Whilst Tallente, rejuvenated, and with a wonderful sense of well-being
at the back of his mind, was on his feet in the House of Commons on the
following afternoon, leading an unexpected attack against the
unfortunate Government, Dartrey sat at tea in Nora's study. Nora, who
had had a very busy day, was leaning back in her chair, well content
though a little fatigued. Dartrey, who had forgotten his lunch in the
stress of work, was devoting himself to the muffins.
"While I think of it," he said, "let me thank you for playing hostess so
charmingly the other night."
She made him a little bow.
"Your dinner party was a great success."
"Was it?" he murmured, a little doubtfully. "I am not quite so sure. I
can't seem to get at Tallente, somehow."
"He is doing his work well, isn't he?"
"The mechanical side of it is most satisfactory," Dartrey confessed.
"He is the most perfect Parliamentary machine that was ever evolved."
"Surely that is exactly what you want? You were always complaining that
there was no one to bring the stragglers into line."
"For the present," Dartrey admitted, "Tallente is doing excellently. I
wish, though, that I could see a little farther into the future."
"Tell me exactly what fault you find with him?" Nora persisted.
"He lacks enthusiasm already. He makes none of the mistakes which are
coincident with genius and he is a little intolerant. He takes no
trouble to adapt himself to varying views, he has a fine, broad outlook,
but no man can see into every corner of the earth, and what is outside
his outlook does not exist."
"Anything else?"
"He is not happy in his work. There is something wanting in his scheme
of life. I have built a ladder for him to climb. I have given him the
chance of becoming the greatest statesman of to-day. One would think
that he had some other ambition."
Nora sighed. She looked across at her visitor a little diffidently.
"I can help you to understand Andrew Tallente," she declared. "His
condition is the greatest of all tributes to my sex. He has had an
unhappy married life. From forty to fifty he has borne it
philosophically as a man may. Now the reaction has come. With the
first dim approach of age, he becomes suddenly terrified for the things
he is missing."
Dartrey was thoughtful.
"I dare say you are right," he admitted, "but if he needs an Aspasia,
surely she could be found?"
Nora rested her head upon her fingers. She seemed to be watching
intently the dancing flames. Her broad, womanly forehead was troubled,
her soft brown eyes pensive.
"He is fifty years old," she said. "It is rather an anomalous age. At
fifty a man's taste is almost hypercritical and his attraction to my sex
is on the wane. No, the problem isn't so easy."
Dartrey had finished tea and was feeling for his cigarette case.
"I rather fancied, Nora, that he was attracted by you."
"Well, he isn't, then," she replied, with a smile.
"He was rather by way of thinking that he was, the other night, but that
was simply because he was in a curiously unsettled state and he felt
that I was sympathetic."
"You are a very clever woman, Nora," he said, looking across at her.
"You could make him care for you if you chose."
"Is that to be my sacrifice to the cause?" she asked. "Am I to give my
soul to its wrong keeper, that our party may flourish?"
"You don't like Tallente?"
"I like him immensely," she contradicted vigorously. "If I weren't
hopelessly in love with some one else, I could find it perfectly easy to
try and make life a different place for him."
He looked at her with trouble in his kind eyes. It was as though he had
suddenly stumbled upon a tragedy.
"I have never guessed this about you, Nora," he murmured.
"You are not observant of small things," she answered, a little
bitterly.
"Who is the man?"
"That I shall not tell you."
"Do I know him?"
"Less, I should say, than any one of your acquaintance."
He was silent for a moment or two. Then it chanced that the telephone
rang for him, with a message from the House of Commons. He gave some
instructions to his secretary.
"It is a queer thing," he remarked, as he replaced the receiver, "how
far our daily work and our ambitions take us out of our immediate
environment. I see you day by day, Nora, I have known you intimately
since your school days--and I never guessed."
"You never guessed and I have no time to suffer," she answered. "So we
go on until the breaking time comes, until one part of ourselves
conquers and the other loses. It is rather like that just now with
Andrew Tallente. A few more years and it will probably be like that
with me."
He threw his cigarette away as though the flavour had suddenly become
distasteful and sat drumming with his fingers upon the table, his eyes
fixed upon Nora.
"Tallente's position," he said thoughtfully, "one can understand. He is
married, isn't he, and with all the splendid breadth of his intellectual
outlook he is still harassed by the social fetters of his birth and
bringing up. I can conceive Tallente as a person too highminded to seek
to evade the law and too scornful for intrigue. But you, Nora, how is
it that your love brings you unhappiness? You are young and free, and
surely," he concluded, with a little sigh, "when you choose you can make
yourself irresistible."
