Nobody's Man Part 4

"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 a.s.sured 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 circ.u.mstances 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 const.i.tuency, 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 n.o.body'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 n.o.body'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, brus.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s-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-gla.s.s. 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 hoa.r.s.e whisper sound more agitated.

"A police inspector, sir, from Barnstaple, is waiting in the study."

CHAPTER IV