ON the morning after Parliament had risen the newspapers announced the marriage of Cynthia Daventry to Harry Rames. The ceremony had taken place by special license early one morning at a little church in Mayfair, with a girl friend of Cynthia’s, and a member of Parliament named Robert Brook, as witnesses. A good many people were surprised; still more, however, declared that they had foreseen the marriage all along, and that of course it couldn’t last; while Lord Helmsdale’s mother simply remarked in accents of pity: “Poor thing! Double her age, isn’t he? And she was so pretty, too, a few months ago.”
On the other hand, however, a good many honest telegrams of congratulations reached the couple honeymooning in the woods of Fontainebleau; and when Harry and Cynthia returned to London, there were fresher incidents than their marriage for people to discuss. They settled down in Curzon Street to keep their bargain loyally.
If Cynthia’s heart ached at times, as it had done amongst the trees of Fontainebleau, for a life struck to fire by passion, she gave no outward sign of her pain. She was to help forward the great career, and to the best of her powers she did. She threw open her house to her husband’s party; she entertained; she attended social gatherings; she walked abroad in Ludsey with a good memory for faces; she spent many hours on the train. Harry, on his side, was assiduous at Westminster. He sat upon committees in the morning, and on one of the green benches below the gangway during the afternoon and evening, with an occasional rush home at a quarter to eight to take his wife out to dinner.
“Be there!” was one of Henry Smale’s maxims which he had taken to heart. “Sit in the House. Never mind the library or the smoking-room, or the lobby, or the terrace. Sit in the House! However dull the debate, and however inviting the sunlight streaming through the high windows, sit in the House. All the great Parliamentarians have done it. The lawyers can’t do it, of course. But you haven’t their excuse. You can. It may seem a waste of time. You’ll find that it isn’t.”
So Harry Rames sat in the House, and Cynthia, when she had no other engagement to detain her, came down to Westminster, dined with him there, and spent an hour afterward in the ladies’ gallery. She became acquainted with many men of different calibre, and amongst them with Mr. Devenish, the Secretary for Agriculture, who was just beginning to do a little more than make a vociferous noise in the world. Mr. Devenish happened to pass through the dining-room when Harry and his wife were finishing dinner, and catching sight of them he turned off toward their table.
He was a brisk, smallish man, and Cynthia was astonished by his aspect. She had seen him often enough upon the floor of the House of Commons, and had taken him for a person of a commanding height. But it was not the first time she had made this mistake. The House of Commons, like the theatre, magnifies men to the galleries. Mr. Devenish dropped his hand upon Rames’s shoulder.
“I want a word with you to-night, Rames,” he said
“Why not now?” asked Rames. “This is my wife, Mr. Devenish.”
Mr. Devenish bowed to her.
“I knew that very well,” he said.
Cynthia disbelieved him. Also she had formed a dislike of him. There was something too acrid in his speeches. She thought of him as a man going about with a phial of vitriol hidden in the palm of his hand.
“I am not famous,” she said coldly. “How should you know, Mr. Devenish?”
“I saw you in the lobby, and—I asked;” he smiled as he spoke, and she found his smile singularly disarming; it was so friendly and genuine a thing. Mr. Devenish turned again to Harry Rames.
“We want you to help us. A vote on account for the navy is coming up on Thursday. There will be a motion for the reduction of armaments. We want you to speak.”
Harry Rames shook his head.
“I rather propose to leave those questions alone. I don’t want to get the reputation of being a service member.”
“I appreciate that,” said Mr. Devenish. “But you are asked to speak in this debate by the government.”
“On the general question?” asked Rames.
“Not so much on that. The point is the economy of the big ship. You can speak from practical experience. You know. You are here in Parliament to contribute your knowledge.” Mr. Devenish turned to Cynthia, and again his smile illumined his face. “Persuade him, Mrs. Rames.”
It occurred to Cynthia that Mr. Devenish did not trouble to inquire whether Harry Rames believed the big ship to be an economical thing. Harry was to support the government. The rest of his argument she agreed with. It was Harry’s duty, since he was in Parliament, to contribute of his knowledge.
“Very well,” said Captain Rames. “Of course if the government wishes it, I shall be proud to take part in the debate. Won’t you sit down and have some coffee?”
“Yes, do!” said Cynthia cordially, and she was not altogether engaged in helping her husband on when she spoke. Mr. Devenish now puzzled her. She had begun by disliking him. He had spoken very few words to her, and yet she no longer disliked him. There was a charm in his manner of which he seemed quite unaware. At close quarters he lost the narrowness, which she had thought the mark of him. He seemed broadly human, comprehensively sympathetic. Yet he obviously wore no mask. He was simple, and he gave a pleasant impression of being a good fighter. Mr. Devenish drew up a chair and sat down.
