CHAPTER I

Andrew Tallente stepped out of the quaint little train on to the

flower-bedecked platform of this Devonshire hamlet amongst the hills, to

receive a surprise so immeasurable that for a moment he could do nothing

but gaze silently at the tall, ungainly figure whose unpleasant smile

betrayed the fact that this meeting was not altogether accidental so far

as he was concerned.

"Miller!" he exclaimed, a little aimlessly.

"Why not?" was the almost challenging reply. "You are not the only

great statesman who needs to step off the treadmill now and then."

There was a certain quiet contempt in Tallente's uplifted eyebrows. The

contrast between the two men, momentarily isolated on the little

platform, was striking and extreme. Tallente had the bearing, the voice

and the manner which were his by heritage, education and natural

culture. Miller, who was the son of a postman in a small Scotch town,

an exhibitioner so far as regards his education, and a mimic where

social gifts were concerned, had all the aggressive bumptiousness of the

successful man who has wit enough to perceive his shortcomings. In his

ill-chosen tourist clothes, untidy collar and badly arranged tie, he

presented a contrast to his companion of which he seemed, in a way,

bitterly conscious.

"You are staying near here?" Tallente enquired civilly.

"Over near Lynton. Dartrey has a cottage there. I came down

yesterday."

"Surely you were in Hellesfield the day before yesterday?"

Miller smiled ill-naturedly.

"I was," he admitted, "and I flatter myself that I was able to make the

speech which settled your chances in that direction."

Tallente permitted a slight note of scorn to creep into his tone.

"It was not your eloquence," he said, "or your arguments, which brought

failure upon me. It was partly your lies and partly your tactics."

An unwholesome flush rose in the other's face.

"Lies?" he repeated, a little truculently.

Tallente looked him up and down. The station master was approaching

now, the whistle had blown, their conversation was at an end.

"I said lies," Tallente observed, "most advisedly." The train was

already on the move, and the departing passenger was compelled to step

hurriedly into a carriage. Tallente, waited upon by the obsequious

station master, strolled across the line to where his car was waiting.

It was not until his arrival there that he realised that Miller had

offered him no explanation as to his presence on the platform of this

tiny wayside station.

"Did you notice the person with whom I was talking?" he asked the

station master.

"A tall, thin gentleman in knickerbockers? Yes, sir," the man replied.

"Part of your description is correct," Tallente remarked drily. "Do you

know what he was doing here?"

"Been down to your house, I believe, sir. He arrived by the early train

this morning and asked the way to the Manor."

"To my house?" Tallente repeated incredulously.

"It was the Manor he asked for, sir," the station master assured his

questioner. "Begging your pardon, sir, is it true that he was Miller,

the Socialist M.P.?"

"True enough," was the brief reply. "What of it?"

The man coughed as he deposited the dispatch box which he had been

carrying on the seat of the waiting car.

"They think a lot of him down in these parts, sir," he observed, a

little apologetically.

Tallente made no answer to the station master's last speech and merely

waved his hand a little mechanically as the car drove off. His mind was

already busy with the problem suggested by Miller's appearance in these

parts. For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in the

turmoil which he had left. Then with a little shrug of the shoulders he

abandoned this new enigma. Its solution must be close at hand.

Arrived at the edge of the dusty, white strip of road along which he had

travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and

watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise.

He had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and

mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage.

In the distance, the moorland reared itself into strange promontories,

out-flung to the sea. On his right, a little farm, with its cluster of

out-buildings, nestled in the bosom of the hills. On either side, the

fields still stretched upward like patchwork to a clear sky, but below,

down into the hollow, blotting out all that might lie beneath, was a

curious sea of rolling white mist, soft and fleecy yet impenetrable.

Tallente, who had seen very little of this newly chosen country home of

his, had the feeling, as the car crept slowly downward, of one about to

plunge into a new life, to penetrate into an unknown world. A man of

extraordinarily sensitive perceptions, leading him often outside the

political world in which he fought the battle of life, he was conscious

of a curious and grim premonition as the car, crawling down the

precipitous hillside, approached and was enveloped in the grey shroud.

The world which a few moments before had seemed so wonderful, the

sunlight, the distant view of the sea, the perfumes of flowers and

shrubs, had all gone. The car was crawling along a rough and stony

road, between hedges dripping with moisture and trees dimly seen like

spectres. At last, about three-quarters of the way down to the sea,

after an abrupt turn, they entered a winding avenue and emerged on to a

terrace. The chauffeur, who had felt the strain of the drive, ran a

little past the front door and pulled up in front of an uncurtained

window. Tallente glanced in, dazzled a little at first by the

unexpected lamplight. Then he understood the premonition which had sat

shivering in his heart during the long descent.

The mist, which had hung like a spectral curtain over the little demesne

of Martinhoe Manor, had almost entirely disappeared when, at a few

minutes before eight, with all traces of his long journey obliterated,

Andrew Tallente stepped out on to the stone-flagged terrace and looked

out across the little bay below. The top of the red sandstone cliff

opposite was still wreathed with mists, but the sunlight lay upon the

tennis lawn, the flower gardens below, and the rocks almost covered by

the full, swelling tide. Tall, and looking slimmer than ever in his

plain dinner garb, there were some indications of an hour of strange and

unexpected suffering in the tired face of the man who gazed out in

somewhat dazed fashion at the little panorama which he had been looking

forward so eagerly to seeing again. Throughout the long journey down

from town, he had felt an unusual and almost boyish enthusiasm for his

coming holiday. He had thought of his tennis racquet and fishing rods,

wondered about his golf clubs and his guns. Even the unexpected

encounter with Miller had done little more than leave an unpleasant

taste in his mouth. And then, on his way down from "up over," as the

natives called that little strip of moorland overhead, he had vanished

into the mist and had come out into another world.

"Andrew! So you are out here? Why did you not come to my room? Surely

your train was very punctual?"

Tallente remained for a moment tense and motionless. Then he turned

around. The woman who stood upon the threshold of the house, framed

with a little cascade of drooping roses, sought for his eyes almost

hungrily. He realised how she must be feeling. A dormant vein of

cynicism parted his lips as he held her fingers for a moment. His tone

and his manner were quite natural.

"We were, I believe, unusually punctual," he admitted. "What an

extraordinary mist! Up over there was no sign of it at all."

She shivered. Her eyes were still watching his face, seeking for an

answer to her unasked question. Blue eyes they were, which had been

beautiful in their day, a little hard and anxious now. She wore a white

dress, simple with the simplicity of supreme and expensive art. A rope

of pearls was her only ornament. Her hair was somewhat elaborately

coiffured, there was a touch of rouge upon her cheeks, and the

unscreened evening sunlight was scarcely kind to her rather wan features

and carefully arranged complexion. She still had her claims to beauty,

however. Tallente admitted that to himself as he stood there appraising

her, with a strange and almost impersonal regard,--his wife of thirteen

years. She was beautiful, notwithstanding the strained look of anxiety

which at that moment disfigured her face, the lurking fear which made

her voice sound artificial, the nervousness which every moment made

fresh demands upon her self-restraint.

"It came up from the sea," she said. "One moment Tony and I were

sitting out under the trees to keep away from the sun, and the next we

were driven shivering indoors; It was just like running into a fog bank

in the middle of the Atlantic on a hot summer's day."

"I found the difference in temperature amazing," he observed. "I, too,

dropped from the sunshine into a strange chill."

She tried to get rid of the subject.

"So you lost your seat," she said. "I am very sorry. Tell me how it

happened?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"The Democratic Party made up their mind, for some reason or other, that

I shouldn't sit. The Labour Party generally were not thinking of

running a candidate. I was to have been returned unopposed, in

acknowledgment of my work on the Nationalisation Bill. The Democrats,

however, ratted. They put up a man at the last moment, and--well, you

know the result--I lost."

"I don't understand English politics," she confessed, "but I thought you

were almost a Labour man yourself."

"I am practically," he replied. "I don't know, even now, what made them

oppose me."

"What about the future?"

"My plans are not wholly made."

For the first time, an old and passionate ambition prevailed against the

thrall of the moment.

"One of the papers this morning," she said eagerly, "suggested that you

might be offered a peerage."

"I saw it," he acknowledged. "It was in the Sun. I was once

unfortunate enough to be on the committee of a club which blackballed

the editor."

Her mouth hardened a little.

"But you haven't forgotten your promise?"

"'Bargain' shall we call it?" he replied. "No, I have not forgotten."

"Tony says you could have a peerage whenever you liked."

"Then I suppose it must be so. Just at present I am not prepared to

write 'finis' to my political career."

The butler announced dinner. Tallente offered his arm and they passed

through the homely little hall into the dining room beyond. Stella came

to a sudden standstill as they crossed the threshold.

"Why is the table laid for two only?" she demanded. "Mr. Palliser is

here."

"I was obliged to send Tony away--on important business," Tallente

intervened. "He left about an hour ago."

Once more the terror was upon her. The fingers which gripped her napkin

trembled. Her eyes, filled with fierce enquiry, were fixed upon her

husband's as he took his place in leisurely fashion and glanced at the

menu.

"Obliged to send Tony away?" she repeated. "I don't understand. He

told me that he had several days' work here with you."

"Something intervened," he murmured.

"Why didn't you wire?" she faltered, almost under her breath. "He

couldn't have had any time to get ready."

Andrew Tallente looked at his wife across the bowl of floating flowers.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "I didn't think of that. But in any case I did not

make up my mind until I arrived that it was necessary for him to go."

There was silence for a time, an unsatisfactory and in some respects an

unnatural silence. Tallente trifled with his _hors d'oeuvres_ and was

inquisitive about the sauce with which his fish was flavoured. Stella

sent away her plate untouched, but drank two glasses of champagne. The

light came back to her eyes, she found courage again. After all, she

was independent of this man, independent even of his name. She looked

across the table at him appraisingly. He was still sufficiently

good-looking, lithe of frame and muscular, with features well-cut

although a little irregular in outline. Time, however, and anxious work

were beginning to leave their marks. His hair was grey at the sides,

there were deep lines in his face, he seemed to her fancy to have

shrunken a little during the last few years. He had still the languid,

high-bred voice which she had always admired so munch, the same coolness

of manner and quiet dignity. He was a personable man, but after all he

was a failure. His career, so far as she could judge it, was at an end.

She was a fool to imagine, even for a moment, that her whole future lay

in his keeping.

"Have you any plans?" she asked him presently. "Another constituency?"

He smiled a little wearily. For once he spoke quite naturally.

"The only plan I have formulated at present is to rest for a time," he

admitted.

She drank another glass of champagne and felt almost confident. She

told him the small events of the sparsely populated neighbourhood, spoke

of the lack of water in the trout stream, the improvement in the golf

links, the pheasants which a near-by landowner was turning down. They

were comparative newcomers and had seen as yet little of their

neighbours.

"I was told," she concluded, "that the great lady of the neighbourhood

was to have called upon me this afternoon. I waited in but she didn't

come."

"And who is that?" he enquired.

"Lady Jane Partington of Woolhanger--a daughter of the Duke of

Barminster. Woolhanger was left to her by an old aunt, and they say

that she never leaves the place."

"An elderly lady?" he asked, merely with an intent of prolonging a

harmless subject of conversation.

"On the contrary, quite young," his wife replied. "She seems to be a

sort of bachelor-spinster, who lives out in that lonely place without a

chaperon and rules the neighborhood. You ought to make friends with

her, Andrew. They say that she is half a Socialist.--By the by, how

long are we going to stay down here?"

"We will discuss that presently," he answered.

The service of dinner came to its appointed end. Tallente drank one

glass of port alone. Then he rose, left the room by the French windows,

passed along the terrace and looked in at the drawing-room, where Stella

was lingering over her coffee.

"Will you walk with me as far as the lookout?" he invited. "Your maid

can bring you a cloak if you are likely to be cold."

She responded a little ungraciously, but appeared a few minutes later, a

filmy shawl of lace covering her bare shoulders. She walked by his side

to the end of the terrace, along the curving walk through the

plantation, and by the sea wall to the flagged space where some seats

and a table had been fixed. Four hundred feet below, the sea was

beating against jagged rocks. The moon was late and it was almost dark.

She leaned over and he stood by her side.

"Stella," he said, "you asked me at dinner when we were leaving here.

You are leaving to-morrow morning by the twelve-thirty train."

"What do you mean?" she demanded, with a sudden sinking of the heart.

"Please do not ask," he replied. "You know and I know. It is not my

wish to make public the story of our--disagreement."

She was silent for several moments, looking over into the black gulf

below, watching the swirl of the sea, listening to its dull booming

against the distant rocks, the shriek of the backward-dragged pebbles.

An owl flew out from some secret place in the cliffs and wheeled across

the bay. She drew her shawl around her with a little shiver.

"So this is the end," she answered.

"No doubt, in my way," he reflected, "I have been as great a

disappointment to you as you to me. You brought me your great wealth,

believing that I could use it towards securing just what you desired in

the way of social position. Perhaps that might have come but for the

war. Now I have become rather a failure."

"There was no necessity for you ever to have gone soldiering," she

reminded him a little hardly.

"As you say," he acquiesced. "Still, I went and I do not regret it. I

might even remind you that I met with some success."

"Pooh!" she scoffed. "What is the use of a few military distinctions?

What are an M.C. and a D.S.O. and a few French and Belgian orders going

to do for me? You know I want other things. They told me when I

married you," she went on, warming with her own sense of injury, "that

you were certain to be Prime Minister. They told me that the Coalition

Party couldn't do without you, that you were the only effective link

between them and Labour. You had only to play your cards properly and

you could have pushed out Horlock whenever you liked. And now see what

a mess you have made of things! You have built up Horlock's party for

him, he offers you an insignificant post in the Cabinet, and you can't

even win your seat in Parliament."

"Your epitome of my later political career has its weak points, but I

dare say, from your point of view, you have every reason for complaint,"

he observed. "Since I have failed to procure for you the position you

desire, our parting will have a perfectly natural appearance. Your

fortune is unimpaired--you cannot say that I have been extravagant--and

I assure you that I shall not regret my return to poverty."

"But you won't be able to live," she said bluntly. "You haven't any

income at all."

"Believe me," he answered quietly, "you exaggerate my poverty. In any

case, it is not your concern."

"You wouldn't--"

She paused. She was a woman of not very keen perceptions, but she

realised that if she were to proceed with the offer which was half

framed in her mind, the man by her side, with his, to her outlook,

distorted sense of honour, would become her enemy. She shrugged her

shoulders, and turning towards him, held out her hand.

"It is the end, then," she said. "Well, Andrew, I did my best according

to my lights, and I failed. Will you shake hands?"

He shook his head.

"I cannot, Stella. Let us agree to part here. We know all there is to

be known of one another, and we shall be able to say good-by without

regret."

She drifted slowly away from him. He watched her figure pass in and out

among the trees. She was unashamed, perhaps relieved,--probably, he

reflected, as he watched her enter the house, already making her plans

for a more successful future. He turned away and looked downwards. The

darkness seemed, if possible, to have become a little more intense, the

moaning of the sea more insistent. Little showers of white spray

enlaced the sombre rocks. The owl came back from his mysterious

journey, hovered for a moment over the cliff and entered his secret

home. Behind him, the lights in the house went out, one by one.

Suddenly he felt a grip upon his shoulder, a hot breath upon his cheek.

It was Stella, returned dishevelled, her lace scarf streaming behind,

her eyes lit with horror. "Andrew!" she cried. "It came over me--just

as I entered the house! What have you done with Anthony?"

CHAPTER II

Tallente's first impressions of Jane Partington were that an exceedingly

attractive but somewhat imperious young woman had surprised him in a

most undignified position. She had come cantering down the drive on a

horse which, by comparison with the Exmoor ponies which every one rode

in those parts, had seemed gigantic, and, finding a difficulty in making

her presence known, had motioned to him with her whip. He climbed down

from the steps where he had been busy fastening up some roses, removed a

nail from his mouth and came towards her.

"How is it that I can make no one hear?" she asked. "Do you know if

Mrs. Tallente is at home?"

Tallente was in no hurry to reply. He was busy taking in a variety of

pleasant impressions. Notwithstanding the severely cut riding habit and

the hard little hat, he decided that he had never looked into a more

attractively feminine face. For some occult reason, unconnected, he was

sure, with the use of any skin food or face cream, this young woman who

had the reputation of living out of doors, winter and summer, had a

complexion which, notwithstanding its faint shade of tan, would have

passed muster for delicacy and clearness in any Mayfair drawing-room.

Her eyes were soft and brown, her hair a darker shade of the same

colour. Her mouth, for all its firmness, was soft and pleasantly

curved. Her tone, though a trifle imperative, was kindly, gracious and

full of musical quality. Her figure was moderately slim, but

indistinguishable at that moment under her long coat. She possessed a

curious air of physical well-being, the well-being of a woman who has

found and is enjoying what she seeks in life.

"Won't you tell me why I can make no one hear?" she repeated, still

good-naturedly but frowning slightly at his silence.

"Mrs. Tallente is in London," he announced. "She has taken most of the

establishment with her."

The visitor fumbled in her side pocket and produced a diminutive ivory

case. She withdrew a card and handed it to Tallente, with a glance at

his gloved hands.

"Will you give this to the butler?" she begged. "Tell him to tell his

mistress that I was sorry not to find her at home."

"The butler," Tallente explained, "has gone for the milk. He shall have

the card immediately on his return."

She looked at him for a moment and then smiled.

"Do forgive me," she said. "I believe you are Mr. Tallente?"

He drew off his gloves and shook hands.

"How did you guess that?" he asked.

"From the illustrated papers, of course," she answered. "I have come to

the conclusion that you must be a very vain man, I have seen so many

pictures of you lately."

"A matter of snapshots," he replied, "for which, as a rule, the victim

is not responsible. You should abjure such a journalistic vice as

picture papers."

