A People's Man

It was the eve of the reopening of Parliament. Maraton, who had been absent from London--no one knew where--during the last six weeks, had suddenly reappeared. Once more he had...

Maraton made his way from Downing Street on foot, curiously enough altogether escaping recognition from the crowds who were still hanging about on the chance of catching a glimp...

Selingman had the air of one who has achieved a personal triumph as, with his arm in Maraton's, he led him towards the man whom they had come to visit.

Mr. Foley and Lord Armley were waiting together in the library--not the smaller apartment into which Julia had been shown, but a more spacious, almost a stately room in the fron...

"Aaron was run over just as he was starting," she explained quickly. "He is not hurt badly, but he wasn't able to catch the train. He had an important letter from Manchester and...

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 t...

From the atmosphere of Lyndwood Park and its surroundings--fragrant, almost epicurean--Maraton passed to the hard squalor of the great smoke-hung city of the north. There were n...

Maraton was more than ever conscious, as he climbed the stairs of the house in Downing Street an hour or so later, of a certain fragility of appearance in Mr. Foley, markedly ap...

Selingman took little heed of the cordon around Maraton. He brushed them all to one side, and when at last confronted by the final barrier, in the shape of Julia, he only patted...

Maraton, with the peculiar sensitiveness of the artist to an altered atmosphere, was keenly conscious of the change when Julia had left the room and the delegates had entered. O...

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...

From town to town, travelling for the most part on the platform of an engine, Maraton sped on his splendid mission. It was Ernshaw himself who drove, with the help of an assista...

At twenty minutes past eight, Maraton, with his two companions, reached the building in which the meeting was to take place--a plain, unimposing-looking edifice, built for a cha...

Between three and four o'clock, half a dozen people, on different devices, tried to draw Elisabeth from her retirement. Her particular friend called to suggest a round of the pi...

Eight days later, Maraton delivered his preliminary address to the ironworkers of Sheffield, and at six o'clock the next morning the strike had been unanimously proclaimed. The...

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 a...

Julia was conscious of a new vitality as she left the Park. She was her own mistress now; her half tie to Graveling was permanently broken. So much the better! The man's persona...

About seven miles from London, Selingman gave the signal for the car to pull up. They drew in by the side of the road and they all stood up in their places. Before them, the red...

Lady Grenside's hospitable instincts were unquenchable. The small house-party to which her brother had reluctantly consented had grown by odd couples until the house was more th...

"They won't give us dinner here," he explained. "London isn't civilised enough for that yet, or perhaps it's a matter of climate. But we can get all sorts of things to eat, and...

In the roar of applause which followed Maraton's brilliant but wholly unprepared peroration, a roar which broke and swelled like the waves of the sea, different people upon the...

"Mother always forgets whom she has asked down for the week-end," she said, "and my uncle is far too sweet about it. I know that he wanted to have as much time as possible alone...

She had given up her place by the window to an anaemic-looking child of seventeen, who had a habit of fainting during these long, summer afternoons. Her own fingers were weary a...

Julia rose at daybreak and, fully dressed, stood watching the red light eastwards staining the smoke-hung city. Her little room with its plain deal furniture, its uncarpeted flo...

On the following morning, Maraton saw Elisabeth for the first time since his return from Manchester. As he rang the bell of Mr. Foley's residence in Downing Street, at a few min...

Selingman came into the restaurant with a huge rose in his buttonhole and another bunch of flowers--carnations this time--in his hands. He made his way to the little round table...

The lengthy reports of his Sheffield visit and speeches, of which the newspapers made great capital, an extraordinary impression of the same in Selingman's wonderful prose, and...

Into the salon of Maxendorf's suite at the Ritz Hotel, freed for a moment from its constant stream of callers, came suddenly, without announcement--from a place of hiding, indee...

Mr. Foley pointed to an easy-chair. Maraton, however, did not at once respond to his gesture of invitation. He was standing, tense and silent, with head upraised, listening. Fro...

Across Soho, threading his way with devilish ingenuity through mazes of narrow streets, scattering with his hooter little groups of gibbering, swarthy foreigners, Aaron Thurnbre...

It happened to be a quiet evening in the House, and Maraton and Selingman dined together at a little before eight o'clock. Selingman's personality was too unusual to escape atte...

The sound of traffic outside had died away. The silence became almost unnaturally prolonged. Only the echo of Julia's last words seemed, somehow or other, to remain, words which...

"Come back with me now, won't you?" she asked, a little abruptly. "My uncle is restless and unwell this afternoon, and it will perhaps relieve him to have your decision."

Selingman was once more entirely his old self. He staggered into the room with a tin of biscuits under one arm, and three bottles of hock under the other, all of which he deposi...

One by one, Maraton got rid at last of the little crowd of journalists who had been waiting for him below. The last on the list was perhaps the most difficult. He pressed very h...

Selingman had scarcely left the place when Ernshaw arrived, piloted into the room by Aaron, who had been waiting for him below. Maraton and he gripped hands heartily. During the...

"Naturally," he replied. "I quite understand that. I am delighted to think that you are coming at all. May I ask whether you have conferred with your friends about the matter?"

The last words had been spoken, the suspense of a few hours was at an end. Maraton was on his way back to London, a duly accredited Member of Parliament for the eastern division...