"George Denny? Mr. George Denny, the member for Westropp? I have had no dealings whatever with that gentleman in the matter."
Wharton let him pass.
Then as he himself entered the tea-room, he perceived the bending form of Aldous Raeburn chatting to Lady Winterbourne on his right, and that tall whiteness close in front, waiting for him.
His brain cleared in a flash. He was perfectly conscious that a bribe had just been offered him, of the most daring and cynical kind, and that he had received the offer in the tamest way. An insult had been put upon him which had for ever revealed the estimate held of him by certain shrewd people, for ever degraded him in his own eyes.
Nevertheless, he was also conscious that the thing was done. The bribe would be accepted, the risk taken. So far as his money-matters were concerned he was once more a free man. The mind had adjusted itself, reached its decision in a few minutes.
And the first effect of the mingled excitement and self-contempt which the decision brought with it had been to drive him into the scene with Marcella. Instinctively he asked of passion to deliver him quickly from the smart of a new and very disagreeable experience.
* * * * *
Well! why should he not take these men's offer?
He was as much convinced as they that this whole matter of the strike had of late come to a deadlock. So long as the public would give, the workers, passionately certain of the justice of their own cause, and filled with new ambitions after more decent living, would hold out. On the other hand, he perfectly understood that the masters had also in many ways a strong case, that they had been very hard hit by the strike, and that many of them would rather close their works or transfer them bodily to the Continent than give way. Some of the facts Pearson had found time to mention had been certainly new and striking.
At the same time he never disguised from himself for an instant that but for a prospective 20,000 l. the facts concerned would not have affected him in the least. Till to-night it had been to his interest to back the strike, and to harass the employers. Now things were changed; and he took a curious satisfaction in the quick movements of his own intelligence, as his thought rapidly sketched the "curve" the Clarion would have to take, and the arguments by which he would commend it.