“WE will have to make a great stand next year, Rames,” said Robert Brook. “We must organize. We have time, thank goodness. There are ten of us now. A lot more will join us.”
“But will they vote? That’s the point,” returned Rames. “Will they vote against the government’s bill on its second reading?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Brook replied enthusiastically. “There are a lot of discontented people in our majority. We’ll have voters—Challoner, for instance. Besides, you have friends.”
Rames laughed.
“Yes, I know the kind of friends—fellows who come to you in your seat after you have spoken, pat you on the back, whisper that they are with you, and then troop like tame mice into the government lobby against you. I’ve watched them.”
Brook, however, was not to be damped. He threw himself for the rest of that session into the work of organization. A halting speaker and an ineffectual personage, he had sat for twenty years in the House of Commons and was not tired of it. He was without distinction, he was the confidant of no minister, he was never caricatured, he was never the chairman of a committee, he rarely spoke. The recruits of each new Parliament took almost its duration before they assigned individuality to his features or honored him with a name. He was mediocrity’s last word. But he had charming manners and won to a kind of friendly pity those whose acquaintance he gently made. He was born for private life, but the House of Commons had caught him as in a net. He had no other interests, he had no wife, he did not any longer even aspire to office. To be busy in the House of Commons—that was lifeblood to him and a renewal of youth. His chance had come now. He hurried from man to man, discreet and furtive. He arranged private meetings. He hooked his little wagon to Rames’s star. He approached Colonel Challoner.
Challoner, the party hack, was instinctively outraged. Was the list of ministers closed forever? No! But as he was about to repel Robert Brook’s advances, the very holder of the office which he coveted stung him into revolt.
It was quite toward the end of the session. Colonel Challoner was walking through the division lobby late at night when he saw the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Charles Bradley, in front of him. There was some stir at the time because certain Indian emigrants had suffered in one of the disturbances of southern Persia. Colonel Challoner hurried officiously to Mr. Bradley’s side.
“Bradley,” he said, “don’t you think it would be good policy to repatriate those Indians at our expense. What?”
Mr. Bradley, a florid gentleman, youthfully middle-aged, with a sweet voice, a pompous manner, and perhaps a bare sufficiency of brains, turned to the colonel with condescending kindness.
“As a member of the government,” he said importantly, “I can no longer speak freely. Ah, my dear Challoner, I tell you I regret day after day that corner seat on the front bench below the gangway, and the opportunity of supplementary questions. But that happy time has gone. You might, if you like, raise the question on the adjournment or the Appropriation Bill next week. I could then reply to you.”
Mr. Bradley smiled benignantly upon Colonel Challoner as from heights of sunrise, and passed on. He had grown very lordly since his elevation to office. Still, a few paces further on it seemed worth his while to stop until Challoner rejoined him. He did not notice that the colonel had grown rather red in the face.
“If you do raise the question, Colonel Challoner, could you introduce into your speech ‘Civis Romanus sum’? I should like to hang my speech upon that. Thank you.”
Even a party hack will turn if he be sufficiently trodden upon by minor ministers, and Colonel Challoner did now.
“Mr. Bradley,” he asked with a most elaborate politeness, “have you ever calculated how many Under Secretaries of State, past and present, there are alive to-day? Or how many of them have names which are even faintly familiar to the public?”
Mr. Bradley gasped and stared. This was Challoner—old Challoner—talking! Bradley was quite unprepared to cope with so unparalleled an outrage. The colonel actually went on, and in accents of raillery:
“‘Civis Romanus sum.’ Now, why quote a phrase so banal. Surely, Mr. Bradley, it has had its day. We can do better than that if we put our heads together. Civis Romanus sum! God bless my soul! But I am willing to help you with a tag of Latin. I will introduce another sentence. Balbus shall build a wall—upon my word he shall—and you can hang your speech onto that, and be damned to you.”
Mr. Bradley, however, had suffered enough of this unseemliness. He hurried forward and passed between the clerks who recorded the votes with a heightened color. Colonel Challoner followed him. But he waited at the door for Robert Brook to emerge, and then drew him by the arm into the outer lobby.
“I have been thinking over what you proposed, Brook,” he said. “Certainly, certainly we must make a stand against Fanshawe’s bill. We have a duty to our constituents. We must show the government we are not to be trifled with.”
Robert Brook responded with warmth.
“I thought that upon reflection you would look upon it that way. You will be a pillar of strength to us, Challoner.”
“That’s very good of you,” said Challoner. After all, there were some, it seemed, who knew his worth. “We must meet in the autumn—just those on whom we can depend—and arrange a plan of campaign.”
“Yes,” said Brook. “But where? We want, don’t you think, to mask our batteries until the time comes for opening fire. We might meet at Rames’s house—but it is known that he is opposed to the measure.” He looked invitingly at his new ally.
“Yes, I see, I see,” said Colonel Challoner a little doubtfully. There was a proposal in his mind—he was not quite sure whether he would make it. It was a bold one—it was the burning of his boats.
