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.
“Oh, yes,” she cried bitterly. “I have eaten of the tree — and lately — very lately.”
And at the sight of her distress all Mr. Benoliel’s indignation vanished.
“I know,” he said gently. “That’s why I wanted you to marry, Cynthia.”
“Is that the remedy?” she asked. And she shook her head slowly. “I am frightened of it.”
She called to her groom, dismounted from her horse and taking Mr. Benoliel by the arm cried:
“Come in. You haven’t seen my house since I bought it. You shall tell me what you think of it, now that it’s finished.”
She ran up the steps and turned to him at the top with a look of compunction in her face:
“I talk to you of my troubles,” she said. “I have no right to — no, neither to you nor to any one. I am ashamed of myself. I have food to eat, clothes to wear, money to spend, and friends. Yes, I am very fortunate,” and her mind winged back to a dark night on the estancia when she had crouched in a big chair, listening to horrors set ready for her. “I ought to be grateful,” she cried with a shudder at her memories. “Come in!”
She led him through the rooms and claimed his enthusiasm for this or that rare piece of satin-wood or mahogany. It had been a great joy to her in the early days of the year to ransack the dealers’ shops and grow learned of Hepplewhite and Chippendale. She told Mr. Benoliel stories of her researches, seeking to recapture some savor of that past pleasure. But her sprightliness became an effort and in her own sitting-room she turned abruptly to him:
“But I have a distaste for it all now,” she said and sat down in a chair. “I have no longer any pride in the house at all.”
Mr. Benoliel stood over her and nodded his head in sympathy. She was distressed. She had a look of discomfort.
“Yes, I understand that, Cynthia,” he said.
She took off her hard hat. It pressed upon her temples and made her head throb.
“How much do you know?” she asked.
“That Mrs. Royle is leaving you.”
“Yes,” said Cynthia moodily. “We have agreed to separate. Do you know anything more?”
“Yes. The missing panel of tapestry hangs again in Ludsey Town Hall.”
“Yes. It was lying in a lumber-room under the roof of my house in Warwickshire. How long it had been lying there, or how it came there, I can’t discover. Diana ran across it by accident. It was tied up in a bale like an old carpet. She didn’t think it of any value — until she went one morning to the Town Hall with an American millionaire who was anxious to see the tapestry and buy it if he could.”
“Yes. I took Cronin there myself. He was staying with me and I drove him into Ludsey and met Mrs. Royle in the street. That was the day before the election. We all three went into the Town Hall together. I remember Mrs. Royle saying that she had never been in the building before. I pointed out the tapestry and explained that a wide strip of it was missing. I think I suggested that it would one day be turned out of some old cupboard.”
Cynthia nodded.
“That no doubt helped her to the truth. Anyway, she tried to persuade me to sell it. She merely told me that it was valuable and that I could get two thousand pounds for it. I didn’t connect it with the Ludsey tapestry. I thought that it might be worth while to bring it up to this house; and I refused to sell. Diana urged me again, however, and but that I don’t like selling things, I would have let her sell it, just because she was getting tiresome about it. Then Hartmann, the Bond Street dealer, called on me a month ago and told me what the strip was.”
“Why did he call?” asked Benoliel.
“He was in the deal with another man. Both apparently were selling to Mr. Cronin, and they quarrelled over the division of the profits. So Hartmann came to me in revenge. He told me that Diana was to get eight thousand pounds if she could persuade me to sell and that they meant to sell the tapestry afterward to Mr. Cronin for twenty-five thousand pounds. It’s not a pretty story, is it?”
“No,” said Benoliel. “So you gave it back to Ludsey?”
“Yes.”
“Does Mrs. Royle know that you are aware of her share in the transaction?”
“Yes. We haven’t ever talked of it, but she knows and proposed of her own accord that we should separate. We couldn’t go on living together, could we? It would be too uncomfortable. I couldn’t trust her.”
“When does she go?”
“In a week or two, now,” said Cynthia. “She has taken a little house on the north side of the park. Of course, for my father’s sake” — thus she always spoke of Mr. Daventry— “I am looking after her;” and she suddenly struck her hands together. “Oh, but it’s all rather sordid, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Benoliel. He was troubled and perplexed. “And what are you going to do?” he asked.
Cynthia shrugged her shoulders.
“I must engage a companion.”
“That doesn’t sound very satisfactory.”
“What else can I do?”
“Marry!” said Mr. Benoliel.
Cynthia rose petulantly to her feet.
“No,” she cried. “That I won’t do.” She turned away and looked out into the street, a storm of rebellion at her heart. Why should every one want to marry her off? Even her friend, her adviser, who should have stood by her, had turned, it seemed, against her. She came back to Mr. Benoliel, but he stood with so distressful a countenance that her indignation died away, and with a pretty compunction she made her apology:
“I know that you are thinking of me. I am sorry if I seemed to forget it. Forgive me! But you can’t really want me to marry just so that I may not be alone.”
“My dear,” said Mr. Benoliel gently, “It’s a very good reason.”
Cynthia shook her head.
“For a girl? — I am little more. No. I may come to that belief in the end when I am older. But not yet. I must have a better reason now. There are too many years ahead of me.”
Mr. Benoliel smiled, with a little wistfulness in the smile.
“Dreams, Cynthia, dreams,” he said.
“I am losing them,” she returned, and with a smile too, the smile of humor, not of amusement. “I am making haste to lose them against my will. But this one I’ll keep for still a little while. I’ll still dream that while I am young I must have a better reason for marriage than the fear of being alone.”
“Very well, Cynthia,” said Mr. Benoliel disconsolately. “I’ll hope you are right.”
He left the house and Cynthia sat down for a long time in her room. She had run to the extreme of melancholy with the determination of youth to make the very worst or best of life’s daily provision. She had never felt so keenly the vanity of her illusions. She had seldom felt so lonely, she was sure. Even Harry Rames nowadays left her severely to herself. Why didn’t he come to see her? She asked the question with indignation. She had never seen him since the supper-party at his hotel in Ludsey on the night before the poll. She had never heard his voice since he had spoken to her over the telephone just after his election. Very likely he had grown tired of her appeals to him to be different from what he was. No doubt she was a bore. Sadly Cynthia admitted it. Yes, she was a bore, and Diana Royle was treacherous, and Harry Rames never came to see her, and, take it all in all, it was a gray and dismal world.
CHAPTER XVIII
A MAIDEN SPEECH
YET TO HER astonishment Harry Rames came that very week on the Friday afternoon. Cynthia received him with an elaborate dignity. There was no acidity in her welcome, neither was there any joy. She seemed intensely unaware that she had not seen him for three months. Her nose was perhaps a trifle too high in the air, but she was not conscious of it. On the whole she was greatly pleased with her demeanor. She was behaving as a woman of the world to whom one acquaintance, more or less, is a matter of complete indifference. She offered him tea, and seating herself upon a sofa in front of the table poured it out. Harry Rames took his cup with humility. Cynthia was quick to notice it, no less quick to be gratified by his exhibition of a quality which hitherto he had lacked. He was abashed. He was ashamed. He was uneasy. No doubt he had come expecting the flattery of questions. Her unconsciousness of the length of his absence put him at a loss. When he spoke, it was with difficulty. And then, suddenly, Cynthia saw his lips twitching at the corners. He was not abashed at all. He was simply trying not to laugh. Cynthia grew hot. Alas! her great dignity had barely sustained her in contentment for five minutes! The old indignation shone in her eyes. The indifferent great lady vanished. Almost before she was aware of it she was talking in broken, resentful sentences — as any other ordinary girl might have done who had been wounded and whose wound had betrayed her into speech.
“People who insist on making friends with other people who didn’t at the beginning want to be friends at all, haven’t the right afterward to drop being friends calmly, without a word of explanation. Of course, if people are bored — but even then they should have guessed they were going to be bored before they perhaps made other people count a little — oh, not so much, of course, but just a little — on their friendship. No, I object to that. It’s hateful — and then you saunter in as if — No.” Cynthia, oppressed with a sense of utter isolation in a most neglectful world, which probably hated her when it stopped to think of her at all, was perilously near to tears. She took refuge in sarcasm of a crude kind:
“You probably wouldn’t understand that suddenly to stay away after you have been friendly is rather humiliating to a girl. But you will take it from me, won’t you, that it is so?”
She spoke as one giving a kindly lesson in tact to a boorish person. But her lips shook. Harry Rames rose from his chair and crossing the room took up the Times which lay still neatly folded in its original square upon a table.
“You have not opened your paper to-day,” he said; and once more he saw Cynthia flinch as though he had struck her a blow — flinch and sit dumb, with her great eyes full of pain.
“Oh, please don’t make any mistake,” he said quickly, and with the newspaper in his hand he came back to her side. “I wasn’t taking what you said carelessly. But if you had read your Times to-day you would have understood, I think, why I have stayed away till now. You might, perhaps, have guessed why I have come this afternoon.”
Cynthia took the newspaper from him and unfolded it, with her eyes resting in doubt upon his. Then comprehension came to her. She turned the pages quickly and stopped at one particular sheet of closely printed columns. “Oh,” she cried, “you have made your maiden speech.”
“Yes, last night.”
In a second her resentment was forgotten. She was all smiles. She reached out an eager hand to him. “It was successful? But why do I ask? I have watched the newspapers ever since the House met. I thought you were never going to speak.”
“I always meant to hold back at the beginning,” said the wise Harry Rames. “There were new men tumbling over one another to speak on the address; I let them get that start of me without any fear. I wanted to learn the way of speaking which carries you home in the House of Commons.”
Cynthia laughed and made room for him on the sofa at her side.
“Yes, there I recognize you.”
“Besides,” Rames continued, “the address fights the election over again, sums it up, and parades its consequences — consequences already known to all. It’s very difficult to make any real mark in the debate on the address. So while the other men talked I sat quiet. Night after night through the address, through the two months which followed it, I sat in the House, listening and watching. And I learned my lesson.”
“Yes?” said Cynthia.
“I learned that the House scoffs at oratory and has no use for perorations; that it won’t listen to leading articles; that it won’t tolerate conceit, except in the biggest men, and hates it in them; that it is conscious of dignity and requires the same consciousness in the members who address it. It requires too that the man who intervenes in a debate should contribute something out of himself.”
“Does it always get that?” asked Cynthia in bewilderment.
“No, indeed. But, on the other hand, it goes out into the lobby, or it talks. Smale’s a wise man. He told me once that hardly ever did a Parliament produce more than three new men. Just think of it! For five or six years, for six or eight or ten months in each of those years, there’s one perpetual flow of talk during eight hours of the day in that Chamber; and yet out of all that sludge of talk only three men emerge of any account. I want to be one of the three men in this Parliament. Otherwise you are right and I am wrong. I have mischosen my career. So I sat quiet and learned my lesson.”
“Until last night,” said Cynthia.
“Yes, my opportunity came.”
“With a subject on which you could contribute?”
“Well, on which I thought I could,” said Rames; and once again Cynthia wondered at the patience with which he had sat night after night awaiting his moment, and yet counting calmly as among the possibilities of failure his own incompetence. “It was Asiatic immigration.”
Cynthia made a grimace.
“Sounds dull?” asked Rames. “Very likely. But it’s an important question for us and one that’s going to be still more important in the future. You see, as a power, we are in a queer position. We are at once the white people resisting the Asiatic immigrant, and the Asiatic immigrant wanting the outlet of immigration — but I won’t make my speech over again to you. I raised the question myself on the colonial vote, and here is what I said,” — he took the newspaper from her hands, folded it, and gave it back to her. Then he sat quietly by her side while she read the speech through. She appreciated the labor and thought which had gone to its making; the half column which the Times gave to reporting it enabled her to realize that it had been delivered with a vivid economy of phrase which gave his meaning aptly and never frittered it away. If only the trouble had been taken and the speech delivered for the sake of the question! The question was a big one. Cynthia understood that through the spectacles of Harry Rames’s speech.
“You made a great success?” she asked turning toward him. She noticed that he was sitting very still beside her, as though he set great store upon her judgment. And in a voice of greater warmth she said:
“But of course you did.”
Again Rames took the newspaper and again he folded it. He pointed to the first leader, from which his name stood out in bigger type than the rest of the text.
“It doesn’t so very often happen that the Times takes the subject of its chief leading article from a man’s first speech in the House of Commons.”
Then he folded the paper again at the parliamentary report and pointed to a paragraph here and there. “That’s what the leader of the opposition said. Here’s the reference the colonial minister made when he wound up the debate. You see, both dealt with my speech.”
There was a note of quiet elation in Harry Rames’s voice. He had taken another step along the chosen path. He had passed through another of the ordeals.
Cynthia did not answer. She sat with the newspaper on her knees, gazing forward with perplexed eyes. She looked almost disheartened.
Rames noticed the look and smiled.
“I know what’s troubling you, Miss Daventry. You are wondering whether it isn’t, after all, the horrible truth that a desire to get on and excel can achieve quite as much, and be quite as useful to the world, as enthusiasm for a cause, the pure, genuine enthusiasm to make the world better.”
Cynthia turned to him with a start.
“Yes, I was wondering just in that way.”
“Well, I’ll answer you,” said Rames firmly. “The desire to get on achieves more and better things than enthusiasm for an idea.”
“I can’t believe it,” cried Cynthia in revolt.
“Think it over,” continued Rames. “Enthusiasm for cause blinds you to the harm, the injustice which you may do in furthering your cause. The desire to get on makes you appreciate the cause, and weigh it, yes, but it makes you weigh also the methods of advance.”
“No, no,” cried Cynthia. “You push a garden roller over all my frail illusions. Some day, I think, you’ll pay;” and she turned suddenly toward him. “Yes, I’m afraid you’ll pay.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 492