"Why?" she laughed. "They lead to such pleasant surprises. I had been

led to believe, for instance, by studying the Daily Mirror, that you

were quite an elderly person with a squint."

"I am becoming self-conscious," he confessed. "Won't you come in?

There is a boy somewhere about the premises who can look after your

horse, and I shall be able to give you some tea as soon as Robert gets

back with the milk."

He cooeed to the boy, who came up from one of the lower shelves of

garden, and she followed him into the hall. He looked around him for a

moment in some perplexity.

"I wonder whether you would mind coming into my study?" he suggested.

"I am here quite alone for the present, and it is the only room I use."

She followed him down a long passage into a small apartment at the

extreme end of the house.

"You are like me," she said. "I keep most of my rooms shut up and live

in my den. A lonely person needs so much atmosphere."

"Rather a pigsty, isn't it?" he remarked, sweeping a heap of books from

a chair. "I am without a secretary just now--in fact," he went on, with

a little burst of confidence engendered by her friendly attitude, "we

are in a mess altogether."

She laughed softly, leaning back amongst the cushions of the chair and

looking around the room, her kindly eyes filled with interest.

"It is a most characteristic mess," she declared. "I am sure an

interviewer would give anything for this glimpse into your tastes and

habits. Golf clubs, all cleaned up and ready for action; trout rod,

newly-waxed at the joints--you must try my stream, there is no water in

yours; tennis racquets in a very excellent press--I wonder whether

you're too good for a single with me some day? Typewriter--rather

dusty. I don't believe that you can use it."

"I can't," he admitted. "I have been writing my letters by hand for the

last two days."

She sighed.

"Men are helpless creatures! Fancy a great politician unable to write

his own letters! What has become of your secretary?"

Tallente threw some books to the floor and seated himself in the vacant

easy-chair.

"I shall begin to think," he said, a little querulously, "that you don't

read the newspapers. My secretary, according to that portion of the

Press which guarantees to provide full value for the smallest copper

coin, has 'disappeared'."

"Really?" she exclaimed. "He or she?"

"He--the Honourable Anthony Palliser by name, son of Stobart Palliser,

who was at Eton with me."

She nodded.

"I expect I know his mother. What exactly do you mean by

'disappeared'?"

Tallente was looking out of the window. A slight hardness had crept

into his tone and manner. He had the air of one reciting a story.

"The young man and I differed last Tuesday night," he said. "In the

language of the novelists, he walked out into the night and disappeared.

Only an hour before dinner, too. Nothing has been heard of him since."

"What a fatuous thing to do!" she remarked. "Shall you have to get

another secretary?"

"Presently," he assented. "Just for the moment I am rather enjoying

doing nothing."

She leaned back amongst the cushions of her chair and looked across at

him with interest, an interest which presently drifted into sympathy.

Even the lightness of his tone could not mask the inwritten weariness of

the man, the tired droop of the mouth, and the lacklustre eyes.

"Do you know," she said, "I have never been more intrigued than when I

heard you were really coming down here. Last summer I was in

Scotland--in fact I have been away every time the Manor has been open.

I am so anxious to know whether you like this part of the world."

"I like it so much," he replied, "that I feel like settling here for the

rest of my life."

She shook her head.

"You will never be able to do that," she said, "at least not for many

years. The country will need so much of your time. But it is

delightful to think that you may come here for your holidays."

"If you read the newspapers," he remarked, a little grimly, "you might

not be so sure that the country is clamouring for my services."

She waved away his speech with a little gesture of contempt.

"Rubbish! Your defeat at Hellesfield was a matter of political jobbery.

Any one could see through that. Horlock ought never to have sent you

there. He ought to have found you a perfectly safe seat, and of course

he will have to do it."

He shook his head.

"I am not so sure. Horlock resents my defeat almost as though it were a

personal matter. Besides, it is an age of young men, Lady Jane."

"Young men!" she scoffed. "But you are young."

"Am I?" he answered, a little sadly. "I am not feeling it just now.

Besides, there is something wrong about my enthusiasms. They are

becoming altogether too pastoral. I am rather thinking of taking up the

cultivation of roses and of making a terraced garden down to the sea.

Do you know anything about gardening, Lady Jane?"

"Of course I do," she answered, a little impatiently. "A very excellent

hobby it is for women and dreamers and elderly men. There is plenty of

time for you to take up such a pursuit when you have finished your

work."

"Fifteen thousand intelligent voters have just done their best to tell

me that it is already finished," he sighed.

She made a little grimace.

"Am I going to be disappointed in you, I wonder?" she asked. "I don't

think so. You surely wouldn't let a little affair like one election

drive you out of public life? It was so obvious that you were made the

victim for Horlock's growing unpopularity in the country. Haven't you

realised that yourself--or perhaps you don't care to talk about these

things to an ignoramus such as I am?"

"Please don't believe that," he begged hastily. "I think yours is

really the common-sense view of the matter. Only," he went on, "I have

always represented, amongst the coalitionists, the moderate Socialist,

the views of those men who recognise the power and force of the coming

democracy, and desire to have legislation attuned to it. Yet it was the

Democratic vote which upset me at Hellesfield."

"That was entirely a matter of faction," she persisted. "That horrible

person Miller was sent down there, for some reason or other, to make

trouble. I believe if the election had been delayed another week, and

you had been able to make two more speeches like you did at the Corn

Exchange, you would have got in."

He looked at her in some surprise.

"That is exactly what I thought myself," he agreed. "How on earth do

you come to know all these things?"

"I take an interest in your career," she said, smiling at him, "and I

hate to see you so dejected without cause."

He felt a little thrill at her words. A queer new sense of

companionship stirred in his pulses. The bitterness of his suppressed

disappointment was suddenly soothed. There was something of the

excitement of the discoverer, too, in these new sensations. It seemed

to him that he was finding something which had been choked out of his

life and which was yet a real and natural part of it.

"You will make an awful nuisance of me if you don't mind," he warned

her. "If you encourage me like this, you will develop the most juvenile

of all failings--you will make me want to talk about myself. I am

beginning to feel terribly egotistical already."

She leaned a little towards him. Her mouth was soft with sweet and

feminine tenderness, her eyes warm with kindness.

"That is just what I hoped I might succeed in doing," she declared. "I

have been interested in your career ever since I had the faintest idea

of what politics meant. You could not give me a greater happiness than

to talk to me--about yourself."

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."

CHAPTER IV

Mr Inspector Gillian of Barnstaple had no idea of denying his

profession. He had travelled over in a specially hired motor-car, and

he was wearing his best uniform. He rose to his feet at Tallente's

entrance and saluted a little ponderously.

"Mr. Andrew Tallente, sir?" he enquired.

Tallente silently admitted his identity, waved the inspector back to his

seat--the one high-backed and uncomfortable chair in the room--and took

an easy-chair himself.

"I have come over, sir," the man continued, "according to instructions

received by telephone from Scotland Yard. My business is to ask you a

few questions concerning the disappearance of the Honourable Anthony

Palliser, who was, I am given to understand, your secretary."

"Dear me!" Tallente exclaimed. "I had no idea that the young man's

temporary absence from polite society would be turned into a

melodramatic disappearance."

The inspector took mental note of the levity in Tallente's tone, and

disapproved.

"The Honourable Anthony Palliser disappeared from here, sir, on Tuesday

night last, the night of your return from London," he said. "I have

come to ask you certain questions with reference to that disappearance."

"Go ahead," Tallente begged. "Care to smoke a cigar?"

"Not whilst on duty, thank you, sir," was the dignified reply.

"You will forgive my cigarette," Tallente observed, lighting one. "Now

you can go ahead as fast as you like."

"Question number one is this, sir. I wish to know whether Mr.

Palliser's abrupt departure from the Manor was due to any disagreement

with you?"

"In a sense I suppose it was," the other acknowledged. "I turned him

out of the house."

The inspector did not attempt to conceal his gratification. He made a

voluminous note in his pocketbook.

"Am I to conclude, then, that there was a quarrel?" he enquired.

"I do not quarrel with people to whom I pay a salary," Tallente replied.

"When you say that you turned him out of the house, that rather implies

a quarrel, doesn't it? It might even imply--blows."

"You can put your own construction upon it," was the cool reply.

"Had you any idea where the honourable Anthony Palliser was going to?"

"I suggested the devil," Tallente confided blandly. "I expect he will

get there some time. I put up with him because I knew his father, but

he is not a young man to make a fuss about."

The inspector was a little staggered.

"I am to conclude, then," he said, "that you were dissatisfied with his

work as your secretary?"

"Absolutely," was the firm reply. "You have no idea what a mess he was

liable to make of things if he was left alone."

The inspector coughed.

"Mr. Tallente, sir," he said, "my instructions are to ask you to

disclose the nature of your displeasure, if any, with the Honourable Mr.

Anthony Palliser. In plain words, Scotland Yard desires to know why he

was turned away from his place at a moment's notice."

"I suppose it is the duty of Scotland Yard to be inquisitive in cases of

this sort," Tallente observed. "You can report to them the whole of the

valuable information with which I have already furnished you, and you

can add that I absolutely refuse to give any information respecting

the--er--difference of opinion between the young man and myself."

The inspector did not conceal his dissatisfaction.

"I shall ask, you, sir," he said with dignity, "to reconsider that

decision. Remember that it is the police who ask, and in cases of this

sort they have special privileges."

"As soon as any criminal case arises from Anthony Palliser's

disappearance," Tallente pointed out, "you will be in a position to ask

me questions from a different standpoint. For the present I have given

you just as much information as I feel inclined to. Shall we leave it

at that?"

The inspector appeared to have become hard of hearing. He did not

attempt to rise from his chair.

"Being your private secretary, sir," he said, "the Honourable Anthony

Palliser would no doubt have access to your private papers?"

"Naturally," Tallente conceded.

"There might be amongst them papers of importance, papers whose

possession by parties in the other camp of politics--"

"Stop!" Tallente interrupted. "Inspector Gillan, you are an astute man.

Excuse me."

He crossed the room and, with a key which he took from a chain attached

to his trouser button, opened a small but powerful safe fitted into the

wall. He opened it confidently enough, gazed inside and remained for a

moment transfixed. Then he took up a few little packets of papers,

glanced them through and replaced them. He still stood there, dangling

the key in his hard. The inspector watched him curiously.

"Anything missing, sir?" he asked.

Tallente swung the door to and came back to his chair.

"Yes!" he admitted.

"Can I make a note of the nature of the loss, sir?" the man asked,

moistening his pencil.

"A political paper of some personal consequence," Tallente replied.

"Its absence disquiets me. It also confirms my belief that Palliser is

lying doggo for a time."

"A hint as to the contents of the missing paper would be very

acceptable, sir," Inspector Gillian begged.

Tallente shook his head.

"For the present," he decided, "I can only repeat what I said a few

moments ago--I have given you just as much information as I feel

inclined to."

The inspector rose to his feet.

"My report will not be wholly satisfactory to Scotland Yard, sir," he

declared.

"My experience of the estimable body is that they take a lot of

satisfying," Tallente replied. "Will you take anything before you go,

Inspector?"

"Nothing whatever, thank you, sir. At the risk of annoying you, I am

bound to ask this question. Will you tell me whether anything in the

nature of blows passed between you and the Honourable Anthony Palliser,

previous to his leaving your house?"

"I will not even satisfy your curiosity to that extent," Tallente

answered.

"It will be my duty, sir," the inspector said ponderously, "to examine

some of your servants."

"Scotland Yard can do that for themselves," Tallente observed. "My wife

and the greater part of the domestic staff left here for London a week

ago."

The representative of the law saluted solemnly.

"I am sorry that you have not felt inclined to treat me with more

confidence in this matter, Mr. Tallente," he said.

He took his leave then. Tallente heard him conversing for some time

with Robert and saw him in the garden, interviewing the small boy.

Afterwards, he climbed into his car and drove away. Tallente opened his

safe and once more let the little array of folded papers slip through

his hands. Then he rang the bell for Robert, who presently appeared.

"The inspector has quite finished with you?" his master asked.

Robert was a portly man, a little unhealthy in colour and a little short

of breath. He had been gassed in the war and his nerves were not what

they had been. It was obvious, as he stood on the other side of the

table, that he was trembling.

"Quite, sir. He was enquiring about Mr. Palliser."

His master nodded.

"I am afraid he will find it a little difficult to obtain any

information round here," he remarked. "There are certain things

connected with that young man which may throw a new light upon his

disappearance."

"Indeed, sir?" Robert murmured.

Tallente glanced towards the safe.

"Robert," he confided, "I have been robbed."

The man started a little.

"Indeed, sir?" he replied. "Nothing very valuable, I hope?"

"I have been robbed of papers," Tallente said quietly, "which in the

wrong hands might ruin me. Mr. Palliser had a key to that safe. Have

you ever seen it open?"

"Never, sir."

"When did Mr. Palliser arrive here?"

"On the evening train of the Monday, sir, that you arrived by on the

Tuesday."

"Tell me, did he receive any visitors at all on the Tuesday?"

"There was a man came over from a house near Lynton, sir, said his name

was Miller."

"Have you any idea what he wanted?"

"No certain idea, sir," Robert replied doubtfully. "Now I come to think

of it, though, it seemed as though he had come to make Mr. Palliser

some sort of an offer. After I had let him out, he came back and said

something to Mr. Palliser about three thousand pounds, and Mr.

Palliser said he would let him know. I got the idea, somehow or other,

that the transaction, whatever it might have been, was to be concluded

on Tuesday night."

"Why didn't you tell me this before, Robert?" his master enquired.

"Other things drove it out of my mind, sir," the man confessed. "I

didn't look upon it as of much consequence. I thought it was something

to do with Mr. Palliser's private affairs."

Tallente glanced at the safe.

"I saw this man Miller at the station," he said, "when I arrived."

"That would be on his way back from here, sir," Robert acquiesced. "I

gathered that he was coming back again after dinner in a car."

"Did you hear a car at all that night?"

"I rather fancied I did," the man asserted. "I didn't take particular

notice, though."

Tallente frowned.

"I am very much afraid, Robert," he said, "that wherever Mr. Palliser

is, those papers are."

Robert shivered.

"Very good, sir," he said, in a low tone.

"Any speculations as to that young man's whereabouts," Tallente

continued thoughtfully, "must necessarily be a matter of pure guesswork,

but supposing, Robert, he should have wandered in that mist the wrong

way--turned to the left, for instance, outside this window, instead of

to the right--he might very easily have fallen over the cliff."

"The walk is very unsafe in the dark, sir," Robert acquiesced, looking

down at the carpet.

"It was not my intention," Tallente remarked thoughtfully, "to kill the

young man. A brawl in front of the windows was impossible, so I took

him with me to the lookout. I suppose he was tactless and I lost my

temper. I struck him on the chin and he went backwards, through that

piece of rotten paling, you know, Robert--"

"I know, sir," the man interrupted, with a little moan. "Please don't!"

Tallente shrugged his shoulders.

"I took him at no disadvantage," he said coolly. "He knew how to use

the gloves and he was twenty years younger than I. However, there it is.

Backwards he went, all legs and arms and shrieks. And with him went the

papers he had stolen.--At twelve o'clock to-night, Robert, I must go

down after him."

"It's impossible, sir! It's a sheer precipice for four hundred feet!"

"Nothing of the sort," was the cool reply. "There are heaps of ledges

and little clumps of pines and yews. All that you will have to do is to

pull up the rope when I am ready. You can fasten it to a tree when I go

down."

"It's not worth it, sir," the man protested anxiously. "No one will

ever find the body down there."

"Send the boy home to stay with his parents to-night," Tallente

continued. "Your wife, I suppose, can be trusted?"

"She is living up at the garage, sir," Robert answered. "Besides, she

is deaf. I'll tell her that I am sleeping in the house to-night as you

are not very well. And forgive me, sir--her ladyship left a message.

She hoped you would lunch with her to-morrow."

Tallente strolled out again in a few minutes, curiously impatient of the

restraint of walls, and clambered up the precipitous field at the back

of the Manor. Far up the winding road which led back into the world, a

motor-car was crawling on its way up over. He watched it through a pair

of field glasses. Leaning back in the tonneau with folded arms, as

though solemnly digesting a problem, was Inspector Gillian. Tallente

closed the glasses with a little snap and smiled.

"The Bucket type," he murmured to himself, "very much the Bucket type."

CHAPTER V

The moon that night seemed to be indulging in strange vagaries, now

dimly visible behind a mist of thin grey vapour, now wholly obscured

behind jagged masses of black cloud, and occasionally shining

brilliantly from a little patch of clear sky. Tallente waited for one

of the latter moments before he finally tested the rope which was wound

around the strongest of the young pine trees and stepped over the rustic

wooden paling at the edge of the lookout He stood there balanced between

earth and sky, until Robert, who watched him, shivered. "There is

nothing to fear," his master said coolly. "Remember, I am an old hand

at mountain climbing, Robert. All the same, if anything should happen,

you'd better say that we fancied we heard a cry from down below and I

went to see what it was. You understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

Tallente took a step into what seemed to be Eternity. The rope cut into

his hands for the first three or four yards, as the red sand crumbled

away beneath his feet, and he was obliged to grip for his life.

Presently he gained a little ledge, from which a single yew tree was

growing, and paused for breath.

"Are you all right, sir?" Robert called out from above.

"Quite," was the confident answer. "I shall be off again in a minute."

