LUNGATINE
The threatened dissolution was, after all, postponed, and through the
autumn months Captain Rames went busily up and down between London and
Ludsey. He made his head-quarters at an hotel on a climbing street in
the thick of the town, and spent his days in the public view and his
nights at meetings and at local festivities.
Cynthia Daventry, five miles away, heard stories of his indefatigable
energy and once or twice she met him in the streets; and once or twice
he snatched an afternoon and swept over in a motor-car to see her. She
welcomed him with a pleasure which she rather resented, and not for
worlds would she have asked him how his campaign was faring. She did
not, however, have to ask. For either Diana Royle was present and
eagerly questioned him, or if Cynthia were alone he plunged into the
subject himself. Captain Rames was at some pains to amuse her and he
succeeded. Little incidents of the campaign, whether they told against
himself or not; sketches of queer characters whom he came across; an
anecdote now and then, drawn from the ancient history of the City--he
poured them out to her, making it quite clear with an apparently
ingenuous frankness that he had deliberately stored them in his memory
purely for her amusement. He was engaged in the work of soothing her
down. Diana Royle would rhapsodize after he had whirled away in a
cloud of dust.
"What a wonderful man! How energetic! How clever!"
"And how complacent!" said Cynthia.
"What high principle!" Diana gushed lyrically. "What character!"
"And what cunning!" added Cynthia, with a droop of her lips.
Diana tapped the floor with an irritable foot.
"Very well, darling. Look for an angel, by all means. You will be very
glad of a man later on." Then she laughed pleasantly. "But I am not
deceived. You talk lightly of him when he is gone, but when he is here
you fix your big eyes on him, and, though you say nothing, every
movement of you asks for more."
Cynthia was startled.
"Well, perhaps I do," she admitted. "I suppose that I have a kind of
hope that I will hear, not more, but something different from what I
am hearing."
"That's so like you, my dear," Diana rejoined; she was all sugar and
vinegar. "If Julius Caesar came back to earth, you would want him
different. But that's the way with romantic people. They look for
heroes all day and never see them when they knock at the front door."
Cynthia laughed good-humoredly. There was this much of truth in Diana
Royle's attack. She had been searching through the words of Harry
Rames all the while when he was uttering them for a glimpse of some
other being beside the man on the make. Certain qualities she
recognized. Enthusiasm, for instance. But it was enthusiasm for the
arena, not for any cause to be won there. A shrewd foresight again was
evident. But it was foresight to pluck the personal advantage. Here,
it seemed to her, was the conscience of the country stirring on all
sides to the recognition of great and unnecessary evils in its midst,
and Harry Rames was alone unaffected. Yet in a measure she was
impressed. He had so closely laid his plans. He gave her yet more
evidence when he came again.
"I have got a rule or two," he said. "All demands for pledges from
leagues and associations go into the waste-paper basket. I'll answer
questions if they are asked me by a man in my constituency. I won't
put my name to a general proposition and post it to London. Many a
good man has been let down that way. Then I won't canvass. I won't
solicit a vote. I don't believe in it. There's one only point of view
for a candidate: that the electors are doing themselves a service by
electing him, and not doing him one. You have got to persuade them of
that."
"Don't you find it difficult?" asked Cynthia, innocently.
Rames laughed.
"Yes, I do," he said. "The electors have their point of view, too. But
I won't canvass, I am there at my hotel if any one wants to see me. I
am at public meetings, and I go to social functions. That's a good
move," and Captain Rames nodded his head. "You meet the fellows on the
other side and if you can get them friendly, you stop them coming out
hot against you. Makes a lot of difference, that. Then there's wisdom
in taking a firm stand upon a point or so. Your own people, treat them
properly, will always give you a bit of latitude, and a reputation for
courage is a fine asset in politics as in anything else."
"But you mustn't overdo it, I suppose," said Cynthia ironically.
"Oh, no, you must be careful about that," replied Rames seriously.
