron, which he summarily disposed of. Julia wondered at the new facility, the heart-whole eagerness which he devoted to every trifling matter. Then, just as she was halfway through copying out a pile of figures, Maraton came in. He stood and watched them in the doorway, half amused, half surprised. For a moment she kept her head down. Then she looked up slowly.

"Since when," he asked, "have I been the proud possessor of two secretaries?"

"You left me letters enough for four, sir," Aaron reminded him. "I wanted to finish them all, so Julia stayed to help me."

Maraton came smiling towards them.

"Why, I am afraid I forgot," he said. "In America I used sometimes to have four typists working. You can't possibly get out all those details by yourself, Aaron."

"We shall have finished this lot, anyhow, in an hour."

"You must get permanent help," Maraton insisted. "Leave off now, both of you. I want to talk to your sister. Do you know," he went on, turning towards her, "that I have scarcely seen anything of you since Manchester?"

"My work keeps me rather a prisoner," she explained, "and after these hot days one hasn't much energy left."

"You are still working at the tailoring?"

She nodded.

"I like to be in the midst of it all, but this weather I am almost afraid I shan't be able to go on. The atmosphere is hateful. It seems to draw all the life out of one."

He glanced over her shoulder at the work she had been doing.

"Why not come to me?" he suggested suddenly. "Aaron needs help. He can't possibly do everything for himself. I have a thirst for information, you know. I want statistics on every possible subject. There are seven or eight big corporations now, whose wages bill I want to compare with the interest they pay on capital. Aaron doesn't have time even to answer the necessary letters. I am in disgrace all round. Do come."

She was sitting quite still, looking at him. It would have been impossible for any one to have guessed that his words were like music to her.

"But there is my trade," she objected. "After all, I am useful there. I keep in touch with the girls."

"You have finished with that," he argued. "You have done your work there. They all know who you are and what you are. You have lots of information which would be useful to me. Aaron must have some one to help him. Why not you? As for the rest, I can afford to pay two secretaries—you needn't be afraid of that."

"I never thought of it," she assured him. "I shouldn't want very much money."

"Leave that to me," he begged, "only accept. Is it a promise? Come, make it a promise and we will have an evening off. All day long I seem to have been moving in a strained atmosphere, talking to men who are only half in sympathy with me, talking to men who are civil because they have brains enough to see the truth. I want an hour or two of rest. Aaron shall telephone to Gardner. I was to have dined with him at his club, but it is of no importance. He was dining there, anyhow, and the other places I was going to this evening don't count. Telephone 1718 Westminster, Aaron, and say that Mr. Maraton is unable to keep his dinner engagement with Mr. Gardner and begs to be excused. Then we'll all go out together. What do you say? I have found something almost like a roof garden. I'll tell you all about New York."

Her face for a moment shone. Then she looked down at her gown. He laughed.

"You have done your day's work and I've done mine," he remarked. "I dare say of the two, yours is the more worthy. We'll go just as we are. Get rid of those people who are waiting, Aaron. I had a look at them. They are all the usual class—cadgers."

"There is one gentleman whom you must see," Aaron declared. "I didn't put him in the waiting-room—a Mr. Beldeman. He came to see you in Manchester."

"Beldeman!"

Maraton repeated the name. Then he smiled.

"A very sensational gentleman," he observed. "Came to offer me—but never mind, I told you about that. Yes, you're right, Aaron. He is always interesting. Take your sister away for a few minutes. You can be getting ready. When I've finished with Mr. Beldeman, we'll start out. I shan't change a thing."

Mr. Beldeman entered the room, carrying his hat in his hand, unruffled by his long wait, to all appearance wearing the same clothes, the same smile, as on his visit to the hotel in Manchester. Maraton greeted him good-humouredly.

"Well, Mr. Beldeman," he began, "you see, I have made things all right for your syndicate of manufacturers, although I couldn't accept your offer. Sit down. You won't keep me long, will you? I have to go out. Perhaps you are going to give me a little for my Lancashire operatives. They can do with it. Strike pay over here is none too liberal, you know."

Mr. Beldeman laid down his hat. He blinked for a moment behind his gold spectacles.

