THE TELEGRAM
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:
Rames,
S. S. Perhaps,
Tilbury Docks.
As she read her face changed. There came a look of introspection in
her dark, wide-open eyes. She swept back in her thoughts over the
course of years and took note of the irony of things and of the
surprising changes in a life like hers which, to all the world, was
uneventful and prescribed.
"I remember," she said. "These are the good wishes sent to you when
you started. You once told me that you never opened them."
"I hadn't the time. We had to catch the tide out of London. We were
late getting away. I had forgotten that I had kept them all."
"I am going to open them."
"It is too late to answer them."
"I wonder."
Cynthia opened the telegrams until she came upon one about half
through the number which arrested her attention. This she spread out
before her and smiled at its phrasing.
"Harry!" she said.
Rames turned about.
"Yes?"
"Come and read this."
He stood behind Cynthia's chair and read aloud the message still
legible upon the form.
"Every heart-felt wish for a triumphant journey from an unknown friend
in--;" and then he stopped with an intake of his breath. "In South
America," he resumed, and so stood quite still for the space of a few
seconds. Then he leaned forward and looked at the name of the
telegraph office from which the message had been sent.
"Daventry," he cried.
"Yes," said Cynthia with a little laugh upon which her voice broke.
"We had a telegraph office on the estancia. We were very proud of it,
I can tell you"; and then the amusement died away from her voice, and
"oh!" she whispered in a long sigh, as she felt his arm about her.
"You sent that! You! Cynthia! Before I knew you, before we met."
"Yes, dear, I sent it."
"Just think," he cried. "It reached me at Tilbury. It travelled out
with me to the South. It was in the desk in my cabin for three long
dark winters. It came back with me to England. By chance I met
you----"
"No, not by chance, Harry," Cynthia interrupted. "I sent Mr. Benoliel
to fetch you."
"Yes, you did," he agreed, with a laugh. "We met, and we married, and
through all these changes it has lain here unopened. Why didn't I open
it? That was conceit, Cynthia. I was haughty. I was going out to
discover the South Pole. I didn't open my telegrams."
"But if you had opened it, Harry, you would only have laughed. For
it's just the message of a schoolgirl, isn't it? You were one of my
heroes--oh, not the only one but the latest one--I had just let you in
past the turnstile to my enchanted garden. I was seventeen on the very
day I sent it. I drove down to the office--oh in such a condition of
importance. I pictured to myself you, the unknown you, sitting in your
cabin and wondering and wondering and wondering who your little friend
was in South America. Then I drove back and"--she stopped and went on
again slowly--"yes, other things happened to me that day." She looked
down again at the telegram. "Yes, the message of a foolish and
romantic school-girl."
"I should like to be able to think, Cynthia," said her husband, "that
I had opened it when it came."
"But you didn't," said Cynthia, "and so--" she broke off her sentence.
She took the telegram form, folded it, and replaced it in its
envelope. She took a brush from a little bottle of gum which stood
ready upon the table by the inkstand and, smearing the inner border of
the envelope, stuck it down again. Then she stood up and turned to her
husband. "And so," she continued, "you must take it, Harry, as though
it were despatched to you by me only to-day for the first time and
delivered to you here now at midnight."
She held out to him the telegram and he took it, gazing at her with a
look of wonder. And then hope flamed in his eyes. Cynthia turned away
abruptly. To her that swift flame of hope, of life, was almost
intolerable.
"Then you knew," he cried.
Cynthia nodded her head, but she kept her face averted.
"I have known a long time," she answered in a low voice. "Ever since
the letter came to you with the Rexland stamp."
The sound of her voice and her attitude pierced to Rames's heart. His
exultation gave way to concern.
"I am very sorry, Cynthia," he said gently. "I tried to hide it."
"Oh, my dear, I know you did. With all your strength you tried to hide
it. You watched yourself each minute. But," and she turned to him with
a little smile of tenderness, "I watched you closer still, and the
longing grew too big to be hidden."
Harry Rames made no pretence to deny the truth of her words, knowing
full well that all denial would be vain. The screen was down between
them.
"Yes," he said; "but Cynthia, I keep my bargain."
"My dear, there is no longer any bargain between us," she answered,
"for on both sides there is love. Of that I am very sure."
She held out her hands to him and he caught them and held her against
his breast.
"You said you had rather that drawer was not unlocked until both of us
were dead," she whispered. "My dear, if that drawer was not to be
unlocked, we might both of us be dead at once for all the value our
lives were going to be. So you will go, you must, unless we are to be
wrecked altogether. We have been most unhappy, both of us. I, because
I thought of the dangers," and she suddenly caught him close as though
even now she dared not let him go, "and could not bring myself to make
the sacrifice and let you run the risk--you, because the call was
always in your ears. It couldn't go on. That's the truth, Harry.
Especially now that you know that your secret's no longer a secret to
me. We should grow estranged, embittered, each one thinking the other
horribly selfish. Perhaps, even hatred might come."
"No," protested Harry.
"Oh, yes, yes. It has come from smaller causes often enough. It might
come, Harry, and that would be terrible. I have thought it out, my
dear. All the time we were cruising down in the West I was thinking
our position over and over and over. And it seemed to me that you must
win this Hickleton election first--and then I would tell you that I
understood your great trouble and let you go. But you had to win
first. I couldn't let you go while people might be able to say that
you had gone because you had been beaten in your political ambitions.
