Nobody's Man Part 13

She laughed understandingly. Her eyes twinkled as she looked at him.

"And thoroughly disapproved them, of course! But you know, Mr.

Tallente, we are out not to reconstruct Society but to lay the stepping stones for a reconstruction. That is all, I suppose, that any single generation could accomplish. The views which I have advocated in the _Universal Review_ are the views which will be accepted as a matter of course in fifty years' time. To-day they seem crude and unmoral, chiefly because the casual reader, especially the British reader, dwells so much upon external effects and thinks so little of the soul that lies below. Even you, Mr. Tallente, with your pa.s.sion for order and your distrust of all change in established things, can scarcely consider our marriage laws an entire success?"

Tallente winced a little and Dartrey hastily intervened.

"We want you to remember this," he said. "The principles which we advocate are condemned before they are considered by men of inherited principles and academic education such as yourself, because you have a.s.sociated them always with the disciples of anarchy, bolshevism, and other diseased rituals. You have never stooped to separate the good from the bad. The person who dares to tamper with the laws of King Alfred stands before you prejudged. Granted that our doctrines are extreme, are we--let me be personal and say am I--the cla.s.s of man whom you have a.s.sociated with these doctrines? We Democrats have gained great power during the last ten years. We have thrust our influence deep into the hearts of those great, sinister bodies, the trades unions.

There is no one except ourselves who realises our numerical and potential strength. We could have created a revolution in this country at any time since the Premier's first gloomy speech in the House of Commons after the signing of peace, had we chosen. I can a.s.sure you that we haven't the least fancy for marching through the streets with red flags and letting loose the diseased end of our community upon the palaces and public buildings of London. We are Democrats or Republicans, whichever you choose to call us, who desire to conquer with the brain, as we shall conquer, and where we recognise a man of genius like yourself, who must be for us or against us, if we cannot convert him then we must see that politically he ceases to count."

Robert came out and whispered in his master's ear. Tallente turned to his guests.

"I cannot offer you dinner," he said, "but my servant a.s.sures me that he can provide a cold supper. Will you stay? I think that you, Dartrey, would enjoy the view from some of my lookouts."

"I accept your invitation," Dartrey replied eagerly. "I have been sitting here, longing for the chance to watch the sunset from behind your wood."

"It will be delightful," Nora murmured. "I want to go down to the gra.s.s pier."

Miller too accepted, a little ungraciously. The little party wandered off down the path which led to the seash.o.r.e. Miller detained his host for a moment at one of the corners.

"By the by, Tallente," he asked, "what about the disappearance of Palliser?"

"He has disappeared," Tallente answered calmly. "That is all I know about it."

Miller stood with his hands in his pockets, gnawing the end of his moustache, gazing covertly at the man who stood waiting for him to pa.s.s on. Tallente's face was immovable.

"Disappeared? Do you mean to say that you don't know where he is?"

"I have no idea."

Again there was a moment's silence. Then Miller leaned a little forward. "Look here, Tallente," he began--Nora turned round and suddenly beckoned her host to her.

"Come quickly," she begged. "I can do nothing with Mr. Dartrey. He has just decided that our whole scheme of life is absurd, that politics and power are shadows, and that work for others is lunacy. All that he wants is your cottage, a fishing rod and a few books."

"Nothing else?" Tallente asked, smiling.

There was a momentary cloud upon her face.

"Nothing else in the world," she answered, her eyes fixed upon the figure of the man who was leaning now over the grey stone wall, gazing seaward.

During the service of the meal, on the terrace afterwards, and even when they strolled down to the edge of the cliff to see the great yellow moon come up from behind the hills, scarcely a word was spoken on political subjects. Dartrey was an Oxford man of Tallente's own college, and, although several years his senior, they discovered many mutual acquaintances and indulged in reminiscences which seemed to afford pleasure to both. Then they drifted into literature, and Tallente found himself amazed at the knowledge of the man whose whole life was supposed to have been given to his labours for the people. Dartrey explained his intimate acquaintance with certain modern writings and his marvellous familiarity with many of the cla.s.sics, as he and his host walked down together along one of the narrow paths. "You see, Tallente," he said, "I have never been a practical politician. I dare say that accounts for my rather peculiar position to-day. I have evolved a whole series of social laws by which I maintain that the people should be governed, and those laws have been accepted wherever socialism flourishes. They took me some years of my earlier life to elaborate, some years of study before I set pen to paper, some years of my later life to place before the world, and there my task practically ended. There is nothing fresh to say about these great human problems. They are there for any man to whom daylight comes, to see. They are all inevitably bound up with the future of our race, but there is no need to dig further. My work is done."

"How can you say that," Tallente argued, "when day by day your power in the country grows, when everything points to you as the next Premier?"

"Precisely," Dartrey replied quietly. "That is why I am here. The head of the Democratic Party has a right to the government of this country, but you know, at this point I have a very sad confession to make. I am the worst politician who ever sat in the House. I am a poor debater, a worse strategist. Again, Tallente, that is why you and I at this moment walk together through your beautiful grounds and watch the rim of that yellow moon. It is yourself we want."

Tallente felt the thrill of the moment, felt the sincerity of the man whose hand pressed gently upon his arm.

"If you are our man, Tallente," his visitor continued, "if you see eye to eye with us as to the great Things, if you can cast away what remains to you of cla.s.s and hereditary prejudice and throw in your lot with ours, there is no office of the State which you may not hope to occupy.

