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Nobody's Man, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book One - Chapter 3 |
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_ BOOK ONE CHAPTER III Very soon tea was brought in. The homely service of the meal, and Robert's plain clothes, seemed to demand some sort of explanation. It was she who provided the opening. "Will your wife be long away?" she enquired. Tallente looked at his guest thoughtfully. She was pouring out tea from an ordinary brown earthenware pot with an air of complete absorption in her task. The friendliness of her seemed somehow to warm the atmosphere of the room, even as her sympathy had stolen into the frozen places of his life. For the moment he ignored her question. His eyes appraised her critically, reminiscently. There was something vaguely familiar in the frank sweetness of her tone and manner. "I am going to make the most idiotically commonplace remark," he said. "I cannot believe that this is the first time we have met." "It isn't," she replied, helping herself to strawberry "Are you in earnest?" he asked, puzzled. "Do you mean that I have spoken to you?" "Absolutely!" "Not only that but you have made me a present." He searched the recesses of his memory in vain. She smiled at his perplexity and began to count on her fingers. "Let me see," she said, "exactly fourteen years ago you arrived in Paris from London on a confidential mission to a certain person." "To Lord Peters!" he exclaimed. She nodded. "You had half an hour to spare after you had finished your business, and you begged to see the young people. Maggie Peters was always a friend of yours. You came into the morning-room and I was there." "You?" "Yes! I was at school in Paris, and I was spending my half-holiday with Maggie." "The little brown girl!" he murmured. "I never heard your name, and when I sent the chocolates I had to send them to 'the young lady in brown.' Of course I remember! But your hair was down your back, you had freckles, and you were as silent as a mouse." "You see how much better my memory is than yours," she laughed. "I am not so sure," he objected. "You took me for the gardener just now." "Not when you came down the steps," she protested, "and besides, it is your own fault for wearing such atrociously old clothes." "They shall be given away to-morrow," he promised. "I should think so," she replied. "And you might part with the battered straw hat you were wearing, at the same time." "It shall be done," he promised meekly. She became reminiscent. "We were all so interested in you in those days. Lord Peters told us, after you were gone, that some day you would be Prime Minister." "I am afraid," he sighed, "that I have disappointed most of my friends." "You have disappointed no one," she assured him firmly. "You will disappoint no one. You are the one person in politics who has kept a steadfast course, and if you have lost ground a little in the country, and slipped out of people's political appreciation during the last decade, don't we all know why? Every one of your friends--and your wife, of course," she put in hastily, "must be proud that you have lost ground. There isn't another man in the country who gave up a great political career to learn his drill in a cadet corps, who actually served in the trenches through the most terrible battles of the war, and came out of it a Brigadier-General with all your distinctions." He felt his heart suddenly swell. No one had ever spoken to him like this. The newspapers had been complimentary for a day and had accepted the verdict of circumstances the next. His wife had simply been the reflex of other people's opinion and the trend of events. "You make me feel," he told her earnestly, "almost for the first time, that after all it was worth while." The slight unsteadiness of his tone at first surprised, then brought her almost to the point of confusion. Their eyes met--a startled glance on her part, merely to assure herself that he was in earnest--and afterwards there was a moment's embarrassment. She accepted a cigarette and went back to her easy-chair. "You did not answer the question I asked you a few minutes ago," she reminded him. "When is your wife returning?" The shadow was back on his face. "Lady Jane," he said, "if it were not that we are old friends, dating from that box of chocolates, remember, I might have felt that I must make you some sort of a formal reply. But as it is, I shall tell you the truth. My wife is not coming hack." "Not at all?" she exclaimed. "To me, never," he answered. "We have separated." "I am so very sorry," she said, after a moment's startled silence. "I am afraid that I asked a tactless question, but how could I know?" "There was nothing tactless about it," he assured her. "It makes it much easier for me to tell you. I married my wife thirteen years ago because I believed that her wealth would help me in my career. She married me because she was an American with ambitions, anxious to find a definite place in English society. She has been disappointed in me. Other circumstances have now presented themselves. I have discovered that my wife's affections are bestowed elsewhere. To be perfectly honest, the discovery was a relief to me." "So that is why you are living down here like this?" she murmured. "Precisely! The one thing for which I am grateful," he went on, "is that I always refused to let my wife take a big country house. I insisted upon an unpretentious place for the times when I could rest. I think that I shall settle down here altogether. I can just afford to live here if I shoot plenty of rabbits, and if Robert's rheumatism is not too bad for him to look after the vegetable garden." "Of course you are talking nonsense," she pronounced, a little curtly. "Why nonsense?" "You must go back to your work," she insisted. "Keep this place for your holiday moments, certainly, but for the rest, to talk of settling down here is simply wicked." "What is my work?" he asked. "I tell you frankly that I do not know where I belong. A very