A People's Man Part 41

Perhaps I shall be in time after our interview with Maxendorf, or before. I will go home and change, on the chance."

The Prime Minister nodded, but his slightly relaxed expression seemed to show that he appreciated Maraton's intention. Selingman looked after him gloomily as he left the room.

"What devilish impulse," he muttered, "leads these men to pa.s.s into your rotten English politics! It is like a poet trying to navigate a dredger. Bah!"

"Need you go into that gloomy chamber again, my friend?"

Maraton shook his head.

"I have finished," he declared. "There will be no division."

"But do you never speak there?"

"Up to now I have not uttered more than a dozen words or so," Maraton replied. "You try it yourself--try speaking to a crowd of well-dressed, well-fed, smug units of respectability, each with his mind full of his own affairs or the affairs of his const.i.tuency. You try it. You wouldn't find the words stream, I can tell you."

Selingman grunted.

"And now--what now?"

"To my rooms--to my house," Maraton announced, "while I change."

"It is good. I shall talk to your secretary. I shall talk to Miss Julia while you disappear. Shall I rob you, my friend?"

"You would rob me of a great deal if you took her away," Maraton answered, "but--"

Selingman interrupted him with a fiercely contemptuous exclamation.

"You have it--the rotten, insular conceit of these Englishmen! You think that she would not come? Do you think that if I were to say to her,--'Come and listen while I make garlands of words, while I take you through the golden doors!'--do you think that she would not put her hand in mine? Fancy--to live in my fairy chamber, to listen while I give shape and substance to all that I conceive--what woman would refuse!"

Maraton laughed softly as they pa.s.sed out into the Palace yard.

"Try Julia," he suggested.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Selingman had the air of one who has achieved a personal triumph as, with his arm in Maraton's, he led him towards the man whom they had come to visit.

"Behold!" he exclaimed. "It is a triumph, this! It is a thing to be remembered! I have brought you two together!"

Maraton's first impressions of Maxendorf were curiously mixed. He saw before him a tall, lanky figure of a man, dressed in sombre black, a man of dark complexion, with beardless face and tanned skin plentifully freckled. His hair and eyes were coal black. He held out his hand to Maraton, but the smile with which he had welcomed Selingman had pa.s.sed from his lips.

"You are not the Maraton I expected some day to meet," he said, a little bluntly, "and yet I am glad to know you."

Selingman shrugged his shoulders.

"Max--my friend Max, do not be peevish," he begged. "I tell you that he is the Maraton of whom we have spoken together. I have heard him. I have been to Sheffield and listened. Don't be prejudiced, Max. Wait."

Maxendorf motioned them to seats and stood with his finger upon the bell.

"Yes," Selingman a.s.sented, "we will drink with you. You breathe of the Rhine, my friend. I see myself sitting with you in your terraced garden, drinking Moselle wine out of cut gla.s.ses. So it shall be. We will fall into the atmosphere. What a palace you live in, Max! Is it because you are an amba.s.sador that they must house you so splendidly?"

Maxendorf glanced around him. He was in one of the best suites in the hotel, but he had the air of one who was only then, for the first time, made aware of the fact.

"These things are done for me," he said carelessly. "It seems I have come before I was expected. The Emba.s.sy is scarcely ready for occupation."

He ordered wine from the waiter and exchanged personal reminiscences with Selingman until it was brought. Selingman grunted with satisfaction.

"Two bottles," he remarked. "Come, I like that. A less thoughtful man would have ordered one first and the other afterwards. The period of waiting for the second bottle would have destroyed the appet.i.te. Quite an artist, my friend Max. And the wine--well, we shall see."

He raised the gla.s.s to his lips with the air of a connoisseur.

"It will do," he decided, setting it down empty and lighting one of his black cigars. "Now let us talk. Or shall I, for a change, be silent and let you talk? To-day my tongue has been busy. Maraton is a silent man, and he has a silent secretary with great eyes behind which lurk fancies and dreams the poor little thing has never been encouraged to speak of. A silent man--Maraton. Rather like you, Max. Which of you will talk the more, I wonder? I shall be dumb."

