They took their coffee in their host's very fascinating study. There was little room here for decoration. The walls were lined with books, there were a few choice bronzes here and there, a statue of wonderful beauty upon the writing table, and a figure of Justice leaning with outstretched arms over the world, presented to Dartrey by a great French artist. For the rest, there were comfortable chairs, an ample fire, and a round table on which were set out coffee and liqueurs of many sorts.
"You will find that I am not altogether an anchorite," Dartrey observed, as they settled into their places.
"I am a lover of old brandy. The '68 I recommend especially, Tallente, and bring your chair round to the fire. There are cigars and cigarettes at your elbow. Miller, I think I know your taste. Help yourself, won't you?"
Miller drank crème de menthe and smoked homemade Virginia cigarettes. Tallente watched him and sighed. Then, suddenly conscious of his host's critical scrutiny, he felt an impulse of shame, felt that his contempt for the man had in it something almost snobbish. He leaned forward and did his best. Miller had been a school-board teacher, an exhibitioner at college, and was possessed of a singular though limited intelligence. He could deal adequately with any one problem presented by itself and affected only by local conditions, yet the more Tallente talked with him, the more he realised his lack of breadth, his curious weakness of judgment when called upon to consider questions dependent upon varying considerations. As to the right or wrong wording of a clause in the Factory Amendment Act, he could be lucid, explanatory and convincing; as to the justice of the same clause when compared with other forms of legislation, he was vague and unconvincing, didactic and prejudiced. If Dartrey's object had been to bring these two men into closer understanding of each other, he was certainly succeeding. It is doubtful, however, whether the understanding progressed entirely in the fashion he had desired. Nora, curled up in an easy-chair, affecting to be sleepy, but still listening earnestly, felt at last that intervention was necessary. The self-revelation of Miller under Tallente's surgical questioning was beginning to disturb even their host.
"I am being neglected," she complained. "If no one talks to me, I shall go home."
Tallente rose at once and sat on the lounge by her side. Dartrey stood on the hearth rug and plunged into an ingenious effort to reconcile various points of difference which had arisen between his two guests. Tallente all the time was politely acquiescent, Miller a little sullen. Like all men with brains acute enough to deal logically with a procession of single problems, he resented because he failed altogether to understand that a wider field of circumstances could possibly alter human vision.
Tallente walked home with Nora. They chose the longer way, by theEmbankment.
"This is the Cockney's antithesis to the moonlight and hills of you country folk," Nora observed, as she pointed to the yellow lights gashing across the black water.
Tallente drew a long breath of content.
"It's good to be here, anyway. I am glad to be out of that house," he confessed.
"I'm afraid," she sighed, "that our dear host's party was a failure. You and Miller were born in different camps of life. It doesn't seem to me that anything will ever bring you together."
"For this reason," Tallente explained eagerly. "Miller's outlook is narrow and egotistical. He may be a shrewd politician, but there isn't a grain of statesmanship in him. He might make an excellent chairman of a parish council. As a Cabinet Minister he would be impossible."
"He will demand office, I am afraid," Nora remarked.
Tallente took off his hat. He was watching the lights from the two great hotels, the red fires from the funnel of a little tug, Mack and mysterious in the windy darkness.
"I am sick of politics," he declared suddenly. "We are a parcel of fools. Our feet move day and night to the solemn music."
"You, of all men," she protested, "to be talking like this!"
"I mean it," he insisted, a little doggedly. "I have spent too many of my years on the treadmill. A man was born to be either an egoist and parcel out the earth according to his tastes, or to develop like Dartrey into a dreamer.—Curse you!" he added, suddenly shaking his fist at the tall towers of the Houses of Parliament. "You're like an infernal boarding-school, with your detentions and impositions and castigations. There must be something beyond."
"A Cabinet Minister—" she began.
"The sixth form," he interrupted. "There's just one aspiration of life to be granted under that roof and to win it you are asked to stifle all the rest. It isn't worth it."
"It's the greatest game at which men can play," she declared.
"And also the narrowest because it is the most absorbing," he answered. "We have our triumphs there and they end in a chuckle. Don't you love sunshine in winter, strange cities, pictures, pictures of another age, pictures which take your thoughts back into another world, architecture that is not utilitarian, the faces of human beings on whom the strain of life has never fallen? And women—women whose eyes will laugh into yours, who haven't a single view in life, who don't care a fig about improving their race, who want just love, to give and to take?"
She gazed at him in astonishment, a little carried away, her eyes soft, her lips parted.
"But you have turned pagan!" she cried.
"An instant's revolt against the methodism of life," he replied, his feet once more upon the earth. "But the feeling's there, all the same," he went on doggedly. "I want to leave school. I have been there so long. It seems to me my holiday is overdue."
She passed her arm through his. She was a very clever and a very understanding woman.
"That comes of your having ignored us," she murmured.
"It isn't my fault if I have," he reminded her.
