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Nobody's Man, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book Two - Chapter 8 |
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_ BOOK TWO CHAPTER VIII Whilst Tallente, rejuvenated, and with a wonderful sense of well-being at the back of his mind, was on his feet in the House of Commons on the following afternoon, leading an unexpected attack against the unfortunate Government, Dartrey sat at tea in Nora's study. Nora, who had had a very busy day, was leaning back in her chair, well content though a little fatigued. Dartrey, who had forgotten his lunch in the stress of work, was devoting himself to the muffins. "While I think of it," he said, "let me thank you for playing hostess so charmingly the other night." She made him a little bow. "Your dinner party was a great success." "Was it?" he murmured, a little doubtfully. "I am not quite so sure. I can't seem to get at Tallente, somehow." "He is doing his work well, isn't he?" "The mechanical side of it is most satisfactory," Dartrey confessed. "He is the most perfect Parliamentary machine that was ever evolved." "Surely that is exactly what you want? You were always complaining that there was no one to bring the stragglers into line." "For the present," Dartrey admitted, "Tallente is doing excellently. I wish, though, that I could see a little farther into the future." "Tell me exactly what fault you find with him?" Nora persisted. "He lacks enthusiasm already. He makes none of the mistakes which are coincident with genius and he is a little intolerant. He takes no trouble to adapt himself to varying views, he has a fine, broad outlook, but no man can see into every corner of the earth, and what is outside his outlook does not exist." "Anything else?" "He is not happy in his work. There is something wanting in his scheme of life. I have built a ladder for him to climb. I have given him the chance of becoming the greatest statesman of to-day. One would think that he had some other ambition." Nora sighed. She looked across at her visitor a little diffidently. "I can help you to understand Andrew Tallente," she declared. "His condition is the greatest of all tributes to my sex. He has had an unhappy married life. From forty to fifty he has borne it philosophically as a man may. Now the reaction has come. With the first dim approach of age, he becomes suddenly terrified for the things he is missing." Dartrey was thoughtful. "I dare say you are right," he admitted, "but if he needs an Aspasia, surely she could be found?" Nora rested her head upon her fingers. She seemed to be watching intently the dancing flames. Her broad, womanly forehead was troubled, her soft brown eyes pensive. "He is fifty years old," she said. "It is rather an anomalous age. At fifty a man's taste is almost hypercritical and his attraction to my sex is on the wane. No, the problem isn't so easy." Dartrey had finished tea and was feeling for his cigarette case. "I rather fancied, Nora, that he was attracted by you." "Well, he isn't, then," she replied, with a smile. "He was rather by way of thinking that he was, the other night, but that was simply because he was in a curiously unsettled state and he felt that I was sympathetic." "You are a very clever woman, Nora," he said, looking across at her. "You could make him care for you if you chose." "Is that to be my sacrifice to the cause?" she asked. "Am I to give my soul to its wrong keeper, that our party may flourish?" "You don't like Tallente?" "I like him immensely," she contradicted vigorously. "If I weren't hopelessly in love with some one else, I could find it perfectly easy to try and make life a different place for him." He looked at her with trouble in his kind eyes. It was as though he had suddenly stumbled upon a tragedy. "I have never guessed this about you, Nora," he murmured. "You are not observant of small things," she answered, a little bitterly. "Who is the man?" "That I shall not tell you." "Do I know him?" "Less, I should say, than any one of your acquaintance." He was silent for a moment or two. Then it chanced that the telephone rang for him, with a message from the House of Commons. He gave some instructions to his secretary. "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 harassed 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 friendship in which two people of opposite sexes 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 constituency. 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 snatched 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? Damn 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 pronounced. "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 class 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." _ |
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