A long account of Hemming's expedition, sent by a New Zealand correspondent, appeared in one of the morning papers the next day. Hemming had travelled a couple of hundred miles further south than Harry Rames. Then he had been compelled to return. But it was Harry Rames who had made it possible for him to get so far. For he used Rames's depots of provisions and was able to save his own for the stretch of new ice-covered country.
Harry lighted upon the account unexpectedly when he opened his newspaper at the breakfast table, but the moment he saw the head-line he folded the sheets quickly again and pushed the paper away from him. He shrank from reading it, hardly daring to trust himself, and he began to talk over with Cynthia the names of suitable candidates for the Hickleton Division.
"The Whips, of course, will have a man ready who will be pledged to swallow the whole of the Government policy, land bill and all. We must be beforehand with them. What do you say to young Burrell, Cynthia?"
"Sir James Burrell's son?"
"Yes. His father is anxious that he should do something," said Harry with a laugh.
"But isn't he rather young and rather insignificant?" asked Cynthia.
"Youth's a good quality in the House of Commons. The older men become suspicious of change and want life stereotyped as it is. And young Burrell isn't without brains. I don't say that he's a flyer, but then, like the Government, I prefer docility to brains in my followers. I think that I will run round to Sir James when we go back to town on Monday."
But though Harry Rames neglected his newspaper at the breakfast table, he came back for it at eleven in the morning. He could keep the drawer in his bureau locked upon his charts, but he could not quench his fever to read the details of Hemming's expedition. For an hour he tried to occupy himself with the business of Cynthia's estate, and then he gave up the attempt. When and how Hemming failed, how far he had travelled with his sledges, what new lessons were to be learnt from his experience--here were questions which he could not silence. He got the paper and read the account through. "The dogs gave out," he said to Cynthia. "The dogs are the trouble. You can't carry enough food for them and for the sledging-party as well. Of course, it's bad luck on Hemming. But I doubt if he followed the highest traditions of British exploration."
"Why?" asked Cynthia.
"He should have chosen a different base, converged upon the Pole from a different angle, and covered ground altogether new. Then, whether he failed or not, he would have brought back a hundred new facts of interest to the scientist and the geographer. As it is he adds very little I should think to our knowledge."
Cynthia was silent for awhile after he had finished. Then she said in a low voice, bending over some embroidery at which she was working:
"And if you were to go back, Harry, where would you make your base?"
"I?"
Harry Rames sprang eagerly up.
"Oh, I should search for a harbor a long way to the east of my old one. At least," and he caught himself up, "I think that is what I should do. I am speaking at random, of course. But I should at all events have considered that possibility carefully, if I had been going out again."
Again a spell of silence followed upon his words and Cynthia did not raise her eyes from her work. She was wearing a hat with a wide brim and Harry Rames could see nothing of her face.
"Won't you get your charts out and show me?" she asked. She had mastered her voice so that there was no sound of effort in it.
"I haven't got them here," said Harry, with a fine indifference. "They are in London I believe, somewhere or other."
Cynthia's needle stopped.
"In London," she said. An idea had occurred to her. "Locked up?"
"Very likely. I may have locked them up. I have done with them altogether, you see."
"Of course," said Cynthia.
This time it was Harry who did not at once reply. The finality of that "of course" brought a flush of anger into his face. He almost blamed her for her blindness, though all his efforts aimed at keeping her blind.
"I will ride into Hickleton this afternoon," he said, "and make sure that the chairman of our association has no pet candidate of his own."
"That will be a good plan," said Cynthia; and with a glance at the crown of that broad hat and a surprise at the obtuseness of the head which it so effectually concealed, he went out of the room. Not until the door was closed did Cynthia lift her face from her work. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she let her hands lie idle on her lap while the tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks. She was not much given to tears, but to-day they had their way with her. She was wretched. Their marriage had been a mistake. From first to last Mr. Benoliel had been right, but she would not listen to him and be warned. Even this afternoon he had accused her--for so she now looked upon his words--with his pitiless truths. It was true that Harry was discouraged, that his face had grown thin and worn, that despite the brave show which he was making, he was utterly unhappy. Harry's words, "The men who go South are driven on by a torment of their souls," lived with her night and day. They were written in fire upon every wall of her house. In that torment Harry Rames was now tossing and must toss, enduring the anguish of his longing silently--just as silently as she herself was weeping in the empty room.