"The Lancashire strike," he said softly, "is of very little service to my principals. As you know, it is more than that for which we were hoping."

Maraton nodded but made no remark.

"My principals," Mr. Beldeman continued, "have watched your career, Mr. Maraton, for some time. They have studied eagerly your speeches and your writings, and when you arrived on this side they expected something more from you. They expected, in fact, the enunciation of a certain doctrine which you have already propounded with singular eloquence in other parts of the world. They expected to find it the text of your first words to Labour in this country. I refer, of course, to the universal strike."

"It was my great theory," Maraton admitted, suddenly grave. "I will not say even now that I have abandoned it. It is in abeyance."

"My principals," Mr. Beldeman remarked slowly, "would like it to take place."

Maraton smiled.

"Your principals, I presume," he said, "do not imagine that I am on the earth to gratify them, even though they did offer me—let me see, how much was it—a million pounds?"

"This time," Mr. Beldeman went on, "it is not a question of money."

"Not a question of money," Maraton repeated. "You don't want to buy me? What do you want to do, then?"

"We threaten," Mr. Beldeman pronounced calmly.

Maraton for a moment seemed puzzled.

"Threaten," he murmured thoughtfully. "Come, do I understand you properly? Is it assassination, or anything of that sort, you're talking about?" Beldeman shook his head.

"Those are methods for extreme cases," he said. "Yours is not an extreme case. We do not threaten you, Mr. Maraton, with death, but we do threaten you with the death of your reputation, the end of your career as a political power in this country, if you do not see your way clear to act as we desire."

Maraton stood, for a few seconds, perfectly still.

"You have courage, Mr. Beldeman," he remarked.

"Sir," Mr. Beldeman replied, "I have been as near death as most men. That is why I occupy my present position. I am the special agent of the greatest political power in the world. When I choose to make use of my machinery, I can kill or spare, abduct, rob, ruin—what I choose. You I only threaten. I fancy that will be enough. We have our hold upon the press of this country."

Maraton walked to the door and back again.

"I killed a man once, Mr. Beldeman," he said, "who threatened me."

"You will not kill me," Mr. Beldeman declared, with gentle confidence in his tone.

"If I had known," Maraton continued softly, "I'd have wrung your neck at Manchester."

"Quite easy, I should say," Mr. Beldeman agreed. "You look strong. Without a doubt I could make you desperate. Better be reasonable. My people want the railway strike, the coal strike, and the iron strike—want them both within a month. Come, what are you afraid of? Stick to your colours, Mr. Maraton. Wasn't it in the North. American Review you declared that a war and conquest were the inevitable prelude of social reform in this country?"

"Did I say that?" Maraton asked.

"You did. Now you are here, you are afraid. Never mind, war and conquest are to come. We give you a month in which to deliver your message. You have, I believe, two large meetings to address before that date. Make your pronouncement and all will be well. The million is yours for the people."

"A sort of gigantic blackmail," Maraton remarked drily.

"You can call it what you like. If you have conditions to make, I am prepared to listen. I do not insult you by offering—"

Maraton flung open the door a little noisily.

"That will do, Mr. Beldeman," he said. "I congratulate you upon the manner in which you have conducted this interview. I presume I shall see you again one day before the month is up?"

"You certainly will," Mr. Beldeman replied. "If you should want me before—an advance payment or anything of that sort—I am at the Royal Hotel."

Maraton was alone in the room. For some moments he remained motionless. He heard Aaron and Julia in the hall but he did not hasten to join them. He moved instead to the window and stood watching Beldeman's retreating form.



CHAPTER XX

Maraton led the way on to the roof of one of London's newer hotels.

"They won't give us dinner here," he explained. "London isn't civilised enough for that yet, or perhaps it's a matter of climate. But we can get all sorts of things to eat, and some wine, and sit and watch the lights come out. I was here the other night alone and I thought it the most restful spot in London."

He called a waiter and had a table drawn up to the palisaded edge of the roof. Then he slipped something into the man's hand, and there seemed to be no difficulty about serving them with anything they required.

