E. Phillips Oppenheim - A People\'s Man

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A PEOPLE'S MAN

By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

CHAPTER I

"Maraton has come! Maraton! Maraton is here!"

Across Soho, threading his way with devilish ingenuity through mazes of
narrow streets, scattering with his hooter little groups of gibbering,
swarthy foreigners, Aaron Thurnbrein, bent double over his ancient
bicycle, sped on his way towards the Commercial Road and eastwards.
With narrow cheeks smeared with dust, yellow teeth showing behind his
parted lips, through which the muttered words came with uneven
vehemence, ragged clothes, a ragged handkerchief around his neck, a
greasy cap upon his head--this messenger, charged with great tidings,
proclaimed himself, by his visible existence, one of the submerged
clinging to his last spar, fighting still with hands which beat the air,
yet carrying the undaunted light of battle in his blazing eyes,
deep-sunken, almost cavernous, the last refuge, perhaps, of that ebbing
life. Drops of perspiration were upon his forehead, his breath came
hard and painfully. Before he had reached his destination, one could
almost hear the rattle in his throat. He even staggered as at last he
dropped from his bicycle and, wheeling it across a broad pavement, left
it reclining against a box of apples exposed in front of a small
greengrocer's shop.

The neighbourhood was ugly and dirty, the shop was ugly and dirty. The
interior into which he passed was dark, odoriferous, bare of stock,
poverty-smitten. A woman, lean, hard-featured, with thin grey hair
disordered and unkempt, looked up quickly at his coming and as quickly
down again. Her face was perhaps too lifeless to express any emotion
whatsoever, but there might have been a shade of disappointment in the
swift withdrawal of her gaze. A customer would have been next door to a
miracle, but hope dies hard.

"You!" she muttered. "What are you bothering about?"

"I want David," Aaron Thurnbrein panted. "I have news! Is he behind?"

The woman moved away to let him pass.

"He is behind," she answered, in a dull, lifeless tone. "Since you took
him with you to Bermondsey, he does no work. What does it matter? We
starve a little sooner. Take him to another meeting, if you will. I'd
rather you taught him how to steal. There's rest in the prisons, at
least."

Aaron Thurnbrein brushed past her, inattentive, unlistening. She was
not amongst those who counted. He pushed open an ill-fitting door,
whose broken glass top was stuffed with brown paper. The room within
was almost horrible in its meagreness. The floor was uncarpeted, the
wall unpapered. In a three-legged chair drawn up to the table, with
paper before him and a pencil in his hand, sat David Ross. He looked up
at the panting intruder, only to glower.

"What do you want, boy?" he asked pettishly. "I am at work. I need
these figures. I am to speak to-night at Poplar."

"Put them away!" Aaron Thurnbrein cried. "Soon you and I will be needed
no more. A greater than we have known is here--here in London!"

The older man looked up, for a moment, as though puzzled. Then a light
broke suddenly across his face, a light which seemed somehow to become
reflected in the face of the starveling youth.

"Maraton!" he almost shrieked.

"Maraton!" the other echoed. "He is here in London!"

The face of the older man twitched with excitement.

"But they will arrest him!"

"If they dared," Aaron Thurnbrein declared harshly, "a million of us
would tear him out of prison. But they will not. Maraton is too
clever. America has not even asked for extradition. For our sakes he
keeps within the law. He is here in London! He is stripped for the
fight!"

David Ross rose heavily to his feet. One saw then that he was not
really old. Starvation and ill-health had branded him with premature
age. He was not thin but the flesh hung about him in folds. His cheeks
were puffy; his long, hairy eyebrows drooped down from his massive
forehead. There was the look about him of a strong man gone to seed.

"They will be all around him like flies over a carcass!" he muttered.

"Mr. Foley--Foley--the Prime Minister--sent for him directly he
arrived," Aaron Thurnbrein announced. "He is to see him to-night at his
own house in Downing Street. It makes no difference."

"Who can tell?" the other remarked despondently. "The pages of history
are littered with the bodies of strong men who have opened their lips to
the poisoned spoon."

Aaron Thurnbrein spat upon the floor.

"There is but one Maraton," he cried fervently. "There has been but one
since the world was shaped. He is come, and the first step towards our
deliverance is at hand."

The older man, whose trembling fingers still rested upon the sheets of
paper, looked at his visitor curiously.

