A People's Man Part 3

"People ask me so many questions!"

"Tell me this," she continued, without heeding his interruption. "Do you, in your heart, believe that you are justified in going about the world preaching your hateful doctrines, seeking out the toilers only to fill them with discontent and to set them against their employers, preaching everywhere bloodshed and anarchy, inflaming the minds of people who in ordinary times are contented, even happy? You have made yourself feared and hated in every country of the world. You have brought America almost to the verge of revolution. And now, just when England needs peace most, when affairs on the Continent are so threatening and every one connected with the Government of the country is pa.s.sing through a time of the gravest anxiety, you intend, they say, to start a campaign here. You say that you love the truth. Answer me this question truthfully, then. Do you believe that you are justified?"

He had listened to her at first with a slight, tolerant smile upon his lips, a smile which faded gradually away. He was sombre, almost stern, when she had finished. He seemed in some curious way to have a.s.sumed a larger shape, to have become more imposing. His att.i.tude had a strange and indefinable influence upon her.

She was suddenly conscious of her youth and inexperience--bitterly and rebelliously conscious of them--before he had even opened his lips. Her own words sounded crude and unconvincing.

"I am not one of the flamboyant orators of the Socialist party, Lady Elisabeth," he said, "nor am I one of those who are able to see much joy or very much hopefulness in life under present conditions. For every word I have spoken and every line I have written, I accept the full and complete responsibility."

"Those men who were murdered in Chicago, murdered at your instigation because they tried to break the strike--what of them?"

He looked at her as one might have looked at a child.

"Their lives were a necessary sacrifice in a good cause," he declared.

"Does one think now of the sea of blood through which France once purged herself? Believe me, young lady, there is nothing in the world more to be avoided than this sentimental and exaggerated reverence for life. It is born of a false ideal, artistically and actually. Life is a sacrifice to be offered in a just cause when necessary.

"I imagine that this is your uncle."

Mr. Foley was standing upon the threshold of the room, his hand outstretched, his thin, long face full of conviction.

"My niece has succeeded in discovering you, then, Mr. Maraton," he said. "I am glad."

Maraton smiled as he shook hands.

"I have certainly had the pleasure of making your niece's acquaintance,"

he admitted. "We have had quite an interesting discussion."

Elisabeth turned away without looking towards him.

"I will leave Mr. Maraton to you, uncle," she said. "He will tell you that I have been very candid indeed. We were coming face to face with Mr. Culvain, so I brought him in here."

She did not glance again in Maraton's direction, nor did she offer him any form of farewell salutation. Mr. Foley frowned slightly as he glanced after her. Maraton, too, watched her leave the room. She paused for a moment on the threshold to gather up her train, a graceful but at the same time imperious gesture. She left them without a backward look. Mr. Foley turned quickly towards his companion and was relieved at the expression which he found in his face.

"My niece is a little earnest in her views," he remarked, "too much so, I am afraid, for a practical politician. She is quite well-informed and a great help to me at times."

"I found her altogether charming," Maraton said quietly. "She has, too, the unusual gift of honesty."

Mr. Foley was once more a little uneasy. It was impossible for him to forget Elisabeth's outspoken verdict upon this man and all his works.

"The young are never tolerant," he murmured.

"And quite rightly," Maraton observed. "There is nothing more to be envied in youth than its magnificent certainty. It knows! . . . I am flattered, Mr. Foley, that you should have received me in your house to-night. Your niece's att.i.tude towards me, even if a trifle crude, is, I am afraid, the general one amongst your cla.s.s in this country."

"To be frank with you, I agree," Mr. Foley a.s.sented. "I, personally, Mr. Maraton, am trying to be a dissenter. It is for that reason that I begged you to come here to-night and discuss the matter with me before you committed yourself to any definite plan of action in this country."

"Your message was a surprise to me," Maraton admitted calmly. "At the same time, it was a summons which I could not disregard. As you see, I am here."

Mr. Foley drew a key from his pocket and led the way across the room towards a closed door.

"I want to make sure that we are not disturbed. I am going to take you through to my study, if I may."

They pa.s.sed into a small inner room, plainly but comfortably furnished.

"My own den," Mr. Foley explained, closing the door behind him with an air of relief. "Will you smoke, Mr. Maraton, or drink anything?"

"Neither, thank you," Maraton answered. "I am here to listen. I am curious to hear what there is that you can have to say to me."

CHAPTER III

Mr. Foley pointed to an easy-chair. Maraton, however, did not at once respond to his gesture of invitation. He was standing, tense and silent, with head upraised, listening. From the street outside came a strange, rumbling sound.

"You permit?" he asked, stepping to the window and drawing the curtain a few inches on one side. "There is something familiar about that sound.

I heard it last in Chicago."

Mr. Foley rose slowly from the easy-chair into which he had thrown himself, and stood by his visitor's side. Outside, the pavements were lined by policemen, standing like sentries about half-a-dozen yards apart. The tented entrance to the house was guarded by a solid phalanx of men in uniform. A mounted inspector was riding slowly up and down in the middle of the road. At the entrance to the street, barely fifty yards away, a moving ma.s.s of people, white-faced, almost spectral, were pa.s.sing slowly beneath the pale gas-lamps.

"The people!" Maraton murmured, with a curious note in his tone, half of reverence, half of pity.

"The mob!" Mr. Foley echoed bitterly. "They brawl before the houses of those who do their best to serve them. They bark always at our heels.

Perhaps to-night it is you whom they have come to honour. Your bodyguard, eh, Mr. Maraton?"

"If they have discovered that I am here, it is not unlikely," Maraton admitted calmly.

Mr. Foley dropped the curtain which he had taken from his companion's fingers. Moving back into the room, he turned on more light. Then he resumed his seat.

"Mr. Maraton," he began, "we met only once before, I think. That was four years ago this summer. Answer me honestly--do you see any change in me?"

Maraton leaned a little forward. His face showed some concern, as he answered:

"You are not in the best of health just now, I fear, Mr. Foley."

"I am as well as I shall ever be," was the quiet reply. "What you see in my face is just the record of these last four years, the outward evidence of four years of ceaseless trouble and anxiety. I will not call myself yet a broken man, but the time is not far off."

Maraton remained silent. His att.i.tude was still sympathetic, but he seemed determined to carry out his role of listener.

"If the political history of these four years is ever truthfully written," Mr. Foley continued, "the world will be amazed at the calm indifference of the people threatened day by day with national disaster.

We who have been behind the scenes have kept a stiff upper lip before the world, but I tell you frankly, Mr. Maraton, that no Cabinet who ever undertook the government of this country has gone through what we have gone through. Three times we have been on the brink of war--twice on our own account and once on account of those whom we are bound to consider our allies. The other national disaster we have had to face, you know of. Still, here we are safe up to to-night. There is nothing in the whole world we need now so much as rest--just a few months'

freedom from anxiety. Until last week we had dared to hope for it.

Now, breathless still from our last escape, we are face to face suddenly with all the possibilities of your coming."

"You fear the people," Maraton remarked quietly.

Mr. Foley's pale, worn face suddenly lit up.

"Fear the people!" he repeated, with a note of pa.s.sion in his tone. "I fear the people for their own sake; I fear the ruin and destruction they may, by ill-advised action, bring upon themselves and their country.

Mr. Maraton, grant, will you not, that I am a man of some experience?

Believe, I pray you, that I am honest. Let me a.s.sure you of this. If the people be not wisely led now, the Empire which I and my Ministers have striven so hard to keep intact, must fall. There are troubles pressing upon us still from every side. If the people are wrongly advised to-day, the British Empire must fall, even as those other great dynasties of the past have fallen."