Tallente

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tallente demanded. "I
am thankful to have an opportunity of asking you that question, Dartrey.
Surely you would reckon me more of a people's man than these Whigs and
Coalitionists?"
"Very much more," Dartrey agreed. "So much more, Mr. Tallente, that we don't wish to see you dancing any longer between two stools. We want you in our camp. You are the first man, Tallente, whom we have sought out in this way. We have come at a busy time, under pretext of a holiday, some two hundred miles from London to suggest to you, temporarily deprived of political standing, that you join us." ”

“ Tallente replied, with unappreciated sarcasm. "Dartrey's volume on 'Socialism in Our Daily Life' will tell you all about it." "Far too dry," she sighed. "I tried to read it but I never got past the first half-dozen pages."
"Some day," Tallente observed coolly, "it may be worth your while, all of you, to try and master the mental inertia which makes thought a labour; the application which makes a moderately good bridge player should be sufficient. Otherwise, you may find yourselves living in an altered state of Society, without any reasonable idea as to how you got there." ”

“ Horlock lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
"No good looking impatient, Tallente," he said. "The door's locked and you know it. You'll have to listen to what I want to say. A few minutes of your time aren't much to ask for."
"Go ahead," Tallente acquiesced.
"There is only one ambition," Horlock continued, "for an earnest politician. You know what that is as well as I do. Wouldn't you sooner be Prime Minister, supported by a recognised and reputable political party, than try to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for your friends Dartrey, Miller and company?" ”

“ No invitation of the sort, however, was accorded him. "All's fair in love and politics, Lady Jane," he declared. "We Democrats have our programme, and our motto is that those who are not with us are against us. Mr. Tallente here knew pretty well what he was up against."
"On the contrary," Tallente interrupted, "one never knows what one is up against when you are in the opposite camp, Miller. Would you mind explaining why you have sought me out in this singular fashion?"
"Certainly," was the gracious reply. "You have a very distinguished visitor over at the Manor, waiting there to see you. ”

“ At any rate, I believe there is a chance. Would you care to see the chief?"
"I haven't the slightest desire to," Tallente replied. "I have made my protest. Nothing in the world can affect the morality of your action. At the same time, I have got over my first dread of it. I am prepared with my defence, and perhaps a little in the way of a counterattack. No, I am not going hat in hand to your chief, Greening. He must do as he thinks well." ”

“ Jane murmured reminiscently."
"Miller is the type of man," Tallente declared, "who was always putting the Labour Party in a false position. He was born and he has lived and he has thought parochially. He is all the time lashing himself into a fury over imagined wrongs and wanting to play the little tin god on Olympus with his threatened strikes. Now there will be no more strikes." ”

“ Tallente asked. "Is he an admirer?"
Nora's face was almost ludicrously expressive.
"He would like to he," she admitted, "but, thick-skinned though he is, I have managed to make him understand pretty well how I feel about him. You'll find him a thorn in your side," she went on reflectively.
"You see, if our party has a fault, it is in a certain lack of system. We have only a titular chief and no real leader. Miller thinks that post is his by predestination. Your coming is beginning to worry him already. It was entirely on your account he paid me that visit this afternoon." ”

“ Dartrey in an hour's time to close the matter."
The Prime Minister was shocked and pained.
"You will dig your own grave," he declared. "The idea is perfectly scandalous. You propose to sell your political birthright for a mess of pottage."
"I am afraid I can't agree with you, sir," Tallente regretted. "I am at least as much in sympathy with the programme of the Democratic Party as I am with yours." ”

“ Miller has his objectionable points, but he possesses still a great hold upon certain types of the working man. I feel that you should appreciate that a little more thoroughly. The politician, as you should know better than I, has no personal feelings."
"The politician is left with very few luxuries," Tallente replied, with a certain grimness.
Nora was announced, brilliant and gracious in a new dinner gown which she frankly confessed had ruined her, and close behind her Miller, a little ungainly in his overlong dress coat and badly arranged white tie. ”

“ It is a pity Mr. Tallant is not informed of the tutor’s infernal presumption, you say. He would soon send him to the right-about, he’s such a proud fellow, you know, that Tallant.
“In love!” you repeat. “In rubbish! He should come with me, and air his little bit of brains on the Stock Exchange; he should know what it is to make a hundred thousand pounds in a week, and lose it in a day; he should see what women are, how they sell themselves body and soul for money.”
There, friend Mammon, you need say no more. ”

“ The huge laugh bellowed out again. "Come along. Bailey will put your things together, and you can fix it with him all right."
They took possession of him, the two tall, healthy, handsome young things; and it was only among the violet dusks of that evening, with the scents of baronia and jasmine and all the haunting damp bush odours drawn warmly about him on the wide low stone verandah, that Tallentyre, who had slept most of the afternoon in a long room opening low windows to a garden that met the bush, screwed up his courage to the attack again. ”

“ The struggle to answer brought sweat to his face and palms, and power came slowly back with a tearing sense of grief, as though he had failed to respond to some great need—some maiden need which could not be spoken, which he could not clearly meet or fathom. Water dripped on him now; the shadow of a big wattle-tree was over him, and the tang of whisky in his mouth, and Donald Senior's brown, jovial face very near. He was talking, but for a while Tallentyre could not piece out the words. Hearing cleared at last. ”