She was afraid of herself and dissatisfied with herself. Afraid, because she had been perilously near to one wild outcry, "Since your heart is set on it, go!" Dissatisfied, because she had stifled the words before they were spoken, because she could not bring herself to speak them, and never would.
From that day a change came over her. She flung herself with a veritable fever of energy upon those opportunities which enable a woman to identify herself with politics. The work she had undertaken in Ludsey, she undertook in London on a wider scale, and with infinitely greater effort. She was elected upon the central committees of the various women's associations connected with her husband's party; she travelled far and wide throughout the country on the business of organizations; she made speeches; she sought the presence of Cabinet Ministers at her dinner-table; she lost her color, her buoyancy. What she did was done doggedly. To go to bed each night tired out, that was her ambition.
"If Harry wears himself out, why should not I?" she said when any of her friends remonstrated with her, but not one of them was allowed to guess that the secret of all her energy was remorse. She was seeking her rest in fatigue. For her remorse grew. Night after night Harry sat faithfully, as he had promised to Hamlin, in his seat on the front bench below the gangway. He took his part in the debates, he recovered the ground which he had lost. He was once more a man marked for high office. But it was all labor now, and unloved labor. And the strain of it was visible. He went out and in without that happy mien of confidence which once Cynthia had been wont to resent, but for which she vainly hungered now.
There was one Friday evening toward the end of June when she was impelled to approach the dangerous subject of her own accord. She and Harry had been dining with the Prime-Minister in Downing Street. All that week the House had been sitting into the small hours. The Prime-Minister himself had taken her aside and given her a warning. They returned home soon after eleven, and as they sat over a final cigarette in Harry's study, Cynthia could not shut her eyes to his restlessness, the nervous flickering of his fingers, the unsteady intonations of his voice.
"Aren't you doing too much, Harry?" she asked.
"Not more than you, Cynthia," he replied as he poured himself out a whiskey and soda.
"Much more. And women who are doing what they want to do can stand a great deal more than men who are not."
Harry looked across at her quickly.
"But, of course, I am doing just what I have always planned to do, just what you are helping me to do--just what I sought your help to enable me to do."
"Sure?"
"Of course."
Cynthia had crossed the room to his side and was standing with a hand upon his shoulder. She was in a mood of indecision and the touch of her hand revealed her mood to Rames. A change came over him. She felt a tremor of his body, a sudden quickening of the muscles beneath her hand. He became intensely expectant. She could read the question in his mind. Was she by some wonderful inspiration going to release him from the torment of his soul? But the mere sensation of his movement was enough for Cynthia. She withdrew her hand. She repeated unconsciously words which he had once used to her.
"After all we get some fun out of it, don't we, Harry?" she said; and Harry rose quickly from his chair.
"We get much more out of it, Cynthia," he said with a face which had suddenly grown very grave and tender; and the next moment she was in his arms, held there tightly, clasped against him. Cynthia was carried out of herself. She was swept away unexpectedly upon a swirl of passion.
"Harry! Oh, Harry!" she whispered in a low voice of happiness. His right hand touched and stroked her hair. Then he tilted her chin backward and he looked into her eyes and a smile transfigured his face.
"Oh, much more, Cynthia," he cried, and he bent his head and kissed her. He put her away from him and looked her over from her delicate feet to the fair crown of her hair. She wore a satin gown of white with her diamonds in her hair, and a rope of pearls about her neck.
"There! That's that!" he said, and Cynthia with a laugh and the blush of a girl answered, "Thank you." Harry Rames lit a cigarette and Cynthia's eyes followed each movement and followed it with incredulity. The change so ardently longed for by her had come then? He loved--he actually loved!
"Since when?" she asked gently.
"Do you remember one evening when you stood there by the door, very wistful, and told me something about yourself which I did not know?"
"Yes, I remember. I was unwise."
"You were not. For it began then."
"Really?"
She went up to him, and he caught her hand in his and held it tightly clasped.
