A LETTER FROM ABROAD
The session passed, and Devenish's land bill, as Rames had foretold,
was postponed. It figured again in the Address at the beginning of the
following year, but as late as March no definite date had been
assigned for its introduction. On a Saturday morning of this month
Cynthia and her husband were breakfasting in the dining-room of the
white house, when the morning's letters were brought in by the butler.
Harry Rames tossed one or two aside.
"Circulars, pamphlets," he said. He opened some of the others, taking
them from the top of the pile. "Here's one from the Chamber of
Commerce--railway rates. I'll answer that this morning. Here's
another--the committee of a school wants a grant from the treasury.
Here's a third--" and as he was beginning to tear open the envelope,
his voice suddenly stopped.
Cynthia looked up from her own letters and saw that while he was
holding the third letter in his hand he was not looking at it. His
eyes were fixed upon that one which was now uppermost on the heap. He
sat and stared at the envelope for an appreciable time. Then dropping
the letter which he held, he picked up this new and startling one and
carried it swiftly over to the window. Cynthia followed his movement
with her eyes, just curious, but nothing more. Her eyes indeed
travelled beyond him and noticed the sunlight in the garden, the
yellow and purple crocuses and the first of the daffodils, noticed
them with an up-springing lightness of heart. Then the stillness of
her husband's attitude caught her attention. She saw something in his
face which she had never seen there before, which she had never
thought to see there at all. He wore the look of a man quite caught
out of himself. He was as one wrapped in visions and refined by the
fires of great longings. It seemed to her that she saw a man whose
eyes, brimful of light, looked upon the Holy Grail.
He turned back to her. He brought her the letter still unopened and
placed it in her hands. Cynthia received it as though written upon its
cover she would read the revelation of his secret. Yet she saw nothing
but a soiled envelope with a foreign stamp. She gazed up at her
husband mystified.
"Look at the stamp, Cynthia!" said Rames in a queer voice.
Cynthia looked. It wore the head familiar to English people. But the
lettering about the head was strange. She spelled it out.
"Rexland."
With a start she turned to him. "That is the country you discovered."
"Yes. A stamp was struck to commemorate my discovery of it."
"A stamp?" cried Cynthia. "Wait a minute, Harry! You once spoke of a
stamp to me before. Yes, on the morning of the day when you were to
deliver your speech--the speech which failed. It was this stamp of
which you were speaking?"
"Yes."
"You remembered it on that morning, even when your thoughts were full
of the speech you were going to deliver."
"I remembered it by accident," he said sharply. "I can't think why. It
had been out of my thoughts for so long. Yet it was that stamp." His
voice softened. "It is issued by the post-office--for a penny. Just
think of it! A penny stamp brings a letter from the Antarctic seas to
us here in Warwickshire."
"Mr. Hemming sent it?"
"Without a doubt. When he came to see me in London fifteen months ago,
he told me that if I intended to go out again he would not use my
harbor."
Harry was standing just behind his wife. Cynthia was not looking at
him any longer. But she was listening with a curious intentness as
though the words which he spoke were of less importance to her than
the accent with which he spoke them. She put questions to him to make
yet more sure of it.
"And you gave him permission!"
"Of course. I had not the right to refuse it. I was never going
South again. Nothing was further from my thoughts. I told him to
use not only my harbor, but the depots of food I had made along my
sledge-route from the harbor toward the Pole."
"You think that he reached the harbor?"
"I am sure of it. Otherwise he would not have used this stamp. He must
have wintered there. I did not think that he would reach it before
winter closed in upon him. The summer last year must have been very
late."
Cynthia nodded her head.
"Yes."
Her attention was relaxed. Harry Rames had been striving to keep from
his voice any note of regret, to speak in the ordinary level tone
suitable to a matter of only ordinary interest. But in spite of his
efforts he was not sure that he had succeeded. Cynthia handed to him
the letter. He took it and turned it over in his hand.
"He has had time since he wintered in that harbor. One summer would be
enough. He may have done it--if his dogs lived. There's always that
condition. If his dogs lived! Mine didn't. Perhaps--perhaps--" He
broke off abruptly and thrust the letter back into Cynthia's hand.
"You open it! You can tell me what he says."
Harry Rames walked again to the window and stood with his back to the
room. Cynthia's eyes followed him and travelled past him once more to
the garden. She was sure that she would never forget those daffodils
and the purple crocuses waving in the sunlight for one day as long as
she lived. A minute ago she had noticed them; now she noticed them
again; and within that minute had been revealed to her the great
secret Harry Rames had been at so much pains to hide. She knew her
rival now, and was appalled. "Such men are driven by a torment of
their souls." It was Harry himself who had said that. The wish came to
her, "If only this man has succeeded." She tore open the envelope.
Harry Rames stood at the window waiting for the letter to be read to
him; and it seemed to him that he waited for an eternity. He had heard
the tearing of the envelope. The letter was open in Cynthia's hands.
Yet she did not speak a word. Rames's heart sank.
"Then he has reached the Pole?" he asked with a studied carelessness.
"I don't know," Cynthia replied in perplexity.
"Read it."
"There is nothing to read."
Rames turned round and came swiftly toward her.
"He must have forgotten to enclose his letter. There is nothing
but this," said Cynthia. She was holding a single blank sheet of
note-paper in her hand. She turned it over. "No, there's not a word
written anywhere. Do you understand it?"
"Yes. He has failed."
There was no doubt left to her of her husband's joy. The cry which
broke from his lips was not to be denied. It was a real cry of
exultation. Cynthia turned pale as she heard it. But she would not
acknowledge that she understood it, nor would she look into Harry's
face lest she should see the same exultation blazoned there.
"Poor Hemming," said Rames. "That's bad luck. The disappointment must
have hit him hard."
"You can understand that," said Cynthia steadily.
"Yes. He would have written, you see, if he had taken it more lightly.
He has nothing to say. That is what his blank sheet of paper means.
That is what it must mean. Well, I must go and write to the Chamber of
Commerce, Cynthia;" and gathering up his letters he went out of the
room.
As for Cynthia, she remembered that the North Warwickshire met that
morning at eleven o'clock four miles from the house. She rode to the
meet and followed the hounds over a good grass country flying her
hedges on a big horse which old Mr. Daventry had given to her on the
very first day when she had hunted over six years ago. It had always
been her experience that when troubles and fears overburdened her, a
hard day's hunting was her best medicine. It smoothed out the creases
of her mind, whipped up the blood in her veins, set her pulses dancing
with the joy of living and unrolled her courage like a banner. The
sunlight, the swift rush through the air, the rhythm of movement, the
keenness of the animal beneath her, the flight over hedge and ditch,
had never failed her up till now. It always seemed to her that by some
process, of which she was quite unconscious, the direct and simple
thing to do emerged from the confusion of her thoughts and shone out
unmistakably. And it shone out to-day. But she could not bring herself
to accept it. As she rode homeward through the lanes she was at her
arguments again.
"No! With time contentment will come to him. He will be subdued to the
matter he works in. And I cannot let him go."
Mr. Benoliel's warning obstinately confronted her.
"One party doesn't keep the bargain or keeps it half-heartedly as an
irksome thing and day by day the separation grows more complete until
you are living with your enemy or living quite alone."
But she would not be convinced; she battled against it. "There was a
saving clause. 'Unless on both sides there is love.' In that case a
way could be found. And on both sides there may be love."
She had treasured up little acts of thoughtfulness on Harry Rames's
part, the merest small things which women are quick to notice and to
build upon; such as having a cloak ready for her shoulders almost
before she was aware that she was cold. She ran these trifles over in
her mind, clutching at them for proof that the longed for change was
coming--nay, perhaps had come. There had been a constant watchfulness,
a constant care for her shown by her husband during this last year. It
might be of course that a certain remorse was stirring in him--remorse
that he was only keeping his side of the bargain in the letter and not
the spirit.
"But I cannot let him go," she insisted. The perils, the hardships,
the dangers of snow-storms and cold and shipwreck and famine which had
all seemed so trivial to her in her days of romance now loomed up
before her terrible and dark. It was no use to argue that other men
had gone that road and had come back. This one might not. She reached
her home with her distress as heavy upon her as when she had set out;
and was told that Mr. Benoliel was waiting to see her.
She went at once into the drawing-room and gave Mr. Benoliel some tea.
"Will you tell Mr. Rames," she said to her butler, "that Mr. Benoliel
is here."
"He's not in the house," said Benoliel. "He's in Ludsey. I asked for
him when I heard that you were out. I am glad. For I should like to
tell you my news first."
The butler left the room and Mr. Benoliel became at once mysterious
and omniscient.
"Sir George Carberley is going to resign," he said.
Cynthia looked at him in surprise.
"The member for our division?"
The white house was not within the borough limits of Ludsey. It stood
in the Hickleton Division of the county of Warwickshire and Sir George
Carberley, an important unit of the opposition, was Harry Rames's
representative in the House of Commons.
"Yes," said Mr. Benoliel. "He has sat for the division for forty years
now and he is tired. He intends to resign when this session is over."
"Are you sure?" asked Cynthia. "How do you know this?"
"Ah!" said Benoliel with a smile. "You mustn't ask me that, Cynthia.
Indeed I am not quite sure that I ought to have told you the news at
all. But I thought that it was so important for you to know it at once
that I stretched a point of confidence."
"Thank you," said Cynthia. "But what I don't understand is why it is
so important for us to have the news before the others?"
"Captain Rames is on the executive of your association, isn't he?"
"Yes."
"Then he will have a voice in the selection of the candidate who will
fight the seat from your political point of view."
"Of course."
"Very well," said Mr. Benoliel. "If he has a candidate ready when the
news of the approaching resignation is published, and if that man is
willing to follow not simply the Government's policy, but also your
husband's policy as regards Devenish's land bill, don't you see what a
chance he gets? If Rames can secure the selection of his man as
candidate and then can win over the seat, he strengthens his position
with the Government enormously. He has put his views about Devenish's
bill to the test of an election, and he has won."
"Yes, I see that," said Cynthia doubtfully. She was considering the
prospect Mr. Benoliel held out to her from a quite different point of
view. If Harry succeeded in this plan, his victory would be one more
link in the chain of obligation which bound him to his present life.
If he failed, his failure would be another disappointment weakening
it.
"But can we win?" she cried. "The seat's supposed to be impregnable."
"That's one of your advantages. More seats are lost by over-confidence
than by bad candidates. Besides, the mere fact that one man has held a
seat for forty years is against the probability of another man of the
same color succeeding. There are lots of people who will be ready to
say 'It's time we gave the other fellows a look-in.' Your husband has
only got to throw himself heart and soul into the fight and he will
stand a very good chance. No doubt of that."
Cynthia reflected. "Why did you wish to tell me this news before you
told it to Harry?" she asked, bending her brows upon Mr. Benoliel in a
steady frown which had before now warned him to walk with
circumspection.
"I wasn't quite sure," he explained, "that you would wish him now to
undertake a further obligation of political service."
"Indeed!" said Cynthia icily. "And why shouldn't I wish it now, Mr.
Benoliel?"
Mr. Benoliel had no intention to allow himself to be browbeaten by a
slip of a girl for whose happiness he was in a measure responsible.
"Because, my dear Cynthia," he answered, "it has seemed to me on the
last few occasions when I have met your husband that he was feeling
the strain of a Parliamentary life. He has looked worn and tired. I
could almost fancy that he was disheartened."
Cynthia's thoughts did Mr. Benoliel some injustice at this moment.
Certainly he was suggesting to her that his neglected warning had been
justified, that Harry's Parliamentary ambition had been a mere phase
in his life, which was now passing or had already passed. But she went
further and assumed in him a kind of triumph at the accuracy of his
diagnosis. Right underneath his sympathetic words she seemed to hear
the whisper of a question:
"Am I not a clever man?"
The whirr of a motor-car grew loud and ceased. Harry had returned from
Ludsey. Mr. Benoliel sat patiently in front of her, awaiting her
decision. Was he to break his news to Harry Rames or was he not?
Cynthia felt that Harry's destiny and hers were in her hands. She must
make her choice and by that choice it seemed to her they would be both
inextricably bound, their happiness or their misery allotted to them
for the whole span of their lives.
She sat with her chin propped in the palm of her hand and her eyes
brooding darkly on Mr. Benoliel. A door was shut somewhere in the
house. She rose and pressed the bell.
"Howard," she said to her butler, "was that Mr. Rames?"
"Yes ma'am."
"He is in his study I think?"
"Yes."
"Will you show Mr. Benoliel in to him?" And as Benoliel rose, she said
to him, "Will you come back after you have told your news? You will
have an opportunity of reconsidering your judgment. I should like to
hear whether you still think him disheartened."
Cynthia was in her most aggrieved and stately mood. She usually was
when she knew herself to be in the wrong. She would not admit Mr.
Benoliel's sympathy or affection for her. She had an epithet for him
very near to the tip of her tongue at this moment. Mr. Benoliel was
officious. With a distant bow she dismissed him.
She had the satisfaction half an hour later of hearing Mr. Benoliel's
complete recantation.
"I was quite wrong, Cynthia. He was in the best of spirits. He was
elated. The look of strain had gone if it was ever there. I have been
mistaken. I am happy to admit it."
Cynthia relaxed from her frigidity. But her satisfaction was a poor
one and had little life in it. She had merely tricked Mr. Benoliel
into the belief that his insight had been at fault. For in truth, as
she knew very well, it had never been more shrewd. What had led Mr.
Benoliel into error was his ignorance of the letter with the "Rexland"
stamp which had arrived at the white house by the morning's post.
Hemming's failure was a kind of reprieve for Harry Rames. In a sudden
revulsion he had been lifted out of his discouragement. His exultation
had remained with him all that day. Cynthia had counted upon it when
she had sent Benoliel to his study.