"You are a Jew," he muttered. "Why do you worship Maraton? He is not
of your race."

The young man's gesture was almost sublime.

"Jew or Christian--what does it matter?" he demanded. "I am a Jew.
What has my religion done for me? Nothing! I am a free man in my
thoughts. I am one of the oppressed. Men or women, Jews or Christians,
infidels or believers--what does it matter? We are those who have been
broken upon the wheel. Deliverance for us will come too late. We fight
for those who will follow. It is Maraton who points towards the light.
It is Maraton whose hand shall press the levers which shall set the
kingdoms rocking. I tell you that our own country, even, may bite the
dust--a conqueror's hand lay heavy upon her throat; and yet, no matter.
Through the valley of fire and blood and pestilence--one must pass
through these to the great white land."

"Amen!" David Ross cried fervently. "The gift is upon you to-day,
Aaron. Amen!"

The two stood together for a moment, speechless, carried away out of
themselves. Then the door was suddenly opened. The woman stood there,
sour and withered; behind her, a hard-featured man, official,
malevolent.

"We are for the streets!" the woman exclaimed harshly. "He's got the
order."

"Three pounds thirteen or out you go," the man announced, pushing his
way forward. "Here's the paper."

David Ross looked at him as one awakened from a dream.

"Evicted!"

"And d--d well time, too!" the newcomer continued. "You've had all the
chance in the world. How do you expect to make a living, fiddling about
here all day with pencil and paper, and talking Socialist rot at night?
Leave that chair alone and be off, both of you."

They glanced despairingly towards Aaron Thurnbrein. He thrust his hands
into his pockets and exposed them with a little helpless gesture. The
coins he produced were of copper. The official looked at them and
around the place with a grin of Contempt.

"Cut it short," he ordered. "Clear out."

"There's my bicycle," Aaron Thurnbrein said slowly.

They all looked at him--the woman and the man with nervous anxiety, the
official with a flicker of interest Aaron Thurnbrein drew a little sigh.
The bicycle bad been earned by years of strenuous toil. It was almost a
necessity of his existence.

"Aaron's bicycle," David Ross muttered. "No, no! That must not be.
Let us go to the streets."

But the woman did not move. Already the young man had wheeled it into
the shop.

"Take it," he insisted. "What does it matter? Maraton is here!"

Away again, this time on foot, along the sun-baked pavements, through
courts and alleys into a narrow, busy street in the neighbourhood of
Shoreditch. He stopped at last before a factory and looked tentatively
up at the windows. Through the opened panes came the constant click of
sewing machines, the smell of cloth, the vision of many heads bent over
their work. He stood where he was for a time and watched. The place
was like a hive of industry. Row after row of girls were there, seated
side by side, round-shouldered, bending over their machines, looking
neither to the right nor to the left, struggling to keep up to time to
make sure of the wage which was life or death to them. It was nothing
to them that above the halo of smoke the sky was blue; or that away
beyond the murky horizon, the sun, which here in the narrow street
seemed to have drawn all life from the air, was shining on yellow
cornfields bending before the west wind. Here there was simply an
intolerable heat, a smell of fish and a smell of cloth.

Aaron Thurnbrein crossed the street, entered the unimposing doorway and
knocked at the door which led into the busy but unassuming offices. A
small boy threw open a little glass window and looked at him doubtfully.

"I don't know that you can see Miss Thurnbrein even for a minute," he
declared, in answer to Aaron's confident enquiry. "It's our busiest
time. What do you want?"

"I am her brother," Aaron announced. "It is most important."

The boy slipped from a worn stool and disappeared. Presently the door
of the little waiting-room was suddenly opened, and a girl entered.

"Aaron!" she exclaimed. "Has anything happened?"

Once more he raised his head, once more the light that flickered in his
face transformed him into some semblance of a virile man.

"Maraton is here! Maraton has arrived!"

The light flashed, too, for a moment in her face, only she, even before
it came, was beautiful.

"At last!" she cried. "At last! Have you seen him, Aaron? Tell me
quickly, what is he like?"

"Not yet," Aaron replied. "To-night they say that he goes first to
visit the Prime Minister. He will come to us afterwards."

"It is great news," she murmured. "If only one could see him!"

The office boy reappeared.

"Guvnor says why aren't you at your work, Miss Thurnbrein," he remarked,
as he climbed on to his stool. "You won't get through before closing
time, as it is."

