Harry Rames did his first service for an elector of Ludsey. He glanced toward Mr. Benoliel, who rose.
"It is getting late," said Benoliel, "and Rames has a busy day in front of him."
"I will order your motor-car round to the door," said Rames. He rang the bell and the rest of the company left the table. Diana Royle and Cynthia sought their cloaks in the adjoining sitting-room. Harry Rames took M. Poizat by the arm and led him to the door.
"I am very grateful to you," he said. "Good-night." And even as M.
Poizat"s foot was over the threshold the voice of Colonel Challoner brought him to a halt:
"One moment. I remember now. You come from Alsace, M. Poizat."
"I come from Provence," cried the little man, facing about swiftly with a pa.s.sionate, white face.
Harry Rames had begun to think Colonel Challoner rather a bore with his incomplete reminiscences. That thought pa.s.sed from him altogether.
He had but to look at the two men to know that some queer and unexpected moment of drama had sprung from their chance meeting at this hotel at Ludsey. They stood facing one another, the little Frenchman in the doorway with fear and rage contending in his face, his mouth twisted into a snarl, his lips drawn back from his gums like an animal, his teeth gleaming; the colonel erect above the table with the candle-light shining upward upon a triumphant and menacing face.
"You were in Metz in "71," cried Challoner. "So was I. I was a lad at the time. I was aide to our attache. That"s where I saw you, M.
Poizat--in the long corridor of the a.r.s.enal. Yes, you were in Metz in "71."
And behind M. Poizat appeared the waiter announcing that Mr.
Benoliel"s motor-car was at the door.
CHAPTER XV
THE MAYOR AND THE MAN
St. Anne"s Hall stands tucked away in a narrow street of Ludsey by the s.p.a.cious square; and from its ancient windows you look out between the lozenges of stained gla.s.s upon the great church of St. Anne with its soaring spire and its wide graveyard. Into this hall the ballot-boxes were brought from the polling-booths on the next evening, and at long tables in the Council Chamber the voting papers were sorted and counted. Harry Rames walked from table to table. He seemed to see nothing but crosses against his opponent"s name. He did not dare to put a question to any of the scrutineers standing behind the sorters.
The very swiftness with which the votes were counted impressed him with a sense of disaster. For the first time he began to ask himself how he was to shape his life if to-night he were defeated. Thus an hour pa.s.sed and then the chief constable drew him aside to a bench under the musician"s gallery at one end of the room.
"I"ve been watching the tables, Captain Rames," he said, "and I think you are going to be elected."
"You do?" said Rames eagerly. "Yes, and I shall be very glad if you are."
"Thank you," exclaimed Rames. He could have wrung off the chief constable"s hand in the fervor of his grat.i.tude.
"Oh, I am not speaking as a politician," the chief constable returned with a smile. "I have the order of my city to look after. That"s all I am thinking about. If you weren"t by any chance to get in, I am afraid there would be trouble to-night in Ludsey. And I want you if you are returned to get back to your hotel at once. It"s important from my point of view that you should show up on your balcony as soon as possible after the result is declared."
"I see," said Rames.
"I will take you out the back way through the police station," the chief constable continued, "and there"s a lane opposite which will lead you straight to your back door. You had better run, I think. For your own friends would tear you to pieces to-night without noticing they were doing you any harm."
The chief constable suddenly changed his tone. One of the scrutineers on the side of Rames"s opponent had drawn close to them. The chief constable had no intention to allow a suspicion that he favored one side more than the other. He raised his voice.
"You have noticed our tapestry, perhaps. It is quite invaluable, I believe. We lent it two years ago to the South Kensington Museum.
There was an American millionaire here the other day who wished to buy it."
Raines looked across the room.
"Isn"t there some portion of it missing?" he asked.
"Yes. That disappeared in the Commonwealth times. Let us go and look at it."
Rames walked at the chief constable"s side up the floor of the room toward the dais where Mr. Redling the Mayor, with his chain of office about his shoulders, sat in his big chair in the centre of the long council table. His mace lay upon the table in front of him, and he surveyed the busy scene over which he presided with an imperturbable gravity. But Mr. Redling was a genial soul with a twinkling eye and a red, round face like a crumpled cherub"s; and as Harry Rames advanced toward the dais, Mr. Redling beckoned to him with a discreet twist of the finger of a hand lying idle upon the table.
Harry Rames took a seat beside the Mayor at the long table and again words of comfort were poured into his ears in a gentle undertone.
"I think you are going to do it," said Mr. Redling, repeating almost word for word the utterance of his chief constable. "Of course, I couldn"t take any part. But you know what I should have been doing if I hadn"t been Mayor, don"t you? But I have asked quietly here and there about your chance and I fancy it"s all right."
He winked, and his face broke into triumphant smiles. He was a man.
Then he remembered again that he was a Mayor, and he sat a pillar of munic.i.p.al propriety.
"It"s good of you to say that," cried Harry Rames in a low voice. "I needed to hear it, I can tell you."