"What you want to produce is an impression that you are not pliable,
that industries will be safe under your watch--that's for the business
men--and that social advancement will not be neglected--that's for the
artisans. You know the election is coming now," he suddenly exclaimed.
"Do come to one of my meetings!"
Cynthia looked doubtful.
"I don't think," she said, "that I believe very much in any work
which--I don't express what I mean very well--which hasn't a great
dream at the heart of it."
Rames looked up into her face quickly and grew suddenly serious. He
made no comment upon her words, however.
"After all that's no reason why you shouldn't come to one of my
meetings."
Cynthia smiled.
"I will come to the last one on the night before the poll," she
replied reluctantly.
"I shall hold you to it," said Harry Rames, and he went away well
pleased with his visit. Cynthia was popular in Ludsey. So Cynthia
should sit on that momentous evening in the front row upon the
platform. Also he would make for her benefit an unusually effective
speech. Cynthia from the window watched his motor-car spin away in a
whirl of dust. He was going to preside that evening at a meeting of
the Salvation Army.
The dissolution took place on the fifteenth of January. But the real
contest had begun a fortnight before in Ludsey. Harry Rames rushed
into it as if it had been a foot-ball rally. He spoke all day, in
factories and outside factories, in halls and schoolrooms and from
club-room windows. He ransacked the morning papers for new pegs on
which to hang his arguments; he kicked off at foot-ball matches and
the aim of the kick was entirely political; and at the end of three
weeks even he was very tired and inclined to recognize an element of
humiliation in the conduct of a successful campaign.
It was eleven o'clock at night. There was to be but one more day of
it, but one more meeting to-morrow night, the big, final rally on the
eve of the poll. Harry Rames lay outstretched upon his sofa with his
pipe between his lips cradled pleasantly upon that reflection, when
the door of his room opened and a waiter brought in a card. Rames
waved it aside.
"I can see no one."
"The gentleman said that his business was important."
Rames grumbled and took the card from the salver.
"M. Poizat," he read. "A Frenchman. Certainly not. I won't see him."
The waiter, an old English servant, a rare being nowadays, even in a
country hotel, stood his ground.
"He's lived in Ludsey a long time, sir."
"Oh, has he!" said Rames. "Tell him I am out."
The waiter shook his head.
"He has already told me that you are in, sir. Come, you had better see
him, sir. Perhaps he's the ha'porth of tar."
"Oh, very well," said Rames. "But I tell you, William, that I am in
the mood to assert my rights as a man."
"Mustn't do that, sir, until the day after to-morrow. You are only a
candidate till then."
William retired. Rames fell back upon his sofa. He meant to lie there
prone upon his back, even if his visitor held all the votes of Ludsey
in the hollow of his hand. Then the door opened and was shut again. A
little, puckish old man stood in the room, danced lightly on his feet,
skipped in the air, twirled before Captain Rames's astonished eyes and
finally struck an inviting attitude, both arms extended and one foot
advanced, like the pictures of the quack doctors in the newspaper
advertisements.
"Oh, he's out of a lunatic asylum," Captain Rames almost groaned
aloud. "He won't even have a vote."
The little man skimmed forward with agility, fixing a bright and
twinkling pair of eyes upon the prostrate candidate.
"How old do you think I am?" he asked, and he whirled his arms.
"You are the youngest thing I have ever seen," replied Rames with
conviction. "I didn't know that people were even born as young as you
are."
"I am seventy-three," exclaimed the little man with a chuckle. He
squared up at an imaginary antagonist and delivered a deadly blow in
the air.
"Do you mind not doing that!" said Rames mildly. "My nerves are not
what they should be, and if you do it again I shall probably cry. I
suppose that you are M. Poizat----"
"I am, sir," said the little man. He changed his tactics. He no longer
whirled his arms in the air. He advanced to the sofa and suddenly put
up his foot on the edge.
"Feel my calf!" he said abruptly.
Captain Rames meekly obeyed.
"You ought to have a medal," he said languidly. "You really ought. At
seventy-three, too! For myself I am like butter, and rather inferior
butter, on a very hot day."
M. Poizat nodded his head.
"I know. That's why I am here!" He looked about the room and with the
importance of a conspirator he drew out of his pocket a medicine
bottle filled with a brown liquid. "Why am I so young?" he asked. "Why
is my leg of iron? Listen to my voice. Why is it so clear?--It's all
'Lungatine,'" and with immense pride he reverently placed the bottle
on the mantel-shelf. He turned again to Captain Rames.
"I heard you to-night. I suffered with you. What a voice! How harsh!
How terrible! And yet what good words if only one could have heard
them! I said to myself: 'That poor man. I can cure him. He does not
know of Lungatine. He makes us all uncomfortable because he does not
know of Lungatine.' So I ran home and brought a bottle."
"It's very good of you, I am sure," said Rames, "But look!" He pointed
to a table. Throat sprays, tonics, lozenges, encumbered it. "The
paraphernalia of a candidate," he said.
M. Poizat smiled contemptuously. He drew from his breast pocket a
sheaf of letters.
"See how many in Ludsey owe their health to me!" he cried, and he gave
the letters to Rames, who read them over with an 'oh' and an 'ah' of
intense admiration when any particularly startling cure was gratefully
recorded.
"You are a chemist here I suppose--naturalized, of course?" asked
Captain Rames.
"I have a restaurant," M. Poizat corrected him. "Lungatine is merely
one of my discoveries."
He sat down complacently. Captain Rames started up in dismay upon his
elbow.
"I have a great deal to do to-morrow," he said piteously. The plea was
of no avail. Captain Rames was in the grip of that most terrible of
all constituents, the amateur inventor. M. Poizat drew his chair to
the side of the sofa and went through the tale of his inventions. It
was the usual inevitable list--an automatic lift which would work with
absolute safety in any mine, a torpedo which would destroy any navy, a
steel process which would resist any torpedo, and a railway-coupling.
"I'll bring you the models," he cried.
"No, no," cried Rames, springing from his sofa in dismay. Then he laid
his hand on the inventor's shoulder and smiled wisely:
"Royal commissions for you," he said. "They're the fellows for models.
I'll see about some. Royal commissions for you. Thank you for your
Lungatine. Good-night, my friend, good-night."
Gently, but firmly, he raised the inventor from his chair, while he
shook hands with him, and conducted him toward the door.
"You have your hat? Yes."
"A tablespoonful six times a day in a wineglass of water."
"Yes. The instructions, I see, are on the bottle."
Captain Rames opened the door with his pleasantest smile.
"To-morrow at your great meeting," said M. Poizat, "I shall be there.
I shall hear what you say. Your voice will ring like a trumpet. And
perhaps at the end of your speech, you will say that it is all due to
Lungatine."
A frosty silence followed upon the words. Captain Rames said
indifferently:
"You have been in England a long time. You are naturalized, of
course?"
M. Poizat did not reply to the question.
"Perhaps you will say that it is all due to Lungatine," he repeated
softly. "Perhaps you will say that. Who knows?"
Captain Rames looked up at the ceiling.
"Ah, who knows?" he said enigmatically.
M. Poizat shook hands for a second time and went down the stairs.
Captain Rames closed the door, took the cork from the bottle, wetted
the tips of his finger, and tasted the brown liquid. It was a simple
solution of paregoric.
"I don't believe the fellow's naturalized," cried Rames, and he raised
the bottle in the air above the coal-scuttle. But he did not let it
drop.
"Perhaps he is though," he thought. He poured away a portion of the
liquid amongst the coal, replaced the cork, and set the bottle
prominently upon the mantel-shelf so that if M. Poizat took it into
his head to call again he would see it there. Then he betook himself
to bed; and M. Poizat figured in his dreams, a grotesque, little,
capering creature, a figure of fun, as indeed he was, to the eyes of
wakefulness. There are people upon whose faces nature writes plainly
hints of tragic destinies, and M. Poizat had certainly no relationship
with these. But then nature is apt to be freakish.