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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Quisante, by Anthony Hope
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Quisante
+
+Author: Anthony Hope
+
+Release Date: November 11, 2006 [EBook #19752]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUISANTE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Clarke and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                      _Methuen's Colonial Library_
+
+
+                              QUISANTE
+
+
+
+                          BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+                    A Man of Mark
+                    Mr. Witt's Widow
+                    Father Stafford
+                    A Change of Air
+                    Half a Hero
+                    The Prisoner of Zenda
+                    The God in the Car
+                    The Dolly Dialogues
+                    Comedies of Courtship
+                    The Chronicles of Count Antonio
+                    The Heart of Princess Osra
+                    Phroso
+                    Simon Dale
+                    Rupert of Hentzau
+                    The King's Mirror
+
+
+
+
+                              QUISANTE
+
+
+                                 BY
+
+                            ANTHONY HOPE
+
+
+
+                            METHUEN & CO.
+                        36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
+                                LONDON
+                                 1900
+
+                          _Colonial Library_
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                                          PAGE
+
+    I. DICK BENYON'S OUTSIDER                                       1
+   II. MOMENTS                                                     16
+  III. SANDRO'S WAY                                                31
+   IV. HE'S COMING!                                                46
+    V. WHIMSY-WHAMSIES                                             65
+   VI. ON DUTY HILL                                                84
+  VII. ADVICE FROM AUNT MARIA                                     101
+ VIII. CONTRA MUNDUM                                              120
+   IX. LEAD US NOT--                                              137
+    X. PRACTICAL POLITICS                                         155
+   XI. SEVENTY-SEVEN AND SUSY SINNETT                             176
+  XII. A HIGHLY CORRECT ATTITUDE                                  196
+ XIII. NOT SUPERHUMAN                                             215
+  XIV. OPEN EYES                                                  235
+   XV. A STRANGE IDEA                                             257
+  XVI. THE IRREVOCABLE                                            279
+ XVII. DONE FOR?                                                  301
+XVIII. FOR LACK OF LOVE?                                          321
+  XIX. DEATH DEFIED                                               339
+   XX. THE QUIET LIFE TO-MORROW                                   355
+  XXI. A RELICT                                                   371
+
+
+
+
+    Transcriber's Note
+
+    The following sentence, found in Chapter IX., was originally printed
+     with the "three several" error and has not been changed:
+
+        That evening Quisante brought home to dinner the gentleman whom
+        Dick Benyon called old Foster the maltster, and who had been
+        Mayor of Henstead three several times.
+
+
+
+
+                              QUISANTE.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I.
+
+                       DICK BENYON'S OUTSIDER.
+
+
+A shrunken sallow old lady, dressed in rusty ill-shaped black and
+adorned with an evidently false 'front' of fair hair, sat in a tiny
+flat whose windows overlooked Hyde Park from south to north. She was
+listening to a tall loose-built dark young man who walked restlessly
+about the little room as he jerked out his thoughts and challenged the
+expression of hers. She had known him since he was a baby, had brought
+him up from childhood, had always served him, always believed in him,
+never liked him, never offered her love nor conciliated his. His father
+even, her only brother Raphael Quisante, she had not loved; but she had
+respected Raphael. Alexander--Sandro, as she alone of all the world
+called him--she neither loved nor respected; him she only admired and
+believed in. He knew his aunt's feelings well enough; she was his ally,
+not his friend; kinship bound them, not affection; for his brain's sake
+and their common blood she was his servant, his heart she left alone.
+
+Thus aware of the truth, he felt no obligation towards her, not even
+when, as now, he came to ask money of her; what else should she do with
+her money, where else lay either her duty or her inclination? She did
+not love him, but he was her one interest, the only tie that united her
+with the living moving world and the alluring future years, more
+precious to her since she could see so few of them.
+
+"I don't mean to make myself uncomfortable," said Miss Quisante. "How
+much do you want?" He stopped and turned round quickly with a gleam of
+eagerness in his eyes, as though he had a vision of much wealth. "No,
+no," she added with a surly chuckle, "the least you'll take is the most
+I'll give."
+
+"I owe money."
+
+"Who to?" she asked, setting her cap uncompromisingly straight. "Jews?"
+
+"No. Dick Benyon."
+
+"That money you'll never pay. I shan't consider that."
+
+The young man's eyes rested on her in a long sombre glance; he seemed
+annoyed but not indignant, like a lawyer whose formal plea is brushed
+aside somewhat contemptuously by an impatient truth-loving judge.
+
+"You've got five hundred a year or thereabouts," she went on, "and no
+wife."
+
+He threw himself into a chair; his face broke into a sudden smile,
+curiously attractive, although neither sweet nor markedly sincere.
+"Exactly," he said. "No wife. Well, shall I get one with five hundred a
+year?" He laughed a little. "An election any fine day would leave me
+penniless," he added.
+
+"There's Dick Benyon," observed the old lady.
+
+"They talk about that too much already," said Quisante.
+
+"Come, Sandro, you're not sensitive."