"I looked at you to-night as we sat at dinner. There was no one but you at the dinner-table. How on earth you could have brought yourself to marry me, I can't think."
"I told you," said Cynthia, "I was afraid," and there was a note of exultation in the confession as though now at last she was freed from fear. Harry Rames lifted her suddenly from the ground and held her close to him. She hung inert in his arms.
"That's over," he said.
"Quite."
"I love you, Cynthia."
Cynthia threw her head back and closed her eyes, giving to him her face, her throat.
"I wanted to hear you say that," she whispered. He carried her over to the sofa and laid her down.
For a week or two after that evening Cynthia walked in a dream. The great trouble which had weighed upon her thoughts incessantly was altogether gone. Mr. Benoliel had been right in his conjectures. He must still be right, she reasoned. He had foreseen the trouble accurately. "You will be living with your enemy or living quite alone." But he had added a saving clause. If on both sides there was love, then salvation would be found. Cynthia did not enquire very deeply into Mr. Benoliel's meaning. The salvation would come automatically, following upon love. She was content to think that and she walked in a world of roses as in the days of her girlhood in the estancia before James Challoner had come to claim her.
But after a fortnight she waked from her dream. Life was different: it was intensified. There was a little more sunlight on a sunny day, a little more sparkle in the summer, one walked to music. But the trouble was not gone, in spite of the fact that on both sides there was love. For with love, contentment had not come to Harry Rames. He watched himself, but she watched him closer and she knew. His sleep grew disturbed. The torment of his soul was not appeased. Daily he became more and more the convict at the oar. There grew up between them a loving enmity.
A morning came in the middle of July when to Cynthia the strain became intolerable. She was riding under the trees in the Row. It was not yet half-past nine and the air was still fresh with the dews of the night. A light haze hung near to the ground, the sunlight touched the green alleys of trees to gold, and far off across the Park soldiers were marching to the drums and fifes. She had reached the cross-road which leads to the Albert Gate when an impulse seized her. Mr. Brook was riding at her side, dilating enthusiastically on the importance of their group in the House of Commons, while Cynthia from time to time said mechanically "yes," and again "yes," and wished with her whole heart that all the bores in London would not take their exercise at half-past nine in the morning. Mr. Brook was in full swing when Cynthia abruptly reined in her horse.
"Good-by," she said, "I am afraid I have something I must do," and to Mr. Brook's astonishment she turned and cantered quickly back to Hyde Park Corner. Thence she rode to Grosvenor Square, gave her horse to her groom, and burst into Mr. Benoliel's dining-room where he sat breakfasting delicately amidst his silver and flowers. She waved the butler from the room and sat down at the table at right-angles to Mr. Benoliel.
"I am very unhappy," she said. "I was riding in the Park. It seemed ridiculous to be unhappy on a day like this. Yet I am. So I put my pride in my pocket."
She spoke with a kind of petulance, like one aggrieved and surprised at the contrariness of things. But Mr. Benoliel recognized that her distress was very real. His face clouded over; he laid his hand upon her arm.
"Have some breakfast, Cynthia."
"Food!" cried Cynthia in contempt. Then she changed her tone. "Well, I haven't had any breakfast. Perhaps--yes."
She was a girl with a healthy appetite and very unhappily she ate a big breakfast.
"Now light a cigarette and tell me about it."
He pushed over a silver box lined with cedar wood from which Cynthia took a cigarette. She tapped the end upon the table and lighted it. Mr. Benoliel's cigarettes were famous for their freshness and the delicacy of their aroma. Cynthia inhaled the tobacco and was a little comforted.
"No," she said. "I can't tell you all about it. I just want to ask you a question."
"Yes?"
"You remember the warning you gave me at Culver when you didn't know that I was married?"
"Quite well," said Mr. Benoliel regretfully. "It came too late."
"I am glad that it came too late," Cynthia observed quietly. "For I might have taken it."
Mr. Benoliel looked perplexed.
"Yet you are unhappy, Cynthia?"
"Very. None the less I wouldn't go back. But I don't want you to ask me questions. I will tell you at once that you were right--quite right up to a point. And the happiness both of Harry and myself depends upon your being right all through."
Mr. Benoliel's eyes flashed into life.
"There is a chance then?"
