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Peter Dale and his little deputation, and this idiotic person Graveling, I have scarcely done a thing since I got home." "There's nothing that you need do until to-morrow," she told him softly. There was another brief pause. She was sitting up now leaning back in her chair, indeed trembling no longer, although the colour still flamed in her cheeks.
"I am Richard Graveling, M.P.," the young man announced, with a certain emphasis on those last two letters, "M.P. for Poplar East. We expected you at the Clarion to-night." "I had other business," Maraton remarked calmly. The young man appeared a trifle disconcerted. "I don't see what business you can have here till we've talked things out and laid our plans," he declared.
One by one they shook hands with Maraton and took their places around the table. They had no appearance of men charged with a great mission. Henneford, who had met them at the station, was beaming with hospitality. Peter Dale was full of gruff good-humour and jokes. Graveling alone entered with a scowl and sat with folded arms and the air of a dissentient.
Aaron sat down at the table. He ate and drank ravenously. He was, in fact, half starved but barely conscious of it. "He spoke of the great things?" Julia shook her head. She was busy cutting bread and butter. "Scarcely at all. What chance was there? And then Richard Graveling came." "They were friends? They took to one another?" the young man asked eagerly. She hesitated.
Graveling was advancing towards him with the air of a bully. "Do you hear you Maraton?" he cried. "I've had enough of you! You can flout us all at our work, if you like, but you go a bit too far when you think to make a plaything of my girl. Do you hear that?" "Perfectly," Maraton replied. "And what have you got to say about it?" Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly.
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!"
David Ross, Peter Dale and Graveling occupied chairs on the platform. Between them, Julia and Aaron kept Maraton informed as to the identity of each newcomer. "That's Mr. Docker, who is going to speak now," the latter declared in an excited whisper. "He is a fighting man. It's he who has manoeuvred this strike, they say. Now he's off." Mr.
"Let them come in," he directed. The three men Peter Dale, Abraham Weavel and Graveling filed into the room a little solemnly. Maraton shook hands with the two former, but Graveling, who kept his head turned away from Julia, affected not to notice Maraton's friendly overtures. "So you managed it all right," Peter Dale remarked. "Pretty close fit, wasn't it?" "Seven hundred," Maraton replied.
"I am not sure about that. Graveling was in one of his tempers. He was rude, and he said things to me which I felt obliged to contradict." "They did not quarrel?" She laughed softly. "Imagine Maraton quarrelling! I think that he is above such pettiness, Aaron." "Graveling is a good fellow and a hard worker," Aaron declared. "The one thing which he lacks is enthusiasm. He doesn't really feel.
But are you sure about the others Ernshaw and his Union men? We've tried all human means, and Ernshaw is like a rock. Dale and Graveling and all the rest have done what they could. Ernshaw remains outside. I thought that I had won the Labour Party. It seems to me, when the trouble came, that they represented nothing."
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