Marcella Part 45

Aldous felt a sudden stab of suspicion--presentiment.

"Of course he will be well defended; he will have every chance; that you may be sure of," he said slowly.

Marcella controlled herself, and they walked on. As they entered the drive of Mellor, Aldous thought pa.s.sionately of those divine moments in his sitting-room, hardly yet nine hours old. And now--_now_!--she walked beside him as an enemy.

The sound of a step on the gravel in front of them made them look up.

Past, present, and future met in the girl's bewildered and stormy sense as she recognised Wharton.

CHAPTER X.

The first sitting of the Birmingham Labour Congress was just over, and the streets about the hall in which it had been held were beginning to fill with the issuing delegates. Rain was pouring down and umbrellas were plentiful.

Harry Wharton, accompanied by a group of men, left the main entrance of the hall,--releasing himself with difficulty from the friendly crowd about the doors--and crossed the street to his hotel.

"Well, I'm glad you think I did decently," he said, as they mounted the hotel stairs. "What a beastly day, and how stuffy that hall was! Come in and have something to drink."

He threw open the door of his sitting-room as he spoke. The four men with him followed him in.

"I must go back to the hall to see two or three men before everybody disperses," said the one in front. "No refreshment for me, thank you, Mr. Wharton. But I want to ask a question--what arrangements have you made for the reporting of your speech?"

The man who spoke was thin and dark, with a modest kindly eye. He wore a black frock coat, and had the air of a minister.

"Oh, thank you, Bennett, it's all right. The _Post_, the _Chronicle_, and the _Northern Guardian_ will have full copies. I sent them off before the meeting. And my own paper, of course. As to the rest they may report it as they like. I don't care."

"They'll all have it," said another man, bluntly. "It's the best speech you've ever made--the best president's speech we've had yet, I say,--don't you think so?"

The speaker, a man called Casey, turned to the two men behind him. Both nodded.

"Hallin's speech last year was first-rate," he continued, "but somehow Hallin damps you down, at least he did me last year; what you want just now is _fight_--and, my word! Mr. Wharton let 'em have it!"

And standing with his hands on his sides, he glanced round from one to another. His own face was flushed, partly from the effects of a crowded hall and bad air, but mostly with excitement. All the men present indeed--though it was less evident in Bennett and Wharton than in the rest--had the bright nervous look which belongs to leaders keenly conscious of standing well with the led, and of having just emerged successfully from an agitating ordeal. As they stood together they went over the speech to which they had been listening, and the scene which had followed it, in a running stream of talk, laughter, and gossip.

Wharton took little part, except to make a joke occasionally at his own expense, but the pleasure on his smiling lip, and in his roving, contented eye was not to be mistaken. The speech he had just delivered had been first thought out as he paced the moonlit library and corridor at Mellor. After Marcella had left him, and he was once more in his own room, he had had the extraordinary self-control to write it out, and make two or three machine-copies of it for the press. Neither its range nor its logical order had suffered for that intervening experience. The programme of labour for the next five years had never been better presented, more boldly planned, more eloquently justified. Hallin's presidential speech of the year before, as Casey said, rang flat in the memory when compared with it. Wharton knew that he had made a mark, and knew also that his speech had given him the whip-hand of some fellows who would otherwise have stood in his way.

Casey was the first man to cease talking about the speech. He had already betrayed himself about it more than he meant. He belonged to the New Unionism, and affected a costume in character--fustian trousers, flannel shirt, a full red tie and work-man's coat, all well calculated to set off a fine lion-like head and broad shoulders. He had begun life as a bricklayer's labourer, and was now the secretary of a recently formed Union. His influence had been considerable, but was said to be already on the wane; though it was thought likely that he would win a seat in the coming Parliament.

The other two men were Molloy, secretary to the congress, short, smooth-faced, and wiry, a man whose pleasant eye and manner were often misleading, since he was in truth one of the hottest fighting men of a fighting movement; and Wilkins, a friend of Casey's--ex-iron worker, Union official, and Labour candidate for a Yorkshire division--an uneducated, pa.s.sionate fellow, speaking with a broad, Yorkshire accent, a bad man of affairs, but honest, and endowed with the influence which comes of sincerity, together with a gift for speaking and superhuman powers of physical endurance.

"Well, I'm glad it's over," said Wharton, throwing himself into a chair with a long breath, and at the same time stretching out his hand to ring the bell. "Casey, some whisky? No? Nor you, Wilkins? nor Molloy? As for you, Bennett, I know it's no good asking you. By George! our grandfathers would have thought us a poor lot! Well, some coffee at any rate you must all of you have before you go back. Waiter! coffee. By the way, I have been seeing something of Hallin, Bennett, down in the country."

He took out his cigarette case as he spoke, and offered it to the others. All refused except Molloy. Casey took his half-smoked pipe out of his pocket and lit up. He was not a teetotaler as the others were, but he would have scorned to drink his whisky and water at the expense of a "gentleman" like Wharton, or to smoke the "gentleman's" cigarettes.

His cla.s.s-pride was irritably strong. Molloy, who was by nature anybody's equal, took the cigarette with an easy good manners, which made Casey look at him askance.

Mr. Bennett drew his chair close to Wharton's. The mention of Hallin had roused a look of anxiety in his quick dark eyes.

"How is he, Mr. Wharton? The last letter I had from him he made light of his health. But you know he only just avoided a breakdown in that strike business. We only pulled him through by the skin of his teeth--Mr.

