"Oh, I say, Rames," he began, but Rames cut him short.
"I really want to hear," he said earnestly. "I ask for a particular reason."
Burrell lit his cigar. The contest had impressed him deeply. But like most men he was shy of revealing any strength of feeling. The eager eyes of Rames, however, kept him to his task. He looked back over the five weeks, gathering up his little sheaf of recollections.
"What remains in my mind," he said with hesitation, "is not the excitement, nor the applause, is not the difficulty of making speeches about subjects with which one is not half acquainted, nor the fear of being asked questions for which one has no reply ready, but something quite different. It is the memory of little bare raftered school-rooms, hot with gas-light, crowded with white faces, faces so hopeful, so--intolerably hopeful--the faces of people who look confidently to candidates and Parliaments for so much more than it seems to me Parliaments and candidates can ever do."
"Ah!" said Rames curiously. "You felt that too. I remember that I did."
Burrell leaned forward.
"Did you too, though you shouted yourself hoarse with the rest, feel a little ashamed?"
Rames reflected. "No," he said; "never." Then he added with a smile, "but I think I should now."
"I did," said Burrell. "There were times when I wanted to stop my speech in the middle and cry out, 'Don't look at me with such high hopes. It's no use! It's no use!' But I held my tongue. For there's always the little that governments can do. That's the consolation, isn't it?" Burrell was finding it easier to speak out his thoughts now. The false shame with which he had begun had quite left him. His words tumbled out hot from his soul. The strangely curious, almost envious, look with which Harry Rames, his tutor and leader, waited upon him encouraged and urged him on.
"The fight, the excitement, the victory--oh yes, they are worth having, even though one owes them to another, just as I owe them, Captain Rames, to you. But now, after the victory, there's still the little which can be done; and there's still the memory of the raftered school-rooms, the hot gas-light, and the rows of eager, hopeful, pallid faces to help one on to do it."