She looked at him with a peculiar light in her eyes.
"I have proved myself very far from being irresistible," she declared.
"The man for whose love my whole being is aching to-day is absolutely
unawakened as to my desirability. I enjoy with him the most impersonal
friendship in which two people of opposite sexes ever indulged."
"I thought that I was acquainted with all your intimates," Dartrey
observed, in a puzzled tone. "Let me meet this man and judge for
myself, Nora."
"Do you mean that?" she asked.
"Certainly."
"Very well, then," she acquiesced, "I'll ask him to dinner here. When
are you free?"
He glanced through a thin memorandum book.
"On Sunday night?"
"At eight o'clock," she said. "You won't mind a simple dinner, I know.
I can promise you that you will be interested. My friend is worth
knowing."
Dartrey took his departure a little hurriedly. He had suddenly
remembered an appointment at his committee rooms and went off with his
mind full of the troubles of a northern constituency. On his way up
Parliament Street he met Miller, who turned and walked by his side.
"Heard the news?" the latter asked curtly. "No. Is there any?" was the
quick reply.
"Tallente's broken the truce," Miller announced. "There was rather an
acid debate on the Compensation Clauses of Hensham's Allotment Bill.
Tallente pulled them to pieces and then challenged a division. The
Government Whips were fairly caught napping and were beaten by twelve
votes." Dartrey's eyes flashed.
"Tallente is a most wonderful tactician," he said. "This is the second
time he's forced the Government into a hole. Horlock will never last
the session, at this rate."
"There are rumours of a resignation, of course," Miller went on, "but
they aren't likely to go out on a snatched division like this."
"We don't want them to," Dartrey agreed. "All the time, though, this
sort of thing is weakening their prestige. We shall be ready to give
them their coup de grace in about four months."
The two men were silent for a moment. Then Miller spoke again a little
abruptly.
"I can't seem to get on with Tallente," he confessed.
"I am sorry," Dartrey regretted. "You'll have to try, Miller. We can't
do without him."
"Try? I have tried," was the impatient rejoinder. "Tallente may have
his points but nature never meant him to be a people's man. He's too
hidebound in convention and tradition. Upon my soul, Dartrey, he makes
me feel like a republican of the bloodthirsty age, he's so blasted
superior!"
"You're going back to the smaller outlook, Miller," his chief
expostulated. "These personal prejudices should be entirely negligible.
I am perfectly certain that Tallente himself would lay no stress upon
them."
"Stress upon them? Damn it, I'm as good as he is!" Miller exclaimed
irritably. "There's no harm in Tallente's ratting, quitting his order
and coming amongst us Democrats, but what I do object to is his bringing
the mannerisms and outlook of Eton and Oxford amongst us. When I am
with him, he always makes me feel that I am doing the wrong thing and
that he knows it."
Dartrey frowned a little impatiently.
"This is rubbish, Miller," he pronounced. "It is you who are to blame
for attaching the slightest importance to these trifles."
"Trifles!" Miller growled. "Within a very short time, Dartrey, this
question will have to be settled. Does Tallente know that I am promised
a seat in his Cabinet?"
"I think that he must surmise it."
"The sooner he knows, the better," Miller declared acidly. "Tallente
can unbend all right when he likes. He was dining at the Trocadero the
other night with Brooks and Ainley and Parker and Saunderson--the most
cheerful party in the place. Tallente seemed to have slipped out of
himself, and yet there isn't one of those men who has ever had a day's
schooling or has ever worn anything but ready-made clothes. He leaves
his starch off when he's with them. What's the matter with me, I should
like to know? I'm a college man, even though I did go as an
exhibitioner. I was a school teacher when those fellows were wielding
pick-axes."
Dartrey looked at his companion thoughtfully. For a single moment the
words trembled upon his lips which would have brought things to an
instant and profitless climax. Then he remembered the million or so of
people of Miller's own class and way of thinking, to whom he was a
leading light, and he choked back the words.
"I find this sort of conversation a little peevish, Miller," he said.
"As soon as any definite difference of opinion arises between you and
Tallente, I will intervene. At present you are both doing good work.
Our cause needs you both."
"You won't forget how I stand?" Miller persisted, as they reached their
destination.
"No one has ever yet accused me of breaking my word," was the somewhat
chilly rejoinder. "You shall have your pound of flesh."