Reverie, however, was soon dispersed.  He recollected his other correspondents, and springing up he began to pace his room, gloomily thinking over his money difficulties, which were many.  He and his mother had always been in want of money ever since he could remember.  Lady Mildred would spend huge sums on her various crotchets and campaigns, and then subside for six months into wretched lodgings in a back street of Southsea or Worthing, while the Suffolk house was let, and her son mostly went abroad.  This perpetual worry of needy circumstances had always, indeed, sat lightly on Wharton.  He was unmarried, and so far scarcity had generally passed into temporary comfort before he had time to find it intolerable.  But now the whole situation was becoming more serious.  In the first place, his subscriptions and obligations as a member of Parliament, and as one of the few propertied persons in a moneyless movement, were considerable.  Whatever Socialism might make of money in the future, he was well aware that money in the present was no less useful to a Socialist politician than to any one else.  In the next place, the starting and pushing of the Clarion newspaper—­originally purchased by the help of a small legacy from an uncle—­had enormously increased the scale of his money transactions and the risks of life.

How was it that, with all his efforts, the Clarion was not making, but losing money?  During the three years he had possessed it he had raised it from the position of a small and foul-mouthed print, indifferently nourished on a series of small scandals, to that of a Labour organ of some importance.  He had written a weekly signed article for it, which had served from the beginning to bring both him and the paper into notice; he had taken pains with the organisation and improvement of the staff; above all, he had spent a great deal more money upon it, in the way of premises and appliances, than he had been, as it turned out, in any way justified in spending.

Hence, indeed, these tears.  Rather more than a year before, while the Clarion was still enjoying a first spurt of success and notoriety, he had, with a certain recklessness which belonged to his character, invested in new and costly machinery, and had transferred the paper to larger offices.  All this had been done on borrowed money.

Then, for some reason or other, the Clarion had ceased to answer to the spur—­had, indeed, during the past eight months been flagging heavily.  The outside world was beginning to regard the Clarion as an important paper.  Wharton knew all the time that its advertisements were falling off, and its circulation declining.  Why?  Who can say?  If it is true that books have their fates, it is still more true of newspapers.  Was it that a collectivist paper—­the rival organ mentioned by Wilkins—­recently started by a group of young and outrageously clever Venturists and more closely in touch than the Clarion