“They won’t be long.”
She turned her head sideways towards him as she spoke. Her attitude was alive with feminine grace and charm.
“You are as good as you are beautiful,” he said, in reply to her hospitable remark.
She met his full glance, and smiled contentedly. The blunt sincerity of the tribute compensated for its lack of the finer imaginative shades. There was a moment’s silence. Then she raised her eyes again, but this time with sad expectancy.
“Well?”
He broke out in a kind of groan.
“It’s all over. I needn’t tell you that. You got my letter this morning, and you must have guessed from my wire this afternoon. We give in to-morrow unconditionally—after all these weeks of struggle and sacrifice. It is the most crushing blow labour has ever had. And I’ll stake my existence another week would have seen them through. Rosenthal is no more going to finance these firms than he is going to finance me. It has been cruel. I have been working at it since six o’clock this morning. It has been like trying to fly a kite with a cannon-ball at its tail. At the meeting this afternoon I did all I knew. I have never lost my head with passion before. They were all like dead men; went away dragging their boots. Some of them cursed me. Managers came round me afterwards. ‘Didn’t I know? The strike fund was exhausted.’ As if I was ignorant of it! ‘Two more days would see the end of it.’ I said, ‘In God’s name, see the two days out.’ They shook their heads; were going to announce surrender then and there; but I managed to make them put it off till the morning. And then I came away—eating my heart out.”
He set his teeth and glowered at the fire. The story of the defeat had brought back the bitterness in all its intensity. Lady Phayre did not speak, instinctively knowing that, with him, silence was the truest sympathy.
“The bitter part to me,” he continued, with note of passion that vibrated through the woman, “is, that if I could have had a hundredth part of the grip on them to-day that I had a week ago, I should have brought them through. I know it as I know water goes down hill. I have failed. It is my failure. I have been responsible for all these poor creatures’ sacrifices during the past weeks; and now all the poverty, hunger, despair, for nothing. You saw what it was a few days ago. You should have been there this morning. I saw a man seize a bit of bread and treacle out of a child’s hand and begin to devour it—like a wolf—I couldn’t stand it.”
Lady Phayre looked at him quickly, and then for the first time noticed a slight bruise and an abrasion on his forehead. She drew her own conclusions.