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Maraton spent three hours and a half that morning in conclave with the committee appointed for his reception, and for that three hours and a half he was profoundly bored. Every one had a good deal to say except Richard Graveling, who sat at the end of the table with folded arms and a scowl upon his face. The only other man who scarcely opened his lips during the entire time, was Maraton himself.
There is civil war waging now, I can tell you," he added, as he sat down. "Graveling was there with a message. The whole of the Labour Party is against the strike. The leaders of the men are hot for it, and the men themselves. There wasn't a single one of them who hesitated. Ernshaw, who represents the Union, told me that there wasn't one of them who wouldn't get the sack if he dared to waver.
Alone at the table David Ross sat like a figure of stone, his mouth a little open, something of the light in his face. "I'm too much of an Englishman, for one," Graveling said, "to want to pull the country down. Now where does this universal strike come in?" "The universal strike," Maraton explained quietly, "is the doctrine I came to England to preach.
I'll ask you a question, Maraton. Were you at the Ritz Hotel one night about two months ago, with the ambassador of a foreign a country?" "I was," Maraton admitted coolly. Graveling looked around with a little cry of triumph. "It's a plot, this; nothing more nor less than a plot!" he declared vigorously. "What sort of an Englishman does he call himself, I wonder?
Does he look strong enough for the work?" She smiled at him reassuringly. "Yes, he looks strong and he looks kind. For the rest " "There is something! Tell me what it is at once?" "Foolish! Well, he is unlike Richard Graveling and the others, unlike us. Why not? He is cultivated, educated, well-dressed." The youth, for a moment, was aghast. "You don't mean that he is a gentleman?"
I am not for strikes that finish with a shilling a week more for the men; or for Acts of Parliament which dole out tardy charity. I am for the bigger things. Last night I lay awake, thinking your friend Richard Graveling set me thinking. We must aim high. I am here for no man's individual good. I am here to plan not pinpricks but destruction." The servant brought in more breakfast.
The young man distinctly scowled. "So Foley's been getting at you, has he?" Maraton's face was inscrutable but there was, for a moment, a dangerous flash in his eyes. "I had some conversation with him this evening. "What did he want?" Graveling asked bluntly. Maraton raised his eyebrows. He turned to the girl. "Do you know Mr. Graveling?" The young man scowled.
"It was nowt to do with me," he announced. "The fellow sprung up all on his own, as it were. Graveling here may have known something of it, but so far as we are concerned he was not an authorised candidate." Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly. "There was nothing," he objected, "to convey that idea to the electors. He made use of the Labour agent and the Labour committee rooms.
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.
Graveling was overbalanced by his fierce blow into the empty air. The next moment he was lying on his back, and the room seemed to be spinning around him. Maraton was standing with his finger upon the bell. Julia was by his side, her eyes blazing. She spoke never a word, but as Graveling struggled back to his senses he could see the scorn upon her face.
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