"We will have to make a great stand next year, Rames," said Robert Brook. "We must organize. We have time, thank goodness. There are ten of us now. A lot more will join us."
"But will they vote? That's the point," returned Rames. "Will they vote against the government's bill on its second reading?"
"Oh, yes," Mr. Brook replied enthusiastically. "There are a lot of discontented people in our majority. We'll have voters--Challoner, for instance. Besides, you have friends."
Rames laughed.
"Yes, I know the kind of friends--fellows who come to you in your seat after you have spoken, pat you on the back, whisper that they are with you, and then troop like tame mice into the government lobby against you. I've watched them."
Brook, however, was not to be damped. He threw himself for the rest of that session into the work of organization. A halting speaker and an ineffectual personage, he had sat for twenty years in the House of Commons and was not tired of it. He was without distinction, he was the confidant of no minister, he was never caricatured, he was never the chairman of a committee, he rarely spoke. The recruits of each new Parliament took almost its duration before they assigned individuality to his features or honored him with a name. He was mediocrity's last word. But he had charming manners and won to a kind of friendly pity those whose acquaintance he gently made. He was born for private life, but the House of Commons had caught him as in a net. He had no other interests, he had no wife, he did not any longer even aspire to office. To be busy in the House of Commons--that was lifeblood to him and a renewal of youth. His chance had come now. He hurried from man to man, discreet and furtive. He arranged private meetings. He hooked his little wagon to Rames's star. He approached Colonel Challoner.
Challoner, the party hack, was instinctively outraged. Was the list of ministers closed forever? No! But as he was about to repel Robert Brook's advances, the very holder of the office which he coveted stung him into revolt.
It was quite toward the end of the session. Colonel Challoner was walking through the division lobby late at night when he saw the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Charles Bradley, in front of him. There was some stir at the time because certain Indian emigrants had suffered in one of the disturbances of southern Persia. Colonel Challoner hurried officiously to Mr. Bradley's side.
"Bradley," he said, "don't you think it would be good policy to repatriate those Indians at our expense. What?"
Mr. Bradley, a florid gentleman, youthfully middle-aged, with a sweet voice, a pompous manner, and perhaps a bare sufficiency of brains, turned to the colonel with condescending kindness.
"As a member of the government," he said importantly, "I can no longer speak freely. Ah, my dear Challoner, I tell you I regret day after day that corner seat on the front bench below the gangway, and the opportunity of supplementary questions. But that happy time has gone. You might, if you like, raise the question on the adjournment or the Appropriation Bill next week. I could then reply to you."
Mr. Bradley smiled benignantly upon Colonel Challoner as from heights of sunrise, and passed on. He had grown very lordly since his elevation to office. Still, a few paces further on it seemed worth his while to stop until Challoner rejoined him. He did not notice that the colonel had grown rather red in the face.
"If you do raise the question, Colonel Challoner, could you introduce into your speech 'Civis Romanus sum'? I should like to hang my speech upon that. Thank you."
Even a party hack will turn if he be sufficiently trodden upon by minor ministers, and Colonel Challoner did now.
"Mr. Bradley," he asked with a most elaborate politeness, "have you ever calculated how many Under Secretaries of State, past and present, there are alive to-day? Or how many of them have names which are even faintly familiar to the public?"
Mr. Bradley gasped and stared. This was Challoner--old Challoner--talking! Bradley was quite unprepared to cope with so unparalleled an outrage. The colonel actually went on, and in accents of raillery:
"'Civis Romanus sum.' Now, why quote a phrase so banal. Surely, Mr. Bradley, it has had its day. We can do better than that if we put our heads together. Civis Romanus sum! God bless my soul! But I am willing to help you with a tag of Latin. I will introduce another sentence. Balbus shall build a wall--upon my word he shall--and you can hang your speech onto that, and be damned to you."
Mr. Bradley, however, had suffered enough of this unseemliness. He hurried forward and passed between the clerks who recorded the votes with a heightened color. Colonel Challoner followed him. But he waited at the door for Robert Brook to emerge, and then drew him by the arm into the outer lobby.
"I have been thinking over what you proposed, Brook," he said. "Certainly, certainly we must make a stand against Fanshawe's bill. We have a duty to our constituents. We must show the government we are not to be trifled with."
Robert Brook responded with warmth.
"I thought that upon reflection you would look upon it that way. You will be a pillar of strength to us, Challoner."
"That's very good of you," said Challoner. After all, there were some, it seemed, who knew his worth. "We must meet in the autumn--just those on whom we can depend--and arrange a plan of campaign."
"Yes," said Brook. "But where? We want, don't you think, to mask our batteries until the time comes for opening fire. We might meet at Rames's house--but it is known that he is opposed to the measure." He looked invitingly at his new ally.
"Yes, I see, I see," said Colonel Challoner a little doubtfully. There was a proposal in his mind--he was not quite sure whether he would make it. It was a bold one--it was the burning of his boats.