"In a sense it is," she insisted. "The woman in your life should be the most beautiful part of it. You chose to make her the stepping-stone to your ambition. Consequently you go through life hungry, you wait till you almost starve, and then suddenly the greatest things in the world which lie to your hand seem like baubles."
"You are hideously logical," he grumbled.
They were walking slower now, within a few yards of the entrance to her flat. Both of them were a little disturbed,—she, full as she was with all the generous impulses of sensuous humanity, intensely awakened, intensely sympathetic.
"Tell me, where is your wife?" she asked.
"In America."
"It is hopeless with her?"
"Utterly and irretrievably hopeless."
"It has been for long?"
"For years."
"And for the sake of your principles," she went on, almost angrily, "your stupid, canonical and dry-as-dust little principles, you've let your life shrivel up."
"I can't help it," he answered. "What would you have me do? Stand in the market place and shout my needs?"
She clung to his arm. "You dear thing!" she said. "You're a great baby!"
They were in the shadow of the entrance to the flats. He suddenly bent over her; his lips were almost on hers. There was a frightened gleam in her eyes, but she made no movement of retreat. Suddenly he drew himself upright.
"That wouldn't help, would it?" he said simply. "Thank you, all the same, Nora. Good-by!"
On his table, when he entered his rooms that night, lay the letter for which he had craved. He opened it almost fiercely. The few lines seemed like a message of hope:
"Don't laugh at me, dear friend, but I am coming to London for a week or two, to my little house in Charles Street. I don't know exactly when. You will find time to come and see me?"
Here the mists seem to have fallen upon us like a shroud, and we can't escape. I galloped many miles this morning, but it was like trying to find the edge of the world.
Please call on my sister at 17 Mount Street. She likes you and wants to see more of you.
For some weeks after his chief's dinner party, Tallente slackened a little in his grim devotion to work. A strangely quiescent period of day-by-day political history enabled him to be absent from his place in the House for several evenings during the week, and although he spent a good many hours with Dartrey at Demos House, carefully discussing and elaborating next season's programme, he still found himself with time to spare, and with Jane's note buttoned up in his pocket, he deliberately turned his face towards life in its more genial and human aspect.
He dined one night at the club to which he had belonged for many years, a club frequented chiefly by distinguished literary men, successful barristers, and a sprinkling of actors. His arrival created at first almost a sensation, a slight feeling of constraint even, amongst the little gathering of men drinking their apéritifs in the lounge under the stairs. Somehow or other, there was a feeling that many of the old ties had been broken. Tallente stood for new and menacing things in politics. He had to a certain extent cut himself adrift from the world which starts at Eton and Oxford and ends by making mild puns on the judicial bench, or uttering sonorous platitudes from a properly accredited seat in the House.
Tallente, fully appreciating the atmosphere, nevertheless made strenuous and not unsuccessful efforts to pick up the old threads. He abandoned even the moderation of his daily life. He drank cocktails, champagne and port, laughed heartily at the stories of the day and ransacked his brain to cap them. Of bridge, unfortunately, he knew nothing, but he played pool with some success, and left the club late, leaving behind him curiously mingled opinions as to the cause for this sudden return to his old haunts.
He himself walked through the streets, on his way homeward, conscious of at least partial success, feeling the pleasurable warmth of the wine he had drunk and the companionship for which he had so strenuously sought. He found himself thinking almost enviously of the men with whom he had associated,—Philipson, with whom he had been at college, with three plays running at different theatres, interested, even fascinated by his work, chaffing gaily with his principal actor as to the rendering of some of his lines. Then there was Fardell, also a schoolfellow, now a police magistrate, full of dry and pleasant humour, called by his intimates "The Beak "; Amberson, poseur and dilettante thirty years ago, but always a good fellow, now an acknowledged master of English prose and a critic whose word was unquestioned. These men, one and all, seemed to be up to the neck in life, kept young and human by the taste of it upon their palate. The contemplation of their whole-sided existence, their sound combination of work and play, produced in him a sort of jealousy, for he knew that there was something behind it, which he lacked.
The night was bright and dry and there were still crowds about Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circle and Piccadilly itself. As he walked, he looked into the faces of the women who passed him by, struggling against his old abhorrence as against one of the sickly offshoots of an over-eclectic epicureanism. They typified not vice but weakness, the unhappy result of man's inevitable revolt against unnatural laws. Yet even then the mingled purity and priggishness encouraged by years of repression forbade any vital change in his sentiments. The toleration for which he sought, when it made its grudging appearance, was mingled with dislike and distrust. He breathed more freely as he turned into the quieter street in which his rooms were situated, passing them by, however, crossing Curzon Street and embarking upon a brief pilgrimage which had become almost a nightly one. Within a very few minutes he paused before a certain number in a street even more secluded than his own. At last the thing which he had so greatly anticipated had happened. There were lights in the house from top to bottom. Jane had arrived!
