BRAMLING is the very house for a conspiracy. It lies in Dorsetshire, hidden away at the back of the grass-walled town of Wareham on the road to no where. A stream runs past its door down to Poole Harbor, and its windows look across grass meadows to where the sea-cliffs lift against the sky. Hither through one October day came in old-fashioned flies and private motor-cars the inhabitants of the Cave—Cynthia amongst the last of them with a foot which hesitated to cross the threshold. There were thirty in all assembled in the drawing-room when the dinner-gong sounded, eighteen men and twelve women. Colonel Challoner, to Cynthia’s satisfaction, had to give his arm to Lady Lorme, the wife of an ex-Under Secretary of the home office who had quarreled with his chief and resigned. She herself was taken in by Robert Brook. Reluctance and curiosity struggled for mastery within her as she entered the dining-room, and took her seat. She would not look up at the walls, yet she could hardly but look up, and she sought furtively around the dinner-table whether any noticed the picture and her resemblance to it. But no one was looking at any picture at all. Not a remark was made or a glance thrown to show her where it hung. She looked more boldly at her companions, and coming to a greater ease began with enjoyment to laugh at herself. Not one person at the table was devoting a thought to her at all. They were all very busy, drinking their soup and talking rapidly like uncomfortable people who fear that if once their speech flags they will never find anything more to say. They were in truth an uncongenial company, held together by a single link, their eagerness to harass their own government. Even Robert Brook, who knew Cynthia well, was talking to her with incoherence in his agitation lest the gathering at Bramling should fail. She heard Sir Faraday Lorme, a big red-faced man of sixty with a bull-neck, say across the table to Charles Payne, one of the eight who genuinely thought Fanshawe’s bill a bad experiment:
“Of course, as a rule, you know I don’t act with you, but—” and the rest of the sentence was lost to her ears, but it seemed to her that fully half of those present might have said as much to their neighbors. Further along the table she caught sight of Mr. Andrew Fallon, a dark white-faced man who had only joined them because his wife had been signally and publicly snubbed by the wife of a Cabinet Minister. Cynthia could see the wife on the opposite side of the table, a portly over-dressed woman with an overbearing voice; and on behalf of all her sex she felt grateful to the Cabinet Minister’s wife.
A singularly gentle voice drew her attention. She turned away from Robert Brook, to find at her other side Mr. Howard Fall.
“We have spoken in the lobby, Mrs. Rames,” said Howard Fall timidly. “Captain Rames was kind enough to introduce me.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Cynthia. “Oh, I am glad that you are here.”
To her Howard Fall was, with the exception of her husband, the most interesting man in the room. She welcomed his presence whole-heartedly. He was intellect, he was modesty. Even now at her implied compliment he was blushing like a young girl and his eyes shone with dog-like gratitude. Howard Fall was then about fifty years of age; and though he was but a contemporary of Harry Rames in the House of Commons, he had already acquired there a special place of high distinction. Of too acute and logical a mind to be a good party-man, he harried with a pleasant voice and most destructive criticism, now his own party, now his opponents. He had one great quality in common with Cynthia, he was quite without affectation. He would make a brilliant speech with extraordinary diffidence. But he made it, and a genuine word of praise or thanks delighted him, as a schoolboy is delighted with a sovereign. With the mild manners of a curate he combined the courage of a soldier. If he had ideas to express—and he generally had—no thought of prudence could hinder him from expressing them. Indeed, he drew a gentle contentment from the knowledge that as a rule they were troublesome to those whom he nominally supported. Cynthia had heard him more than once from the ladies’ gallery, and had admired his honesty and his courage. For the moment she was enheartened by his presence. It put confidence into her. With him to help, Harry might indeed put up a fight against Mr. Devenish.
“I didn’t know,” said Howard Fall, “that Captain Rames was going to speak against Fanshawe’s bill. Otherwise, of course, I should have been in the House to support him;” and the “of course” struck all Cynthia’s comfort from her. It was so significant of the man. He was born predestined always to revolt. Any party of two had him for a third. Cynthia glanced disconsolately to where her husband sat at the end of the table. But he showed no sign of misgiving. He was talking energetically to the four people nearest to him, and he only paused when her eyes rested upon his face. She turned away again and there above the head of Colonel Challoner, who was sitting exactly opposite to her, she saw at last the portrait glowing upon the wall.