+
+"And Lady Richard hates me. Besides if you want to impress fools, you
+must respect their prejudices. Give me a thousand a year; for the
+present, you know."
+
+He asked nearly half the old lady's income; she sighed in relief. "Very
+well, a thousand a year," she said. "Make a good show with it. Live
+handsomely. It'll pay you to live handsomely."
+
+A genuine unmistakable surprise showed itself on his face; now there was
+even the indignation which a reference to non-payment of debts had
+failed to elicit.
+
+"I shall do something with it, you might know that," he said
+resentfully.
+
+"Something honest, I mean."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, something not criminal," she amended, chuckling again. "I'm sorry
+to seem to know you so well," she added.
+
+"Oh, we know one another pretty well," said he with a nod. "Never the
+jam without the powder from you."
+
+"But always the jam," said old Maria. "And you'll find the world a good
+deal like your aunt, Sandro."
+
+An odd half-cunning half-eager gleam shot across his eyes.
+
+"A man finds the world what he makes it," he said. He rose, came and
+stood over her, and went on, laughing. "But the devil makes an aunt once
+and for all, and won't let one touch his handiwork."
+
+"You can touch her savings, though!"
+
+He blazed out into a sudden defiance. "Oh, refuse if you like. I can
+manage without you. You're not essential to me."
+
+She smiled, her thin lips setting in a wry curve. Now and then it seemed
+hard that there could be no affection between her and the one being whom
+the course of events plainly suggested for her love. But, as Sandro
+said, they knew one another very well. In the result she felt entitled
+to assume no airs of superiority; he had not been a dutiful or a
+grateful nephew, she had not been a devoted or a patient aunt; as she
+looked back, she was obliged to remember one or two occasions when he
+had driven or betrayed her into a severity of which she did not
+willingly think. This reflection dictated the words with which she met
+his outburst.
+
+"You can tell your story on Judgment Day and I'll tell mine," she said.
+"Oh, neither of 'em will lose in the telling, I'll be bound. Meanwhile
+let's be----"
+
+"Friends?" he suggested with an obvious but not ill-natured sneer.
+
+"Lord, no! Whatever you like! Banker and client, debtor and creditor,
+actor and audience? Take your choice--and send me your bank's address."
+
+He nodded slightly, as though he concluded a bargain, not at all as
+though he acknowledged a favour. Yet he remarked in a ruminative tone,
+"I shall be very glad of the money."
+
+A moment's pause followed. Then Miss Quisante observed reluctantly,
+
+"The only thing I ever care to know about you is what you're planning,
+Sandro. Don't I earn that by my thousand a year?"
+
+"Well, here you are. I'm started, thanks to Dick Benyon and myself. I've
+got my seat, I can go on now. But I'm an outsider still." He paused a
+moment. "I feel that; Benyon feels it too. I want to obviate it a bit. I
+mean to marry."
+
+"An insider?" asked the old lady. She looked at him steadily. "Your
+taste's too bad," she said; he was certainly dressed in a rather bizarre
+way. "And your manners," she added. "She won't have you," she ended.
+Quisante took no notice and seemed not to hear; he stood quite still by
+the window, staring over the park. "Besides she'll know what you want
+her for."
+
+He wheeled round suddenly and looked down at his aunt. His face was
+softer, the cunningness had gone from his smile, his eyes seemed larger,
+clearer, even (by a queer delusion of sight) better set and wider apart.
+
+"Yes, I'll show her that," he said in a low voice, with a new richness
+of tone.
+
+Old Maria looked up at him with an air of surprise.
+
+"You do want her for that? As a help, I mean?" she asked.
+
+His lips just moved to answer "Yes." Aunt Maria's eyes did not leave his
+face. She remembered that when he had come before to talk about
+contesting the seat in Parliament he had now won, there had been a
+moment (poised between long periods of calculation and elaborate
+forecasts of personal advantage) in which his face had taken on the same
+soft light, the same inspiration.
+
+"You odd creature!" she murmured gently. "She's handsome, I suppose?"
+
+"Superb--better than that."
+
+"A swell?" asked old Maria scornfully.
+
+"Yes," he nodded.
+
+His aunt laughed. "A Queen among women?" was the form her last question
+took.
+
+"An Empress," said Alexander Quisante, the more ornate title bursting
+gorgeously from his lips.
+
+"Just the woman for you then!" remarked Aunt Maria. A stranger would
+have heard nothing in her tone save mockery. Quisante heard more, or did
+not hear that at all. He nodded again quite gravely, and turned back to
+the window. There were two reasonable views of the matter; either the
+lady was not what Quisante declared her, or if she were she would have
+nothing to do with Quisante. But Aunt Maria reserved her opinion; she
+was prepared to find neither of these alternatives correct.