“You come to many of our debates,” he said to Cynthia. “What do you think of us?” and with an unaffected interest in the views of a pretty woman, he led her on to express her opinion.
“Well,” she said frankly, “I think most of your debates are very dull.”
“That’s quite true,” Mr. Devenish replied with a laugh at the little spurt of complaint in her voice. “Nine out of ten are dull, and if you were in the government you would wish the tenth was too. The debate which sparkles and amuses you in the gallery means keen opposition on the floor of the House. The debate which is dull means that the government gets its bill. And the government is there to get its bills.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” said Cynthia, and then Harry Rames intervened.
“It’s curious,” he said, “but I no longer find any debate dull. I used to be bored, I admit it, but I can sit through anything now and find it interesting.”
“Yes,” said Cynthia, nodding her head; “I have noticed that, Harry, from the gallery, and—I think it’s a bad sign.”
“The sign of the true Parliamentarian,” said Mr. Devenish.
“Perhaps,” said Cynthia stubbornly. “Still a bad one.”
“Now why?” asked Mr. Devenish indulgently. Cynthia was certainly a very pretty woman. Let her talk! Cynthia colored and replied hotly:
“Because it means that the four walls of that little chamber are closing in on you. The game inside, with its pauses, its coups, its manœuvres, is becoming more important than the great interests and issues outside which you are there to decide. It means that in your thoughts the country and the constituency are growing smaller, and the green leather benches on which you sit becoming more and more important. If you don’t find any debates dull, you are growing aloof from the country. You are becoming, as you say, a Parliamentarian. That means Parliament first, the country a bad second.”
Cynthia stopped abruptly. She had allowed herself to be betrayed into delivering a lecture upon politics to a past-master in the art, a man who, out of his forty-five years, had spent twenty in the House of Commons. She flushed. “But you must think me a fool,” she cried.
“I don’t,” Mr. Devenish exclaimed. “Yours is a definite point of view.” He was not speaking seriously. For he was eager to learn so long as the learning came to him by word of mouth, and not from the printed page. “Tell me some more.”
He was considering no longer the prettiness of the woman, the changing lights upon her face. He was conceding respect to her judgment. Cynthia was mollified. She continued:
“And here’s something which to me makes many of the debates tedious and unreal. You all behave as if your ideal of a member of the House of Commons were a fossil on a shelf.”
Mr. Devenish laughed.
“Why do you say that, Mrs. Rames?”
“Because if a man changes his opinions ever so little during a course of years, he at once has the reports of his old speeches flung at his head in scathing accents, as though he had committed the meanest of crimes.”
“It’s a party score,” said Mr. Devenish.
“Yes, but why?” Cynthia insisted. “You must all know that a man who is any use at all does change his opinions as his experience widens. Surely that’s true. What’s the use of thought at all if it leaves you precisely where you were?”
“Mrs. Rames,” said Mr. Devenish, “I cannot dispute it.”
Cynthia had long been puzzled by this extraordinary childishness on the part of men of reputed intelligence. She was determined if she could to get at the truth. “Then why?” she asked. “Why, when one of the opposition proves that a member of the government has changed his view, does all the opposition shout with derision, and why do all on the government side look glum? Why must the minister labor to show that he really hasn’t changed any views? Why does he rise so quickly to do it? And why, when he has risen, doesn’t he say: ‘Of course I have changed my views. I am a better man than I was two years ago.’”
“Well, upon my word, I can’t tell you why,” said Mr. Devenish honestly. “I suppose we haven’t the courage. Don’t you approve of us at all?”
“Oh, yes, I do,” said Cynthia quickly; “and much more than I expected to do.” She was induced to give her impression of the body of members.
“I had got an idea that everybody was in here to get something.” She grew suddenly red, and in a flurry, which Mr. Devenish did not understand. She continued, “I suppose I got the idea from newspapers. I made a wrong inference. They are here, of course—the rich men who want honors to put a crown upon their wealth, the office-hunters, the speculator, and the financier, who use their membership to help their city business—But there are others one is apt to overlook, the silent people, who make no mark, and don’t want to make one. You see them in the lobby, rather disconsolately busy about nothing. They are probably not particularly intelligent. Some of them, no doubt, are quite stupid. But one rather respects them, because membership of the House of Commons means to them a real daily loss. They would be more prosperous if they devoted the time they spend here to their business. But they seem to be here because they believe that some things want doing, some definite things, and that they can help to get them done by their votes. There is a lot of them. Then there are the country gentlemen who would be happier on their estates, and would be there but for their conviction that the solid judgment of the country gentleman is absolutely necessary in the council of the nation.” She spoke with pomposity and a friendly mimicry of the class she described. “But I like them. I think they are of value because to them, too, membership here means a real loss.”
“Well, I agree,” said Mr. Devenish.
