Nobody's Man Part 30

"It is a queer thing," he remarked, as he replaced the receiver, "how far our daily work and our ambitions take us out of our immediate environment. I see you day by day, Nora, I have known you intimately since your school days--and I never guessed."

"You never guessed and I have no time to suffer," she answered. "So we go on until the breaking time comes, until one part of ourselves conquers and the other loses. It is rather like that just now with Andrew Tallente. A few more years and it will probably be like that with me."

He threw his cigarette away as though the flavour had suddenly become distasteful and sat drumming with his fingers upon the table, his eyes fixed upon Nora.

"Tallente's position," he said thoughtfully, "one can understand. He is married, isn't he, and with all the splendid breadth of his intellectual outlook he is still hara.s.sed by the social fetters of his birth and bringing up. I can conceive Tallente as a person too highminded to seek to evade the law and too scornful for intrigue. But you, Nora, how is it that your love brings you unhappiness? You are young and free, and surely," he concluded, with a little sigh, "when you choose you can make yourself irresistible."

She looked at him with a peculiar light in her eyes.

"I have proved myself very far from being irresistible," she declared.

"The man for whose love my whole being is aching to-day is absolutely unawakened as to my desirability. I enjoy with him the most impersonal friends.h.i.+p in which two people of opposite s.e.xes ever indulged."

"I thought that I was acquainted with all your intimates," Dartrey observed, in a puzzled tone. "Let me meet this man and judge for myself, Nora."

"Do you mean that?" she asked.

"Certainly."

"Very well, then," she acquiesced, "I'll ask him to dinner here. When are you free?"

He glanced through a thin memorandum book.

"On Sunday night?"

"At eight o'clock," she said. "You won't mind a simple dinner, I know.

I can promise you that you will be interested. My friend is worth knowing."

Dartrey took his departure a little hurriedly. He had suddenly remembered an appointment at his committee rooms and went off with his mind full of the troubles of a northern const.i.tuency. On his way up Parliament Street he met Miller, who turned and walked by his side.

"Heard the news?" the latter asked curtly. "No. Is there any?" was the quick reply.

"Tallente's broken the truce," Miller announced. "There was rather an acid debate on the Compensation Clauses of Hensham's Allotment Bill.

Tallente pulled them to pieces and then challenged a division. The Government Whips were fairly caught napping and were beaten by twelve votes." Dartrey's eyes flashed.

"Tallente is a most wonderful tactician," he said. "This is the second time he's forced the Government into a hole. Horlock will never last the session, at this rate."

"There are rumours of a resignation, of course," Miller went on, "but they aren't likely to go out on a s.n.a.t.c.hed division like this."

"We don't want them to," Dartrey agreed. "All the time, though, this sort of thing is weakening their prestige. We shall be ready to give them their coup de grace in about four months."

The two men were silent for a moment. Then Miller spoke again a little abruptly.

"I can't seem to get on with Tallente," he confessed.

"I am sorry," Dartrey regretted. "You'll have to try, Miller. We can't do without him."

"Try? I have tried," was the impatient rejoinder. "Tallente may have his points but nature never meant him to be a people's man. He's too hidebound in convention and tradition. Upon my soul, Dartrey, he makes me feel like a republican of the bloodthirsty age, he's so blasted superior!"

"You're going back to the smaller outlook, Miller," his chief expostulated. "These personal prejudices should be entirely negligible.

I am perfectly certain that Tallente himself would lay no stress upon them."

"Stress upon them? d.a.m.n it, I'm as good as he is!" Miller exclaimed irritably. "There's no harm in Tallente's ratting, quitting his order and coming amongst us Democrats, but what I do object to is his bringing the mannerisms and outlook of Eton and Oxford amongst us. When I am with him, he always makes me feel that I am doing the wrong thing and that he knows it."

Dartrey frowned a little impatiently.

"This is rubbish, Miller," he p.r.o.nounced. "It is you who are to blame for attaching the slightest importance to these trifles."