"Well, why not?" he suddenly said. "Why not meet at my house in Dorsetshire? I have some partridges. They will provide the excuse. Let us meet in October. Let me have the names and I'll quietly ask the men before the session ends."
Mr. Brook was delighted. He called mysteriously upon Harry Rames.
"We have got Challoner," he said. Rames shook his head.
"He'll back out."
"I don't see how he can. He is asking us all to meet at Bramling in the autumn."
Harry Rames sat back in his chair.
"How in the world did you manage that, Brook? We must go, of course."
Challoner spoke to Rames that evening. "It's to be quite an informal little party," he said with a wink, and took Rames and Brook each by the arm. Now that he had tasted the delights of revolt, Colonel Challoner, too, was a different man. He lost his dreariness. No longer he moulted; no longer he dripped melancholy on all who stood near to him. He passed ministers with a high head and an arrogant smile. "We'll show 'em," he said. "Yes, sir, we'll show 'em." And as he saw Bradley approaching him, "Here's Civis Romanus," he cried in tones loud enough to carry to the Under Secretary's ears. The Under Secretary flushed and hurried on. Colonel Challoner had told his story freely, and Civis Romanus Mr. Bradley remained for the rest of that Parliament. Colonel Challoner resumed: "We'll meet on the eighth of October. A little partridge shoot, eh? Just a few of us, jolly fellows all. You'll bring your wife, Rames, won't you? The others will."
That was a precaution which had been suggested by Brook.
"Some one is sure to let out that we are meeting at Bramling," he said. "If the men go without their wives, the gathering will have the look of a conspiracy. With them it will just be an ordinary autumn shooting party."
"Quite so," said Rames.
The House rose at eleven o'clock that night, and when Harry went home, he found his wife just returned from a dinner party. She came with him into his study and while they sat and talked he told her that she, too, was to be included in the visit to Bramling. Cynthia's face clouded.
"I would rather not go," she said. "I don't think there is any need that I should."
"The other men will bring their wives."
"There will be enough then. It won't matter if one wife doesn't go."
She was looking at Harry Rames directly, but with a great disquiet in her eyes. Harry, however, persisted.
"I think you are wanted, Cynthia. We have a difficult job to keep these men together and agree upon a line of concerted action. Some women could be very useful at a juncture like this. You are one of them."
Cynthia rose with a quick movement to her feet. She stood before him, her broad forehead troubled, her lips mutinous, and by her attitude she made all the more plain his need of her. The room was Rames's own study which had been lined with mahogany, and against the bright dark panelling, in her white dress, she gleamed slim and fair and beautiful as silver. Harry Rames looked her over with a smile. She was, as he put it to himself, exquisitely turned out. She had the grace and delicacy natural to a family nursed in good manners through a century, and with all her beauty she had simplicity and a desire to please.
"Yes, I want you, Cynthia," he said, and the blood rushed hot to her face and throat. She turned from him swiftly and went out of the open window onto a balcony which overhung their tiny square of garden. Rames's eyes followed her curiously. Something had gone wrong; that was clear. He could see her leaning over the rail in the darkness, her face between her hands.
Rames's survey of her had brought back to her recollection that distant morning by the wheat-field in South America when her father had looked her over horribly from head to foot and had valued her for a market. There had been just a touch of appraisement in her husband's look now. Almost she traced a resemblance in the two men's thoughts, the two men's examinations.
Harry left her to herself for a few minutes. Then he followed her:
"I think I understand, Cynthia," he said gently. "Of course it isn't a very high and lofty business we're engaged on. That's right enough. And when you consider the sort of people our party's going to be composed of--the dissatisfied, the ambitious, the timid, and just a few who believe Fanshawe's bill a bad thing--the manœuvre doesn't look very pretty. So if you don't want to go, don't."
But Cynthia had changed her mind.
"No. I'll come, Harry," she said. "It's too late to be half-hearted now. I'll certainly come."
She turned back into the room, and picking up her gloves from a table went upstairs. Harry Rames had no doubt that he had hit upon the reason of her disinclination to go to Bramling. But as Cynthia ran up the stairs she kept saying to herself nervously like one who would frighten fear away with words:
"Perhaps no one will notice it. Very likely no one will notice it. And if they do, they will think it an accident."
She had not been considering at all the worthiness of these autumn manœuvres. She had been thinking of a picture by Romney which hung in the dining-room of Bramling, a picture which she had never seen, but which yet she knew to be a portrait of herself. She had, however, promised to help in the making of the great career and this was one of its critical moments. It was, as she had said to Harry, too late to be half-hearted. If she failed him now, she failed him altogether. She must take the risk that others would notice the resemblance--and amongst the others, perhaps even her grandfather Colonel Challoner himself. To one determination, however, she clung. She would admit no kinship with the Challoners. Nothing should persuade her, neither the old man's loneliness nor his disappointed hopes. She held the name and the family in horror, though the name and the family were her own.