"Oh yes! If you are right."
"Let me hear!"
Cynthia put her question.
"What did you exactly mean when you said that even if the change you feared should come and some latent ambition should spring to life and snatch him back, separation need not follow, provided that on both sides there was love?"
A gravity overspread Benoliel's face.
"I meant, my dear, that sooner or later," he said gently, "after much tribulation, much revolt, one of the two will make the necessary sacrifice, and will make it whole-heartedly."
Cynthia was silent for a little while.
"Yes," she said at last in a low voice. "Of late I have begun to think that that is what you meant."
She dropped her cigarette upon a plate and rose. "Thank you, Mr. Benoliel," she said, and she walked with a trailing step to the door. At the door she paused.
"And is it always the woman who must make the sacrifice?" she asked; and Mr. Benoliel lost in a moment all that second-hand aspect of the dilettante which habitually cloaked him.
"Always," he said, with a ringing gravity of voice. "That is the law of the world, and neither man nor woman shall change it."
Cynthia opened the door and went out.
Yet that August when Parliament had risen, Harry Rames and Cynthia were cruising in the Solent and no word had been spoken by her to remedy their trouble. It was Cynthia who had proposed this holiday and Harry had fallen in with her plan eagerly. They had chartered a small steam yacht of a hundred tons. Rames navigated the boat himself and slipping their moorings one afternoon, they left Cowes behind them and steamed away through the north channel of the Shingles to Poole. Cynthia had ceased to wrestle with herself. She was content to lie in her deck chair and put into and out of the harbors of the West.
"This shall be the perfect holiday," she had said. "Whatever the future may hold for us, we will have this month together without visitors, without any shadows."
They were tossed in Portland race; they steamed across the West Bay over a sea smooth and bright as a steel mirror. They dropped their anchor at Dartmouth. They rounded the Start on the next day and crossed the Bar of Salcombe harbor under the shadow of Bolt Head on just such an evening of sunset as that which the poet fixed in a few lines of deathless verse. Cynthia stood with her arm through Harry's, as very slowly with the lead going in the bows he set the boat over the shallows.
"Sunset and evening star," Cynthia quoted.
"And one clear call for me," Harry Rames continued and abruptly broke off like a guilty person who has spoken without thought. Cynthia walked to the end of the bridge. After all, this cruise had made a difference to Harry. She consoled herself by the reflection. He had recovered something of his buoyancy of spirits since he had trodden the planks of this little yacht and looked down from its flimsy bridge onto its narrow deck and tapering bow. He was interested in the boat, quick to induce her to give him of her best, and her brass shone like a woman's ornaments. They put out from Salcombe the next day, and keeping clear of Plymouth and Polperro and Fowey, heard the bell upon the Manacles in the afternoon and dropped anchor between the woods of Helford River. They stayed there for a day and made a passage thence to Guernsey on a night of moonlight. Cynthia sat late upon the bridge while Rames in his great-coat kept the boat upon her course. Toward morning he came to her side and stooped over her.
"I thought you were asleep."
"No."
"Aren't you tired?"
"No."
"You were lying so still."
"Yes," said Cynthia. "I am storing this night up."
The swish and sparkle of the water along the boat's sides, the rattle of the chain as the helmsman spun the wheel, the quiet orders of her husband, the infinite peace of sky and sea, and the yacht like a jewel hung between them, were indeed to dwell long in Cynthia's memories. For their holiday was at an end. A sailor was sent ashore at Guernsey for the ship's letters and he brought them on board whilst Harry and Cynthia were at breakfast in the deck cabin. There was one for Rames with the Hickleton postmark stamped upon the envelope. Harry tore it open reluctantly.
"Carberley has resigned," he said. "There will be a meeting of the executive on Friday night to adopt young Burrell."
Cynthia looked out across the harbor.
"We ought to go back, oughtn't we?" she said slowly.
Harry glanced at his letter.
"It is not expected that the election will take place for five weeks," he answered.
Cynthia shook her head.
"We shall want all that time, Harry." Then she cried with a sudden vehemence. "You have got to win this fight, Harry. So much hangs on it for you and me."
"I know, Cynthia," he answered.
"More than you know."
Harry rose from his chair.
