A People's Man Part 32

Maraton was interested. He walked slowly along by the side of his companion.

"I did not," he admitted. "I came with other views.

"I knew it!" Ross exclaimed, almost fiercely. "I felt it, man. You came to preach redemption, even though the means were sharp and short and sudden, means of blood, means of death. Before you ever came here, I seemed to hear your voice crying across that great continent, crying even across the ocean. It was a terrible cry, but it seemed as though it must reach up into heaven and down into h.e.l.l, for it was aflame with truth. It seemed to me that I could see the revolution upon us, the death that is like sleep, the looking down once more from some undiscovered place upon the new morning. You never uttered that cry over here."

Maraton glanced at his companion curiously.

"Mine was an immense responsibility," he said. "Granted that I had the power, do you think that I had the right to stir up a civil war here in the face of the help I was promised for our people?"

David Ross sighed.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I only know that many years ago, Peter Dale, when he was a young man, spoke as though the word of truth were burning in his heart. He was for a revolution. He would be content with nothing less. And Borden was like that, and Graveling, and others whom you don't know. And then the people gave them their mandate, knocked a bit of money together, and sent them to Parliament. There, somehow or other, they seemed to fall into the easier ways. They worked stolidly and honestly, no doubt, but something had gone, something we've all missed, something that by this time might have helped. When they told me--it was Aaron who came and told me--rode his bicycle like a madman, all the way from Soho. 'Maraton is come!' he shouted. Then it seemed to me that freedom was here; no more compromises, but battle--the naked sword, battle with the wrongs of generations to requite. Is the sword sheathed?"

Maraton pa.s.sed his arm through his companion's.

"It is not sheathed," he declared, "nor while I have life will it be sheathed. If I have chosen the quieter methods, it is because for the present I have come to believe that they are the best. Six hundred thousand people in Lancas.h.i.+re are going to start life next Monday with an increase of between fifteen and twenty per cent to their weekly wage.

Isn't that something to the good? And then, in a few weeks, every forge and furnace in Sheffield will be cold until the men's demands are granted there. And when that is over, we go for every industry, one by one, throughout the country. Before a year is past, I reckon that many millions will have pa.s.sed from the pockets of the middle cla.s.ses into the pockets of the labouring man. I am going to set that stream running faster and faster, and then I am going to begin all over again. With prosperity, the labouring cla.s.ses will gain strength. You will have more time for thought, for education, for self-knowledge. And as they gain strength, once more we raise our hands. Do they seem slow to you, our methods, David Ross? Believe me, they did to me. Yet in my heart I know that I have chosen the right."

The man drew a little sigh. There may have been disappointment mingled with it, yet there was a certain amount of relief.

"I was afraid for you, Maraton," he said. "I thought of those others when they stumbled upon the easy ways, and I was afraid. With you it may be different. Hold on your way, then. It is not for me to criticise. But if you slacken, if your hand droops, then I shall come again."

He turned abruptly away and disappeared, walking with quick, shambling footsteps. Maraton looked after him thoughtfully for several moments, then he continued on his way homewards.

CHAPTER XXIII

The last words had been spoken, the suspense of a few hours was at an end. Maraton was on his way back to London, a duly accredited Member of Parliament for the eastern division of Nottingham. From his place in the railway carriage he fancied that he could hear even now the roar of voices, feel the thrill of emotion with which he had waited for the result. An Independent Member, even when backed as Maraton had been backed, is never in a wholly safe position. On the whole, he had done well. He had increased the majority of four hundred to a majority of seven hundred. And this, too, in the face of unexpected difficulties.

At the last minute a surprise had been sprung upon the const.i.tuency. A Labour candidate had entered the field. Maraton's telegram to Peter Dale had produced no reply. The man, if not officially recognised, was at least not officially discouraged. His intervention had been useless, however. Maraton had carried the working men with him. In a sense it was an election on the strangest issues which had ever been fought.

Many of the most far-seeing journalists of the day predicted in this new alliance the redistribution of Parties which for some time had been inevitable. So far as Maraton was concerned, it was, without doubt, an unexpected phase in his career. He was Maraton, M.P., representative of a manufacturing town; elected, indeed, as an Independent, but with a weighty backing of the Unionist Party behind him. The next time he spoke, probably, if he did speak before his journey to Sheffield, would be in the House of Commons. Would he, like those others, feel the inertia of it, the slow decay of his ambitions, the fatal tendency towards compromise?

Arrived at St. Pancras, Maraton drove straight to his house in Russell Square and, letting himself in with his latch-key, made his way to the study. The lights were still burning there. Julia and Aaron were sitting opposite to one another at the end of the long table, a typewriter between them and a pile of papers by Aaron's side. Julia rose at once to her feet.

"You are in!" she cried. "We have been telephoning all the evening. We heard half an hour ago."

Maraton nodded.

"In by seven hundred. Not bad, I suppose, considering that I must have been rather a hard nut to crack. Has Peter Dale been here?"

Aaron shook his head.

"He hasn't been near the place."

Maraton's face hardened.

"You know that they sprang a Labour candidate upon me at the last moment? He did me no particular harm, but it was an infamous trick. I wired to Dale yesterday and had no reply."

"David Ross has been here," Aaron said. "We heard all about it from him. There is dissension in the camp. Dale was in favour of withdrawing their candidate, but Graveling wouldn't have it."

"He did me no harm, anyway," Maraton remarked. "The Labour vote was mine from the start."

"So it ought to have been," Aaron declared vigorously. "What could they do but vote for you, with Manchester staring them in the face?"

Maraton's expression lightened, a gleam of humour twinkled in his eyes.

"After all," he murmured, "it would have been almost Gilbertian if I had been returned to Parliament with the Labour vote against me! . . .

Aaron, go and ring up Peter Dale. I want this matter cleared up. Ask him when we can meet."

Aaron left the room upon his errand. Maraton moved restlessly about the room for a moment or two. He mixed himself a drink at the sideboard, and lit a cigarette. Julia's eyes followed him all the time.

"So you are a Member of Parliament," she said at last.

"I hope you approve?" he queried.

Julia did not answer him at once. He looked across at her from the depth of the easy chair into which he had thrown himself. She was wearing a plain black dress, b.u.t.toned to her throat and unrelieved even by a linen collar or any touch of white. She was pale, and her eyes seemed all the more beautiful for the faint violet lines beneath them.

"Parliament has been the grave of so many men's careers," Maraton continued. "I am fully warned. Nothing of the sort is going to happen to me. I wouldn't have gone in now but for Foley. It's only fair. It helps him, and he's sticking to his pledges like a man."

"When do you go to Sheffield?" she asked.

"Next Wednesday. No postponements."

Julia nodded.

"Mr. Elgood has been here this afternoon," she said, "from Sheffield.

He is the secretary of the Union, you know. He is coming again to-morrow morning. He wants to talk to you about the boys' age limit."

"Any letters of consequence?"

Julia pointed a little disdainfully to a pile upon the table.

"All invitations," she observed coldly. "Perhaps you had better look them through."

Maraton shook his head.

"They are no use to me," he declared, "unless they're political?"

He rose and stood by Julia's side, glancing idly through the heap of papers by the side of her machine.

"You seem to have found plenty to do, anyway," he remarked.

"There was a great deal," she a.s.sured him. "I think I have collected all the possible information you can need on the steel works of Sheffield."

"Haven't been overworking, I hope?"

She laughed at him softly. Her parted lips seemed somehow to lighten her face.