THE LETTER
Cynthia ran down the broad flight of steps into Westminster Hall, and
skimmed across the historic flags of the ancient building without a
pause. What at this moment was Charles the First to her, or even Mr.
Gladstone? She came out into Palace Yard and drove home through the
dusk just as the lamps in the shop-windows were beginning to bring
some gleams of cheerfulness into the black February streets. She sat
back in the corner of her car with her muff tightly held against her
breast as though to cherish close some knowledge treasured there. When
she reached her house she let herself in with her key and walked with
secret steps into Harry's study. Once there she locked the door and
with the firelight dancing upon the walls to keep her company, she sat
down to make her reckoning with herself. But in truth the reckoning
was already made.
The great bargain, on her side at all events, was a bargain no more,
could never again be a bargain. A veritable revolution had taken place
in her that afternoon. She knew it from the depth of her sympathy with
Harry in his failure--above all from the surprising sharpness of her
disappointment when Robert Brook had returned with no answer to her
scribbled message.
For the failure as a factor in their fortunes she cared not a straw.
Indeed, she welcomed it, since it was that which had wakened her. She
had believed herself to be defective in the quality of passion, and
her sense of the defect had hurt her like a bitter humiliation; she
had envied wistfully the other women who possessed passion, even the
wantons who flaunted it. Now the humiliation was gone. She rejoiced.
She leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed and sailed over
magical seas which were joyous and golden. She loved. She was like
some lady of old Italy lit to swift flame by the first kiss from her
lover's lips. Only it was a trivial irony in closer keeping with our
modern days that what had kindled her who had demanded ideas, was a
failure due to nothing but the lack of them.
Cynthia rejoiced; for she loved. That pain and disappointment were in
store for her she did not doubt. But she ran forward to meet the pain.
She was young. Sooner all the pain in the world than the placidity of
years without fire or inspiration. She recognized frankly that though
upon her side the bargain was no longer any bargain at all, it still
was just a bargain to her husband. A sign had been given to her that
afternoon, a little sign, yet great in its significance. She had
pleaded to herself as she sat in the ladies' gallery that when Harry
rose, and just before he began to speak, he had looked up to where she
sat, as though he were conscious of her presence, as though he drew
strength from it. But he had not looked up. Even at the time she had
known that he had not.
"I merely pretended to myself that he had," she frankly admitted now.
"His movement was nothing more than the natural muscular action of a
man bracing himself for an effort." She herself, Cynthia, had not
been, she felt sure, at that moment, in the remotest of his thoughts.
"If Harry had changed toward me as I have toward him," she argued, "he
would have looked up, not only because he wanted to, but because he
would have remembered what I had said to him on that very point the
afternoon when he asked me to marry him."
But in spite of her conviction she rejoiced. Some kinship she could
claim with Juliet. For all her longing was to give and to give, and
still to give. She had sought desperately for color in her life.
She had welcomed politics in the hunt for it. She had it now and to
spare--enough to daub the world. The handle of the door was tried and
through the panels her astonished maid told her the hour. Cynthia
sprang up and unlocked it.
"I shall dine at home to-night," she said. "The cook must get me some
dinner, anything."
The maid reminded Cynthia that she had arranged to dine with some
friends and visit a theatre. "I know," said Cynthia. She had made the
plan so that she might not spend in loneliness the anxious hours of
this evening. But since she had made the plan the world had changed
its hues.
"You must telephone and say that I can't come," said Cynthia,
remorselessly, as she ran upstairs.
Whilst she dressed she considered what she should do with this
wonderful evening. She meant to spend it alone--yes, but that did not
quite content her. Somehow it should be made memorable. Something she
must do which, but for this day of days, she never would have done.
Something which must not merely mark it as a harbor boom marks a turn
of the channel, but must be the definite consequence of it. Cynthia,
in a word, went down to her solitary dinner much more akin than she
had ever been since to the girl who, eager for life with the glorious
eagerness of youth, had run down the stairs on the morning of her
seventeenth birthday into the dining-room of the Daventry estancia.
Half-way through dinner the thing to do, in order fitly to commemorate
the day, came to her in a burst of light.
She went back to Harry's study and sitting at his writing-table,
composed with great care a letter of many pages. The hours passed as
she wrote and rewrote, and glancing at the clock before the end was
reached, she saw that it was already past eleven. Then she hurried.
The division at this moment was being taken. Within the hour Harry
would have returned; and indeed she had only just folded her letter in
its envelope when his step sounded in the hall.
She heard the door open and shut. He was in the room. But she kept her
head bowed over her letter lest her face should betray her over much.
Nor for a moment did she speak, since she did not quite trust her
voice. It was Harry who spoke first.
"You have come back? I did not expect you so soon."
"I never went. I stayed at home."
"Oh! You are not ill, Cynthia?"
"No. But I felt that I had been rather hard and cruel----"
"You?"
"Oh, yes, I can be." Cynthia was stamping down her envelope with an
elaboration of care which almost suggested that it was never meant to
be opened. "I was in this case. So I stayed at home and wrote a letter
to make amends. I should very much like it to be posted to-night,
Harry. The servants have all gone to bed. I wonder if you----"
"Of course. You are afraid that you might change your mind about it in
the morning."
