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A People's Man, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 8 |
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_ CHAPTER VIII The conference between Mr. Foley and Maraton was brief enough. The former arrived a few moments after his niece's departure. "I have come," Maraton announced, as they shook hands, "to accept your invitation to Lyndwood. You understand, I am sure, that that commits me to nothing?" Mr. Foley's expression was one of intense relief. "Naturally," he replied. "I quite understand that. I am delighted to think that you are coming at all. May I ask whether you have conferred with your friends about the matter?" Maraton shook his head. "I have not even mentioned it to them. I met what I understand to be a committee of the Labour Party this morning--a Mr. Dale, Abraham Weavel, Culvain, Samuel Borden and David Ross. Those were the names so far as I can remember. I did not mention my proposed visit to you at all. There seemed to me to be no necessity. I am subject to no one here." Mr. Foley smiled. "They won't like it," he declared frankly. "Their liking or disliking it will not affect the situation in the least," Maraton assured him. "I shall come, without a doubt. It will interest me to hear what you have to say, although unfortunately I cannot hold out the slightest hope--" "That is entirely understood," Mr. Foley interrupted. "Now how will you come? Lyndwood Park is just sixty miles from London. To-day is Friday, isn't it? I shall motor down there sometime to-morrow. Why won't you come down with me?" Maraton shook his head. "If you will excuse me," he said, "I will not fix any time definitely. I have a good deal of correspondence still to attend to, and there is one little matter which might keep me in town till the afternoon." "Let me send a car up for you," Mr. Foley suggested. "Thank you," Maraton replied, "I have already hired one for a time." "Then come just at what time suits you," Mr. Foley begged,--"the sooner the better, of course. Apart from that, I shall be about the place all day." In Buckingham Gate, Maraton came slowly to a standstill. The coach which he had seen in the Park an hour ago was drawn up in front of a large hotel. The young man who was driving it had just come down the steps and was drawing on his gloves. They met almost face to face. "Am I to speak to you?" the young man asked. "You had better," Maraton assented. "Tell me what you are doing here?" "I was bored with Paris," the young man answered. "My friends were all coming here. I had no idea that we were likely to meet." Maraton looked at him thoughtfully. As they stood face to face at that moment, there was a certain strange likeness between them, a likeness of the husk only. "I do not wish to interfere with your movements," Maraton said calmly. "Where you are is nothing to me. I proposed that you should remain away from London simply because I fancied that it would be easier for you to observe the conditions which exist between us. So long as you remember them, however, your whereabouts are indifferent to me." The young man laughed a little nervously. "You're not over-cordial!" Maraton shrugged his shoulders. "The world in which you live," he remarked, "is a training school, I suppose, for false sentiment. The slight kinship that there is between us is of no account to me. I simply remind you once more that it is to your advantage to neither know me or to know of me. Remember that, and it may be London or Paris or New York--wherever you choose." The young man remounted his coach, and Maraton passed on. He walked without a pause to the square in which his house was situated. Here he found Aaron hard at work and, sitting down at once, he began to sign his letters. "No end of people have been here," Aaron announced. "I have got rid of them all." "Good!" Maraton said shortly. "By-the-bye, Aaron, isn't there a meeting to-night at the Clarion?" Aaron nodded. "David Ross is going to speak. He can move them when he starts. My sister is going to call here for me, and I thought if you didn't want me, I'd like to go." "We will all go together," Maraton decided. "We can creep in somewhere at the back, I suppose. I want to hear how they do it." The young man's face lit up with joy. "There's sure to be lots of people there," he declared, "but we can find a seat at the back quite easily." "What's it all about?" Maraton asked. "The proposed boiler-maker's strike," Aaron replied eagerly. "The meeting is really a meeting of the workpeople at Boulding's. But are you sure you won't go on the platform, sir?" Maraton shook his head. "That is just what I don't want to do. I want to see what these meetings are like, what sort of arguments are used, what the spirit of the people is, if I can. That is what I would really like to find out, Aaron--the spirit of the people." The young man looked up from his work. He was greatly changed during the last few hours. He was wearing a new suit of clothes and clean linen; his hair had been cut, his face shaved. Yet in some respects he was unaltered. His eyes still burned in their sockets, his lips still quivered. "I will tell you what the people are like," he said. "They are like dumb animals, like sheep. They have suffered so long and so much that their nerve power is numbed. They lack will, they lack initiative. They are narrowed down to a daily life which makes of them something little different from an animal. Yet they can be roused. David Ross himself has done it, done it like none of those other M.P.'s. I have seen him carried out of himself. He is like some of these Welshmen and Salvation Army people when they're half drunk with religion--the words seem to come to them in a stream. That's how David Ross is sometimes. But it isn't often any one can get at them." "That is what they say over on the other side," he remarked softly. "They've got to be in such a state," Aaron continued, "that nothing appeals to them except some material benefit; a pipe of tobacco or a mug of beer will stir them more than any dream of freedom. Oh! it's sad to see them, often. I used to go to the gates at the shipbuilding yard and watch them come out. Ten years about does for a man there. It's a short spell." Maraton sighed. "Yet they endure," he muttered to himself. "Yet they endure," Aaron echoed. "Can't you see why? Don't you know that it is because they haven't heard the word--the one great word? That's what they're waiting for--for the prophet to open their eyes and lead them out of the wilderness. Only just at first it may be that even his voice will sound in vain. You are sure you won't mind my sister coming with us, sir? She is so interested and they all know her down there." "It will be an advantage to have your sister," Maraton replied. "There are many things I should like to ask her." _ |
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