He walked back more slowly than he had come to where the glare of the sky indicated the houses and the streets. As he crossed Park Lane again two men arm-in-arm pa.s.sed him and one of them stopped.

"Is that you, Rames?" asked a friendly and solicitous voice.

Rames recognized it at once as the voice of Hamlin the chief Whip.

"You had paired for to-night," Hamlin continued, "hadn't you? You didn't miss much. But I want to be able to rely on you for Thursday.

We know, of course, that you are against us over Devenish's land bill.

That's all right. But you are with us on the rest of our policy and we want your help."

"I shall be there on Thursday," answered Harry Rames. "It's quite true that I have not been so much in the House this session as I used to be. But you will see me in my old place to-morrow. Good-night."

He walked on and Hamlin rejoined his companion.

"It was Rames," he said. "We're not going to lose him. I am glad. He's marked out for a great position if he doesn't throw it away."

But Rames through the roar of the traffic, carriages rolling home, wagons lumbering in to Covent Garden, heard louder than ever the boom of Southern seas and the wind whistling between the halyards of a ship.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

A LETTER FROM ABROAD

The session pa.s.sed, and Devenish's land bill, as Rames had foretold, was postponed. It figured again in the Address at the beginning of the following year, but as late as March no definite date had been a.s.signed for its introduction. On a Sat.u.r.day morning of this month Cynthia and her husband were breakfasting in the dining-room of the white house, when the morning's letters were brought in by the butler.

Harry Rames tossed one or two aside.

"Circulars, pamphlets," he said. He opened some of the others, taking them from the top of the pile. "Here's one from the Chamber of Commerce--railway rates. I'll answer that this morning. Here's another--the committee of a school wants a grant from the treasury.

Here's a third--" and as he was beginning to tear open the envelope, his voice suddenly stopped.

Cynthia looked up from her own letters and saw that while he was holding the third letter in his hand he was not looking at it. His eyes were fixed upon that one which was now uppermost on the heap. He sat and stared at the envelope for an appreciable time. Then dropping the letter which he held, he picked up this new and startling one and carried it swiftly over to the window. Cynthia followed his movement with her eyes, just curious, but nothing more. Her eyes indeed travelled beyond him and noticed the sunlight in the garden, the yellow and purple crocuses and the first of the daffodils, noticed them with an up-springing lightness of heart. Then the stillness of her husband's att.i.tude caught her attention. She saw something in his face which she had never seen there before, which she had never thought to see there at all. He wore the look of a man quite caught out of himself. He was as one wrapped in visions and refined by the fires of great longings. It seemed to her that she saw a man whose eyes, brimful of light, looked upon the Holy Grail.

He turned back to her. He brought her the letter still unopened and placed it in her hands. Cynthia received it as though written upon its cover she would read the revelation of his secret. Yet she saw nothing but a soiled envelope with a foreign stamp. She gazed up at her husband mystified.

"Look at the stamp, Cynthia!" said Rames in a queer voice.

Cynthia looked. It wore the head familiar to English people. But the lettering about the head was strange. She spelled it out.

"Rexland."

With a start she turned to him. "That is the country you discovered."

"Yes. A stamp was struck to commemorate my discovery of it."

"A stamp?" cried Cynthia. "Wait a minute, Harry! You once spoke of a stamp to me before. Yes, on the morning of the day when you were to deliver your speech--the speech which failed. It was this stamp of which you were speaking?"

"Yes."

"You remembered it on that morning, even when your thoughts were full of the speech you were going to deliver."

"I remembered it by accident," he said sharply. "I can't think why. It had been out of my thoughts for so long. Yet it was that stamp." His voice softened. "It is issued by the post-office--for a penny. Just think of it! A penny stamp brings a letter from the Antarctic seas to us here in Warwickshire."

"Mr. Hemming sent it?"

"Without a doubt. When he came to see me in London fifteen months ago, he told me that if I intended to go out again he would not use my harbor."

Harry was standing just behind his wife. Cynthia was not looking at him any longer. But she was listening with a curious intentness as though the words which he spoke were of less importance to her than the accent with which he spoke them. She put questions to him to make yet more sure of it.

"And you gave him permission!"

"Of course. I had not the right to refuse it. I was never going South again. Nothing was further from my thoughts. I told him to use not only my harbor, but the depots of food I had made along my sledge-route from the harbor toward the Pole."

"You think that he reached the harbor?"

"I am sure of it. Otherwise he would not have used this stamp. He must have wintered there. I did not think that he would reach it before winter closed in upon him. The summer last year must have been very late."

Cynthia nodded her head.

"Yes."

Her attention was relaxed. Harry Rames had been striving to keep from his voice any note of regret, to speak in the ordinary level tone suitable to a matter of only ordinary interest. But in spite of his efforts he was not sure that he had succeeded. Cynthia handed to him the letter. He took it and turned it over in his hand.

"He has had time since he wintered in that harbor. One summer would be enough. He may have done it--if his dogs lived. There's always that condition. If his dogs lived! Mine didn't. Perhaps--perhaps--" He broke off abruptly and thrust the letter back into Cynthia's hand.

"You open it! You can tell me what he says."

Harry Rames walked again to the window and stood with his back to the room. Cynthia's eyes followed him and travelled past him once more to the garden. She was sure that she would never forget those daffodils and the purple crocuses waving in the sunlight for one day as long as she lived. A minute ago she had noticed them; now she noticed them again; and within that minute had been revealed to her the great secret Harry Rames had been at so much pains to hide. She knew her rival now, and was appalled. "Such men are driven by a torment of their souls." It was Harry himself who had said that. The wish came to her, "If only this man has succeeded." She tore open the envelope.

Harry Rames stood at the window waiting for the letter to be read to him; and it seemed to him that he waited for an eternity. He had heard the tearing of the envelope. The letter was open in Cynthia's hands.

Yet she did not speak a word. Rames's heart sank.

"Then he has reached the Pole?" he asked with a studied carelessness.

"I don't know," Cynthia replied in perplexity.

"Read it."

"There is nothing to read."

Rames turned round and came swiftly toward her.

"He must have forgotten to enclose his letter. There is nothing but this," said Cynthia. She was holding a single blank sheet of note-paper in her hand. She turned it over. "No, there's not a word written anywhere. Do you understand it?"

"Yes. He has failed."

There was no doubt left to her of her husband's joy. The cry which broke from his lips was not to be denied. It was a real cry of exultation. Cynthia turned pale as she heard it. But she would not acknowledge that she understood it, nor would she look into Harry's face lest she should see the same exultation blazoned there.