A Peoples Man | Page 2

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