"It will be I who will talk," Maxendorf a.s.serted. "I, because I have a mission, things to explain to our friend here, if he will but listen."

"Listen--of course he will listen!" Selingman interrupted. "You two--what was it the _Oracle_ called you both--the world's deliverers.

Put your heads together and decide how you are going to do it. The people over here, Max, are rotting in their kennels. Sink-holes they live in. Live! What a word!"

"If you indeed have something to say to me," Maraton proposed, "let us each remember who we are. There is no need for preambles. I know you to be a people's man. We have all watched your rise. We have all marvelled at it."

"A Socialist statesman in the stiffest-necked country of Europe,"

Selingman muttered. "Marvelled at it, indeed!"

"I am where I am," Maxendorf declared, "because the world is governed by laws, and in the main they are laws of justice and right. The people of my country fifty years ago were as deep in the mire as the people of your country to-day. Their liberation has already dawned. That is why I stand where I do. Your people, alas! are still dwellers in the caves. The moment for you has not yet arrived. When I heard that Maraton had come to England, I changed all my plans. I said to myself--' I will go to Maraton and I will show him how he may lead his people to the light.' And then I heard other things."

"Continue," Maraton said simply.

Maxendorf rose to his feet. He came a little nearer to Maraton. He stood looking down at him with folded arms--a lank, gaunt figure, the angular lines of his body and limbs accentuated by his black clothes and black tie.

"It came upon me like a thunderbolt," Maxendorf proceeded. "I heard unexpectedly that Maraton had entered Parliament, had placed his hand in the hand of a Minister--not even the leader of the people's Party. You do not read the Press of my country, perhaps. You did not hear across the seas the groan which came from the hearts of my children. I said to myself--'The Maraton whom we knew of exists no longer, yet I will go and see.'"

Maraton moved in his chair a little uneasily. He felt suddenly as though he were a prisoner at the bar, and this man his judge.

"You do not understand the circ.u.mstances which I found existing on my arrival here," Maraton explained. "You do not understand the promises which I have received from Mr. Foley, and which he is already carrying into effect. You read of the Lancas.h.i.+re strike?"

Maxendorf nodded his long head slowly but said nothing.

"The settlement of that," Maraton continued, "was arranged before I spoke to the people. It is the same with Sheffield. For the first time, the Parliament of this country has pa.s.sed a measure compelling the manufacturers to recognise and treat with the demands of the people.

Trade Unionism has been lifted to an entirely different level. There are three Bills now being drafted--people's Bills. Revolutionary measures they would have been called, a thousand years ago. Every industry in the country will have its day. In the next ten years Capital will have earned many millions less, and those many millions will have gone to the labouring cla.s.ses."

"Is it you who speak," Maxendorf asked grimly, "or is this another man--a sophist living in the shadow of Maraton's fame? Is there anything of the truth, anything of the great compelling truth in this piecemeal legislation? Is it in this way that the freedom of a country can be gained? One gathered that the Maraton who sent his message across the seas had different plans."

"I had," Maraton admitted, "but the time came when I was forced to ask myself whether they were not rather the plans of the dreamer and the theorist, when I was forced to ask myself whether I was justified in destroying this generation for the sake of those to come. Life, after all, is a marvellous gift. You and I may believe in immortality, but who can be sure? It is easy enough to play chess, but when the p.a.w.ns are human lives, who would not hesitate?"

Maxendorf sighed.

"I cannot talk with you, Maraton," he said. "You will not speak with me honestly. You came, you landed on these sh.o.r.es with an inspired idea--something magnificent, something worthy. You have subst.i.tuted for it the time-worn methods of all the reformers since the days of Adam, who have parted with their principles and dabbled in sentimental altruism. Piecemeal legislation--what can it do?"