"I'll give orders. We will steam back to Southampton at once. But it's a pity, isn't it? Old Carberley might have waited for another month. I am sorry."
"So am I," said Cynthia. Her eyes had wandered from him and were once more fixed upon the shipping in the harbor. Her face had grown white. "More sorry than you can know."
A little white dinghy, gay with a sailor in a white jersey and a red cap, was just leaving the side of a big yacht moored across the water. The picture of that little boat was fixed for life in Cynthia's recollections. It had nothing to do with her, she never knew who sailed in the yacht, or on what business the boat put off to shore. But the picture of it was vivid to her long after important memories had grown altogether dim.
The fight for the Hickleton Division was memorable in the political history of that year. From first to last it was Rames's fight. The candidate was young, and a halting speaker, and unknown to the constituency. But he lived in Rames's house and when he appeared upon a platform he appeared with Rames at his side. When he spoke he uttered the words which Rames had prepared, and when he had finished Rames was on his legs to fill up the deficiencies and whip the assembly to a fire of enthusiasm. From the great guns of his own party no assistance came. Indeed, most of them would have been well pleased had the seat not been won. For in the forefront of his programme Mr. William Burrell put hostility to the land bill. The two men left the white house early in the morning to return there late at night. For five weeks the lights of Rames's motor flashed on the hedges of the country roads in Warwickshire, and the constituency was won. The result was declared at noon, and half an hour later Mr. William Burrell, M.P., a slim, fair young gentleman with a small gift of flippancy, made his one memorable speech in the big room of the club.
"Gentlemen," he said, "the British public, as a whole, is indifferent to politics. It wakes up to be sure at the time of an election. But if I were asked to define politics in relation to the British public I should define it as a spasm of pain recurring once in every four or five years. What, then, is it which arouses the enthusiasm of which I am a witness? What is it which achieves these triumphs? Need I say? It is personality. Character--that's what you want in public life--and now, gentlemen, you have got it."
The speech was received with a very tornado of laughter. Rames turned to his wife who sat by him on the little raised platform at the end of the room.
"I told you he wasn't a fool," he said, and Mr. Arnall, who had come over from Ludsey, cried out with a chuckle of delight that he had now a companion speech to match the famous one of Taylor the democrat.
"You won't go back to London until to-morrow, will you?" said Rames to young Burrell. "It's best not to hurry away the moment you've won the seat."
They returned accordingly to the white house, and when the two men were left by Cynthia to their wine after dinner, Rames turned inquisitively to his guest.
"I have noticed a change in you, Burrell, during these five weeks. You came into the contest as though it was a joke, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did," said Burrell, blushing.
"And though you laughed at it again to-day, as a matter of fact it ceased to be a joke very quickly."
Burrell agreed. "Very quickly."
Rames fetched a box of cigars from the sideboard.
"Now light a cigar," he said, "and tell me just as clearly as you can what brought about the change, and what this election really means to you."
Mr. William Burrell, M.P., shied at the proposal.
"Oh, I say, Rames," he began, but Rames cut him short.
"I really want to hear," he said earnestly. "I ask for a particular reason."
Burrell lit his cigar. The contest had impressed him deeply. But like most men he was shy of revealing any strength of feeling. The eager eyes of Rames, however, kept him to his task. He looked back over the five weeks, gathering up his little sheaf of recollections.
"What remains in my mind," he said with hesitation, "is not the excitement, nor the applause, is not the difficulty of making speeches about subjects with which one is not half acquainted, nor the fear of being asked questions for which one has no reply ready, but something quite different. It is the memory of little bare raftered school-rooms, hot with gas-light, crowded with white faces, faces so hopeful, so--intolerably hopeful--the faces of people who look confidently to candidates and Parliaments for so much more than it seems to me Parliaments and candidates can ever do."
"Ah!" said Rames curiously. "You felt that too. I remember that I did."
Burrell leaned forward.
"Did you too, though you shouted yourself hoarse with the rest, feel a little ashamed?"
Rames reflected. "No," he said; "never." Then he added with a smile, "but I think I should now."