+
+For there was something remarkable about Sandro; the knowledge that had
+been hers so long promised fair to become the world's discovery. Society
+was travelling towards Aunt Maria's opinion, moved thereto not so much
+by a signally successful election fight, nor even by a knack of
+distracting attention from others and fixing it on himself, as by the
+monstrous hold the young man had obtained and contrived to keep over
+Dick Benyon. Dick was not a fool; here ended his likeness to Quisante;
+here surely ought to end his sympathy with that aspiring person? But
+there was much more between them; society could see that for itself,
+while doubters found no difficulty in overhearing Lady Richard's open
+lamentations. "If Dick had known him at school or at Cambridge----" "If
+he was somebody very distinguished----" "If he was even a gentleman----"
+Eloquent beginnings of unfinished sentences flowed with expressive
+freedom from Amy Benyon's pretty lips. "I don't want to think my husband
+mad," she observed pathetically to Weston Marchmont, himself one of the
+brightest hopes of that party which Dick Benyon was understood to
+consider in need of a future leader. Was that leader to be Quisante?
+Manners, not genius, Amy declared to be the first essential. "And I
+don't believe he's got genius," she added hopefully; that he had no
+manners did not need demonstration to Marchmont, whose own were so
+exquisite as to form a ready-make standard.
+
+And it was not only Dick. Jimmy was as bad. Nobody valued Jimmy's
+intellect, but every one had been prepared to repose securely on the
+bedrock of his prejudices. He was as infatuated as his brother; Quisante
+had swept away the prejudices. The brethren were united in an effort to
+foist their man into every circle and every position where he seemed to
+be least wanted; to this end they devoted time, their social reputation,
+enthusiasm, and, as old Maria knew, hard money. They were triple-armed
+in confidence. Jimmy met remonstrances with a quiet shrug; Dick had one
+answer, always the same, given in the same way--a confident assertion,
+limited and followed, an instant later, by one obvious condition,
+seemingly not necessary to express. "You'll see, if he lives," he
+replied invariably when people asked him what there was after all in Mr.
+Quisante. Their friends could only wonder, asking plaintively what the
+Duke thought of his brothers' proceedings. The Duke, however, made no
+sign; making no sign ranked as a characteristic of the Duke's.
+
+When Lady Richard discussed this situation with her friends the Gaston
+girls, she gained hearty sympathy from Fanny, but from May no more than
+a mocking half-sincere curiosity.
+
+"Is it possible for a man to like both me and Mr. Quisante?" Lady
+Richard asked. "And after all Dick does like me very much."
+
+"Likes both his wife and Mr. Quisante! What a man for paradoxes!" May
+murmured.
+
+"Jimmy's worse if anything," the aggrieved wife went on. This remark was
+levelled straight at Fanny; Jimmy being understood to like Fanny, a
+parallel problem presented itself. Fanny recognized it but, not choosing
+to acknowledge Jimmy's devotion, met it by referring to Marchmont's
+openly professed inability to tolerate Quisante.
+
+"I always go by Mr. Marchmont's judgment in a thing like that," she
+said. "He's infallible."
+
+"There's no need of infallibility, my dear," observed Lady Richard
+irritably. "Ordinary common sense is quite enough." She turned suddenly
+on May. "You talked to him for nearly an hour the other night," she
+said.
+
+"Yes--how you could!" sighed Fanny.
+
+"I couldn't help it. He talked to me."
+
+"About those great schemes that he's filled poor dear Dick's head with?
+Not that I doubt he's got plenty of schemes--of a sort you know."
+
+"He didn't talk schemes," said Lady May. "He was worse than that."
+
+"What did he do?" asked her sister.
+
+"Flirted."
+
+A sort of gasp broke from Lady Richard's lips; she gazed helplessly at
+her friends. Fanny began to laugh. May preserved a meditative
+seriousness; she seemed to be reviewing Quisante's efforts in a judicial
+spirit.
+
+"Well?" said Lady Richard after the proper pause.
+
+"Oh well, he was atrocious, of course," May admitted; her tone, however,
+expressed a reluctant homage to truth rather than any resentment. "He
+doesn't know how to do it in the least."
+
+"He doesn't know how to do anything," Lady Richard declared.
+
+"Most men are either elephantine or serpentine," said Fanny. "Which was
+he, dear?"
+
+"I don't think either."
+
+"Porcine?" asked Lady Richard.
+
+"No. I haven't got an animal for him. Well, yes, he was a little
+weaselly perhaps. But----" She glanced at Lady Richard as she paused,
+and then appeared to think that she would say no more; she frowned
+slightly and then smiled.
+
+"I like his cheek!" exclaimed Fanny with a simplicity that had survived
+the schoolroom.
+
+Lady Richard screwed her small straight features into wrinkles of
+disgust and a shrug seemed to run all over her little trim
+smartly-gowned figure; no presumption could astonish her in Quisante.
+
+"Why in the world did you listen to him, May?" Fanny went on.
+
+"He interested me. And every now and then he was objectionable in rather
+an original way."
+
+With another shrug, inspired this time by her friend's mental vagaries,
+Lady Richard diverged to another point.
+
+"And that was where you were all the time Weston Marchmont was looking
+for you?" she asked.
+
+May began to laugh. "Somehow I'm generally somewhere else when Mr.