Bramling is the very house for a conspiracy. It lies in Dorsetshire, hidden away at the back of the grass-walled town of Wareham on the road to no where. A stream runs past its door down to Poole Harbor, and its windows look across grass meadows to where the sea-cliffs lift against the sky. Hither through one October day came in old-fashioned flies and private motor-cars the inhabitants of the Cave--Cynthia amongst the last of them with a foot which hesitated to cross the threshold. There were thirty in all assembled in the drawing-room when the dinner-gong sounded, eighteen men and twelve women. Colonel Challoner, to Cynthia's satisfaction, had to give his arm to Lady Lorme, the wife of an ex-Under Secretary of the home office who had quarreled with his chief and resigned. She herself was taken in by Robert Brook. Reluctance and curiosity struggled for mastery within her as she entered the dining-room, and took her seat. She would not look up at the walls, yet she could hardly but look up, and she sought furtively around the dinner-table whether any noticed the picture and her resemblance to it. But no one was looking at any picture at all. Not a remark was made or a glance thrown to show her where it hung. She looked more boldly at her companions, and coming to a greater ease began with enjoyment to laugh at herself. Not one person at the table was devoting a thought to her at all. They were all very busy, drinking their soup and talking rapidly like uncomfortable people who fear that if once their speech flags they will never find anything more to say. They were in truth an uncongenial company, held together by a single link, their eagerness to harass their own government. Even Robert Brook, who knew Cynthia well, was talking to her with incoherence in his agitation lest the gathering at Bramling should fail. She heard Sir Faraday Lorme, a big red-faced man of sixty with a bull-neck, say across the table to Charles Payne, one of the eight who genuinely thought Fanshawe's bill a bad experiment:
"Of course, as a rule, you know I don't act with you, but--" and the rest of the sentence was lost to her ears, but it seemed to her that fully half of those present might have said as much to their neighbors. Further along the table she caught sight of Mr. Andrew Fallon, a dark white-faced man who had only joined them because his wife had been signally and publicly snubbed by the wife of a Cabinet Minister. Cynthia could see the wife on the opposite side of the table, a portly over-dressed woman with an overbearing voice; and on behalf of all her sex she felt grateful to the Cabinet Minister's wife.
A singularly gentle voice drew her attention. She turned away from Robert Brook, to find at her other side Mr. Howard Fall.
"We have spoken in the lobby, Mrs. Rames," said Howard Fall timidly. "Captain Rames was kind enough to introduce me."
"Yes, indeed," said Cynthia. "Oh, I am glad that you are here."
To her Howard Fall was, with the exception of her husband, the most interesting man in the room. She welcomed his presence whole-heartedly. He was intellect, he was modesty. Even now at her implied compliment he was blushing like a young girl and his eyes shone with dog-like gratitude. Howard Fall was then about fifty years of age; and though he was but a contemporary of Harry Rames in the House of Commons, he had already acquired there a special place of high distinction. Of too acute and logical a mind to be a good party-man, he harried with a pleasant voice and most destructive criticism, now his own party, now his opponents. He had one great quality in common with Cynthia, he was quite without affectation. He would make a brilliant speech with extraordinary diffidence. But he made it, and a genuine word of praise or thanks delighted him, as a schoolboy is delighted with a sovereign. With the mild manners of a curate he combined the courage of a soldier. If he had ideas to express--and he generally had--no thought of prudence could hinder him from expressing them. Indeed, he drew a gentle contentment from the knowledge that as a rule they were troublesome to those whom he nominally supported. Cynthia had heard him more than once from the ladies' gallery, and had admired his honesty and his courage. For the moment she was enheartened by his presence. It put confidence into her. With him to help, Harry might indeed put up a fight against Mr. Devenish.
"I didn't know," said Howard Fall, "that Captain Rames was going to speak against Fanshawe's bill. Otherwise, of course, I should have been in the House to support him;" and the "of course" struck all Cynthia's comfort from her. It was so significant of the man. He was born predestined always to revolt. Any party of two had him for a third. Cynthia glanced disconsolately to where her husband sat at the end of the table. But he showed no sign of misgiving. He was talking energetically to the four people nearest to him, and he only paused when her eyes rested upon his face. She turned away again and there above the head of Colonel Challoner, who was sitting exactly opposite to her, she saw at last the portrait glowing upon the wall.
For the moment she had forgotten it. Now it caught away her breath. She sat and stared at it. It was the portrait of a girl of seventeen, dressed in white from the big straw hat with its flapping brim to the shoes upon her feet. There was but one touch of color, a broad shining ribbon of bright blue looped about the crown of the hat, and thus dressed, the girl stood in a field of sunlight and corn, looking straight out from the picture, with a great curiosity and eagerness in her dark-blue eyes. She seemed to be looking upon the gates of a world of wonder--gates which with a most tantalizing tardiness were slowly opening to let her through.
