Nobodys Man | Page 6

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