“Well, why not?” he suddenly said. “Why not meet at my house in Dorsetshire? I have some partridges. They will provide the excuse. Let us meet in October. Let me have the names and I’ll quietly ask the men before the session ends.”
Mr. Brook was delighted. He called mysteriously upon Harry Rames.
“We have got Challoner,” he said. Rames shook his head.
“He’ll back out.”
“I don’t see how he can. He is asking us all to meet at Bramling in the autumn.”
Harry Rames sat back in his chair.
“How in the world did you manage that, Brook? We must go, of course.”
Challoner spoke to Rames that evening. “It’s to be quite an informal little party,” he said with a wink, and took Rames and Brook each by the arm. Now that he had tasted the delights of revolt, Colonel Challoner, too, was a different man. He lost his dreariness. No longer he moulted; no longer he dripped melancholy on all who stood near to him. He passed ministers with a high head and an arrogant smile. “We’ll show ’em,” he said. “Yes, sir, we’ll show ’em.” And as he saw Bradley approaching him, “Here’s Civis Romanus,” he cried in tones loud enough to carry to the Under Secretary’s ears. The Under Secretary flushed and hurried on. Colonel Challoner had told his story freely, and Civis Romanus Mr. Bradley remained for the rest of that Parliament. Colonel Challoner resumed: “We’ll meet on the eighth of October. A little partridge shoot, eh? Just a few of us, jolly fellows all. You’ll bring your wife, Rames, won’t you? The others will.”
That was a precaution which had been suggested by Brook.
“Some one is sure to let out that we are meeting at Bramling,” he said. “If the men go without their wives, the gathering will have the look of a conspiracy. With them it will just be an ordinary autumn shooting party.”
“Quite so,” said Rames.
The House rose at eleven o’clock that night, and when Harry went home, he found his wife just returned from a dinner party. She came with him into his study and while they sat and talked he told her that she, too, was to be included in the visit to Bramling. Cynthia’s face clouded.
“I would rather not go,” she said. “I don’t think there is any need that I should.”
“The other men will bring their wives.”
“There will be enough then. It won’t matter if one wife doesn’t go.”
She was looking at Harry Rames directly, but with a great disquiet in her eyes. Harry, however, persisted.
“I think you are wanted, Cynthia. We have a difficult job to keep these men together and agree upon a line of concerted action. Some women could be very useful at a juncture like this. You are one of them.”
Cynthia rose with a quick movement to her feet. She stood before him, her broad forehead troubled, her lips mutinous, and by her attitude she made all the more plain his need of her. The room was Rames’s own study which had been lined with mahogany, and against the bright dark panelling, in her white dress, she gleamed slim and fair and beautiful as silver. Harry Rames looked her over with a smile. She was, as he put it to himself, exquisitely turned out. She had the grace and delicacy natural to a family nursed in good manners through a century, and with all her beauty she had simplicity and a desire to please.
“Yes, I want you, Cynthia,” he said, and the blood rushed hot to her face and throat. She turned from him swiftly and went out of the open window onto a balcony which overhung their tiny square of garden. Rames’s eyes followed her curiously. Something had gone wrong; that was clear. He could see her leaning over the rail in the darkness, her face between her hands.
Rames’s survey of her had brought back to her recollection that distant morning by the wheat-field in South America when her father had looked her over horribly from head to foot and had valued her for a market. There had been just a touch of appraisement in her husband’s look now. Almost she traced a resemblance in the two men’s thoughts, the two men’s examinations.
Harry left her to herself for a few minutes. Then he followed her:
“I think I understand, Cynthia,” he said gently. “Of course it isn’t a very high and lofty business we’re engaged on. That’s right enough. And when you consider the sort of people our party’s going to be composed of—the dissatisfied, the ambitious, the timid, and just a few who believe Fanshawe’s bill a bad thing—the manœuvre doesn’t look very pretty. So if you don’t want to go, don’t.”
But Cynthia had changed her mind.
“No. I’ll come, Harry,” she said. “It’s too late to be half-hearted now. I’ll certainly come.”
She turned back into the room, and picking up her gloves from a table went upstairs. Harry Rames had no doubt that he had hit upon the reason of her disinclination to go to Bramling. But as Cynthia ran up the stairs she kept saying to herself nervously like one who would frighten fear away with words:
“Perhaps no one will notice it. Very likely no one will notice it. And if they do, they will think it an accident.”
She had not been considering at all the worthiness of these autumn manœuvres. She had been thinking of a picture by Romney which hung in the dining-room of Bramling, a picture which she had never seen, but which yet she knew to be a portrait of herself. She had, however, promised to help in the making of the great career and this was one of its critical moments. It was, as she had said to Harry, too late to be half-hearted. If she failed him now, she failed him altogether. She must take the risk that others would notice the resemblance—and amongst the others, perhaps even her grandfather Colonel Challoner himself. To one determination, however, she clung. She would admit no kinship with the Challoners. Nothing should persuade her, neither the old man’s loneliness nor his disappointed hopes. She held the name and the family in horror, though the name and the family were her own.
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