"Not at all," replied Cynthia with a laugh. Harry Rames walked over to
the table.
"Give it to me, Cynthia," he said; and at last Cynthia raised her head
and rather shyly her eyes sought his face. At his first glance she
stood up quickly and she did not give him her letter. Harry Rames was
standing, his face white and drawn and harassed. He had been answering
her vaguely, as though the words came from him by reflex action rather
than through a comprehension of what she said. For a moment Cynthia
was afraid to speak. The beating of her heart was painful. Then she
laid her hand upon his arm.
"Something has happened, Harry?" she faltered.
"Something terrible," he replied, and walking to the fire he warmed
his hands at the blaze like one smitten with a chill.
"The debate collapsed? Your people didn't follow you into the lobby?
Oh, Harry!"
She went to his side.
"No. That's not the trouble. We did better in the division than I had
anticipated. Of course we had the labor party solid against us. But
that we had reckoned on. On the other hand, some of the Irish members
came along with us, and it had been expected that they would all
abstain. No, we ran the government majority down to thirty-one.
Devenish is shaken, I can tell you. He passed me after the division
was over, without a word and white with passion. No, Cynthia, we did
very well." He moved away from the fire and sat down in the chair at
his writing-table. "I took all my people into the Division Lobby with
me--except one."
Cynthia put out a hand and steadied herself against the mantel-piece.
"Except one?" She turned toward him, her face troubled, her eyes most
wistful. "One failed you--one alone. Oh, Harry, it wasn't Colonel
Challoner?"
But though she asked the question, she did not need the answer. Her
foreboding made her sure of it.
"It was," replied Harry, and Cynthia turned again to the fire. A
little sob, half-checked, burst from her. Then she tore the letter
which she had been at such great pains to write, across and again
across, and dropped the fragments into the fire.
"The Challoners are no good," she said, in a voice curiously distinct
and hard.
"Don't say that, Cynthia," Harry Rames answered gently.
"I do say it. I ought to know."
The words were uttered, and only then she realized what she had said.
She looked quickly toward her husband, but he gave to her cry no
particular significance. His brain seemed to register her words, not
to comprehend them. Cynthia was conscious of a great relief. Loud at
her heart rose a hope, a prayer that in all things, all qualities,
even to tricks of manner, she was her mother's child, and had nothing
of her father. Never would she acknowledge her relationship with that
family. Never would she admit her name. Her first resolve and instinct
had been right. The Challoners were no good.
"No, I should not say that, Cynthia," Raines repeated. "He's dead."
Cynthia turned swiftly upon the word. Her dress rustled as she turned,
and when that sound ceased there was absolute silence in the room.
Cynthia stood by the mantel-shelf still as stone. Her face was white,
and a look of awe overspread it. With her lips parted and her eyes
troubled and wondering she watched her husband. Harry Rames sat with a
large silver paper-knife in his hands, looking absently straight in
front of him. And in a little while he broke the silence by absently
tapping with the blade of the paper-knife upon his blotting-pad. The
sound roused Cynthia. She moved to a low chair close to the
writing-table.
"Dead? Harry, I don't quite understand."
The tapping ceased.
"His heart was wrong. He died in the Division Lobby--actually while
the division was being taken."
"In the Division Lobby? But you said you didn't take him with you."
"I didn't. He was in the Government Lobby."
Cynthia's face contracted with pain. A low moan burst from her. "He
was actually voting against you!"
"Yes."
Harry added reluctantly:
"Our revolt killed him." Cynthia sat down in the chair.
"Tell me everything, will you, Harry?" she entreated, and thus the
story was told her.
"The Whips got at Challoner. You know Hamlin, don't you? But you don't
know his methods, Cynthia. He doesn't bully you if you revolt. He
doesn't threaten. He takes you affectionately by the arm and makes you
feel a beast. His round brown eyes survey you with a gentle and
wistful regret. You leave him, convinced that he personally will be
dreadfully hurt if you vote against the government. You are glad to be
rid of him as you are glad to be rid of a man whom you have injured;
and within the hour he is at your elbow again, pursuing the same
insidious, amicable strategy. That's how he worked on Challoner, and
Challoner was not the man either to withstand him, or to tell us
boldly that he was going to--"--"rat" was on the tip of his tongue,
but Rames caught the word back and substituted "change his mind." "So,
do you see, he stayed with us to the last minute. It was arranged that
the division should be taken at eleven. As soon as the Speaker rose to
put the question, Challoner, who had been standing at the bar of the
House slipped out through the lobby and down the stairs to a little
smoking-room on the opposite side of the passage to the big strangers'
smoking-room. That room is very often quite deserted. Few people,
indeed, use it at any time. In a corner of that room he sat behind a
newspaper all of the ten minutes during which the division bells were
ringing."
"To avoid meeting any of you?" asked Cynthia.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"But how do you know he was there?"
"He was seen by one or two of the Irish members who did not intend to
vote at all. They went into the room while the bells were ringing and
saw him."
"I understand."
