"That's sound enough," Peter Dale admitted. "How are you going to get it?"
"You ask for too much," Weavel observed, "and you get nothing."
"It is never wise," Culvain suggested quietly, "to have the public against one."
Maraton rose a little abruptly to his feet. He had the air of one eager to dismiss the subject.
"Gentlemen," he announced, "I've heard your views. In a few days' time you shall hear mine. Only let me tell you this. To me you all seem to be working and thinking on very narrow lines. Your object seems to be the securing of small individual benefits for your individual constituents. I think that if we get to work together in this country, there must be something more national in our aspirations. That is all I have to say for the present. As I think you know, I intend to make a pronouncement of my own views at Manchester."
They all took their leave a little later. Maraton himself saw them out and watched them across the Square. Somehow or other, his depression had visibly increased as he turned away. He had come into contact lately, on the other side of the world, with a different order of person--men and women, too, passionately, strenuously in earnest. They were well-fed, prosperous individuals, these whom he had just dismissed. Their politics were their business, their position as Members of Parliament a source of unmixed joy to all of them; hard-headed men, very likely, good each in his own department; beyond that, nothing.
He returned presently to his study, where Aaron was already at work, typing letters.
"So that is your committee of Labour Members," Maraton remarked, throwing himself into an easy chair.
"They are all sound men," he declared. "Peter Dale, too, is a fine speaker."
"Yet it isn't from them," he said quietly, "that I can take a mandate. I must go to the people. I couldn't even talk to them to-day. I couldn't take them into my confidence. I couldn't show them the things I have seen perhaps only in my dreams. I don't suppose they would have listened. . . . How many more letters, Aaron?"
"I shall walk for an hour or so," he announced. "Get them ready for me to sign when I come in. Have you a home, young man?"
"Excellent!" Maraton declared cheerfully. "These people with homes lose sight of the real thing. What do you think of your Labour Members, honestly, Aaron? Ah, I can see that they have been little gods to you! Little tin gods, I am afraid, Aaron. Do they know what it is to go hungry, I wonder? Not often! . . . Get on with your letters. I am going out."