"I did," said Burrell. "There were times when I wanted to stop my speech in the middle and cry out, 'Don't look at me with such high hopes. It's no use! It's no use!' But I held my tongue. For there's always the little that governments can do. That's the consolation, isn't it?" Burrell was finding it easier to speak out his thoughts now. The false shame with which he had begun had quite left him. His words tumbled out hot from his soul. The strangely curious, almost envious, look with which Harry Rames, his tutor and leader, waited upon him encouraged and urged him on.
"The fight, the excitement, the victory--oh yes, they are worth having, even though one owes them to another, just as I owe them, Captain Rames, to you. But now, after the victory, there's still the little which can be done; and there's still the memory of the raftered school-rooms, the hot gas-light, and the rows of eager, hopeful, pallid faces to help one on to do it."
He stopped and leaned back in his chair. The shame of a young man who has let his tongue wag before his elders and masters seized hold upon him.
"But why did you lead me on to talk this sort of blatter to you?" he asked in an aggrieved voice. "All that I have just learnt you knew long since."
Harry Rames shook his head.
"Your opposition to Devenish's land bill shows it," Burrell insisted. "Oh, we'll have a real policy of land reform, not an act of revenge."
Harry Rames leaned across the corner of the table toward young Burrell. To the youth's eyes he looked at this moment extraordinarily haggard and old.
"I'll tell you, Burrell, why I asked my question. I wanted to recapture from you if I could something of a man's enthusiasm at his first political victory."
Burrell looked at his leader with astonishment. Of the man of fire who had blazed through the constituency from corner to corner with clear ringing phrases and an inexhaustible good-humor there was now nothing left. He was burnt out. He sat with brooding eyes and a white face all fallen into despair. The tale of his years was suddenly written large upon him. Burrell had wit enough to understand that fatigue did not explain the change. A mask was withdrawn; he saw misery like a cancer. Rames sat and betrayed himself like a man in his cups.
"You tell me you felt ashamed in the school-rooms. I never knew anything of such shame. To win, to win, to win! That was all I thought about. That was all the desire I felt. That was what I hoped you would help me to recapture to-night. But you haven't helped."
Rames's eyes dwelt angrily upon his colleague.
"No. You have made me feel ashamed too." Then his face relaxed and he added in a friendlier voice: "I believe that I have helped you--really helped you. Oh, not to win a seat in the House of Commons. That's nothing to be so proud about. But to find your vocation."
"Where you have found yours," said Burrell firmly.
"Not a bit of it," said Rames, and then he woke from his moodiness to a savage outburst of contempt. "Oh, I am going on with it. Don't be alarmed, Burrell. I'll lead you. We'll put up a fight. We'll make the fur fly. Very possibly we'll pull the whole Government down with a run. But--" and drawing his chair nearer to the youth he changed his tone. "I'll tell you the truth about the House of Commons. It's the place where the second-rate gets the finest show in the world. In no walk of life does second-rate intellect reap so high a reward or meet with such great esteem. But it won't lift you to the very top. Nor will first-rate intellect either. Remember that!"
"What will then?" asked Burrell in perplexity, and Harry Rames shrugged his shoulders.
"The little bit extra. Character, perseverance! I don't know. Something anyway. It's the same everywhere now. There are too many clever people about. Faith in a cause, I think will do it. That's why the sentimentalists do so much harm in public affairs. They get their way, because they believe. They are not playing the political game. Cleverness is twelve for a penny nowadays. To get up to the top you must have the little bit extra. Now in the sphere of politics I haven't got it. I don't say office is out of my reach. It isn't. I have been offered it. I have refused it. But I haven't got the little bit extra. Outside politics--in quite another sphere--I believe I have. But that's all done with. I was warned when I went into politics--warned by a shrewd, wise man. But I wouldn't listen, and so some day amongst the second-rate Right Honorables half a dozen lines will announce my death in theTimes."
Young Burrell had no great experience of the intenser emotions, and the bitterness with which Rames spoke appalled him. He saw a man in torture, and he listened to a cry of pain grown intolerable. Then in a second all was changed again. Rames was on his feet replacing the stoppers in the decanters, taking the shades from off the candles, performing the little conventional acts of a host in his dining-room. The chasm in the ordinary level surface of things which had yawned for a moment and given Burrell a glimpse of the pit where misery gnawed had closed up.
"We will join my wife," said Rames. He stopped at the door.
"Were you ever at Toulon?"
"No."
"There's a statue on the quay there, at the water's edge, overlooking the harbor. A great bronze figure, extraordinarily alert, with a light upon its forehead, the Genius of the Sea. And on the open pages of a bronze book in the front of the pedestal, the names of the great sailors are engraved. Cook and the rest of them. The list ends with D'Urville, I remember. I only saw the statue once. My father showed it to me when I was a boy. I don't suppose that I have ever thought of it until to-day." He repeated softly as though speaking to himself:
"Yes the list ends with D'Urville." Then he roused himself. "Bring your cigar in. Cynthia doesn't mind. By the way," and a smile of tenderness transfigured his face, "not a word of this to her. She thinks I am going to be a great man. She's wrong, but I don't want her to know before she needs must." Burrell consented at once. He followed Rames from the room with all joy in his victory quite overcast. He looked beyond the surprising revelations of his host and obtained a glimpse into a new side of life. He was the spectator of one of the grim comedies of marriage. Here was the wife--so it seemed to him--believing joyfully in the great destiny of her husband; and the husband laboring in torment to sustain her belief, while all the while he knew that his destiny was thwarted and that the true current of his life ran through other fields.
They went along the passage into the drawing-room. It was a warm night of September and the windows stood open upon the garden. Cynthia was not in the room. Harry stepped out onto the lawn. The night was dark and he could see no one. But the light in the drawing-room had revealed him as he stepped out, and whilst he was standing peering into the darkness Cynthia came softly over the grass to his side.
"You'll catch cold," he said. "The dew's heavy."
Cynthia took his arm. "Hush," she said. "Listen!" and through the still air the chimes of the great clock in Ludsey steeple floated with a silvery and melodious sound to their ears. A tune was struck out by the bells, then another.
"I heard that," said Cynthia in a whisper, "on the night my father died. I was sitting alone with him in the darkness while his life drifted away. It was winter."
Harry put his arm about her and pressed her to his side.
"I heard them again," she continued, "one night when I was waiting for you to telephone to me, Harry. Do you remember?"
"Yes."
"I waited a long time for you that night, Harry," and there was a catch in her voice. "Ludsey chimes have meant very much to us. Let us hear them out!"
They stood together in the darkness until the last distant note had died away. It seemed to Rames that Cynthia listened as though she were taking a farewell of them.
Harry Rames and Cynthia travelled up to London the next day. Cynthia was restless and excited.
"Let us dine at a restaurant and go to a theatre, Harry," she said. "I can't sit still and stay at home to-night."
"Very well. What shall we go and see?"
"Oh, something with bright colors and movement and music."
But there ran through the piece she chose a melody of a haunting wistfulness and Harry Rames, happening to glance at his wife in the darkness of the auditorium, saw that the tears were raining silently down her cheeks.
"What's the matter, Cynthia?" he asked in a whisper.
Cynthia smiled at him through her tears and laid a hand upon his arm.
"Hush!" she answered. "It's all right, Harry."
As the curtain descended at the end of the act she said, "Let us go now quickly, do you mind? Before the lights are turned up."
They were, fortunately, near to the end of their row of stalls, and they were able to slip out while the curtain was still ascending and descending upon the lighted stage, and the auditorium still dark. Rames left Cynthia in the lobby while he went in search of his carriage. When he returned he found her standing with her face carefully turned to the wall in front of a commonplace engraving, which seemed to be demanding from her the most meticulous study.
"Have you found it?" she asked, and she hurried with him across the pavement. "Let us go home, Harry. It was nothing except nerves. I was stupid. We have been doing a good deal lately, haven't we?"
"That's all right, Cynthia. You poor little girl," said Rames as he crossed her cloak over her throat. He knew her too well to make the mistake of plying her with questions, and they drove to their home in silence.
"You had better go to bed, Cynthia," he said. "I'll send your maid to you."
"No. I am all right now," she answered. "I have something to say, Harry."
She went forward to his study--that room with the mahogany panels where both had faced the hardest crises of their lives, had known the worst of their sorrows, the sweetest of their joys. Harry followed her, turned on the lights, and closed the door. Cynthia was already standing by the fireplace with a foot upon the fender; and she shivered as though she were cold.
