AN hour later Cynthia drove down to the House of Commons, anxious and yet expectant of triumph. For on this afternoon Harry Rames should particularly excel; the occasion was so confederate with his gifts. In debate he was as yet too inexperienced to shine with any brilliancy. His success had been made with prepared speeches. He had not as yet the art to handle words with such precision that he could express vividly in an argument across the floor just what he meant, and no more and no less. He was not at ease with his vocabulary when a sudden call was made upon it, and his lack of ease became manifest and spread, as it always does, discomfort. He was in a word on the way to becoming a polished debater but as yet he was at school. This afternoon, however, he had not to reply, not to intervene in the middle of a discussion; his business was to make the set speech which set the debate going. And here he was on his own good ground. He could prepare the vivid phrase and, a quality perhaps still more important, he could speak it. He had an invaluable gift which had stood him in good stead when he had delivered his maiden speech. He was able so to deliver a carefully concocted speech as to give the impression that he was thinking aloud. He gained his effect by an apt breaking off of sentences and a recommencement, by a sudden drop to the homeliest of colloquialisms, by a seeming deliberation in the choice of his words, so that the picturesque and living sentence, which had been so carefully thought out, appeared to leap new-minted from a furnace of conviction. He had been shrewd enough to recognize with his own unflattering estimation of his powers that an amendment to the address provided him especially with a rare opportunity.
When Cynthia reached the ladies’ gallery she had some trouble to find a place whence she could command the House. The gallery was full, since it was the beginning of the session. For the same reason the House itself was not. Even though questions were being asked of the ministers, a time when the House is seldom less than crowded, there were to-day vacant spaces on the benches. The real business of Parliament would not begin until the debate on the Address was concluded. Members still lingered in the country or the south of France. Rames’s amendment was considered rather as a dress-parade than an engagement. It was not expected that he would press his views to a division. At the last moment suave words from a Cabinet Minister would no doubt dissuade the recalcitrant as they had done a thousand times before.
But his supporters were there clustered close below the gangway on the three back benches; Howard Fall two seats away from Harry Rames, chirruping gently and rubbing his hands together with delight; beyond him the sandy-haired man from the Shires with an eye on Devenish upon the treasury bench, and prepared at any moment for the production of that threatened pup which the Minister for Agriculture was sure to sell them; beyond him again Colonel Challoner and the timid spirits all trying to look unconscious and most of them pretending that they only occupied these particular seats by the merest accident. But they were in full view. Robert Brook had seen to that. They were labelled plainly and legibly, and if some of them shirked at the last moment, they would still get the credit of having shared in the revolt. In front of all were the earnest men who believed the policy of Devenish to be dangerous. Behind all under the shadow of the gallery were the young bloods, all as convinced as their graver seniors in the front, but still youths spoiling for a row and totally unawed by the frockcoats of the treasury bench. Their business was to cheer and to ejaculate, not to speak. Thus had Robert Brook disposed his forces for the battle. He himself sat between Harry Rames and Howard Fall, and, looking about him, was proud of the array.
Before questions had come to an end Cynthia had squeezed herself into a place on the first row of seats behind the stone grille. She had now from her aerie the whole group within her view, or rather, the tops of all its particular heads. She waited impatiently. Every now and then a sudden fluttering like the waving of little flags ran with a crackle of sound along the benches below and showed that another page of the question paper had been turned. Questions must now be coming to an end surely, she thought in her ignorance. Her mistake was colossal. The Speaker had only this moment come to the questions of the Irish members, and there was a postmaster in Ballymena who had last week committed the hideous crime of refusing a registered letter at two minutes to eight by the church-clock. Upon this important matter, by question and supplementary question, the Imperial Parliament was forced to concentrate its attention till the hands of the clock above the door pointed to a quarter to four. Then the Speaker rose, a buzz of talk mounted to Cynthia’s ears, a few members called upon by name came forward from behind the Speaker’s chair to the clerk’s table with private bills, others drifted out into the lobby and the tea-room and the smoking-rooms. Then once more the Speaker rose. His canopied chair was just beneath Cynthia. She could not see him but she heard his voice quite clearly.
