YET that August when Parliament had risen, Harry Rames and Cynthia were cruising in the Solent and no word had been spoken by her to remedy their trouble. It was Cynthia who had proposed this holiday and Harry had fallen in with her plan eagerly. They had chartered a small steam yacht of a hundred tons. Rames navigated the boat himself and slipping their moorings one afternoon, they left Cowes behind them and steamed away through the north channel of the Shingles to Poole. Cynthia had ceased to wrestle with herself. She was content to lie in her deck chair and put into and out of the harbors of the West.
“This shall be the perfect holiday,” she had said. “Whatever the future may hold for us, we will have this month together without visitors, without any shadows.”
They were tossed in Portland race; they steamed across the West Bay over a sea smooth and bright as a steel mirror. They dropped their anchor at Dartmouth. They rounded the Start on the next day and crossed the Bar of Salcombe harbor under the shadow of Bolt Head on just such an evening of sunset as that which the poet fixed in a few lines of deathless verse. Cynthia stood with her arm through Harry’s, as very slowly with the lead going in the bows he set the boat over the shallows.
“Sunset and evening star,” Cynthia quoted.
“And one clear call for me,” Harry Rames continued and abruptly broke off like a guilty person who has spoken without thought. Cynthia walked to the end of the bridge. After all, this cruise had made a difference to Harry. She consoled herself by the reflection. He had recovered something of his buoyancy of spirits since he had trodden the planks of this little yacht and looked down from its flimsy bridge onto its narrow deck and tapering bow. He was interested in the boat, quick to induce her to give him of her best, and her brass shone like a woman’s ornaments. They put out from Salcombe the next day, and keeping clear of Plymouth and Polperro and Fowey, heard the bell upon the Manacles in the afternoon and dropped anchor between the woods of Helford River. They stayed there for a day and made a passage thence to Guernsey on a night of moonlight. Cynthia sat late upon the bridge while Rames in his great-coat kept the boat upon her course. Toward morning he came to her side and stooped over her.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“No.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
“No.”
“You were lying so still.”
“Yes,” said Cynthia. “I am storing this night up.”
The swish and sparkle of the water along the boat’s sides, the rattle of the chain as the helmsman spun the wheel, the quiet orders of her husband, the infinite peace of sky and sea, and the yacht like a jewel hung between them, were indeed to dwell long in Cynthia’s memories. For their holiday was at an end. A sailor was sent ashore at Guernsey for the ship’s letters and he brought them on board whilst Harry and Cynthia were at breakfast in the deck cabin. There was one for Rames with the Hickleton postmark stamped upon the envelope. Harry tore it open reluctantly.
“Carberley has resigned,” he said. “There will be a meeting of the executive on Friday night to adopt young Burrell.”
Cynthia looked out across the harbor.
“We ought to go back, oughtn’t we?” she said slowly.
Harry glanced at his letter.
“It is not expected that the election will take place for five weeks,” he answered.
Cynthia shook her head.
“We shall want all that time, Harry.” Then she cried with a sudden vehemence. “You have got to win this fight, Harry. So much hangs on it for you and me.”
“I know, Cynthia,” he answered.
“More than you know.”
Harry rose from his chair.
“I’ll give orders. We will steam back to Southampton at once. But it’s a pity, isn’t it? Old Carberley might have waited for another month. I am sorry.”
“So am I,” said Cynthia. Her eyes had wandered from him and were once more fixed upon the shipping in the harbor. Her face had grown white. “More sorry than you can know.”
A little white dinghy, gay with a sailor in a white jersey and a red cap, was just leaving the side of a big yacht moored across the water. The picture of that little boat was fixed for life in Cynthia’s recollections. It had nothing to do with her, she never knew who sailed in the yacht, or on what business the boat put off to shore. But the picture of it was vivid to her long after important memories had grown altogether dim.
The fight for the Hickleton Division was memorable in the political history of that year. From first to last it was Rames’s fight. The candidate was young, and a halting speaker, and unknown to the constituency. But he lived in Rames’s house and when he appeared upon a platform he appeared with Rames at his side. When he spoke he uttered the words which Rames had prepared, and when he had finished Rames was on his legs to fill up the deficiencies and whip the assembly to a fire of enthusiasm. From the great guns of his own party no assistance came. Indeed, most of them would have been well pleased had the seat not been won. For in the forefront of his programme Mr. William Burrell put hostility to the land bill. The two men left the white house early in the morning to return there late at night. For five weeks the lights of Rames’s motor flashed on the hedges of the country roads in Warwickshire, and the constituency was won. The result was declared at noon, and half an hour later Mr. William Burrell, M.P., a slim, fair young gentleman with a small gift of flippancy, made his one memorable speech in the big room of the club.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “the British public, as a whole, is indifferent to politics. It wakes up to be sure at the time of an election. But if I were asked to define politics in relation to the British public I should define it as a spasm of pain recurring once in every four or five years. What, then, is it which arouses the enthusiasm of which I am a witness? What is it which achieves these triumphs? Need I say? It is personality. Character—that’s what you want in public life—and now, gentlemen, you have got it.”
The speech was received with a very tornado of laughter. Rames turned to his wife who sat by him on the little raised platform at the end of the room.
“I told you he wasn’t a fool,” he said, and Mr. Arnall, who had come over from Ludsey, cried out with a chuckle of delight that he had now a companion speech to match the famous one of Taylor the democrat.
“You won’t go back to London until to-morrow, will you?” said Rames to young Burrell. “It’s best not to hurry away the moment you’ve won the seat.”
They returned accordingly to the white house, and when the two men were left by Cynthia to their wine after dinner, Rames turned inquisitively to his guest.
“I have noticed a change in you, Burrell, during these five weeks. You came into the contest as though it was a joke, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” said Burrell, blushing.
“And though you laughed at it again to-day, as a matter of fact it ceased to be a joke very quickly.”
Burrell agreed. “Very quickly.”
Rames fetched a box of cigars from the sideboard.
“Now light a cigar,” he said, “and tell me just as clearly as you can what brought about the change, and what this election really means to you.”
Mr. William Burrell, M.P., shied at the proposal.
“Oh, I say, Rames,” he began, but Rames cut him short.
“I really want to hear,” he said earnestly. “I ask for a particular reason.”
Burrell lit his cigar. The contest had impressed him deeply. But like most men he was shy of revealing any strength of feeling. The eager eyes of Rames, however, kept him to his task. He looked back over the five weeks, gathering up his little sheaf of recollections.
“What remains in my mind,” he said with hesitation, “is not the excitement, nor the applause, is not the difficulty of making speeches about subjects with which one is not half acquainted, nor the fear of being asked questions for which one has no reply ready, but something quite different. It is the memory of little bare raftered school-rooms, hot with gas-light, crowded with white faces, faces so hopeful, so—intolerably hopeful—the faces of people who look confidently to candidates and Parliaments for so much more than it seems to me Parliaments and candidates can ever do.”
“Ah!” said Rames curiously. “You felt that too. I remember that I did.”
Burrell leaned forward.
“Did you too, though you shouted yourself hoarse with the rest, feel a little ashamed?”
Rames reflected. “No,” he said; “never.” Then he added with a smile, “but I think I should now.”
“I did,” said Burrell. “There were times when I wanted to stop my speech in the middle and cry out, ‘Don’t look at me with such high hopes. It’s no use! It’s no use!’ But I held my tongue. For there’s always the little that governments can do. That’s the consolation, isn’t it?” Burrell was finding it easier to speak out his thoughts now. The false shame with which he had begun had quite left him. His words tumbled out hot from his soul. The strangely curious, almost envious, look with which Harry Rames, his tutor and leader, waited upon him encouraged and urged him on.
“The fight, the excitement, the victory—oh yes, they are worth having, even though one owes them to another, just as I owe them, Captain Rames, to you. But now, after the victory, there’s still the little which can be done; and there’s still the memory of the raftered school-rooms, the hot gas-light, and the rows of eager, hopeful, pallid faces to help one on to do it.”
He stopped and leaned back in his chair. The shame of a young man who has let his tongue wag before his elders and masters seized hold upon him.
“But why did you lead me on to talk this sort of blatter to you?” he asked in an aggrieved voice. “All that I have just learnt you knew long since.”
Harry Rames shook his head.
“Your opposition to Devenish’s land bill shows it,” Burrell insisted. “Oh, we’ll have a real policy of land reform, not an act of revenge.”
Harry Rames leaned across the corner of the table toward young Burrell. To the youth’s eyes he looked at this moment extraordinarily haggard and old.
“I’ll tell you, Burrell, why I asked my question. I wanted to recapture from you if I could something of a man’s enthusiasm at his first political victory.”
Burrell looked at his leader with astonishment. Of the man of fire who had blazed through the constituency from corner to corner with clear ringing phrases and an inexhaustible good-humor there was now nothing left. He was burnt out. He sat with brooding eyes and a white face all fallen into despair. The tale of his years was suddenly written large upon him. Burrell had wit enough to understand that fatigue did not explain the change. A mask was withdrawn; he saw misery like a cancer. Rames sat and betrayed himself like a man in his cups.
“You tell me you felt ashamed in the school-rooms. I never knew anything of such shame. To win, to win, to win! That was all I thought about. That was all the desire I felt. That was what I hoped you would help me to recapture to-night. But you haven’t helped.”
Rames’s eyes dwelt angrily upon his colleague.
“No. You have made me feel ashamed too.” Then his face relaxed and he added in a friendlier voice: “I believe that I have helped you—really helped you. Oh, not to win a seat in the House of Commons. That’s nothing to be so proud about. But to find your vocation.”
“Where you have found yours,” said Burrell firmly.
“Not a bit of it,” said Rames, and then he woke from his moodiness to a savage outburst of contempt. “Oh, I am going on with it. Don’t be alarmed, Burrell. I’ll lead you. We’ll put up a fight. We’ll make the fur fly. Very possibly we’ll pull the whole Government down with a run. But—” and drawing his chair nearer to the youth he changed his tone. “I’ll tell you the truth about the House of Commons. It’s the place where the second-rate gets the finest show in the world. In no walk of life does second-rate intellect reap so high a reward or meet with such great esteem. But it won’t lift you to the very top. Nor will first-rate intellect either. Remember that!”
“What will then?” asked Burrell in perplexity, and Harry Rames shrugged his shoulders.
“The little bit extra. Character, perseverance! I don’t know. Something anyway. It’s the same everywhere now. There are too many clever people about. Faith in a cause, I think will do it. That’s why the sentimentalists do so much harm in public affairs. They get their way, because they believe. They are not playing the political game. Cleverness is twelve for a penny nowadays. To get up to the top you must have the little bit extra. Now in the sphere of politics I haven’t got it. I don’t say office is out of my reach. It isn’t. I have been offered it. I have refused it. But I haven’t got the little bit extra. Outside politics—in quite another sphere—I believe I have. But that’s all done with. I was warned when I went into politics—warned by a shrewd, wise man. But I wouldn’t listen, and so some day amongst the second-rate Right Honorables half a dozen lines will announce my death in the Times.”
Young Burrell had no great experience of the intenser emotions, and the bitterness with which Rames spoke appalled him. He saw a man in torture, and he listened to a cry of pain grown intolerable. Then in a second all was changed again. Rames was on his feet replacing the stoppers in the decanters, taking the shades from off the candles, performing the little conventional acts of a host in his dining-room. The chasm in the ordinary level surface of things which had yawned for a moment and given Burrell a glimpse of the pit where misery gnawed had closed up.
“We will join my wife,” said Rames. He stopped at the door.
“Were you ever at Toulon?”
“No.”
“There’s a statue on the quay there, at the water’s edge, overlooking the harbor. A great bronze figure, extraordinarily alert, with a light upon its forehead, the Genius of the Sea. And on the open pages of a bronze book in the front of the pedestal, the names of the great sailors are engraved. Cook and the rest of them. The list ends with D’Urville, I remember. I only saw the statue once. My father showed it to me when I was a boy. I don’t suppose that I have ever thought of it until to-day.” He repeated softly as though speaking to himself:
“Yes the list ends with D’Urville.” Then he roused himself. “Bring your cigar in. Cynthia doesn’t mind. By the way,” and a smile of tenderness transfigured his face, “not a word of this to her. She thinks I am going to be a great man. She’s wrong, but I don’t want her to know before she needs must.” Burrell consented at once. He followed Rames from the room with all joy in his victory quite overcast. He looked beyond the surprising revelations of his host and obtained a glimpse into a new side of life. He was the spectator of one of the grim comedies of marriage. Here was the wife—so it seemed to him—believing joyfully in the great destiny of her husband; and the husband laboring in torment to sustain her belief, while all the while he knew that his destiny was thwarted and that the true current of his life ran through other fields.
They went along the passage into the drawing-room. It was a warm night of September and the windows stood open upon the garden. Cynthia was not in the room. Harry stepped out onto the lawn. The night was dark and he could see no one. But the light in the drawing-room had revealed him as he stepped out, and whilst he was standing peering into the darkness Cynthia came softly over the grass to his side.
“You’ll catch cold,” he said. “The dew’s heavy.”
Cynthia took his arm. “Hush,” she said. “Listen!” and through the still air the chimes of the great clock in Ludsey steeple floated with a silvery and melodious sound to their ears. A tune was struck out by the bells, then another.
“I heard that,” said Cynthia in a whisper, “on the night my father died. I was sitting alone with him in the darkness while his life drifted away. It was winter.”
Harry put his arm about her and pressed her to his side.
“I heard them again,” she continued, “one night when I was waiting for you to telephone to me, Harry. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“I waited a long time for you that night, Harry,” and there was a catch in her voice. “Ludsey chimes have meant very much to us. Let us hear them out!”
They stood together in the darkness until the last distant note had died away. It seemed to Rames that Cynthia listened as though she were taking a farewell of them.
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