He walked slowly back and forth several times. The music in his blood, stirred already by the wine he had drunk and the revival of old memories, moved to a new and more wonderful tune. He knew now, without any possibility of self-deception, exactly what he had been waiting for, exactly where all his thoughts and hopes for the future were centered. Was she there now, he wondered, gazing at the windows like a moon-struck boy. He lingered about and fate was kind to him.
A limousine swung around the corner and pulled up in front of the door, a few minutes later. The footman on the box sprang down. He heard her voice as she said "Good-by" to some one. The car rolled smoothly away. She crossed the pavement with an involuntary glance at the tall, approaching figure.
"Jane!" he exclaimed.
She stood quite still, with the latch-key in her hand. The car was out of sight now and they seemed to be almost alone in the street. At first there was something almost unfamiliar in her rather startled face, her coiffured hair, her bare neck with its collar of diamonds. There was a moment of suspense. Then he saw something flash into her eyes and he was glad to be there.
"You?" she exclaimed, a little breathlessly. He plunged into explanations.
"My rooms are close by here in Charges Street," he told her. "I was walking home from the club and saw you step out of the car."
"How could you know that I was coming to-day?" she asked. "I only telephoned Alice after I arrived."
"To tell you the truth," he confessed, "I have got into the habit of walking this way home, in case—well, to-night I have my reward."
She turned the key in the latch and pushed the door open.
"You must come in," she invited.
"Isn't it too late?"
"What does that matter so long as I ask you?"
He followed her gladly into the hall, closing the door behind him.
"That wretched switch is somewhere near here," she said, feeling along the wall.
Her fingers suddenly met his and stayed passive in his grasp. She turned a little around as she realised the nearness of him.
"Jane," he whispered, "I have wanted you so much."
For a single moment she rested in his arms,—a wonderful moment, inexplicable, voluptuous, stirring him to the very depths. Then she slipped away. Her fingers sought the wall once more and the place was flooded with light.
"You must come in here for a moment," she said, opening the nearest door. "I shall not ask you to share my milk, and I am afraid I don't know where to get you a whisky and soda, but you can light a cigarette and just tell me how things are and when you are coming to see me."
He followed her into a comfortable little apartment, furnished in mid-Victorian fashion, but with an easy-chair drawn up to the brightly burning fire. On a table near was a glass of milk and some biscuits. The ermine cloak slipped from her shoulders. She stood with one foot upon the fender, half turned towards him. His eyes rested upon her, filled with a great hunger.
"Well?" she queried.
"You are wonderful," he murmured.
She laughed and for a moment her eyes fell.
"But, my dear man," she said, "I don't want compliments. I want to know the news."
"There is none," he answered. "We are marking time while Horlock digs his own grave."
"You have been amusing yourself?"
"Indifferently. I dined the other night with Dartrey, to-night at the Sheridan Club. The most exciting thing in the twenty-four hours has been my nightly pilgrimage round here."
"How idiotic!" she laughed. "Supposing you had not happened to meet me?You could scarcely have rung my bell at this hour of the night."
"I should have been content to have seen the lights and to have known that you had arrived."
"You dear man!" she exclaimed, with a sudden smile, a smile of entire and sweet friendliness. "I like the thought of your doing that. It is something to know that one is welcome, when one breaks away from the routine of one's life, as I have."
"Tell me why you have done it?" he asked.
She looked back into the fire.
"Everything was going a little wrong," she explained. "One of my farmers was troublesome, and the snow has stopped work and hunting. We lost thirty of our best ewes last week. I found I was getting out of temper with everybody and everything, so I suddenly remembered that I had an empty house here and came up."
"To the city of adventures," he murmured.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"London has never seemed like that to me. I find it generally a very ugly and a very sordid place, where I am hedged in with relatives, generally wanting me to do the thing I loathe.—You have really no news for me, then?"
"None, except that I am glad to see you."
"When will you come and have a long talk?"
"Will you dine with me to-morrow night?" he begged eagerly. "In the afternoon I have committee meetings. Thursday afternoon you could come down to the House, if you cared to."
"Of course I should, but hadn't you better dine here?" she suggested."I can ask Alice and another man."
"I want to see you alone," he insisted, "for the first time, at any rate."
"Then will you take me to that little place you told me of in Soho?" she suggested. "I don't want a whole crowd to know that I am in town just yet. Don't think that it sounds vain, but people have such a habit of almost carrying one off one's feet. I want to prowl about London and do ordinary things. One or two theatres, perhaps, but no dinner parties. I shan't stay long, I don't suppose. As soon as I hear from Mr. Segerson that the snow has gone and that terrible north wind has died away, I know I shall be wanting to get back."
"You are very conscientious about your work there," he complained. "Don't you ever realise that you may have an even more important mission here?"
For a single moment she seemed troubled. Her manner, when she spoke, had lost something of its calm graciousness.
"Really?" she said. "Well, you must tell me all about it to-morrow night. I shall wear a hat and you must not order the dinner beforehand. I don't mind your ordering the table, because I like a corner, but we must sail into the place just like any other two wanderers. It is agreed?"
He bent over her fingers. His good angel and his instinct of sensibility, which was always appraising her attitude towards him, prompted his studied farewell.
"You will let yourself out?" she begged. "I have taken off my cloak andI could not face that wind."
"Of course," he answered. "I shall call for you at a quarter to eight to-morrow night. I only wish I could make you understand what it means to have that to look forward to."
"If you can make me believe that," she answered gravely, "perhaps I shall be glad that I have come."
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 andTallente, 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."
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 Savoychef d'oeuvre. We want those specialhors d'oeuvreswhich you know all about, a sole grilleda la maison, a plainly roasted chicken with an endive salad. The sweets are your affair. The savoury must be a cheese soufflé. 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. "ThePommery, George, slightly iced, an aperitif now, and the dinner can take its course. We will linger over thehors d'oeuvresand 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."
"I can quite understand," she acquiesced sympathetically, "that you have a difficult class of men to deal with. Tell me what the evening papers mean by their placards?"
"We had a small tactical success against the Government this afternoon," he explained. "It doesn't really amount to anything. We are not ready for their resignation at the moment, any more than they are ready to resign."
"You are an object of terror to all my people," she confided smilingly. "They say that Horlock dare not go to the country and that you could turn him out to-morrow if you cared to."
"So much for politics," he remarked drily.
"So much for politics," she assented. "And now about yourself?"
"A little finger of flame burning in an empty place," he sighed. "That is how life seems to me when I take my hand off the plough."
She answered him lightly, but her face softened and her eyes shone with sympathy.
"Aren't you by way of being just a little sentimental?"
"Perhaps," he admitted. "If I am, let me feel the luxury of it."
"One reads different things of you."
"For instance?"
"Town Topics says that you have become an interesting figure at many social functions. You must meet attractive people there."
"I only wish that I could find them so," he answered. "London has been almost feverishly gay lately and every one seems to have discovered a vogue for entertaining politicians. There seems to be a sort of idea that dangerous corners may be rubbed off us by a judicious application of turtle soup and champagne."
"Cynic!" she scoffed pleasantly.
"Well, I don't know," he went on. "From any other point of view, some of the entertainments to which I have been bidden appear utterly without meaning. However, it is part of my programme to prove to the world that we Democrats can open our arms wide enough to include every class in life. Therefore, I go to many places I should otherwise avoid. I have studied the attitude of the younger women whom I have approached, purely impersonally and without the slightest hypersensitiveness. They have all been perfectly pleasant, perfectly disposed for conversation or any of the usual social amenities. But they know that I have in the background a wife. To flirt with a married man of fifty isn't worth while."
"It appears to me," she said, with a slight note of severity in her tone, "that you have set your mind upon having a perfectly frivolous time."
"Not at all," he objected. "I have simply been experimenting."
The service of dinner had now commenced, and with George in the background, a haughty head waiter a few yards off, and a myrmidon handing them their dishes with a beatific smile, the conversation drifted naturally into generalities. When they resumed their more intimate talk, Tallente felt himself inspired by an ever-increasing admiration for his companion and her adaptability. During this brief interval he had seen many admiring and some wondering glances directed towards Jane and he realised that she was somehow a person entirely apart from any of the others, more beautiful, more distinguished, more desirable. Of the Lady Jane ruling at Woolhanger with a high hand, there was no trace. She looked out upon the gay room with its voluptuous air, its many couples and little parties carrées, with the friendly and sympathetic interest of one who finds herself in agreeable surroundings and whose only desire is to come into touch with them. Her plain black gown, her simple hat with its single quill, the pearls which were her sole adornment, all seemed part of her. She appeared wholly unconscious of the admiration she excited. She who was sometimes inclined, perhaps, to carry herself a little haughtily in her mother's drawing-room, was here only anxious to share in the genial atmosphere of friendliness which the general tone of her surroundings seemed to demand.
"Well, what was the final result of your efforts towards companionship?" she enquired, after they had praised the chicken enthusiastically and the wave of service had momentarily ebbed kitchenwards.
"They have led me to only one conclusion," he answered swiftly.
"Which is?"
"That if you remain on Exmoor and I in Westminster, the affairs of this country are not likely to prosper."
She laughed softly.
"As though I made any real' difference!"
Then she saw a transformed man. The firm mouth suddenly softened, the keen bright eyes glowed. A light shone out of his worn face which few had ever seen there.
"You make all the difference," he whispered. "You of your mercy can save me from the rocks. I have discovered very late in life, too late, many would say, that I cannot build the temples of life with hands and brain alone. Even though the time be short and I have so little to offer, I am your greedy suitor. I want help, I want sympathy, I want love."
There was nothing whatever left now of Lady Jane of Woolhanger. Segerson would probably not have recognised his autocratic mistress. The most timid of her tenant farmers would have adopted a bold front with her. She was simply a very beautiful woman, trembling a little, unsteady, nervous and unsure of herself.
"Oh, I wish you hadn't said that!" she faltered.
"But I must say it," he insisted, with that alien note of tenderness still throbbing in his tone. "You are not a dabbler in life. You have never been afraid to stand on your feet, to look at it whole. There is the solid, undeniable truth. It is a woman's glory to help men on to the great places, and the strangest thing in all the world is that there is only one woman for any one man, and for me—you are the only one woman."
Around them conversation had grown louder, the blue cloud of tobacco smoke more dense, the odour of cigarettes and coffee more pungent. Down in the street a wandering musician was singing a little Neapolitan love song. They heard snatches of it as the door downstairs was opened.
"You have known me for so short a time," she argued. "How can you possibly be sure that I could give you what you want? And in any case, how could I give anything except my eager wishes, my friendship—perhaps, if you will, my affection? But would that bring you content?"
"No!" he answered unhesitatingly. "I want your love, I want you yourself. You have played a woman's part in life. You haven't been content to sit down and wait for what fate might bring you. You have worked out your own destiny and you have shown that you have courage. Don't disprove it."
She looked him in the eyes, very sweetly, but with the shadow of a great disturbance in her face.
"I want to help you," she said. "Indeed, I feel more than you can believe—more than I could have believed possible—the desire, the longing to help. But what is there you can ask of me beyond my hand in yours, beyond all the comradeship which a woman who has more in her heart than she dare own, can give?"
Once more the door was opened below. The voice of the singer came floating up. Then it was closed again and the little passionate cry blotted out. His lips moved but he said nothing. It seemed suddenly, from the light in his face, that he might have been echoing those words which rang in her ears. She trembled and suddenly held her hand across the table.
"Hold my fingers," she begged. "These others will think that we have made a bet or a compact. What does it matter? I want to give you all that I can. Will you be patient? Will you remember that you have found your way along a very difficult path to a goal which no one yet has ever reached? I could tell you more but may not that be enough? I want you to have something to carry away with you, something not too cold, something that burns a little with the beginnings of life and love, and, if you will, perhaps hope. May that content you for a little while, for you see, although I am not a girl, these things, and thoughts of these things, are new to me?"
He drew a little breath. It seemed to him that there was no more beautiful place on earth than this little smoke-hung corner of the restaurant. The words which escaped from his lips were vibrant, tremulous.
"I am your slave. I will wait. There is no one like you in the world."
Tallente found a distant connection of his waiting for him in his rooms, on his return from the House at about half-past six,—Spencer Williams, a young man who, after a brilliant career at Oxford, had become one of the junior secretaries to the Prime Minister. The young man rose to his feet at Tallente's entrance and hastened to explain his visit.
"You'll forgive my waiting, sir," he begged. "Your servant told me that you were dining out and would be home before seven o'clock to change."
"Quite right, Spencer," Tallente replied. "Glad to see you. Whisky and soda or cocktail?"
The young man chose a whisky and soda, and Tallente followed suit, waving his visitor back into his chair and seating himself opposite.
"Get right into the middle of it, please," he enjoined.
"To begin with, then, can you break your engagement and come and dine with the Chief?"
"Out of the question, even if it were a royal command," was the firm reply. "My engagement is unbreakable."
"The Chief will be sorry," Williams said. "So am I. Will you go round to Downing Street and see him afterwards?"
"I could," Tallente admitted, "but why? I have nothing to say to him. I can't conceive what he could have to say to me. There are always pressmen loitering about Downing Street, who would place the wrong construction on my visit. You saw all the rubbish they wrote because he and I talked together for a quarter of an hour at Mrs. Van Fosdyke's?"
"I know all about that," Williams assented, "but this time, Tallente, there's something in it. The Chief quarrelled with you for the sake of the old gang. Well, he made a bloomer. The old gang aren't worth six-pence. They're rather a hindrance than help to legislation, and when they're wanted they're wobbly, as you saw this afternoon. Lethbridge went into the lobby with you."
Tallente smiled a little grimly.
"He took particularly good care that I should know that."
"Well, there you are," Williams went on. "The Chief's fed up. I can talk to you here freely because I'm not an official person. Can you discuss terms at all for a rapprochement?"
"Out of the question!"
"You mean that you are too much committed to Dartrey and the Democrats?"
"'Committed' to them is scarcely the correct way of putting it,"Tallente objected. "Their principles are in the main my principles.They stand for the cause I have championed all my life. Our alliance isa natural, almost an automatic one."
"It's all very well, sir," Williams argued, "but Dartrey stands for a Labour Party, pure and simple. You can't govern an Empire by parish council methods."
"That is where the Democrats come in," Tallente pointed out. "They have none of the narrower outlook of the Labour Party as you understand it—of any of the late factions of the Labour Party, perhaps I should say. The Democrats possess an international outlook. When they legislate, every class will receive its proper consideration. No class will be privileged. A man will be ranked according to his production."
Williams smiled with the faint cynicism of clairvoyant youth.
"Sounds a little Utopian, sir," he ventured. "What about Miller?"
"Well, what about him?"
"Are you going to serve with him?"
