E. Phillips Oppenheim

“ Both Julia and Maraton yielded gracefully enough to the influence of their companion's personality.
"Whether it is well for us or not," Maraton remarked, as he watched the wine flow into his glass, "to yield up one's will like this, to become even as a docile child, I do not know, but it is very pleasant. It is an hour of detachment."
"It is the secret of youth, the secret of life, the secret of joy," Selingman declared. "Detachment is the word. Life would make slaves of all of us, if one did not sometimes square one's shoulders and say—'No, thank you, I have had enough! ”

“ And yet so few of us know what love is, so few of us know what companionship is, so few of us know the world in which those others dwell. You have looked at me with your great eyes, Julia, and at first you saw nothing but a fat, plain old man, with plenty of conceit and a humour for idle speeches. And today you think a little differently, and as the days go on you will think more differently still, for I am going to take you with me, Julia, and I am going to keep you with me, and I am going to keep the light in your eyes and the laughter at your lips, in the only way that counts. ”

“ Foley said quietly, "to you two alone, that I had rather he had come at some other time. Selingman, you are indeed one of the happiest of the earth. You have no responsibilities save the responsibilities you owe to your genius. The only call to which you need listen is the call to give to the world the thoughts and music which beat in your brain. And with us, things are different. There is the future of a country, the future of an Empire, always at stake, when one sleeps and when one wakes." ”

“ You pass, your influence passes, your mantle is buried in your grave, and the country slips back, and the people suffer, and the great wheel grinds them into bone and powder just as surely a century hence as a century ago. Man, you don't start right. If you would restore a ruined and neglected garden, you must first destroy, make a bonfire of the weeds prepare your soil. Then, in the springtime, fresh flowers will blossom, the trees will give leaf, the birds who have deserted a ruined and fruitless waste will return and sing once more the song of life. But there must be destruction, Maraton. ”

“ I ask you what will be the attitude of Labour towards the starvation of the next ten or twenty years, if you should bring the ruin you threaten upon the country? I ask you to use your common sense. Of what use would you be? Who would listen to you? If they left you alive, would any audience of starving men and women, looking back upon the comparative prosperity of the past, listen to a word from your lips. Believe me, they would not. They would be more likely, if they found you, to rend you limb from limb. The operatives of this country are not dreamers. ”

“ You and I, Maraton, know how industries should be conducted. You and I know the just share which Capital should claim. You and I together will make the laws. Oh, what does it matter whether you are English or Icelanders, Fins or Turks! Humanity is so much greater than nationality. Your men shall work side by side with mine, and what each produces, each shall have. What is being done for my country shall surely be done for yours. Can't you see, Maraton—can't you see, my prophet who gropes in the darkness, that I am showing you the only way? ”

“ I belong more, I am afraid, to the school of theorists. In my mind I bring all Labour together, all the toilers of the world who are slaves to the great Moloch, Capital. You have an immense middle class here in England, who are living in fatness and content. The keynote of my creed is that these people have twice the incomes they ought to have, and Labour half as much. That, of course, is just the simple, oldfashioned, illogical Socialism with which you probably all started life, and which doubtless lies in some forgotten chamber of the minds of all of you. ”

“ When the light goes out, the old burden will seem all the heavier. It is so little that man can do for them."
They had flung open the top of the cab, and Maraton's eyes were fixed far ahead at the dull glow which hung over the city, the haze of smoke and heat, stretching like a sulphurous pall southwards. The roar of voices was always in his ears, but for a moment his thoughts seemed to have passed away, his eyes seemed to be seeking for some message beyond the clouds. ”

“ Declare your coal strike, your railway strike, your ironfounders' strike. Let the revolution come. I tell you then that we shall appear not as invaders, but as friends and liberators. Your industries shall start again on a new basis, the basis which you and I know of, the basis which gives to the toilers their just and legitimate share of what they produce. Your trade shall flourish just as it flourished before, but away to dust and powder with your streets of pig-sties, the rat-holes into which your weary labourers creep after their hours of senseless slavery. ”

“ This is the dream of my life which he, Selingman, alone has known of—the fusion of our races."
"Magnificent!" Selingman cried, springing to his feet. "The dream of a god! Listen to it, Maraton. My brain has realised it. I, too, have seen it. Your country is bound in the everlasting shackles. Generations must pass before you can even weaken the hold of your bourgeoisie upon the soul and spirit of your land. You are tied hard and fast, and withal you are on the downward grade. The work which you do to-day, the next generation will undo. Give up this foolish legislation. Listen to Maxendorf. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The philosopher thinks like that in his study. Stand before those people, look into their white, labour-worn faces, feel with them, sorrow with them for a little time, and I tell you that your hand will falter before it drives the plough. You will raise your eyes to heaven and pray that you may see some way of bringing help to them—to them who live—the help for which they crave. Haven't they a right to their lives? Who gives us a mandate to sweep them away for the sake of the unborn?"
"You have become a sentimentalist, Maraton," Maxendorf declared grimly. ”

“ That's the worst of a woman. If ever she begins to think seriously, she does her hair in a lump, changes silk for cotton, forgets her corsets, and leaves off ribbons. Silly, silly child!" he went on, shaking his forefinger at her. "I tell you women have done their greatest work in the world when their brains have been covered with a pretty hat. . . . There she goes, he growled," as she left the room. "Thinks I'm a flippant old windbag, I know. And I'm not. Why don't you fall in love with her, Maraton? It would be the making of you. Even a prophet needs relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. ”

“ Compromise—the spirit of compromise you call it. How one hates the sound of it! Bah! Man, you are on a lower level, when you talk the smug talk of to-day. I am disappointed in you. Maxendorf is disappointed in you. You are riding down the easy way on to the sandbanks of failure."
"Your garden," Maraton rejoined, with an answering note of passion in his tone, "would never have blossomed again if you had driven the plough across it, ripped up its fruit trees, torn up its neglected plants by ruthless force. You must plant fresh seed and grow new trees. Then there's another nation, another world. ”

“ Maxendorf confessed quietly.
"You bargain like a politician!" Selingman cried. "Man, can't you see the glory of it?"
"I can see the glory," Maraton answered, turning around, "but I can see also the ineffaceable ignominy of it. Is your country great enough, Maxendorf, to follow where your finger points? I do not know."
"Yet you, too," Maxendorf persisted, "must sometimes have looked into futurity. You must have seen the slow decay of national pride, the nations of the world growing closer and closer together. Can't you bear to strike a blow for the great things? ”

“ I fear nothing, Maxendorf, but as one man to another I have come to tell you, before I start north, that if in your heart there is a single grain of deceit, if ever it shall be made clear to me that I have been made the cat's-paw of what you have called patriotism, if the people of this country have left a breath of life in my body, I shall dedicate it to a purpose at which you can guess. ”

“ Lady Elisabeth, in her cool muslin gown and simple hat, seemed to be moving in a world of her own, into which her companion's chatter but rarely penetrated. She walked with a slow and delicate grace, not without a characteristic touch of languor. Once or twice she looked around her—one might almost have imagined that she was seeking escape from her companion—and on one of these occasions her eyes met Maraton's. She stopped short. They were within a few feet of one another, and Maraton rose to his feet. She lowered her parasol and held out her hand. ”

“ Selingman declared. "For a genius you see no further than the end of your nose. They tell me that when you landed, there were prophets in the East End who rose up and shouted—'Maraton is come! Maraton is here!' No more—just the simple announcement—as though that fact alone were changing life. Very well. I will be your prophet and you shall be the people. I will say to you, as they cried to the Children of Israel groaning under their toil—Maxendorf has come! Maxendorf is here!" ”

“ The world to-day doesn't deserve the offerings of the artist until it has purged itself. I waste my time writing plays, but then, after all, I am not English. If those were my people, Maraton, I doubt whether my pen could ever have wandered even for a moment into the pleasant ways."
Maraton sighed.
"There is America, too," he groaned.
"A conglomeration," Selingman declared hastily, "not to be reckoned with yet as a nation. What is born amongst the older peoples must find its way there by natural law. It is not a country for commencements. England—it is England where the harvest is ripe. ”

“ Maxendorf never faltered. His long narrow face was turned steadily towards Maraton. His eyebrows were drawn together. He spoke slowly and with great distinctness.
"I am for humanity," he declared. "Many of the people of my country I have already freed. It is for the sufferers in other lands that I toil in these days. If I am a patriot, it is because it is part of my political outfit, and a political outfit is necessary to the man who labours as I have laboured."
"So be it, then," Maraton decided. "I accept your words. Within a month from this time, the revolution will be here. ”

“ He called a waiter and had a table drawn up to the palisaded edge of the roof. Then he slipped something into the man's hand, and there seemed to be no difficulty about serving them with anything they required.
"A salad, some sandwiches, a bottle of hock and plenty of strawberries. We shan't starve, at any rate," Maraton declared. "Lean back in your chairs, you children of the city, lean down and look at your mother. Look at her smoke-hung arms, stretched out as though to gather in the universe; and the lights upon her bosom—see how they come twinkling into existence." ”

“ Youth, you know, youth is everything. You work best for others by realising the joys of life yourself. I, too, am a philanthropist, Miss Julia—I don't like your other name—I, too, think and write for others. I, too, have dreams of a millennium, of days when the huge wheel shall be driven to a different tune, and faces be lifted to the skies that hang now towards the gutters. ”

“ 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. ”