"As soon as the bells stopped, as soon, in a word, as he was quite
certain that we should be all in our lobby, he started up quickly.
There is just a little time between the moment when the bells cease
ringing and the moment when the lobby doors are locked. But it is only
a little time. If you want to vote you have to hurry. Challoner was a
good distance away, and he had a flight of stairs to ascend. He
hurried, he ran; I expect, too, that he was agitated. His courage had
failed him. He must prove his loyalty to his official leaders at all
costs. He reached the lobby in plenty of time. Monro, you remember
him, the Scotchman? He was at Bramling."
"Yes," said Cynthia.
"He saw Challoner. He was standing by the entrance door of our lobby.
We were in the 'No' Lobby, for the question we had to vote upon was
that the original words of the Address 'stand part,' and to enter the
'Aye' Lobby a man must pass our entrance door and traverse the House.
Monro saw Challoner hurry past the door, and thinking that he had
mistaken our lobby and was under the impression that the question he
had to vote upon was that the amendment be substituted--in which case,
of course, we should all have been in the 'Aye' Lobby--he called to
the Colonel. Challoner didn't hear, or wouldn't hear. He hurried on,
and once inside the Government Lobby, collapsed onto the bench which
runs along the sides. He died within a couple of minutes."
Harry Rames ceased. The shock of this swift calamity had driven from
Cynthia's thoughts all her indignation against the Challoners. She
pictured to herself that old, unhappy, disappointed man, dropping at
last between the shafts, the pack-horse of politics. Not even the
insignificance of an Under Secretaryship had come to requite him for
his tedious years of service. And it never could have fallen to him.
That she recognized. Again the silence was broken by the tap-tap of
the paper-knife upon the blotting-pad.
"It's a Juggernaut, that House, isn't it? You said that once,
Cynthia," said Rames.
"I did? I don't remember."
Cynthia was perplexed by his distress. Sensibility was not to be
counted amongst his qualities. Yet he sat there with trouble heavy
upon him, and every now and then a shiver of the shoulders, a shiver
of repugnance.
"This has shocked you terribly, Harry," she said.
"Yes. I have known death before now, but never death without any
dignity. That's what I find terrible." He paused for a moment and then
said in a low and distinct voice:
"I am to blame for it, Cynthia."
"You?" she exclaimed.
"Yes. I ought to have left him alone. I ought never to have taken
advantage of his disappointments. I dragged him into the revolt to
serve myself--yes, that's the truth, Cynthia. We both know it. I
dragged him in without giving him and his character a thought. He was
the real party hack. To him the men upon the treasury bench were as
gods walking the earth. A nod from one of them in a passage, a
hand-shake in a drawing-room, a little private conversation with a
Cabinet Minister in the Division Lobby--that was the kind of food
which sustained him through how many years! And he was a good cavalry
officer once, I am told." Harry Rames suddenly swung round toward his
wife. "That's strange, isn't it? Very strange. He must have come into
the House of Commons twenty years ago a very different man. But I
suppose the walls closed round him and crushed the vitality out of
him. You had a phrase about such men--the prisoners of the House of
Commons. He was one of them. I did a cruel thing when I enlisted him.
For I might have known that he must desert. I am to blame for his
death."
"No," Cynthia protested.
"Yes."
"Even if you might have known that he must desert, you couldn't have
foreseen that he would hide from you till the last moment."
"That's just what he would do."
"Even so, you didn't know, Harry, that he had heart disease."
"Would it have made any difference to me if I had?" And that question
silenced Cynthia.
Harry Rames fell again to tapping with his paper-knife upon the
blotting-pad. He tapped aimlessly, the silver handle flashing in the
light, the ivory blade striking and resounding. But gradually an
intention seemed to become audible in his tapping. The taps came
quickly, three or four together, then were spaced, then streamed
swiftly again like sparks from an anvil. The noise began to jar on
Cynthia's nerves.
"Don't do that, Harry, please," she said.
"I won't," said he, throwing down the paper-knife.
"You might have been sending a telegram."
"By wireless, eh?" he said with a smile, and then a curious look came
into his face. "I was," he said slowly. Cynthia drew back in her chair
with a queer feeling of uneasiness.
"Not to--?" she began, and stopped short of the name. She glanced
furtively around the room. She was suddenly chilled.
"To Challoner? No," he answered. He had hardly been aware of what he
was doing, and he wondered now why the idea to do it had thus
irrelevantly entered his head. No doubt an instinctive desire to get
relief from the obsession of the sordid tragedy of Challoner's death
had prompted him. But, whatever the cause, he had been tapping out,
in accordance with the Morse code, a message to the little, black,
full-rigged ship far away upon Southern seas.
He sprang up from his chair.
"There's a letter you wanted me to post, Cynthia. I had forgotten it.
Give it to me."
"It dropped into the fire," said Cynthia.
Harry looked into the fire; a torn fragment or two had fallen into the
grate.
"I dropped it into the fire," said Cynthia. "For I had already changed
my mind about it."
The long letter which she had torn up at the first news of Colonel
Challoner's defection, the letter which was to commemorate that
evening, had been written to Colonel Challoner, and admitted that she
was the daughter of his son.