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Nobody's Man, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book One - Chapter 12 |
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_ BOOK ONE CHAPTER XII Dartrey had been called unexpectedly to the north, to a great Labour conference, and Tallente, waiting for his return, promised within the next forty-eight hours, found himself rather at a loose end. He avoided the club, where he would have been likely to meet his late political associates, and spent the morning after his visit to the Prime Minister strolling around the Park, paying visits to his tailor and hosier, and lunched by himself a little sadly in a fashionable restaurant. At five o'clock he found his way to Westminster and discovered Nora Miall's flat. A busy young person in pince-nez and a long overall, who announced herself as Miss Miall's secretary, was in the act of showing out James Miller as he rang the bell. "Any news?" the latter asked, after Tallente had found it impossible to avoid shaking hands. "I am waiting for Mr. Dartrey's return. No, there is no particular news that I know of." "Dartrey's had to go north for a few days," Miller confided officiously. "I ought to have gone too, but some one had to stay and look after things in the House. Rather a nuisance his being called away just now." Tallente preserved a noncommittal silence. Miller rolled a cigarette hastily, took up his unwrapped umbrella and an ill-brushed bowler hat. "Well, I must be going," he concluded. "If there is anything I can do for you during the chief's absence, look me up, Mr. Tallente. It's all the same, you know--Dartrey or me--Demos House in Parliament Street, or the House. You haven't forgotten your way there yet, I expect?" With which parting shaft Mr. James Miller departed, and the secretary, Opening the door of Nora's sitting room, ushered Tallente in. "Mr. Tallente," she announced, with a subdued smile, "fresh from a most engaging but rather one-sided conversation with Mr. Miller." Nora was evidently neither attired nor equipped this afternoon for a tea party at Claridge's. She wore a dark blue princess frock, buttoned right up to the throat. Her hair was brushed straight back from her head, revealing a little more completely her finely shaped forehead. She was seated before a round table covered with papers, and Tallente fancied, even as he crossed the threshold, that there was an electric atmosphere in the little apartment, an impression which the smouldering fire in her eyes, as she glanced up, confirmed. The change in her expression, however, as she recognised her visitor, was instantaneous. A delightful smile of welcome chased away the sombreness of her face. "My dear man," she exclaimed, "come and sit down and help me to forget that annoying person who has just gone out!" Tallente smiled. "Miller is not one of your favorites, then?" "Isn't he the most impossible person who ever breathed." she replied. "He was a conscientious objector during the war, a sex fanatic since--Mr. Dartrey had to use all his influence to keep him out of prison for writing those scurrulous articles in the Comet--and I think he is one of the smallest-minded, most untrustworthy persons I ever met. For some reason or other, Stephen Dartrey believes in him. He has a wonderful talent for organization and a good deal of influence with the trades unions.--By the by, it's all right about the muffins." She rang the bell and ordered tea. Tallente glanced for a moment about the room. The four walls were lined with well-filled bookcases, but the mural decorations consisted--except for one wonderful nude figure, copy of a well-known Rodin--of statistical charts and shaded maps. There were only two signs of feminine occupation: an immense bowl of red roses, rising with strange effect from the sea of manuscript, pamphlets, and volumes of reference, and a wide, luxurious couch, drawn up to the window, through which the tops of a little clump of lime trees were just visible. As she turned back to him, he noticed with more complete appreciation the lines of her ample but graceful figure, the more remarkable because she was neither tall nor slim. "So that was your wife at Claridge's yesterday afternoon?" she remarked, a little abruptly. He assented in silence. Her eyes sought his speculatively. "I know that Lady Clanarton is a terrible gossip," she went on. "Was she telling me the truth when she said that your married life was not an entire success?" "She was telling you the truth," Tallente admitted. "I like to know everything," she suggested quietly. "You must remember that we shall probably become intimates." "I did my wife the injustice of marrying her for money," Tallente explained. "She married me because she thought that I could provide her with a social position such as she desired. Our marriage was a double failure. I found no opportunity of making use of her money, and she was discontented with the value she received for it. We have within the last few days agreed to separate. Now you know everything," he added, with a little smile, "and curiously enough, considering the brevity of our acquaintance, you know it before anybody else in the world except one person." She smiled. "I like to know everything about the people I am interested in," she admitted. "Besides, your story sounds so quaint. It seems to belong, somehow or other, to the days of Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen. I suppose that is because I always feel that I am living a little way in the future." Tea was brought in, and a place cleared for the tray upon a crowded table. Afterwards she lit a cigarette and threw herself upon the lounge. "Turn your chair around towards me," she invited. "This is the hour I like best of any during the day. Do you see what a beautiful view I have of the Houses of Parliament? And there across the river, behind that mist, the cesspool begins. Sometimes I lie here and think. I see right into Bermondsey and Rotherhithe and all those places and think out the lives of the people as they are being lived. Then I look through those wonderful windows there--how they glitter in the sunshine, don't they!