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A People's Man, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Chapter 18 |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII Those wonderful few days at Manchester had passed, and oppressed by the inevitable reaction, Julia was back at work in the clothing factory. She had given up her place by the window to an anaemic-looking child of seventeen, who had a habit of fainting during these long, summer afternoons. Her own fingers were weary and she was conscious of an increasing fatigue as the hours of toil passed on. No breath of air came in from the sun-baked streets through the wide-flung windows. The atmosphere of the long, low room, in which over a hundred girls closely huddled together, were working, was sickly with the smell of cloth. There was no conversation. The click of the machines seemed sometimes to her partially dulled senses like the beating out of their human lives. It seemed impossible that the afternoon would ever end. The interval for tea came and passed--tea in tin cans, with thick bread and melting butter. The respite was worse almost than the mechanical toil. Julia's eyes ranged over the housetops, westwards. There was another world of trees, flowers, and breezes; another world altogether. She set her teeth. It was hard to have no place in it. A little time ago she had been content, content even to suffer, because she was toiling with these others whom she loved, and for whom, in her profound pity, she poured out her life and her talents. And now there was a change. Was it the spell of this cruel summer, she wondered, or was it something else--some new desire in her incomplete life, something from which for so many years she had been free? She let her thoughts, momentarily, go adrift. She was back again in the cab, her fingers clutching his arm, her heart thrilling with the wonderful passionate splendour of those few hours. She recalled his looks, his words, his little acts of kindness. She realised in those few moments how completely he filled her thoughts. She began to tremble. "Better have your place by the window back again, Miss Thurnbrein," the girl at her side said suddenly. "You're looking like Clara, just before she popped off. My, ain't it awful!" Julia came back to herself and refused the child's offer. "I shall be all right directly," she declared. "This weather can't last much longer." "If only the storm would come!" the child muttered, as she turned back to her work. If only the storm would come! Julia seemed to take these words with her as she passed at last into the streets, at the stroke of the hour. It was like that with her, too. There was something inside, something around her heart, which was robbing her of her rest, haunting her through the long, lonely nights, torturing her through these miserable days. Soon she would have to turn and face it. She shivered with fear at the thought. In the street a man accosted her. She looked up with an almost guilty start. A little cry broke from her lips. It was one of disappointment, and Graveling's unpleasant lips were twisted into a sneer as he raised his cap. "Thought it was some one else, eh?" he remarked. "Well, it isn't, you see; it's me. There's no one else with a mind to come down here this baking afternoon to fetch you." "I thought it might be Aaron," she faltered. "Never mind whom you thought it might have been," he answered gruffly. "Aaron's busy, I expect, typing letters to all the lords and ladies your Mr. Maraton hobnobs with. I'm here, and I want to talk with you." "I am too tired," she pleaded. "I am going straight home to lie down." "I'd thought of that," he answered stubbornly. "I've got a taxicab waiting at the corner. Not often I treat myself to anything of that sort. I'm going to take you up to one of those parks in the West End we've paid so much for and see so little of, and when I get you there I'm going to talk to you. You can rest on the way up. There's a breeze blowing when you get out of these infernally hot streets." She was only too glad to sink back amongst the hard, shiny leather cushions of the taxicab, and half close her eyes. The first taste of the breeze, as they neared Westminster Bridge, was almost ecstatic. Graveling had lit a pipe, and smoked by her side in silence. "We are coming out of our bit of the earth now, to theirs," he remarked presently, as they reached Piccadilly, brilliant with muslin-clad women and flower-hung windows. "It isn't often I dare trust myself up here. Makes me feel as though I'd like to go amongst those sauntering swells and mincing ladies in their muslins and laces, and parasols, and run amuck amongst them--send them down like a pack of ninepins. Aye, I'd send them into hell if I could!" She was still silent. She felt that she needed all her strength. They drove on to the Achilles statue, where he dismissed the taxicab. The man stared at the coin which he was offered, and looked at the register. "'Ere!" he exclaimed. "You're a nice 'Un, you are!" Graveling turned upon him almost fiercely. "If you want a tip," he said, "go and drive some of these fine ladies and gentlemen about, who've got the money to give. I'm a working man, and luxuries aren't for me. Be off with you, or I'll call a policeman!" He shouldered his way across the pavement, and Julia followed him. Soon they found a seat in the shade of the trees. She leaned back with a little sigh of content. "Five minutes!" she begged. "Just five minutes!" He glanced at his watch, relit his pipe, and relapsed once more into sombre silence. Julia's thoughts went flitting away. She closed her eyes and leaned back. She had only one fear now. Would he find out! He was thick enough, in his way, but he was no