"Trifles!" Miller growled. "Within a very short time, Dartrey, this question will have to be settled. Does Tallente know that I am promised a seat in his Cabinet?"

"I think that he must surmise it."

"The sooner he knows, the better," Miller declared acidly. "Tallente can unbend all right when he likes. He was dining at the Trocadero the other night with Brooks and Ainley and Parker and Saunderson--the most cheerful party in the place. Tallente seemed to have slipped out of himself, and yet there isn't one of those men who has ever had a day's schooling or has ever worn anything but ready-made clothes. He leaves his starch off when he's with them. What's the matter with me, I should like to know? I'm a college man, even though I did go as an exhibitioner. I was a school teacher when those fellows were wielding pick-axes."

Dartrey looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a single moment the words trembled upon his lips which would have brought things to an instant and profitless climax. Then he remembered the million or so of people of Miller's own cla.s.s and way of thinking, to whom he was a leading light, and he choked back the words.

"I find this sort of conversation a little peevish, Miller," he said.

"As soon as any definite difference of opinion arises between you and Tallente, I will intervene. At present you are both doing good work.

Our cause needs you both."

"You won't forget how I stand?" Miller persisted, as they reached their destination.

"No one has ever yet accused me of breaking my word," was the somewhat chilly rejoinder. "You shall have your pound of flesh."

CHAPTER IX

Jane leaned back in her chair, drew off her gloves and looked around her with an appreciative smile. She had somehow the subtle air of being even more pleased with herself and her surroundings than she was willing to admit. Every table in the restaurant was occupied. The waiters were busy: there was an air of gaiety. A faint smell of cookery hung about the place and its clients were undeniably a curious mixture of the bourgeois and theatrical. Nevertheless, she was perfectly content and smiled her greetings to the great Monsieur George, who himself brought their menu.

"We want the best of your ordinary dishes," Tallente told him, "and remember that we do not come here expecting Ritz specialities or a Savoy _chef d'oeuvre_. We want those special _hors d'oeuvres_ which you know all about, a sole grilled _a la maison_, a plainly roasted chicken with an endive salad. The sweets are your affair. The savoury must be a cheese souffle. And for wine--"

He broke off and looked across the table. Jane smiled apologetically.

"You will never bring me out again," she declared. "I want some champagne."

"I never felt more like it myself," he agreed. "The _Pommery_, George, slightly iced, an aperitif now, and the dinner can take its course. We will linger over the _hors d'oeuvres_ and we are in no hurry."

George departed and Tallente smiled across at his companion. It was a wonderful moment, this. His steady success of the last few months, the triumph of the afternoon had never brought him one of the thrills which were in his pulses at that moment, not one iota of the pleasurable sense of well-being which was warming his veins. The new menace which had suddenly thrown its shadow across his path was forgotten. Governments might come or go, a career be made or broken upon the wheel. He was alone with Jane.

"Now tell me all the news at Woolhanger?" he asked.

"Woolhanger lies under a mantle of snow," she told him. "There is a wind blowing there which seems to have come straight from the ice of the North Pole and sounds like the devil playing bowls amongst the hills."

"The hunting?"

"All stopped, of course. A few nights ago, two stags came right up to the house and quite a troop of the really wild ponies from over Hawkbridge way. We've never had such a spell of cold in my memory. It reminded one of the snowstorm in 'Lorna Doone.'--But after all, I told you all about Woolhanger last night. I want your news."

"I seem to have settled down with the Democrats," he told her. "I do my best to keep the party in line. The great trades unions are, of course, our chief difficulty, but I think we are making progress even with them.

Some of the miners' representatives dined with me at the Trocadero the other night. Good fellows they are, too. There is only one great difficulty," he went on, "in the consolidation of my party, and that is to get a little more breadth into the views of these men who represent the leading industries. They are obsessed with the duties that they owe to their own artificers and the labour connected with the particular industry they represent. It is hard to make them see the importance of any other subject. Yet we need these very men as lawmakers. I want them to study production and the laws of production from a universal point of view."