--and I think I hear the men speak whom they have sent to plead their cause. Some Demosthenes from Tower Hill exhausts himself with phrase-making, shouts himself into a perspiration, drawing lurid, pictures of hideous and apparent wrongs, and a hundred or so well-dressed legislators whisper behind the palms of their hands, make their plans for the evening and trot into their appointed lobbies like sheep when the division bell rings. It is the most tragical epitome of inadequacy the world has ever known." "Have you Democrats any fresh inspiration, then?" he asked. "Of course we have," she rapped out sharply. "It isn't like you to ask such a question. The principles for which we stand never existed before, except academically. No party has ever been able to preach them within the realm of practical politics, because no party has been comprehensive enough. The Labour Party, as it was understood ten years ago, was a pitiful conglomeration of selfish atoms without the faintest idea of coordination. It is for the souls of the people we stand, we Democrats, whether they belong to trades unions or not, whether they till the fields or sweat in the factories, whether they bend over a desk or go back and forth across the sea, whether they live in small houses or large, whether they belong to the respectable middle classes whom the after-the-war legislation did its best to break, or to the class of actual manual laborers." "I don't see what place a man like Miller has in your scheme of things," he observed, a little restlessly. She shrugged her shoulders. "Miller is a limpet," she said. "He has posed as a man of brains for half a generation. His only real cleverness is an unerring but selfish capacity for attaching himself to the right cause. We can't ignore him. He has a following. On the other hand, he does not represent our principles any more than Pitt would if he were still alive." "What will be your position really as regards the two main sections of the Labour Party?" he asked. "We are absorbing the best of them, day by day," she answered quickly. "What is left of either will be merely the scum. The people will come to us. Their discarded leaders can crawl back to obscurity. The people may follow false gods for a very long time, but they have the knack of recognising the truth when it is shown them." "You have the gift of conviction," he said thoughtfully. She shrugged her shoulders. "Our cause speaks, not I," she declared. "Every word I utter is a waste of breath, a task of supererogation. You can't associate with Stephen Dartrey for a month without realising for yourself what our party means and stands for. So--enough. I didn't ask you here to undertake any missionary work. I asked you, as a matter of fact, for my own pleasure. Take another cigarette and pass me one, please. And here's another cushion," she added, throwing it to him. "You look as though you needed it." He settled down more comfortably. He had the pleasant feeling of being completely at his ease. "So far as entertaining you is concerned," he confessed, "I fear I am likely to be a failure. I am beginning to feel like a constant note of interrogation. There is so much I want to know." "Proceed, then. I am resigned," she said with a smile. "About yourself. I just knew of you as the writer of one or two articles in the reviews. Why have I never heard more of you?" "One reason," she confided, "is because I am so painfully young. I haven't had time yet to become a wonderful woman. You see, I have the tremendous advantage of not having known the world except from underneath a pigtail, while the war was on. I was able to bring to these new conditions an absolutely unbiassed understanding." "But what was your upbringing?" he asked. "Your father, for instance?" "Is this going to be a pill for you?" she enquired, with slightly wrinkled forehead. "He was professor of English at Dresden University. We were all living there when the war broke out, but he was such a favourite that they let us go to Paris. He died there, the week after peace was declared. My mother still lives at Versailles. She was governess to Lady Clanarton's grandchildren, hence my presence yesterday in those aristocratic circles." "And you live here alone?" "With my secretary--the fuzzyhaired young person who was just getting rid of Mr. Miller for me when you arrived. We are a terribly advanced couple, in our ideas, but we lead a thoroughly reputable life. I sometimes think," she went on, with a sigh, "that all one's tendencies towards the unusual can be got rid of in opinions. Susan, for instance--that is my secretary's name--pronounces herself unblushingly in favour of free love, but I don't think she has ever allowed a man to kiss her in her life." "Your own opinions?" he asked curiously. "I suppose they, too, are a little revolutionary, so far as regards our social laws?" "I dare not even define them," she acknowledged, "they are so entirely negative. Somehow or other, I can't help thinking that the present system will die out through the sheer absurdity of it. We really shan't need a crusade against the marriage laws. The whole system is committing suicide as fast as it can." "How old are you?" he asked. "Twenty-four," she answered promptly. "And supposing you fell in love--taking it for granted that you have not done so already--should you marry?" Her eyes rested upon his, a little narrowed, curiously and pleasantly reflective. All the time the corners of her sensitive mouth twitched a little. "To tell you the truth," she confided, with a somewhat evasive air, "I have been so busy thinking out life for other people that I have never stopped to apply its general principles to myself." "You are a sophist," he declared. "I have not your remarkable insight," she laughed mockingly. _ |
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