Tallente's head had been the wonder even of members of the Alpine Club,

years ago in Switzerland. He found himself now in this strangest of all

positions, absolutely steady and unmoved. Sheer below him, dark,

rushing waves broke upon the rocks, sending showers of glittering spray

upwards. Above, the little lookout with its rustic paling seemed almost

more than directly overhead. The few stars and the fugitive moon seemed

somehow set in a different sky. He felt a new kinship with a great gull

who came floating by. He had become himself a creature of the wild

places. Presently he began once more to let himself down, hand over

hand, to where the next little clump of trees showed a chance of a

precarious foothold. The rope chafed his fingers but he remained

absolutely steady. Once he trusted for a moment to a yew tree, growing

out of a fissure in the rock, which came out by the roots and went

hurtling down into space. From overhead he heard Robert's terrified

cry. The rope stood the strain of his sudden clutch, however, and all

was well. A little lower down, holding on with one hand, he took his

torch from his pocket and examined the surface of the cliff. Nothing

apparently had been disturbed, nor was there any sign of any heavy body

having been dashed through the undergrowth. Soon he went on again,

and, working a little to the left, stood for a moment upon a green,

turf-covered crag, a tiny plateau covered with the refuse of seagulls

and a few stunted trees, from amongst which a startled hawk rose with a

wild cry. He waited here until the moon shone once more and he could

see the little strip of shingle below. Nowhere could he find any trace

of the thing he sought.

At the end of half an hour's climbing, he reached the end of the rope.

The little cove, filled with tumbled rocks and a narrow strip of beach,

was still about eighty feet below. The slope here was far less

precipitous and there was a foothold in many places amongst the thinly

growing firs and dwarfed oaks. Calmly he let go the rope and commenced

to scramble. More than once his foot slipped, but he was always in a

position to save himself. The time came at last when he stood upon the

pebbly beach, surprised to find that his knees were shaking and his

breath coming fast. The little place was so enclosed that when he

looked upwards it seemed as though he were at the bottom of a pit, as

though the stars and the doubtful moon had receded and he was somehow in

the bowels of the earth instead of being on the sea level. There were

only a few feet of the shingle dry, and a great wave, breaking amongst

the huge rocks, drenched him with spray. He proceeded with his task,

however, searching methodically amongst the rocks, scanning the pebbly

beach with his torch, always amazed that nowhere could he find the

slightest trace of what he sought. Finally, drenched to the skin and

utterly exhausted, he commenced once more the upward climb. He was an

hour reaching the end of the rope. Then he blew the whistle and the

rest was easy. Nevertheless, when the paling came into sight and he

felt Robert's arms under his shoulders, he reeled over towards the seat

and lay there, his clothes caked in red mud, the knees of his

knickerbockers cut, blood on his hands and forehead, breathless. Robert

forced brandy down his throat, however, and in a moment or two he was

himself again.

"A miracle!" he gasped. "There is nothing there."

"There was something dark, I fancied, upon the strip of beach, sir,"

Robert ventured.

"I thought so too. It was a tarred plank of timber."

"Then the tide must have reached him."

Tallente rose to his feet and looked over.

"The sea alone knows," he said. "For the first time, though, Robert, I

feel inclined to agree with the newspapers, who speak of the strange

disappearance of the Honourable Antimony Palliser. Could any man go

backwards over that palisading, do you think, and save his life?"

Robert shook his head.

"Miracles can't happen, sir," he muttered.

"Nevertheless," Tallente said, a little gloomily, "the sea never keeps

what the land gives it. My fate will rest with the tides."

Robert suddenly gripped his master's arm. The moon had disappeared

underneath a fragment of cloud and they stood in complete darkness.

Both men listened. From one of the paths which led through the grounds

from the beach, came the sound of muffled footsteps. A startled owl

flew out and wheeled over their heads with a queer little cry.

"Who's that in the grounds, Robert?" Tallente demanded.

"I've no idea, sir," the latter replied, his voice shaking. "The

cottage is empty. The boy went home--I saw him start off. There is no

one else about the place."

Nevertheless, the footsteps came nearer. By and by, through the trees,

came the occasional flash of an electric torch. Robert turned towards

the house but Tallente gripped him by the arm.

"Stop here," he muttered. "We couldn't get away. Any one would hear

our footsteps along this flinty path. Besides, there is the rope."

"It's someone else searching!" Robert whispered hoarsely.

The light grew nearer and nearer. A little way below, the path branched

to the right and the left. To the left it encircled the tennis lawn and

led to the Manor or back to the road. The path to the right led to the

little lookout upon which the two men were standing. The footsteps for

a moment hesitated. Then the light flashed out and approached. Whoever

the intruder might be, he was making his way directly towards them.

Tallente shrugged his shoulders.

"We must see this through, Robert," he said. "We were in a tighter

corner at Ypres, remember. Keep as quiet as you can. Now, then."

Tallente flashed on his own torch.

"Who's there?" he asked sternly.

There was no answer. The torch for a moment remained stationary, then

it began again to advance.

"What are you doing in my grounds?" Tallente demanded. "Who are you?"

A shape loomed into distinctness. A bulky man in dark clothes came into

sight.

"I am Gillian--Inspector Gillian. What are you doing out here, Mr.

Tallente?"

Tallente laughed a little scornfully.

"It seems to me that the boot is on the other leg," he said. "I should

like to know what the mischief you mean by wandering around my grounds

at this hour of the night without my permission?"

The inspector completed his climb and stood in the little circle of

light. He took note of the rope and of Tallente's condition.

"My presence here, sir," the inspector announced, "is connected with the

disappearance of the Honourable Anthony Palliser."

"Confidence for confidence," Tallente replied. "So is mine."

The inspector moved to the palisading. The top rail had been broken, as

though it had given under the weight of some heavy body. He held up the

loose fragment, glanced downwards into the dark gulf and back again to

Tallente. "You've been over there," he said. "I have," Tallente

admitted. "I've made a search that I don't fancy you'd have tackled

yourself. I've been down the cliff to the beach."

"What reason had you for supposing that you might discover Mr.

Palliser's body there?" the other asked bluntly.

Tallente sat on the stone seat and lit a cigarette.

"I will take you into my confidence, Mr. Inspector," he said. "This

afternoon I strolled round here with a lady caller, just before you

came, and I fancied that I heard a faint cry. I took no notice of it at

the time, but to-night, after dinner, I wandered out here again, and

again I fancied I heard it. It got on my nerves to such an extent that

I fetched Robert here, a coil of rope, put on some shoes with spikes and

tried to remember that I was an Alpine climber."

"You've been down to the beach and back, sir?" the inspector asked,

looking over a little wonderingly.

"Every inch of the way. The last eighty feet or so I had to scramble."

"Did you discover anything, sir?"

"Not a thing. I couldn't even find a broken twig in any of the little

clumps of outgrowing trees. There wasn't a sign of the sand having been

disturbed anywhere down the face of the cliff, and I shouldn't think a

human being had been on that beach during our lifetimes. I have had my

night's work for nothing."

"It was just the cry you fancied you heard which made you undertake this

expedition?"

"Precisely!"

The inspector held up the broken rail.

"When was this smashed?" he enquired.

"I have no idea," Tallente answered. "All the woodwork about the place

is rotten."

"Doesn't it occur to you, sir, as being an extraordinarily dangerous

thing to put it back in exactly the same position as though it were

sound?"

"Iniquitous," Tallente agreed.

The inspector made a mental note. Tallente threw the remains of his

cigarette into the sea. "I am going to bed now." he said. "Can I offer

you any refreshment, Mr. Inspector, or are your investigations not yet

complete?"

"I thank you, sir, but I require nothing. I have some men up in the

wood there and I shall join them presently. I am staying in the

neighborhood."

Tallente pointed to the rope.

"If you would care to search for yourself, Mr. Inspector, we'll help

you down."

The man shook his head.

"Scarcely a job for a man of my build, sir. I have a professional

climber coming to-morrow. I wish you had informed me of your intention

to go down to-night."

"If you had informed me of your intention to remain in the neighborhood,

that might have been possible," was the cool reply. The man took the

loose wooden rail from its place and held it under his arm. "Walking

off with a portion of my fence, eh?" Tallente asked.

The inspector made no direct reply. He turned his torch on to the

broken end.

"A clue?" Tallente asked him lightly. The other turned away. "It is

not my place, sir," he announced, "to share any discovery I might make

with a person who has deliberately refused to assist the law."

"No one has convinced me yet," Tallente replied, "that Palliser's

disappearance is a matter in which the law need concern itself." The

inspector coughed. "I wish you good night, sir." He disappeared along

the narrow path. They listened to his retreating footsteps. Tallente

picked up his end of the rope. "I was right," he said, as he led the

way back to the house. "Quite the Inspector Bucket type."

CHAPTER VI

At noon the next day, Tallente, nervously as well as physically

exhausted with the long climb from the Manor, turned aside from the

straight, dusty road and seated himself upon a lichen-covered boulder.

He threw his cap on the ground, filled and lighted an old briar pipe,

and gazed with a queer mixture of feelings across the moorland to where

Woolhanger spread itself, a queer medley of dwelling house and farm

buildings, strangely situated at the far end of the table-land he was

crossing, where the moor leaned down to a great hollow in the hills.

The open stretch of common which lay between him and his destination had

none of the charm of the surrounding country. It was like a dark spot

set in the midst of the rolling splendours of the moorland proper.

There were boulders of rock of unknown age, dark patches of peat land,

where even in midsummer the mud oozed up at the lightest footfall, pools

and sedgy places, the home and sometimes the breeding place of the

melancholy snipe. Of colour there was singularly little. The heather

bushes were stunted, their roots blackened as though with fire, and even

the yellow of the gorse shone with a dimmer lustre. But in the

distance, a flaming carpet of orange and purple stretched almost to the

summit of the brown hills of kindlier soil, and farther round,

westwards, richly cultivated fields, from which the labourers seemed to

hang like insects in the air, rolled away almost to the clouds.

Tallente looked at them a little wearily, impressed with the allegorical

significance of his position. It seemed to him that he was in the land

to which he belonged, the barren land of desolation and failure. The

triumphs of the past failed for a moment to thrill his pulses. The

memory of his well-lived and successful life brought him not an atom of

consolation. The present was all that mattered, and the present had

brought him to the gates of failure.--After all, what did a man work

for, he wondered? What was the end and aim of it all? Life at

Martinhoe Manor, with a faithful but terrified manservant, bookshelves

ready to afford him the phantasmal satisfaction of another man's

thoughts, sea and winds, beauties of landscape and colour, to bring him

to the threshold of an epicurean pleasure which needed yet that one

pulsating link with humanity to yield the full meed of joy and content.

It all came back to the old story of man's weakness, he thought, as he

rose to his feet, his teeth almost savagely clenching his pipe. He had

become a conqueror of circumstances only to become a victim of the

primitive needs of life.

At about a quarter of a mile from the house, the road branched away to

the left to disappear suddenly over the edge of a drop of many hundreds

of feet. Tallente passed through a plain white gate, down an avenue of

dwarfed oaks, to emerge into an unexpectedly green meadow, cloven

through the middle with a straight white avenue. Through another gate

he passed into a drive which led through flaming banks of rhododendrons,

now a little past their full glory, to the front of the house, a long

and amplified building which, by reason of many additions, had become an

abode of some pretensions. A manservant answered his ring at once and

led him into a cool, white stone hall, the walls of which were hung from

floor to ceiling with hunting and sporting trophies.

"Her ladyship is still at the farm, sir," the man announced. "She said

if you came before she returned would you care to step round?"

Tallente signified his assent and was led through the house, across a

more extensive garden, from which a marvellous view of the valley and

the climbing slopes behind held him spellbound, by the side of a small,

quaintly shaped church, to a circular group of buildings of considerable

extent. The man conducted him to the front of a white-plastered cottage

covered with roses, and knocked at the door.

"This is her ladyship's office, sir," he announced.

Lady Jane's invitation to enter was clear and friendly. Tallente found

her seated behind a desk, talking to a tall man in riding clothes, who

swung around to eye the newcomer with a curiosity which seemed somehow

not altogether friendly. Lady Jane held out her hand and smiled

delightfully.

"Do come in, Mr. Tallente," she begged. "I can't tell you how glad I

am to see you. Now you will believe, won't you, that I am not

altogether an idler in life? This is my agent, Mr. Segerson--Mr.

Tallente."

Lionel Segerson held out his hand. He was a tall, well-built young

Devonian, sunburnt, with fair curly hair, a somewhat obstinate type of

countenance, and dressed in the dandified fashion of the sporting

farmer.

"Glad to know you, Mr. Tallente," he said, in a tone which lacked

enthusiasm. "I hope you're going to stay down in these parts for a

time?"

Tallente made only a monosyllabic reply, and Lady Jane, with a little

gesture of apology, continued her conversation with Segerson.

"I should like you," she directed, "to see James Crockford for yourself.

Try and explain my views to him--you know them quite well. I want him

to own his land. You can tell him that within the last two years I have

sold eleven farms to their tenants, and no one could say that I have not

done so on easy terms. But I need further convincing that Crocker is in

earnest about the matter, and that he will really work to make his farm

a success. In five good years he has only saved a matter of four

hundred pounds, although his rental has been almost insignificant. That

is the worst showing of any of the tenants on the estate, and though if

I had more confidence in him I would sell on a mortgage, I don't feel

inclined to until he has shown that he can do better. Tell him that he

can have the farm for two thousand pounds, but he must bring me eight

hundred in cash and it must not be borrowed money. That ought to

satisfy him. He must know quite well that I could get three thousand

pounds for it in the open market."

"These fellows never take any notice of that," Segerson remarked.

"Ungrateful beggars, all of them. I'll tell him what you say, Lady

Jane."

"Thank you."

"Anything else?" the young man asked, showing a disposition to linger.

"Nothing, thanks, until to-morrow morning." There was even then a slight

unwillingness in his departure, which provoked a smile from Lady Jane as

the door closed.

"The young men of to-day are terribly spoilt," she said. "He expected

to be asked to lunch."

"I am glad he wasn't," Tallente observed.

She laughed.

"Why not? He is quite a nice young man."

"No doubt," Tallente agreed, without conviction. "However, I hate young

men and I want to talk to you."

"Young men are tiresome sometimes," she agreed, rising from her chair.

"And older ones too, I am afraid!"

She closed her desk and he stood watching her. She was wearing an

extraordinarily masculine garb--a covert-coating riding costume, with

breeches and riding boots concealed under a long coat--but she

contrived, somehow, to remain altogether feminine. She stood for a

moment looking about her, as though wondering whether there were

anything else to be done, a capable figure, attractive because of her

earnest self-possession.

"Sarah," she called out.

The sound of a typewriter in an inner room ceased. The door was opened

and a girl appeared on the threshold.

"You won't see me again to-day unless you send up for me," her mistress

announced. "Let me have the letters to sign before five. Try and get

away early, if you can. The car is going in to Lynton. Perhaps you

would like the ride?"

"I should enjoy it very much, your ladyship," the girl replied

gratefully. "There is really very little to do this afternoon."

"You can bring the letters whenever you like, then," Lady Jane told her,

"and let Martin know that you are going in with him."

"You study your people, I see," Tallente remarked, as they strolled

together back to the house.

"I try," she assented. "I try to do what I can in my little community

here, very much as you, in a far greater way, try to study the people in

your political programme. Of course," she went on, "it is far easier

for me. The one thing I try to develop amongst them is a genuine, not

a false spirit of independence. I want them to lean upon no one. I

have no charities in connection with the estate, no soup kitchens or

coal at Christmas, or anything of that sort. My theory is that every

person is the better for being able to look after himself, and my idea

of charity is placing him in a position to be able to do it. I don't

want to be their Lady of the Manor and accept their rents and give them

a dinner. I try to encourage them to save money and to buy their own

farms. The man here who owns his own farm and makes it pay is in a

position to lead a thoroughly self-respecting and honourable life. He

ought to get what there is to be got out of life, and his children

should be yeomen citizens of the best possible type. Of course, all

this sort of thing is so much easier in the country. Very often, in the

winter nights here, I waste my time trying to think out your greater

problems."

"Problems," he observed, "which the good people of Hellesfield have just

decided that I am not the man to solve."

"An election counts for nothing," she declared. "The merest whim will

lead thousands of voters into the wrong polling booth. Besides, nearly

all the papers admit that your defeat was owing to a political intrigue.

The very men who should have supported you--who had promised to support

you, in fact--went against you at the last moment. That was entirely

due to Miller, wasn't it?"

"Miller has been my political bête noir for years," he confessed. "To

me he represents the ignominious pacifist, whereas to him I represent

the sabre-rattling jingo. I got the best of it while the war was on.

To-day it seems to me that he has an undue share of influence in the

country."

"Who are the men who really represent what you and I would understand as

Labour?" she asked.

"That is too difficult a question to answer offhand," he replied.

"Personally, I have come to the conclusion that Labour is

unrepresentable--Labour as a cause. There are too many of the people

yet who haven't vision."

They passed into the cool, geranium-scented hall. She pointed to an

easy-chair by the side of which was set, on a small mahogany table, a

silver cocktail shaker and two glasses.

"Please be as comfortable as you can," she begged, "for a quarter of an

hour. If you like to wash, a touch of the bell there will bring Morton.

I must change my clothes. I had to ride out to one of the outlying

farms this morning, and we came back rather quickly."

She moved about the hall as she spoke, putting little things to rights.

Then she passed up the circular staircase. At the bend she looked back

and caught him watching her. She waved her hand with a little less than

her usual frankness. Tallente had forgotten for a moment his

whereabouts, his fatigue, his general weariness. He had turned around

in his chair and was watching her. She found something in the very

intensity of his gaze disturbing, vaguely analogous to certain

half-formed thoughts of her own. She called out some light remark,

scoffed at herself, and ran lightly out of sight, calling to her maid as

she went.

CHAPTER VII

Luncheon was served in a small room at the back of the house. Through

the wide-flung French windows was a vista of terraced walks, the two

sunken tennis lawns, a walled garden leading into an orchard, and

beyond, the great wood-hung cleft in the hills, on either side of which

the pastoral fields, like little squares, stretched away upwards. From

here there was no trace of the more barren, unkinder side of the

moorland. The succession of rich colours merged at last into the dim,

pearly hue where sky and cloud met, in the golden haze of the August

heat, a haze more like a sort of transparent filminess than anything

which really obscured.

