Nobody's Man Part 38

"That is why I played truant," Dartrey put in, "although we only went as far as Tunbridge Wells."

Tallente held out a hand to each. For a moment the tragedy in his own life was forgotten.

"I can't wish you happiness, because you have found it," he said. "Wise and wonderful people! Let me see if your coffee is what I should expect, Nora," he went on. "To tell you the truth, I have had rather a disturbed breakfast."

"So have we," Dartrey observed. "You mean the Leeds figures, of course?"

Tallente shook his head.

"I haven't even opened a newspaper."

"Horlock went down himself yesterday to speak for his candidate. Our man is in by five thousand, seven hundred votes."

"Amazing!" Tallente murmured.

"It is the greatest reversal of figures in political history," Dartrey declared. "Listen, Tallente. I was quite prepared to go the Session, as you know, but Horlock's had enough. He is asking for a vote of confidence on Tuesday. He'll lose by at least sixty votes."

"And then?"

"We can't put it off any longer. We shall have to take office. I shall be sent for as the nominal leader of the party and I shall pa.s.s the summons on to you. Here is a list of names. Some of them we ought to see unofficially at once."

Tallente looked down the slip of paper. He came to a dead stop with his finger upon Miller's name.

"I know," Dartrey said sympathetically, "but, Tallente, you must remember that men are not made all in the same mould, and Miller is the link between us and a great many of the most earnest disciples of our faith. In politics a man has sometimes to be accepted not so much for what he is as for the power which he represents."

"Has he agreed to serve under me?" Tallente inquired.

"We have never directly discussed the subject," Dartrey replied. "He posed rather as the amba.s.sador when we came to you at Martinhoe, but as a matter of fact, if it interests you to know it, he was strongly opposed to my invitation to you. I am expecting him here every moment--in fact, he telephoned that he was on the way an hour ago."

Miller arrived, a few minutes later, with the air of one already cultivating an official gravity. He was dressed in his own conception of morning clothes, which fitted him nowhere, linen which confessed to a former day's service and a brown Homburg hat. It was noticeable that whilst he was almost fulsome in his congratulations to Nora and overcordial to Dartrey, he scarcely glanced at Tallente and confined himself to a nod by way of greeting.

"Couldn't believe it when you told me over the telephone," he said. "I congratulate you both heartily. What about Leeds, Dartrey?"

"Splendid!"

"It's the end, I suppose?"

"Absolutely! That is why I telephoned for you. Horlock is quite resigned. I understand that they will send for me, but I wish to tell you, Miller, as I have just told Tallente, that I have finally made up my mind that it would not be in the best interests of our party for me to attempt to form a Ministry myself. I am therefore pa.s.sing the task on to Tallente. Here is a list of what we propose."

Miller clenched the sheet of paper in his hand without glancing at it.

His tone was bellicose.

"Do I understand that Tallente is to be Prime Minister?"

"Certainly! You see I have put you down for the Home Office, Sargent as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Saunderson--"

"I don't want to hear any more," Miller interrupted. "It's time we had this out. I object to Tallente being placed at the head of the party."

"And why?" Dartrey asked coldly.

"Because he is a newcomer and has done nothing to earn such a position,"

Miller declared; "because he has come to us as an opportunist, because there are others who have served the cause of the people for all the years of their life, who have a better claim; and because at heart, mind you, Dartrey, he isn't a people's man."

"What do you mean by saying that I am not a people's man?" Tallente demanded.

"Just what the words indicate," was the almost fierce reply. "You're Eton and Oxford, not board-school and apprentice. Your brain brings you to the cause of the people, not your heart. You aren't one of us and never could be. You're an aristocrat, and before we knew where we were, you'd be legislating for aristocrats. You'd try and sneak them into your Cabinet. It's their atmosphere you've been brought up in. It's with them you want to live. That's what I mean when I say that you're not a people's man, Tallente, and I defy any one to say that you are."

"Miller," Dartrey intervened earnestly, "you are expounding a case from the narrowest point of view. You say that Tallente was born an aristocrat. That may or may not be true, but surely it makes his espousal of the people's cause all the more honest and convincing? For you to say that he is not a people's man, you who have heard his speeches in the house, who have read his pamphlets, who have followed, as you must have followed, his political career is sheer folly."

"Then I am content to remain a fool," Miller rejoined. "Once and for all, I decline to serve under Tallente, and I warn you that if you put him forward, if you go so far, even, as to give him a seat in the Cabinet of the Government it is your job to form, you will disunite the party and bring calamity upon us."

"Have you any further reason for your att.i.tude," Tallente asked pointedly, "except those you have put forward?"

Miller met his questioner's earnest gaze defiantly.

"I have," he admitted.

"State it now, then, please."

Miller rose to his feet. He became a little oratorical, more than usually artificial.

"I make my appeal to you, Dartrey," he said. "You have put forward this man as your choice of a leader of the great Democratic Party, the party which is to combine all branches of Labour, the party which is to stand for the people. I charge him with having written in the last year of the war a scathing attack upon the greatest of British inst.i.tutions, the trades unions, an article written from the extreme aristocratic standpoint, an article which, if published to-day and distributed broadcast amongst the miners and operatives of the north, would result in a revolution if his name were persisted in."

"I have read everything Tallente has ever written, and I have never come across any such article," Dartrey declared promptly.

"You have never come across it because it was never published," Miller continued, "and yet the fact remains that it was written and offered to the Universal Review. It was actually in type and was only held back at the earnest request of the Government, because on the very day that it should have appeared, an armistice was concluded between the railway men, the miners and the War Council, and the Government was terrified lest anything should happen to upset that armistice."

"Is this true, Tallente?" Dartrey asked anxiously.

"Perfectly. I admit the existence of the article and I admit that it was written with all the vigour I could command, on the lines quoted by Miller. Since, however, it was never published, it can surely be treated as nonexistent?"

"That is just what it cannot be," Miller declared. "The signed ma.n.u.script of that article is in the hands of those who would rather see it published than have Tallente Prime Minister."

"Blackmail," the latter remarked quietly.

"You can call it what you please," was the sneering reply. "The facts are as I have stated them."

"But what in the world could have induced you to write such an article, Tallente?" Dartrey demanded. "Your att.i.tude towards Labour, even when you were in the Coalition Cabinet, was perfectly sound."

"It was more than sound, it was sympathetic," Tallente insisted. "That is why I worked myself into the state of indignation which induced me to write it. I will not defend it. It is sufficient to remind you both that when we were hard pressed, when England really had her back to the wall, when coal was the very blood of life to her, a strike was declared in South Wales and received the open sympathy of the faction with which this man Miller here is a.s.sociated. Miller has spoken plainly about me.

Let him hear what I have to say about him. He went down to South Wales to visit these miners and he encouraged them in a course of action which, if other industries had followed suit, would have brought this country into slavery and disgrace. And furthermore, let me remind you of this, Dartrey. It was Miller's branch of the Labour Party who sent him to Switzerland to confer with enemy Socialists and for the last eighteen months of the war he practically lived under the espionage of our secret service--a suspected traitor."

"It's a lie!" Miller fumed.

"It is the truth and easily proved," Tallente retorted. "When peace came, however, Miller's party altered their tactics and the hatchet was to have been buried. My article was directed against the trades unions as they were at that time, not as they are to-day, and I still claim that if public opinion had not driven them into an arrangement with the Government, my article would have been published and would have done good. To publish it now could answer no useful purpose. Its application is gone and the conditions which prompted its tone disappeared."

"I am beginning to understand," Dartrey admitted. "Tell me, how did the ma.n.u.script ever leave your possession, Tallente?"