Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “Will you tell me when you first began to think of me in this way?” she asked with an earnestness which to Harry Rames appeared quite singular. To his direct mind the one question which needed answering was whether she meant to marry him or no.

  “Does the exact date matter?”

  “Very much.”

  Rebellion again broke out in Cynthia. “I believe it is quite a usual question for maidens to ask on these occasions. But no doubt I ought to have asked it with a deeper bashfulness.”

  Harry reflected. Here was one of the nice subtleties of the feminine mind which somehow he must satisfy.

  “It was after I had driven out once or twice from Ludsey to see you. That is as near as I can put it. It was after I had got to know you a little.”

  “As soon, in a word, as you concluded that I would suit the place.” Though the sentence was phrased still in the ironical form, the irony had suddenly gone from her voice. She was so relieved that a smile trembled about her lips. Her next words gave the reason of her relief.

  “So really and truly you want me personally — as well.”

  The question would have sounded vague to a stranger, but these two understood that it was her fortune which she omitted to name. Cynthia knew, as she could not but know, that her wealth had first set his thoughts running toward her. But it was some personal quality which in the end had decided him to ask for her. He must have money — yes, but other help than money as well. It was a satisfaction to her pride that he found it in her.

  “Yes,” he returned. “A wife can do so much for a man in politics if she is the right wife. I should be very glad if you would marry me,” Rames resumed. “I think that we should get along together very well, and together we might do important things.”

  “Be important things,” Cynthia corrected.

  Harry Rames smiled.

  “That’s an old quarrel of ours, Cynthia. I mean ‘do’ this time.”

  Cynthia looked at him quickly. She was in the mood to find in that hope the strongest of appeals.

  “You really think so?”

  “I do. I should owe so very much to you. I should be conscious of my debt. I should try with all my strength to pay it back.”

  Cynthia gave him her face frankly now. A smile of confidence quite lit it up.

  “I have no doubt of that,” she said; and then the smile faded, and there came a look of longing.

  “But I would rather, of course, that it were work for love of me, than work to repay me. There’s a difference, isn’t there? But I suppose one can’t have everything, and — perhaps — I might be content to help you on.”

  She fell again to a wistful silence, pursuing the vision of a happiness which might have been down an avenue of bright imagined years. The happiness did exist. She had seen the evidences of it often enough. All men were not tant soit peu cochons, as she had once heard an unhappy French lady describe them, nor were all women neurotic. She had heard of lovers who felt that they had been waiting for one another since the beginning of the world. But it seemed that such happiness was for others, not for her.

  “Tell me!” she said. “When you were making your speech, after the agitation had passed and when you were master of yourself, you looked up to the ladies’ gallery, you said, and noticed the women behind the grille?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well — it is a little difficult to ask the question — But” — she stopped for a moment or two, and then went on with an appealing timidity, while the color once more mounted into her face— “but I suppose that then — when you knew you were making a success — it never came into your mind that you would have liked to have got me up there in the gallery while you were speaking?”

  The temptation to lie was strong upon Harry Rames now. The very timidity of her appeal moved him. It taught him that the truth would hurt her much more than he had ever dreamed. He hesitated. For the first time in her company he was at a loss.

  “The truth, please,” she pleaded earnestly. “You said that your mind was free, that you could stand outside yourself and look on at what you were doing, as artists do. It never once occurred to you that you wanted me up there in the ladies’ gallery, too, at the moment of your success, to witness it — to — yes, to share it with you?”

  The word was out at last — the word which she had been striving with her modesty to reach.

  “Be frank, please,” she prayed.

  Harry Rames was at a loss how to wrap the brutal truth up so that it should not hurt overmuch. He had no other intention at this moment. He was for once not considering what effect his answer would have upon his own prospects and future.

  “You were in my thoughts,” he said. “That’s true. For I was thinking that now I could come to you. But, yes, I wanted to be sure of myself first.”

  “Yes,” said Cynthia slowly, and with humility she analyzed the meaning of his words. “You never thought of me as a kind of inspiration to an even greater success in the future if you succeeded now, or as a kind of consolation if you failed. It may be vanity to say so, but I think that is what a woman in whom you were interested, and who was interested in you, would have liked you to have thought. I was, after all, shut out, wasn’t I? I was to hear of the achievement after it was done and over, and I was neither to share the preliminary fears, nor feel the revulsion when the triumph came.”

  “Yes, but look at it from my point of view. There are many who want to marry you — men with something to offer. It wouldn’t have been fair if I didn’t bring something in my basket too.”

  “Fair!” cried Cynthia scornfully. “Oh, I know, that’s the point of view of the man — at least,” and as she realized that she had been unjust, her face dimpled to smiles, “of the men one rather likes.” For it occurred to her that Lord Helmsdale would have been troubled by no such scruples.

  “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t have borrowed another man’s thoroughbred so that you might cut a dashing figure while you proposed.”

  Rames had no idea of what she meant, and he behaved as he usually did when unintelligible things were said to him by women. He asked for no explanations and just took no notice of Cynthia’s words. He sat quietly at her side and waited.

  The clock struck the hour. He put his hand into his pocket, and at the movement Cynthia started.