Lady Jane, whose gift of femininity had triumphed even over her farm

clothes, seemed to Tallente to convey a curiously mingled impression of

restfulness and delicate charm in her cool, white muslin dress, low at

the neck, the Paquin-made garment of an Aphrodite. She talked to him

with all the charm of an accomplished hostess, and yet with the

occasional fascinating reserve of the woman who finds her companion

something more than ordinarily sympathetic. The butler served them

unattended from the sideboard, but before luncheon was half way through

they dispensed with his services.

"I suppose it has occurred to you by this time, Mr. Tallente," she

said, as she watched the coffee in a glass machine by her side, "that I

am a very unconventional person."

"Whatever you are," he replied, "I am grateful for."

"Cryptic, but with quite a nice sort of sound about it," she observed,

smiling. "Tell me honestly, though, aren't you surprised to find me

living here quite alone?"

"It seems to me perfectly natural," he answered.

"I live without a chaperon," she went on, "because a chaperon called by

that name would bore me terribly. As a matter of fact, though, there is

generally some one staying here. I find it easy enough to persuade my

friends and some of my relatives that a corner of Exmoor is not half a

bad place in the spring and summer. It is through the winter that I am

generally avoided."

"I have always had a fancy to spend a winter on Exmoor," he confided.

"It has its compensations," she agreed, "apart, of course, from the

hunting."

He felt the desire to speak of more vital things. What did hunting or

chaperons more or less matter to the Lady Janes of the world! Already

he knew enough of her to be sure that she would have her way in any

crisis that might arise. "How much of the year," he asked, "do you

actually spend here?"

"As much as I can."

"You are content to be here alone, even in the winter?"

"More contented than I should be anywhere else," she assured him.

"There is always plenty to do, useful work, too--things that count."

"London?"

"Bores me terribly," she confessed.

"Foreign travel?"

She nodded more tolerantly.

"I have done a little of it," she said. "I should love to do more, but

travel as travel is such an unsatisfying thing. If a place attracts

you, you want to imbibe it. Travel leaves you no time to do anything

but sniff. Life is so short. One must concentrate or one achieves

nothing. I know what the general idea of a stay-at-home is," she went

on. "Many of my friends consider me narrow. Perhaps I am. Anyhow, I

prefer to lead a complete and, I believe, useful life here, to looking

back in later years upon that hotchpotch of lurid sensations, tangled

impressions and restless moments that most of them call life."

"You display an amazing amount of philosophy for your years," he

ventured, after a little hesitation. "There is one instinct, however,

which you seem to ignore."

"What is it, please?"

"Shall I call it the gregarious one, the desire for companionship of

young people of your own age?"

She shrugged her shoulders. She had the air of one faintly amused by

his diffidence.

"You mean that I ought to be husband hunting," she said. "I quite admit

that a husband would be a very wonderful addition to life. I have none

of the sentiments of the old maid. On the other hand, I am rather a

fatalist. If any man is likely to come my way whom I should care to

marry, he is just as likely to find me here as though I tramped the

thoroughfares of the world, searching for him. At last!" she went on,

in a changed tone, as she poured out his coffee. "I do hope you will

find it good. The cigarettes are at your elbow. This is quite one of

the moments of life, isn't it?"

He agreed with her emphatically.

"A counsel of perfection," he murmured, as he sniffed the delicate

Turkish tobacco. "Tell me some more about yourself?"

She shook her head.

"I am much too selfish a person," she declared, "and nothing that I do

or say or am amounts to very much. I want you to let me a little way

into your life. Talk either about your soldiering or your politics.

You have been a Cabinet Minister and you will be again. Tell me what it

feels like to be one of the world's governors?"

"Let us finish talking about you first," he begged. "You spoke quite

frankly of a husband. Tell me, have you made up your mind what manner

of man he must be?"

"Not in the least. I am content to leave that entirely to fate."

"Bucolic? Intellectual? An artist? A man of affairs?"

She made a little grimace.

"How can I tell? I cannot conceive caring for an ordinary person, but

then every woman feels like that. And, you see, if I did care, he

wouldn't be ordinary--to me. And so far as I am concerned," she

insisted, with a shade of restlessness in her manner, "that finishes the

subject. You must please devote yourself to telling me at least some

of the things I want to know. What is the use of having one of the

world's successful men tête-a-tête, a prisoner to my hospitality, unless

I can make him gratify my curiosity?"

The thought created by her words burned through his mind like a flash of

destroying lightning.

"One of the world's successful men," he repeated. "Is that how I seem

to you?"

"And to the world," she asserted.

He shook his head sadly.

"I have worked very hard," he said. "I have been very ambitious. A few

of my ambitions have been gratified, but the glory of them has passed

with attainment. Now I enter upon the last lap and I possess none of

the things I started out in life to achieve."

"But how absurd!" she exclaimed. "You are one of our great politicians.

You would have to be reckoned with in any regrouping of parties."

"Without even a seat in the House of Commons," he reminded her bitterly.

"And again, how can a man be a great politician when there are no

politics? The confusion amongst the parties has become chaos, and I for

one have not been clear-sighted enough to see my way through."

"Of course, I know vaguely what you mean," she said, "but remember that

I am only a newspaper-educated politician. Can't you be a little more

explicit?"

He lit another cigarette and smoked restlessly for a moment.

"I'll try and explain, if I can," he went on. "To be a successful

politician, from the standard which you or I would aim at, a man needs

not only political insight, but he needs to be able to adopt his views

to the practical programme of one of the existing parties, or else to be

strong enough to form a party of his own. That is where I have come to

the cul-de-sac in my career. It was my ambition to guide the working

classes of the country into their rightful place in our social scheme,

but I have also always been an intensely keen Imperialist, and therefore

at daggers drawn with many of the so-called Labour leaders. The

consequence has been that for ten years I have been hanging on to the

thin edge of nothing, a member of the Coalition Government, a member by

sufferance of a hotchpotch party which was created by the combination of

the Radicals and the Unionists with the sole idea of seeing the country

through its great crisis. All legislation, in the wider sense of the

term, had to be shelved while the country was in danger and while it was

recovering itself. That time I spent striving to educate the people I

wanted to represent, striving to make them see reason, to combat the two

elements in their outlook which have been their eternal drawback, the

elements of blatant selfishness and greedy ignorance. Well, I failed.

That is all there is about it--I failed. No party claims me. I haven't

even a seat in the House of Commons. I am nearly fifty years old and I

am tired."

"Nearly fifty years old!" she repeated. "But what is that? You

have--health, you are strong and well, there is nothing a younger man

can do that you cannot. Why do you worry about your age?"

"Perhaps," he admitted, with a faint smile, and an innate compulsion to

tell her of the thought which had lurked behind, "because you are so

marvelously young."

"Absurd!" she scoffed. "I am twenty-nine years old--practically thirty.

That is to say, with the usual twenty years' allowance, you and I are of

the same age."

He looked across at her, across the lace-draped table with its bowls of

fruit, its richly-cut decanter of wine, its low bowl of roses, its haze

of cigarette smoke. She was leaning back in her chair, her head resting

upon the fingers of one hand. Her face seemed alive with so many

emotions. She was so anxious to console, so interested in her

companion, herself, and the moment. He felt something unexpected and

irresistible.

"I would to God I could look at it like that!" he exclaimed suddenly.

The words had left his lips before he was conscious that the thought

which had lain at the back of them had found expression in his tone and

glance. Just at first they produced no other effect in her save that

evidenced by the gently upraised eyebrows, the sweetly tolerant smile.

And then a sudden cloud, scarcely of discomfiture, certainly not of

displeasure, more of unrest, swept across her face. Her eyes no longer

met his so clearly and frankly. There was a little mist there and a

silence. She was looking away through the windows to the dim, pearly

line of blue, the actual horizon of things present. Her pulses were

scarcely steady. She was possessed to a full extent of the her

qualities of courage, physical and spiritual, yet at that moment she

felt a wave of curious fear, the fear of the idealist that she may not

be true to herself.

The moment passed and she looked at him with a smile. An innate gift of

concealment, the heritage of her sex, came to her rescue, but she felt,

somehow or other, as though she had passed through one of the crises of

her life--that she could never be quite the same again. She had ceased

for those few seconds to be natural.

"What does that wish mean?" she asked. "Do you mean that you would like

to agree with me, or would you like to be twenty-nine?"

He too turned his back upon that little pool of emotion, did his best to

be natural and easy, to shut out the memory of that flaming moment.

"At twenty-nine," he told her, "I was First Secretary at St.

Petersburg. I am afraid that I was rather a dull dog, too. All Russia,

even then, was seething, and I was trying to understand. I never did.

No one ever understood Russia. The explanation of all that has happened

there is simply the eternal duplication of history--a huge class of

people, physically omnipotent, conscious of wrongs, unintelligent, and

led by false prophets. All revolutions are the same. The purging is

too severe, so the good remains undone."

There followed a silence, purposeful on her port, scarcely realised by

him. She sought for means of escape, to bring their conversation down

to the level where alone safety lay. She moved her chair a little

farther back into the scented chamber, as though she found the sunlight

too dazzling.

"You are like so many of the men who work for us," she said. "You are

just a little tired, aren't you? You come down here to rest, and I dig

up all the old problems and ask you to vex yourself with them. We must

talk about slighter things. You are going to shoot here this

season--perhaps hunt, later on?"

"I do not think so," he answered. "I have forgotten what sports mean.

I may take a gun out sometimes. There is a little shooting that goes

with the Manor, but very few birds, I believe. The last ten years seem

to have driven all those things out of one's mind."

"Don't you think that you are inclined to take life a little too

earnestly?" she asked. "One should have amusements."

"I may feel the necessity," he replied, "but it is not easy to take up

one's earlier pleasures at my time of life."

"Don't think me inquisitive," she went on, "but, as I told you, I have

looked you up in one of those wonderful books which tell us everything

about everybody. You were a Double Blue at Oxford."

"Racquets and cricket," he assented. "Neither of them much use to me

now."

"Racquets would help you with lawn tennis," she said, "but beyond that I

find that not a dozen years ago you were a scratch golfer, and you

certainly won the amateur championship of Italy."

"It is eleven years since I touched a club," he told her.

"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she declared. "Games are

part of an Englishman's life, and when he neglects them altogether there

is something wrong. I shall insist upon your taking up lawn tennis

again. I have two beautiful courts there, and very seldom any one to

play with who has the least idea of the game."

His eyes rested for a moment upon the smoothly shaven lawns.

"So you think that regeneration may come to me through lawn tennis?" he

murmured.

"And why not? You are taking yourself far too seriously, you know. How

do you expect regeneration to come?"

"Shall I tell you what it is I lack?" he answered suddenly. "Incentive.

I think my will has suddenly grown flabby, the ego in me unresponsive.

You know the moods in which one asks oneself whether it is worth while,

whether anything is worth while. Well, I am there at the crossroads. I

think I feel more inclined to look for a seat than to go on."

"The strongest of us need to rest sometimes," she agreed quietly.

He relapsed into a silence so apparently deliberate that she accepted it

as a respite for herself also. From the greater seclusion of her

shadowy seat, she found herself presently able to watch him

unnoticed,--the brooding melancholy of his face, the nervous,

unsatisfied mouth, the discontent of his sombre brows. Then, even as

she watched, the change in his expression startled her. His eyes were

fixed upon the narrow ribbon of road which twisted around the other side

of the house and led over the bleaker moors, seawards. The look puzzled

her, gave her an uncomfortable feeling. Its note of appreciation seemed

to her inexplicable. With a quaint, electrical sympathy, he caught the

unspoken question in her eyes and translated it.

"You are beginning to doubt me," he said. "You are wondering if the

shadow I carry with me is not something more than the mere depression of

a man who has failed."

"You have not failed," she declared, "and I never doubt you, but there

was something in your face just then which was strange, something alien

to our talk. It was as though you saw something ominous in the

distance."

"It is true," he admitted. "In the distance I can see the car I ordered

to come and fetch me. There is a passenger--a man in the tonneau. I am

wondering who he is."

"Some one to whom your man has given a lift, perhaps," she suggested.

He shook his head.

"I have another feeling--perhaps I should say an apprehension. It is

some one who brings news."

"Political or--domestic?"

"Neither," he answered. "I thought that Fate had dealt me out most of

her evil tricks when I came down here, a political outcast. She had

another one up her sleeve, however. Do you read your morning papers?"

"Every day," she confessed. "Is it a weakness?"

"Not at all."

"You read of the disappearance of the Honourable Anthony Palliser?"

"Of course," she answered. "Besides, you told me about it, did you

not, yesterday afternoon? I know one of his sisters quite well, and I

was looking forward to seeing something of him down here."

"I was obliged to dismiss him at a moment's notice," Tallente went on.

"He betrayed his trust and he has disappeared. That very imposing

police inspector who broke up our tête-a-tête yesterday afternoon and I

fear shortened your visit came on his account. He was the spokesman for

a superior authority in London. They have come to the conclusion that I

could, if I chose, throw some light upon his disappearance."

"And could you?"

He rose to his feet.

"You are the one person in the world," he said, "to whom I could tell

nothing but the truth. I could."

They both heard the sound of footsteps in the hall. Lady Jane,

disturbed by the ominous note in Tallente's voice, rose also to her

feet, glancing from him towards the door, filled with some vague,

inexplicable apprehension. Tallente showed no fear, but it was plain

that he had nerved himself to face evil things. There was something

almost ludicrous in this denouement to a situation which to both had

seemed filled with almost dramatic possibilities. The door was opened

by Parkins, the stout, discreet man servant, ushering in the unkempt,

ill-tailored, ungainly figure of James Miller.

"This gentleman," Parkins announced, "wishes to see Mr. Tallente on

urgent business."

CHAPTER VIII

The newcomer had distinctly the best of the situation. Tallente, who

had expected a very different visitor, was for the moment bereft of

words. Lady Jane, who, among her minor faults, was inclined to be a

supercilious person, with too great a regard for externals, gazed upon

this strange figure which had found its way into her sanctum with an

astonishment which kept her also silent.

"Sorry to intrude," Mr. Miller began, with an affability which he meant

to be reassuring. "Mr. Tallente, will you introduce me to the lady?"

Tallente acquiesced unwillingly.

"Lady Jane," he said, "this is Mr. James Miller--Lady Jane Partington."

Mr. Miller was impressed, held out his hand and withdrew it.

"I must apologize for this intrusion, Lady Jane, and to you, Tallente,

of course. Mr. Tallente is naturally surprised to see me. He and I

are political opponents," he confided, turning to Jane.

Her surprise increased, if possible.

"Are you Mr. Miller, the Democrat M.P.?" she asked,--"the Mr. Miller

who was making those speeches at Hellesfield last week?"

"At your ladyship's service," he replied, with a low bow. "I am afraid

if you are a friend of Mr. Tallente's you must look upon me as a very

disagreeable person."

"If the newspapers are to be believed, your strategies up at Hellesfield

scarcely give one an exalted idea of your tactics," she replied coldly.

"They all seem to agree that Mr. Tallente was cheated out of his seat."

The intruder smiled tolerantly. He glanced around the room as though

expecting to be asked to seat himself. No invitation of the sort,

however, was accorded him. "All's fair in love and politics, Lady

Jane," he declared. "We Democrats have our programme, and our motto is

that those who are not with us are against us. Mr. Tallente here knew

pretty well what he was up against."

"On the contrary," Tallente interrupted, "one never knows what one is up

against when you are in the opposite camp, Miller. Would you mind

explaining why you have sought me out in this singular fashion?"

"Certainly," was the gracious reply. "You have a very distinguished

visitor over at the Manor, waiting there to see you. I came over with

him and found your car on the point of starting. I took the liberty of

hunting you up so that there should be no delay in your return."

"And who may this distinguished visitor he?" Tallente enquired, with

unconscious sarcasm. "Stephen Dartrey," Miller answered. "He and Miss

Miall and I are staying not far from you."

"Stephen Dartrey?" Lady Jane murmured. "Dartrey?" Tallente echoed. "Do

you mean to say that he is over at the Manor now?"

"Waiting to see you," Miller announced, and for a moment there was a

little gleam of displeasure in his eyes. Lady Jane sighed. "Now, if

only you'd brought him over with you, Mr. Miller," she said, a shade

more amiably, "you would have given me real pleasure. There is no man

whom I am more anxious to meet." Miller smiled tolerantly. "Dartrey is

a very difficult person," he declared. "Although he is the leader of

our party, and before very long will be the leader of the whole Labour

Party, although he could be Prime Minister to-morrow if he cared about

it; he is one of the most retiring men whom I ever knew. At the present

moment I believe that he would have preferred to have remained living

his hermit's life, a writer and a dilettante, if circumstances had not

dragged him into politics. He lives in the simplest way and hates all

society save the company of a few old cronies."

"What does Dartrey want with me?" Tallente interrupted, a little

brusquely. "It is no part of my mission to explain," Miller replied.

"I undertook to come here and beg you to return at once." Tallente

turned to Lady Jane. "You will forgive me?" he begged. "In any case, I

must have been going in a few minutes."

"I should forgive you even if you went without saying good-by," she

replied, "and I can assure you that I shall envy you. I do not want to

turn your head," she went on pleasantly, as she walked by his side

towards the door and across the hall, rather ignoring Miller, who

followed behind, "but for the last two or three years the only political

figures who have interested me at all have been Dartrey and

yourself--you as the man of action, and Dartrey as the most wonderful

exponent of the real, higher Socialism. I had a shelf made for his

three books alone. They hang in my bedroom and I look upon them as my

textbooks."

"I must tell Dartrey this," Miller remarked from behind. "I am sure

he'll be flattered."