+Marchmont looks for me," she said. "It isn't deliberate, really; I like
+him very much, but when he comes near me, some perverse fate seems to
+set my legs moving in the opposite direction."
+
+"Well, Alexander Quisante's a perverse fate, if you like," said Lady
+Richard.
+
+"It's curious how there are people one's like that towards. You're very
+fond of them, but it seems quite certain that you'll never get much
+nearer to them. Is it fate? Or is it that in the end there's a--a
+solution of sympathy, a break somewhere, so that you stop just short of
+finding them absolutely satisfying?"
+
+Neither of her friends answered her. Lady Richard did not deal in
+speculations; Fanny preferred not to discuss, even indirectly, her
+sister's feelings towards Marchmont; they bred in her a mixture of
+resentment and relief too complicated for public reference. It was
+certainly true enough that he and May got no nearer to one another; if
+the break referred to existed somewhere, its effect was very plain; how
+could it display itself more strikingly than in making the lady prefer
+Quisante's weaselly flirtation to the accomplished and enviable homage
+of Weston Marchmont? And preferred it she had, for one hour of life at
+least. Fanny felt the anger which we suffer when another shows
+indifference towards what we should consider great good fortune.
+
+But indifference was not truly May's attitude towards Marchmont. Nobody,
+she honestly thought, could be indifferent to him, to his handsomeness,
+his grace and refinement, the fine temper of his mind, his indubitable
+superiority of intellect; in everything he was immeasurably above the
+ordinary run of her acquaintance, the well-groomed inconsiderables of
+whom she knew such a number. Being accustomed to look this world in the
+face unblinkingly, she did not hesitate to add that he possessed great
+wealth and the prospect of a high career. He was all, and indeed rather
+more, than she, widowed Lady Attlebridge's slenderly dowered daughter,
+had any reason to expect. She wanted to expect no more, if possible
+really to regard this opportunity as greater luck than she had a right
+to anticipate. The dissatisfaction which she sought to explain by
+talking of a solution of sympathy was very obstinate, but justice set
+the responsibility down to her account, not to his; analysing her
+temperament, without excusing it, she found a spirit of adventure and
+experiment--or should she say of restlessness and levity?--which
+Marchmont did not minister to nor yet assuage. The only pleasure that
+lay in this discovery came from the fact that it was so opposed to the
+general idea about her. For it was her lot to be exalted into a type of
+the splendid calm patrician maiden. In that sort of vein her friends
+spoke of her when they were not very intimate, in that sort of language
+she saw herself described in gushing paragraphs that chronicled the
+doings of her class. Stately, gracious, even queenly, were epithets
+which were not spared her; it would have been refreshing to find some
+Diogenes of a journalist who would have called her, in round set terms,
+discontented, mutinous, scornful of the ideal she represented, a very
+hot-bed of the faults the beauty of whose absence was declared in her
+dignified demeanour. Now what May looked, that Fanny was; but poor
+Fanny, being slight of build, small in feature, and gay in manner, got
+no credit for her exalted virtues and could not be pressed into service
+as the type of them. For certainly types must look typical. May's
+comfort in these circumstances was that Marchmont's perfect breeding and
+instinctive avoidance of display, of absurdity, even of betraying any
+heat of emotion, saved her from the usual troubles which an unsatisfied
+lover entails on his mistress. He looked for her no doubt, but with no
+greater visible perturbation than if she had been his handkerchief.
+
+An evening or two later Dick Benyon took her in to dinner. Entirely in
+concession to him--for the subject had passed from her own thoughts--she
+asked, "Well, how's your genius going on?" Before the meal was over she
+regretted her question. It opened the doors to Dick's confused eloquence
+and vague laudations of his _protege_; putting Dick on his defence, it
+involved an infinite discussion of Quisante. She was told how Dick had
+picked him up at Naples, gone to Pompeii with him, travelled home with
+him, brought him and Jimmy together, and how the three had become
+friends. "And if I'm a fool, my brother's not," said Dick. May knew that
+Jimmy would shelter himself under a plea couched in identical language.
+From this point Dick became less expansive, for at this point his own
+benefactions and services had begun. She could not get much out of him,
+but she found herself trying to worm out all she could. Dick had no
+objection to saying that he had induced Quisante to go in for politics,
+and had "squared" the influential persons who distributed (so far as a
+free electorate might prove docile) seats in Parliament. Rumour and Aunt
+Maria would have supplemented his statement by telling of substantial
+aid given by the Benyon brothers. May, interested against her wish and
+irritated at her interest, yet not content, like Dick's wife, to shrug
+away Dick's aberrations, turned on him with a sudden, "But why, why? Why
+do you like him?"
+
+"Like him!" repeated Dick half-interrogatively. He did not seem sure
+that his companion had chosen the right, or at any rate the best, word
+to describe his feelings. In response she amended her question.
+
+"Well, I mean, what do you see in him?"
+
+Here was another fatal question, for Dick saw everything in him. Hastily
+cutting across the eulogies, she demanded particulars--who was he, where
+did he come from, and so forth. On these heads Dick's account was
+scanty; Quisante's father had grown wine in Spain; and Quisante himself
+had an old aunt in London.
