Nobodys Man | Page 8

laughed.
"I am not so sure," he objected. "You took me for the gardener just
now."
"Not when you came down the steps," she protested, "and besides, it is
your own fault for wearing such atrociously old clothes."
"They shall be given away to-morrow," he promised.
"I should think so," she replied. "And you might part with the battered
straw hat you were wearing, at the same time."
"It shall be done," he promised meekly.
She became reminiscent.
"We were all so interested in you in those days. Lord Peters told us,
after you were gone, that some day you would be Prime Minister."
"I am afraid," he sighed, "that I have disappointed most of my friends."
"You have disappointed no one," she assured him firmly. "You will
disappoint no one. You are the one person in politics who has kept a
steadfast course, and if you have lost ground a little in the country, and

slipped out of people's political appreciation during the last decade,
don't we all know why? Every one of your friends--and your wife, of
course," she 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