"What can he want with you?" Lady Jane asked, dropping her voice a

little.

"I can't tell," Tallente confessed. "His visit puzzles me. He is the

hermit of politics. He seldom makes advances and has few friends. He

is, I believe, a man with the highest sense of honour. Perhaps he has

come to explain to me why they threw me out at Hellesfield."

"In any case," she said, as they stood for a moment on the step, "I feel

that something exciting is going to happen."

Miller, carrying his tweed cap in his hand, insisted upon a farewell.

"Sorry to have taken your guest away, Lady Jane," he said. "It's an

important occasion, however. Would you like me to bring Dartrey over,

if we are out this way before we go back?"

She shook her head.

"No, I don't think so," she answered quietly. "I might have an illusion

dispelled. Thank you very much, all the same."

Mr. Miller stepped into the car, a little discomfited. Tallente

lingered on the step.

"You will let me know?" she begged.

"I will," he promised. "It is probably just a visit of courtesy.

Dartrey must feel that he has something to explain about Hellesfield."

There was a moment's curious lingering. Each seemed to seek in vain for

a last word. They parted with a silent handshake. Tallente looked

around at the corner of the avenue. She was still standing there,

gazing after the car, slim, cool and stately. Miller waved his cap and

she disappeared.

The car sped over the moorland. Miller, with his cap tucked into his

pocket, leaned forward, taking deep gulps of the wonderful air.

"Marvellous!" he exclaimed. "Tallente, you ought to live for ever in

such a spot!"

"What does Dartrey want to see me about?" his companion asked, a little

abruptly.

Miller coughed, leaned back in his place and became impressive.

"Tallente," he said, "I don't know exactly what Dartrey is going to say

to you. I only know this, that it is very possible he may make you, on

behalf of all of us--the Democratic Party, that is to say--an offer

which you will do well to consider seriously."

"To join your ranks, I suppose?"

"I must not betray a confidence," Miller continued cautiously. "At the

same time, you know our power, you have insight enough to guess at our

destiny. It is an absolute certainty that Dartrey, if he chooses, may

be the next Prime Minister. You might have been in Horlock's Cabinet

but for an accident. It may be that you are destined to be in

Dartrey's."

Tallente found his thoughts playing strange pranks with him. No man

appreciated the greatness of Dartrey more than he. No man, perhaps, had

a more profound conviction as to the truth and future of the principles

of which he had become the spokesman. He realised the irresistible

power of the new democracy. He was perfectly well aware that it was

within Dartrey's power to rule the country whenever he chose. Yet there

seemed something shadowy about these things, something unpleasantly real

and repulsive in the familiarity of his companion, in the thought of

association with him, He battled with the idea, treated it as a

prejudice, analysed it. From head to foot the man wore the wrong

clothes in the wrong manner,--boots of a vivid shade of brown, thick

socks without garters, an obviously ready-made suit of grey flannel, a

hopeless tie, an unimaginable collar. Even his ready flow of speech

suggested the gifts of the tubthumpers his indomitable persistence, a

lack of sensibility. He knew his facts, knew all the stock arguments,

was brimful of statistics, was argumentative, convincing, in his way

sincere. Tallente acknowledged all these things and yet found himself

wondering, with a grim sense of irony, how he could call a man "Comrade"

with such finger nails!

"It's given you something to think about, eh?" Miller remarked affably.

Tallente came to himself with a little start.

"I'm afraid my mind was wandering," he confessed.

His companion smiled knowingly. He was conscious of Tallente's

aloofness, but determined to break through it if he could. After all,

this caste feeling was absurd. He was, in his way, a well-known man, a

Member of Parliament, a future Cabinet Minister. He was the equal of

anybody.

"Don't wonder at it! Pleasant neighbours hereabouts, eh?"

Tallente affected to misunderstand. He glanced around at the few

farmhouses dotted in sheltered places amongst the hills.

"There are very few of them," he answered. "That makes this place all

the more enjoyable for any one who comes for a real rest."

Miller felt that he was suffering defeat. He opened his lips and closed

them again. The jocular reference to Lady Jane remained unspoken.

There was something in the calm aloofness of the man by his side which

intimidated even while it annoyed him. Soon they commenced the drop

from the moorland to where, far away below, the Manor with its lawn and

gardens and outbuildings seemed like a child's pleasure palace. Miller

leaned forward and pointed downwards.

"There's Dartrey sitting on the terrace," he pointed out. "Dartrey and

Nora Miall. You've heard of her, I expect?"

"I know her by repute, of course," Tallente admitted. "She is a very

brilliant young woman. It will give me great pleasure to meet her."

CHAPTER IX

Tallente took tea that afternoon with his three guests upon the terrace.

Before them towered the wood-embosomed cliffs, with here and there great

red gashes of scarred sandstone. Beyond lay the sloping meadow, with

its clumps of bracken and grey stone walls, and in the background a more

rugged line of rocky cliffs. The sea in the bay flashed and glittered

in the long rays of the afternoon sunshine. The scene was

extraordinarily peaceful. Stephen Dartrey for the first few minutes

certainly justified his reputation for taciturnity. He leaned back in a

long wicker chair, his head resting upon his hand, his thoughtful eyes

fixed upon vacancy. No man in those days could have resembled less a

popular leader of the people. In appearance he was a typical

aristocrat, and his expression, notwithstanding his fine forehead and

thoughtful eyes, was marked with a certain simplicity which in his

younger days had lured many an inexperienced debater on to ridicule and

extinction. In an intensely curious age, Dartrey was still a man over

whose personality controversy raged fiercely. He was a poet, a dreamer,

a writer of elegant prose, an orator, an artist. And behind all these

things there was a flame in the man, a perfect passion for justice, for

seeing people in their right places, which had led him from the more

flowery ways into the world of politics. His enemies called him a

dilettante and a poseur. His friends were led into rhapsodies through

sheer affection. His supporters hailed him as the one man of genius who

held out the scales of justice before the world.

"Of course," Nora Miall observed, looking up at her host pleasantly, "I

can see what is going to happen. Mr. Dartrey came out here to talk to

you upon most important matters. This place, the beauty of it all, is

acting upon him like a soporific. If we don't shake him up presently,

he will go away with wonderful mind pictures of your cliffs and sea, and

his whole mission unfulfilled."

"Libellous as usual, Nora," Dartrey murmured, without turning his head.

"Mr. Tallente is providing me with a few minutes of intense enjoyment.

He has assured me that his time is ours. Soon I shall finish my tea,

light a cigarette and talk. Just now you may exercise the privilege of

your sex unhindered and better your own acquaintance with our host."

The girl laughed up into Tallente's face.

"Very likely Mr. Tallente doesn't wish to improve his acquaintance with

me," she said.

Tallente hastened to reassure her. Somehow, the presence of these two

did much to soothe the mental irritation which Miller had set up in him.

They at least were of the world of understandable things. Miller,

slouching in his chair, with a cheap tie-clip showing underneath his

waistcoat, a bulging mass of sock descending over the top of his boot,

rolling a cigarette with yellow-stained, objectionable fingers, still

involved him in introspective speculation as to real values in life.

"I have often felt myself unfortunate in not having met you before, Miss

Miall," he said. "Some of your writings have interested me immensely."

"Some of them?" she queried, with a smile.

"Absolute agreement would deny us even the stimulus of an argument," he

observed. "Besides, after all, men find it more difficult to get rid of

prejudices than women."

She leaned forward to help herself to a cigarette and he studied her for

a moment. She was a little under medium height, trimly yet almost

squarely built. Her mouth was delightful, humourous and attractive, and

her eyes were of the deepest shade of violet, with black, silken

eyelashes. Her voice was the voice of a cultivated woman, and Tallente,

as he mostly listened to her light ripple of conversation, realised that

the charm which was hers by reputation was by no means undeserved. In

many ways she astonished him. The stories which had been told of her,

even written, were incredible, yet her manners were entirely the manners

of one of his own world. The trio--Dartrey, with his silence and

occasional monosyllabic remarks--seemed to draw closer together at every

moment until Miller, obviously chafing at his isolation, thrust himself

into the conversation.

"Mr. Tallente," he said, taking advantage of a moment's pause to direct

the conversation into a different channel, "we kept our word at

Hellesfield."

"You did," his host acknowledged drily. "You succeeded in cheating me

out of the seat. I still don't know why."

He turned as though appealing to Dartrey, and Dartrey accepted the

challenge, swinging a little around in his chair and tapping his

cigarette against the table, preparatory to lighting it.

"You lost Hellesfield, Mr. Tallente, as you would have lost any seat

north of Bedford," he declared.

"Owing to the influence of the Democrats?"

"Certainly."

"But why is that influence exercised against me?" Tallente demanded. "I

am thankful to have an opportunity of asking you that question, Dartrey.

Surely you would reckon me more of a people's man than these Whigs and

Coalitionists?"

"Very much more," Dartrey agreed. "So much more, Mr. Tallente, that we

don't wish to see you dancing any longer between two stools. We want

you in our camp. You are the first man, Tallente, whom we have sought

out in this way. We have come at a busy time, under pretext of a

holiday, some two hundred miles from London to suggest to you,

temporarily deprived of political standing, that you join us."

"That temporary deprivation," Tallente murmured, "being due to your

efforts."

"Precisely!"

"And the alternative?"

"Those who are not with us are against us," Dartrey declared. "If you

persist in remaining the doubtful factor in politics, it is our business

to see that you have no definite status there."

Tallente laughed a little cynically.

"Your methods are at least modern," he observed. "You invite a man to

join your party, and if he refuses you threaten him with political

extinction."

"Why not?" Dartrey asked wonderingly. "You do not pause to consider the

matter. Government is meant for the million. Where the individual

might impede good government, common sense calls for his ostracism. No

nation has been more slow to realise this than England. A code of order

and morals established two thousand years ago has been accepted by them

as incapable of modification or improvement. To take a single instance.

Supposing De Valera had been shot the first day he talked treason

against the Empire, your troubles with Ireland would have been immensely

minimised. And mark this, for it is the crux of the whole matter, the

people of Ireland would have attained what they wanted much sooner. You

are not one of those, Andrew Tallente, who refuse to see the writing on

the wall. You know that in one form or another in this country the

democracy must rule. They felt the flame of inspiration when war came

and they helped to win the war. What was their reward? The opulent

portion of them were saddled with an enormous income tax and high prices

of living through bad legislation, which made life a burden. The more

poverty-stricken suffered sympathetically in exactly the same way. We

won the war and we lost the peace. We fastened upon the shoulders of

the deserving, the wage-earning portion of the community, a burden

which their shoulders could never carry a burden which, had we lost the

war instead of winning it, would have led promptly to a revolution and a

measure at least of freedom."

"There is so much of truth in what you say," Tallente declared, "that I

am going to speak to you frankly, even though my frankness seems brutal.

I am going to speak about your friend Miller here. Throughout the war,

Miller was a pacifist. He was dead against killing Germans. He was all

for a peace at any price."

"Steady on," Miller interrupted, suddenly sitting up in his chair.

"Look here, Tallente--"

"Be quiet until I have finished," Tallente went on. "He was concerned

in no end of intrigue with Austrian and German Socialists for

embarrassing the Government and bringing the war to an end. I should

say that but for the fact that our Government at the time was wholly one

of compromise, and was leaning largely upon the Labour vote, he would

have been impeached for high treason."

Miller, who had been busy rolling a cigarette, lit it with ostentatious

carelessness.

"And what of all this?" he demanded.

"Nothing," Tallente replied, "except that it seems a strange thing to

find you now associated with a party who threaten me openly with

political extinction unless I choose to join them. I call this

junkerdom, not socialism."

"No man's principles can remain stable in an unstable world," Miller

pronounced. "I still detest force and compulsion of every sort, but I

recognise its necessity in our present civil life far more than I did in

a war which was, after all, a war of politicians."

Nora Miall leaned over from her chair and laid her hand on Tallente's

arm. After Miller's raucous tones, her voice sounded almost like music.

"Mr. Tallente," she said, "I can understand your feeling aggrieved.

You are not a man whom it is easy to threaten, but remember that after

all we must go on our fixed way towards the appointed goal.

And--consider--isn't the upraised rod for your good? Your place is with

us--indeed it is. I fancy that Stephen here forgets that you are not

yet fully acquainted with our real principles and aims. A political

party cannot be judged from the platform. The views expressed there

have to be largely governed by the character of the audience. It is to

the textbooks of our creed, Dartrey's textbooks, that you should turn."

"I have read your views on certain social matters, Miss Miall," Tallente

observed, turning towards her.

She laughed understandingly. Her eyes twinkled as she looked at him.

"And thoroughly disapproved them, of course! But you know, Mr.

Tallente, we are out not to reconstruct Society but to lay the stepping

stones for a reconstruction. That is all, I suppose, that any single

generation could accomplish. The views which I have advocated in the

_Universal Review_ are the views which will be accepted as a matter of

course in fifty years' time. To-day they seem crude and unmoral,

chiefly because the casual reader, especially the British reader, dwells

so much upon external effects and thinks so little of the soul that lies

below. Even you, Mr. Tallente, with your passion for order and your

distrust of all change in established things, can scarcely consider our

marriage laws an entire success?"

Tallente winced a little and Dartrey hastily intervened.

"We want you to remember this," he said. "The principles which we

advocate are condemned before they are considered by men of inherited

principles and academic education such as yourself, because you have

associated them always with the disciples of anarchy, bolshevism, and

other diseased rituals. You have never stooped to separate the good

from the bad. The person who dares to tamper with the laws of King

Alfred stands before you prejudged. Granted that our doctrines are

extreme, are we--let me be personal and say am I--the class of man whom

you have associated with these doctrines? We Democrats have gained

great power during the last ten years. We have thrust our influence

deep into the hearts of those great, sinister bodies, the trades unions.

There is no one except ourselves who realises our numerical and

potential strength. We could have created a revolution in this country

at any time since the Premier's first gloomy speech in the House of

Commons after the signing of peace, had we chosen. I can assure you

that we haven't the least fancy for marching through the streets with

red flags and letting loose the diseased end of our community upon the

palaces and public buildings of London. We are Democrats or

Republicans, whichever you choose to call us, who desire to conquer with

the brain, as we shall conquer, and where we recognise a man of genius

like yourself, who must be for us or against us, if we cannot convert

him then we must see that politically he ceases to count."

Robert came out and whispered in his master's ear. Tallente turned to

his guests.

"I cannot offer you dinner," he said, "but my servant assures me that he

can provide a cold supper. Will you stay? I think that you, Dartrey,

would enjoy the view from some of my lookouts."

"I accept your invitation," Dartrey replied eagerly. "I have been

sitting here, longing for the chance to watch the sunset from behind

your wood."

"It will be delightful," Nora murmured. "I want to go down to the grass

pier."

Miller too accepted, a little ungraciously. The little party wandered

off down the path which led to the seashore. Miller detained his host

for a moment at one of the corners.

"By the by, Tallente," he asked, "what about the disappearance of

Palliser?"

"He has disappeared," Tallente answered calmly. "That is all I know

about it."

Miller stood with his hands in his pockets, gnawing the end of his

moustache, gazing covertly at the man who stood waiting for him to pass

on. Tallente's face was immovable.

"Disappeared? Do you mean to say that you don't know where he is?"

"I have no idea."

Again there was a moment's silence. Then Miller leaned a little

forward. "Look here, Tallente," he began--Nora turned round and

suddenly beckoned her host to her.

"Come quickly," she begged. "I can do nothing with Mr. Dartrey. He

has just decided that our whole scheme of life is absurd, that politics

and power are shadows, and that work for others is lunacy. All that he

wants is your cottage, a fishing rod and a few books."

"Nothing else?" Tallente asked, smiling.

There was a momentary cloud upon her face.

"Nothing else in the world," she answered, her eyes fixed upon the

figure of the man who was leaning now over the grey stone wall, gazing

seaward.

During the service of the meal, on the terrace afterwards, and even when

they strolled down to the edge of the cliff to see the great yellow moon

come up from behind the hills, scarcely a word was spoken on political

subjects. Dartrey was an Oxford man of Tallente's own college, and,

although several years his senior, they discovered many mutual

acquaintances and indulged in reminiscences which seemed to afford

pleasure to both. Then they drifted into literature, and Tallente found

himself amazed at the knowledge of the man whose whole life was supposed

to have been given to his labours for the people. Dartrey explained his

intimate acquaintance with certain modern writings and his marvellous

familiarity with many of the classics, as he and his host walked down

together along one of the narrow paths. "You see, Tallente," he said,

"I have never been a practical politician. I dare say that accounts for

my rather peculiar position to-day. I have evolved a whole series of

social laws by which I maintain that the people should be governed, and

those laws have been accepted wherever socialism flourishes. They took

me some years of my earlier life to elaborate, some years of study

before I set pen to paper, some years of my later life to place before

the world, and there my task practically ended. There is nothing fresh

to say about these great human problems. They are there for any man to

whom daylight comes, to see. They are all inevitably bound up with the

future of our race, but there is no need to dig further. My work is

done."

"How can you say that," Tallente argued, "when day by day your power in

the country grows, when everything points to you as the next Premier?"

"Precisely," Dartrey replied quietly. "That is why I am here. The head

of the Democratic Party has a right to the government of this country,

but you know, at this point I have a very sad confession to make. I am

the worst politician who ever sat in the House. I am a poor debater, a

worse strategist. Again, Tallente, that is why you and I at this moment

walk together through your beautiful grounds and watch the rim of that

yellow moon. It is yourself we want."

Tallente felt the thrill of the moment, felt the sincerity of the man

whose hand pressed gently upon his arm.

"If you are our man, Tallente," his visitor continued, "if you see eye

to eye with us as to the great Things, if you can cast away what remains

to you of class and hereditary prejudice and throw in your lot with

ours, there is no office of the State which you may not hope to occupy.