I was too proud of you, my dear, to allow that. You must lay down your
career at a moment of success, leaving behind you a good name amongst
your colleagues and perhaps a great many regrets. But you have won the
election now, you have made good, as they say, and so, for both our
sakes, you must go."
She drew herself out of his arms and moved away to the fire.
"Of course it's just what I wanted when I first met you, isn't it?"
she said with a wavering effort of a laugh. "I urged you to go back
and finish your work the first time I met you--one night at the
Admiralty. Only things have changed a good deal since then, haven't
they?"
Her voice, which had been steady up till now, broke, and with a sob
she suddenly hid her face in her hands. "Oh, Harry," she cried as
though her heart was breaking, and he hurried to her, exclaiming:
"Cynthia, I am a brute. I can't leave you here for three years alone."
She held him off with her arm outstretched, dreading lest she should
weaken and take her advantage of his remorse and so have to go through
all this heart-rending renunciation again at some future time.
"You won't, Harry," she said, drying her eyes with her handkerchief.
"I have thought it all out. My father asked me on his death-bed not to
desert the Daventry estancia altogether. He loved it so himself that
he did not wish to think that he would die and that no one of his own
people would ever see it again and make sure that all was going well
with it. And here's the opportunity. While you go down to the
Antarctic I will go back to the Daventry estancia. I couldn't live
here day after day with you away amidst the storms and the snow. There
I shall be able to. I will have the estancia to look after. When will
you go?"
"Not so very soon, Cynthia, after all," he said. "It will take me a
year before the preparations are complete. Besides, there's the money
to be raised."
Cynthia raised her shoulders in a gesture of reproach.
"Oh, Harry! There's no trouble about the money, of course."
Rames stared at her. "Cynthia," he cried. "You'll help?"
"More than help, Harry," she answered. "You see I let you go--yes. I
even bid you go--yes. But I mean to have my share, my dear, in
whatever you do. I mean that you shall carry something of me,
something more than a telegram this time, to your farthest South."
Rames sat down in a chair by the side of the fire close to where she
stood. He gazed into the flames in silence. With all gentleness and
love she was heaping coals of fire upon his head. Every look, every
word she spoke, confessed the deep pain which he was causing her. She
was brave, but through the curtain of her bravery her fear and anguish
shone. He spoke as a man will who is smitten by his conscience.
"I am very sorry, Cynthia. When I asked you to marry me I had no
suspicion that any longing could get so strong a hold on me. I once
told you carelessly that men were driven out upon these expeditions by
the torment of their souls. I said that knowing it only by hearsay and
by the plain proof of it which they show in what they have written.
Now I know it--here," and he struck his breast above his heart. "Yes,
I have got to go if I am ever to have peace. But I am sorry, Cynthia."
His voice trailed off into silence and Cynthia laid a hand upon his
head and stroked his hair. "I know," she said, "I know."
"All that I thought so fine, so well worth having--the fight with
other men for mastery, the conquest with what conquest would
bring--power and rule and governing--it's extraordinary how completely
all desire for it has vanished out of me!" he continued. "Do you
remember the account I gave you of my maiden speech?"
"Yes."
Cynthia's hand had gone to her breast, but her voice was steady.
"There was a fragment of time when the world went blank, when I lost
the thread of my speech, and stood dumb. A fragment of time so short
that it wasn't noticeable to any one in the House except myself."
"Yes."
"Well, these three years of politics seem to me just such an
unnoticeable interruption of my real life. The fight which I revelled
in appears to me now a squabble made ignoble with intrigues, bitter
with mean disappointments, the victory not worth the fight. No doubt I
am wrong. I went into the House of Commons, you see, without ideas,"
and Cynthia started at the word so familiar to her fancies. "Now I
have one, a big one, and it has mastered me."
And so Harry Rames passed at last through the turnstile into Cynthia's
private garden. But it was in accordance with the irony of their lives
that she wished with every drop of her blood that he had remained
outside.
"I long for simple things, not shifts and intrigues and bitterness;
the gray mists on glaciers; the day's journey over the snow, with its
wind ridges and its storms; the hard, lean life of it all; the fight,
not with men, but with enormous things of nature, some dangerous, some
serene, but, whether dangerous or serene, wholly indifferent." He
gazed for a little while into the fire, seeking in the analysis of his
emotions his apologia.
"I think, Cynthia," he continued, "that once a man has gone far into
the empty spaces of the earth, he has the mark of them upon him.
Voices call from them over all the leagues of all the seas and need no
receivers at the end."
"Yes," said Cynthia, and once more her memories travelled back to the
death-bed of old Daventry in the dark room of the white house. He had
given her reasons for his great love of his estancia on the wide
plains of Argentina. But there had been another reason, she
remembered, which his failing wits had not allowed his tongue to
formulate. Cynthia had often wondered what that reason was. She had no
doubt that her husband had explained it now. "Yes, my father also
heard those voices."
After a short silence Harry Rames reached out his hand and took hers.
"I think, my dear," he said gently, "that things would have been
different, that I should not have wanted to go, had we been fortunate
enough to have children--" and with a cry Cynthia turned to him
fiercely.
"No, no!" she exclaimed. "During this hour, for the first time, I have
been thanking God we had no children. For if we had, you would still
have wanted to go just as much as you do now, and that I could not
have borne."
Harry had no answer for her outburst. In his heart he knew that what
she had said was true. He sat in silence, his eyes upon the fire and
her hand in his; and a moment or two later she dropped upon her knees
at his side.
"But oh, Harry, come back to me!" she cried. "You must go I know.
That's the way things happen. But oh, come back to me."