Raeburn and I."

"Oh, he's no const.i.tution; never had, I suppose. But he seemed much as usual. He's staying with Raeburn, you know, and I've been staying with the father of the young lady whom Raeburn 's going to marry."

"Ah! I've heard of that," said Bennett, with a look of interest. "Well, Mr. Raeburn isn't on our side, but for judgment and fair dealing there are very few men of his cla.s.s and circ.u.mstances I would trust as I would him. The lady should be happy."

"Of course," said Wharton, drily. "However, neither she nor Raeburn are very happy just at this moment. A horrible affair happened down there last night. One of Lord Maxwell's gamekeepers and a 'helper,' a lad of seventeen, were killed last night in a fight with poachers. I only just heard the outlines of it before I came away, but I got a telegram just before going into congress, asking me to defend the man charged with the murder."

A quick expression of repulsion and disgust crossed Bennett's face.

"There have been a whole crop of such cases lately," he said. "How shall we ever escape from the _curse_ of this game system?"

"We shan't escape it," said Wharton, quietly, knocking the end off his cigarette, "not in your lifetime or mine. When we get more Radicals on the bench we shall lighten the sentences; but that will only exasperate the sporting cla.s.s into finding new ways of protecting themselves. Oh!

the man will be hung--that's quite clear to me. But it will be a good case--from the public point of view--will work up well--"

He ran his hand through his curls, considering.

"Will work up admirably," he added in a lower tone of voice, as though to himself, his eyes keen and brilliant as ever, in spite of the marks of sleeplessness and fatigue visible in the rest of the face, though only visible there since he had allowed himself the repose of his cigarette and arm-chair.

"Are yo' comin' to dine at the 'Peterloo' to-night, Mr. Wharton?" said Wilkins, as Wharton handed him a cup of coffee; "but of coorse you are--part of yower duties, I suppose?"

While Molloy and Casey were deep in animated discussion of the great meeting of the afternoon he had been sitting silent against the edge of the table--a short-bearded sombre figure, ready at any moment to make a grievance, to suspect a slight.

"I'm afraid I can't," said Wharton, bending forward and speaking in a tone of concern; "that was just what I was going to ask you all--if you would make my excuses to-night? I have been explaining to Bennett. I have an important piece of business in the country--a labourer has been getting into trouble for shooting a keeper; they have asked me to defend him. The a.s.sizes come on in little more than a fortnight, worse luck! so that the time is short--"

And he went on to explain that, by taking an evening train back to Widrington, he could get the following (Sat.u.r.day) morning with the solicitor in charge of the case, and be back in Birmingham, thanks to the convenience of a new line lately opened, in time for the second meeting of the congress, which was fixed for the early afternoon.

He spoke with great cordiality and persuasiveness. Among the men who surrounded him, his youth, good looks, and easy breeding shone out conspicuous. In the opinion of Wilkins, indeed, who followed his every word and gesture, he was far too well dressed and too well educated. A day would soon come when the labour movement would be able to show these young aristocrats the door. Not yet, however.

"Well, I thowt you wouldn't dine with us," he said, turning away with a blunt laugh.

Bennett's mild eye showed annoyance. "Mr. Wharton has explained himself very fully, I think," he said, turning to the others. "We shall miss him at dinner--but this matter seems to be one of life and death. And we mustn't forget anyway that Mr. Wharton is fulfilling this engagement at great inconvenience to himself. We none of us knew when we elected him last year that he would have to be fighting his election at the same time. Next Sat.u.r.day, isn't it?"

Bennett rose as he spoke and carefully b.u.t.toned his coat. It was curious to contrast his position among his fellows--one of marked ascendency and authority--with his small insignificant physique. He had a gentle deprecating eye, and the heart of a poet. He played the flute and possessed the gift of repeating verse--especially Ebenezer Eliot's Corn Law Rhymes--so as to stir a great audience to enthusiasm or tears. The Wesleyan community of his native Cheshire village owned no more successful cla.s.s-leader, and no humbler Christian. At the same time he could hold a large business meeting sternly in check, was the secretary of one of the largest and oldest Unions in the country, had been in Parliament for years, and was generally looked upon even by the men who hated his "moderate" policy, as a power not to be ignored.

"Next Sat.u.r.day. Yes!" said Wharton, nodding in answer to his inquiry.

"Well, are you going to do it?" said Casey, looking round at him.

"Oh, yes!" said Wharton, cheerfully; "oh, yes! we shall do it. We shall settle old Dodgson, I think."

"Are the Raeburns as strong as they were?" asked Molloy, who knew Brookshire.

"What landlord is? Since '84 the ground is mined for them all--good and bad--and they know it."

"The mine takes a long time blowing up--too long for my patience," said Wilkins, gruffly. "How the country can go on year after year paying its tribute to these plunderers pa.s.ses my comprehension. But you may attack them as you please. You will never get any forrarder so long as Parliament and the Cabinet is made up of them and their hangers on."

Wharton looked at him brightly, but silently, making a little a.s.senting inclination of the head. He was not surprised that anything should pa.s.s Wilkins's comprehension, and he was determined to give him no opening for holding forth.

"Well, we'll let you alone," said Bennett. "You'll have very little time to get off in. We'll make your excuses, Mr. Wharton. You may be sure everybody is so pleased with your speech we shall find them all in a good temper. It was grand!--let me congratulate you again. Good-night--I hope you'll get your poacher off!"