"I was quite wrong, Cynthia. He was in the best of spirits. He was elated. The look of strain had gone if it was ever there. I have been mistaken. I am happy to admit it."
Cynthia relaxed from her frigidity. But her satisfaction was a poor one and had little life in it. She had merely tricked Mr. Benoliel into the belief that his insight had been at fault. For in truth, as she knew very well, it had never been more shrewd. What had led Mr.
Benoliel into error was his ignorance of the letter with the "Rexland"
stamp which had arrived at the white house by the morning"s post.
Hemming"s failure was a kind of reprieve for Harry Rames. In a sudden revulsion he had been lifted out of his discouragement. His exultation had remained with him all that day. Cynthia had counted upon it when she had sent Benoliel to his study.
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
THE CONVICT AT THE OAR
A long account of Hemming"s expedition, sent by a New Zealand correspondent, appeared in one of the morning papers the next day.
Hemming had travelled a couple of hundred miles further south than Harry Rames. Then he had been compelled to return. But it was Harry Rames who had made it possible for him to get so far. For he used Rames"s depots of provisions and was able to save his own for the stretch of new ice-covered country.
Harry lighted upon the account unexpectedly when he opened his newspaper at the breakfast table, but the moment he saw the head-line he folded the sheets quickly again and pushed the paper away from him.
He shrank from reading it, hardly daring to trust himself, and he began to talk over with Cynthia the names of suitable candidates for the Hickleton Division.
"The Whips, of course, will have a man ready who will be pledged to swallow the whole of the Government policy, land bill and all. We must be beforehand with them. What do you say to young Burrell, Cynthia?"
"Sir James Burrell"s son?"
"Yes. His father is anxious that he should do something," said Harry with a laugh.
"But isn"t he rather young and rather insignificant?" asked Cynthia.
"Youth"s a good quality in the House of Commons. The older men become suspicious of change and want life stereotyped as it is. And young Burrell isn"t without brains. I don"t say that he"s a flyer, but then, like the Government, I prefer docility to brains in my followers. I think that I will run round to Sir James when we go back to town on Monday."
But though Harry Rames neglected his newspaper at the breakfast table, he came back for it at eleven in the morning. He could keep the drawer in his bureau locked upon his charts, but he could not quench his fever to read the details of Hemming"s expedition. For an hour he tried to occupy himself with the business of Cynthia"s estate, and then he gave up the attempt. When and how Hemming failed, how far he had travelled with his sledges, what new lessons were to be learnt from his experience--here were questions which he could not silence.
He got the paper and read the account through. "The dogs gave out," he said to Cynthia. "The dogs are the trouble. You can"t carry enough food for them and for the sledging-party as well. Of course, it"s bad luck on Hemming. But I doubt if he followed the highest traditions of British exploration."
"Why?" asked Cynthia.
"He should have chosen a different base, converged upon the Pole from a different angle, and covered ground altogether new. Then, whether he failed or not, he would have brought back a hundred new facts of interest to the scientist and the geographer. As it is he adds very little I should think to our knowledge."
Cynthia was silent for awhile after he had finished. Then she said in a low voice, bending over some embroidery at which she was working:
"And if you were to go back, Harry, where would you make your base?"
"I?"
Harry Rames sprang eagerly up.
"Oh, I should search for a harbor a long way to the east of my old one. At least," and he caught himself up, "I think that is what I should do. I am speaking at random, of course. But I should at all events have considered that possibility carefully, if I had been going out again."
Again a spell of silence followed upon his words and Cynthia did not raise her eyes from her work. She was wearing a hat with a wide brim and Harry Rames could see nothing of her face.
"Won"t you get your charts out and show me?" she asked. She had mastered her voice so that there was no sound of effort in it.
"I haven"t got them here," said Harry, with a fine indifference. "They are in London I believe, somewhere or other."
Cynthia"s needle stopped.
"In London," she said. An idea had occurred to her. "Locked up?"
"Very likely. I may have locked them up. I have done with them altogether, you see."
"Of course," said Cynthia.
This time it was Harry who did not at once reply. The finality of that "of course" brought a flush of anger into his face. He almost blamed her for her blindness, though all his efforts aimed at keeping her blind.
"I will ride into Hickleton this afternoon," he said, "and make sure that the chairman of our a.s.sociation has no pet candidate of his own."
"That will be a good plan," said Cynthia; and with a glance at the crown of that broad hat and a surprise at the obtuseness of the head which it so effectually concealed, he went out of the room. Not until the door was closed did Cynthia lift her face from her work. Her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears and she let her hands lie idle on her lap while the tears overflowed and ran down her cheeks. She was not much given to tears, but to-day they had their way with her. She was wretched. Their marriage had been a mistake. From first to last Mr.
Benoliel had been right, but she would not listen to him and be warned. Even this afternoon he had accused her--for so she now looked upon his words--with his pitiless truths. It was true that Harry was discouraged, that his face had grown thin and worn, that despite the brave show which he was making, he was utterly unhappy. Harry"s words, "The men who go South are driven on by a torment of their souls,"
lived with her night and day. They were written in fire upon every wall of her house. In that torment Harry Rames was now tossing and must toss, enduring the anguish of his longing silently--just as silently as she herself was weeping in the empty room.
She was afraid of herself and dissatisfied with herself. Afraid, because she had been perilously near to one wild outcry, "Since your heart is set on it, go!" Dissatisfied, because she had stifled the words before they were spoken, because she could not bring herself to speak them, and never would.
From that day a change came over her. She flung herself with a veritable fever of energy upon those opportunities which enable a woman to identify herself with politics. The work she had undertaken in Ludsey, she undertook in London on a wider scale, and with infinitely greater effort. She was elected upon the central committees of the various women"s a.s.sociations connected with her husband"s party; she travelled far and wide throughout the country on the business of organizations; she made speeches; she sought the presence of Cabinet Ministers at her dinner-table; she lost her color, her buoyancy. What she did was done doggedly. To go to bed each night tired out, that was her ambition.
"If Harry wears himself out, why should not I?" she said when any of her friends remonstrated with her, but not one of them was allowed to guess that the secret of all her energy was remorse. She was seeking her rest in fatigue. For her remorse grew. Night after night Harry sat faithfully, as he had promised to Hamlin, in his seat on the front bench below the gangway. He took his part in the debates, he recovered the ground which he had lost. He was once more a man marked for high office. But it was all labor now, and unloved labor. And the strain of it was visible. He went out and in without that happy mien of confidence which once Cynthia had been wont to resent, but for which she vainly hungered now.
There was one Friday evening toward the end of June when she was impelled to approach the dangerous subject of her own accord. She and Harry had been dining with the Prime-Minister in Downing Street. All that week the House had been sitting into the small hours. The Prime-Minister himself had taken her aside and given her a warning.
They returned home soon after eleven, and as they sat over a final cigarette in Harry"s study, Cynthia could not shut her eyes to his restlessness, the nervous flickering of his fingers, the unsteady intonations of his voice.
"Aren"t you doing too much, Harry?" she asked.
"Not more than you, Cynthia," he replied as he poured himself out a whiskey and soda.
"Much more. And women who are doing what they want to do can stand a great deal more than men who are not."
Harry looked across at her quickly.
"But, of course, I am doing just what I have always planned to do, just what you are helping me to do--just what I sought your help to enable me to do."
"Sure?"
"Of course."
Cynthia had crossed the room to his side and was standing with a hand upon his shoulder. She was in a mood of indecision and the touch of her hand revealed her mood to Rames. A change came over him. She felt a tremor of his body, a sudden quickening of the muscles beneath her hand. He became intensely expectant. She could read the question in his mind. Was she by some wonderful inspiration going to release him from the torment of his soul? But the mere sensation of his movement was enough for Cynthia. She withdrew her hand. She repeated unconsciously words which he had once used to her.
"After all we get some fun out of it, don"t we, Harry?" she said; and Harry rose quickly from his chair.
"We get much more out of it, Cynthia," he said with a face which had suddenly grown very grave and tender; and the next moment she was in his arms, held there tightly, clasped against him. Cynthia was carried out of herself. She was swept away unexpectedly upon a swirl of pa.s.sion.
"Harry! Oh, Harry!" she whispered in a low voice of happiness. His right hand touched and stroked her hair. Then he tilted her chin backward and he looked into her eyes and a smile transfigured his face.