"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!