fool, and he was already coarsely jealous. "Ten minutes you've had," he announced at last. "Look here, Julia, I've brought you out to ask you a plain question. Are you going to marry me or are you not?" "I am not," she answered steadily. He had been so certain of her reply that his face betrayed no disappointment. Only he turned a little in his chair so that he could watch her face. She was conscious of the cruelty of his action. "Then I want to know what you are going to do," he continued. "You are thin and white and worn out. You're fit for something better than a tailoress and you know it. And you're killing yourself at it. You're losing your health, and with your health you're losing your power of doing any work worth a snap of the fingers." "It isn't so bad, except this very hot weather," she protested. "Then I'm secretary to the Guild, you know. I can do my work so much better when I'm really one of themselves. Besides, they always listen to me at the meetings, because I come straight from the benches." "You've done your whack," he declared. "No need to go on any longer, and you know it. I can make a little home for you right up in Hampstead, and you can go on with your writing and lecturing and give up this slavery. You know you were thinking of it a short time back. You've no one to consider but yourself. You're half promised to me and I want you." "I am sorry, Richard," she said, "if I have ever misled you, but I hope that from now onward, at any rate, there need be no shadow of misunderstanding. I do not intend to marry. My work is the greatest thing in life to me, and I can continue it better unmarried." "It's the first time you've talked like this," he persisted. "Amy Chatterton, Rachael Weiss, and most of 'em are married. They stick at it all right, don't they? What's the matter with your doing the same?" "Different people have different ideas," she pronounced. "Please be my friend, Richard, and do not worry me about this. You can easily find some one else. There are any number of girls, I'm sure, who'd be proud to be your wife. As for me, it is impossible." "And why is it impossible?" he demanded, in a portentous tone. "Because I do not care for you in that way," she answered, "and because I have no desire to marry at all." He smoked sullenly at his pipe for several moments. All the time his eyes were filled with smouldering malevolence. "Now I am going to begin to talk," he said. "Don't look as though you were going to run away, because you're not. I am going to talk to you about that fellow Maraton." "Why do you mention his name?" she asked, stiffening. "What has he to do with it?" "A good deal, to my thinking," was the grim reply. "It's my belief that you've a fancy for him, and that's why you've turned against me." "You've no right to say anything of the sort!" she exclaimed. "And, by God, why haven't I?" he insisted, striking his knee with his clenched fist. "Haven't you been my girl for six years before he came? You were kind of shy, but you'd have been mine in the end, and you know it. Waiting was all I had to do, and I was content to wait. And now he's come along, and I know very well that I haven't a dog's chance. You're a working lass, Julia, fit mate for a working man. Do you think he's one of our sort? Not he! Do you think he's for marrying a girl who works for her bread? If you do, you're a bigger fool than I think you. He's forever nosing around amongst these swell ladies and gentlemen with handles to their names, ladies and gentlemen who live on the other side of the earth to us. He can talk like a prophet, I grant you, but that's all there is of the prophet about him. People's man, indeed! He'll be the people's man so long as it pays him and not a second longer." "Have you finished?" she asked quietly. "No, nor never shall have finished," he continued, raising his voice, "while he's playing the rotten game he's at now, and you're mooning around after him as though he were a god. I'll never stop speaking until I've knocked the bottom out of that, Julia. You never used to think anything of fine clothes and all these gentlemen's tricks, it's all come of a sudden." "Have you finished?" she asked again. "Never in this life!" he replied fiercely. "I tell you he shan't have you, and you shan't have him. I'm there between, and I'm not to be got rid of. I'll take one of you or both of you by the throat and strangle the life out of you, before I quit. It isn't," he went on, his face once more disfigured by that ample sneer, "it isn't that I'm afraid of his wanting to marry you. He won't do that. But he's one of those who are fond of messing about--philanderer's the word. If he tries it on with you, he'll find hell before his time! Sit down!" She had risen to her feet. He clutched at her skirt. The sense of his touch--she was peculiarly sensitive to touch--gave her the strength she needed. She snatched it away. "Now," she declared', "you have had your say. This is what you get for it. You have offended me. Our friendship is forgotten. The less I see of you, the more content I shall be. And as to what I do or what becomes of me, it isn't your business. I shall do with myself exactly as I choose--exactly as I choose, Richard Graveling! You hear that?" she reiterated, with blazing eyes and tone cruelly deliberate. "I haven't much in the world, but my body and my soul are my own. I shall give them where I choose, and on what terms I please. If you try to follow me, you'll put me to the expense of a cab home. That's all!" She walked away with firm footsteps. She felt stronger, more of a woman than she had done all day. Graveling made no attempt to follow her. He sat and smoked in stolid silence. _ |
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