Mr. Redling looked at his face. The three weeks had taken a heavy toll of him. He had thinned and sharpened; his eyes were heavy and very tired; for the moment his buoyancy had gone.
"Yes," said Mr. Redling. "An election takes a good deal out of one.
And these two hours are the worst of it when the fight"s all over and there"s nothing to do but wait. Gives you a kind of glimpse into what women have to put up with all their lives, eh?"
Harry Rames glanced at the Mayor with interest.
"Why, I suppose that"s true."
Mr. Redling nodded his head.
"Yes. It teaches you that sitting with your hands in your lap isn"t the same as sitting soft, after all."
Harry Rames felt comfort steal in upon him from the neighborhood of the little Mayor. Mr. Redling was that rare bird, a strong politician without a fad, and, therefore, a veritable haven of refuge to a candidate in the cudgelling of an election. On the few afternoons when Harry Rames had been able to s.n.a.t.c.h a half hour of leisure he had been wont to run round to the Mayor"s house and spend a restful interval with one of the Mayor"s cigars. Mr. Redling laid his Mayoralty aside with the silk hat he invariably wore, and when he took off his chain of office he usually took off his coat too. He had had his ups and downs, and as he discoursed upon his city in his shirt-sleeves, Harry Rames never failed to draw comfort from his talk, so strong a spirit of human friendship breathed from him.
"They like you here," continued Mr. Redling; "both sides. Take us for all in all we are not violent people. Give us the right sort of man, and we"ll be sure he won"t do us harm, whatever his politics," and then as Mr. Benoliel, who was acting as one of Rames"s scrutineers, came to him with a doubtful voting paper, he switched off to another topic; and it happened quite naturally that he chose the very same subject as the chief constable had done.
"Have you noticed our tapestry?" he asked. "We are proud of it. An American gentleman, a Mr. Cronin, came over here last week with Mr.
Benoliel to see it. And after he had seen it, he wanted to buy it."
"Oh, did he?" said Benoliel as he handed the voting paper to the Mayor. "But I might have guessed that he would. I brought him over from Culver, and we met Mrs. Royle just outside here. She came in with us. Mrs. Royle seemed as interested in the tapestry as Cronin himself."
While Mr. Redling examined the voting paper, Harry Rames cast an eye over the tapestry. The aesthetic qualities formed a quite insignificant element in his nature. Of art he thought nothing at all. It noted in his mind long hair and an absence of baths--such was his ignorance.
The only picture-gallery into which he had ever entered was the Royal Academy; and the only occasion upon which he had ventured over that threshold was the Academy dinner to which he had been invited after his return from his Antarctic expedition. He had a primitive appreciation of scarlet as a color and he recognized that women upon canvas could look beautiful. There for him art ended. So he gazed at the tapestry with a lack-l.u.s.tre eye. There was no vividness of color, and the human forms worked upon it had an angularity and a thickness of joint which pleased him not at all.
"I suppose it"s very beautiful," he said.
"It"s unique," replied Mr. Benoliel; "that"s why Cronin wanted it. Let a thing be unique, he"ll not trouble his head so much about its beauty, and I am told he will ask no questions how it comes to be offered to him."
"Well, he offered us a hundred thousand pounds," Mr. Redling remarked with half a sigh. Ludsey was growing at a pace which made it difficult for the borough council to keep up with it. Mr. Redling thought of baths and schools and houses. "A hundred thousand pounds--a good deal of money for a munic.i.p.ality to refuse. But of course, we did. We couldn"t let that tapestry go." He returned to the voting paper and gave his decision upon it. Harry Rames drifted down again into the body of the hall. He troubled no more about the priceless tapestry swinging under the high carved roof in this ancient place. He was a man of his own day, absorbed in its doings, and wondering always in a great labor of thought how he might make his name familiar in all men"s mouths before nightfall swept him into the darkness. His anxieties were now diminished, his heart beat high. For here were two men, both experienced in elections and both convinced that he would surely win. So the first small victory, it seemed, was won. He crossed to the row of windows and looked down through a lozenge of white in the painted pattern into the street below. And having once looked he could not again withdraw his eyes.
It was a night of January, dreary and loud with a roar of falling rain. A light wind carried the rain at a slant so that it shot down past the street lamps like slender javelins of steel. And exposed to that pitiless a.s.sault a silent crowd of men stood packed together in the narrow street between St. Anne"s Hall and the railings of the church. A few, a very few, carried umbrellas over their heads, the rest stood with their coat collars turned up about their throats and their hands deep in their pockets. No one moved, for there was no room to move; and all the faces were uplifted under the brims of their soaking hats to the great window beyond the hall whence the result should be declared. The patience of the throng, its acquiescence in discomfort, as though discomfort were the ordinary condition of its life, suddenly caught hold of Harry Rames. He took a step, nay, a stride forward. Last night when he had come out of the Exchange and the herd of animals had been transfigured into the uplifted faces of men, his thought had been: