A. E. W. Mason

“ Yes, in the Mellah of Mequinez, Cynthia. That's where the Jews are crowded; an evil-smelling place you would call it, close and airless, with narrow alleys and houses huddling together, and a reek of rancid cookery. Yet it's a town of spaces; there's a good square before the gate. There are great silent palaces, with gardens and lakes. There's room in Mequinez--but not for us. We were shut up in the Mellah at six o'clock at night like children. And we were not all poor. The Mellah was gaudy with the bright handkerchiefs and dresses of the women, and their satin and silk scarves. ”

“ Benoliel shrugged his shoulders.
"Does he know himself?" he asked.
"Better than most men," said Cynthia. "He has set out to use himself as a machine and he has studied the machine unceasingly, its limits and its capacities, so that he might use it to its fullest power." She recalled Harry Rames's foresight, the careful laying of his plans, the queer modesty which underlay his ambition to excel. She turned triumphantly to Mr. Benoliel. "Oh, yes, he knows himself a good deal better than youth can know itself." ”

“ Cynthia's face changed. The gentleness and the pity vanished. She drew in her breath sharply as though alarm knocked at her heart.
"Something out of your past life has come alive, quite unexpectedly after all these years, and has snatched you back," she said slowly, as if she were comparing the words with others she had once heard spoken. "Quick! Tell me!"
She bent forward with her eyes intent upon M. Poizat's face, and fear growing in them more and more visibly.
"You remember, Mrs. Rames, the night before the election at Ludsey. You were all having supper in the hotel after the meeting. ”

“ The Whips got at Challoner. You know Hamlin, don't you? But you don't know his methods, Cynthia. He doesn't bully you if you revolt. He doesn't threaten. He takes you affectionately by the arm and makes you feel a beast. His round brown eyes survey you with a gentle and wistful regret. You leave him, convinced that he personally will be dreadfully hurt if you vote against the government. You are glad to be rid of him as you are glad to be rid of a man whom you have injured; and within the hour he is at your elbow again, pursuing the same insidious, amicable strategy. ”

“ Cynthia was greatly moved. An old futile man without wife or family in a big, empty house, feeding himself from day to day with the disappointments of a hopeless ambition--it made for her a dismal picture. She contrasted it with the other one before her eyes--Harry Rames at the head of the table, confident, comfortable, young as politicians go, with the world a smooth sea for his conquering sails; and once again an unaccountable resentment against Harry Rames flared up within her. Almost she wished that for once he might fail. Almost she revealed herself then to Colonel Challoner. ”

“ I became homesick for my country, and for that city on which I had turned my back with joy."
"You?" cried Cynthia. For a moment she thought herself listening to a fairy tale. "You wanted to go back to the humiliations, to the Mellah?"
She recalled the feminine nicety of his house in Grosvenor Square, the bright silver--not too much of it--the elegance of its mahogany furniture, which was never allowed to crowd the rooms. She recollected those dinner-parties at which the great men of the earth were entertained with so much pride. ”

“ London lay unburnished, like an ill-kept yacht, and the emptiness of Sunday made it dreary beyond all words. The chill of that day and the fevers of the week to come caused Cynthia's heart to sink. A vision rose before her eyes with unexpected vividness of another place where life ran occupied with smoother matters. Not in Warwickshire, but over far seas. She thought with a sudden poignancy of longing of the Daventry estancia where to-day the golden leagues of corn would be rippling to the sun and the cattle searching for the rare blades of green in the burnt pastures. ”

“ I am like you in that, Cynthia, eh? We neither of us wear our hearts upon our sleeves or are fond of talking sentiment. But I am compelled to to-night. I think the most beautiful thing in the world is a couple of young lovers facing all the unknown future, hand in hand, high of hope and courage, and serious with the uplifting seriousness of love. Now you are not in love, Cynthia, and he's not young. So, from my point of view, on both sides this marriage falls short of the marriage which should be."
"Captain Rames is not old," replied Cynthia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. Benoliel's eyes were fixed upon the fire; he spoke, lingering upon his words. He had grown forgetful of the purpose which drove him to reveal himself. Another and a strange aspect of him was presented suddenly to Cynthia. The dilettante and the exquisite had vanished. He spoke with a kind of yearning in his voice. His thoughts had drifted out through the doorway of his abominable villa. He was walking in the starshine over the wide empty plain of the Sebou, steeped in the enchantment of which he had spoken. Dimly she foresaw whither he was leading her. ”

“ Behind all under the shadow of the gallery were the young bloods, all as convinced as their graver seniors in the front, but still youths spoiling for a row and totally unawed by the frockcoats of the treasury bench. Their business was to cheer and to ejaculate, not to speak. Thus had Robert Brook disposed his forces for the battle. He himself sat between Harry Rames and Howard Fall, and, looking about him, was proud of the array.
Before questions had come to an end Cynthia had squeezed herself into a place on the first row of seats behind the stone grille. ”

“ Benoliel would check him in his speech or cause him to listen with an absent ear. He watched the play of his delicate fingers upon the table-cloth, the continual restlessness of his body. Mr. Benoliel was of his race; there was in his aspect a queer mixture of the financier and the dilettante, the shrewd business man and the sensuous apprecitator of art. There was a touch, too, of the feminine in him.
"I told you that you would not be bored," said Sir James Burrell toward the end of the dinner. "You are not the first man who has fallen under the spell of Mr. Benoliel."
Harry Rames laughed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One has so very little time," he exclaimed with a touch of passion in his voice. "I would like to go on living and living and living for a century. As it is, one begins at twenty at the earliest, and then with luck one may have fifty-five years--that's all," and the prospect of the disintegration of his powers at the early age of seventy-five affected him with so much melancholy that Cynthia laughed again, but this time with a clear and joyous ring of amusement.
"Never mind, Captain Rames, I am sure you will live every day of your fifty-five years, and that is more than all can say." ”

“ Captain Rames took a step back.
"Did you see?" he cried to Cynthia.
"Yes. They are not animals to draw your chariot," she replied. "They are men."
"Yes, men--men to govern," he answered. His was the spirit of the old Whig families. Though he was not of them, he meant to force his way among them. To govern the people, not to admit it to government, to go far in appeasing it, but not to give it the reins, that was his instinct. ”

“ I dragged him into the revolt to serve myself--yes, that's the truth, Cynthia. We both know it. I dragged him in without giving him and his character a thought. He was the real party hack. To him the men upon the treasury bench were as gods walking the earth. A nod from one of them in a passage, a hand-shake in a drawing-room, a little private conversation with a Cabinet Minister in the Division Lobby--that was the kind of food which sustained him through how many years! And he was a good cavalry officer once, I am told." Harry Rames suddenly swung round toward his wife. ”

“ Never mind the library or the smoking-room, or the lobby, or the terrace. Sit in the House! However dull the debate, and however inviting the sunlight streaming through the high windows, sit in the House. All the great Parliamentarians have done it. The lawyers can't do it, of course. But you haven't their excuse. You can. It may seem a waste of time. You'll find that it isn't."
So Harry Rames sat in the House, and Cynthia, when she had no other engagement to detain her, came down to Westminster, dined with him there, and spent an hour afterward in the ladies' gallery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Life was different: it was intensified. There was a little more sunlight on a sunny day, a little more sparkle in the summer, one walked to music. But the trouble was not gone, in spite of the fact that on both sides there was love. For with love, contentment had not come to Harry Rames. He watched himself, but she watched him closer and she knew. His sleep grew disturbed. The torment of his soul was not appeased. Daily he became more and more the convict at the oar. There grew up between them a loving enmity.
A morning came in the middle of July when to Cynthia the strain became intolerable. ”

“ Was he troubled about his decision afterward?"
"Not at all," said Cynthia. "He slept perfectly; he ate his dinner with absolute contentment."
"Now I am afraid of him," said Mr. Devenish gravely, and he added a shrewd saying to explain his fear. "Here's the great difference which makes art and politics incompatible. The men who succeed in politics are the men who don't worry. The men who succeed in art are the men who do. Yes, I am afraid of him now, and if I hit hard, Mrs. Rames, bear me no grudge. I shall hit hard because I must." ”