Was she herself indeed like that? The question rushed into Cynthia's mind. As pretty as that? It was impossible. Yet she had been recognized because of it. Just so then she must have looked that morning when, after sending her neglected telegram to Captain Rames, she had stood at the edge of the wheat on the Daventry estancia. Yet nobody recognized her now. She had the features of the girl in the portrait, the broad forehead, the straight, delicate nose, the fair hair, the big dark-blue eyes. Yet nobody recognized her. Perhaps, however, she had gone off. She was getting old. A gentle melancholy descended upon Cynthia. The fear lest her likeness to the girl in the picture should be remarked had quite gone since she had seen the picture. She was now rather hurt and indignant that no one had noticed it.
Lady Lorme gave the signal a little while afterward, and the ladies rose and left the men to their cigars and their discussion. Colonel Challoner opened the proceedings with a pompous, unnecessary little speech. He welcomed his guests, and he reminded them at considerable length of the object of the gathering. He concluded with a question as to whether any honorable member present had any views as to the best procedure to be adopted.
"Yes," said Harry Rames, "if I may make a suggestion. There are eighteen of us here. I propose that we now go carefully through the list of members and consider how many more we can get to join us, upon whom we can count. I have Vacher's list here;" and he drew out from his pocket the familiar little paper-covered book with the names and addresses of the members.
"I think that's the first thing to be done," a man agreed from the other end of the table. He was a Mr. Edgington, a little, square, bald man with short side-whiskers, who seemed a cross between an attorney and a stable-boy. He was one of the many men in the House who have a subject. He had mastered the Housing question; he really knew the facts, he had the figures at his fingers' ends, and he had counted upon his knowledge to take him straight through the doors of the Local Government Board. But the doors had remained closed, and he had turned gadfly in consequence--a gadfly that trumpeted but had no sting. "To be sure about the men who will stand out against the pressure of the Whips, who will not be frightened into line by their local associations, who retain, in a word, some self-respect and some veneration for the independence of the House of Commons--that is our first requisite," he said floridly.
The company then went carefully through the list and marked off twenty fresh names as the names of men who might be inclined to join the revolt. It was arranged that discreet letters should be written to them on the following day, and Robert Brook was appointed secretary by an unanimous vote.
"Of course we shan't get them all," said Lorme.
"And of those we do get, some will shirk when the division bell rings," added Howard Fall.
"No doubt," said Rames. "But if we can carry thirty men into the opposition lobby on the second reading, we shall have made a demonstration which will go far to kill the bill. It will mean sixty on a division. It will leave the government with a comfortable majority. We all want that of course,"--a chorus of approval, more or less sincere, greeted the remark--"But it will also mean that the government will hardly be able to force the bill through its committee stages by a drastic use of the closure."
"Exactly," said a tall, bearded man with a strong Scotch accent, who up to this moment had held his tongue. He represented a northern town of Scotland, and was one of the eight who were opposed to the measure first and last because they believed it harmful to the country. "Exactly. The demonstration is very well, but if the bill is to be killed, we will have to kill it in committee. And to prepare for that must be our chief work here, Colonel Challoner."
"Yes," said Rames. "Mr. Monro is right. We must go word by word through those clauses of Fanshawe's bill, which we are fairly certain Devenish will incorporate in his measure. We must formulate amendments, and we ought, I think, to agree, to some extent, upon the speakers to move them. It will, of course, have to be a provisional arrangement--" and he was interrupted by a strident voice which belonged to a sandy-haired hunting-man with a broad red face who would have seemed totally out of place in any conspiracy.
"Yes. Devenish may sell us a pup. He's a deuce of a clever fellow is Devenish. Let him get wind of your partridges, Challoner, and he'll sell us a pup for a sure thing."
"All the more reason we should keep our gathering quiet," said Challoner. He looked round the table with an impatience which had been growing upon him during the last half-hour. "I think that's all we can do to-night."
"About all," said Monro. "There is just this suggestion I would like to make. I know a man whose business is land, and he is most experienced in it; and I thought that if you would like, I would send him a telegram to-morrow, and we could employ him to help us in framing these amendments. He is a partner in Beevis and Beevis, the land-agents in Piccadilly."
"By all means, do," said Challoner. "We all agree to that, don't we? And now let us join the ladies."
He sprang up and opened the door like a man in a great hurry. When he entered the drawing-room, he crossed it at once to Cynthia's side.
"I was sorry, Mrs. Rames, that I couldn't take you in to dinner to-night. I would have liked very much that on your first evening at Bramling you should have come in with me. For, as you know, I somehow associate you with this house."
He looked at her with a very direct inquiry in his eyes. But Cynthia would not respond to it; and he sat at her side with a wistfulness in his voice and his words against which she had a little trouble to protect her heart. But she did, for she was alarmed. When she had met him before he had spoken rather as though he wished that they were related. To-night he spoke as if he suspected that they were.
