"I can't reconcile Mr. Devenish with his speeches," she said.

"Yet there's a continuity," replied Harry. "He is one of your instances of men big enough to widen out. But he's an enthusiast, and he has done in his day a deal of platform work so that the old phrases come trippingly to his tongue. He says, when he's carried away, more than he thinks now, but less than he used to think ten years ago. I fancy that's the explanation."

Cynthia looked toward the door through which Mr. Devenish had disappeared.

"Tell me about him, Harry," she said.

"I will, certainly," said Rames. His ill-humor had pa.s.sed. He leaned toward his wife with a smile upon his face. It seemed to Cynthia that the moment of embarra.s.sment so quickly gone had brought now as its consequence another moment quite as inexplicable--a moment during which she and Harry were nearer to one another than as yet they had been.

"The one thing I think to remember about Devenish is this," Rames continued. "As a boy he had always to walk in the road and he has not forgotten it."

The division bell began to ring before he could say another word to elaborate his sketch of the man. He led Cynthia out through the arches to the door where her carriage waited, and he left her to drive home puzzled by his phrase.

He spoke, as he had promised to do, on the following Thursday. Cynthia heard the speech from the ladies' gallery, not siding with it at all, nor against it, but simply attentive to its effect. He rose in a full House, which did not diminish as he spoke, and the s.p.a.ce behind the bar grew crowded. He was brief; he worked his own intimate knowledge of the mechanism of a modern ship of war into the scheme of his speech. He was nervous, Cynthia knew, but he gave no outward sign of nervousness; he spoke with a quiet resonance of voice, as though he had the measure of that a.s.sembly; and he brought into play that remarkable gift of counterfeiting sincerity, which always astonished, and sometimes frightened her. It was difficult even for her to realize that he had no real opinion about the value of the big ship, one way or the other, and that he had merely crammed his subject diligently with her help during the last few days. He spoke, indeed, with telling effect. There were friends of Cynthia in the gallery who were quick to congratulate her. She herself was filled with admiration, but it was the admiration for the fine performance of an actor; and when she went down in the lift to join him after the debate was over, the cry was loud in her heart: "If only he believed one word of it!"

He met her at the gate of the lift, and she caught his arm and pressed it against her side.

"Thank you," said Harry. "That's better than words."

"It wasn't a congratulation," she replied. "It was an appeal."

Harry Rames spoke once more during that session, late at night, in a thin House, and to try himself in unprepared debate, rather than with any intention to arrest notice. But the moment was well chosen, for a speaker on the government side was needed; and when the House rose for the autumn, he took down with him to Warwickshire the reputation of a rising man. He had kept his bargain, Cynthia gratefully acknowledged it, and the fears which Isaac Benoliel had aroused in her began for a time to lose their substance.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MAN WHO HAD WALKED IN THE ROAD

Harry Rames and Cynthia pa.s.sed the autumn at the white house, and hardly a day pa.s.sed but one or the other was seen in the climbing streets of Ludsey. Harry presided at the social gatherings of the city, the musical clubs, the horticultural society, and the rest. He was busy with his town clerk over a railway bill which the munic.i.p.ality meant to oppose. He made friends with his public opponents. Cynthia herself was hardly less active. She threw herself into the work of committees and councils, not from enthusiasm, but in a desperate search for that color which Mr. Arnall and his fellows had got from politics, and her own youth demanded for herself. And with the work, interest in it came, if color did not. They were establishing Harry Rames in his seat--that was certain, and she had her share in it. They were winning and, being a woman, she loved to win. Cynthia was a success in Ludsey--she could not but know it. For the demands for her presence and her time grew with every morning's post. There came to her a sort of exultation of battle. She was doing her work; she was helping to make the great career, and in the pleasure of helping to make, she lost sight of the essential emptiness of the thing she was making.

"Yes," said Harry one night to her. "You are making this seat safe for me, Cynthia, for the next election."

Cynthia looked at him with her eyes bright.

"Do you think so?" she asked eagerly, asking for praise, and Arthur Pynes, the young chairman of the a.s.sociation, who had been dining with them, corroborated her husband.

"We once had a candidate whose wife would sing at the public meetings.

We couldn't stop her, and every time she sang she cost us fifty votes.

We have always stipulated for a bachelor since. But you have changed our views now, Mrs. Rames."

"I am very glad," said Cynthia; and the trio fell to discussing plans for the next session. "We want to see you in office before three years are out," said Pynes to Harry Rames. "There's no reason why we shouldn't."

"Yes, there is," said Harry Rames. "A large majority. They want you to keep quiet and vote and, being strong, they would just as soon put into office men who have never opened their mouths in the House as not, and probably sooner."

"Then you must force 'em," said Arthur Pynes.

They discussed the government programme for the next session, and what opportunities would arise from it. But the changes and transitions of Parliament are rapid. However sternly the government may cling to its ordered sequence of legislation, great questions will arise which have not been foreseen, and the ballot will give to private members their opportunity of discord. Thus the man who sits next to you may be in hot debate with you to-morrow, and those who smiled at you from the treasury bench yesterday may see you stroll with a fine air of indifference into the opposition lobby to-day. Harry Rames was well aware of the pull of the undercurrents, but neither he nor Cynthia, nor Arthur Pynes had a suspicion that night that the next session was to see him in definite antagonism to Devenish, the man who had been forced to walk in the road.

