A People's Man Part 46

"I was," Maraton admitted coolly.

Graveling looked around with a little cry of triumph.

"It's a plot, this; nothing more nor less than a plot!" he declared vigorously. "What sort of an Englishman does he call himself, I wonder?

It's the foreigners that are at the bottom of the lot of it! They want our trade, they'd be glad of our country. They've bribed this man Maraton to get it without the trouble of fighting for it, even!"

Maraton moved towards the door. Holding it open, he turned and faced them.

"Before I came," he said, "I hoped that you might be men. I find you just the usual sort of pigmies. You call yourselves people's men! You haven't mastered the elementary truths of your religion. What's England, or France, or any other country in the world, by the side of humanity? Be off! I'll go my own way. Go yours, and take your little tinsel of jingoism with you. Whenever you want to fight me, I shall be ready."

"And fight you we shall," Peter Dale thundered, "mark you that! There's limits, even to us. The Government of this country mayn't be all it should be, but, after all, it's our English Government, and there is a point at which every man has to support it. The law is the law, and so you may find out, my friend!"

They filed out. Maraton closed the door after them. He was alone. He threw open the window to get rid of the odour of tobacco smoke which still hung about. The echo of their raucous voices seemed still in the air. These were the men who should have been his friends and a.s.sociates! These were the men to whom he had the right to look for sympathy! They treated him like a dangerous lunatic. Their own small interests, their own small careers were threatened, and they were up in arms without a moment's hesitation. Not one of them had made the slightest attempt to see the whole truth. The word "revolution" had terrified them. The approach of a crisis had driven their thoughts into one narrow focus: what would it mean for them?

He resumed his seat. The empty chairs pushed back seemed, somehow or other, allegorical. He was alone. The man for whose friends.h.i.+p he had indeed felt some desire, the man who had opened his hands and heart to him--Stephen Foley--would know him henceforth no more. He drew his thoughts resolutely away from that side of his life, closed his ears to the music which beat there, crushed down the fancies which sprang up so easily if ever he relaxed his hold upon his will. He was lonely; for the first time in his life, perhaps, intensely lonely. In all the country there was scarcely a human being who would not soon look upon him as a madman. What did one live for, after all? Just to continue the dull, hopeless struggle--to fight without hope of reward, to fight with oneself as well as with the world?

The door was opened softly. Julia came in. Perhaps she guessed from his att.i.tude something of his trouble, for she moved at once to his side.

"They have gone?" she asked.

"They have gone," he admitted.

She sighed.

"I shall not ask you anything," she said, "because I know. Pigs of men--pigs with their noses to the ground! How can they lift their heads! You could not make them understand!"

"I scarcely tried," he confessed. "They have found out, for one thing, that I am wealthy, a fact that does not concern them in the least, and they accused me of it as though it were a crime. It was all so hopeless. You cannot make men understand who have not the capacity for understanding. You cannot make the blind see. They even reminded me that they were Englishmen. They talked the usual rubbish about conquest and foreign enemies and patriotism."

"Clods!" she muttered. "But you?"

She sat down beside him, her eyes full of light. She laid her hands boldly upon his.

"You will not let yourself be discouraged?" she I pleaded. "Remember that even if you are alone in the world, you are right. You fight without hope of reward, without hope of appreciation. You will be the enemy of every one, and yet you know in your heart that you have the truth. You know it, and I know it, and Aaron knows it, and David Ross believes it. There are millions of others, if you could only find them, who understand, too--men too great to come out from their studies and talk claptrap to the mob. There are other people in the world who understand, who will sympathise. What does it matter that you cannot hear their spoken voices? And we--well, you know about us."

Her voice was almost a caress, the loneliness in his heart was so intense.

"Oh, you know about us!" she continued. "I--oh, I am your slave! And Aaron! We believe, we understand. There isn't anything in this world,"

she went on, with a little sob, "there isn't anything I wouldn't gladly do to help you! If only one could help!"

He returned very gently the pressure of her burning fingers. She drew his eyes towards hers, and he was startled to see in those few minutes how beautiful she was. There was inspiration in her splendidly modelled face--the high forehead, the eyes brilliantly clear, kindled now with the light of enthusiasm and all the softer burning of her exquisite sympathy. Her lips--full and red they seemed--were slightly parted.

She was breathing quickly, like one who has run a race.

"Oh, dear master," she whispered--"let me call you that--don't, even for a moment, be faint-hearted!"

The door was suddenly thrown open. Selingman entered, an enormous bunch of roses in his hand, a green hat on the back of his head.

"Faint-hearted?" he exclaimed. "What a word! Who is faint-hearted?

Julia, I have brought you flowers. You would have to kiss rue for them if he were not here. Don't glower at me. Every one kisses me. Great ladies would if I asked them to. That's the best of being a genius.