I had not meant to appeal to your ambitions. I do so now only

generally. As a rule, every man connected with a revolution thinks

himself able to govern the State. That is not so with us. A man may

have the genius for seeing the truth, the genius even for engraving the

laws which should govern the world upon tablets of stone, without having

the capacity for government."

"But do you mean to say," Tallente asked, "that when Horlock goes down,

as go down he must within the next few months, you are not prepared to

take his place?"

"I should never accept the task of forming a government," Dartrey said

quietly, "unless I am absolutely driven to do so. I have shown the

truth to the world. I have shown to the people whom I love their

destiny, but I have not the gifts to lead them. I am asking you,

Tallente, to join us, to enter Parliament as one of our party and to

lead for us in the House of Commons."

"Yours is the offer of a prince," Tallente replied, after a brief,

nervous pause. "If I hesitate, you must remember all that it means for

me."

Dartrey smiled.

"Now, my friend," he said, "look me in the face and answer me this

question. You know little of us Democrats as a party. You see nothing

but a hotchpotch of strange people, struggling and striving to attain

definite form. Naturally you are full of prejudices. Yet consider your

own political position. I am not here to make capital out of a man's

disappointment in his friends, but has your great patron used you well?

Horlock offers you a grudging and belated place in his Cabinet. What

did he say to you when you came hack from Hellesfield?" Tallente was

silent. There was, in fact, no answer which he could make. "I do not

wish to dwell on that," Dartrey went on. "Ingratitude is the natural

sequence of the distorted political ideals which we are out to destroy.

You should be in the frame of mind, Tallente, to see things clearly.

You must realise the rotten condition of the political party to which

Horlock belongs--the Coalitionists, the Whip, or whatever they like to

call themselves. The government of this country since the war has been

a farce and a mockery. We are dropping behind in the world's race.

Labour fattens with sops, develops a spirit of greed and production

languishes. You know why. Labour would toil for its country, Labour

can feel patriotism with the best, but Labour hates to toil under the

earth, upon the earth, and in the factories of the world for the sake of

the profiteer. This is the national spirit, that jealousy, that

slackness, which the last ten years has developed. There is a new

Little Englander abroad and he speaks with the voice of Labour. It is

our task to find the soul of the people. And I have come to you for

your aid."

Tallente looked for a moment down to the bay and listened to the sound

of the incoming tide breaking upon the rocks. Dimmer now, but even more

majestic in the twilight, the great, immovable cliffs towered up to the

sky. An owl floated up from the grove of trees beneath and with a

strange cry circled round for a moment to drop on to the lawn, a

shapeless, solemn mass of feathers. At the back of the hills a little

rim of gold, no wider than a wedding ring, announced the rising of the

moon. He felt a touch upon his sleeve, a very sweet, persuasive voice

in his ear. Nora had left Miller in the background and was standing by

his side.

"I heard Mr. Dartrey's last words," she said. "Can you refuse such an

appeal in such a spot? You turn away to think, turn to the quietness of

all these dreaming voices. Believe me, if there is a soul beneath them,

it is the same soul which has inspired our creed. You yourself have

come here full of bitterness, Andrew Tallente, because it seemed to you

that there was no place for you amongst the prophets of democracy. It

was you yourself, in a moment of passion, perhaps, who said that

democracy, as typified in existing political parties, was soulless. You

were right. Hasn't Mr. Dartrey just told you so and doesn't that make

our task the clearer? It brings before us those wonderful days written

about in the Old Testament--the people must be led into the light."

Her voice had become almost part of the music of the evening. She was

looking up at him, her beautiful eyes aglow. Dartrey, a yard or two

off, his thoughtful face paler than ever in the faint light, was

listening with joyous approval. In the background, Miller, with his

hands in his pockets, was smoking mechanically the cigarette which he

had just rolled and lit. The thrill of a great moment brought to

Tallente a feeling of almost strange exaltation.

"I am your man, Dartrey," he promised. "I will do what I can."

CHAPTER X

The Right Honourable John Augustus Horlock, Prime Minister of England

through a most amazing fluke, received Tallente, a few days later, with

the air of one desiring to show as much graciousness as possible to a

discomfited follower. He extended two fingers and indicated an

uncomfortable chair.

"Well, well, Tallente," he said, "sorry I wasn't in town when you passed

through from the north. Bad business, that Hellesfield affair."

"It was a very bad business indeed," Tallente agreed, "chiefly because

it shows that our agents there must be utterly incapable."

The Prime Minister coughed.

"You think so, Tallente, eh? Now their point of view is that you let

Miller make all the running, let him make his points and never got an

answer in--never got a grip on the people, eh?"

"That may do for the official explanation," Tallente replied coldly,

"but as a plain statement of facts it is entirely beside the mark. If

you will forgive my saying so, sir, it has been one of your

characteristics in life, born, without doubt," he added, with a little

bow, "of your indomitable courage, to minimise difficulties and dangers

of a certain type. You did not sympathise with me in my defeat at

Hellesfield because you underrated, as you always have underrated, the

vastly growing strength and dangerous popularity of the party into whose

hands the government of this country will shortly pass."

Mr. Horlock frowned portentously. This was not at all the way in which

he should have been addressed by an unsuccessful follower. But

underneath that frown was anxiety.

"You refer to the Democrats?"

"Naturally."

"Do I understand you to attribute your defeat, then, to the tactics of

the Democratic Party?"

"It is no question of supposition," Tallente replied. "It is a

certainty."

"You believe that they have a greater hold upon the country than we

imagine, then?"

"I am sure of it," was the confident answer. "They occupy a position no

other political party has aimed at occupying in the history of this

country. They aid and support themselves by means of direct and logical

propaganda, carried to the very heart and understanding of their

possible supporters. Their methods are absolutely unique and personally

I am convinced that it is their destiny to bring into one composite body

what has been erroneously termed the Labour vote."

Horlock smiled indulgently. He preferred to assume a confidence which

he could not wholly feel.

"I am glad to hear your opinion, Tallente," he said. "I have to

remember, however, that you are still smarting under a defeat inflicted

by these people. What I cannot altogether understand is this: How was

it that you were entirely deprived of their support at Hellesfield. You

yourself are supposed to be practically a Socialist, at any rate from

the point of view of the staider of my party. Yet these fellows down at

Hellesfield preferred to support Bloxham, who twenty years ago would

have been called a Tory."

"I can quite understand your being puzzled at that," Tallente

acknowledged. "I was myself at first. Since then I have received an

explanation."

"Well, well," Mr. Horlock interjected, with a return of his official

genial manner, "we'll let sleeping dogs lie. Have you made any plans,

Tallente?"

"A week ago I thought of going to Samoa," was the grim reply. "You

don't want me, the country didn't seem to want me. I have worked for

other people for thirty years. I rather thought of resting, living the

life of a lotus eater for a time."

"An extremist as ever," the Prime Minister remarked tolerantly. "Even a

politician who has worked as hard as you have can find many pleasurable

paths in life open to him in this country. However, the necessity for

such an extreme course of action on your part is done away with. I am

very pleased to be able to tell you that the affair concerning which I

have been in communication with your secretary for the last two months

has taken an unexpectedly favourable turn."

"What the mischief do you mean?" Tallente enquired, puzzled.

"I mean," Mr. Horlock announced, with a friendly smile, "that sooner

than be deprived of your valuable services, His Majesty has consented

that you should go to the Upper House. You will be offered a peerage

within the next fortnight."

Tallente stared at the speaker as though he had suddenly been bereft of

his senses.

"What on earth are you talking about, sir?" he demanded.

Mr. Horlock somewhat resented his visitor's tone.

"Surely my statement was sufficiently explicit?" he said, a little

stiffly. "The peerage concerning which at first, I admit, I saw

difficulties, is yours. You can, without doubt, be of great service to

us in the Upper House and--"

"But I'd sooner turn shopkeeper!" Tallente interrupted. "If I

understand that it is your intention to offer me a peerage, let us have

no misunderstanding about the matter. It is refused, absolutely and

finally."

The Prime Minister stared at his visitor for a moment in amazement.

Then he unlocked a drawer in his desk, drew out several letters and

threw them over to Tallente.

"And will you tell me what the devil you mean by authorising your

secretary to write these letters?" he demanded.

Tallente picked them up, read them through and gasped.

"Written by Palliser, aren't they?" Mr. Horlock demanded.

"Without a doubt," Tallente acknowledged. "The amazing thing, however,

is that they are entirely unauthorised. The subject has never even been

discussed between Palliser and myself. I am exceedingly sorry, sir," he

went on, "that you should have been misled in this fashion, but I can

only give you my word of honour that these letters are entirely and

absolutely unauthorised."

"God bless my soul!" the Prime Minister exclaimed. "Where is Palliser?

Better telephone."

"Palliser left my service a week or more ago," Tallente replied. "He

left it at a moment's notice, in consequence of a personal disagreement

concerning which I beg that you will ask no questions I can only assure

you that it was not political. Since he left no word has been heard of

him. The papers, even, have been making capital of his disappearance."

"It is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard in my life," Horlock

declared, a little irritably. "Why, I've spent hours of my time trying

to get this matter through."

"Dealing seriously with Palliser, thinking that he represented me in

this matter?"

"Without a doubt."

"Will you lend me the letters?" Tallente asked.

Mr. Horlock threw them across the table.

"Here they are. My secretary wrote twice to Palliser last week and

received no reply. That is why I sent you a telegram."

"I was on my way to see you, anyway," Tallente observed. "I thought

that you were going to offer me a seat."

Mr. Horlock shook his head.

"We simply haven't a safe one," he confided, "and there isn't a soul I

could ask to give up, especially, to speak plainly, for you, Tallente.

They look upon you as dangerous, and although it would have been a nine

days' wonder, most of my people would have been relieved to have heard

of your going to the Upper House."

"I see," Tallente murmured. "In plain words, you've no use for me in

the Cabinet?"

"My dear fellow," the Prime Minister expostulated, "you have no right to

talk like that. I offered you a post of great responsibility and a seat

which we believed to be perfectly safe. You lost the election, bringing

a considerable amount of discredit, if you will forgive my saying so,

upon the Government. What more can I do?"

Tallente was watching the speaker curiously. He had thought over this

interview all the way up on the train, thought it out on very different

lines.

"Nothing, I suppose," he admitted, "yet there's a certain risk about

dropping me, isn't there? You might drive me into the arms of the

enemy."

"What, the old Whig lot? Not a chance! I know you too well for that."

"No, the Democrats."

Horlock moved restlessly in his chair. He was eyeing his visitor

steadfastly.

"What, the people who have just voted solidly against you?"

"Hasn't it occurred to you that that might have been political

strategy?" Tallente suggested. "They might have maneuvered for the very

situation which has arisen--that is, if I am really worth anything to

anybody."

Horlock shook his head.

"Oil and water won't mix, Tallente, and you don't belong to that crowd.

All the same," he confessed, "I shouldn't like you with them. I cannot

believe that such a thing would ever come to pass, but the thought isn't

a pleasant one."

"Now that you have made up your mind that I don't want to go to the

House of Lords and wouldn't under any possible consideration," Tallente

asked, "have you anything else to suggest?"

Mr. Horlock was a little annoyed. He considered that he had shown

remarkable patience with a somewhat troublesome visitor.

"Tallente," he said, "it is of no use your being unreasonable. You had

your chance at Hellesfield and you lost it; your chance in my Cabinet

and lost that too. You know for yourself how many rising politicians I

have to satisfy. You'll be back again with us before long, of course,

but for the present you must be content to take a rest. We can make use

of you on the platform and there are always the reviews."

"I see," Tallente murmured.

"The fact is," his host concluded, as his fingers strayed towards the

dismissal bell, "you made rather a mistake, Tallente, years ago, in

dabbling at all with the Labour Party. At first, I must admit that I

was glad. I felt that you created, as it were, a link between my

Government and a very troublesome Opposition. To-day things have

altered. Labour has shown its hand and it demands what no sane man

could give. We've finished with compromise. We have to fight Socialism

or go under."

Tallente nodded.

"One moment," he begged, as the Prime Minister's forefinger rested upon

the button of the bell. "Now may I tell you just why I came to pay you

this visit?"

"If there is anything more left to be said," Mr. Horlock conceded, with

an air of exaggerated patience.

"There is just this," Tallente declared. "If you had had a seat to

offer me or a post in your Cabinet, I should have been compelled to

decline it, just as I have declined that ridiculous offer of a peerage.

I have consented to lead the Democratic Party in the House of Commons."

The Prime Minister's fingers slipped slowly from the knob of the bell.

He was a person of studied deportment. A journalist who had once

written of his courtly manners had found himself before long the

sub-editor of a Government journal. At that moment he was possessed of

neither manners nor presence. He sat gazing at Tallente with his mouth

open. The latter rose to his feet.

"I ask you to believe, sir," he said, "that the step which I am taking

is in no way due to my feeling of pique or dissatisfaction with your

treatment. I go where I think I can do the best work for my country and

employ such gifts as I have to their best advantage."

"But you are out to ruin the country!" Horlock faltered. "The Democrats

are Socialists."

"From one point of view," Tallente rejoined, "every Christian is a

Socialist. The term means nothing. The programme of my new party aims

at the destruction of all artificial barriers which make prosperity easy

to one and difficult to another. It aims not only at the abolition of

great fortunes and trusts, but at the abolition of the conditions which

make them possible. It embraces a scheme for national service and a

reasonable imperialism. It has a sane programme, and that is more than

any Government which has been in office since the war has had."

Mr. Horlock rose to his feet.

"Tallente," he pronounced, "you are a traitor to your class and to your

country."

He struck the bell viciously. His visitor turned away with a faint

smile.

"Don't annoy me," he begged, "or I may some day have to send you to the

House of Lords!"

CHAPTER XI

Tallente, obeying an urgent telephone message, made his way to

Claridge's and sent his card up to his wife. Her maid came down and

invited him to her suite, an invitation which he promptly declined. In

about a quarter of an hour she descended to the lounge, dressed for the

street. She showed no signs of confusion or nervousness at his visit.

She was hard and cold and fair, with a fraudulent smile upon her lips,

dressed to perfection, her maid hovering in the background with a

Pekinese under one arm and a jewel case in her other hand.

"Thank goodness," she said, as she fluttered into a chair by his side,

"that you hate scenes even more than I do! You have the air of a man

who has found out no end of disagreeable things!"

"You are observant," he answered drily. "I have just come from the

Prime Minister."

"Well?"

"I find that Palliser has been conducting a regular conspiracy behind my

back, with reference to this wretched peerage. He has practically

forged my name and has placed me in a most humiliating position. You, I

suppose, were his instigator in this matter?"

"I suppose I was," she admitted.

"What was to be his reward--his ulterior reward, I mean?"

"I promised him twenty thousand pounds," she answered, with cold fury.

"It appears that I overvalued your importance to your party. Tony

apparently did the same. He thought that you had only to intimate your

readiness to accept a peerage and the thing would be arranged. It seems

that we were wrong."

"You were doubly wrong," he replied. "In the first place, there were

difficulties, and in the second, nothing would have induced me to accept

such a humiliating offer."

"How did you find this out?" she enquired.

"The Prime Minister offered me the peerage less than an hour ago," he

answered. "I need not say that I unhesitatingly refused it."

Stella ceased buttoning her gloves. There was a cold glitter in her

eyes.

"You refused it?"

"Of course!"

She was silent for a moment.

"Andrew," she said, "you have scarcely kept your bargain with me."

"I am not prepared to admit that," he replied. "You had a very

considerable social position at the time when I was in office. It was

up to you to make that good."

"I am tired of political society," she answered. "It isn't the real

thing. Now you are out of Parliament, though, even that has vanished.

Andrew!"

"Well?"

She leaned a little towards him. She began to regret that he had not

accepted her invitation to visit her in her suite. Years ago she had

been able to bend him sometimes to her will. Why should she take it for

granted that she had lost her power? Here, however, even persuasions

were difficult. He sat upon a straight, high-backed chair by her side

and his face seemed as though it were carved out of stone.

"You have always declined, Andrew, to make very much use of my money,"

she said. "Could we not make a bargain now? I will give you a hundred

thousand pounds and settle five million dollars on the holder of the

title forever, if you will accept this peerage. I wouldn't mind a

present to the party funds, either, if that helped matters."

Tallente shook his head.

"I am sorry for your disappointment," he said, "but nothing would induce

me to accept a seat in the Upper House. I have other plans."

"They could be changed."

"Impossible!"

"You might be forced to change them."

"By whom?"

The smile maddened her. She had meant to be subtle. She became

flamboyant. She leaned forward in her chair.

"What have you done with Tony Palliser?" she demanded.

Tallente remained absolutely unruffled. He had been expecting something

of this sort. The only wonder was that it had been delayed so long.

"A threat?" he asked pleasantly.

"Call it what you like. Men don't disappear like that. What did you do

with him?"

"What do you think he deserved?"

She bit her lip.

"I think you are the most detestable human being who ever breathed," she

faltered. "Supposing I go to the police?"

"Don't be melodramatic," he begged. "In the first place, what have you

to tell? In the second place, in this country, at any rate, a wife

cannot give evidence against her husband."

"You admit that something has happened?" she asked eagerly.

"I admit nothing," he replied, "except that Anthony Palliser has

disappeared under circumstances which you and I know about, that he has

forged my name and entered into a disgraceful conspiracy with you, and

that he has stolen from my wife a political document of great importance

to me."

"I knew nothing about the political document," she said quickly.

"Possibly not," he agreed. "Still, the fact remains that Tony was a

thoroughly bad lot. I find myself able to regard the possibility of an

accident having happened to him with equanimity. Have you anything

further to say?"

She sat looking down on the floor for several minutes. She had

probably, Tallente decided as he watched her, some way of suffering in

secret, all the more terrible because of its repression. When she

looked up, her face seemed pinched and older. Her voice, however, was

steady.