  “There is no hurry,” said Harry Rames. “I was only getting out my cigarette case. May I smoke?”

  “Of course,” replied Cynthia; she was relieved that she need not answer upon the moment. She was still in a great perplexity; and while Harry Rames smoked his cigarette she sought this way and that for a light to guide her. Here was not the marriage of which she had dreamed. No. But he was honest. It was possible, too, that she might be able to help him on, as he had said. And it might be well worth doing. It might be true that the ambitious men are the world’s best servants, and not the men possessed with ideas. Ideas, she remembered, with a bitter little smile at her folly, had once given the right of entrance to her enchanted garden. But she had travelled far from its gateway, and the flowers were all dead in it, and its pathways overgrown. It might be that the fixed idea meant the narrow vision. Harry Rames might be right; and if he were, by helping him on, she would make her money of real and great value. It was a gray world anyway — and Harry Rames was honest. She could trust him — though he wounded her.

  She turned suddenly toward him.

  “Do you remember the supper party at Ludsey?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he replied: “And the little Frenchman, Monsieur Poizat.”

  “I was not thinking of him,” said Cynthia. A sentence or two spoken at that table by Colonel Challoner had leaped into her memory. Politics meant color in the lives of men. It was the craving for color which fired enthusiasm in the towns of the provinces. Well, she herself craved for bright colors in her life too. Might she not get them out of the paint-pot of politics just as men did?

  “If I were to say yes,” she remarked, “I would not be
content to be merely the witness of your success. I must share the fears which go to make it. I could not sit quiet and twirl my thumbs, shut out from the hopes and apprehensions and endeavors, and just smile admiringly at the result. I must share everything.”

  “Of course,” said Harry Rames. “From the moment you say ‘yes,’ you share everything. I meant that too when I said that I needed your help.”

  He spoke gravely and sincerely, and again Cynthia said, “Thank you.”

  She sat for a little while longer, hesitating upon the brink. To say “yes” would solve the question of a companion. Oh, certainly, there were practical advantages in the acceptance of Harry Rames’s proposal. She would have to abandon the hope of beauty in her life. Color, excitement, interest, she might get. But the beautiful life would not be for her. Still, under no circumstances, perhaps, might it have been for her. No one, she reflected, and with some sadness — no one by his approach had ever set her heart beating to a quicker tune. Perhaps there was some defect in her, some want of human passion, she reflected, which placed her in the second rank of women. When Cynthia was humble there was no girl so humble as Cynthia. And, after all, Harry Rames was honest. To that one stable point all her questions brought her back.

  She moved at last, and Harry Rames rose and stood before her.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Cynthia dropped her hands loose at her sides and answered with a smile:

  “Why not?”

  It was in those words that she accepted him. There was no spirit in them, and very little of expectation. But she had come to expect not very much; and she had travelled a long way from the garden of her dreams.

  “After all, there’s a turnstile in this affair, too,” she said, with a note of bitterness. “A very important one too. For it leads not into a garden, but straight to the treasury bench.”

  Harry Rames was bewildered. But he made no comment. Women were queer, and it was good to disregard their moments of excitement. Cynthia sprang up the next moment and laid her hand upon his arm.

  “Oh, yes, we’ll follow Mr. Smale’s advice, Harry,” she cried, “and we’ll keep our eyes on the treasury bench. Why not? Now go, and come back to-morrow.”

  She was laughing a little wildly, and Harry Rames had the sense to take her at her word. He went out of the room, and Cynthia flung herself down upon the cushions and cried for an hour by the clock.

  “Well,” she said to herself at the end, as she rose and dried her eyes, “Mr. Benoliel will be satisfied. That’s one thing.” Almost she seemed to blame Mr. Benoliel for the fact of her engagement.

  CHAPTER XX

  AT CULVER

  THE ODD THING in the affair, however, was that Mr. Benoliel did not seem satisfied. Cynthia asked him over the telephone the next day to come to her, and when he came she told him of her engagement.

  “But no one knows of it as yet except yourself,” she added; “and no one is to know, for the present. I want it kept a secret.”

  “Oh!” said Mr. Benoliel, looking at her curiously. “And why?”

  “There will be a certain amount of ill-natured talk,” Cynthia returned in a confusion. “And I want the time for it to be as short as possible. It will cease after we are married.”

  “People will say that Rames is an adventurer, who is marrying you for your money,” said Mr. Benoliel bluntly, and Cynthia turned on him with spirit.

  “Lord Helmsdale’s mother will, and other mothers would have said the same of Lord Helmsdale if I had married him.”

  “So it’s to spare the feelings of Harry Rames that you are keeping your engagement secret,” said Mr. Benoliel with an ironical wonder. “I should never have suspected him of such delicate susceptibilities.”

  “Well, I should be uncomfortable too!” cried Cynthia, bending puzzled and indignant brows at him. “I think you are quite horrid.”

  Benoliel sustained her indignation unabashed.

  “Is that the only reason, Cynthia?” he asked.

  “You wanted me married,” Cynthia continued. “You ought to be very, very pleased.”

  Mr. Benoliel, however, was not to be lured from his question into a discussion upon the propriety of his feelings. He repeated it.

  “Is fear of gossip the only reason, Cynthia, which makes you keep your engagement secret?”

  Cynthia again showed signs of confusion. Mr. Benoliel wore his air of omniscience. She sat down upon a chair.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Benoliel?”

  “This,” said he. “I have noticed that the young ladies who keep their engagements secret are not, as a rule, very much in love with the men they are engaged to. They leave themselves a loop-hole of escape.”

  Cynthia’s cheeks flamed. Certainly she had intended to spare Harry Rames and herself some uncomfortable weeks. But would she have minded those weeks had she cared for him? The question came swiftly, and as swiftly was answered. Had she cared for him she would have wanted to wear him like a ribbon on her breast for all the world to see. She realized it with a pang. She would have run quickly forward to meet the gossip and do battle. But she had not run forward. It was true that she had left herself a pathway of retreat, and rather by instinct than from any deliberate plan. Her wariness had prompted her. Once more she had wanted to be safe. But nothing of this was she going to acknowledge to Mr. Benoliel.

  “I think you are extraordinarily horrid,” she said again with a cold dignity, and hoped that her stateliness would crush her inquisitor.

  “When do you propose to marry, then?” he asked.

  “Just before Whitsuntide. The House will rise for ten days, I hear, at the least. We shall announce the marriage just before the House rises;” and that indeed was the plan upon which she had agreed only that morning with Harry Rames.

  “Then there is no hurry,” said Mr. Benoliel. “Perhaps you and Captain Rames will pay me a visit in the country before Whitsuntide comes.”

  He spoke as though he accepted the situation, and turned to other subjects, fearing to confirm Cynthia in obstinacy by any show of opposition.

  “Certainly,” she said; “we shall be pleased to come;” and a month later she and Harry Rames came one Friday afternoon to Culver.

  The house stood within hearing of the bells of Ludsey, but on that side of the city opposite to the White House. Benoliel had built it himself, and to those who knew the man but slightly it was an astonishing production. Captain Rames, for instance, whose taste was not very meticulous, never ceased to marvel at it. Even this Friday afternoon, as the car swung round a turn of the country road and the thing stood before him, he contemplated it with amazement. It was nothing but a monstrous new villa of red and yellow brick, a pretentious ghastliness of towers and flashing glass rising from the middle of a small bare field within twenty yards of the roadway. An avenue of fir-trees not yet shoulder-high wound to the front door, and there was no need for it to wind. Circular beds of glaring flowers disfigured the new lawns, and little bushes of evergreens, which would one distant day make an effort to be shrubberies, gave to the house a most desolate and suburban look. It seemed wonderful to Harry Rames that so nice and delicate a person as Mr. Benoliel could bear to live in it at all; and still more wonderful that with a dozen of the most beautiful houses in England bosomed in deep meadows and whispered to by immemorial elms, within an easy motor-ride to choose from as his models, he should have devised this unconscionable edifice.

  Sir James Burrell, the surgeon, however, who was sitting opposite to Harry Rames in the car, and next to Cynthia, took a different view. He gazed at the house with satisfaction. For it would add yet another subtle paragraph to his character sketch of Mr. Benoliel.

  “How extraordinary,” he cried, “and yet how like the man! That’s just the house which Benoliel would have built. Only one had not the insight to guess it. I love it!” and he leaned his head out of the window and chuckled at the building’s grotesqueness. “Yes, I love it. The fitness of things appeals to me.” And he turned t
o the astonished Captain Rames. “You don’t see the exquisite appropriateness of that — let us not call it a house — that detached residence to Isaac Benoliel?”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Harry Rames. “He always seemed to me to set up as a lover of beautiful things.”

  “And the love is genuine,” said Sir James, fairly off at a gallop upon his hobby. “He doesn’t set up. The love is almost a quality of his race. Yes, but his race doesn’t always know what things are beautiful. There’s the explanation of that building — race, which confounds logic and is quite untroubled by inconsistencies. There’s Benoliel’s race in every line of it. He’s of the Orient. He loves flamboyancy and gaudiness. He may conceal it carefully from us. But every now and then it must break out, and it has run riot here. Does the East repair and mend? No, it lets its old buildings decay and builds afresh. That’s why Mr. Benoliel passes by your stately houses all up for sale in their parks and builds this villa. Remember, Captain Rames, though Mr. Benoliel talks with you and walks with you, he doesn’t think with you. Behind those old tired eyes of his, he thinks as the East thinks.”

  Thus Sir James Burrell, and the car stopped at the front door before he could utter another word. He was not sorry, nor indeed were the other occupants of the carriage. He was merely trying his new paragraph on the dog, so to speak. He needed time to eliminate the unnecessary, and make it vivid with the single word, and fix it up with a nice juxtaposition of paradoxes and altogether to furbish it for presentation.

  “He does talk!” said Harry Rames to Cynthia.

  “Yes, doesn’t he,” she replied with a laugh, and then grew serious. “But I wonder whether he’s right. I wonder whether Mr. Benoliel thinks and judges from principles which are true to him, but not true to us.” Her eyes rested with a strange and thoughtful scrutiny on Harry’s face.