“You! You do?” asked Cynthia in surprise. “I thought that—” and she stopped.
“Well, what?” Mr. Devenish pressed for her opinion with a laugh.
“Never mind,” said Cynthia. “There’s another class, too, which attracts me. The failures. The ambitious men who just don’t succeed, and fail by so very little, but fail completely.”
“Yes,” Mr. Devenish agreed, “their lot is not attractive. They can’t bring themselves to admit failure. They drift along here until the time is past for them to do anything else. The four walls, as you say, have closed about them. They sit here, eating out their hearts, jealous of the others who succeed, and making a bitter pretence of contentment.”
“They are the prisoners of the House of Commons,” said Cynthia, and the phrase struck pleasantly upon Mr. Devenish’s ears so used to the slipshod metaphors of the average speaker.
“Yes,” he said with a quick look of interest. “Yes, that’s a true saying. How did you think of it, Mrs. Rames?”
“I have sympathy with failures,” she replied.
“Ah,” said Mr. Devenish. “But it’s easy to have that when one is married to success,” and he turned genially to Captain Rames.
A junior whip hurried up to the table.
“You are wanted, Mr. Devenish, in the House,” he said.
Devenish looked at his watch and sprang up. “I have stayed longer than I ought to. We can count upon you then, Rames, for Thursday,” and he hurried away. Cynthia followed him with her eyes. He attracted her and he left with her an impression of power, which made his interest in her, obviously expressed, a subtle flattery. She turned back to her husband.
“I was mistaken in that man,” she said, and as Harry Rames did not answer her, she continued: “You see, Harry, I am doing my best to help you on.”
“You are indeed,” said Harry Rames sulkily. Cynthia stared at him. The sulkiness in his voice set her blood tingling. He could be jealous then! She laughed out loud suddenly, with a girl’s joyousness, and, as Harry lifted inquiring eyes to her, the blood mantled into her cheeks, and she sat in a pretty confusion. For a moment both of them were embarrassed, and neither could have told why. Cynthia broke through the embarrassment with the first words which occurred to her:
“I can’t reconcile Mr. Devenish with his speeches,” she said.
“Yet there’s a continuity,” replied Harry. “He is one of your instances of men big enough to widen out. But he’s an enthusiast, and he has done in his day a deal of platform work so that the old phrases come trippingly to his tongue. He says, when he’s carried away, more than he thinks now, but less than he used to think ten years ago. I fancy that’s the explanation.”
Cynthia looked toward the door through which Mr. Devenish had disappeared.
“Tell me about him, Harry,” she said.
“I will, certainly,” said Rames. His ill-humor had passed. He leaned toward his wife with a smile upon his face. It seemed to Cynthia that the moment of embarrassment so quickly gone had brought now as its consequence another moment quite as inexplicable—a moment during which she and Harry were nearer to one another than as yet they had been.
“The one thing I think to remember about Devenish is this,” Rames continued. “As a boy he had always to walk in the road and he has not forgotten it.”
The division bell began to ring before he could say another word to elaborate his sketch of the man. He led Cynthia out through the arches to the door where her carriage waited, and he left her to drive home puzzled by his phrase.
He spoke, as he had promised to do, on the following Thursday. Cynthia heard the speech from the ladies’ gallery, not siding with it at all, nor against it, but simply attentive to its effect. He rose in a full House, which did not diminish as he spoke, and the space behind the bar grew crowded. He was brief; he worked his own intimate knowledge of the mechanism of a modern ship of war into the scheme of his speech. He was nervous, Cynthia knew, but he gave no outward sign of nervousness; he spoke with a quiet resonance of voice, as though he had the measure of that assembly; and he brought into play that remarkable gift of counterfeiting sincerity, which always astonished, and sometimes frightened her. It was difficult even for her to realize that he had no real opinion about the value of the big ship, one way or the other, and that he had merely crammed his subject diligently with her help during the last few days. He spoke, indeed, with telling effect. There were friends of Cynthia in the gallery who were quick to congratulate her. She herself was filled with admiration, but it was the admiration for the fine performance of an actor; and when she went down in the lift to join him after the debate was over, the cry was loud in her heart: “If only he believed one word of it!”
He met her at the gate of the lift, and she caught his arm and pressed it against her side.
“Thank you,” said Harry. “That’s better than words.”
“It wasn’t a congratulation,” she replied. “It was an appeal.”
Harry Rames spoke once more during that session, late at night, in a thin House, and to try himself in unprepared debate, rather than with any intention to arrest notice. But the moment was well chosen, for a speaker on the government side was needed; and when the House rose for the autumn, he took down with him to Warwickshire the reputation of a rising man. He had kept his bargain, Cynthia gratefully acknowledged it, and the fears which Isaac Benoliel had aroused in her began for a time to lose their substance.
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