Mr. Beevis arrived the next afternoon, and for the rest of the week, while the morning was given to the partridges and the amusements of the country, the afternoon and the evening found the Cave busy upon the bill. Amendments were formulated and shared out amongst them, whilst it was by general consent left to Rames to raise the question, first of all, on the Address at the beginning of the session and then to move the rejection of the bill later on when it came before the House upon its second reading. Good progress, in a word, was made, and, to the delight of all, no whisper of this conspiracy crept into any of the daily papers. They were examined anxiously every day upon their arrival at eleven, and laid down with relief. Cynthia could not but laugh.
"I never would have believed that you could have found so many members of Parliament reluctant to see their names in the papers," she said to her husband.
"Yes, it's astonishing what modesty they can develop," he replied.
But though Cynthia laughed, the work, the concealments, the sort of restrained excitement which was diffused through the house, began to have their effect upon her. She was getting color into her life at last, she assured herself, even if it was only a dingy color. Moreover, she had the opportunity to compare her husband with his rivals in the career. Indeed, he had but one real rival in that House, Howard Fall. And though he lacked the subtlety of his intellect, he had a swifter initiative, a more telling vigor of phrase. As for the rest he stood head and shoulders above them all, and they knew it and looked to him to lead them. If he did not share the strong convictions of the honest men, he overtopped them by sheer ability, and as to the others he knew nothing either of their malice or their fear. Thus they all came hopefully to the last day of their visit; and then at one o'clock in the day the thunderbolt fell.
It was a Sunday and the whole party had just settled down to luncheon when the whir of a motor-car floated into the room. It was followed by the sound of a door opening and shutting, a pleasant and familiar voice was heard to inquire for Colonel Challoner, and the next moment, ushered in by the butler, Mr. Devenish entered the room. Consternation ran round that luncheon table like a wind across a field of corn. Colonel Challoner sprang up hastily with every sign of discomfort.
"My dear Devenish, I am delighted to see you, I am sure. You are just in time for luncheon." He called to the butler to lay another place at his side. "I didn't know you were in the neighborhood. You should have let me know."
"I didn't mean to do that," said Devenish dryly. He ran his eye from face to face with a twinkling glance. Cynthia herself could hardly restrain a laugh. The independent members of the nation's Parliament looked so singularly like a set of school-boys' caught by a master in the planning of a rebellion.
"Quite a large party, eh, Challoner?" he said with a smile.
"Yes, yes," replied the colonel. "The partridges, you know."
"Ah, the partridges, to be sure. But I didn't know that Howard Fall shot at anything but ministers. And even they only get winged, eh, Fall?"
Mr. Devenish strolled round the table and shook hands with Fall. Fall, however, was one of the few who was quite undisturbed.
"Yes, but I am looking to practice to improve my shooting," he said.
A place was now laid for Devenish. Colonel Challoner called to him.
"Will you come and sit here, Devenish?"
"Certainly," replied the smiling minister. "But I should first of all like to shake hands with all my friends;" and quite slowly he walked round the table and shook hands with each of the men present and those of the ladies whom he knew. He was in the best of tempers, and he had a cordial word for every one except for Captain Ramos. To him he merely said:
"Ah!" and the accent of his voice had in it no note of surprise. It was the ejaculation of a man establishing something which he had suspected. Then he walked to his place and sat down.
"There are eighteen members of Parliament, Challoner," he said pleasantly. "I hope that I have forgotten no one. Let me see!" Again his eye ranged round the table, obviously registering in his memory the identity of Challoner's guests. "No, eighteen members of Parliament. Have you got a partridge left?"
Rames leaned forward and met smile with smile.
"We have just left one for next year," he said, "and we have been making a careful note of the piece of land on which we think we shall get him."
Howard Fall was delighted. For he loved courage. But the others of that company were more than ever confused and disconcerted.
"He's giving us away," said one of the weak-kneed in an indignant whisper to Andrew Fallon. Fallon's white face was twisted in a grin.
"He's cutting down the bridge behind you, my friend. And I don't think he's a bad judge."
Meanwhile Devenish returned the direct gaze of Captain Rames. There was no pretence between these two. Their eyes met; they challenged each other, Rames with perfect good-humor, Devenish with a certain grimness in his smile. He nodded his head toward Rames and tightened his lips. There was not a man at that table who could not construe the gesture into words.
"You are the leader here, Rames. Very well, we'll see."
Mr. Devenish turned to his neighbor. It was Cynthia, and even to her he talked for a little while with reserve. Rames had been correct in his diagnosis of the man. A good-humored fighter as a rule, he lost his good-humor when the attack was made upon his flank. He had begun his own political career with side-shots at his leaders from the front-bench below the gangway; but he did not rejoice when the same disposition of battle was planned against himself. However, luncheon and the proximity of a beautiful woman appeased him as they should. He began to talk freely; his smile lost its grimness, his natural geniality flashed bright.
