“I have got a rule or two,” he said. “All demands for pledges from leagues and associations go into the waste-paper basket. I’ll answer questions if they are asked me by a man in my constituency. I won’t put my name to a general proposition and post it to London. Many a good man has been let down that way. Then I won’t canvass. I won’t solicit a vote. I don’t believe in it. There’s one only point of view for a candidate: that the electors are doing themselves a service by electing him, and not doing him one. You have got to persuade them of that.”
“Don’t you find it difficult?” asked Cynthia, innocently.
Rames laughed.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “The electors have their point of view, too. But I won’t canvass, I am there at my hotel if any one wants to see me. I am at public meetings, and I go to social functions. That’s a good move,” and Captain Rames nodded his head. “You meet the fellows on the other side and if you can get them friendly, you stop them coming out hot against you. Makes a lot of difference, that. Then there’s wisdom in taking a firm stand upon a point or so. Your own people, treat them properly, will always give you a bit of latitude, and a reputation for courage is a fine asset in politics as in anything else.”
“But you mustn’t overdo it, I suppose,” said Cynthia ironically.
“Oh, no, you must be careful about that,” replied Rames seriously. “What you want to produce is an impression that you are not pliable, that industries will be safe under your watch — that’s for the business men — and that social advancement will not be neglected — that’s for the artisans. You know the election is coming now,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Do come to one of my meetings!”
Cynthia looked doubtful.
“I don’t think,” she said, “that I believe very much in any work which — I don’t express what I mean very well — which hasn’t a great dream at the heart of it.”
Rames looked up into her face quickly and grew suddenly serious. He made no comment upon her words, however.
“After all that’s no reason why you shouldn’t come to one of my meetings.”
Cynthia smiled.
“I will come to the last one on the night before the poll,” she replied reluctantly.
“I shall hold you to it,” said Harry Rames, and he went away well pleased with his visit. Cynthia was popular in Ludsey. So Cynthia should sit on that momentous evening in the front row upon the platform. Also he would make for her benefit an unusually effective speech. Cynthia from the window watched his motor-car spin away in a whirl of dust. He was going to preside that evening at a meeting of the Salvation Army.
The dissolution took place on the fifteenth of January. But the real contest had begun a fortnight before in Ludsey. Harry Rames rushed into it as if it had been a foot-ball rally. He spoke all day, in factories and outside factories, in halls and schoolrooms and from club-room windows. He ransacked the morning papers for new pegs on which to hang his arguments; he kicked off at foot-ball matches and the aim of the kick was entirely political; and at the end of three weeks even he was very tired and inclined to recognize an element of humiliation in the conduct of a successful campaign.
It was eleven o’clock at night. There was to be but one more day of it, but one more meeting to-morrow night, the big, final rally on the eve of the poll. Harry Rames lay outstretched upon his sofa with his pipe between his lips cradled pleasantly upon that reflection, when the door of his room opened and a waiter brought in a card. Rames waved it aside.
“I can see no one.”
“The gentleman said that his business was important.”
Rames grumbled and took the card from the salver.
“M. Poizat,” he read. “A Frenchman. Certainly not. I won’t see him.”
The waiter, an old English servant, a rare being nowadays, even in a country hotel, stood his ground.
“He’s lived in Ludsey a long time, sir.”
“Oh, has he!” said Rames. “Tell him I am out.”
The waiter shook his head.
“He has already told me that you are in, sir. Come, you had better see him, sir. Perhaps he’s the ha’porth of tar.”
“Oh, very well,” said Rames. “But I tell you, William, that I am in the mood to assert my rights as a man.”
“Mustn’t do that, sir, until the day after to-morrow. You are only a candidate till then.”
William retired. Rames fell back upon his sofa. He meant to lie there prone upon his back, even if his visitor held all the votes of Ludsey in the hollow of his hand. Then the door opened and was shut again. A little, puckish old man stood in the room, danced lightly on his feet, skipped in the air, twirled before Captain Rames’s astonished eyes and finally struck an inviting attitude, both arms extended and one foot advanced, like the pictures of the quack doctors in the newspaper advertisements.
“Oh, he’s out of a lunatic asylum,” Captain Rames almost groaned aloud. “He won’t even have a vote.”
The little man skimmed forward with agility, fixing a bright and twinkling pair of eyes upon the prostrate candidate.
“How old do you think I am?” he asked, and he whirled his arms.
“You are the youngest thing I have ever seen,” replied Rames with conviction. “I didn’t know that people were even born as young as you are.”
“I am seventy-three,” exclaimed the little man with a chuckle. He squared up at an imaginary antagonist and delivered a deadly blow in the air.
“Do you mind not doing that!” said Rames mildly. “My nerves are not what they should be, and if you do it again I shall probably cry. I suppose that you are M. Poizat — —”
“I am, sir,” said the little man. He changed his tactics. He no longer whirled his arms in the air. He advanced to the sofa and suddenly put up his foot on the edge.
“Feel my calf!” he said abruptly.
Captain Rames meekly obeyed.
“You ought to have a medal,” he said languidly. “You really ought. At seventy-three, too! For myself I am like butter, and rather inferior butter, on a very hot day.”
M. Poizat nodded his head.
“I know. That’s why I am here!” He looked about the room and with the importance of a conspirator he drew out of his pocket a medicine bottle filled with a brown liquid. “Why am I so young?” he asked. “Why is my leg of iron? Listen to my voice. Why is it so clear? — It’s all ‘Lungatine,’” and with immense pride he reverently placed the bottle on the mantel-shelf. He turned again to Captain Rames.
“I heard you to-night. I suffered with you. What a voice! How harsh! How terrible! And yet what good words if only one could have heard them! I said to myself: ‘That poor man. I can cure him. He does not know of Lungatine. He makes us all uncomfortable because he does not know of Lungatine.’ So I ran home and brought a bottle.”
“It’s very good of you, I am sure,” said Rames, “But look!” He pointed to a table. Throat sprays, tonics, lozenges, encumbered it. “The paraphernalia of a candidate,” he said.
M. Poizat smiled contemptuously. He drew from his breast pocket a sheaf of letters.
“See how many in Ludsey owe their health to me!” he cried, and he gave the letters to Rames, who read them over with an ‘oh’ and an ‘ah’ of intense admiration when any particularly startling cure was gratefully recorded.
“You are a chemist here I suppose — naturalized, of course?” asked Captain Rames.
“I have a restaurant,” M. Poizat corrected him. “Lungatine is merely one of my discoveries.”
He sat down complacently. Captain Rames started up in dismay upon his elbow.
“I have a great deal to do to-morrow,” he said piteously. The plea was of no avail. Captain Rames was in the grip of that most terrible of all constituents, the amateur inventor. M. Poizat drew his chair to the side of the sofa and went through the tale of his inventions. It was the usual inevitable list — an automatic lift which would work with absolute safety in any mine, a torpedo which would destroy any navy
, a steel process which would resist any torpedo, and a railway-coupling.
“I’ll bring you the models,” he cried.
“No, no,” cried Rames, springing from his sofa in dismay. Then he laid his hand on the inventor’s shoulder and smiled wisely:
“Royal commissions for you,” he said. “They’re the fellows for models. I’ll see about some. Royal commissions for you. Thank you for your Lungatine. Good-night, my friend, good-night.”
Gently, but firmly, he raised the inventor from his chair, while he shook hands with him, and conducted him toward the door.
“You have your hat? Yes.”
“A tablespoonful six times a day in a wineglass of water.”
“Yes. The instructions, I see, are on the bottle.”
Captain Rames opened the door with his pleasantest smile.
“To-morrow at your great meeting,” said M. Poizat, “I shall be there. I shall hear what you say. Your voice will ring like a trumpet. And perhaps at the end of your speech, you will say that it is all due to Lungatine.”
A frosty silence followed upon the words. Captain Rames said indifferently:
“You have been in England a long time. You are naturalized, of course?”
M. Poizat did not reply to the question.
“Perhaps you will say that it is all due to Lungatine,” he repeated softly. “Perhaps you will say that. Who knows?”
Captain Rames looked up at the ceiling.
“Ah, who knows?” he said enigmatically.
M. Poizat shook hands for a second time and went down the stairs. Captain Rames closed the door, took the cork from the bottle, wetted the tips of his finger, and tasted the brown liquid. It was a simple solution of paregoric.
“I don’t believe the fellow’s naturalized,” cried Rames, and he raised the bottle in the air above the coal-scuttle. But he did not let it drop.
“Perhaps he is though,” he thought. He poured away a portion of the liquid amongst the coal, replaced the cork, and set the bottle prominently upon the mantel-shelf so that if M. Poizat took it into his head to call again he would see it there. Then he betook himself to bed; and M. Poizat figured in his dreams, a grotesque, little, capering creature, a figure of fun, as indeed he was, to the eyes of wakefulness. There are people upon whose faces nature writes plainly hints of tragic destinies, and M. Poizat had certainly no relationship with these. But then nature is apt to be freakish.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE POLL
THE WALLS OF the great Corn Exchange were draped with banners and hung with gigantic mottoes. Cynthia sat in the front row of chairs upon the platform with Isaac Benoliel upon one side of her, and beyond him Diana Royle. It was the first public meeting at which she had ever been present, and now that the shy uneasiness at the prominence of her position which had troubled her when she took her seat was passing away, she gazed about her, eagerness in her eyes and a throb of excitement at her heart. In front of her a rostrum had been built out from the edge of the platform so that the speakers might stand upon the exact spot whence the voice carried with the greatest sonority. The rostrum was railed and hung with red cloth; the chairman’s table, with the inevitable water-bottle, occupied it; and the small, square space was the only empty space in all that cavern of a hall. A few rows of chairs for members of the association were ranged at the front upon the floor; behind the chairs the people stood packed and massed to the doors, most of them men. The one gallery was crowded to its furthest nook; behind Cynthia the platform was thronged. Wherever her eyes turned she saw faces, faces, faces, all set in one direction, all white under the glare of light, all inclined toward the empty rostrum. It was the eve of the poll. There was a tingle of excitement in the air, a hushed expectancy. Only when Cynthia raised her eyes did she lose the vague feeling of suspense. Overhead a skylight in the roof was covered with a horizontal blind. One tattered corner hung down and as she looked up from the indistinguishable throng of faces, it arrested her attention as something especially individual and definite and single.
Suddenly came a buzz and a stir. The chairman was seen to rise from a flight of steps at the side of the platform. He was followed by a tall, gaunt, loose-limbed man with a bony face, a white moustache, and a high, bald head. He had the look of a soldier. Cynthia took no heed of him. He stalked before her and sank unnoticed in his place. Behind him came Harry Rames, and as he passed along the narrow gangway between the crowded chairs, those who had seats sprang to their feet; and three thousand people broke like a wave into a flutter of handkerchiefs and a shattering thunder of applause. Above the applause a chant gradually swelled, two lines of a tune rather like a chime. Cynthia could not hear the words, but the sound, with its rise and fall, surged backward and forward against the walls of the Exchange for a full minute.
Mr. Benoliel leaned toward Cynthia.
“They have given him their foot-ball song. In a city of artisans, keen on foot-ball, that’s a good sign.”
Cynthia nodded. But she hardly heard, she could not have answered. Here was something quite new to her, and overwhelmingly new. The thunderous outburst had taken her by the throat; for a second she felt choked; she had no part in politics, yet emotion woke in her and the tears sprang into her eyes.
“What’s the matter, Cynthia?” asked Diana Royle.
Cynthia replied with a break in her voice between a laugh and a sob.
“I don’t know. It’s just the crowd, I think.”
“And the enthusiasm of the crowd,” added Mr. Benoliel. “You make me feel very old, Cynthia. I can listen to it quite unmoved now. But there was a time when I couldn’t without a choking in my throat. It’s the splendid faith of the crowd.”
Cynthia, arrested by the phrase, looked quickly at Benoliel. Greatly as she liked him she was never quite sure of him. Kind as he had been to her she always suspected some touch of the charlatan. He had the look of a man quite in earnest.
“I wonder,” she said, “whether mere magnetism is enough to arouse it.”
Mr. Benoliel did not answer; for the chairman rose at his table; and while he spoke the harmless necessary words, Cynthia took stock of Harry Rames, who was seated in the rostrum at the side of the table in front of her and a little to her left. The last weeks of exertion had left their marks; the flesh had worn thin upon his face; there were dark hollows beneath his eyes; he had gained a look of spirituality which did not belong to him. He was nervous; his hands, with the long fingers which never seemed to accord with the rest of him, moved uneasily and restlessly from the buttons of his coat to the slip of notes which he had placed upon the table. Cynthia was deceived by the look of him as she had been deceived by the fervor of the gathering. The outburst was not entirely, was not even chiefly, a tribute to the candidate. Ludsey was a political city, and by three weeks of speeches and agitation political feeling had been whipped to a climax of excitement. It sought and found its outlet to-night at this final rally before the poll.
The cheers broke out again when Harry Rames rose and leaned his hand upon the rail of the rostrum. When they died down he began to speak — first a faltering word or two of thanks. Then his voice suddenly strengthened and rang firm. His fingers ceased to twitch, and he turned over in his mind the consecutions of his thoughts as though he were turning over the pages of a book. All that he had planned to say came clearly to him in its due order, and brought the comforting assurance that the rest would follow. He was master of himself, and being master of himself set his audience at ease to listen, Cynthia among the rest. Anxious as he himself, she knew now that the speech would go right on to its considered end. She leaned forward, all ears to catch the words, and all eagerness to read into them, if she could, the something more which was not there.
But she could not; yet it was a night of triumph for Harry Rames, “Breezy Harry Rames.” She recalled her own phrase with a disappointed droop of the lips more than once during the next hour. He was going to win. She had no doubt of it. Confidence swept
from his audience to him and back again in waves. And he savored the joys of the orator as he never had before. He had the arts of the platform, and more than the arts, a power to bend his audience to sympathy. He knew that night the supreme reward, the hush of a mass of people constraining themselves to silence and even to immobility while a voice, low as a whisper, sounded audibly in every nook. He played with the suspense, prolonging it to the last moment of endurance, and then, by a sudden swoop to a sharp, clever phrase, drawing the audience to its feet and coining the silence in a stormy tumult of applause.
He had the gift of speech; Cynthia gladly conceded it. An aptness of homely words, an absence of all extravagance, and a voice resonant and pleasant as a clear-toned, bell impressed her more than she had expected to be impressed. A day’s rest had restored his voice for the time, even though M. Poizat’s Lungatine had not contributed to the restoration.
She was surprised, too, by a certain shrewdness in the matter of the speech. It was not so much of the platform as his manner. There was very little reference to the navy. “I don’t mean to be considered a ‘service member,’” he had said to her once. “No one pays attention to the service member in the House of Commons.” But here and there came views which struck her as new and worth consideration.
“If you could teach the wives of the artisans to cook and to take an interest in cooking, you would have done a great deal more to solve the question of intemperance in this country than if you closed half the public-houses,” he cried once and developed his theme with humor and some courage. He drew a picture of a wife putting her husband’s supper on the fire, ready against the time when he should come home from his factory, and then running out into the street to talk to a neighbor and leaving the meat to grill to the toughness and dryness of leather.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 488