She turned reluctantly away. There was something in her face from which
even Aaron could scarcely remove his eyes.

"I must go," she declared. "We are busy here, and so many of the girls
are away--down with the heat, I suppose. Thank you for coming, Aaron."

"I would like," he answered, "to walk the streets of London one by one,
and stand at the corners and shout to the passers-by that Maraton has
come. Only I wonder if they would understand. I wonder!"

He passed out into the street and the girl returned to her work. After
a few yards he felt suddenly giddy. There was a little enclosure across
the road, called by courtesy a playground--a few benches, a dusty space,
and some swings. He threw himself into a corner of one of the benches
and closed his eyes. He was worn out, physically exhausted. Yet all
the time the sense of something wonderful kept him from collapse.
Maraton had come!

CHAPTER II

Westward, the late June twilight deepened into a violet and moonless
darkness. The lights in St. James's Park glittered like motionless
fireflies; a faint wind rustled amongst the drooping leaves of the
trees. Up here the atmosphere was different. It seemed a long way from
Shoreditch.

Outside the principal of the official residences in Downing Street,
there was a tented passage-way and a strip of drugget across the
pavement. Within, the large reception rooms were crowded with men and
women. There was music, and many forms of entertainment were in
progress; the popping of champagne corks; the constant murmur of
cheerful conversation. The Prime Minister was giving a great political
reception, and men and women of every degree and almost every
nationality were talking and mingling together. The gathering was
necessarily not select, but it was composed of people who counted. The
Countess of Grenside, who was the Prime Minister's sister and the head
of his household, saw to that.

They stood together at the head of the staircase, a couple curiously
unlike not only in appearance but in disposition and tastes. Lady
Grenside was tall and fair, almost florid in complexion, remarkably
well-preserved, with a splendid presence and figure. She had been one
of the beauties of her day, and even now, in the sixth year of her
widowhood, was accounted a remarkably handsome woman. Mr. Foley, her
brother, was also tall, but gaunt and thin, with a pronounced stoop.
His grey imperial gave him an almost foreign appearance. He had the
forehead of a philosopher but the mouth of a humourist. His eyes,
shrewd and penetrating--he wore no glasses although he was nearly sixty
years of age--were perhaps his best feature.

"Tell me, my dear Stephen," she asked, as the tide of incoming guests
finally ceased and they found themselves at liberty, "why are you
looking so disturbed? It seems to me that every one has arrived who
ought to come, and judging by the noise they are making, every one is
thoroughly enjoying themselves. Why are people so noisy nowadays, I
wonder?"

Mr. Foley smiled.

"What an observant person you are! To tell you the truth, there was
just one guest whom I was particularly anxious to see here to-night. He
promised to come, but so far I am afraid that he has not arrived."

"Not that awful man Maraton?"

He nodded.

"No use calling him names, Catharine," he continued grimly. "Maraton is
one of the most important problems we have to face within the next few
weeks. I suppose there is no chance of his having slipped in without
our having noticed him?"

Lady Grenside shook her head.

"I should imagine not. I am quite sure that I haven't shaken hands
to-night with any one who reminded me in the least of what this man must
be. Very likely Elisabeth will discover him if he is here. She has
just gone off on one of her tours of inspection."

Mr. Foley shrugged his shoulders. He was, after all, a philosopher.

"I am afraid Elisabeth won't get very far," he remarked. "Carton was in
her train, and Ellison and Aubrey weren't far behind. She is really
quite wonderful. I never in all my life saw any one look so beautiful
as she does to-night."

Lady Grenside made a little grimace as she laid her fingers upon her
brother's arm and pointed towards an empty settee close at hand.

"Beautiful, yes," she sighed, "but oh, so difficult!"

Almost at that moment, Elisabeth had paused on her way through the
furthest of the three crowded rooms--and Maraton, happening
simultaneously to glance in her direction, their eyes met. They were
both above the average height, so they looked at one another over the
heads of many people, and in both their faces was something of the same
expression--the faint interest born of a relieved monotony. The girl
deliberately turned towards him. He was an unknown guest and alone.
There were times when her duties came quite easily.

"I am afraid that you are not amusing yourself," she remarked, with some
faint yet kindly note of condescension in her tone.

"You are very kind," he answered, his eyebrows slightly lifted. "I
certainly am not. But then I did not come here to amuse myself."

"Indeed? A sense of duty brought you, perhaps?"