"Really," Tallente protested, "for a political opponent, or the representative of a political opponent, you're a trifle on the inquisitive side."
"It's a matter that you'll have to face sometime or other," the young man asserted. "I happen to know that Dartrey is committed to Miller."
"I don't see how you can happen to know anything of the sort," Tallente declared, a little bluntly. "In any case, Spencer, my political association or nonassociation with Miller is entirely my own affair, and you can hook it. Remember me to all your people, and give my love to Muriel."
"Nothing doing, eh?" Williams observed, rising reluctantly to his feet.
"You have perception," Tallente replied.
"The Chief was afraid you might be a little difficult about an interview. Those pressmen are an infernal nuisance, anyway. What about sneaking into Downing Street at about midnight, in a cloak and slouch hat, eh?"
"Too much of the cinema about you, young fellow," Tallente scoffed."Run along now. I have to dress."
Tallente held out his hand good-humouredly. His visitor made no immediate motion to take it.
"There was just one thing more I was asked to mention, sir," he said. "I will be quite frank if I may. My instructions were not to allude to it if your attitude were in the least conciliatory."
"Go on," Tallente bade him curtly.
"There has been a rumour going about that some years ago—while the war was on, in fact—you wrote a very wonderful attack upon the trades unions. This attack was so bitter in tone, so damning in some of its facts, and, in short, such a wonderful production, that at the last moment the late Prime Minister used his influence with you to suspend its publication. It was held over, and in the meantime the attitude of the trades unions towards certain phases of the war was modified, and the collapse of Germany followed soon afterwards. Consequently, that article was never published."
"You are exceedingly well informed," Tallente admitted. "Pray proceed."
"There is in existence," the young man continued, "a signed copy of that article. Its publication at the present moment would probably make your position with the Democratic Party untenable."
"Is this a matter of blackmail?" Tallente asked.
The young man stiffened.
"I am speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, sir. He desired me to inform you that the signed copy of that article has been offered to him within the last few days."
Tallente was silent for several moments. The young man's subtle intimation was a shock in more ways than one.
"The manuscript to which you refer," he said at last, "was stolen from my study at Martinhoe under somewhat peculiar conditions."
"Perhaps you would like to explain those conditions to Mr. Horlock,"Williams suggested.
Tallente held open the door.
"I shall not seek out your Chief," he said, "but I will tell him the truth about that manuscript if at any time we should come together. In the meantime, I am perfectly in accord with the view which your Chief no doubt holds concerning it. The publication of that article at the present moment would inevitably end my connection with the Democratic Party and probably close my political career. This is a position which I should court rather than submit to blackmail direct or indirect."
"My Chief will resent your using such a word, sir," Williams declared.
"Your Chief could have avoided it by a judicious use of the waste-paper basket and an exercise of the gift of silence." Tallente retorted, as the young man took his departure.
Horlock came face to face with Tallente the following afternoon, in one of the corridors of the House and, scarcely troubling about an invitation, led him forcibly into his private room. He turned his secretary out and locked the door.
"A cigar?" he suggested.
Tallente shook his head.
"I want to see what's doing, in a few minutes," he said.
"I can tell you that," Horlock declared. "Nothing at all! I was just off when I happened to see you. You're looking very fit and pleased with yourself. Is it because of that rotten trick you played on us the other day?"
"Rotten? I thought it was rather clever of me," Tallente objected.
"Perfectly legitimate, I suppose," the other assented grudgingly."That's the worst of having a tactician in opposition."
"You shouldn't have let me get there," was the quick retort.
Horlock drew a paper knife slowly down between his fingers.
"I sent Williams to you yesterday."
"You did. A nice errand for a respectably brought-up young man!"
"Chuck that, Tallente."
"Why? I didn't misunderstand him, did I?"
"Apparently. He told me that you used the word 'blackmail.'"
"I don't think the dictionary supplies a milder equivalent."
"Tallente," said Horlock with a frown, "we'll finish with this once and for ever. I refused the offer of the manuscript in question."
"I am glad to hear it," was the laconic reply.
"Leaving that out of the question, then, I suppose there's no chance of your ratting?"
"Not the faintest. I rather fancy I've settled down for good."
Horlock lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
"No good looking impatient, Tallente," he said. "The door's locked and you know it. You'll have to listen to what I want to say. A few minutes of your time aren't much to ask for."
"Go ahead," Tallente acquiesced.
"There is only one ambition," Horlock continued, "for an earnest politician. You know what that is as well as I do. Wouldn't you sooner be Prime Minister, supported by a recognised and reputable political party, than try to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for your friends Dartrey, Miller and company?"
"So this is the last bid, eh?" Tallente observed.
"It's the last bid of all," was the grave answer. "There is nothing more."
"And what becomes of you?"
