"We shall want all that time, Harry." Then she cried with a sudden vehemence. "You have got to win this fight, Harry. So much hangs on it for you and me."
"I know, Cynthia," he answered.
"More than you know."
Harry rose from his chair.
"I'll give orders. We will steam back to Southampton at once. But it's a pity, isn't it? Old Carberley might have waited for another month. I am sorry."
"So am I," said Cynthia. Her eyes had wandered from him and were once more fixed upon the shipping in the harbor. Her face had grown white. "More sorry than you can know."
A little white dinghy, gay with a sailor in a white jersey and a red cap, was just leaving the side of a big yacht moored across the water. The picture of that little boat was fixed for life in Cynthia's recollections. It had nothing to do with her, she never knew who sailed in the yacht, or on what business the boat put off to shore. But the picture of it was vivid to her long after important memories had grown altogether dim.
The fight for the Hickleton Division was memorable in the political history of that year. From first to last it was Rames's fight. The candidate was young, and a halting speaker, and unknown to the constituency. But he lived in Rames's house and when he appeared upon a platform he appeared with Rames at his side. When he spoke he uttered the words which Rames had prepared, and when he had finished Rames was on his legs to fill up the deficiencies and whip the assembly to a fire of enthusiasm. From the great guns of his own party no assistance came. Indeed, most of them would have been well pleased had the seat not been won. For in the forefront of his programme Mr. William Burrell put hostility to the land bill. The two men left the white house early in the morning to return there late at night. For five weeks the lights of Rames's motor flashed on the hedges of the country roads in Warwickshire, and the constituency was won. The result was declared at noon, and half an hour later Mr. William Burrell, M.P., a slim, fair young gentleman with a small gift of flippancy, made his one memorable speech in the big room of the club.
"Gentlemen," he said, "the British public, as a whole, is indifferent to politics. It wakes up to be sure at the time of an election. But if I were asked to define politics in relation to the British public I should define it as a spasm of pain recurring once in every four or five years. What, then, is it which arouses the enthusiasm of which I am a witness? What is it which achieves these triumphs? Need I say? It is personality. Character--that's what you want in public life--and now, gentlemen, you have got it."
The speech was received with a very tornado of laughter. Rames turned to his wife who sat by him on the little raised platform at the end of the room.