"Tell me one thing," he said suddenly.
"It depends--" said Cynthia warily.
"Very well then. Tell me another thing. Why does your portrait hang in this house?"
Cynthia's cheeks flamed. She looked swiftly across Devenish at Colonel Challoner. But he was giving no heed to them.
"Do you think it's like me?" she asked.
"Itisyou," he replied.
"No one else has noticed the resemblance all this week," said Cynthia.
Mr. Devenish glanced along the table.
"Well, look at 'em," he said contemptuously, and they both laughed. Lady Lorme rose at that moment from the table, and Mr. Devenish, pleading the distance he had to travel, took his departure.
"I have enjoyed myself very much, Challoner," he said as the colonel came out with him to-the doorway. "I can't tell you how glad I am that I thought of dropping in upon you for luncheon. I am going back to London now. Good-by."
He mounted into his car and drove gaily off. In the dining-room behind him, the sandy-haired man was saying over and over again to the dismayed conspirators--
"He'll sell us a pup. He'll sell us a pup. I'll bet you a monkey, he'll sell us a pup."
That night, when the men went upstairs, Rames passing from his dressing-room into his wife's bedroom found her still up and sitting by her fire.
"We go back to-morrow, Cynthia. It has been a long week. I hope you haven't been bored."
"No," she said. "I haven't."
"What do you think of them? Will they run away when the fight comes?"
"Not all," said Cynthia. "But even of those who stay with you, there's not one who is a match for Mr. Devenish."
She spoke with some warmth in her voice.
"You like him?" said Harry Rames.
"I think he's a big man," she replied.
Rames, who was standing looking into her mirror, suddenly swung round.
"Shall I tell you why you say that, Cynthia?"
"Yes."
"Because he's the only man except myself who has noticed your likeness to that very pretty girl on the wall of the dining-room. I heard him mention it to you at luncheon."
He burst out into a laugh as he spoke; and in a moment or two Cynthia joined in the laugh. So Harry Rames too had noticed the resemblance. She laughed and her eyes laughed with her lips.
"After all," said Harry Rames, "we get some fun out of it, don't we, Cynthia?"
"Yes," said Cynthia and her laughter died away. "We get some fun out of it, Harry. That's just what we do get"; and her eyes turned away from him to the fire.
Captain Rames had arranged to travel by a train which ran directly into Warwickshire through the outskirts of London. It left Wareham at mid-day, some two hours later than the fast London trains, and though Cynthia had wished to escape in all the hurry of the general departure, she had found no sufficient reason. She and her husband were thus the last of that company at Bramling, and when all but they had gone, Colonel Challoner turned from the front door whence he had been speeding his guests, and invited her to walk with him in the garden. Cynthia in a flurry began to search for excuses, and before she found one realized that the moment for excuses had already gone. She turned and walked with Colonel Challoner into the red-walled garden where his fruit and flowers grew. The half-hour which ever since the first evening at Bramling she had intended to avoid was, after all, upon her.
"There is not very much to see now, Mrs. Rames," said the colonel, and without any change of voice he added, "I learnt just before the session ended that you had come from South America."
"From the Argentine," said Cynthia.
"But you are English-born, of course?"
"Oh, yes, of course," said Cynthia. "But I never came to England until five years ago. I was brought up partly in Buenos Ayres and partly on the Daventry estancia two hundred miles to the south-west of Buenos Ayres. My name was Cynthia Daventry."
Cynthia rattled off her story to spare herself his questions, and for a few minutes he walked by her side in silence. But he was not altogether to be deterred.
"I had a son in South America," he continued. "He went out under--rather unhappy circumstances. He took a young wife with him. She ran away to join him. They went to Chile. There a daughter was born--my granddaughter."
"On the other side of the Andes," said Cynthia.
"Yes," said Colonel Challoner. "You were never in Chile, I suppose?"
Cynthia answered without any hesitation and in a voice schooled perfectly to indifference.
"Oh, yes, once. I have seen Valparaiso."
Colonel Challoner was deceived by her indifference. To him, with the particular intention of his question filling his mind, it was as though she had said she had never been in Valparaiso at all.
"I knew nothing of what my boy was doing, Mrs. Rames," he continued, "nor that he had a daughter. He left England under a cloud. I gave him what money I could afford and--I had done with him. Perhaps I was harsh--I did not think that I was. But--well, it's not so easy to have done with people when they are your own flesh and blood, and after a time I began to make inquiries. I heard of the daughter then."
"Yes?" said Cynthia. She looked up into his face inquiringly. She had dreaded this half-hour of acting lest the changes of color in her face, and the unevenness of her voice, should betray her. Yet now that the half-hour was here she played her part with ease.
