A People's Man Part 18

"I hope so," he answered gravely. "My ways are not the ways to which you have been accustomed. In my heart I believe that I see further into the real truth than some of those very ignorant friends of yours who have been sent into Parliament by the operatives they represent; further even than you, Julia, handicapped by your s.e.x, with your eyes fixed, day by day, only upon the misery of life. You blame me because I am here amongst these people as an equal. Listen. Is one responsible for their birth and instincts? I tell you now what I have told to no one, for no one has ever ventured to ask me twice of my parentage. I was born, in a sense, as these people were born. I cannot help it if, finding it advisable to come amongst them, I find their ways easy. That is all. I came here to keep a promise to a man who is, in his way, a great statesman. He is Prime Minister of our country. He has, without a doubt, so far as it is possible for such a man to have it there at all, the cause of the people at his heart. Is it for me to ignore him, to leave what he would say to me unsaid, to pull down the pillars which have kept this a proud country for many hundreds of years, without even listening? Remember that if I speak at Manchester the things that are in my heart, this country, for your time and mine, must perish. Of that I am sure. That has been made clear to me. Do you wonder, Julia, that, before I take that last step, I lift every stone, I turn over every page, I listen to every word which may be spoken by those who have the right to speak? That is why I am here. On Monday morning I leave. On Monday night I speak to the people in Manchester."

She listened to him very much as a prisoner at the bar might listen to a judge who reasons before he p.r.o.nounces sentence, and her face became as the face of that prisoner might become, who detects some leniency of tone, some softening of manner, on the part of the arbiter of his fate.

She ceased to tremble, her lips relaxed, her eyes grew softer and softer. She came a step nearer, resting her finger-tips upon a little table, her body leaning towards him. He had a queer vision of her for a moment--no longer the prophetess, a touch of the Delilah in the soft sweetness of her eyes.

"Oh, forgive me!" she begged. "I was foolish. Forgive me!"

He smiled at her rea.s.suringly.

"There is nothing to forgive," he insisted. "You asked for an explanation to which you had a right. I have tried to give it to you.

Indeed, Julia, you need have no fear. Whatever I decide in life will be what I think best for our cause."

The shadow of fear once more trembled in her tone.

"Whatever you decide," she repeated. "You will not--you will not let them call you a deserter? You couldn't do that."

"There isn't anything in the world," he told her quietly, "which has the power to tempt me from doing the thing which I think best. I cannot promise that it will be always the thing which seems right to this committee of men," he added, touching the envelope with his forefinger.

"I cannot promise you that, but it should not worry you. You yourself are different. It is my hope that soon you will understand me better.

I think that when that time comes you will cease to fear."

The light in her face was wonderful.

"Oh, I want to!" she murmured. "I want to understand you better. There hasn't been anything in life to me like the sound of your name, like the thought of you, since first I understood. Perhaps I am as bad as Aaron," she sighed. "I, too, alas! am your hopeless slave."

He moved a step nearer. This time she made no effort to retreat. Once more she was trembling a little, but her face was soft and sweet. All the pallor, the hard lines, the suffering seemed to have pa.s.sed miraculously out of it. A soul--a woman's soul--was shining at him out of her eyes. It wasn't her physical self that spoke--in a way he knew that. Yet she was calling to him, calling to him with all she possessed, calling to him as to her master.

He succeeded in persuading her to eat and drink, and she departed, a little grim and unpleased, in the motor car which Mr. Foley had insisted upon ordering round. Then Maraton strolled into the garden to take his delayed coffee. Elisabeth came noiselessly across the turf to his side.

"I hope there was nothing disturbing in your letters?" she said.

"Not very," he replied. "It is only what I expected."

"Every one," she continued, "has been admiring your secretary. We all thought that she had such a beautiful face."

"She is not my secretary," he explained. "She came in place of her brother, who met with a slight accident just as he was starting."

Somehow or other, he fancied that Elisabeth was pleased.

"I didn't think that it was like you to have a woman secretary," she remarked.

He smiled as he replied:

"Miss Thurnbrein is a very earnest worker and a real humanitarian. She has written articles about woman labour in London."