+
+"Not much of a genealogy," she suggested. Dick was absurd enough to
+quote "_Je suis un ancetre_." "Oh, if you're as silly as that!" she
+exclaimed with an annoyed laugh.
+
+"He's the man we want."
+
+"You and Jimmy?"
+
+"The country," Dick explained gravely. He had plenty of humour for other
+subjects, but Quisante, it seemed, was too sacred. "Look here," he went
+on. "Come and meet him again. Amy's going out of town next week and
+we'll have a little party for him."
+
+"That happens best when Amy's away?"
+
+"Well, women are so----"
+
+"Yes, I know. I'm a woman. I won't come."
+
+Dick looked at her not sourly but sadly, and turned to his other
+neighbour. May was left to sit in silence for five minutes; then a pause
+in Dick's talk gave her time to touch him lightly on the arm and to say
+when he turned, "Yes, I will, and thank you."
+
+But she said nothing about the weaselly flirtation.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II.
+
+                              MOMENTS.
+
+
+At the little dinner which Lady Richard's absence rendered more easy
+there were only the Benyon brothers (a wag had recently suggested that
+they should convert themselves into Quisante Limited), Mrs. Gellatly,
+Morewood the painter, and the honoured guest. Morewood was there because
+he was painting a kit-cat of Quisante for the host (Heaven knew in what
+corner Lady Richard would suffer it to hang), and Mrs. Gellatly because
+she had expressed a desire to meet Lady May Gaston. Quisante greeted May
+with an elaborate air of remembrance; his handshake was so ornate as to
+persuade her that she must always hate him, and that Dick Benyon was as
+foolish as his wife thought him. This mood lasted half through dinner;
+the worst of Quisante was uppermost, and the exhibition depressed the
+others. The brothers were apologetic, Mrs. Gellatly gallantly suave; her
+much-lined, still pretty face worked in laborious smiles at every
+loudness and every awkwardness. Morewood was so savage that an abrupt
+conclusion of the entertainment threatened to be necessary. May, who had
+previously decided that Mr. Quisante would be much better in company,
+was travelling to the conclusion that he was not nearly so trying when
+alone; to be weaselly is not so bad as to be inconsiderate and
+ostentatious.
+
+Just then came the change which transformed the party. Somebody
+mentioned Mahomet; Morewood, with his love of a paradox, launched on an
+indiscriminate championship of the Prophet. Next to believing in nobody,
+it was best, he said, to believe in Mahomet; there, he maintained, you
+got most out of your religion and gave least to it; and he defended the
+criterion with his usual uncompromising aggressiveness. Then Quisante
+put his arms on the table, interrupted Morewood without apology, and
+began to talk. May thought that she would not have known how good the
+talk was--for it came so easily--had she not seen how soon Morewood
+became a listener, or even a foil, ready and content to put his
+questions not as puzzles but as provocatives. Yet Morewood was
+proverbially conceited, and he was fully a dozen years Quisante's
+senior. She stole a look round; the brothers were open-mouthed, Mrs.
+Gellatly looked almost frightened. Next her eyes scanned Quisante's
+face; he was not weaselly now, nor ostentatious. His subject filled him
+and lit him up; she did not know that he looked as he had when he spoke
+to old Maria of his Empress among women, but she knew that he looked as
+if nothing mentally small, nothing morally mean, nothing that was not in
+some way or other, for good or evil, big and spacious could ever come
+near him from without or proceed out from him.
+
+She was immensely startled when, in a pause, her host whispered in her
+ear, "One of his moments!" The phrase was to become very familiar to her
+on the lips of others, even more in her own thoughts. "His moments!" It
+implied a sort of intermittent inspiration, as though he were some
+ancient prophet or mediaeval fanatic through whose mouth Heaven spoke
+sometimes, leaving him for the rest to his own low and carnal nature.
+The phrase meant at once a plenitude of inspiration and a rarity of it.
+Not days, nor hours, but moments were seemingly what his friends valued
+him for, what his believers attached their faith to, what must (if
+anything could) outweigh all that piled the scales so full against him.
+An intense curiosity then and there assailed her; she must know more of
+the man; she must launch a boat on this unexplored ocean--for the
+Benyons had not navigated it, they only stood gaping on the beach. Here
+was scope for that unruly spirit of hers which Marchmont's culture and
+Marchmont's fascination could neither minister to nor assuage.
+
+She was gazing intently at Quisante when she became conscious of Mrs.
+Gellatly's eyes on her. Mrs. Gellatly looked frightened still;
+accustomed tactfully to screen awkwardness, she was rather at a loss in
+the face of naked energy. She sought to share her alarm with May Gaston,
+but May was like a climber fronted by a mountain range.
+
+"You may be right and you may be wrong," said Morewood. "At least I
+don't know anybody who can settle the quarrel between facts and dreams."
+
+"There isn't any quarrel."
+
+"There's a little stiffness anyhow," urged Morewood, still unwontedly
+docile.