"A sense of duty, beyond a doubt," the man assented politely.

She felt like passing on--but she also felt like staying, so she stayed.

"Cannot I help you towards the further accomplishment of your duty,
then?" she enquired.

He looked at her and the grim severity of his face was lightened by a
smile.

"You could help me more easily to forget it," he replied.

She opened her lips, hesitated and closed them again. Already she had
recognised the fact that this was not a man to be snubbed. Neither had
she, notwithstanding her momentary irritation, any real desire to do so.

"You do not know many people here?"

"I know no one," he confessed.

"I am Elisabeth Landon," she told him. "Mr. Foley is my uncle. My
mother and I live with him and always help him to entertain."

"Hence your interest in a lonely stranger," he remarked. "Please have
no qualms about me. I am always interested when I am permitted to watch
my fellow creatures, especially when the types are novel to me."

She looked at him searchingly for a moment. As yet she had not
succeeded in placing him. His features were large but well-shaped, his
cheek-bones a little high, his forehead massive, his deep-set eyes
bright and marvellously penetrating. He had a mouth long and firm, with
a slightly humorous twist at the corners. His hair was black and
plentiful. He might have been of any age between thirty-five and forty.
His limbs and body were powerful; his head was set with the poise of an
emperor. His clothes were correct and well worn, he was entirely at his
ease. Yet Elisabeth, who was an observant person, looked at him and
wondered. He would have been more at home, she thought, out in the
storms of life than in her uncle's drawing-rooms. Yet what was he? He
lacked the trimness of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the
modern fighting man there was no trace whatsoever in his speech or
appearance. The politicians who were likely to be present she knew.
What was there left? An explorer, perhaps, or a colonial. Her
curiosity became imperious.

"You have not told me your name," she reminded him.

"My name is Maraton," he replied, a little grimly.

"You--Maraton!"

There was a brief silence--not without a certain dramatic significance
to the girl who stood there with slightly parted lips. The smooth
serenity of her forehead was broken by a frown; her beautiful blue eyes
were troubled. She seemed somehow to have dilated, to have drawn
herself up. Her air of politeness, half gracious, half condescending,
had vanished. It was as though in spirit she were preparing for battle.

"You seem to have heard of me," he remarked drily.

"Who has not heard of you!" she answered in a low tone. "I am sorry.
You have made me break my word."

"I?"

She was recovering herself now. A certain icy aloofness seemed to have
crept into her manner. Her head was held at a different angle. Even
the words seemed to leave her lips differently. Her tone was one of
measured indignation.

"Yes, you! When Mr. Foley told me that he had asked you to come here
to-night, I vowed that I would not speak to you."

"A perfectly reasonable decision," he agreed, without the slightest
change of expression, "but am I really to be blamed for this unfortunate
incident? You cannot say that I thrust myself upon your notice."

His eyebrows were ever so slightly uplifted. She was not absolutely
sure that there was not something very suggestive of amusement in his
deep-set eyes. She bit her lip. Naturally he was not a gentleman!

"I thought that you were a neglected guest," she explained coldly. "I
do not understand how it is that you have managed to remain
undiscovered."

He shook his head doubtfully.

"I made my entrance with the others. I saw a very charming lady at the
head of the stairs--your mother, I believe--who gave me her fingers and
called me Mr. Martin. Your uncle shook hands with me, looking over my
head to welcome some one behind. I passed on with the rest. The fault
remains, beyond a doubt, with your majordomo and my uncommon name."

"Since I have discovered you, then," she declared, "you had better let
me take you to my uncle. He has been looking everywhere for you for the
last hour. We will go this way."

She laid the extreme tips of her fingers upon his coat sleeve. He
glanced down at them for a moment. Her reluctance was evident.

"Perhaps," he suggested coolly, "we should make faster progress if I
were to follow you."

She took no further notice of him for some time. Then very suddenly she
drew him to one side out of the throng, into an almost empty anteroom--a
dismal little apartment lined with shelves full of blue books and
Parliamentary records.

"I am content to obey my guide," he remarked, "but why this abrupt
flight?"

She hesitated. Then she raised her eyes and looked at him. Perhaps
some instinct told her that the truth was best.

"Because Mr. Culvain was in that crowd," she told him. "Mr. Culvain
has been looking for you everywhere. It is only to see you that he came
here this evening. My uncle is anxious to talk with you first."