“Captain Rames.”
Rames rose amidst vociferous applause from his own group and some cheers from the opposition. The personal question flashed into Cynthia’s mind.
“Will he look up toward the gallery in which I am sitting?”
He threw his head back. It seemed that he did look up. Cynthia leaned forward as though across that distance her eyes could answer and sustain him. She forgot that the only light in the gallery was fixed against the wall behind her, and that nothing more individual of her was visible upon the floor of the chamber than the wide sphere of her hat.
He was not so nervous, she realized at once, as he usually was. Nervousness gave to his voice a peculiar vibration which was not without its effect in arresting attention. Cynthia missed it now. But the sentences which she already knew by heart followed one behind the other spaced and regular as the waves of a calm sea. She forgot that little significant omission of manner. She followed the argument as she knew it, and it was developed step by step as it had been prepared. Harry Rames had spoken for five minutes when a lady on Cynthia’s left whispered in an audible voice to her neighbor on the right:
“I thought you told me that Captain Rames was a brilliant speaker.”
“Not I, dear,” came the reply. “These men of action are seldom effective in their speeches. I shouldn’t expect him to do better than he is doing.”
Cynthia moved indignantly. The poor woman must be off her head. But if she did not know what good speaking was, she might at all events hold her tongue. She looked down again into the well of the House and became perplexed. The benches were actually emptying. The double doors opposite to her which led from the chamber to the lobby were swinging silently backward and forward with a perpetual motion as the members passed out, and the space just in front of those doors where members may stand and where she had seen them stand packed on other days while Harry spoke, was almost empty. There were just one or two standing there, but they were obtaining orders for the galleries from the sergeant-at-arms. Then the voice at her elbow spoke again in an accent of resignation.
“He is very, very dull.”
Cynthia clenched her hands. She would have dearly liked to have boxed her neighbor’s ears. Was he dull she asked? And the dreadful continuous buzz of voices, which always rises when a speaker has lost the attention of the House, rose from the benches below to answer her. With a sob only half suppressed Cynthia was forced to admit the truth. The incredible thing was happening. Harry Rames at the crisis of his fortunes was signally failing.
“If he fails it’s partly my fault,” she thought. “I helped in the preparation of the speech.”
For it was word for word the prepared speech which he was delivering, the very phrases chosen for their simplicity and their force were uttered in their due place. Yet the effect was dreary beyond measure. Even the ardent spirits beneath the gallery had ceased to applaud; they sat back in the shadow, all their enthusiasm quenched. A still worse sign, Mr. Devenish had laid his writing pad and his fountain-pen on the table in front of him; he took no more notes, he leaned back with his arms folded and his eyes closed, a typical picture of a Cabinet Minister, a man inured to patience and the bed-fellow of boredom.
“Why is Harry failing?” Cynthia asked of herself despairingly. And the answer came from her neighbor.
“You know, my dear, I don’t believe that what he’s saying is nonsense if one only had the necessary concentration to follow it. But his delivery’s so bad that he makes attention impossible.”
Again Cynthia was constrained to admit the criticism. The chosen sentences were uttered, but no conviction winged them. Harry’s gifts of speech were that afternoon quite hidden. He was as one delivering a recitation which by constant repetition had become at once meaningless and automatic. His voice trailed away into lassitude. There was no spirit behind any word.
The buzz of conversation increased, a protesting voice called “Order, order,” and then Harry faltered and stopped, stopped quite noticeably. A general cheer rose to encourage him—for the House of Commons can be generous, especially to those who are dropping out of the race—and twisting his hands together suddenly, almost with the air of a man waking from a dream, Harry Rames staggered on again. Cynthia’s heart went out to him in a rush of pity. What he must be suffering! He had staked so much upon this afternoon. So much had been expected of him. Cynthia’s thoughts went back to the week at Bramling. With what high hopes that company had counted upon his leadership!
“If he would only finish!” she prayed. She looked upon him as a man in torment. She leaned her elbows on the rail in front of her, closed her ears with her thumbs and shut her eyes. She took at once with the exaggeration of her years the blackest view.
