The Turnstile Part 16

"I suppose," she said, "that your journey to the South really counts now for very little in your thoughts. Yet you must have had a great many wishes for your success sent to you from all parts of the world before you started. I wonder you can forget them all, and leave that work unfinished."

It seemed to Captain Rames that she had hit upon a rather far-fetched argument to persuade him to a second journey to the South.

"Well, I am getting a good many wishes for my success now, and I hear them spoken," he said with a smile. "It is true that I got all sorts of messages and telegrams before I sailed to the South. But to tell you the truth I was rather too busy to read them. I have got them all tied up somewhere in a brown-paper parcel."

Cynthia seemed actually to flinch. She turned away abruptly.

"I wanted to ask of you a favor," said Rames. "Mr. Benoliel said that you lived near Ludsey. You could do a great deal if you would help me.

Will you?"

Cynthia turned back to him, her eyes shone angrily, the blood came into her cheeks in a rush.

"No," she said decisively, and without another word she walked away.

"I might have struck her," thought Captain Rames. He knew nothing of a telegram from the Daventry estancia which lay forgotten in that brown-paper parcel.

None the less he walked home across the Mall treading upon air. Great people had moved out of their way to make his acquaintance; Cabinet ministers had promised to speak for him; important ladies had smiled their friendliest. He looked back upon the days of his insignificance, and his heart was buoyant within him. Certainly one girl with dark-blue eyes and a face like a rose-leaf had presumed to disapprove of him. But there! Girls! You never knew what odd notions nested in their pretty heads. If a man on the make steered his course by a girl's favor, he would soon s.h.i.+pwreck on a snag. However, this girl must be soothed down. Harry Rames could not afford to have an enemy at Ludsey. But he had no doubt that he could soothe her down. He walked home, softly whistling under his breath.

Cynthia for her part went home in a different mood. She had lost another illusion to-night.

CHAPTER XII

LUNGATINE

The threatened dissolution was, after all, postponed, and through the autumn months Captain Rames went busily up and down between London and Ludsey. He made his head-quarters at an hotel on a climbing street in the thick of the town, and spent his days in the public view and his nights at meetings and at local festivities.

Cynthia Daventry, five miles away, heard stories of his indefatigable energy and once or twice she met him in the streets; and once or twice he s.n.a.t.c.hed an afternoon and swept over in a motor-car to see her. She welcomed him with a pleasure which she rather resented, and not for worlds would she have asked him how his campaign was faring. She did not, however, have to ask. For either Diana Royle was present and eagerly questioned him, or if Cynthia were alone he plunged into the subject himself. Captain Rames was at some pains to amuse her and he succeeded. Little incidents of the campaign, whether they told against himself or not; sketches of queer characters whom he came across; an anecdote now and then, drawn from the ancient history of the City--he poured them out to her, making it quite clear with an apparently ingenuous frankness that he had deliberately stored them in his memory purely for her amus.e.m.e.nt. He was engaged in the work of soothing her down. Diana Royle would rhapsodize after he had whirled away in a cloud of dust.

"What a wonderful man! How energetic! How clever!"

"And how complacent!" said Cynthia.

"What high principle!" Diana gushed lyrically. "What character!"

"And what cunning!" added Cynthia, with a droop of her lips.

Diana tapped the floor with an irritable foot.

"Very well, darling. Look for an angel, by all means. You will be very glad of a man later on." Then she laughed pleasantly. "But I am not deceived. You talk lightly of him when he is gone, but when he is here you fix your big eyes on him, and, though you say nothing, every movement of you asks for more."

Cynthia was startled.

"Well, perhaps I do," she admitted. "I suppose that I have a kind of hope that I will hear, not more, but something different from what I am hearing."

"That's so like you, my dear," Diana rejoined; she was all sugar and vinegar. "If Julius Caesar came back to earth, you would want him different. But that's the way with romantic people. They look for heroes all day and never see them when they knock at the front door."

Cynthia laughed good-humoredly. There was this much of truth in Diana Royle's attack. She had been searching through the words of Harry Rames all the while when he was uttering them for a glimpse of some other being beside the man on the make. Certain qualities she recognized. Enthusiasm, for instance. But it was enthusiasm for the arena, not for any cause to be won there. A shrewd foresight again was evident. But it was foresight to pluck the personal advantage. Here, it seemed to her, was the conscience of the country stirring on all sides to the recognition of great and unnecessary evils in its midst, and Harry Rames was alone unaffected. Yet in a measure she was impressed. He had so closely laid his plans. He gave her yet more evidence when he came again.

"I have got a rule or two," he said. "All demands for pledges from leagues and a.s.sociations go into the waste-paper basket. I'll answer questions if they are asked me by a man in my const.i.tuency. I won't put my name to a general proposition and post it to London. Many a good man has been let down that way. Then I won't canva.s.s. I won't solicit a vote. I don't believe in it. There's one only point of view for a candidate: that the electors are doing themselves a service by electing him, and not doing him one. You have got to persuade them of that."

"Don't you find it difficult?" asked Cynthia, innocently.

Rames laughed.

"Yes, I do," he said. "The electors have their point of view, too. But I won't canva.s.s, I am there at my hotel if any one wants to see me. I am at public meetings, and I go to social functions. That's a good move," and Captain Rames nodded his head. "You meet the fellows on the other side and if you can get them friendly, you stop them coming out hot against you. Makes a lot of difference, that. Then there's wisdom in taking a firm stand upon a point or so. Your own people, treat them properly, will always give you a bit of lat.i.tude, and a reputation for courage is a fine a.s.set in politics as in anything else."

"But you mustn't overdo it, I suppose," said Cynthia ironically.

"Oh, no, you must be careful about that," replied Rames seriously.

"What you want to produce is an impression that you are not pliable, that industries will be safe under your watch--that's for the business men--and that social advancement will not be neglected--that's for the artisans. You know the election is coming now," he suddenly exclaimed.

"Do come to one of my meetings!"

Cynthia looked doubtful.

"I don't think," she said, "that I believe very much in any work which--I don't express what I mean very well--which hasn't a great dream at the heart of it."

Rames looked up into her face quickly and grew suddenly serious. He made no comment upon her words, however.

"After all that's no reason why you shouldn't come to one of my meetings."

Cynthia smiled.

"I will come to the last one on the night before the poll," she replied reluctantly.

"I shall hold you to it," said Harry Rames, and he went away well pleased with his visit. Cynthia was popular in Ludsey. So Cynthia should sit on that momentous evening in the front row upon the platform. Also he would make for her benefit an unusually effective speech. Cynthia from the window watched his motor-car spin away in a whirl of dust. He was going to preside that evening at a meeting of the Salvation Army.

The dissolution took place on the fifteenth of January. But the real contest had begun a fortnight before in Ludsey. Harry Rames rushed into it as if it had been a foot-ball rally. He spoke all day, in factories and outside factories, in halls and schoolrooms and from club-room windows. He ransacked the morning papers for new pegs on which to hang his arguments; he kicked off at foot-ball matches and the aim of the kick was entirely political; and at the end of three weeks even he was very tired and inclined to recognize an element of humiliation in the conduct of a successful campaign.

It was eleven o'clock at night. There was to be but one more day of it, but one more meeting to-morrow night, the big, final rally on the eve of the poll. Harry Rames lay outstretched upon his sofa with his pipe between his lips cradled pleasantly upon that reflection, when the door of his room opened and a waiter brought in a card. Rames waved it aside.

"I can see no one."

"The gentleman said that his business was important."

Rames grumbled and took the card from the salver.

"M. Poizat," he read. "A Frenchman. Certainly not. I won't see him."

The waiter, an old English servant, a rare being nowadays, even in a country hotel, stood his ground.

"He's lived in Ludsey a long time, sir."

"Oh, has he!" said Rames. "Tell him I am out."