+
+"They'd get on better if they saw more of one another," suggested May
+timidly. It was her first intervention. She felt its insignificance. She
+would not have complained if Quisante had followed Morewood's example
+and taken no notice of it. He stopped, turned to her with exaggerated
+deference, and greeted her obvious little carrying out of the metaphor
+as though it were a heaven-sent light. Somehow in doing this he seemed
+to fall all in an instant from lofty heights to depths almost beyond
+eyesight. While he complimented her elaborately, Morewood turned away in
+open impatience. Another topic was started, the conversation was killed;
+or, to put it as she put it to herself, that moment of Quisante's was
+ended. Did his moments always end like that? Did they fade before a
+breath, like the frailest flower? Did the contemptible always follow in
+a flash on the entrancing?
+
+Presently she found a chance for a whisper to Morewood.
+
+"How are you painting him?" she asked.
+
+"You must come and see," he replied, with a rather sour grin.
+
+"So I will, but tell me now. You know the difference, I mean?"
+
+"Oh, and do you already? Well, I shall do him making himself agreeable
+to a lady."
+
+"For heaven's sake don't!" she whispered, half-laughing yet not without
+seriousness. The man was a malicious creature and might well caricature
+what he was bound to idealise to the extreme limit of nature's
+sufferance. Such a trick would be hardly honest to Dick Benyon, but
+Morewood would plead his art with unashamed effrontery, and, if more
+were needed, tell Dick to take his cheque to the deuce and go with it
+himself.
+
+The rest of the party was, to put it bluntly, a pleasant little
+gathering in no way remarkable and rather spoilt by the presence of one
+person who was not quite a gentleman. May struggled hard against the
+mercilessness of the judgment contained in the last words; for it ought
+to have proved quite final as regarded Alexander Quisante. As a fact it
+would not leave her mind, it established an absolutely sure footing in
+her convictions; and yet it did not seem quite final in regard to
+Quisante. Perhaps Dick Benyon would maintain the proud level of his
+remark about the genealogy, and remind her that somebody settled
+Napoleon's claims by the same verdict. But one did not meet Napoleon at
+little dinners, nor think of him with no countervailing achievements to
+his name.
+
+Her mind was so full of the man that when she joined her mother at a
+party later in the evening, she had an absurd anticipation that
+everybody would talk to her about him. Nobody did; that evening an
+Arctic explorer and a new fortune-teller divided the attention of the
+polite; men came and discussed one or other of these subjects with her
+until she was weary. For once then, on Marchmont making an appearance
+near her, her legs did not carry her in the opposite direction; she
+awaited and even invited his approach; at least he would spare her the
+fashionable gossip, and she thought he might tell her something about
+Quisante. In two words he told her, if not anything about Quisante,
+still everything that he himself thought of Quisante.
+
+"I met Mr. Quisante at dinner," she said.
+
+"That fellow!" exclaimed Marchmont.
+
+The tone was full of weariness and contempt; it qualified the man as
+unspeakable and dismissed him as intolerable. Was Marchmont infallible,
+as Fanny had said? At least he represented, in its finest and most
+authoritative form, the opinion of her own circle, the unhesitating
+judgment against which she must set herself if she became Quisante's
+champion. It would be much easier, and probably much more sensible, to
+fall into line and acquiesce in the condemnation; then it would matter
+nothing whether the vulgar did or did not elect to admire Dick Benyon's
+peculiar friend. Yet a protest stirred within her; only her sense of the
+ludicrous prevented her from adopting Dick's word and asking Marchmont
+if he had ever seen the fellow in one of his "moments." But it would be
+absurd to catch up the phrase like that, and it was by no means certain
+that even the moments would appeal to Marchmont.
+
+Looking round, she perceived that a little space in the crowded room had
+been left vacant about them; nobody came up to her, no woman, in passing
+by, signalled to Marchmont; the constant give-and-take of companions was
+suspended in their favour. In fine, people supposed that they wanted to
+talk to one another; it would not be guessed that one of the pair wished
+Quisante to be the topic.
+
+"He's got some brains," Marchmont went on, "though of rather a flashy
+sort, I think. Dick Benyon's been caught by them. But a more impossible
+person I never met. You don't like him?"
+
+"Yes, I do," she answered defiantly. "At least I do every now and then."
+
+"Pray make the occasions as rare as possible," he urged in his low lazy
+voice, with his pleasant smile and a confidential look in his handsome
+eyes. "And don't let them coincide with my presence."
+
+"Really he won't hurt you; you're too particular."
+
+"No, he won't hurt me, but I should feel rather as though he were
+hurting you."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"By being near you, certainly by being anything in the least like a
+friend of yours."
+
+"He'd defile me?" she asked, laughing.
+
+"Yes," said he seriously; the next moment he smiled and shrugged his
+shoulders; he did not withdraw his seriousness but he apologised for it.
+
+"Oh, I'd better get under a glass-case at once," she exclaimed, laughing
+again impatiently.
+
+"Yes, and lock it, and----"
+
+"Give you the key?"
+
+He laughed as he said, "The most artistic emotions have some selfishness
+in them, I admit it."