"Yes, it's chilly," said Rames. "Ill light the fire."
He struck a match and set light to the paper. The wood crackled, the flames spurted up. Cynthia threw off her cloak and, crouching before the fire, warmed herself. Harry Rames drew up an arm-chair for her.
"Won't you sit here, Cynthia, and be comfortable?" he asked, and his voice seemed to rouse her from a gloomy contemplation. She stood up and walked over to his bureau.
Harry's eyes followed her movements closely. With a growing consternation he saw her grasp the handles of a locked drawer and try to open it.
"What do you keep in here, Harry?" she asked.
"Oh, some old forgotten things."
"Your charts?"
"My word, yes. I believe they are there," he said with an air of surprise.
"Will you show them to me?" Cynthia asked. "I should like to see them."
"I don't know where the key is. It's lost."
"Are you sure?"
"For all the chance I have of finding it, dear, it might just as well be at the bottom of the Serpentine."
Harry had not moved away from the fireplace. Cynthia, her back toward him, had been playing with the brass handles of the locked drawer. Now she swung round suddenly. Often she had wondered what errand had taken him from the house at one o'clock of the morning after she had revealed her heart to him in this very room. Now she guessed the truth. It was on that night that he had begun to build up his dykes against the encroachments of his longings. She faced him; her eyes burned steadily upon his face, thoughtful, but betraying nothing of her thoughts.
"Yes," she said, "I suppose it might as well be in the Serpentine." She turned again to the drawer.
"A knife will open it easily, Harry."
Harry Rames moved uncomfortably.
"It had better be left alone, Cynthia," he said. But she insisted and, opening a blade of his knife, he went reluctantly across the room to her side.
"It is your wish, Cynthia. You will remember that?" he said gravely. "For myself I would much rather that it should never be unlocked until both of us are dead."
Cynthia showed no surprise at the gravity of his voice. But now she too paused. "There is still time," she was saying to herself in feverish trouble of mind, though her face was calm. "There is still time. He is giving me my chance--my last chance." Her eyelids were lowered over her eyes and she glanced at him under the thick lashes.
"You are afraid to open it, Harry?"
"Yes, I am afraid."
It was not merely the outrush of old and overwhelming memories which he dreaded. But that locked drawer had become to him a symbol of his own self-mastery. So long as it remained locked, and no longer, he would dominate his torments and be the captain of his soul. For so long he would keep locked a frail door against his yearnings. Cynthia, in a voice so faltering and low that it was hardly audible, said:
"Still I should like it opened."
"Very well."
She stood with her fingers clenched upon her palms whilst Harry inserted the blade of his knife in the chink of the drawer, ran it along until it touched the lock, and then forced apart the fastenings. There was a crack as of splintering wood. Harry Rames replaced his knife in his pocket, pulled out the drawer, and carried it over to his writing-table.
"There it is," he said, moving away from it to the fireplace. Cynthia bent over the drawer and turned on the light of a reading lamp which stood upon the table.
"This is your own chart upon the top, Harry?"
"Yes. It is the last one, you see. Hemming may be bringing back another."
"Will you show me exactly the point you reached?"
It seemed to Harry as if she was bent on trying him to the last point of endurance.
"It is marked there quite plainly, Cynthia," he said.
Cynthia leaned over the drawer--for a long time. Harry Rames was quite surprised at the closeness of her scrutiny. It was so long since she had shown any interest in his journey or indeed in anything except his political career. As a matter of fact, Cynthia saw of that map nothing but a blur: for her eyes were dim with tears, and she bent so low over its configurations simply because in that attitude her face was hidden.
She moved.
"What is this?"
She took up a brown package, tied up with string, which lay in a corner of the drawer.
"I don't know," said Rames with a puzzled face. "I have forgotten."
"May I open it?"
"Of course."
Cynthia cut the string and, one after another, perhaps a score of brown telegraph envelopes slipped out in a cascade and fell upon the table in front of her.
"Telegrams," she said curiously. "Unopened, too! Oh, Harry!" this with a mocking laugh of reproach. Then she looked at the address of one of the telegrams. It ran: