Part 56 (1/2)

”Oh, Harry! There's no trouble about the money, of course.”

Rames stared at her. ”Cynthia,” he cried. ”You'll help?”

”More than help, Harry,” she answered. ”You see I let you go--yes. I even bid you go--yes. But I mean to have my share, my dear, in whatever you do. I mean that you shall carry something of me, something more than a telegram this time, to your farthest South.”

Rames sat down in a chair by the side of the fire close to where she stood. He gazed into the flames in silence. With all gentleness and love she was heaping coals of fire upon his head. Every look, every word she spoke, confessed the deep pain which he was causing her. She was brave, but through the curtain of her bravery her fear and anguish shone. He spoke as a man will who is smitten by his conscience.

”I am very sorry, Cynthia. When I asked you to marry me I had no suspicion that any longing could get so strong a hold on me. I once told you carelessly that men were driven out upon these expeditions by the torment of their souls. I said that knowing it only by hearsay and by the plain proof of it which they show in what they have written.

Now I know it--here,” and he struck his breast above his heart. ”Yes, I have got to go if I am ever to have peace. But I am sorry, Cynthia.”

His voice trailed off into silence and Cynthia laid a hand upon his head and stroked his hair. ”I know,” she said, ”I know.”

”All that I thought so fine, so well worth having--the fight with other men for mastery, the conquest with what conquest would bring--power and rule and governing--it's extraordinary how completely all desire for it has vanished out of me!” he continued. ”Do you remember the account I gave you of my maiden speech?”

”Yes.”

Cynthia's hand had gone to her breast, but her voice was steady.

”There was a fragment of time when the world went blank, when I lost the thread of my speech, and stood dumb. A fragment of time so short that it wasn't noticeable to any one in the House except myself.”

”Yes.”

”Well, these three years of politics seem to me just such an unnoticeable interruption of my real life. The fight which I revelled in appears to me now a squabble made ign.o.ble with intrigues, bitter with mean disappointments, the victory not worth the fight. No doubt I am wrong. I went into the House of Commons, you see, without ideas,”

and Cynthia started at the word so familiar to her fancies. ”Now I have one, a big one, and it has mastered me.”

And so Harry Rames pa.s.sed at last through the turnstile into Cynthia's private garden. But it was in accordance with the irony of their lives that she wished with every drop of her blood that he had remained outside.

”I long for simple things, not s.h.i.+fts and intrigues and bitterness; the gray mists on glaciers; the day's journey over the snow, with its wind ridges and its storms; the hard, lean life of it all; the fight, not with men, but with enormous things of nature, some dangerous, some serene, but, whether dangerous or serene, wholly indifferent.” He gazed for a little while into the fire, seeking in the a.n.a.lysis of his emotions his apologia.

”I think, Cynthia,” he continued, ”that once a man has gone far into the empty s.p.a.ces of the earth, he has the mark of them upon him.