+
+"It would make a little variety if I sent a duplicate to Mr. Quisante!"
+
+Here he would not follow her in her banter. He grew grave and even
+frowned, but all he said was, "Really there are limits, you know." It
+was her own verdict, expressed more tersely, more completely, and more
+finally. There were limits, and Alexander Quisante was beyond them; the
+barrier they raised could not be surmounted; he could not fly over it
+even on the wings of his moments.
+
+"You above everybody oughtn't to know such people," Marchmont went on.
+
+Now he was thinking of the type she was supposed to represent; that was
+the fashion in which it was appropriate to talk to the type.
+
+"I'm not in the very least like that really," she assured him. "If you
+knew me better you'd find that out very soon."
+
+"I'm willing to risk it."
+
+Flirtation for flirtation--and this conversation was becoming one--there
+could be no comparison between Marchmont's and Quisante's; the one was
+delightful, the other odious; the one combined charm with dignity; the
+other was a mixture of cringing and presumption. May put the contrast no
+less strongly than this as she yielded to the impulse of the minute and
+gave the lie to Marchmont's ideal of her by her reckless acceptance of
+the immediate delights he offered. The ideal would no doubt cause him to
+put a great deal of meaning into her acceptance; whether such meaning
+were one she would be prepared to indorse her mood did not allow her to
+consider. She showed him very marked favour that evening, and in his
+company contrived to forget entirely the puzzle of Quisante and his
+moments, and the possible relation of those moments to the limits about
+which her companion was so decisive.
+
+At last, however, they were interrupted. The interruption came from Dick
+Benyon, who had looked in somewhere else and arrived now at the tail of
+the evening. Far too eager and engrossed in his great theme to care
+whether his appearance were welcome, he dashed up to May, crying out
+even before he reached her, "Well, what do you say about him now? Wasn't
+he splendid?"
+
+Clearly Dick forgot his earlier apologetic period; for him the moment
+was the evening. A cool question from Marchmont, the cooler perhaps for
+annoyance, forced Dick into explanations, and he sketched in his summary
+fashion the incident which had aroused his enthusiasm and made him look
+so confidently for a response from May. Marchmont was unreservedly and
+almost scornfully antagonistic.
+
+"Oh, you're too cultivated to live," cried Dick. "Now isn't he too
+elegant, May?"
+
+"I'm not the least elegant," said Marchmont, with quiet confidence. "But
+I'm--well, I'm what Quisante isn't. So are you, Dick."
+
+"Suppose we are, and by Jove, isn't he what we aren't? I'm primitive, I
+suppose. I think hands and brains are better than manners."
+
+"I'll agree, but I don't like his hands or his brains either."
+
+"He'll mount high."
+
+"As high as Haman. I shouldn't be the least surprised to see it."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to give him up because he doesn't shake hands at
+the latest fashionable angle."
+
+"All right, Dick. And I'm not going to take him up because he's a dab at
+rodomontade."
+
+"And you neither of you need fight about him," May put in, laughing.
+They joined in her laugh, each excusing himself by good-natured abuse of
+the other.
+
+There was no question of a quarrel, but the divergence was complete,
+striking, and even startling. To one all was black, to the other all
+white; to one all tin, to the other all gold. Was there no possibility
+of compromise? As she sat between the two, May thought that a
+discriminating view of Quisante ought to be attainable, not an
+oscillation from disgust to admiration, but a well-balanced stable
+judgment which should allow full value to merits and to defects, and sum
+up the man as a whole. Something of the sort she tried to suggest;
+neither disputant would hear of it, and Marchmont went off with an
+unyielding assertion that the man was a cad, no more and no less than a
+cad. Dick looked after him with a well-satisfied air; May fancied that
+opposition and the failure of others to understand intensified his
+satisfaction in his own discovery. But he grew mournful as he said to
+her,
+
+"I shan't have a chance with you now. You'll go with Marchmont of
+course. And I did want you to like him."
+
+"Mr. Marchmont doesn't control my opinions."
+
+They were very old friends; Dick allowed himself a significant smile.
+
+"I know what you mean," she said, smiling. "But it's nonsense. Besides,
+look at yourself and Amy! She hates him, and yet you----"
+
+"Oh, she's only half-serious, and Marchmont's in deadly earnest under
+that deuced languid manner of his. I tell you what, he's a very limited
+fellow, after all."
+
+May laughed; the limits were being turned to a new use now.
+
+"Awfully clever and well-read, but shut up inside a sort of compartment
+of life. Don't you know what I mean? He's always ridden first-class, and
+he won't believe there's anybody worth knowing in the thirds."
+
+"You think he's like that?" she asked thoughtfully.
+
+"You can see it for yourself. There's no better fellow, no better
+friend, but, hang it, an oyster's got a broader mind."
+
+"I like broad minds."
+
+"Then you'll like Quis----"
+
+"Absolutely you shan't mention that name again. Find mother for me and
+tell her to tell me that it's time to go home."