"I heard that Jim and his wife and his child had all perished in one of the earthquakes, eighteen years ago. And there was I, you see, alone again, but alone for life now."
"I am sorry," said Cynthia.
"But the news was wrong," the old man continued with a sudden violence. "My son--died," and he plainly substituted that verb for another, "only five years ago. I received a cutting from a newspaper. I sent out again at once to South America a man whom I could trust; and I discovered that Jim was not killed by the earthquake, nor was his daughter. He carried her up the valley toward the Andes--tramped away, since Valparaiso was ruined, with his daughter in his arms. He wouldn't leave her behind. No, he must have carried her across the Continent. There was good in Jim, after all, you see--only I, his father hadn't the sense to see it."
Colonel Challoner was not aware that it was just the weight of the little daughter in Jim's arms which had made his journey across the Andes possible and profitable. Cynthia left him all the comfort of his delusion, and all its remorse, since the remorse was so completely outweighed by the comfort.
"That's the last I have been able to find out," Colonel Challoner resumed. "They disappeared up into the mountains together, and years after Jim--died--in the Argentine. As for the daughter, I have come upon no trace of her. She may have lived. She may have died. Had she lived she would have been just about your age, Mrs. Rames."
"Indeed?"
"I suppose that you never heard of her?"
"What was her name?"
"Even that I can't tell you. There was a daughter. That's all I know."
Colonel Challoner waited with his eyes upon Cynthia's face. He longed, yet he hardly dared to hope for an answer. It would be such a wonderful thing for him if the girl facing him in his trim brick-walled garden had when a child eighteen years ago been carried in Jim's arms over the stupendous passes of the Andes. Surely if it were so, she must admit it now out of gratitude for Jim's devotion. But Cynthia made no reply and he moved slowly to the door of the garden and held it open for her to pass out. She went from Bramling with her secret still her own, though some remorse was now her penalty for keeping it. She could not quite get rid of the picture of the old man at the open door in the high red-brick wall waiting wistfully for an answer to a question which he could only suggest. But she had made her plan and with a certain stubbornness--almost a hardness which marked this phase of her life--she had abided by it. If Colonel Challoner had said clearly and formally that he made no claim upon her, that he did not ask her to take her place in the family of Challoners, then she would have acknowledged what he plainly suspected. But he had imposed upon himself no such condition. On the contrary she had been led to believe that he would claim her; and that was intolerable to her thoughts. She did not argue or reason; she recollected. And what she recollected was a night of horror when her father had claimed her for the ruin of her body and her soul. When she stepped into the train she made a silent vow that she would never come to Bramling again.
"It's a strange thing," said Harry Rames as they were travelling across the country, "that two strangers to Bramling, Devenish and myself, noticed your extraordinary likeness to that picture on the wall, and Challoner who has sat beneath it most nights of the week for years didn't. It had become so familiar to him, I suppose, that it had ceased to have definite features."
"That's how things happen," said Cynthia, and this time she uttered the phrase with relief. "When you know people very well, you cease to notice the changes, you lose count of how they look. But when we first met at Ludsey he did claim to recognize me, though he could not fix upon the place or time. I have no doubt it was because of that picture."
Harry Rames agreed. None of Colonel Challoner's suspicions had even occurred to him. He drifted off to the great subject.
"Devenish won't be idle, Cynthia," he said.
"No," answered Cynthia. "He gives me the impression that even on his death-bed he would be quick about it."
And on the Tuesday morning, the very day after they had reached home, theTimesbrought Harry Rames news which sent him out of his study in search of his wife.
"Look, Cynthia," he said and he handed to her the paper. Cynthia read the paragraph at which he pointed.
"Mr. Devenish returned to London on Sunday evening and putting off two deputations which had been arranged for Tuesday left London hurriedly on Monday afternoon to join the Prime-Minister in Scotland."
Cynthia laid down the paper with a genuine sense of consternation. She was astonished to realize how much she now longed for the success of Harry's rather dingy plot. Fear was written upon her face.
"That means--?" she said.
"That we must look out," replied Rames. He laughed a little as a man will when the joy of battle is upon him. "Lucky Devenish can't get at my constituency. I don't know that he would try to in any case. But he can't.
"You have Arthur Pynes with you."
"Yes. And I pledged myself before I was elected to resign at once if any responsible number of my supporters objected to any action I thought it my duty to take in the House. Do you see, Cynthia?" and he laughed again. "That pledge is my safeguard. I thought it would be when I made it. If any one tries to put pressure upon me, I can always point to that pledge. I can always ask whether they would like me to resign."
"Suppose they said yes," cried Cynthia in alarm.
Harry Rames grinned.
"I'd get in again if they did. I'd keep nine-tenths of my own people and get a good lot of the other fellow's because of my independence. But they won't! No one wants a by-election at Ludsey. Ludsey is too busy."
