Nobodys Man | Page 3

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