"One section of the Press will say that I have shown self-denial and patriotism greater than any man of my generation and that my name will be handed down to history as one of the most single-minded statesmen of the day. Another section will say that I have been forced into a well-deserved retirement and that it will remain a monument to my everlasting disgrace that I brought my party to such straits that it was obliged to compromise with the representative of an untried and unproven conglomeration of fanatics. A third section—"
"Oh, chuck it!" Tallente interrupted. "Horlock, I appreciate your offer because I know that there is a large amount of self-denial in it, but I am glad of an opportunity to end all these discussions. My word is passed to Dartrey."
"And Miller?" the Prime Minister asked, with calm irony.
Tallente felt the sting and frowned irritably.
"I have had no discussions of any sort with Miller," he answered. "He has never been represented to me as holding an official position in the party."
"If you ever succeed in forming a Democratic Government," Horlock said, "mark my words, you will have to include him."
"If ever I accept any one's offer to form a Government," Tallente replied, "it will be on one condition and one condition only, which is that I choose my own Ministers."
"If you become the head of the Democratic Party," Horlock pointed out, "you will have to take over their pledges."
"I do not agree with you," was the firm reply, "and further, I suggest most respectfully that this discussion is not agreeable to me."
An expression of hopelessness crept into Horlock's face.
"You're a good fellow, Tallente," he sighed, "and I made a big mistake when I let you go. I did it to please the moderates and you know how they've turned out. There isn't one of them worth a row of pins. If any one ever writes my political biography, they will probably decide that the parting with you was the greatest of my blunders."
He rose to his feet, swinging the key upon his finger.
"One more word, Tallente," he added. "I want to warn you that so far as your further progress is concerned, there is a snake in the grass somewhere. The manuscript of which Williams spoke to you, and which would of course damn you forever with any party which depended for its existence even indirectly upon the trades unions, was offered to me, without any hint at financial return, on the sole condition that I guaranteed its public production. It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that there is some one stirring who means harm. I speak to you now only as a friend and as a well-wisher. Did I understand Williams to say that the document was stolen from your study at Martinhoe?"
"It was stolen," Tallente replied, "by my secretary, Anthony Palliser, who disappeared with it one night in August."
"'Disappeared' seems rather a vague term," Horlock remarked.
"A trifle melodramatic, I admit," Tallente assented. "So were the circumstances of his—disappearance. I can assure you that I have had the police inspector of fiction asking me curious questions and I am convinced that down in Devonshire I am still an object of suspicion to the local gossips."
"I remember reading about the affair at the time," Horlock remarked, as he unlocked the door. "It never occurred to me, though, to connect it with anything of this sort. Surely Palliser was a cut above the ordinary blackmailer?"
Tallente shrugged his shoulders. "A confusion of ethics," he said. "I dare say you remember that the young man conspired with my wife to boost me into a peerage behind my back However!—"
"One last word, Tallente," Horlock interrupted. "I am not at liberty to tell you from what source the offer as to your article came, but I can tell you this—Palliser was not or did not appear to be connected with it in any way."
"But I know who was," Tallente exclaimed, with a sudden lightning-like recollection of that meeting on the railway platform at Woody Bay.—"Miller!"
Horlock made no answer. To his visitor, however, the whole affair was now clear.
"Miller must have bought the manuscript from Palliser," he said, "when he knew what sort of an offer Dartrey was going to make to me and realised how it would affect him. Horlock, I am not sure, after all, that I don't rather envy you if you decide to drop out of politics. The main road is well enough, but the by-ways are pretty filthy."
Horlock remained gravely silent and Tallente passed out of the room, realising that he had finally severed his connection with orthodox English politics. The realisation, however, was rather more of a relief than otherwise. For fifteen years he had been cumbered with precedent in helping to govern by compromise. Now he was for the clean sweep or nothing. He strolled into the House and back into his own committee room, read through the orders of the day and spoke to the Government Whip. It was, as Horlock had assured him, a dead afternoon. There were a sheaf of questions being asked, none of which were of the slightest interest to any one. With a little smile of anticipation upon his lips, he hurried to the telephone. In a few moments he was speaking to Annie, Lady Jane's maid.
"Will you give her ladyship a message?" he asked. "Tell her that I am unexpectedly free for an hour or so, and ask if I may come around and see her?" The maid was absent from the telephone for less than a minute. When she returned, her message was brief but satisfactory. Her ladyship would be exceedingly pleased to see Mr. Tallente.
Tallente found a taxi on the stand and drove at once to Charles Street. The butler took his hat and stick and conducted him into the spacious drawing-room upon the first floor. Here he received a shock. The most natural thing in the world had happened, but an event which he had never even taken into his calculation. There were half a dozen other callers, all, save one, women. Jane saw his momentary look of consternation, but was powerless to send him even an answering message of sympathy. She held out her hand and welcomed him with a smile.
"This is perfectly charming of you, Mr. Tallente," she said. "I know how busy you must be in the afternoons, but I am afraid I am old-fashioned enough to like my men friends to sometimes forget even the affairs of the nation. You know my sister, I think—Lady Alice Mountgarron? Aunt, may I present Mr. Tallente—the Countess of Somerham. Mrs. Ward Levitte—Lady English—oh! and Colonel Fosbrook."
