Nobodys Man | Page 8

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