"And you are glad that I have won?" he asked. And again she waited a while before she answered; and when she did speak it was with that little spirit of resentment which Rames had heard before in her voice.
"Well,--since your heart was so much set on winning,--yes, there you have your triumph--I am glad that you won."
Cynthia meant what she said, but she was reluctant to mean it. She spoke, too, under a constraint to speak. She had a picture before her eyes of the man at the other end of the line quietly waiting upon her, certain perhaps of what she would say. And the picture and the sense of compulsion were both an offence to her.
"Good-night," she added curtly and with a sharp, quick movement she hung up the receiver. The little clang of metal travelled along the line to Harry Rames and emphasized her resentment.
But he was not disturbed by that. On the whole he looked upon it as a favorable sign. So definite a resentment implied that she was interested and set a value on their friendship. Rames went upstairs to bed, but he was too tired to sleep and his thoughts raced ahead and scouted in the future. He had leaped the first obstacle in the race, but that once leaped and looked back upon became a tiny thing compared with those which lay ahead.
"Will she? Will she not?" he asked. All hung upon the answers to those questions. He was poor. He must marry. He must marry money and even money was not enough. Other qualities were needed to help him to the great career. But they were all there, a few miles away, possessed by the young mistress of the White House. She had looks and manners and a distinction of her own. You could not be in a room with her, however crowded, and be long unaware that she was present too. Only--would she?
He had very little to offer her--beyond this earnest of future success which he had won to-night. And six hundred and seventy others would have won just the same opportunity before the year was a fortnight older. Moreover, Cynthia was romantic and he was not. For all her friendliness he was a bitter disappointment to her. He recognized it all and began to regret that he had not donned the glittering cloak of romance which so often she had held out to him. But his foresight came to console him.
"I could never have lived up to it," he reflected. "She would have found me out. I have been honest with her and she likes honesty."
Certainly there were points in his favor. Rames took heart. She had run the gauntlet of the drawing-rooms through a London season. Men had gone down before her satin slippers, men ancient and modern. Mothers of daughters had frowned upon her, mothers of sons had smiled. Young Lord Helmsdale, adored of the ladies, had pursued her, and it was his habit to be pursued. Yet she had come out of the throng to Warwickshire heart-free. Of that he was sure.
Besides, she had waited up to speak to him. That was something,--not very much, perhaps,--but surely something. Also, since he had wished to win, she was glad that he had won. Rames"s memories took him back to the night when they first met at the Admiralty. Not thus had she spoken then. She had moved toward him since that night--reluctantly, slowly. Yet she had moved.
He was still casting up this ledger of his chances when a lonely booming sound broke upon the stillness of the night and penetrated through the open window like some melancholy siren of the sea. It was repeated and repeated, growing louder with each repet.i.tion yet hardly more articulate, and without any change of intonation. And every now and then it was interrupted for a few seconds by a dull crash. Rames tried to thrust it from his notice.
"Will she? Will she not?" he asked himself. But the booming sound would not be denied. It was as the wail of some utterly friendless man who cared not whether his fellows slept or waked. It was thoroughly pitiless. Nearer it came to the hotel, and now wavering, heavy feet could be heard to beat an irregular accompaniment. The occasional thud was explained. A very drunken man was staggering up the hill and from time to time he fell upon the pavement, unconscious that he fell, barely aware only that his long-drawn cry had ceased. Rames thought of him as a malignant creature determined to inflict torture--until the sound at last sifted itself into definite words. "Vote for Harry Rames!" the nightfarer cried aloud to a city which had already done so; and at times he dropped the Harry and inserted an epithet of color common no doubt in his vocabulary. He pa.s.sed beneath the windows and with many a tumble faded into distance, invoking the unresponsive gas lamps.
Rames turned over on his side with relief.
"My dear," he whispered, "take his advice and vote for Harry Rames! I shall owe you much, but I"ll make it up to you. I"ll not ask you till I am sure I can. I must risk Helmsdale carrying you off."
He fell asleep and even the tune the clock chimes in Ludsey church played at four o"clock in the morning did not make him stir. But at the White House just at that hour Cynthia waked. It was not the clock which waked her. It seemed to her that she had heard a step in the corridor. She sat up in her bed and in a few seconds was sure of it.
Some one was moving very stealthily about the house. For a moment her old horror gripped her. Here was her father come at last with authority to claim her. She sat staring wide-eyed into the darkness, flung back to the days when she was a child. Then her reason rea.s.serted itself. Her father was dead. The blood flowed again to her heart. But the stealthy sound continued. She heard a door gently latched. She sprang out of bed, opened her own door, and switched on the light. The corridor was empty to the edge of the shadows. She peered into them. She saw nothing, and no sound reached her now.
"Who is it?" she asked in a loud voice, and no answer came to her. She waited in her doorway with a hand to her breast. The plank of a stair cracked loudly, close to her; but no footsteps made it crack. She went back into her room.
Yet she had not been mistaken. Any one in the road that night might have seen a light ascending past the windows of the staircase and then moving through the upper rooms, until at last in one it remained for a long time. The light was carried by Diana Royle. She pa.s.sed up the staircase to an unfurnished room used for the storage of old boxes and discarded things. From the corner of this room she rolled out a great bale, dusty with years, and tied up like a carpet with an old piece of rope. She cut the rope and spread it out upon the floor, cautiously and silently. Then lowering her candle she examined it. With a smile upon her lips she stood up again. She fastened the bale and dragged it back into its corner. The smile did not leave her lips. Chance had led her up here some weeks ago. She had discovered the bale and had wondered what it was. An old carpet? A disused curtain? Now she knew.
In an attic of this old house she had discovered the lost strip of the Ludsey tapestry.
CHAPTER XVII
A REFUSAL
"So you have refused young Helmsdale."
Three months had pa.s.sed since the Ludsey election. The air was warm and golden and already the world whispered of summer, yet not too loud lest it should seem to boast and so be balked of its desire.
Parliament had met, London was full, and in the country the foxes and the pheasants had leisure to attend to their own affairs. And with the rest Cynthia had come to town. She rode on this morning out of the park, where the buds were running along the branches of the trees like delicate green flames, about eleven o"clock, and turning out of South Audley Street into Curzon Street, she saw Mr. Benoliel waiting upon the pavement in front of her new house. As she stopped her horse before the door he reprimanded her:
"Cynthia, you have refused him."
Cynthia blushed. Then she exclaimed:
"But how in the world could you know! It isn"t half an hour since I refused him." Then she bent down over her saddle and gazed at him in the fulness of admiration. "But you know everything. It wouldn"t be of much use trying to keep things from you, would it?"
Mr. Benoliel smiled grimly.
"Yes, that"s the way, Cynthia, and no doubt a neater style of doing it will come in time."
Cynthia sat upright, swift as a spring, and remained so, with her nose in the air, haughty for five complete seconds. Then curiosity restored her to her s.e.x and she swooped again over her saddle.
"How did you know?"
"He borrowed a horse from me this morning," said Mr. Benoliel--"a good horse. He was very particular that it should be a valuable horse. So I gathered that he wanted to make on this morning of all mornings a specially favorable impression."
Cynthia"s lips twitched.
"You lent him a very good horse," she said. "But the horse didn"t tell you."
"That"s where you are wrong, Cynthia. The horse did," said Mr.
Benoliel. "Ten minutes ago, as I was turning out of Grosvenor Square, I met my very valuable horse being led by a ragged beggarman whom I had never seen in my life before. I asked him what the d.i.c.kens he was doing with it and he explained that as he was standing by the rails in Hyde Park a young man rode up to him in a violent rage, dismounted, tossed him the reins and a shilling and told him to lead the rotten beast back to Grosvenor Square. Just fancy that! My horse! I might have lost him altogether."
Cynthia tried her best to look indignant at so treacherous a return to Mr. Benoliel"s generosity, but she could not and she rippled suddenly into laughter.
"He was horribly angry," she said.
Mr. Benoliel turned his wrath again upon Cynthia.
"And no wonder!" he said. "Helmsdale"s not used to being refused. He is young. He is good-looking. He has a social position----"
"And he has a profile," added Cynthia. "Please don"t forget that. But you can"t if you know him, or even if you don"t, can you? Have you ever fixed your eyes steadily upon him, Mr. Benoliel? Do the next time you see him, and within twenty seconds he will show you his profile.
He will turn his head quite slowly and show it you, just like a man at the music-halls disclosing the newest sensation. I couldn"t marry a profile, even though it was mounted on your horse." Then she bent down to him again coaxing him: "You didn"t really want me to marry him, did you? You see, I don"t love him."
Mr. Benoliel seemed to think this answer insufficient.
"Love would come," he answered.
"That"s what he said," exclaimed Cynthia.
"And you?" asked Benoliel.
Cynthia bent her eyes steadily upon him.
"I answered, "Lovers would come.""
Mr. Benoliel looked up at her with a wry face.
"You know too much, my dear," he said, and Cynthia threw back her head, with her face suddenly clouded and sullen.