DEVENISH REPLIES
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,
the _Times_ brought 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.