Part 46 (1/2)

M. Poizat, however, was equally positive.

”But it is in the Ludsey newspapers. Captain Rames takes them in, and reads them of course.”

”Of course,” said Cynthia.

”Then he must know. Such news is not tucked away in the corner of a local paper. No, indeed. It was printed on the first page.”

”Still you had better see him,” said Cynthia. She rose as she spoke, and she spoke a trifle absently, as though her thoughts had been suddenly diverted from the consideration of M. Poizat's calamity.

”Come back at five. He will advise you.”

She rang the bell. She was in a hurry now to get rid of the little Frenchman. Something much more important to her had occurred than the revelations of La Grande Clothilde. Doubts had flashed into her mind--doubts which she was in torture to resolve. As soon as Poizat's back was turned she went quickly into her husband's study. Upon a side-table, carelessly heaped, with their wrappers still gummed about them, she counted a dozen of the local papers of Ludsey. They took two a week, one of each political complexion. It was six weeks then since Harry Rames had taken the trouble to glance at a newspaper from his own const.i.tuency.

She stripped off the wrappers to make sure. Then she turned to the calendar upon the top of his writing-table. Six weeks just took her back to the date when Harry Rames had emptied the House with a speech, and had brought home the tragic news of Colonel Challoner's death.

Harry's omission on the surface was trivial enough. But to Cynthia it was significant and disquieting. For it was not in accordance with the deliberate prudence which used to mark the conduct of his political career. To nurse the const.i.tuency, to be familiar with its events and its needs, to respond to it, this had been his first care. Now for six weeks he neglected even to inform himself about it. And the omission did not stand alone.

”He will be home at five,” Cynthia argued, ”he who made it a rule to sit in the House however dull the course of public business.”

Often of late he had left the House as soon as questions were over and the usual vote taken upon the suspension of the eleven-o'clock rule, and had only returned thither upon the stroke of eleven on the chance of coming in for a division. Cynthia remembered, too, how indifferent he had been, on the day after he had made his failure, to the criticisms which the failure had evoked. Mr. Devenish had put in some biting and effective work in his reply, which should have been gall and wormwood to the ambitious Harry Rames. But he had not seemed to mind. The newspapers which supported the Government too had not spared him. Conceit and presumption were the least of his failings. The _Piccadilly News_ had published a cartoon of him as Humpty Dumpty. Yet he had remained unmoved, though Cynthia had cried her eyes red over the castigation.

Certainly some change had come over him, she reflected, and once more she was conscious of fear and a sinking heart. For the story which she had heard this morning from M. Poizat linked itself up in her mind with the warning of Mr. Benoliel. Poizat's history was not quite an ill.u.s.tration of the warning. That she recognized. Mr. Benoliel had bidden her beware of latent tendencies of character, latent cravings and ambitions, taking their origin from the years in which she had had no share. It was a definite act which had sprung into being in the case of M. Poizat. Still Poizat's disaster was a proof of the clutch of finished things, and of the continuity of life; was an instance that to turn over the new page and begin to write afresh as she and Harry Rames had proposed to do, is beyond man's reach. Two lines of verse, gathered she knew not whence, rang in her brain and would not be silenced:

”Our past deeds follow us from afar And what we have been makes us what we are.”

After a year's respite Cynthia was again afraid. Mr. Benoliel was magnified by her fears into the semblance of a prophet of old.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE CALL

Cynthia went that night alone to a dinner party in Seamore Place. But she was ill at ease and as soon as she could get away she hurried home. She had not seen her husband that day. He had returned at five o'clock, had been closeted for a long while with M. Poizat and had then departed, leaving a message that a series of divisions would compel him to dine at the House of Commons. The couple, however, had made it a habit to reserve for themselves, whenever the House was not sitting late, an hour or so at the close of even the busiest day, and Cynthia was fairly sure that she would not have to wait long before Harry Rames came home. As a fact, he was already in his study. The door was ajar and through the opening the light streamed out into the hall.

Cynthia pushed the door open. Harry was sitting at his writing-table on the opposite side of the room and studying with a complete absorption a scroll which he held down unrolled beneath his eyes.

Cynthia stood in the doorway for a moment or two watching him with a tender smile upon her face, and speculating idly upon the doc.u.ment which so riveted his attention. For the moment her trouble was quite driven from her thoughts. He was here, after all, in the house with her: he, the loved one: and with a sort of fierceness she was content.

Then he looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. His face changed; he had the aspect clearly of a man at bay. He swept a pile of letters and printed papers over his scroll, spreading them out. He rose and stood between her and the writing-table, hiding it from her view.

”You are home early,” he said.

”Earlier than you expected! Yet I am later than you.”

”Oh, I paired at ten o'clock.”

”I see.”

The furtive movement of her husband increased her fears and at the same time wounded her pride. They were to be frank with one another.

That was the pledge which each had given to the other. And here was the pledge broken, for Harry was definitely practising concealments.

Cynthia, however, did not belong to the tribe of the clamorous. She stepped within the room and left him to continue the conversation.