The Turnstile Part 36

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 Roma.n.u.s sum.' Now, why quote a phrase so ba.n.a.l. Surely, Mr.

Bradley, it has had its day. We can do better than that if we put our heads together. Civis Roma.n.u.s sum! G.o.d 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 d.a.m.ned to you."

Mr. Bradley, however, had suffered enough of this unseemliness. He hurried forward and pa.s.sed 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 const.i.tuents. 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 Dorsets.h.i.+re? 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. Raines 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 pa.s.sed 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 Roma.n.u.s," 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 Roma.n.u.s 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 att.i.tude 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 apprais.e.m.e.nt 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 man[oe]uvre 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 man[oe]uvres. 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 kins.h.i.+p 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.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE PICTURE AT BRAMLING

Bramling is the very house for a conspiracy. It lies in Dorsets.h.i.+re, hidden away at the back of the gra.s.s-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 gra.s.s meadows to where the sea-cliffs lift against the sky. Hither through one October day came in old-fas.h.i.+oned 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 a.s.sembled 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 hara.s.s 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 s.e.x 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."