M. Poizat, however, was equally positive.

"But it is in the Ludsey newspapers. Captain Rames takes them in, and reads them of course."

"Of course," said Cynthia.

"Then he must know. Such news is not tucked away in the corner of a local paper. No, indeed. It was printed on the first page."

"Still you had better see him," said Cynthia. She rose as she spoke, and she spoke a trifle absently, as though her thoughts had been suddenly diverted from the consideration of M. Poizat's calamity.

"Come back at five. He will advise you."

She rang the bell. She was in a hurry now to get rid of the little Frenchman. Something much more important to her had occurred than the revelations of La Grande Clothilde. Doubts had flashed into her mind--doubts which she was in torture to resolve. As soon as Poizat's back was turned she went quickly into her husband's study. Upon a side-table, carelessly heaped, with their wrappers still gummed about them, she counted a dozen of the local papers of Ludsey. They took two a week, one of each political complexion. It was six weeks then since Harry Rames had taken the trouble to glance at a newspaper from his own const.i.tuency.

She stripped off the wrappers to make sure. Then she turned to the calendar upon the top of his writing-table. Six weeks just took her back to the date when Harry Rames had emptied the House with a speech, and had brought home the tragic news of Colonel Challoner's death.

Harry's omission on the surface was trivial enough. But to Cynthia it was significant and disquieting. For it was not in accordance with the deliberate prudence which used to mark the conduct of his political career. To nurse the const.i.tuency, to be familiar with its events and its needs, to respond to it, this had been his first care. Now for six weeks he neglected even to inform himself about it. And the omission did not stand alone.

"He will be home at five," Cynthia argued, "he who made it a rule to sit in the House however dull the course of public business."

Often of late he had left the House as soon as questions were over and the usual vote taken upon the suspension of the eleven-o'clock rule, and had only returned thither upon the stroke of eleven on the chance of coming in for a division. Cynthia remembered, too, how indifferent he had been, on the day after he had made his failure, to the criticisms which the failure had evoked. Mr. Devenish had put in some biting and effective work in his reply, which should have been gall and wormwood to the ambitious Harry Rames. But he had not seemed to mind. The newspapers which supported the Government too had not spared him. Conceit and presumption were the least of his failings. The _Piccadilly News_ had published a cartoon of him as Humpty Dumpty. Yet he had remained unmoved, though Cynthia had cried her eyes red over the castigation.

Certainly some change had come over him, she reflected, and once more she was conscious of fear and a sinking heart. For the story which she had heard this morning from M. Poizat linked itself up in her mind with the warning of Mr. Benoliel. Poizat's history was not quite an ill.u.s.tration of the warning. That she recognized. Mr. Benoliel had bidden her beware of latent tendencies of character, latent cravings and ambitions, taking their origin from the years in which she had had no share. It was a definite act which had sprung into being in the case of M. Poizat. Still Poizat's disaster was a proof of the clutch of finished things, and of the continuity of life; was an instance that to turn over the new page and begin to write afresh as she and Harry Rames had proposed to do, is beyond man's reach. Two lines of verse, gathered she knew not whence, rang in her brain and would not be silenced:

"Our past deeds follow us from afar And what we have been makes us what we are."

After a year's respite Cynthia was again afraid. Mr. Benoliel was magnified by her fears into the semblance of a prophet of old.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE CALL

Cynthia went that night alone to a dinner party in Seamore Place. But she was ill at ease and as soon as she could get away she hurried home. She had not seen her husband that day. He had returned at five o'clock, had been closeted for a long while with M. Poizat and had then departed, leaving a message that a series of divisions would compel him to dine at the House of Commons. The couple, however, had made it a habit to reserve for themselves, whenever the House was not sitting late, an hour or so at the close of even the busiest day, and Cynthia was fairly sure that she would not have to wait long before Harry Rames came home. As a fact, he was already in his study. The door was ajar and through the opening the light streamed out into the hall.

Cynthia pushed the door open. Harry was sitting at his writing-table on the opposite side of the room and studying with a complete absorption a scroll which he held down unrolled beneath his eyes.

Cynthia stood in the doorway for a moment or two watching him with a tender smile upon her face, and speculating idly upon the doc.u.ment which so riveted his attention. For the moment her trouble was quite driven from her thoughts. He was here, after all, in the house with her: he, the loved one: and with a sort of fierceness she was content.

Then he looked up and saw her standing in the doorway. His face changed; he had the aspect clearly of a man at bay. He swept a pile of letters and printed papers over his scroll, spreading them out. He rose and stood between her and the writing-table, hiding it from her view.

"You are home early," he said.

"Earlier than you expected! Yet I am later than you."

"Oh, I paired at ten o'clock."

"I see."

The furtive movement of her husband increased her fears and at the same time wounded her pride. They were to be frank with one another.

That was the pledge which each had given to the other. And here was the pledge broken, for Harry was definitely practising concealments.

Cynthia, however, did not belong to the tribe of the clamorous. She stepped within the room and left him to continue the conversation.

Rames spoke hastily to engage her attention.

"Poizat came to see me this afternoon."

"Yes?"

"He was desperate. We talked over his position. I recommended him to go to Tangier and settle there. He has a little money. He will find compatriots, and I should think it's the place where people will be least likely to trouble about him. I fancy that he will go there. But it's a bad business to have to start life all over again at seventy."

"Yes," said Cynthia.

She watched him as he walked up and down the room, making up her mind that on her side at all events the pledge should not be broken.

"M. Poizat said something to me which I think is true. That nothing one has ever done is ever quite done with."

Harry Rames stopped in his walk. He stood quite still for a few moments.

"Oh, surely that's not true," he said carelessly and resumed his pacing. But Cynthia was aware of a change in him. Before he had been thinking of Poizat and his destiny; now he was alert and waiting upon her words.

"I believe that it's more true than he knew. For even if nothing actual comes of the thing done, it's still there, recorded in the character. Harry, we are in the clutch of finished things."

Her voice rose in a low cry and brought Harry swiftly round upon his heel. Her words. .h.i.t him shrewdly, but her aspect more shrewdly still.

She was still standing close by the door. She was dressed in a gown of pale blue and gold with a bright ribbon of blue in her hair. Her cloak had slipped from her shoulders to her feet, her gloves were twisted in her hands, her eyes wide and dark with trouble looked out from a face which was piteously wistful. She made unconsciously a poignant appeal to him. The delicate loveliness of her youth and the gay panoply of her attire contrasted so strikingly with the quivering misery of her face.

"What makes you believe that, Cynthia?" He crossed the room to her side and shook her arm with a friendly gesture familiar to her.

"Poizat's case is not enough to build a world of theory on."

"Nor do I," replied Cynthia. "I was adding to that case another."

Harry Rames flinched.

"What other?" he asked with an effort.

"Years ago in Argentina I once listened at a door," she began, and in Harry's eyes shone a great relief. "What I heard frightened me. I lay awake in terror all that night. I have lived in fear ever since. I could not shake fear off even after I knew there was no longer any cause for fear. I can find causes anywhere. Fear's the truth of me.

Most of the things which I have done have been done from fear."

"I never understood that, Cynthia."

"I never spoke of it before."

"Fear even prompted your marriage?"

Cynthia looked him frankly in the face.

"Yes. You were so frank, so honest about yourself. I felt safe with you. And after we were married--I escaped from fear. I was reprieved."

"Thank you," said Harry with a quiet sincerity. Then he moved away from her to the fireplace and turned again.