The Turnstile Part 20

Cynthia laughed eagerly with the rest in her anxiety to keep Colonel Challoner from plying her with questions. She was ready with her answers, but greatly she feared, lest by probing into his memories he should understand of a sudden where he had seen her before. And for a time she was successful. The confidence which had run from man to man in the great Corn Exchange an hour before was present at this supper-table and kindled them all to cheeriness. The ex-Mayor said with a pleasant drawl, which was his habit:

"Do you remember Taylor the Democrat, Arnall? He fought two elections here within three months and then went bankrupt. He was an adventurer and the most eloquent man I ever heard. But he was a caution."

"Yes," cried Mr. Arnall, with a clicking laugh at the back of his throat. "Do you remember his meeting down by the club? 'Gag that calf,'" and Mr. Arnall spluttered with delight.

"That's it," said the ex-Mayor. "You must know that Taylor stood as a Democrat, Captain Rames. That's where the fun comes in. He wore a blue swallow-tail-coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and his hair down to his shoulders. 'Your father was a miller,' one fellow shouted from the crowd. 'Gag that calf,' cried Taylor and he held up his arms in the air. 'Look at these fair hands. No work has ever sullied them.' That did him all right."

A quiet, elderly man leaned over the table.

"Did you notice the flag upon the chairman's table, Captain Rames?" he asked. "It was woven out of Ludsey silk fifty years ago. It's the true Ludsey blue. My father wove it for Sir William Harris's first election, and the other fellows swore they would have it on the polling-day. But we carried it about the streets from morning to evening, with twelve big fellows to protect it. It was nearly down once, I remember. I was a lad at the time--at the corner of Stapley's Lane. But we saved it and it was your table-cloth to-night, Captain Rames. It brought us victory then. It will again to-morrow."

The stories were continued. They were often not very pointed; often enough the humor was far to seek; but they were alive. They were told with infinite enjoyment, and the smallest details were remembered over decades. Cynthia began now to listen to them for their own sake; she was learning with surprise the value of politics to the lives of men in a busy city of the provinces. But the colonel at her elbow was not longer to be diverted.

"I think it must have been in Dorsets.h.i.+re that we met," he said. "I live near to Wareham."

Cynthia looked at him quite steadily.

"I have never been in Dorsets.h.i.+re in my life, Colonel Challoner."

"Yet I a.s.sociate you with that county," he persisted. "Now, why should I do that, Miss Daventry? You have not been to my house, I know. For since my wife died and my son went away, I have not had so many young people to stay with me as I should have liked."

From the moment when Colonel Challoner had claimed her recognition, Cynthia had not doubted that she was sitting next to a relation. And Colonel Challoner's location of his home in Dorsets.h.i.+re, near to Wareham, had confirmed her belief. She knew quite well how it came about that he had seemed to recognize her, that he a.s.sociated her with his own parish. She knew because upon one unforgettable night she had crouched in a great chair in a dark room and through the panels of a door had heard her father claim her as his daughter. He, too, had recognized her as Colonel Challoner now did, and just by the same means. For there was a Romney hanging upon the dining-room wall in that house near Wareham which might have been a portrait of herself.

But until this moment she had not guessed what degree of relations.h.i.+p bound her to the old man at her side.

Now, however, she knew that too. The hesitation, the gentle wistfulness with which he had spoken of his son struck home at her.

She was this man's granddaughter. She was moved by what he had said. A big house empty of young people must be a place of melancholy and hollow as a sh.e.l.l. Yet she would not reveal herself. She had it fixed now as an instinct of her nature that she would never wear the name of Challoner, nor admit a link with any of that name.... But she turned toward her grandfather with a greater sympathy.

"You have given up your whole life to politics now?" she asked, and a wave of pity swept through her. It could not be possible that he should win any success in that sphere, and she was young and could hardly conceive of life at all without success.

"Yes. I left the army twenty-five years ago. Sometimes I think that I may have made a mistake," he answered. "But it is too late for me to go back upon a mistake, even were I sure that I had made one. Politics is all I have now. I have no longer any family. And I have politics in my bones. I do not know what I should do if I lost my seat. I should probably die." He spoke with absolute simplicity, absolute sincerity: Cynthia was greatly moved. An old futile man without wife or family in a big, empty house, feeding himself from day to day with the disappointments of a hopeless ambition--it made for her a dismal picture. She contrasted it with the other one before her eyes--Harry Rames at the head of the table, confident, comfortable, young as politicians go, with the world a smooth sea for his conquering sails; and once again an unaccountable resentment against Harry Rames flared up within her. Almost she wished that for once he might fail. Almost she revealed herself then to Colonel Challoner. But she did not. She had painfully learned a great gift--silence.

She knew very well with what relief she would wake on the morrow to the recollection that she was still Cynthia Daventry and not Cynthia Challoner.

"I expect that what I say will sound extravagant to you, Miss Daventry," Colonel Challoner continued. "You at your age could hardly understand it."

The spell which was upon Cynthia was broken. She looked thoughtfully about the table.

"I should not have understood it an hour ago. I was inclined to think it really didn't matter very much in the long run who was in and who was out, that the things which wanted doing and which legislation could do, would get themselves done sooner or later by one side or the other and perhaps by both; and that for the rest the nation went on its way, leaving the talk and the honors to the politicians because it had no time for either and doing the work itself."

Colonel Challoner laughed.

"That's a definite point of view, at all events."

"I expect that I was drawing my ideas from another--" she was about to say "country," but checked herself lest she should be asked what country and so put Colonel Challoner on the track of her relations.h.i.+p to him. She went on hastily: "But since I have been sitting here, I have learned how much of color politics can bring into the lives of men."

And Colonel Challoner looked at her and cried:

"That's it, Miss Daventry. Color! That's the great need. That's why the quack religions flourish in the back streets. We all need it--all except the man there at the head of the table," and Colonel Challoner looked a trifle enviously at Harry Rames. "He has it and to spare."

The door opened by a few inches at this moment and a wrinkled pippin of a head was pushed in. A pair of little bright eyes surveyed the company and then the door was thrust wide open and M. Poizat stepped lightly in.

Harry Rames rose and shook hands with the little Frenchman. Colonel Challoner stroked his white moustache.

"You were present to-night?" said Rames. "What a difference, eh?"

"Yes, I was proud," M. Poizat returned. "But always I waited for some little word--some little word which did not come."

"One always forgets an important point and generally the most important. It is the experience of all speakers," said Rames. He turned to the table. "I must introduce to you M. Poizat, and if ever your voices are hoa.r.s.e in Ludsey, please ask for Lungatine."

Rames drew a chair to the table, pressed M. Poizat into it, and filled for him a gla.s.s of champagne. The little man was delighted. He drank Captain Rames's health, he bowed to the company; and his hand was arrested in mid-air, holding the wine-gla.s.s by its stem. Colonel Challoner was gazing fixedly across the table at him. A look of trouble took all the merriment out of M. Poizat's face.

"I have seen you before, M. Poizat," said Colonel Challoner.

Cynthia began to think that the colonel had a mania for recognizing people.

"I am _Mr_. Poizat, an Englishman," the little confectioner answered hurriedly.

"Naturalized," said the colonel.

"It is true," said M. Poizat reluctantly.

"If you had only said that last night," thought Harry Rames. "You would have got your advertis.e.m.e.nt, my friend."

But he said not a word aloud, and M. Poizat continued:

"But it was a long time ago. And all the years since I have spent in Ludsey."

Colonel Challoner shook his head.

"It was not in Ludsey that I saw you. For I was never here in my life before."

M. Poizat shrugged his shoulders.

"We have sat opposite to one another in a train perhaps. We have run against one another in the traffic of a London street."

"No, it was on some occasion more important. I do not forget a face."

"Nor I," said M. Poizat. "And I have never seen yours, sir, until this moment;" and though he spoke with spirit his uneasiness was apparent to every one at that table.

Colonel Challoner sat back in his chair and let the subject drop. But he was not satisfied. He was even annoyed at his failure to identify the Frenchman, and he sat relentlessly revolving in his mind the changing scenes of his life. Meanwhile the talk drifted back to by-gone elections and this or that great night when some famous statesman was brought into the town and never allowed to speak one audible word. Mr. Arnall mentioned one whose name resounded through England.

"Next night in Warrington he said that he had been struggling with the beasts at Ephesus," said Mr. Arnall with a chirrup of delight. The old Adam was strong in him at this moment and his own solemn exhortations to hear all sides clean forgotten. Suddenly Colonel Challoner broke in upon him. He leaned across the table and with a smile of triumph stared between the candles at M. Poizat.

"It was in a corridor," he said, "a vast bare corridor--somewhere--a long time ago. You were coming out of a room--wait!--wait!--No, I cannot name the place," and he sank back again disappointed.

But M. Poizat's face wore now a sickly pallor.

"In no corridor--nowhere," he stammered and his eyes, urgent with appeal, turned toward Harry Rames.