Peter Dale smoked steadily for several moments.

“It was nowt to do with me,” he announced.  “The fellow sprung up all on his own, as it were.  Graveling here may have known something of it, but so far as we are concerned he was not an authorised candidate.”

Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“There was nothing,” he objected, “to convey that idea to the electors.  He made use of the Labour agent and the Labour committee rooms.  My telegram to you remained unanswered.  Under those circumstances, I really can scarcely see how you find it possible to disown him.”

“In any case,” Abraham Weavel intervened, with conciliation in his tone, “he didn’t do himself a bit a’ good nor you a bit of harm.  Four hundred and thirty votes he polled out of eight thousand, and those were votes which otherwise would have gone to the Liberal.  I should say myself that it did you good, if anything.”

“You may be right,” Maraton admitted.  “At the same time, one thing is very clear.  You did not offer me the slightest official support.  It is true that I did not ask for it.  I prefer, as I have told you all along, my independence.  It will be my object to continue without direct association with any party.  If I can find a place in the house allotted to Independent Members, I shall sit there.  If not, I shall sit with the Unionists.”

Peter Dale’s face darkened.  This was what they had feared.

“You mean that you’re breaking away from us?” he exclaimed angrily.  “There’s no room in our little party for Independent Members, no sort of sense in a mere handful of us all pulling different ways.”

“I never joined your party, Mr. Dale,” Maraton reminded him.  “I have never joined any man’s party.  I am for the people.”

“And what about us?” Graveling demanded.  “Aren’t we for the people?  Isn’t that what we’re in Parliament for?  Isn’t that why we are called Labour Members?”

Maraton regarded the last speaker steadily.

“Mr. Graveling,” he said, “since you have mooted the question, I will admit that I do not consider you, as a body of men, entirely devoted to the cause of the people.  You are each devoted to your own constituency.  It is your business to look after the few thousand voters who sent you into Parliament, and in your eagerness to serve and please them, I think that you sometimes forget the greater, the more universal truths.  I may be wrong.  That is how the matter seems to me.”

“Then since you’re so frank,” Peter Dale declared, with undiminished wrath, “I’ll just imitate your candour!  I’ll tell you how you seem to us.  You seem like a man with a gift, whose head has been turned by Mr. Foley and his fine friends.  You’re full of great phrases, but there’s nothing practical about them or you.  You’re on your way to an easy place for yourself in the world, and a seat in Foley’s Cabinet.”

“Have you any objection,” Maraton asked, “to the people’s cause being represented in the Cabinet?”