For the moment she had forgotten it. Now it caught away her breath. She sat and stared at it. It was the portrait of a girl of seventeen, dressed in white from the big straw hat with its flapping brim to the shoes upon her feet. There was but one touch of color, a broad shining ribbon of bright blue looped about the crown of the hat, and thus dressed, the girl stood in a field of sunlight and corn, looking straight out from the picture, with a great curiosity and eagerness in her dark-blue eyes. She seemed to be looking upon the gates of a world of wonder—gates which with a most tantalizing tardiness were slowly opening to let her through.
Was she herself indeed like that? The question rushed into Cynthia’s mind. As pretty as that? It was impossible. Yet she had been recognized because of it. Just so then she must have looked that morning when, after sending her neglected telegram to Captain Rames, she had stood at the edge of the wheat on the Daventry estancia. Yet nobody recognized her now. She had the features of the girl in the portrait, the broad forehead, the straight, delicate nose, the fair hair, the big dark-blue eyes. Yet nobody recognized her. Perhaps, however, she had gone off. She was getting old. A gentle melancholy descended upon Cynthia. The fear lest her likeness to the girl in the picture should be remarked had quite gone since she had seen the picture. She was now rather hurt and indignant that no one had noticed it.
Lady Lorme gave the signal a little while afterward, and the ladies rose and left the men to their cigars and their discussion. Colonel Challoner opened the proceedings with a pompous, unnecessary little speech. He welcomed his guests, and he reminded them at considerable length of the object of the gathering. He concluded with a question as to whether any honorable member present had any views as to the best procedure to be adopted.
“Yes,” said Harry Rames, “if I may make a suggestion. There are eighteen of us here. I propose that we now go carefully through the list of members and consider how many more we can get to join us, upon whom we can count. I have Vacher’s list here;” and he drew out from his pocket the familiar little paper-covered book with the names and addresses of the members.
“I think that’s the first thing to be done,” a man agreed from the other end of the table. He was a Mr. Edgington, a little, square, bald man with short side-whiskers, who seemed a cross between an attorney and a stable-boy. He was one of the many men in the House who have a subject. He had mastered the Housing question; he really knew the facts, he had the figures at his fingers’ ends, and he had counted upon his knowledge to take him straight through the doors of the Local Government Board. But the doors had remained closed, and he had turned gadfly in consequence—a gadfly that trumpeted but had no sting. “To be sure about the men who will stand out against the pressure of the Whips, who will not be frightened into line by their local associations, who retain, in a word, some self-respect and some veneration for the independence of the House of Commons—that is our first requisite,” he said floridly.
The company then went carefully through the list and marked off twenty fresh names as the names of men who might be inclined to join the revolt. It was arranged that discreet letters should be written to them on the following day, and Robert Brook was appointed secretary by an unanimous vote.
“Of course we shan’t get them all,” said Lorme.
“And of those we do get, some will shirk when the division bell rings,” added Howard Fall.
“No doubt,” said Rames. “But if we can carry thirty men into the opposition lobby on the second reading, we shall have made a demonstration which will go far to kill the bill. It will mean sixty on a division. It will leave the government with a comfortable majority. We all want that of course,”—a chorus of approval, more or less sincere, greeted the remark—“But it will also mean that the government will hardly be able to force the bill through its committee stages by a drastic use of the closure.”
“Exactly,” said a tall, bearded man with a strong Scotch accent, who up to this moment had held his tongue. He represented a northern town of Scotland, and was one of the eight who were opposed to the measure first and last because they believed it harmful to the country. “Exactly. The demonstration is very well, but if the bill is to be killed, we will have to kill it in committee. And to prepare for that must be our chief work here, Colonel Challoner.”
“Yes,” said Rames. “Mr. Monro is right. We must go word by word through those clauses of Fanshawe’s bill, which we are fairly certain Devenish will incorporate in his measure. We must formulate amendments, and we ought, I think, to agree, to some extent, upon the speakers to move them. It will, of course, have to be a provisional arrangement—” and he was interrupted by a strident voice which belonged to a sandy-haired hunting-man with a broad red face who would have seemed totally out of place in any conspiracy.
“Yes. Devenish may sell us a pup. He’s a deuce of a clever fellow is Devenish. Let him get wind of your partridges, Challoner, and he’ll sell us a pup for a sure thing.”
“All the more reason we should keep our gathering quiet,” said Challoner. He looked round the table with an impatience which had been growing upon him during the last half-hour. “I think that’s all we can do to-night.”
“About all,” said Monro. “There is just this suggestion I would like to make. I know a man whose business is land, and he is most experienced in it; and I thought that if you would like, I would send him a telegram to-morrow, and we could employ him to help us in framing these amendments. He is a partner in Beevis and Beevis, the land-agents in Piccadilly.”
“By all means, do,” said Challoner. “We all agree to that, don’t we? And now let us join the ladies.”
He sprang up and opened the door like a man in a great hurry. When he entered the drawing-room, he crossed it at once to Cynthia’s side.
“I was sorry, Mrs. Rames, that I couldn’t take you in to dinner to-night. I would have liked very much that on your first evening at Bramling you should have come in with me. For, as you know, I somehow associate you with this house.”
He looked at her with a very direct inquiry in his eyes. But Cynthia would not respond to it; and he sat at her side with a wistfulness in his voice and his words against which she had a little trouble to protect her heart. But she did, for she was alarmed. When she had met him before he had spoken rather as though he wished that they were related. To-night he spoke as if he suspected that they were.
Mr. Beevis arrived the next afternoon, and for the rest of the week, while the morning was given to the partridges and the amusements of the country, the afternoon and the evening found the Cave busy upon the bill. Amendments were formulated and shared out amongst them, whilst it was by general consent left to Rames to raise the question, first of all, on the Address at the beginning of the session and then to move the rejection of the bill later on when it came before the House upon its second reading. Good progress, in a word, was made, and, to the delight of all, no whisper of this conspiracy crept into any of the daily papers. They were examined anxiously every day upon their arrival at eleven, and laid down with relief. Cynthia could not but laugh.
“I never would have believed that you could have found so many members of Parliament reluctant to see their names in the papers,” she said to her husband.
“Yes, it’s astonishing what modesty they can develop,” he replied.
But though Cynthia laughed, the work, the concealments, the sort of restrained excitement which was diffused through the house, began to have their effect upon her. She was getting color into her life at last, she assured herself, even if it was only a dingy color. Moreover, she had the opportunity to compare her husband with his rivals in the career. Indeed, he had but one real rival in that House, Howard Fall. And though he lacked the subtlety of his intellect, he had a swifter initiative, a more telling vigor of phrase. As for the rest he stood head and shoulders above them all, and they knew it and looked to him to lead them. If he did not share the strong convictions of the honest men, he overtopped them by sheer ability, and as to the others he knew nothing either of their malice or their fear. Thus they all came hopefully to the last day of their visit; and then at one o’clock in the day the thunderbolt fell.
It was a Sunday and the whole party had just settled down to luncheon when the whir of a motor-car floated into the room. It was followed by the sound of a door opening and shutting, a pleasant and familiar voice was heard to inquire for Colonel Challoner, and the next moment, ushered in by the butler, Mr. Devenish entered the room. Consternation ran round that luncheon table like a wind across a field of corn. Colonel Challoner sprang up hastily with every sign of discomfort.
“My dear Devenish, I am delighted to see you, I am sure. You are just in time for luncheon.” He called to the butler to lay another place at his side. “I didn’t know you were in the neighborhood. You should have let me know.”
“I didn’t mean to do that,” said Devenish dryly. He ran his eye from face to face with a twinkling glance. Cynthia herself could hardly restrain a laugh. The independent members of the nation’s Parliament looked so singularly like a set of school-boys’ caught by a master in the planning of a rebellion.
“Quite a large party, eh, Challoner?” he said with a smile.
“Yes, yes,” replied the colonel. “The partridges, you know.”
“Ah, the partridges, to be sure. But I didn’t know that Howard Fall shot at anything but ministers. And even they only get winged, eh, Fall?”
Mr. Devenish strolled round the table and shook hands with Fall. Fall, however, was one of the few who was quite undisturbed.
“Yes, but I am looking to practice to improve my shooting,” he said.
A place was now laid for Devenish. Colonel Challoner called to him.
“Will you come and sit here, Devenish?”