intelligent constituency, stuffed up to the throat with schoolboard education, has determined that it would prefer a representative who has changed his politics already four times. I seem to be nobody's man. Horlock at heart is frightened of me, because he is convinced that I am not sound, and he has only tried to make use of me as a sop to democracy. The Whigs hate me like poison, hate me even worse than Horlock. If I were in Parliament, I should not know which Party to support. I think I shall devote my time to roses." "And between September and May?" "I shall hibernate and think about them." "Of course," she said, with the air of one humoring a child, "you are not in earnest. You have just been through a very painful experience and you are suffering from it. As for the rest, you are talking nonsense." "Explain, please," he begged. "You said just now that you did not know where your place was," she continued. "You called yourself nobody's man. Why, the most ignorant person who thinks about things could tell you where you belong. Even I could tell you." "Please do," he invited. She rose to her feet. "Walk round the garden with me," she begged, brushing the cigarette ash from her skirt. "You know what a terrible out-of-door person I am. This room seems to me close. I want to smell the sea from one of those wonderful lookouts of yours." He walked with her along one of the lower paths, deliberately avoiding the upper lookouts. They came presently to a grass-grown pier. She stood at the end, her firm, capable fingers clenching the stone wall, her eyes looking seaward. "I will tell you where you belong," she said. "In your heart you must know it, but you are suffering from that reaction which comes from failure to those people who are not used to failure. You belong to the head of things. You should hold up your right, hand, and the party you should lead should form itself about you. No, don't interrupt me," she went on. "You and all of us know that the country is in a bad way. She is feeling all the evils of a too-great prosperity, thrust upon her after a period of suffering. You can see the dangers ahead--I learnt them first from you in the pages of the reviews, when after the war you foretold the exact position in which we find ourselves to-day. Industrial wealth means the building up of a new democracy. The democracy already exists but it is unrepresented, because those people who should form its bulwark and its strength are attached to various factions of what is called the Labour Party. They don't know themselves yet. No Rienzi has arisen to hold up the looking-glass. If some one does not teach them to find themselves, there will be trouble. Mind, I am only repeating what you have told others." "It is all true," he agreed. "Then can't you see," she continued eagerly, "what party it is to which you ought to attach yourself--the party which has broken up now into half a dozen factions? They are all misnamed but that is no matter. You should stand for Parliament as a Labour or a Socialist candidate, because you understand what the people want and what they ought to have. You should draw up a new and final programme." "You are a wonderful person," he said with conviction, "but like all people who are clear-sighted and who have imagination, you are also a theorist. I believe your idea is the true one, but to stand for Parliament as a Labour member you have to belong to one of the acknowledged factions to be sure of any support at all. An independent member can count his votes by the capful." "That is the old system," she pointed out firmly. "It is for you to introduce a new one. If necessary, you must stoop to political cunning. You should make use of those very factions until you are strong enough to stand by yourself. Through their enmity amongst themselves, one of them would come to your side, anyway. But I should like to see you discard all old parliamentary methods. I should like to see you speak to the heart of the man who is going to record his vote." "It is a slow matter to win votes in units," he reminded her. "But it is the real way," she insisted. "Voting by party and government by party will soon come to an end. It must. All that it needs is a strong man with a definite programme of his own, to attack the whole principle." He looked away from the sea towards the woman by his side. The wind was blowing in her face, blowing back little strands of her tightly coiled hair, blowing back her coat and skirt, outlining her figure with soft and graceful distinction. She was young, healthy and splendid, full of all the enthusiasm of her age. He sighed a little bitterly. "All that you say," he reminded her, "should have been said to me by the little brown girl in Paris, years ago. I am too old now for great tasks." She turned towards him with the pitying yet pleasant air of one who would correct a child. "You are forty-nine years old and three months," she said. "How on earth did you know that?" he demanded. She smiled. "A valuable little red book called 'Who's Who.' You see, it is no use your trying to pose as a Methuselah. For a politician you are a young man. You have time and strength for the greatest of all tasks. Find some other excuse, sir, if you talk of laying down the sword and picking up the shuttle." He looked back seawards. His eyes were following the flight of a seagull, wheeling in the sunlight. "I suppose you are right," he acknowledged. "No man is too old for work." "I beg your pardon, sir." They turned abruptly around. They had been so engrossed that they had not noticed the sound of footsteps. Robert, a little out of breath, was standing at attention. There was a disturbed look in his face, a tremor in his voice. "I beg your pardon, sir," he repeated, "there is--some one here to see you." "Some one?" Tallente repeated impatiently. Robert leaned a little forward. The effort at lowering his voice only made his hoarse whisper sound more agitated. "A police inspector, sir, from Barnstaple, is waiting in the study." _ |
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