The Turnstile Part 43

But in spite of her conviction she rejoiced. Some kins.h.i.+p she could claim with Juliet. For all her longing was to give and to give, and still to give. She had sought desperately for color in her life.

She had welcomed politics in the hunt for it. She had it now and to spare--enough to daub the world. The handle of the door was tried and through the panels her astonished maid told her the hour. Cynthia sprang up and unlocked it.

"I shall dine at home to-night," she said. "The cook must get me some dinner, anything."

The maid reminded Cynthia that she had arranged to dine with some friends and visit a theatre. "I know," said Cynthia. She had made the plan so that she might not spend in loneliness the anxious hours of this evening. But since she had made the plan the world had changed its hues.

"You must telephone and say that I can't come," said Cynthia, remorselessly, as she ran upstairs.

Whilst she dressed she considered what she should do with this wonderful evening. She meant to spend it alone--yes, but that did not quite content her. Somehow it should be made memorable. Something she must do which, but for this day of days, she never would have done.

Something which must not merely mark it as a harbor boom marks a turn of the channel, but must be the definite consequence of it. Cynthia, in a word, went down to her solitary dinner much more akin than she had ever been since to the girl who, eager for life with the glorious eagerness of youth, had run down the stairs on the morning of her seventeenth birthday into the dining-room of the Daventry estancia.

Half-way through dinner the thing to do, in order fitly to commemorate the day, came to her in a burst of light.

She went back to Harry's study and sitting at his writing-table, composed with great care a letter of many pages. The hours pa.s.sed as she wrote and rewrote, and glancing at the clock before the end was reached, she saw that it was already past eleven. Then she hurried.

The division at this moment was being taken. Within the hour Harry would have returned; and indeed she had only just folded her letter in its envelope when his step sounded in the hall.

She heard the door open and shut. He was in the room. But she kept her head bowed over her letter lest her face should betray her over much.

Nor for a moment did she speak, since she did not quite trust her voice. It was Harry who spoke first.

"You have come back? I did not expect you so soon."

"I never went. I stayed at home."

"Oh! You are not ill, Cynthia?"

"No. But I felt that I had been rather hard and cruel----"

"You?"

"Oh, yes, I can be." Cynthia was stamping down her envelope with an elaboration of care which almost suggested that it was never meant to be opened. "I was in this case. So I stayed at home and wrote a letter to make amends. I should very much like it to be posted to-night, Harry. The servants have all gone to bed. I wonder if you----"

"Of course. You are afraid that you might change your mind about it in the morning."

"Not at all," replied Cynthia with a laugh. Harry Rames walked over to the table.

"Give it to me, Cynthia," he said; and at last Cynthia raised her head and rather shyly her eyes sought his face. At his first glance she stood up quickly and she did not give him her letter. Harry Rames was standing, his face white and drawn and hara.s.sed. He had been answering her vaguely, as though the words came from him by reflex action rather than through a comprehension of what she said. For a moment Cynthia was afraid to speak. The beating of her heart was painful. Then she laid her hand upon his arm.

"Something has happened, Harry?" she faltered.

"Something terrible," he replied, and walking to the fire he warmed his hands at the blaze like one smitten with a chill.

"The debate collapsed? Your people didn't follow you into the lobby?

Oh, Harry!"

She went to his side.

"No. That's not the trouble. We did better in the division than I had antic.i.p.ated. Of course we had the labor party solid against us. But that we had reckoned on. On the other hand, some of the Irish members came along with us, and it had been expected that they would all abstain. No, we ran the government majority down to thirty-one.

Devenish is shaken, I can tell you. He pa.s.sed me after the division was over, without a word and white with pa.s.sion. No, Cynthia, we did very well." He moved away from the fire and sat down in the chair at his writing-table. "I took all my people into the Division Lobby with me--except one."

Cynthia put out a hand and steadied herself against the mantel-piece.

"Except one?" She turned toward him, her face troubled, her eyes most wistful. "One failed you--one alone. Oh, Harry, it wasn't Colonel Challoner?"

But though she asked the question, she did not need the answer. Her foreboding made her sure of it.

"It was," replied Harry, and Cynthia turned again to the fire. A little sob, half-checked, burst from her. Then she tore the letter which she had been at such great pains to write, across and again across, and dropped the fragments into the fire.

"The Challoners are no good," she said, in a voice curiously distinct and hard.

"Don't say that, Cynthia," Harry Rames answered gently.

"I do say it. I ought to know."

The words were uttered, and only then she realized what she had said.

She looked quickly toward her husband, but he gave to her cry no particular significance. His brain seemed to register her words, not to comprehend them. Cynthia was conscious of a great relief. Loud at her heart rose a hope, a prayer that in all things, all qualities, even to tricks of manner, she was her mother's child, and had nothing of her father. Never would she acknowledge her relations.h.i.+p with that family. Never would she admit her name. Her first resolve and instinct had been right. The Challoners were no good.

"No, I should not say that, Cynthia," Raines repeated. "He's dead."

Cynthia turned swiftly upon the word. Her dress rustled as she turned, and when that sound ceased there was absolute silence in the room.

Cynthia stood by the mantel-shelf still as stone. Her face was white, and a look of awe overspread it. With her lips parted and her eyes troubled and wondering she watched her husband. Harry Rames sat with a large silver paper-knife in his hands, looking absently straight in front of him. And in a little while he broke the silence by absently tapping with the blade of the paper-knife upon his blotting-pad. The sound roused Cynthia. She moved to a low chair close to the writing-table.

"Dead? Harry, I don't quite understand."

The tapping ceased.

"His heart was wrong. He died in the Division Lobby--actually while the division was being taken."

"In the Division Lobby? But you said you didn't take him with you."

"I didn't. He was in the Government Lobby."

Cynthia's face contracted with pain. A low moan burst from her. "He was actually voting against you!"

"Yes."

Harry added reluctantly:

"Our revolt killed him." Cynthia sat down in the chair.

"Tell me everything, will you, Harry?" she entreated, and thus the story was told her.

"The Whips got at Challoner. You know Hamlin, don't you? But you don't know his methods, Cynthia. He doesn't bully you if you revolt. He doesn't threaten. He takes you affectionately by the arm and makes you feel a beast. His round brown eyes survey you with a gentle and wistful regret. You leave him, convinced that he personally will be dreadfully hurt if you vote against the government. You are glad to be rid of him as you are glad to be rid of a man whom you have injured; and within the hour he is at your elbow again, pursuing the same insidious, amicable strategy. That's how he worked on Challoner, and Challoner was not the man either to withstand him, or to tell us boldly that he was going to--"--"rat" was on the tip of his tongue, but Rames caught the word back and subst.i.tuted "change his mind." "So, do you see, he stayed with us to the last minute. It was arranged that the division should be taken at eleven. As soon as the Speaker rose to put the question, Challoner, who had been standing at the bar of the House slipped out through the lobby and down the stairs to a little smoking-room on the opposite side of the pa.s.sage to the big strangers'

smoking-room. That room is very often quite deserted. Few people, indeed, use it at any time. In a corner of that room he sat behind a newspaper all of the ten minutes during which the division bells were ringing."

"To avoid meeting any of you?" asked Cynthia.

"Yes, I suppose so."

"But how do you know he was there?"