It was not, indeed, until the session was more than half-way through that Cynthia herself learnt it. She had dined with her husband at the House. It was a warm night of early summer, and after dinner they took their coffee upon the terrace. A private bill was occupying the attention of a thin House, and the terrace was fairly full of members waiting for the resumption of public business. Amongst them was Mr.

Devenish. He strolled up to the couple, and after shaking hands with Cynthia, turned to Harry Rames:

"I hear you are against Fanshawe's bill."

"Yes," said Harry Rames.

"It comes on next Friday," continued Devenish. "The government will accept the principle, and give the bill a second reading."

"It won't go further than that," said Harry Rames.

"Not this year. But next year we shall embody the principle in a measure of our own, and then--?" He looked inquiringly at Harry.

"Then," said Harry deliberately, "I suppose we must try to get it amended."

A beam of light pouring from one of the windows showed Devenish's face clearly to Cynthia. She saw it harden and narrow. When he spoke his voice was sharp.

"I shall be in charge," he said. "I shall not accept any amendment which strikes at the principle."

"I am sorry," said Rames. He lit his cigar. He had not the air of a man receding from his position.

Cynthia was leaning forward, her eyes travelling curiously from one to the other. She had noticed the quick snap in the voice of Devenish, the quiet indifference to it in her husband's. But she did not know on what point they disagreed. Harry Rames turned toward her and explained:

"Fanshawe is bringing in a land bill on Friday afternoon. I didn't think that the government would take it up or I would have told you about it, Cynthia, and talked it over with you."

Devenish looked quickly toward the girl. Since Rames consulted her, could he enlist her upon his side? Cynthia read the unspoken question in his face, and turned gratefully to her husband who had made it clear that she had her word in his decisions.

"Fanshawe proposes that the State should buy compulsorily so much land at intervals of so many years, split it into small holdings and lease them," Rames continued.

"And you disapprove?" said Cynthia.

"Yes. I am against the small holding. I think that's waste. I am in favor of the small farm. But I want the farm owned, not taken on lease. That's my chief objection. The State's a hard landlord."

"Is a bank a better one?" asked Devenish.

"I think so," returned Rames. "A bank's a business; the State's a machine. There's a big difference there."

"Well, I shall be interested to hear what you have to say on Friday,"

said Devenish, as he rose from his chair. "It would be a pity if we lost your support--a great pity." He spoke with a slow significance.

The words were half a compliment, and the other half a menace. He turned at once lightly to Cynthia. "You must persuade him, Mrs. Rames, to be sensible, you really must," he said. "To create owners is a long, slow process, and I can't wait." A sudden violence flamed in his voice, and with a characteristic action he brought a clenched fist sharply down into the open palm of his other hand. He looked out across the Thames and leftward to the lights on Westminster bridge. He seemed to be a.s.suring himself that he stood at last where he had always meant to stand, that the moment for which he had lived was surely coming. "No, I can't wait. I want to set about the land system in this country. With tenancies one can begin at once."

As he walked away from them Cynthia recalled the description of him which Harry Rames had given to her. "As a boy he had always to walk in the road, and he has not forgotten it." She began to understand the phrase now. Devenish's swift and bitter outburst had been an illumination.

He had been forced to walk in the road. Rames had shown a shrewd insight into a complex character when he coined the phrase. Devenish was the son of a small struggling tradesman, in a little town surrounded by land which was carefully preserved. Therefore he was chased out of the woods and off the gra.s.s. The game-keeper was his enemy, and an enemy always at hand. To feel the turf beneath his feet he must use stealth like a criminal. He lived in a good gra.s.s country, and all the share he had of it was the dust kicked up from the road by the wheels of carriages. In his boyhood he had brooded over his exclusion, and through the hard struggles of his youth his thoughts had been rancorous. Now, it is true, the rancor had diminished. At the age of forty-five he had reached high office, and with high office, for the first time, a regular and sufficient income. He was freed for a while, at all events, from the desperate endeavor to pay his way outside and keep his footing inside the House of Commons. He met men of diverse pursuits from the far corners of the earth. The world broadened out before him magically.

He entered late, as it were, upon his youth; the arts swept into his view, a glittering procession, and enchanted him. All was new to him as to a child. The natural charm of the man found an outlet; he had good-humor now, and a pleasant friendliness. Gradually the doors of great houses had been opened to him--and he had looked in. It was to his credit that he had only looked in. He had come away unspoilt, uncaptured. But though he recognized that for him the world had become wonderfully a place of amenities, he had not forgotten that as a boy he had been forced to walk in the road; and the dust of it was still bitter in his mouth. "For those who come after me," he had said to himself, "it shall not be so," and he was in a hurry to set about the change. To create peasant proprietors? There was a world of obstacles in the way. To create tenants of the State? A single budget would suffice. Fanshawe's scheme should be the chief item in the government programme of next year, and Captain Rames must look to himself if he stood firm to oppose it.

Captain Rames, on his side, had no intention to give way. He drove away from the House that night with Cynthia, and in the carriage he said: