Nobody's Man Part 41

"Why aren't you oftener enthusiastic?"

He glanced at her swiftly. Their eyes met. Fearlessly she held his fingers for a moment,--a long, wonderful moment.

"I was getting past enthusiasms," he said; "I was dropping into the dry-as-dust school--the argumentative, logical, cold, ineffectual school. The last few months have changed that. I feel young again. If Dartrey will give me a free hand, I'll deliver up to him Miller's bones."

Dartrey had come to the dinner in an uncertain frame of mind. No one knew better than he the sinister power behind Miller. Yet before Tallente had finished speaking he had made up his mind.

"I'll stand by you, Tallente," he declared, "even if it puts us back a year or so. Miller carries with him always an atmosphere of unwholesome things. He has got the Bolshevist filth in his blood and I don't trust him. No one trusts him. He shall take his following where he will, and if we are not strong enough to rule without them, we'll wait."

It was a compact of curious importance which the two men sealed impulsively with a grip of the hands across the table, and down at Woolhanger, through some dreary months, it was Jane's greatest pleasure to remember that it was at her table it had been made.

Tallente, seeking about for some excuse to remain for a few moments after the departure of the Dartreys, was relieved of all anxiety by Jane's calm and dignified remark.

"I can't part with you just yet, Mr. Tallente," she said. "You are not in a hurry, I hope, and you are so close to your rooms that the matter of taxies need not worry you. And, Mr. Dartrey, next time you come down to my county you must bring your wife over to see me. Woolhanger is so typically Devonshire, I really think you would be interested."

"I shall make Stephen bring me in the spring," Nora promised. "I shall never forget how fascinated we were with the whole place this last summer. Don't forget that you are coming to the House with me tomorrow afternoon."

Jane smiled.

"I am looking forward to it," she declared. "The only annoying part is that that stupid man won't promise to speak."

"I shall have so much to say within the next week or so," Tallente observed, a little grimly, "that I think I had better keep quiet as long as I can."

The moment for which Tallente had been longing came then. The front door closed behind the departing guests. Jane motioned to him to come and sit by her side on the couch.

"I love your friends," she said. "I think Mrs. Dartrey is perfectly sweet and Dartrey is just as wonderful as I had pictured him. They are so strangely unusual," she went on. "I can scarcely believe, even now, that our dinner actually took place in my little room here--Stephen Dartrey, the man I have read about all my life, and this brilliant young wife of his. Thank you so much, dear friend, for bringing them."

"And thank you, dear perfect hostess," he answered. "Do you know what you did? You created an atmosphere in which it was possible to think and talk and see things clearly. Do you realise what has happened?

Dartrey has done a great thing. He has thrown over the one menacing power in the advancing cause of the people. He is going to back me against Miller."

"What exactly is Miller's position?" she asked.

"Let me tell you another time," he begged. "I have looked forward so to these few minutes with you. Tell me how much time you are going to spare me this next week?"

She looked at him with the slight, indulgent smile of a woman realising and glad to realise her power. To Tallente she had never seemed more utterly and entirely desirable. It was not for him to know that a French modiste had woven all the cunning and diablerie of the s.e.x lure into the elegant shape, the apparent simplicity of the black velvet which draped her limbs. In some mysterious way, the same spirit seemed to have entered into Jane herself. The evening had been one of unalloyed pleasure. She felt the charm of her companion more than ever before. The pleasant light in her eyes, the courteous, half-mocking phrases with which, as a rule, she fenced herself about in those moments when he sought to draw her closer to him, were gone. Her eyes were as bright as ever, but softer. Her mouth was firm, yet somehow with a faint, womanly voluptuousness in its sweet curves. The fingers which lay unresistingly in his hand were soft and warm.

"As much time as you can spare," she promised him. "I thought, though, that you would be busy tearing Miller bone from bone."

"The game of politics is played slowly," he answered, "sometimes so slowly that one chafes. Dear Jane, I want to see you all the time. So much of what is best in me, best and most effective, comes from you."

"If I can help, I am proud," she whispered.

"You help more than you will ever know, more than my lips can tell you.

It is you who have lit the lamp again in my life, you from whom come the fire and strength which make me feel that I shall triumph, that I shall achieve the one thing I have set my heart upon."

"The one thing?" she murmured rashly.

"The one thing outside," he answered, "the desire of my brain. The desire of my heart is here."

She lay in his arms, her lips moved to his and the moments pa.s.sed uncounted. Then, with a queer little cry, she stood up, covered her face for a moment with her hands and then held them both out to him.

"Dear man," she begged, "dearest of all men--will you go now?

To-morrow--whenever you have time--let your servant ring up. I will free myself from any engagement--but please!"

He kissed her fingers and pa.s.sed out with a murmured word. He knew so little of women and yet some wonderful instinct kept him always in the right path. Perhaps, too, he feared speech himself, lest the ecstasy of those few moments might be broken.

CHAPTER XVII

This is how a weekly paper of indifferent reputation but immense circulation brought Tallente's love affair to a crisis. In a column purporting to set out the editor's curiosity upon certain subjects, the following paragraphs appeared:

Whether a distinguished member of the Democratic Party is not considered just now the luckiest man in the world of politics and love.

Whether the young lady really enjoys playing the prodigal daughter at home and in the country, and what her n.o.ble relatives have to say about it.

Whether there are not some sinister rumours going about concerning the politician in question.

Jane's mother, who had arrived in London only the day before, was in Charles Street before her prodigal daughter had finished breakfast. She brandished a copy of the paper in her hand. Jane read the three paragraphs and let the paper slip from her fingers as though she had been handling an unclean thing. She rang the bell and pointed to where it lay upon the floor.

"Take that into the servants' hall and let it be destroyed, Parkins,"

she ordered.

The d.u.c.h.ess held her peace until the man had left the room. Then she turned resolutely to Jane.

"My dear," she said, "that's posing. Besides, it's indiscreet. Parkins will read it, of course, and it's what that sort of person reads, nowadays, that counts. We can't afford it. The aristocracy has had its fling. To-day we are on our good behaviour."

"I should have thought," Jane declared, "that in these democratic days the best thing we could do would be to prove ourselves human like other people."

"And people call you clever!" her mother scoffed. "Why, my dear child, any slight respect which we still receive from the lower orders is based upon their conviction that somehow or other we are, after all, made differently from them. Sometimes they hate us for it and sometimes they love us for it. The great thing, nowadays, however, is to cultivate and try and strengthen that belief of theirs."

"How did you come to see this rag?" Jane enquired mildly.

"Your Aunt Somerham brought it round this morning while I was in bed,"

her mother replied. "It was a great shock to me. Also to your father.

He was anxious to come with me but is threatened with an attack of gout."

"And what do you want to say to me about it? Just why did you bring me that rag and show me those paragraphs?"

"My dear, I must know how much truth there is in them. Have you been going about with this man Tallente?"

"To a certain extent, yes," Jane admitted, after a moment's hesitation.