I had not meant to appeal to your ambitions. I do so now only generally. As a rule, every man connected with a revolution thinks himself able to govern the State. That is not so with us. A man may have the genius for seeing the truth, the genius even for engraving the laws which should govern the world upon tablets of stone, without having the capacity for government."

"But do you mean to say," Tallente asked, "that when Horlock goes down, as go down he must within the next few months, you are not prepared to take his place?"

"I should never accept the task of forming a government," Dartrey said quietly, "unless I am absolutely driven to do so. I have shown the truth to the world. I have shown to the people whom I love their destiny, but I have not the gifts to lead them. I am asking you, Tallente, to join us, to enter Parliament as one of our party and to lead for us in the House of Commons."

"Yours is the offer of a prince," Tallente replied, after a brief, nervous pause. "If I hesitate, you must remember all that it means for me."

Dartrey smiled.

"Now, my friend," he said, "look me in the face and answer me this question. You know little of us Democrats as a party. You see nothing but a hotchpotch of strange people, struggling and striving to attain definite form. Naturally you are full of prejudices. Yet consider your own political position. I am not here to make capital out of a man's disappointment in his friends, but has your great patron used you well?

Horlock offers you a grudging and belated place in his Cabinet. What did he say to you when you came hack from h.e.l.lesfield?" Tallente was silent. There was, in fact, no answer which he could make. "I do not wish to dwell on that," Dartrey went on. "Ingrat.i.tude is the natural sequence of the distorted political ideals which we are out to destroy.

You should be in the frame of mind, Tallente, to see things clearly.

You must realise the rotten condition of the political party to which Horlock belongs--the Coalitionists, the Whip, or whatever they like to call themselves. The government of this country since the war has been a farce and a mockery. We are dropping behind in the world's race.

Labour fattens with sops, develops a spirit of greed and production languishes. You know why. Labour would toil for its country, Labour can feel patriotism with the best, but Labour hates to toil under the earth, upon the earth, and in the factories of the world for the sake of the profiteer. This is the national spirit, that jealousy, that slackness, which the last ten years has developed. There is a new Little Englander abroad and he speaks with the voice of Labour. It is our task to find the soul of the people. And I have come to you for your aid."

Tallente looked for a moment down to the bay and listened to the sound of the incoming tide breaking upon the rocks. Dimmer now, but even more majestic in the twilight, the great, immovable cliffs towered up to the sky. An owl floated up from the grove of trees beneath and with a strange cry circled round for a moment to drop on to the lawn, a shapeless, solemn ma.s.s of feathers. At the back of the hills a little rim of gold, no wider than a wedding ring, announced the rising of the moon. He felt a touch upon his sleeve, a very sweet, persuasive voice in his ear. Nora had left Miller in the background and was standing by his side.

"I heard Mr. Dartrey's last words," she said. "Can you refuse such an appeal in such a spot? You turn away to think, turn to the quietness of all these dreaming voices. Believe me, if there is a soul beneath them, it is the same soul which has inspired our creed. You yourself have come here full of bitterness, Andrew Tallente, because it seemed to you that there was no place for you amongst the prophets of democracy. It was you yourself, in a moment of pa.s.sion, perhaps, who said that democracy, as typified in existing political parties, was soulless. You were right. Hasn't Mr. Dartrey just told you so and doesn't that make our task the clearer? It brings before us those wonderful days written about in the Old Testament--the people must be led into the light."

Her voice had become almost part of the music of the evening. She was looking up at him, her beautiful eyes aglow. Dartrey, a yard or two off, his thoughtful face paler than ever in the faint light, was listening with joyous approval. In the background, Miller, with his hands in his pockets, was smoking mechanically the cigarette which he had just rolled and lit. The thrill of a great moment brought to Tallente a feeling of almost strange exaltation.

"I am your man, Dartrey," he promised. "I will do what I can."

CHAPTER X

The Right Honourable John Augustus Horlock, Prime Minister of England through a most amazing fluke, received Tallente, a few days later, with the air of one desiring to show as much graciousness as possible to a discomfited follower. He extended two fingers and indicated an uncomfortable chair.

"Well, well, Tallente," he said, "sorry I wasn't in town when you pa.s.sed through from the north. Bad business, that h.e.l.lesfield affair."

"It was a very bad business indeed," Tallente agreed, "chiefly because it shows that our agents there must be utterly incapable."

The Prime Minister coughed.

"You think so, Tallente, eh? Now their point of view is that you let Miller make all the running, let him make his points and never got an answer in--never got a grip on the people, eh?"

"That may do for the official explanation," Tallente replied coldly, "but as a plain statement of facts it is entirely beside the mark. If you will forgive my saying so, sir, it has been one of your characteristics in life, born, without doubt," he added, with a little bow, "of your indomitable courage, to minimise difficulties and dangers of a certain type. You did not sympathise with me in my defeat at h.e.l.lesfield because you underrated, as you always have underrated, the vastly growing strength and dangerous popularity of the party into whose hands the government of this country will shortly pa.s.s."

Mr. Horlock frowned portentously. This was not at all the way in which he should have been addressed by an unsuccessful follower. But underneath that frown was anxiety.

"You refer to the Democrats?"

"Naturally."

"Do I understand you to attribute your defeat, then, to the tactics of the Democratic Party?"

"It is no question of supposition," Tallente replied. "It is a certainty."