The Turnstile Part 44

"He was seen by one or two of the Irish members who did not intend to vote at all. They went into the room while the bells were ringing and saw him."

"I understand."

"As soon as the bells stopped, as soon, in a word, as he was quite certain that we should be all in our lobby, he started up quickly.

There is just a little time between the moment when the bells cease ringing and the moment when the lobby doors are locked. But it is only a little time. If you want to vote you have to hurry. Challoner was a good distance away, and he had a flight of stairs to ascend. He hurried, he ran; I expect, too, that he was agitated. His courage had failed him. He must prove his loyalty to his official leaders at all costs. He reached the lobby in plenty of time. Monro, you remember him, the Scotchman? He was at Bramling."

"Yes," said Cynthia.

"He saw Challoner. He was standing by the entrance door of our lobby.

We were in the 'No' Lobby, for the question we had to vote upon was that the original words of the Address 'stand part,' and to enter the 'Aye' Lobby a man must pa.s.s our entrance door and traverse the House.

Monro saw Challoner hurry past the door, and thinking that he had mistaken our lobby and was under the impression that the question he had to vote upon was that the amendment be subst.i.tuted--in which case, of course, we should all have been in the 'Aye' Lobby--he called to the Colonel. Challoner didn't hear, or wouldn't hear. He hurried on, and once inside the Government Lobby, collapsed onto the bench which runs along the sides. He died within a couple of minutes."

Harry Rames ceased. The shock of this swift calamity had driven from Cynthia's thoughts all her indignation against the Challoners. She pictured to herself that old, unhappy, disappointed man, dropping at last between the shafts, the pack-horse of politics. Not even the insignificance of an Under Secretarys.h.i.+p had come to requite him for his tedious years of service. And it never could have fallen to him.

That she recognized. Again the silence was broken by the tap-tap of the paper-knife upon the blotting-pad.

"It's a Juggernaut, that House, isn't it? You said that once, Cynthia," said Rames.

"I did? I don't remember."

Cynthia was perplexed by his distress. Sensibility was not to be counted amongst his qualities. Yet he sat there with trouble heavy upon him, and every now and then a s.h.i.+ver of the shoulders, a s.h.i.+ver of repugnance.

"This has shocked you terribly, Harry," she said.

"Yes. I have known death before now, but never death without any dignity. That's what I find terrible." He paused for a moment and then said in a low and distinct voice:

"I am to blame for it, Cynthia."

"You?" she exclaimed.

"Yes. I ought to have left him alone. I ought never to have taken advantage of his disappointments. 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 G.o.ds walking the earth. A nod from one of them in a pa.s.sage, 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. "That's strange, isn't it? Very strange. He must have come into the House of Commons twenty years ago a very different man. But I suppose the walls closed round him and crushed the vitality out of him. You had a phrase about such men--the prisoners of the House of Commons. He was one of them. I did a cruel thing when I enlisted him.

For I might have known that he must desert. I am to blame for his death."

"No," Cynthia protested.

"Yes."

"Even if you might have known that he must desert, you couldn't have foreseen that he would hide from you till the last moment."

"That's just what he would do."

"Even so, you didn't know, Harry, that he had heart disease."

"Would it have made any difference to me if I had?" And that question silenced Cynthia.

Harry Rames fell again to tapping with his paper-knife upon the blotting-pad. He tapped aimlessly, the silver handle flas.h.i.+ng in the light, the ivory blade striking and resounding. But gradually an intention seemed to become audible in his tapping. The taps came quickly, three or four together, then were s.p.a.ced, then streamed swiftly again like sparks from an anvil. The noise began to jar on Cynthia's nerves.

"Don't do that, Harry, please," she said.

"I won't," said he, throwing down the paper-knife.

"You might have been sending a telegram."

"By wireless, eh?" he said with a smile, and then a curious look came into his face. "I was," he said slowly. Cynthia drew back in her chair with a queer feeling of uneasiness.

"Not to--?" she began, and stopped short of the name. She glanced furtively around the room. She was suddenly chilled.

"To Challoner? No," he answered. He had hardly been aware of what he was doing, and he wondered now why the idea to do it had thus irrelevantly entered his head. No doubt an instinctive desire to get relief from the obsession of the sordid tragedy of Challoner's death had prompted him. But, whatever the cause, he had been tapping out, in accordance with the Morse code, a message to the little, black, full-rigged s.h.i.+p far away upon Southern seas.

He sprang up from his chair.

"There's a letter you wanted me to post, Cynthia. I had forgotten it.

Give it to me."

"It dropped into the fire," said Cynthia.

Harry looked into the fire; a torn fragment or two had fallen into the grate.

"I dropped it into the fire," said Cynthia. "For I had already changed my mind about it."

The long letter which she had torn up at the first news of Colonel Challoner's defection, the letter which was to commemorate that evening, had been written to Colonel Challoner, and admitted that she was the daughter of his son.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

M. POIZAT AGAIN

"There is a man at the door, madam. He says that he is a Ludsey man, and that he worked for Captain Rames during the election."

It was midday. Cynthia had her hat on and was at the moment b.u.t.toning her gloves.

"Tell him that Captain Rames is at the House of Commons now, and that he will be back at home by five," she said.

"The man asked for you," said the footman.

"For me? Did he give a name?"

"No. But he said that you would know him."

Cynthia shrugged her shoulders.

"Very well, Howard. Show him in."

Visitors who would not give their names but claimed to be citizens of Ludsey were not infrequent while Parliament was in session. They usually came with the same request--the loan of their fare home, where they had relations to look after them; and they were usually impostors, who had not so much as seen the spire of St. Anne's Church.

But, on the other hand, there was always a possibility that the case might be genuine, and Cynthia made it a rule to see them. She had already got her purse out of her bag when the door was opened. But she dropped it when she saw her visitor.