"Let us have an understanding," she said. "You do not desire my return

to Martinhoe?"

"I do not," he agreed.

"And what about Cheverton House here?"

"I have nothing to do with it," he replied. "You persuaded me to allow

you to take it and I have lived with you there. I never pretended,

however, to be able to contribute to its upkeep. You can live there, if

you choose, or wherever else you please."

"Alone?"

"It would be more reputable."

"You mean that you will not return there?"

"I do mean that."

His cold firmness daunted her. She was, besides, at a disadvantage; she

had no idea how much he knew.

"I can make you come back to me if I choose," she threatened.

"The attempt would cost you a great deal of money," he told her, "and

the result would be the same. Frankly, Stella," he went on, striving to

impart a note of friendliness into his tone, "we made a bad bargain and

it is no use clinging to the impossible. I have tried to keep my end of

it. Technically I have kept it. If I have failed in other ways, I am

very sorry. The whole thing was a mistake. We have been frank about

it more than once, so we may just as well be frank about it now. I

married for money and you for position. I have not found your money any

particular advantage, and I have realised that as a man gets on in life

there are other and more vital things which he misses though making such

a bargain. You are not satisfied with your position, and perhaps you,

too, have something of the same feeling that I have. You are your own

mistress and you are a very rich woman, and in whichever direction you

may decide to seek for a larger measure of content, you will not find

me in the Way."

"I am not sentimental," she said coldly. "I know what I want and I am

not afraid to own it. I want to be a Peeress."

"In that respect I am unable to help you," he replied. "And in case I

have not made myself sufficiently clear upon the subject, let me tell

you that I deeply resent the plot by which you endeavoured to foist such

an indignity upon me."

"This is your last word?" she demanded.

"Absolutely!"

"Then I demand that you set me free."

He was a little staggered.

"How on earth can I do that?"

"You can allow me to divorce you."

"And spoil any chance I might have of reentering political life," he

remarked quietly.

"I have no further interest in your political life," she retorted.

He looked at her steadfastly.

"There is another way," he suggested. "I might divorce you."

Her eyes fell before the steely light in his. She did her best,

however, to keep her voice steady.

"That would not suit me," she admitted. "I could not be received at

Court, and there are other social penalties which I am not inclined to

face. In the case of a disagreement like ours, if the man realises his

duty, it is he who is willing to bear the sacrifice."

"Under some circumstances, yes," he agreed. "In our case, however,

there is a certain consideration upon which I have forborne to touch--"

It was as much her anger as anything else which induced her lack of

self-control. She gave a little cry.

"Andrew, you are detestable!" she exclaimed. "Let us end this

conversation. You have said all that you wish to say?"

"Everything."

"Please go away, then," she begged. "I am expecting visitors. I think

that we understand each other."

He rose to his feet.

"I am sorry for our failure, Stella," he said. "Pray do not hesitate to

write to me at any time if my advice or assistance can be of service."

He passed down the lounge, more crowded now than when he had entered. A

very fashionably dressed young woman, one of a smart tea party, leaned

back in her chair as he passed and held out her hand.

"And how does town seem, Mr. Tallente, after your sylvan solitude?" she

asked.

Tallente for a moment was almost at a loss. Then a glance into her

really very wonderful eyes, and the curve of her lips as she smiled

convinced him of the truth which he had at first discarded.

"Miss Miall!" he exclaimed.

"Please don't look so surprised," she laughed. "I suppose you think I

have no right to be frivolling in these very serious times, but I am

afraid I am rather an offender when the humour takes me. You kept your

word to Mr. Dartrey, I see?"

Tallente nodded.

"I came to town yesterday."

"I must hear all the news, please," she insisted. "Will you come and

see me to-morrow afternoon? I share a flat with another girl in

Westminster--Number 13, Brown Square."

"I shall be delighted," he answered. "I think your hostess wants to

speak to me. She is an old friend of my aunt."

He moved on a few steps and bowed over the thin, over-bejewelled fingers

of the Countess of Clanarton, an old lady whose vogue still remained

unchallenged, although the publication of her memoirs had very nearly

sent a highly respected publisher into prison.

"Andrew," she exclaimed, "we are all so distressed about you! How dared

you lose your election! You know my little fire-eating friend, I see.

I keep in with her because when the revolution comes she is going to

save me from the guillotine, aren't you, Nora?"

"My revolution won't have anything to do with guillotines," the girl

laughed back, "and if you really want to have a powerful friend at

court, pin your faith on Mr. Tallente."

Lady Clanarton shook her head.

"I have known Andrew, my dear, since he was in his cradle," she said.

"I have heard him spout Socialism, and I know he has written about

revolutions, but, believe me, he's a good old-fashioned Whig at heart.

He'll never carry the red flag. I see your wife has bought the

Maharajaim of Sapong's pearls, Andrew. Do you think she'd leave them to

me if I were to call on her?"

"Why not ask her?" Tallente suggested. "She is over there."

"Dear me, so she is!" she exclaimed. "How smart, too! I thought when

she came in she must be some one not quite respectable, she was so

well-dressed. Going, Andrew? Well, come and see me before you return

to the country. And I wouldn't go and have tea with that little hussy,

if I were you. She'll burn the good old-fashioned principles out of

you, if anything could."

"Not later than five, please," Nora called out. "You shall have

muffins, if I can get them."

"She's got her eye on you," the old lady chuckled. "Most dangerous

child in London, they all tell me. You're warned, Andrew."

He smiled as he raised her fingers to his lips.

"Is my danger political or otherwise?" he whispered.

"Otherwise, I should think," was the prompt retort. "You are too

British to change our politics, but thank goodness infidelity is one of

the cosmopolitan virtues. You were never the man to marry a

plaster-cast type of wife, Andrew, for all her millions. I could have

done better for you than that. What's this they are telling me about

Tony Palliser?"

Tallente stiffened a little.

"A good many people seem to be talking about Tony Palliser," he

observed.

"You shouldn't have let your wife make such an idiot of herself with

him--lunching and dining and theatring all the time. And now they say

he has disappeared. Poor little man! What have you done to him,

Andrew?"

Tallente sighed.

"I can see that I shall have to take you into my confidence," he

murmured.

"You needn't tell me a single word, because I shouldn't believe you if

you did. Are you staying here with your wife?"

"No," Tallente answered. "I am back at my old rooms in Charges Street."

The old lady patted him on the arm and dismissed him.

"You see, I've found out all I wanted to know!" she chuckled.

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.

CHAPTER XIII

"How this came about I don't even quite know," Tallente remarked, an

hour or so later, as he laid down the menu and smiled across the corner

table in the little Soho restaurant at his two companions.

"I can tell you exactly," Nora declared. "You are in town for a few

days only, and I want to see as much of you as I can; Susan here is

deserting me at nine o'clock to go to a musical comedy; I particularly

wanted a sole Georges, and I knew, if Susan and I came here alone, a

person whom we neither of us like would come and share our table.

Therefore, I made artless enquiries as to your engagements for the

evening. When I found that you proposed to dine alone in some hidden

place rather than run the risk of meeting any of your political

acquaintances at the club, I went in for a little mental suggestion."

"I see," he murmured. "Then my invitation wasn't a spontaneous one?"

"Not at all," she agreed. "I put the idea into your head."

"And now that we are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and

delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there

going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report

to Dartrey when he comes back to-morrow?"

She laughed at him from underneath her close-fitting, becoming little

hat. She was biting an olive with firm white teeth.

"After hours," she reassured him. "Susan and I are going to talk a

little nonsense after the day's work. You may join in if you can unbend

so far. We shall probably eat more than is good for us--I had a cup of

coffee for lunch--and if you decide to be magnificent and offer us wine,

we shall drink it and talk more nonsense than ever."

He called for the wine list.

"I thought we were going to discuss the effect of Grecian philosophy

upon the Roman system of government."

She shook her head.

"You're a long way out," she declared, "Our conversation will skirt the

edges of many subjects. We shall speak of the Russian Ballet, Susan and

I will exchange a few whispered confidences about our admirers, we shall

discuss even one who comes in and goes out, with subtle references to

their clothes and morals, and when you and I are left alone we may even

indulge in the wholesome, sentimental exercise of a little flirtation."

"There you have me," he confessed. "I know a little about everything

else you have mentioned."

"A very good opening." she approved. "Keep it till Susan has gone and

then propose yourself as a disciple. There is only one drawback about

this place," she went on, nodding curtly across the room to Miller. "So

many of our own people come here. Mr. Miller must be pleased to see us

together."

"Why?" Tallente asked. "Is he an admirer?"

Nora's face was almost ludicrously expressive.

"He would like to he," she admitted, "but, thick-skinned though he is, I

have managed to make him understand pretty well how I feel about him.

You'll find him a thorn in your side," she went on reflectively.

"You see, if our party has a fault, it is in a certain lack of system.

We have only a titular chief and no real leader. Miller thinks that

post is his by predestination. Your coming is beginning to worry him

already. It was entirely on your account he paid me that visit this

afternoon."

"To be perfectly frank with you," Tallente sighed, "I should find Miller

a loathsome coadjutor."

"There are drawbacks to everything in life," Nora replied. "Long before

Miller has become anything except a nuisance to you, you will have

realised that the only political party worth considering, during the

next fifty years, at any rate, will be the Democrats. After that, I

shouldn't be at all surprised if the aristocrats didn't engineer a

revolution, especially if we disenfranchise them.--Susan, you have a new

hat on. Tell me at once with whom you are going to Daly's?"

"No one who counts," the girl declared, with a little grimace. "I am

going with my brother and a very sober married friend of his."

"After working hours," Nora confessed, glancing critically at the sole

which had just been tendered for Tallente's examination, "the chief

interest of Susan and myself, as you may have observed, lies in food and

in your sex. I think we must have what some nasty German woman once

called the man-hunger."

"It sounds cannibalistic," Tallente rejoined. "Have I any cause for

alarm?"

"Not so far as I am concerned," Susan assured him. "I have really found

my man, only he doesn't know it yet. I am trying to get it into his

brain by mental suggestion."

"You wouldn't think Susan would be so much luckier than I, would you?"

Nora observed, studying her friend reflectively. "I am really much

better-looking, but I think she must have more taking ways. You needn't

be nervous, Mr. Tallente. You are outside the range of our ambitions.

I shall have to be content with some one in a humbler walk of life."

"Aren't you a little over-modest?" he asked. "You haven't told me much

about the social side of this new era which you propose to inaugurate,

but I imagine that intellect will be the only aristocracy."

"Even then," Norah sighed, "I am lacking in confidence. To tell you the

truth, I am not a great believer in my own sex. I don't see us

occupying a very prominent place in the politics of the next few

decades. The functions of woman were decided for her by nature and a

million years of revolt will never alter them."

Tallente was a little surprised.

"You mean that you don't believe in woman Member of Parliament, doctors

and lawyers, and that sort of thing?"

"In a general way, certainly not," she replied. "Women doctors for

women and children, yes! Lawyers--no! Members of Parliament--certainly

not! Women were made for one thing and to do that properly should take

all the energy they possess."

"You are full of surprises," Tallente declared. "I expected a miracle

of complexity and I find you almost primitive." She laughed. "Then

considering the sort of man you are, I ought to have gone up a lot in

your estimation."

"There are a very few higher notches," he assured her, smiling, "than

the one where you now sit enthroned."

Nora glanced at her wrist watch.

"Susan dear, what time do you have to join your friends?" she asked.

Susan shook her head.

"Nothing doing. I've got my seat. I am going when I've had my dinner

comfortably. There's fried chicken coming and no considerations of

friendship would induce me to hurry away from it."

Nora sighed plaintively.

"There is no doubt about it, women do lack the sporting instinct," she

lamented. "Now if we'd both been men, and Mr. Tallente a charming

woman, I should have just given you a wink, you would have muttered

something clumsy about an appointment, shuffled off and finished your

dinner elsewhere."

"Our sex isn't capable of such sacrifices," Susan declared, leaning back

to enable the waiter to fill her glass. "There's the champagne, too."

The meal came to a conclusion with scarcely another serious word. Susan

departed in due course, and Tallente called for his bill, a short time

afterwards, with a feeling of absolute reluctance.

"Shall we try and get in at a show somewhere?" he suggested.

She shook her head.

"Not to-night. Four nights a week I go to bed early and this is one of

them. Let's escape, if we can, before Mr. Miller can make his way over

here. I know he'll try and have coffee with us or something."

Tallente was adroit and they left the restaurant just as Miller was

rising to his feet. Nora sprang into the waiting taxi with a little

laugh of triumph and drew her skirts on one side to make room for her

escort. They drove slowly off along the hot and crowded street, with

its long-drawn-out tangle of polyglot shops, foreign-looking restaurants

and delicatessen establishments. Every one who was not feverishly busy

was seated either at the open windows of the second or third floor, or

out on the pavement below. The city seemed to be exuding the soaked-in

heat of the long summer's day. The women who floated by were dressed in

the lightest of muslins; even the plainest of them gained a new charm in

their airy and butterfly-looking costumes. The men walked bareheaded,

waistcoatless, fanning themselves with straw hats. Here and there, as

they turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, an immaculately turned-out young

man in evening dress passed along the baked pavements and dived into one

of the theatres. Notwithstanding the heat, there seemed to be a sort of

voluptuous atmosphere brooding over the crowded streets. The sky over

Piccadilly Circus was almost violet and the luminous, unneeded lamps had

a festive effect. The strain of a long day had passed. It was the

pleasure-seekers alone who thronged the thoroughfares. Tallente turned

and looked into the corner of the cab, to meet a soft, reflective gleam

in Nora's eyes.

"Isn't London wonderful!" she murmured dreamily. "On a night like this

it always seems to me like a great human being whose pulses you can see

heating, beating all the time."

Tallente, a person very little given to self-analysis, never really

understood the impulse which prompted him to lean towards her, the

slightly quickening sense of excitement with which he sought for the

kindness of her eyes. Suddenly he felt his fingers clasped in hers, a

warm, pleasant grasp, yet which somehow or other seemed to have the

effect of a barrier.

"You asked me a question at dinner-time," she said, "winch I did not

answer at the time. You asked me why I disliked James Miller so much."

"Don't tell me unless you like," he begged. "Don't talk about that

sort of person at all just now, unless you want to."

"I must tell you why I dislike him so much," she insisted. "It is

because he once tried to kiss me."

"Was that so terrible a sin?" he asked, a little thickly.

She smiled up at him with the candour of a child.

"To me it was," she acknowledged, "because it was just the casual caress

of a man seeking for a momentary emotion. Sometimes you have

wondered--or you have looked as though you were wondering--what my ideas

about men and women and the future and the marriage laws, and all that

sort of thing really are. Perhaps I haven't altogether made up my mind

myself, but I do know this, because it is part of myself and my life.

The one desire I have is for children--sons for the State, or daughters

who may bear sons. There isn't anything else which it is worth while

for a woman thinking about for a moment. And yet, do you know, I never

actually think of marrying. I never think about whether love is right

or wrong. I simply think that no man shall ever kiss me, or hold me in

his arms, unless it is the man who is sent to me for my desire, and when

he comes, just whoever he may be, or whenever it may be, and whether St.

George's opens its doors to us or whether we go through some tangle of

words at a registry office, or whether neither of these things happens,

I really do not mind. When he comes, he will give me what I want--that

is just all that counts. And until he comes, I shall stay just as I

have been ever since my pigtail went up and my skirts came down."

She gave his hand a final little pressure, patted and released it. He

felt, somehow or other, immeasurably grateful to her, flattered by her

confidence, curiously exalted by her hesitating words. Speech, however,

he found an impossibility.

"So you see," she concluded, sitting up and speaking once more in her

conversational manner, "I am not a bit modern really, am I? I am just as

primitive as I can be, longing for the things all women long for and

unashamed to confess my longing to any one who has the gift of

understanding, any one who walks with his eyes turned towards the

clouds."

Their taxicab stopped outside the building in which her little flat was

situated. She handed him the door key. "Please turn this for me," she

begged. "I am at home every afternoon between five and seven. Come and

see me whenever you can." He opened the door and she passed in, looking

back at him with a little wave of the hand before she vanished lightly

into the shadows. Tallente dismissed the cab and walked back towards

his rooms. His light-heartedness was passing away with every step he

took. The cheerful little groups of pleasure-seekers he encountered

seemed like an affront to his increasing melancholy. Once more he had

to reckon with this strange new feeling of loneliness which had made its

disturbing entrance into his thoughts within the last few years. It was

as though a certain weariness of life and its prospects had come with

the temporary cessation of his day-by-day political work, and as though

an unsuspected desire, terrified at the passing years, was tugging at

his heartstrings in the desperate call for some tardy realisation.

CHAPTER XIV

Tallente met the Prime Minister walking in the Park early on the

following morning. The latter had established the custom of walking

from Knightsbridge Barracks, where his car deposited him, to Marble Arch

and back every morning, and it had come to be recognised as his desire,

and a part of the etiquette of the place, that he should be allowed this

exercise without receiving even the recognition of passersby. On this

occasion, however, he took the initiative, stopped Tallente and invited

him to talk with him.

"I thought of writing to you, Tallente," he said. "I cannot bring

myself to believe that you were in earnest on Wednesday morning."

"Absolutely," the other assured him. "I have an appointment with

Dartrey in an hour's time to close the matter."

The Prime Minister was shocked and pained.

"You will dig your own grave," he declared. "The idea is perfectly

scandalous. You propose to sell your political birthright for a mess of

pottage."

"I am afraid I can't agree with you, sir," Tallente regretted. "I am at

least as much in sympathy with the programme of the Democratic Party as

I am with yours."

"In that case," was the somewhat stiff rejoinder, "there is, I fear,

nothing more to be said."

There was a brief silence. Tallente would have been glad to make his

escape, but found no excuse.

"When we beat Germany," Horlock ruminated, "the man in the street

thought that we had ensured the peace of the world. Who could have

dreamed that a nation who had played such an heroic part, which had

imperiled its very existence for the sake of a principle, was all the

time rotten at the core!"

"I will challenge you to repeat that statement in the House or on any

public platform, sir," Tallente objected. "The present state of

discontent throughout the country is solely owing to the shocking

financial mismanagement of every Chancellor of the Exchequer and

lawmaker since peace was signed. We won the war and the people who had

been asked to make heroic sacrifices were simply expected to continue

them afterwards as a matter of course. What chance has the man of

moderate means had to improve his position, to save a little for his old

age, during the last ten years? A third of his income has gone in

taxation and the cost of everything is fifty per cent, more than it was

before the war. And we won it, mind. That is what he can't understand.

We won the war and found ruin."

"Legislation has done its best," the Prime Minister said, "to assist in

the distribution of capital."

"Legislation was too slow," Tallente answered bluntly. "Legislation is

only playing with the subject now. You sneer at the Democratic Party,

but they have a perfectly sound scheme of financial reform and they

undertake to bring the income tax down to two shillings in the pound

within the next three years."

"They'll ruin half the merchants and the manufacturers in the country if

they attempt it."

"How can they ruin them?" Tallente replied. "The factories will be

there, the trade will be there, the money will still be there. The

financial legislation of the last few years has simply been a blatant

nursing of the profiteer."

"I need not say, Tallente, that I disagree with you entirely," his

companion declared. "At the same time, I am not going to argue with

you. To tell you the truth, I spent a great part of last night with you

in my thoughts. We cannot afford to let you go. Supposing, now, that I

could induce Watkinson to give up Kendal? His seat is quite safe and

with a little reshuffling you would be able to slip back gradually to

your place amongst us?"

Tallente shook his head.

"I am very sorry, sir," he said, "but my decision is taken. I have come

to the conclusion that, with proper handling and amalgamation, the

Democrats are capable of becoming the only sound political party at

present possible. If Stephen Dartrey is still of the same mind when I

see him this morning, I shall throw in my lot with theirs."

The Prime Minister frowned. He recognised bitterly an error in tactics.

The ranks of his own party were filled with brilliant men without

executive gifts. It was for that reason he had for the moment ignored

Tallente. He realised, however, that in the opposite camp no man could

be more dangerous.

"This thing seems to me really terrible, Tallente," he protested

gravely. "After all, however much we may ignore it, there is what we

might call a clannishness amongst Englishmen of a certain order which

has helped this country through many troubles. You are going to leave

behind entirely the companionship of your class. You are going to cast

in your lot with the riffraff of politics, the mealy-mouthed anarchist

only biding his time, the blatant Bolshevist talking of compromise with

his tongue in his cheek, the tub-thumper out to confiscate every one's

wealth and start a public house. You won't know yourself in this

gallery."

Tallente shook his head.

"These people," he admitted, "are full of their extravagances, although

I think that the types you mention are as extinct as the dodo, but I

will admit their extravagances, only to pass on to tell you this. I

claim for them that they are the only political party, even with their

strange conglomeration of material, which possesses the least spark of

spirituality. I think, and their programme proves it, that they are

trying to look beyond the crying needs of the moment, trying to frame

laws which will be lasting and just without pandering to capital or

factions of any sort. I think that when their time comes, they will try

at least to govern this country from the loftiest possible standard."

The Prime Minister completed his walk, the enjoyment of which Tallente

had entirely spoilt. He held out his hand a little pettishly.

"Politics," he said, "is the one career in which men seldom recover from

their mistakes. I hope that even at the eleventh hour you will relent.

It will be a grief to all of us to see you slip away from the reputable

places."

The Right Honourable John Augustus Horlock stepped into his motor-car

and drove away. Tallente, after a glance at his watch, called a taxi

and proceeded to keep his appointment at Demos House, the great block of

buildings where Dartrey had established his headquarters. In the large,

open waiting room where he was invited to take a seat he watched with

interest the faces of the passers-by. There seemed to be visitors from

every class of the community. A Board of Trade official was there to

present some figures connected with the industry which he represented.

Half a dozen operatives, personally conducted by a local leader, had

travelled up that morning from one of the great manufacturing centres.

A well-known writer was there, waiting to see the chief of the literary

section. Tallente found his period of detention all too short. He was

summoned in to see Dartrey, who welcomed him warmly.

"Sit down, Tallente," he invited. "We are both of us men who believe in

simple things and direct action. Have you made up your mind?"

"I have," Tallente announced. "I have broken finally with Horlock. I

have told him that I am coming to you."

Dartrey leaned over and held out both his hands. The spiritual side of

his face seemed at that moment altogether in the ascendant. He welcomed

Tallente as the head of a great religious order might have welcomed a

novice. He was full of dignity and kindliness as well as joy.

"You will help us to set the world to rights," he said. "Alas! that is

only a phrase, but you will help us to let in the light. Remember," he

went on, "that there may be moments of discouragement. Much of the

material we have to use, the people we have to influence, the way we

have to travel, may seem sordid, but the light is shining there all the

time, Tallente. We are not politicians. We are deliverers."

It was one of Dartrey's rare moments of genuine enthusiasm. His visitor

forgot for a moment the businesslike office with its row of telephones,

its shelves of blue books and masses of papers. He seemed to be

breathing a new and wonderful atmosphere.

"I am your man, Dartrey," he promised simply. "Make what use of me you

will."

Dartrey smiled, once more the plain, kindly man of affairs.

"To descend, then, very much to the earth," he said, "to-night you must

go to Bradford. Odames will resign to-morrow. This time," he added,

with a little smile, "I think I can promise you the Democratic support

and a very certain election."

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I

Tallente found himself possessed of a haunting, almost a morbid feeling

that a lifetime had passed since last his car had turned out of the

station gates and he had seen the moorland unroll itself before his

eyes. There was a new pungency in the autumn air, an unaccustomed

scantiness in the herbiage of the moor and the low hedges growing from

the top of the stone walls. The glory of the heather had passed,

though here and there a clump of brilliant yellow gorse remained. The

telegraph posts, leaning away from the wind, seemed somehow scantier;

the road stretched between them, lonely and desolate. From a farmhouse

in the bosom of the tree-hung hills lights were already twinkling, and

when he reached the edge of the moor, and the sea spread itself out

almost at his feet, the shapes of the passing steamers, with their long

trail of smoke, were blurred and uncertain. Below, his home field, his

wall-enclosed patch of kitchen garden, the long, low house itself lay

like pieces from a child's play-box stretched out upon the carpet. Only

to-night there was no mist. They made their cautious way downwards

through the clearest of darkening atmospheres. On the hillsides, as

they dropped down, they could hear the music of an occasional sheep

bell. Rabbits scurried away from the headlights of the car, an early

owl flew hooting over their heads. Tallente, tired with his journey,

perhaps a little worn with the excitement of the last two months, found

something dark and a little lonely about the unoccupied house, something

a little dreary in his solitary dinner and the long evening spent with

no company save his books and his pipe. Later on, he lay for long

awake, watching the twin lights flash out across the Channel and

listening to the melancholy call of the owls as they swept back and

forth across the lawn to their secret abodes in the cliffs. When at

last he slept, however, he slept soundly. An unlooked-for gleam of

sunshine and the dull roar of the incoming tide breaking upon the beach

below woke him the next morning long after his usual hour. He bathed,

shaved in front of the open window, and breakfasted with an absolute

renewal of his fuller interest in life. It was not until he had sent

back the car in which he had driven as far as the station, and was

swinging on foot across Woolhanger Moor, that he realised fully why he

had come, why he had schemed for these two days out of a life packed

with multifarious tasks. Then he laughed at himself, heartily yet a

little self-consciously. A fool's errand might yet be a pleasant one,

even though his immediate surroundings seemed to mock the sound of his

mirth. Woolhanger Moor in November was a drear enough sight. There

were many patches of black mud and stagnant water, carpets of

treacherous-looking green moss, bare clumps of bushes bent all one way

by the northwest wind, masses of rock, gaunter and sterner now that

their summer covering of creeping shrubs and bracken had lost their

foliage. It was indeed the month of desolation. Every scrap of colour

seemed to have faded from the dripping wet landscape. Phantasmal clouds

of grey mist brooded here and there in the hollows. The distant hills

were wreathed in vapour, so that even the green of the pastures was

invisible. Every now and then a snipe started up from one of the weedy

places with his shrill, mournful cry, and more than once a solitary hawk

hovered for a few minutes above his head. The only other sign of life

was a black speck in the distance, a speck which came nearer and nearer

until he paused to watch it, standing upon a little incline and looking

steadily along the rude cart track. The speck grew in size. A person

on horseback,--a woman! Soon she swung her horse around as though she

recognised him, jumped a little dike to reach him the quicker and reined

up her horse by his side, holding one hand down to him. "Mr.

Tallente!" she exclaimed. "How wonderful!" He held her hand, looking

steadfastly, almost eagerly, up into her flushed face. Her eyes were

filled with pleasure. His errand, in those few breathless moments,

seemed no longer the errand of a fool.

"I can't realise it, even now," she went on, drawing her hand away at

last. "I pictured you at Westminster, in committee rooms and all sorts

of places. Aren't you forging weapons to drive us from our homes and

portion out our savings?"

"I have left the thunderbolts alone for one short week-end," he

answered. "I felt a hunger for this moorland air. London becomes so

enveloping." Jane sat upright upon her horse and looked at him with a

mocking smile. "How ungallant! I hoped you had come to atone for your

neglect."

"Have I neglected you?" he asked quietly, turning and walking by her

side.

"Shockingly! You lunched with me on the seventh of August. I see you

again on the second of November, and I do believe that I shall have to

save you from starvation again."

"It's quite true," he admitted. "I have a sandwich in my pocket,

though, in case you were away from home."

"Worse than ever," she sighed. "You didn't even trouble to make

enquiries."

"From whom should I? Robert--my servant--his wife, and a boy to help in

the garden are all my present staff at the Manor. Robert drives the car

and waits on me, and his wife cooks. They are estimable people, but I

don't think they are up in local news."

"You were quite safe," she said, looking ahead of her. "I am never

away." The tail end of a scat of rain beat on their faces. From the

hollow on their left, the wind came booming up.

"I should have thought that for these few months just now," he

suggested, "you might have cared for a change."

"I have my work here, such as it is," she answered, a little listlessly.

"If I were in town, for instance, I should have nothing to do."

"You would meet people. You must sometimes feel the need of society

down here."

"I doubt whether I should meet the people who would interest me," she

replied, "and in any case I have my work here. That keeps me occupied."

They turned into the avenue and soon the long front of the house spread

itself out before them. Jane, who had been momentarily absorbed, looked

down at her companion.

"You are alone at the Manor?" she asked.

"Quite alone."

She became the hostess directly they had passed the portals of the

house. She led him across the hall into her little sanctum.

"This is the room," she told him, "in which I never do a stroke of

work--sacred to the frivolities alone. I shall send Morton in to see

what you will have to drink, while I change my habit. You must have

something after that walk. I shan't be long."

For the second time she avoided meeting his eves as she left the room.

Tallente stood on the hearth-rug, still looking at the closed door

through which she had vanished, puzzled, a little chilled. He gave his

order to the attentive butler who presently appeared and who looked at

him with covert interest,--the Press had been almost hysterically

prodigal of his name during the last few weeks. Then he settled down to

wait for her return with an impatience which became almost

uncontrollable. It seemed to him, as he paced restlessly about, that

this little apartment, which he remembered so well, had in a measure

changed, was revealing a different atmosphere, as though in sympathy

with some corresponding change in its presiding spirit. There was a

huge and well-worn couch, smothered with cushions and suggestive of a

comfort almost voluptuous; a large easy-chair, into which he presently

sank, of the same character. The wood logs burning in the grate gave

out a pleasant sense of warmth. He took more particular note of the

volumes in the well-filled bookcases,--volumes of poetry, French novels,

with a fair sprinkling of modern English fiction. There was a plaster

cast of the Paris Magdalene over the door and one or two fine point

etchings, after the style of Heillieu, upon the walls. There was no

writing table in the room, nor any signs of industry, but a black oak

gate-table was laden with magazines and fashion papers. Against the

brown walls, a clump of flaming yellow gorse leaned from a distant

corner, its faint almond-like fragrance mingling aromatically with the

perfume of burning logs and a great bowl of dried lavender. More than

ever it seemed to Tallente that the atmosphere of the room had changed,

had become in some subtle way at the same time more enervating and more

exciting. It was like a revelation of a hidden side of the woman, who

might indeed have had some purpose of her own in leaving him here. He

set down his empty glass with the feeling that vermouth was a heavier

drink than he had fancied. Then a streak of watery sunshine filtered

its way through the plantation and crept across the worn, handsome

carpet. He felt a queer exultation at the sound of her footsteps

outside. She entered, as she had departed, without directly meeting his

earnest gaze.

"I hope you have made yourself at home," she said. "Dear me, how untidy

everything is!"

She moved about, altering the furniture a little, making little piles of

the magazines, a graceful, elegant figure in her dark velvet house

dress, with a thin band of fur at the neck. She turned suddenly around

and found him watching her. This time she laughed at him frankly.

"Sit down at once," she ordered, motioning him back to his easy-chair

and coming herself to a corner of the lounge. "Remember that you have a

great deal to tell me and explain. The newspapers say such queer

things. Is it true that I really am entertaining a possible future

Prime Minister?"

"I suppose that might be," he answered, a little vaguely, his eyes still

fixed upon her. "So this is your room. I like it. And I like--"

"Well, go on, please," she begged.

"I like the softness of your gown, and I like the fur against your

throat and neck, and I like those buckles on your shoes, and the way you

do your hair."

She laughed, gracefully enough, yet with some return to that note of

uneasiness.

"You mustn't turn my head!" she protested. "You, fresh from London,

which they tell me is terribly gay just now! I want to understand just

what it means, your throwing in your lot with the Democrats. My uncle

says, for instance, that you have abandoned respectable politics to

become a Tower Hill pedagogue."

"Respectable politics," he replied, "if by that you mean the present

government of the country, have been in the wrong hands for so long that

people scarcely realise what is undoubtedly the fact--that the country

isn't being governed at all. A Government with an Opposition Party

almost as powerful as itself, all made up of separate parties which are

continually demanding sops, can scarcely progress very far, can it?"

"But the Democrats," she ventured, "are surely only one of these

isolated parties?"

"I have formed a different idea of their strength," he answered. "I

believe that if a general election took place to-morrow, the Democrats

would sweep the country. I believe that we should have the largest

working majority any Government has had since the war."

"How terrible!" she murmured, involuntarily truthful.

"Your tame socialism isn't equal to the prospect," he remarked, a little

bitterly.

"My tame socialism, as you call it," she replied, "draws the line at

seeing the country governed by one class of person only, and that class

the one who has the least at stake in it."

"Lady Jane," he said earnestly, "I am glad that I am here to point out

to you a colossal mistake from which you and many others are suffering.

The Democrats do not represent Labour only."

"The small shopkeepers?" she suggested.

"Nothing of the sort," he replied. "The influence of my party has

spread far deeper and further. We number amongst our adherents the

majority of the professional classes and the majority of the thinking

people amongst the community of moderate means. Why, if you consider

the legislation of the last seven or eight years, you will see how they

have been driven to embrace some sort of socialism. Nothing so

detestable and short-sighted as our financial policy has ever been known

in the history of the world. The middle classes, meaning by the middle

classes professional men and men of moderate means, bore the chief

burden of the war. They submitted to terrible taxation, to many

privations, besides the universal gift of their young blood. We won the

war and what was the result? The wealth of the country, through ghastly

legislation, drifted into the hands of the profiteering classes, the

wholesale shopkeepers, the ship owners, the factory owners, the mine

owners. The professional man with two thousand a year was able to save

a quarter of that before the war. After the war, taxation demanded that

quarter and more for income tax, thrust upon him an increased cost of

living, cut the ground from beneath his feet. It isn't either of the

two extremes--the aristocrat or the labouring man--where you must look

for the pulse of a country's prosperity. It is to the classes in

between, and, Lady Jane, they are flocking to our camp just as fast as

they can, just as fast as the country is heading for ruin under its

present Government."

"You are very convincing," she admitted. "Why have you not spoken so

plainly in the House?"

"The moment hasn't arrived," Tallente replied. "There will be a General

Election before many months have passed and that will be the end of the

present fools' paradise at St. Stephen's."

"And then?"

"We shan't abuse our power," he assured her. "What we aim at is a

National Party which will consider the interests of every class. That

is our reading of the term 'Democrat.' Our programme is not nearly so

revolutionary as you are probably led to believe, but we do mean to

smooth away, so far as we can from a practical point of view, the

inequalities of life. We want to sweep away the last remnants of

feudalism."

"Tell me why they were so anxious to gather you into the fold?" she

asked.

"I think for this reason," he explained. "Stephen Dartrey is a

brilliant writer, a great orator, and an inspired lawmaker. The whole

world recognises him as a statesman. It is his name and genius which

have made the Democratic Party possible. On the other hand, he is not

in the least a politician. He doesn't understand the game as it is

played in the House of Commons. He lives above those things. That is

why I suppose they wanted me. I have learnt the knack of apt debating

and I understand the tricks. Even if ever I become the titular head of

the party, Dartrey will remain the soul and spirit of it. If they were

not able to lay their hands upon some person like myself, I believe that

Miller was supposed to have the next claim, and I should think that

Miller is the one man in the world who might disunite the strongest

party on earth."

"Disunite it? I should think he would disperse it to the four corners

of the world!" she exclaimed.

The butler announced luncheon. She rose to her feet.

"I cannot tell you," he said, with a little sigh of relief, as he held

open the door for her, "how thankful I am that I happened to find you

alone."