"I suppose that's true," said Cynthia with a smile of relief. Once more she had occasion to recognize the accuracy of her husband's foresight. But there was a little change. The recognition was no longer accompanied with regret that the foresight was not being used in a higher cause. She was simply relieved that on this side at all events the great career was not open to attack.
Rames took a turn across the room and stopped at the window.
"But I wonder what his next move will be," he said.
In a month he knew. The movement was swift and dramatic. Rames was summoned to London by a letter from the Prime-Minister. He travelled up from Ludsey in the morning; he reached home again in time for dinner.
"They are raising Lamson to the peerage," he said to Cynthia. "That means the Under Secretaryship of the Local Government Board will be vacant. It was offered to me."
Cynthia was radiant.
"That's splendid," she cried.
"I refused it," said Harry Rames.
Cynthia stared at him. Here was a definite step onward, a step refused.
"Why?" she asked in her perplexity.
"It would have meant the end of me, had I accepted it. It was offered to me to make an end of me, to break up the opposition to Devenish's bill, to show me a traitor to my friends, and an enemy who could be silenced by a bribe. If I had taken it, not merely the government, but the House, the whole House, would have despised me. I should have been done for. I should be an Under Secretary for a year, two years, three years--after that nothing and never anything so long as I lived. I refused it, Cynthia;" and he bent over the table toward her.
"You mustn't blame me. I am not failing you. I was thinking of you, my dear, when I refused office. An Under Secretaryship? You remember Challoner's question to Bradley? I should have failed you had I taken it."
Cynthia was almost conscious of disappointment. She liked definite things and here was a tangible sign of Harry Rames's advancement. But she received confirmation very soon that he had been right in refusing it.
It was at the reception at the Foreign Office in January which marked the beginning of the session. Mr. Devenish himself came up to her with a smile. For a moment Cynthia felt an awkwardness at meeting him, but he was quick to put her at her ease.
"Captain Rames did well to refuse office," he said. "I congratulate you, for I suppose that you had some share in the decision."
"No," she replied honestly. "To tell you the truth I was a trifle disappointed."
Mr. Devenish shook his head.
"His whole reputation was at stake. It's character which counts in the House of Commons. If he had taken that Under Secretaryship, he would have been pigeon-holed. We should have had the measure of him. We should not have troubled our heads about him again. For once, Mrs. Rames, you were wrong; he was right."
Cynthia looked at him, her great eyes full of a gentle reproach.
"Wasn't it a little unkind of you to offer it then. You are a friend of mine, aren't you, Mr. Devenish?"
There was no anger in her voice, only a wondering melancholy, a kind of piteous despair that she was living in so graceless a world. Mr. Devenish stared, then he smiled, and he looked at Cynthia with enjoyment.
"It wants a woman to use that argument, Mrs. Rames. No man alive would have the nerve. You are out for a fight with me. Yes, but I am a friend of yours, so I mustn't defend myself." He shook his head. "The House of Commons isn't a nursery, Mrs. Rames. You have got to stand by yourself if you're going to stand, neither being kind nor expecting kindness. Captain Rames stands--and he stands to fight me. Very well--but you can't expect me to prop him up."
"I quite understand," said Cynthia in her iciest manner. "I am not at all hurt or offended. You mustn't think that, Mr. Devenish," she bowed to him distantly and sailed off with great dignity. But she had humor enough to appreciate her discomfiture, and, even as she turned her back, her lips were twitching into a smile which she did not mean him to see. But ten minutes later in another of the rooms she came face to face with him again. He looked at her whimsically, and with a blush and a laugh she made friends with him again.
"Tell me," he said. "Your husband refused the post with decision after the merest pause for thought, though the offer surprised him. I know that. Was he troubled about his decision afterward?"
"Not at all," said Cynthia. "He slept perfectly; he ate his dinner with absolute contentment."
"Now I am afraid of him," said Mr. Devenish gravely, and he added a shrewd saying to explain his fear. "Here's the great difference which makes art and politics incompatible. The men who succeed in politics are the men who don't worry. The men who succeed in art are the men who do. Yes, I am afraid of him now, and if I hit hard, Mrs. Rames, bear me no grudge. I shall hit hard because I must."
Cynthia's heart warmed to him. She laughed joyously.
"I'll bear no grudge, Mr. Devenish."
"By the way, why isn't he here to-night? He ought to be."
"He was here," Cynthia replied. "But a telephone message was brought to him. Some one had called at our house who was urgent to see him. So he went home."
Mr. Devenish saw Cynthia into her carriage and she drove back to Curzon Street. The visitor was still with Harry Rames in his study when she reached home. As she went up to her room she heard his voice through the door, and once she waked up from her sleep and in the small hours she again heard his voice. He was in the hall taking his leave of Harry Rames. Cynthia switched on the light and looked at her watch. It was three o'clock in the morning. Drowsily she asked herself who this visitor could be, but she was asleep again almost before the question was formulated in her mind.