"I am flattered," he murmured, smiling.

"I think that you should be," she asserted. "Personally, I do not
understand my uncle's attitude."

"With regard to me?"

"With regard to you."

"You think, perhaps, that I should not be permitted here at all as a
guest?"

"I do think that," she replied, looking steadily into his eyes. "I
think more than that. I think that your place is in Sing Sing prison."

The corners of his mouth twitched. His amusement maddened her; her eyes
flashed. Underneath her white satin gown her bosom was rising and
falling quickly.

He became suddenly grave.

"Do you take life seriously, Lady Elisabeth?" he asked.

"Certainly," she answered firmly. "I do not think that human life is a
thing to be trifled with. I agree with the Times."

"In what it said about me?"

"Yes!

"And what was that? It is neglectful of me, I know, but I never see the
Times."

"It held you entirely responsible for the death of those poor men in
Chicago," she told him. "It named you as their murderer."

"A very sensible paper, the Times," he agreed. "The responsibility was
entirely mine."

She looked at him for a moment in horror.

"You can dare to admit that here--to me?"

"Why not?" he answered calmly. "So long as it is my conviction, why not
proclaim it? I love the truth. It is the one virtue which has never
been denied me."

Her eyes flashed. She made no effort whatever to conceal her
detestation.

"And they let you go--those Americans?" she cried. "I do not
understand!"

"There are probably many other considerations in connection with the
affair which you do not understand," he observed. "However--they had
their opportunity. I walked the streets openly, I travelled to New York
openly, I took my steamer ticket to England under my own name. The
papers, I believe, chronicled every stage of my journey."

"It was disgraceful!" she declared. "The people in office over there
are cowards."

"Not at all," he objected. "They were very well advised. They acted
with shrewd common sense. America is no better prepared for a
revolution than England is."

"Do you imagine," she demanded, her voice trembling, "that you will be
permitted to repeat in this country your American exploits?"

Maraton smiled a little sadly.

"Need we discuss these things, Lady Elisabeth?"

"Yes, we need!" she replied promptly. "This is my one opportunity. You
and I will probably never exchange another word so long as we live. I
have read your book--every word of it. I have read it several times.
In that book you have shown just as much of yourself as you chose, and
no more. Although I have hated the idea that I might ever have to speak
to you, now that you are here, now that it has come to pass, I am going
to ask you a question."

He sighed.

"People ask me so many questions!"

"Tell me this," she continued, without heeding his interruption. "Do
you, in your heart, believe that you are justified in going about the
world preaching your hateful doctrines, seeking out the toilers only to
fill them with discontent and to set them against their employers,
preaching everywhere bloodshed and anarchy, inflaming the minds of
people who in ordinary times are contented, even happy? You have made
yourself feared and hated in every country of the world. You have
brought America almost to the verge of revolution. And now, just when
England needs peace most, when affairs on the Continent are so
threatening and every one connected with the Government of the country
is passing through a time of the gravest anxiety, you intend, they say,
to start a campaign here. You say that you love the truth. Answer me
this question truthfully, then. Do you believe that you are justified?"

He had listened to her at first with a slight, tolerant smile upon his
lips, a smile which faded gradually away. He was sombre, almost stern,
when she had finished. He seemed in some curious way to have assumed a
larger shape, to have become more imposing. His attitude had a strange
and indefinable influence upon her.

She was suddenly conscious of her youth and inexperience--bitterly and
rebelliously conscious of them--before he had even opened his lips. Her
own words sounded crude and unconvincing.

"I am not one of the flamboyant orators of the Socialist party, Lady
Elisabeth," he said, "nor am I one of those who are able to see much joy
or very much hopefulness in life under present conditions. For every
word I have spoken and every line I have written, I accept the full and
complete responsibility."

"Those men who were murdered in Chicago, murdered at your instigation
because they tried to break the strike--what of them?"

He looked at her as one might have looked at a child.

"Their lives were a necessary sacrifice in a good cause," he declared.
"Does one think now of the sea of blood through which France once purged
herself? Believe me, young lady, there is nothing in the world more to
be avoided than this sentimental and exaggerated reverence for life. It
is born of a false ideal, artistically and actually. Life is a
sacrifice to be offered in a just cause when necessary.

"I imagine that this is your uncle."

Mr. Foley was standing upon the threshold of the room, his hand
outstretched, his thin, long face full of conviction.

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