Tallente made the best of a very disappointing situation. He exchanged bows with his new acquaintances, declined tea and was at once taken possession of by Lady Somerham, a formidable-looking person in tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles, with a rasping voice and a judicial air.
"So you are the Mr. Tallente," she began, "who Somerham tells me has achieved the impossible!"
"Upon the face of it," Tallente rejoined, with a smile, "your husband is proved guilty of an exaggeration."
"Poor Henry!" his wife sighed. "He does get a little hysterical about politics nowadays. What he says is that you are in a fair way to form a coherent and united political party out of the various factions of Labour, a thing which a little time ago no one thought possible."
Tallente promptly disclaimed the achievement.
"Stephen Dartrey is the man who did that," he declared. "I only joined the Democrats a few months ago."
"But you are their leader," Lady Alice put in.
"Only in the House of Commons," Tallente replied.
"Dartrey is the leader of the party."
"Somerham says that Dartrey is a dreamer," the Countess went on, "that you are the man of affairs and the actual head of them all."
"Your husband magnifies my position," Tallente assured her.
Mrs. Ward Levitte, the wife of a millionaire and a woman of vogue, leaned forward and addressed him.
"Do set my mind at rest, Mr. Tallente," she begged. "Are you going to break up our homes and divide our estates amongst the poor?"
"Is there going to be a revolution?" Lady English asked eagerly. "And is it true that you are in league with all the Bolshevists on the continent?"
Tallente masked his irritation and answered with a smile.
"Civil war," he declared, "commences to-morrow. Every one with a title is to be interned in an asylum, all country houses are to be turned into sanatoriums and all estates will be confiscated."
"The tiresome man won't tell us anything," Lady Alice sighed.
"Of course, he won't," Mrs. Ward Levitte observed. "You can't announce a revolution beforehand truthfully."
"If there is a revolution within the next fifteen years," Tallente said, "I think it will probably be on behalf of the disenfranchised aristocracy, who want the vote back again."
Lady English and Mrs. Levitte found something else to talk about between themselves. Lady Somerham, however, had no intention of letting Tallente escape.
"You are a neighbour of my niece in Devonshire, I believe?" she asked.
He admitted the fact monosyllabically. He was supremely uncomfortable, and it seemed to him that Jane, who was conducting an apparently entertaining conversation with Colonel Fosbrook, might have done something to rescue him.
"My niece has very broad ideas," Lady Somerham went on. "Some of her fellow landowners in Devonshire are very much annoyed with the way she has been getting rid of her property."
"Lady Jane," he pronounced drily, "is in my opinion very wise. She is anticipating the legislation to come, which will inevitably restore the land to the people, from whom, in most cases, it was stolen."
"Well, my husband gave two hundred thousand pounds of good, hard-earned money for Stoughton, where we live," Mrs. Ward Levitte intervened. "So far as I know, the money wasn't stolen from anybody, and I should say that the robbery would begin if the Socialists, or whatever they call themselves, tried to take it away from us to distribute amongst their followers. What do you think, Mr. Tallente? My husband, as I dare say you know, is a banker and a very hard-working man."
"I agree with you," he replied. "One of the pleasing features of the axioms of Socialism adopted by the Democratic Party is that it respects the rights of the wealthy as well as the rights of the poor man. The Democrats may—in fact, they most certainly will—legislate to prevent the hoarding of wealth or to have it handed down to unborn generations, but I can assure you that it does not propose to interfere with the ethics ofmeumandtuum."
"I wish I could make out what it's all about," Lady Alice murmured.
"Couldn't you give a drawing-room lecture, Mr. Tallente, and tell us?" the banker's wife suggested.
"I am unfortunately a little short of time for such missionary enterprise," Tallente replied, with unappreciated sarcasm. "Dartrey's volume on 'Socialism in Our Daily Life' will tell you all about it." "Far too dry," she sighed. "I tried to read it but I never got past the first half-dozen pages."
"Some day," Tallente observed coolly, "it may be worth your while, all of you, to try and master the mental inertia which makes thought a labour; the application which makes a moderately good bridge player should be sufficient. Otherwise, you may find yourselves living in an altered state of Society, without any reasonable idea as to how you got there." Mrs. Ward Levitte turned to her hostess.
"Lady Jane," she begged, "come and rescue us, please. We are being scolded. Colonel Fosbrook, we need a man to protect us. Mr. Tallente is threatening us with terrible things."
"We're getting what we asked for," Lady Alice put in quickly.
Colonel Fosbrook caressed for a moment a somewhat scanty moustache. He was a man of early middle-age, with a high forehead, an aquiline nose and a somewhat vague expression.
"I'm afraid my protection wouldn't be much use to you," he said, regarding Tallente with mild interest. "I happen to be one of the few surviving Tories. I imagine that Mr. Tallente's opinions and mine are so far apart that even argument would be impossible."
Tallente acquiesced, smiling.