"A salad, some sandwiches, a bottle of hock and plenty of strawberries. We shan't starve, at any rate," Maraton declared. "Lean back in your chairs, you children of the city, lean down and look at your mother. Look at her smoke-hung arms, stretched out as though to gather in the universe; and the lights upon her bosom—see how they come twinkling into existence."

Both of them followed his outstretched finger with their eyes, but Julia only shivered.

"I hate it," she muttered, "hate it all! London seems to me like a great, rapacious monster. Our bodies and souls are sacrificed over there. For what? I was in Piccadilly and the parks to-day. Is there any justice in the world, I wonder? It's just as though there were a kink in the great wheels and they weren't running true."

"Sometimes I think," Maraton declared, "that the matter would right itself automatically but for the interference of weak people. The laws of life are tampered with so often by people without understanding. They keep alive the unworthy. They try to make life easier for the unfit. They endow hospitals and build model dwellings. It's a sop to their consciences. It's like planting a flower on the grave of the man you have murdered."

"But these things help," Aaron protested.

"Help? They retard," Maraton insisted. "All charity is the most vicious form of self-indulgence. Can't you see that if the poor died in the street and the sick were left to crawl about the face of the earth, the whole business would right itself automatically. The unfit would die out. A stronger generation would arise, a generation stronger and better able to look after itself. But come, we have been serious long enough. You are tired with your day's work, Miss Julia, and Aaron, too. I've been in the committee room of the House of Commons half the day, and my head's addled with figures. Here comes our supper. Let us drop the more serious things of life. We'll try and put a little colour into your cheeks, young lady."

He served them both and filled their glasses with wine. Then, as he ate, he leaned back in his chair and watched them. For all her strange beauty, Julia, too, was one of the suffering children of the world. The lines of her figure, which should have been so subtle and fascinating, were sharpened by an unnatural thinness. Aaron's cheeks were almost like a consumptive's, his physique was puny. There was something in their expression common to both. Maraton was conscious of a wave of pity as he withdrew his eyes.

"Sometimes," he said, "I feel almost angry with you two. You carry on your shoulders the burden of other people's sufferings. It is well to feel and realise them, and the gift of sympathy is a beautiful thing, but our own individualism is also a sacred gift. It is not for us to weaken or destroy it by encouraging a superabundant sympathy for others. We each have our place in the world, whether we owe it to fate or our own efforts, and it is our duty to make the best of it. Our own happiness, indeed, is a present charge upon ourselves for the ultimate benefit of others. A happy person in the world does good always. You two have a leaning towards morbidness. If I had time, I would undertake your education. As it is, we will have another bottle of wine, and I shall take you to a music hall."

It was an evening that lived in Julia's mind with particular vividness for years to come, and yet one which she always found it difficult to piece together in her thoughts. They went to one of the less fashionable music halls, where the turns were frequent and there was no ballet. Aaron was very soon able to re-establish his temporarily lost capacity for enjoyment. Maraton, leaning back in his place with a cigar in his mouth, appreciated everything and applauded constantly. It was Julia who found the new atmosphere most difficult. She laughed often, it is true, but she had always a semi-subjective feeling, as though it were some other person who was really there, and she the instrument chosen to give physical indication of that other person's presence. Only once life seemed suddenly to thrill and burn in her veins, to shoot through her body with startling significance, and in that brief space of time, life itself was transformed for her. Maraton by chance found her hand, as they sat side by side, and held it for a moment in his. There was nothing secret about his action. The firm pressure of his fingers, even, seemed as though they might have been the kindly, encouraging touch of a sympathetic friend. But upon Julia his touch was magical. The rest of the evening faded into insignificance. She understood feelings which had come to her that afternoon in the park with absolute completeness for the first time. From that moment she took her place definitely amongst the women who walk through life but whose feet seldom touch the earth.

When the performance was over, Maraton called a taxicab.

"Aaron," he directed, "you must take your sister back to her lodgings. No, I insist," he added, as she protested. "No 'buses to-night. Go home and sleep well and think about yourself."

She shook her head.

"I will go home in a taxi," she agreed, "if you will do one thing for me. It won't take long. It has been in my mind ever since you said what you did about charity. I want us all to go down to the Embankment. It isn't late enough really, but I want you to come."

He sighed.

"You are incorrigible," he declared. "Never mind, we will go. How good the air is! We'll walk."

They turned along the Strand and descended the narrow street which led to the Embankment. Then they walked slowly as far as Blackfriars Bridge. They neither of them spoke a word. From time to time they glanced at the silent and motionless figures on the seats. For the most part, the loiterers there were either asleep or sitting with closed eyes. Here and there they caught a glance from some spectral face, a glance cold and listless. The fires of life were dead amongst these people. The animal desires alone remained; their faces were dumb.

They stood together at the corner of Blackfriars Bridge.

"Well," Maraton said, "I have done your bidding. I have been here before many times, and I have been here in the winter."

"Tell me," she asked, "there is a girl there on that third seat, crying. Am I doing wrong if I go to her and give her money for a night's lodging?"

"Without a doubt," he answered. "And yet, I expect you'll do it. Principles are splendid—in the abnegation. If we are to be illogical, let me be the breaker of my own laws."

He thrust some money into her hand and Julia disappeared. For some time she remained talking with the figure upon the seat. Aaron and Maraton leaned over the corner of the bridge and looked down the curving arc of lights towards the Houses of Parliament.

"I shall end there, you know, Aaron," Maraton sighed. "I am not looking forward to it. It's a queer sort of a hothouse for a man."

"I wonder," Aaron murmured thoughtfully. "I used to think of you travelling from one to the other of the great cities, and I used to think that when you had spoken to them, the people would see the truth and rise and take their own. I used to be very fond of the Old Testament once," he went on, his voice sinking a little lower. "Life was so simple in those days, and the words of a prophet seemed greater than any laws."

"And nowadays," Maraton continued, "life has become like a huge and complex piece of machinery. Humanity has given way to mechanics. Aaron, I don't believe I can help this people by any other way save by laws."

They both turned quickly around. Julia was standing by their side, and with her the girl.

"I told her," Julia explained, "that it was not my money I was offering, but the money of a gentleman who was the greatest friend the poor people of the world have ever known. She wanted to speak to you."

The girl drew her shawl a little closer around her shoulders. Her face bore upon it the terrible stamp of suffering, without its redeeming purification. Save for her abundant hair, her very sex would have been unrecognisable. She looked steadily at Maraton.

"You sent me money," she said.

"I did," he admitted.

"Are you one of those soft-hearted fools who go about doing this sort of thing?" she demanded.

"I am not," he replied. "I object to giving money away. I am sorry to see people suffering, but as a rule I think that it is their own fault if they come to the straits that you are in. I sent the money to please this young lady."

"Their own fault, eh?" she muttered.

"I qualify that," he added quickly. "Their own fault because they submit to a heritage of unjust laws. It is your own fault because you don't join together and smash the laws. You would fill the jails, perhaps, but you'd make it easier for those who came after."

She stood quite silent for a moment. When she spoke, the truculent note had departed from her tone.

"I came here," she said, "meaning to chuck this money in your face. I thought you were one of these canting hypocrites who salve their consciences by giving away what they don't want. My baby died this morning in the hospital, and they turned me out. If I keep your money, do you know what I shall do with it? Get drunk."

He nodded.

"Why not?"

She looked at him stolidly.

"When I've spent it, I shall go into the river. I'm not fit for anything else. I'm too weak to work, and for the rest, look at me. I'm as ugly as sin itself—just a few bones held together."

"Take the money and get drunk," Maraton advised. "You're quite right. There's no help for you. You've no spirit to help yourself. If you hang on to the crust of the world through charity, you only do the world harm. You're better out of it."

She gathered up the money and shivered a little.

"I'll drink yer health," she muttered, as she turned away.

Julia half started to follow her, but Maraton held her arm.

"Useless," he whispered. "She's one of the broken creatures of the world. Whilst you keep her alive, you spread corruption. She'll probably hang on to life until it gives her up."

He called a taxi.

"Now I am going to have my own way," he announced. "Aaron is going to take you home. I came here because you wished it, but it's very amateurish, you know, this sort of thing. It's on a par with district visiting and slumming, and all the rest of it. A disease in the body sometimes brings out scars. A doctor doesn't stare at the scars. He treats the body for the disease. Get these places out of your mind, Julia. They are only useful inasmuch as they remind us of the black truth."

He took her hands.

"Remember," he added, "that you've finished with the tailoring for a time. Aaron will want you to-morrow, or as soon as you can come. We've piles of work to do."

Her eyes shone at him.

"Work," she murmured, "but think of the difference! If it wasn't for what you've just said about individualism, I think that I should be feeling cruelly selfish."

"Rubbish!" he exclaimed. "You're secretary of the Women's Guild, aren't you? You can keep that up. I'll come and talk to your girls some day. Your work has been too narrow down there. There are some other women's industries I want you to enquire into. Till to-morrow!"

He strode vigorously away. The taxicab turned eastward over Blackfriars Bridge.



CHAPTER XXI

On the following morning, Maraton saw Elisabeth for the first time since his return from Manchester. As he rang the bell of Mr. Foley's residence in Downing Street, at a few minutes before the hour at which he had been bidden to luncheon, he found himself wondering with a leaven of resentment in his feelings why he had so persistently avoided the house during the last three weeks. All his consultations with Mr. Foley, and they had been many, had taken place at the House of Commons. He had refused endless invitations of a social character, and even when Mr. Foley had told him in plain words that his niece was anxious to see him, Maraton had postponed his call. This luncheon party, however, was inevitable. He was to meet a great lawyer who had a place in the Government, and two other Cabinet Ministers. No excuse would have served his purpose.

The man who took his hat and coat had evidently received special instructions.

"Mr. Foley is engaged with his secretary, sir," he said. "A messenger has just arrived from abroad. Will you come this way?"

He was taken to Elisabeth's little room. She was there waiting for him. Directly she rose, he knew why he had kept away.

"Are you not a little ashamed of yourself, Mr. Maraton?" she asked, as the door was closed behind the departing servant.

"On the contrary," he replied, "I am proud."

She laughed at him, naturally at first, but with a note of self-consciousness following swiftly, as she realised the significance of his words.

"How foolish! Really, I know it is only a subterfuge to avoid being scolded. Sit down, won't you? You will have to wait at least ten minutes for luncheon."

They looked at one another. He took up a volume of poems from the small table by his side and put it down again.

"Well?" she asked.

"You have conquered," he declared. "You see, I came down to earth."

"It isn't possible for me," she said simply, "to tell you how glad I am. Don't you yourself feel that you have done the right thing?"

"Since that night at Manchester," he told her, "I have scarcely stopped to think. Do you know that your strongest allies were Mr. Peter Dale and his men?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I disclaim my allies. If we arrived at the same conclusion, we did so by differing lines of thought. Let me tell you," she went on, "there were two things for which I have prayed. One was that you might start your fight exactly as you have done. The other that you might find no official place amongst the Labour Members. Of course, I can't pretend to the practical experience of a real politician, but my uncle talks to me a great deal, and to me the truth seemed so clear. It is the advanced Unionists who need you. They are really the party from whom progress must come, because it is the middle class which has to be attacked, and it is amongst the middle classes that Liberalism has its stronghold. If you once took your place among the Labour Members, you would be a Labour Member and nothing else. People wouldn't take what you said seriously."

"I am coming into the House, if at all, as an Independent Member," he announced.

She nodded.

"Mr. Foley is quite satisfied with that—in fact he thinks it's best. Do you know, he seems to have gained a new lease of life during the last few weeks. What do you think of his commission on your Manchester strike?"

"He kept his word," Maraton admitted. "I expected no less."

"I can tell you this," she went on, "because I know that he will tell you himself after luncheon. The masters met here this morning. They are simply furious with my uncle, but they have had to give in. The bill you drafted would have been rushed through Parliament without a moment's delay, if they had not. Mr. Foley showed them your draft. They have given in on every point."

"I am afraid I'm going to keep your uncle rather busy," Maraton remarked. "Very soon after this is settled, I have promised to speak at Sheffield."

"In a way it is terrible," she said, with a sigh, "and yet it is so much better than the things we feared. Tell me about yourself a little, won't you? How have you been spending your time? You have a large, gloomy house here, they tell me, shrouded with mystery. Have you any amusements or have you been working all the time?"

"Half my days have been spent with your uncle," he reminded her. "The other half at home, working. So many of my facts were rusty. As to my house, is it really mysterious, I wonder? It is large and gloomy, at the extreme corner of an unfashionable square. It suits me because I love space and quietness, and yet I like to be near the heart of things."

"But do you do nothing but work?" she asked. "Have you no hobbies?"

He shook his head.

"I seem to have had no time for games. I like walking, walking in the country or even walking in the cities and watching the people. Only the London streets are so sad. Then I am fond of reading. I'm afraid I should be rather a strange figure if I were to be suddenly projected into your world, Lady Elisabeth."

"But I like to feel that you are in my world," she said gently. "Believe me, it isn't altogether made up of people who play games."

"I read the daily papers," he remarked. "Didn't I see something yesterday about Lady Elisabeth Landon having won the scratch prize at Ranelagh at a ladies' golf meeting?"

She laughed pleasantly.

"Oh! well," she protested, "you must make allowance for my bringing up. We begin to play games in this country as soon as we can crawl about the nursery. It all depends upon the value you set upon these things."

A servant knocked at the door and announced the service of luncheon. Elisabeth rose reluctantly to her feet.

"Now, I suppose, I must hand you over to the serious business of life," she sighed. "If you do have a minute to spare when you have finished with my uncle," she added in a lower tone, as they passed down the wide staircase side by side, "come up and see me before you go. I shall be in till four o'clock."

The familiarity of her words, half whispered in his ear, the delightful suggestion of some confidential understanding between them, were alike fascinating to him. In her plain white serge coat and skirt, and smart hat—she had just come in from walking in the park—she seemed to him to represent so perfectly the very best and most delightful type of womanhood. Her complexion was perfect, her skin fresh as a child's. She carried herself with the spring and grace of one who walks through life self-confidently, fortified always with the knowledge that she was a favourite with women as well as with men. He sat by her side at luncheon and he could not help admiring the delicate tact with which she prevented the conversation from ever remaining more than a few seconds in channels which might have made him feel something of an alien. There was another nephew of Mr. Foley's there, a famous polo player and sportsman; Lord Carton, whose eyes seldom left Elisabeth's face; Sir William Blend, the great lawyer; Mr. Horrill and Lord Armley. These, with Elisabeth's mother and herself, made up the party.

"I think I am going to bar politics," Lady Grenside said, as she took her place.

"Impossible!" Mr. Foley retorted, in high good humour. "This is a political luncheon. We have great and weighty matters to discuss. You women are permitted to be present, but we allot to you the hardest task of all—silence."

"A sheer impossibility, so far as mother is concerned," Elisabeth observed. "As for me, I call myself a practical politician. I intend to take part in the discussion."

Mr. Foley looked across the round table with twinkling eyes.

"We are going to talk about Universal Manhood Suffrage," he announced.

"Scandalous," Elisabeth declared, "before we have our votes!"

"Perhaps," Maraton suggested, "it was Universal Suffrage that Mr. Foley meant."

"Including children and aliens," Lady Grenside remarked. "I am sure the children at the school I went over yesterday could have ruled the nation admirably. They seemed to know positively everything."

"Mother, you are too frivolous," Elisabeth insisted. "If this tone of levity is not dropped, I shall start another subject of conversation. Mr. Maraton, you, of course, are in favour of Universal Manhood Suffrage?"

"I am not at all sure about it," he replied. "It gives the vote to a lot of people I'd sooner see deported."

"But you—you to talk like that!" she exclaimed.

He smiled.

"Votes should belong to those who have a stake in the country, not to the flotsam and jetsam," he continued solemnly.

"But you're a Tory!" she cried.

"Not a bit," he answered. "If I had my way, you would very soon see that one man wouldn't have so much more stake in the country than another. Then Universal Suffrage follows automatically—in fact that's the way I'd arrive at it."

"Don't ever let Mr. Maraton be Prime Minister!" Elisabeth begged. "He's too iconoclastic."

"And just now I was a Tory," Maraton protested.

"It isn't my fault that you are a study in contraries," she laughed. "But then politicians are rather like that, aren't they? I think really that they should be like surgeons, specialise all the time."

"Come down to Ranelagh and play golf after luncheon," Lord Carton suggested abruptly from across the table. "I've got my little racing car outside and I'll take you down there like a rocket."

"Thanks," she answered, "I want particularly to stay in till four o'clock this afternoon. Besides, you can't play golf, you know."

"I don't think Elisabeth has improved," he remarked to her mother, turning deliberately away.

"And I am sure Jack's left his heart in Central America," Elisabeth declared. "He was always fond of dark-complexioned ladies. Mr. Maraton, have you been a great traveller?"

He shook his head.

"I have been in South America," he replied, "and I know most of the country between San Francisco and New York pretty well."

"And Europe?" she asked.

"I walked from Vienna to Paris when I was a boy," he told her. "It's years, though, since I was on the Continent."

Her cousin began to talk of his hunting experiences, and every one listened. As soon as the service of luncheon was concluded, Lady Grenside rose.

"I dare say we shall all meet again before you go," she said. "Coffee is being served to you in the library, Stephen. We won't say good-bye to anybody. Jack, don't forget that you are dining here to-night. You shall take in the blackest young lady I can pick out for you."

Elisabeth followed her mother. At the last moment, Maraton caught a little whisper which only just floated from her lips.

"Till four o'clock!"

The two younger men took their departure almost immediately. The others moved into the library. Mr. Foley plunged at once into the subject which was uppermost in their minds.

"Mr. Maraton," he began, "we want to talk about these strikes. Horrill here, and Blend, have an idea that you are working towards some definite result—that you have more in your mind than I have told them. It is only this morning," he went on in a lower tone, and glancing towards the closed door, "that I explained to them your Manchester speech. They know now that England has you to thank for the fact that we are not at this moment preparing for war."



CHAPTER XXII

Between three and four o'clock, half a dozen people, on different devices, tried to draw Elisabeth from her retirement. Her particular friend called to suggest a round of the picture galleries, tea at the club, and a motor ride to Ranelagh. Lord Carton repeated his invitation to a game of golf. Two people invited her out into the country on various pretexts. Her dressmaker rang up and begged for her presence without delay. To all of these importunities Elisabeth remained deaf. She sat in her room in an easy-chair drawn up to the open window, with a book in her hand at which she scarcely glanced. Her thoughts were with the five men downstairs. Every now and then she glanced at the clock. She heard the conference break up. She sat quite still, listening. Presently there was the sound of a firm tread upon the stairs. She closed her book and breathed a little sigh. A servant ushered in Maraton.

"You have not forgotten, then," she said softly. "Come and sit in my favourite chair and rest for a few moments. I am sure that you must be tired."

He sank down with an air of content. She sat upon the end of the sofa, close to him, her head resting upon her hands.

"Well," she asked, "have you converted Sir William?"

"Up to a certain extent, I believe," he answered, after a momentary hesitation. "I don't think that he trusts me. Lawyers have a habit of not trusting people, you know. On the other hand, I don't think he means to give any trouble. Of course, they don't like what they have to face. No one does. It isn't every one who has the sagacity of your uncle."

"I am glad," she said, "that you appreciate him. Tell me now what is going to happen?"

"Mr. Foley will have his own way," Maraton declared. "The Manchester strike will be over in a few days. The Sheffield strike will be dealt with in the same manner. People will talk about the great loss of trade, the shocking depreciation of profits, the lowered incomes of the people, and all that sort of thing. What will really happen will be that the investor and the manufacturer are going to pay, and Labour is going to get just about a tithe of its own in these two cases. The country will be none the poorer. The money will be still there, only its distribution will be saner."

"And the end of it?" she murmured. "What will the end of it be?"

"We can none of us tell that;" he answered gravely. "There are some, like Sir William, who insist that when Labour has once started, as it will have started after Sheffield, there will be no holding it. I can not answer for it. I only say that the course Mr. Foley has adopted is distinctly the best for the country. If an obstinate man had been in his place to-day, nothing could have saved you from civil war first and possibly from foreign conquest later."

"A month ago," she observed, "you seemed fully prepared for these things."

"I was," he admitted.

"But you are an Englishman, are you not?"

"I am English. I daresay that under other considerations I might even have called myself a patriotic Englishman. As it is, I have very little feeling of that sort. There has been too much self-glorification, and it's the wrong class of people who've revelled in it and enjoyed it. It's a fine thing to die for one's country. It's a shameful thing that that country should grind the life and brains and blood out of a hundred of her children, day by day."

A servant brought in tea, delightfully served. There were small yellow china cups, pale tea with a faint, aromatic odour, thick cream, strawberries and cakes.

"If only you would appreciate it," she declared, "you are really rather a privileged person. No one has tea with me here."

"I do appreciate it," he assured her, "perhaps more than you think."

There was a moment's silence. As he was taking his cup from her fingers, their eyes met, and she looked away again almost immediately.

"I wish," she said, "that you would tell me more about yourself—what you did in America, what your life has been? You are rather a mysterious person, aren't you?"

"In a sense, perhaps, I must seem so," he admitted. "You see, I was an orphan very early. There wasn't any one who cared how I grew up, and I wandered a good deal. The earlier part of my life I was over here—I was at Heidelberg University, bye the bye—and in Paris for two years studying art, of all things! Then something—I don't know what it was—called me to America, and I found it hard to come back. It's a big country, you know, Lady Elisabeth. It gets hold of you. If it hadn't driven me out, I doubt whether I should ever have left it."

"But what was it first inspired you with this—well, wouldn't you call it a passion—for championing the cause of the people?"

He shook his head.

"Born in me, I suppose. I have watched them, lived with them, and then I have been through the whole gamut of Socialistic literature. It is not worth reading, most of it. The essential facts are there to look at, half-a-dozen phrases, a single field of view. It's all very simple."

"Now I am going to ask you something else," she went on. "That first night when we talked together, you seemed so full of hope, so dauntless. Since then, is it my fancy—since you came back from Manchester—are you a little disappointed 'with life? Don't you know in your heart that you've done what's best?"

"I wish I did," he answered simply. "My common sense tells me that I have chosen well, and then sometimes, in the nights, or when I am alone, other thoughts come to me, and I feel almost as though I had been faithless, as though I had simply chosen the easier way. Look how pleasant it is all being made for me! I am no longer an outcast; I bask in the sun of your uncle's patronage; people ask me to dinner, seek my friendship, people whom I feel ought to hate me. I am not sure about it all."

"Listen," she said, "if you had indeed pulled down those pillars, don't you think that day by day and night by night you would have been haunted by the faces of those whom you had destroyed? Think of the children who would have died of starvation, the women who would have been torn from their husbands, the ruined homes, the sorrow and the misery all through the land. Yours would have been the hand which had dealt this blow. You would not have lived to have seen into the future. Would it have been enough for you to have believed that you had done it for the best—that that unborn generation of which you spoke would have unfitted? Oh, I do not think so! I believe that when you realise it, you must be glad."

"It is at any rate consoling to hear you say so," he remarked. "Yet, when you have made up your mind to play the martyr, it is a little hard," he added, helping himself to strawberries, "to be treated like a pampered being."

"In other words," she laughed, "you are discontented because you have been successful?"

"I suppose human nature never meant to let us rest satisfied."

"Don't you ever think of yourself," she asked, "what your own life is going to be? You've settled down now. You will be a Member of Parliament in a few weeks, a Cabinet Minister before long. I know what my uncle thinks of you. He believes in you. To tell you the truth, so do I."

"I am glad."

"I believe," she went on, "that you will do the work that you came here to do. There is no reason why you should not do it from the Cabinet. But there is the rest—your own life. Are you never going to amuse yourself, to take holiday, to draw some of the outside things into your scheme of being?"