Lord, what a wreck he looks! What's wrong with you, man? I know! I met them at the corner of the street. There was the rat-faced fellow with the red tie, and the miner--Labour Members, they call themselves.

I would like to see them with a spade! Have you been trying to get at their brains, Maraton? What's that to make a man like you depressed?

Did you think they had any? Did you think you could draw a single spark of fire out of dull pap like that? Bah!"

Julia was moving quietly about the room, putting the flowers in water.

Aaron had slipped in and was seated before his desk. Selingman, his broad face set suddenly into hard lines, plumped himself into the chair which Peter Dale had occupied.

"Man alive, lift your head--lift your head to the skies!" he ordered.

"You're the biggest man in this country. Will you treat the p.r.i.c.k of a pin like a mortal wound? What did you expect from them? Lord Almighty! . . . I've packed my bag. I'm ready for the road. Two hundred and fifty pounds a time from the _Daily Oracle_ for thumbnail sketches of the Human Firebrand! Lord, what is any one depressed for in this country! It's chock-full of humour. If I lived here long, I should be fat."

He looked downward at his figure with complacency. Julia laughed softly.

"Aren't you fat now?" she asked.

"Immense," he confessed, "but it's nothing to what I could be. It agrees with me," he went on. "You see, I have learnt the art of being satisfied with myself. I know what I am. I am content. That is where you, my friend Maraton, need to grow a little older. Oh, you are great enough, great enough if you only knew it! Even Maxendorf admits that, and he told me frankly he's disappointed in you. Don't sit there like a dumb figure any longer. We are all coming with you, aren't we? I have brought my car over from Belgium. It is a caravan. It will hold us all--Aaron, too. Let us start; let us get out of this accursed city.

Where is the first move?"

"We can't leave tonight," Maraton said. "I am addressing a meeting of the representatives of the Amalgamated Railway Workers--that is, if Peter Dale doesn't manage to stop it. He'll do his best."

"He won't succeed," Aaron declared eagerly. "I saw Ernshaw two hours ago. They're on to Peter Dale and his move. Do you know why Peter Dale was late here this afternoon? He'd been to Downing Street. I heard.

Foley's lost you, but he's holding on to the Labour Party. He's pitting the Labour Party against you in the country." Selingman laughed heartily.

"He's got it!" he exclaimed. "That's the scheme. I am all for a fight, spoiling for it. Fighting and eating are the grandest things in the world! What time is the meeting?"

"Seven o'clock," Maraton replied.

"Two hours we will give you," Selingman continued. "Nine o'clock, a little restaurant I know in the West End, the four of us before we start. We will do ourselves well."

"Before I leave London," Maraton said, "I must see Maxendorf once more."

Selingman stroked his face thoughtfully.

"Your risk," he remarked. "Don't you let these chaps think you are mixed up with Maxendorf."

"I must see Maxendorf," Maraton insisted. "When I leave London to-night, the die is cast. I have cut myself adrift from everything in life. I shall make enemies with every cla.s.s of society. There must be one word more pa.s.s between Maxendorf and me before I hold up the torch."

"He's got it," Selingman declared. "The trick is on him already.

Maxendorf he shall see. I will arrange a meeting somewhere--not at the hotel. Miss Julia, write down this address. This is where we all meet at nine. Half-past six now. I will take you round to your meeting, Maraton. Do you want any papers?"

"I want no papers," Maraton answered. "I speak to these men to-night as I shall speak to them in the north. I take no papers from London with me, no figures, nothing. It is just the things I see I want to tell them."

Selingman nodded.

"You shall speak immortal words," he declared. "And I--I am the one man in the world to transcribe them, to write in the background, to give them colour and point. What giants we are, Maraton--you with your stream of words, and I with my pen! Miss Julia," he added, "remember that you are to be our inspiration as well as my secretary. Put on your prettiest clothes to-night. It is our last holiday."

She looked at him coldly.

"I do not wear pretty clothes," she said.

"Little fool!" he exclaimed. "Just because you've the big things beating in your brain, you'd like to close your eyes to the fact that your s.e.x is the most wonderful thing on G.o.d's earth. That's the worst of a woman. If ever she begins to think seriously, she does her hair in a lump, changes silk for cotton, forgets her corsets, and leaves off ribbons. Silly, silly child!" he went on, shaking his forefinger at her. "I tell you women have done their greatest work in the world when their brains have been covered with a pretty hat. . . . There she goes, he growled," as she left the room. "Thinks I'm a flippant old windbag, I know. And I'm not. Why don't you fall in love with her, Maraton? It would be the making of you. Even a prophet needs relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," he concluded with a graver note in his tone. "She has found the fire somewhere. There were women like her who held Robespierre's hand."