“He has attacked his own government and frightened no one. His career will be affected, perhaps ruined. A really bad mistake may take a man years to overcome in the House of Commons. Who was it said that? Mr. Smale. This is a really bad mistake. The debate itself may collapse. That would mean ruin.”
So she reasoned until in a clap the truth of the mistake came upon her, its cause, its meaning.
“I ought to have foreseen his failure,” she murmured. “It was bound to come. Sooner or later it was bound to come. For his heart is never in the theme but always in the career.”
She might indeed have looked upon it as a retribution, a just retribution.
“And a year ago I should so have looked upon it,” she reflected, and sat back in her seat amazed at the change which two years had wrought in her. The magnitude of it was now for the first time revealed to her. Success following success, each in its anticipated sequence, had sealed up from her the knowledge of herself. It had needed the failure to reveal it.
She leaned back in a confusion of her emotions. She heard no longer any word of the debate. For a little while the House of Commons vanished and was not. She glanced swiftly backward across the months of her married life and detected one by one the indications of the change. Gradually she had ceased to clamor for ideas, she had come to look only at the man and she had desired him to tower above his fellows, because that was his desire. And the reason for the change? She jumped to it with her heart on fire. She loved him.
But while she thus began to make her account with herself a perfunctory cheer and the Speaker’s distinct pronouncement of another name broke in upon her reckoning. The voice of her neighbor brought her back to earth.
“Mr. Howard Fall. I hear he’s quite a favorite speaker.”
The turn of the words recalled irrelevantly to Cynthia Harry’s indignant story of the elector who had told him that he was well patronized in Ludsey. The recollection brought a smile to her face. But the smile faded as her anxieties came home to her. Would the debate collapse?
Howard Fall was already upon his legs seconding the amendment; and in a little while she saw members enter through the doors, stand for a moment at the bar and then as though here was matter worthy of their attention, slip into places upon the seats. Cynthia’s first feeling was one of relief. Yes, the House was undoubtedly filling up. Then, as a burst of laughter followed upon one of Fall’s sallies against Devenish, a sharp pang of jealousy pierced her. The lady at her elbow incensed her by a laugh of approval—a ridiculous snigger Cynthia termed it.
“Yes, now he’s really brilliant,” she said, and Cynthia had to hold herself in, so impelled was she to explain to the lady exactly what she thought of her judgment and her manners and her family and of everything which appertained to her. But she did not. She remained outwardly calm, though inwardly she seethed.
“Mrs. Rames,” a quiet voice called to her from behind. She turned and saw Robert Brook. She left her seat and went to him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked anxiously, her heart leaping with a fear of calamity.
“Nothing,” Brook reassured her. “Your husband asked me to look after you. He can’t well leave the House.” Another burst of laughter intermingled with applause rose up to them. Devenish had petulantly interrupted Howard Fall, and interruptions Howard Fall thrived upon. “Isn’t he in splendid form?” cried Brook with enthusiasm.
“No doubt,” said Cynthia, eyeing him coldly.
Brook looked at her quickly.
“Perhaps you would like some tea Mrs. Rames. Shall we go? The debate will tail off for a bit after Fall has finished.”
He led the way to the lift. Cynthia hurried after him.
“Why?” she cried. “And what do you mean by tailing off?” There was an impatience in her voice with which Brook was unfamiliar. “Do you mean that the debate will collapse?”
“Oh, no,” he replied. “But the big-wigs won’t speak until later. The subject is much too important to drop for want of argument. Indeed, there are enough men eager to speak to carry the debate well over to-morrow, if that were possible.”
They came out from the lift and walked down the long corridor toward the lobby between the rows of books protected by their frames of gilt wire. Robert Brook continued cheerfully:
“Rames, to be sure, wasn’t at his best in opening the debate. But no man is always at his best. There’s not a soul in the House who doesn’t know that.”
“Then this afternoon won’t put him back?”
“Why should it? It was he who had the shrewdness to recognize the opportunity which this question affords, and to select this particular line of attack. He engineered the whole movement. That’s known. And if he carries his own people into the division lobby with him, and the opposition into the bargain, he will have established a fine reputation for Parliamentary capacity. That counts, Mrs. Rames, take the word-of an old hand. That counts here more than speech-making.”
“Does it?” cried Cynthia, smiles breaking through the tragic gloom of her countenance. But the smiles vanished. She shook her head wistfully. “You are merely saying this because you see that I am troubled.”
“But it’s none the less true. This House has a corporate life which is rather difficult for those who are not members of it to understand.”
Robert Brook certainly seemed very well contented. Cynthia, however, was not satisfied.
“But will he carry his people with him into the division lobby—now?” she asked. “Won’t they a little have lost faith?”
“Not a bit. You see Howard Fall has quite saved the situation,” Brook replied cheerily, and Cynthia suddenly stepped on ahead. The name of Howard Fall was beginning to exasperate her. She stopped, however, as they came into the round hall of the lobby.
“On the whole,” she said, with the loftiest impartiality, “I liked my husband’s speech a good deal better than I did Mr. Howard Fall’s. Perhaps on a second thought you will too, Mr. Brook.”
She surveyed him steadily with a pair of cold blue eyes, and then her face suddenly dimpled to a smile of appeal.
“You really mean that I can’t see him?”
“The man who starts a discussion must hear it out. That’s a sound old rule, and if it’s not so religiously kept as it used to be, the House of Commons is the worse.”
“I can send him a little note at all events.”
“Certainly. Write it and I’ll give it to a messenger.”
“A messenger!” said Cynthia doubtfully. “Will it be sure to reach him? It’s rather important.”
Brook smiled.
“Very well. I’ll take it in myself, Mrs. Rames.”
Cynthia took a little diary from the bag she carried, tore out a leaf, scribbled hastily:
“You did splendidly. Everybody thinks so. Cynthia;” and having calmly perpetrated that obvious untruth, she twisted up her message and handed it to Brook. The sandy-haired man from the Shires was drifting about the lobby. Brook called to him. “Look after Mrs. Rames for a moment, will you?” he said, and hurried off through the swing-doors.
It seemed a very short time to Cynthia before he came back, though in that short time she had not so much as addressed a word to her companion. She looked at Robert Brook’s hands. They were empty and a shadow passed over her face.
“Did you give it him?” she asked.
“I passed it along the bench and saw that it reached him. I didn’t wait for him to open it.”
The shadow passed from Cynthia. She was disappointed now, but not hurt; and in a second the disappointment passed too. This was not the day on which small things should be allowed to sting.
“Now you’ll have some tea,” said Brook.
“No, I don’t think I will stay any longer to-day, Mr. Brook,” she replied. Now that her fears were dispersed she was in a hurry to get away and be alone with her new secret. “I am keeping you from the House, and you are our Whip, aren’t you?”
The flattery did not compensate Mr. Brook for his loss. The privilege of parading a pretty and well-dressed woman before the envious eyes of less fortunate colleagues is one which no member of Parliament, not even its sedatest representative of non-conformity, would forego without regret; and in a remote philandering way, Robert Brook was a kind of lady’s man. Cynthia was wearing a trim coat and skirt of dark velvet, and from a coil of fur about her throat her face rose like a summer flower, and was framed in the wide border of her blue hat.
“My duties are light just now,” he protested, but Cynthia lifted up her hands in her great muff appealingly and coaxed him.
“You will let me go now, Mr. Brook, won’t you?” Her eyes besought his permission as though without it she could not go, and Mr. Brook was duly reduced to subservience.
“Good-by,” said Cynthia, and she swung off, the long ends of her stole swinging about her hips, and her step indescribably light. Robert Brook watched her pass down the corridor to the rails where the visitors waited, and sighed in a melancholy fashion. It seemed to him for the moment contemptible to be a bachelor. For there was something strangely appealing about Cynthia, to-day—a winsomeness, a warmth. She seemed all a-quiver with youth. A swift variety of moods swept across her face in lights and shadows, and gave to her vitality. Her feet moved with a dancing buoyancy. All that Robert Brook felt the sandy-haired man from the Shires summarized in one reflective sentence:
“I should like to kiss that girl,” he said. “It would do me a great deal of good.”
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