“ Tallien, weary and dazed, always of a delicate constitution, felt nigh to swooning. His knees were shaking, a cold dread of the supernatural held his heart with an icy grip and caused his hair to tingle at the roots. His tongue felt huge and as if paralysed, his teeth were chattering together. It was as much as he could do not to measure his length on the ground; and the vague desire to remain unobserved kept him crouching in the gloom.
He just could flee the tall stranger pass his hands over the body on the floor, and could hear the other ask him a question in English. ”

“ Claudia was bound to the horns of the altar, as sacrifice, not as deity, and the furrows on Senior's face had lessened; and, although Dolly was unduly and strangely nervous, the shadow was fainter in her eyes. Tallentyre got through that boisterous picnic somehow: sparring with Dolly; watching Halliday always at Claudia's elbow; helping Senior wait on the elders. These young things grappled with the moments bravely, but to him all was a hideous farce. Courage of body and mind were worn down by those realities which he had suffered and seen. ”

“ Tallant thereupon walked up to the mantel-piece, contemplated himself, stroked his beard, and apostrophised his counterfeit.
“You must be an infernal blackguard, Richard Tallant, Esq., to work such an infernal scheme as this against a woman! Upon my soul I believe you are a bad fellow, a deuced bad fellow. How is it, my friend, you are such a rascal? You had a fine opportunity once. I believe that thief Gibbs ruined you, eh? Perhaps; perhaps not. ”

“ Richard Tallant, in a whisper, as he stood quietly smoking a cigar near the open doorway of the summer-house. “The conversation becomes interesting.”
“In what respect?” asked Phœbe.
“Why, dear, Paul has made every possible inquiry, and he pronounces him to be no better than a swindler; and he says many men have been transported and hanged who have done nothing worse than Mr. Gibbs has done,” said Amy, with animation.
“Those are strong words, Amy,” said Miss Tallant.
“They are, by Jove!” said her brother to himself; “but true, I believe, by my soul!” ”

“ It'll comfort him a bit for not going himself. He would give anything to, you know."
"I can believe it," said Tallentyre, curtly. And then they smoked in silence and a strange comradeship. Out of the dim rooms behind came the sound of Jessica singing, and a thrush fluted back from the great gnarled apple-tree lifting among the shadowy syringa and orange and magnolia, tangle sweet with scent and misty with faint flowers down the sloping garden. Tallentyre drew a long breath, as though the very pleasure were pain, and Dolly sprang up, a hovering fragrant white moth above him. ”

“ At length, Count Molé approached, and leant over the back of the prince’s chair. He spoke, in the very ear of the prince, a confidential whisper, which the mayor heard, however, distinctly, so close had he drawn to the illustrious friends.
“‘Prince,’ said the count, ‘have you forgotten old times and all our fierce encounters? Come, and renew our skill at billiards in the next room; it will make us both all the younger by twenty years!’
“Billiards! the Prince de Talleyrand play at billiards! it could not be; he should have imagined that his lameness would have saved him from that. ”

“ But—I don't want things made harder for her ..."
"Harder for her!"
"She likes him—likes him quite a lot, or I couldn't ... She'd have done it long ago, but I—I held her back. Now ... the mother and the girls ... it's too much! We'd have to sell out, you know. I couldn't get through another year. The girls say they'll go out to work. They're all working now beyond their strength. I can't let it go on ..."
"And so you'd sell her—Claudia!" There was neither pity nor softness in Tallentyre just now. The pain was too great. ”

“ CHILDHOOD AND JUVENILE YEARS OF TALLEYRAND.
Our drive was delightful over the green turf beneath the arched vista of the old avenue. The rain-drops glittered on every leaf, and the turf, moistened by the shower, after the long drought, sent up a delicious fragrance beneath each pressure of our horses’ feet. The prince was alone in his carriage, with his dog Carlo. There was but one person in the whole world whom he ever allowed to take the seat beside him in his drives, and she was that day absent from Valençay. ”

“ The sole biographer of Prince Talleyrand must be Prince Talleyrand himself. Any clever, well-informed historian might give the facts of the prince’s life, but who but himself could render to posterity a satisfactory account of the motives which had led to action, the consequences which have accrued from the various decisions which he has taken, and which, in most instances, as he himself is always declaring, have been totally in opposition to the results foreseen? ”

“ The costume in this picture is of about the year 1775, when Talleyrand was in the prime of youth, and when he had not long emerged from St. Sulpice; and yet the portrait is rather that of a young man of fashion of the time than of a youth vowed to a life of penance and austerity. The hair, of which he was always proud, hangs loose and unshorn over his embroidered coat; no sign of monkish scissors or of priestly tonsure is there. There does not exist a picture of the prince either as Abbé de Perigord or as Bishop of Autun. ”

“ The political career of Prince Talleyrand may be said to have begun at his very entrance into life. I have given you a sketch of his childhood—to detail the events of his youth would be to give the history of the close of the eighteenth century. I have heard him say often that few men could boast of having passed through life as he had done—always in a crowd, having to elbow his way through the thickest ranks. ”

“ Had that property in Yorkshire, those splendid farms on the wolds, reverted to the only son of Christopher Tallant? How much had the old man left?
It occurred to him that his father might have changed his will, indeed he had every reason to believe that such had been his intention. But he would not let this more than probable contingency have a settled place in his thoughts ”

“ However, as he has many noble and good qualities, and as he has the deepest interest in all who bear the name of Talleyrand, which is much to his credit as it arises from gratitude to the Cardinal de Périgord, I wish with all my heart that his life may be made more tranquil than it has been in these recent years, and that his troubles may come to an end. Another man might have known how to turn them to his advantage; he can do nothing but succumb. ”