Nobodys Man | Page 6

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