“Certainly,” replied the smiling minister. “But I should first of all like to shake hands with all my friends;” and quite slowly he walked round the table and shook hands with each of the men present and those of the ladies whom he knew. He was in the best of tempers, and he had a cordial word for every one except for Captain Ramos. To him he merely said:
“Ah!” and the accent of his voice had in it no note of surprise. It was the ejaculation of a man establishing something which he had suspected. Then he walked to his place and sat down.
“There are eighteen members of Parliament, Challoner,” he said pleasantly. “I hope that I have forgotten no one. Let me see!” Again his eye ranged round the table, obviously registering in his memory the identity of Challoner’s guests. “No, eighteen members of Parliament. Have you got a partridge left?”
Rames leaned forward and met smile with smile.
“We have just left one for next year,” he said, “and we have been making a careful note of the piece of land on which we think we shall get him.”
Howard Fall was delighted. For he loved courage. But the others of that company were more than ever confused and disconcerted.
“He’s giving us away,” said one of the weak-kneed in an indignant whisper to Andrew Fallon. Fallon’s white face was twisted in a grin.
“He’s cutting down the bridge behind you, my friend. And I don’t think he’s a bad judge.”
Meanwhile Devenish returned the direct gaze of Captain Rames. There was no pretence between these two. Their eyes met; they challenged each other, Rames with perfect good-humor, Devenish with a certain grimness in his smile. He nodded his head toward Rames and tightened his lips. There was not a man at that table who could not construe the gesture into words.
“You are the leader here, Rames. Very well, we’ll see.”
Mr. Devenish turned to his neighbor. It was Cynthia, and even to her he talked for a little while with reserve. Rames had been correct in his diagnosis of the man. A good-humored fighter as a rule, he lost his good-humor when the attack was made upon his flank. He had begun his own political career with side-shots at his leaders from the front-bench below the gangway; but he did not rejoice when the same disposition of battle was planned against himself. However, luncheon and the proximity of a beautiful woman appeased him as they should. He began to talk freely; his smile lost its grimness, his natural geniality flashed bright.
“Tell me one thing,” he said suddenly.
“It depends—” said Cynthia warily.
“Very well then. Tell me another thing. Why does your portrait hang in this house?”
Cynthia’s cheeks flamed. She looked swiftly across Devenish at Colonel Challoner. But he was giving no heed to them.
“Do you think it’s like me?” she asked.
“It is you,” he replied.
“No one else has noticed the resemblance all this week,” said Cynthia.
Mr. Devenish glanced along the table.
“Well, look at ’em,” he said contemptuously, and they both laughed. Lady Lorme rose at that moment from the table, and Mr. Devenish, pleading the distance he had to travel, took his departure.
“I have enjoyed myself very much, Challoner,” he said as the colonel came out with him to-the doorway. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that I thought of dropping in upon you for luncheon. I am going back to London now. Good-by.”
He mounted into his car and drove gaily off. In the dining-room behind him, the sandy-haired man was saying over and over again to the dismayed conspirators—
“He’ll sell us a pup. He’ll sell us a pup. I’ll bet you a monkey, he’ll sell us a pup.”
That night, when the men went upstairs, Rames passing from his dressing-room into his wife’s bedroom found her still up and sitting by her fire.
“We go back to-morrow, Cynthia. It has been a long week. I hope you haven’t been bored.”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t.”
“What do you think of them? Will they run away when the fight comes?”
“Not all,” said Cynthia. “But even of those who stay with you, there’s not one who is a match for Mr. Devenish.”
She spoke with some warmth in her voice.
“You like him?” said Harry Rames.
“I think he’s a big man,” she replied.
Rames, who was standing looking into her mirror, suddenly swung round.
“Shall I tell you why you say that, Cynthia?”
“Yes.”
“Because he’s the only man except myself who has noticed your likeness to that very pretty girl on the wall of the dining-room. I heard him mention it to you at luncheon.”
He burst out into a laugh as he spoke; and in a moment or two Cynthia joined in the laugh. So Harry Rames too had noticed the resemblance. She laughed and her eyes laughed with her lips.
“After all,” said Harry Rames, “we get some fun out of it, don’t we, Cynthia?”
“Yes,” said Cynthia and her laughter died away. “We get some fun out of it, Harry. That’s just what we do get”; and her eyes turned away from him to the fire.
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