"Julia Thurnbrein!" Elisabeth exclaimed. "Yes, I have read them. If only I had known that that was she! I should have liked so much to have talked to her. Do you think that she would come and see me, or let me come and see her? We really do want to understand these things, and it seems to me, somehow, that people like Julia Thurnbrein, and all those who really understand, keep away from us wilfully. They won't exchange thoughts. They believe that we are their natural enemies. And we aren't, you know. There isn't any one I'd like to meet and talk with so much as Julia Thurnbrein."

He nodded sympathetically.

"They are prejudiced," he admitted. "All of them are disgusted with me for being down here. They look with grave suspicion upon my ability to wear a dress suit. It is just that narrowness which has set back the clock a hundred years. . . . How I like your idea of an open-air drawing-room! Mr. Foley hasn't been looking for me, has he? I am due in his study in three minutes."

Her finger touched his arm.

"Come with me for one moment," she insisted, a little abruptly.

She led him down one of the walks--a narrow turf path, leading through great clumps of rhododendrons. At the bottom was the wood where the nightingale had his home. After a few paces she stopped.

"Mr. Maraton," she said, "this may be our last serious word together, for when you have talked with my uncle you will have made your decision.

Look at me, please."

He looked at her. Just then the nightingale began to sing again, and curiously enough it seemed to him that a different note had crept into the bird's song. It was a cry for life, an absolutely pagan note, which came to him through the velvety darkness.

"Isn't it your theory," she whispered, "to destroy for the sake of the future? Don't do it. Theory sometimes sounds so sublime, but the present is actually here. Be content to work piecemeal, to creep upwards inch by inch. Life is something, you know. Life is something for all of us. No man has the right to destroy it for others. He has not even the right to destroy it for himself."

Maraton was suddenly almost giddy. For a moment he had relaxed and that moment was illuminating. Perhaps she saw the fire which leapt into his eyes. If she did, she never quailed. Her head was within a few inches of his, his arms almost touching her. She saw but she never moved. If anything, she drew a little nearer.

"Speak to me," she begged. "Give me some promise, some hope."

He was absolutely speechless. A wave of reminiscence had carried him back into the study, face to face with an accuser. He read meaning in Julia's words now, a meaning which at the time they had not possessed.

It was true that he was being tempted. It was true that there was such a thing in the world as temptation, a live thing to the strong as well as to the weak.

"You could be great," she murmured. "You could be a statesman of whom we should all be proud. In years to come, people would understand, they would know that you had chosen the n.o.bler part. And then for yourself--"

"For myself," he interrupted, "for myself--what?"

Her lips parted and closed again. She looked at him very steadily.

"Don't you think," she asked quietly, "that you are, more than most men, the builder of your own life, the master of your own fate, the conqueror--if, indeed, you desired to possess?"

She was gone, disappearing through a winding path amongst the bushes which he had never noticed. He heard the trailing of her skirts; the air around him was empty save for a breath of the perfume shaken from her gown, and the song of the bird. Then he heard her call to him.

"This way, Mr. Maraton--just a little to your left. The path leads right out on to the lawn."

"Is it a maze?" he asked.

"A very ordinary one," she called back gaily. "Follow me and I will lead you out."

CHAPTER XIII

Mr. Foley and Lord Armley were waiting together in the library--not the smaller apartment into which Julia had been shown, but a more s.p.a.cious, almost a stately room in the front part of the house. Upon Maraton's entrance, Lord Armley changed his position, sitting further back amongst the shadows in a low easy-chair. Maraton took his place so that he was between the two men. It was Lord Armley who asked the first question.

"Mr. Maraton," he enquired, "are you an Englishman?"

"I think that I may call myself so," Maraton replied, with a smile. "I was born in America, but my parents were English."

"I asked," Lord Armley continued, "whether you were an Englishman, for two reasons. One was--well, perhaps you might call it curiosity; the other because, if you are an Englishman, Mr. Foley and I are going to make a strong and I hope successful appeal to your patriotism."

"I am afraid," Maraton replied, "that you will be appealing to a sentiment of which I am ignorant."