+
+Going home brought with it a discovery. May was considered to have
+invited the world to take notice of her preference for Marchmont. This
+fact was first conveyed to her by Lady Attlebridge's gently affectionate
+and congratulatory air; at this May was little more than amused.
+Evidence of greater significance lay in Fanny's demeanour; she came into
+her sister's room and talked for a while; before leaving, but after the
+ordinary kiss of goodnight, she came back suddenly and kissed her again;
+she said nothing, but the embrace was emphatic and eloquent. It seemed
+to the recipient to be forgiving also; it meant "I want you to be happy,
+don't imagine I think of anything else." If Fanny kissed her like that,
+it was because Fanny supposed that she had made up her mind to marry
+Weston Marchmont. She was fully conscious that the inference was not a
+strange one to draw from her conduct that evening. But now the mood of
+impulse was entirely gone; she considered the matter in a cool spirit,
+and her talk with Dick Benyon assumed unlooked-for importance in her
+deliberations. To marry Marchmont was a step entirely in harmony with
+the ideal which her family and the world had of her, which Marchmont
+himself most thoroughly and undoubtingly believed in. If she were really
+what she was supposed to be, the match would satisfy her as well as it
+would everybody else. But if she were quite different in her heart? In
+that case it might indeed be urged that no marriage would or could
+permanently satisfy her or the whole of her nature. This was likely
+enough; to see how often something of that kind happened it was,
+unfortunately, only necessary to run over ten or a dozen names which
+offered themselves promptly enough from the list of her acquaintance.
+Still to marry knowing you would not be satisfied was to drop below the
+common fate of marrying knowing that you might not be; it gave up the
+golden chance; it abandoned illusion just where illusion seemed most
+necessary.
+
+Oh for life, for the movement of life! It is perhaps hard to realise how
+often that cry breaks from the hearts of women. No doubt the aspiration
+it expresses is rather apt to end in antics, not edifying to the
+onlooker, hardly (it may be supposed) comforting to the performer. But
+the antics are one thing, the aspiration another, and they have the
+aspiration strongest who condemn and shun the antics. The matter may be
+stated very simply, at least if the form in which it presented itself to
+May Gaston in her twenty-third year be allowed to suffice. Most girls
+are bred in a cage, most girls expect to escape therefrom by marriage,
+most girls find that they have only walked into another cage. She had
+nothing to say, so far as her own case went, against the comfort either
+of the old or of the new cage; they were both indeed luxurious. But
+cages they were and such she knew them to be. Doubtless there must be
+limits, not only to the tolerance of Weston Marchmont and of society,
+but to everything else except infinity. But there are great expanses,
+wide spaces, short of infinity. When she walked out of her first cage,
+the one which her mother's careful fingers had kept locked on her, she
+would like not to walk into another, but to escape into some park or
+forest, not boundless, yet so large as to leave room for exploring, for
+the finding of new things, for speculation, for doubt, excitement,
+uncertainty, even for the presence of apprehension and the possibility
+of danger. As she surveyed the manner in which she was expected to pass
+her life, the manner in which she was supposed (she faced now the common
+interpretation of her conduct this evening) already to have elected to
+pass it, she felt as a speculator feels towards Consols, as a gambler
+towards threepenny whist. It seemed as though nothing could be good
+which did not also hold within it the potency of being very bad, as
+though certainty damned and chance alone had lures to offer. She would
+have liked to take life in her hand--however precious a thing, what use
+is it if you hoard it?--and see what she could make of it, what usury
+its free loan to fate and fortune would earn. She might lose it; youth
+made light of the risk. She might crawl back in sad plight; the Prodigal
+Son did not think of that when he set out. She found herself wishing she
+had nothing, that she might be free to start on the search for anything.
+
+Like Quisante? Why, yes, just like Quisante. Like that strange,
+intolerable, vulgar, attractive, intermittently inspired creature, who
+presented himself at life's roulette-table, not less various in his own
+person than were the varying turns he courted, unaccountable as chance,
+baffling as fate, changeable as luck. Indeed he was like life itself, a
+thing you loved and hated, grew weary of and embraced, shrank from and
+pursued. To see him then was in a way to look on at life, to be in
+contact with him was to feel the throb of its movement. In her midnight
+musings the man seemed somehow to cease to be odious because he ceased
+to be individual, to be no longer incomprehensible because he was no
+longer apart, because he became to her less himself and more the
+expression and impersonation of an instinct that in her own blood ran
+riot and held festivity.
+
+"I'm having moments, like Mr. Quisante himself!" she said with a sudden
+laugh.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III.
+
+                             SANDRO'S WAY.
+
+
+First to the City, then to the doctor, then to the House, then to the
+dinner of the Imperial League; this was Quisante's programme for the
+second Wednesday in April. It promised a busy day. But of the doctor and
+the House he made light; the first was a formality, the second held out
+no prospect of excitement; the City and the dinner were the real things.
+They were connected with and must be made to promote the two aims which
+he had taken for his with perfect confidence. He wanted money and he
+wanted position; he saw no reason why he should not attain both in the
+fullest measure. Recent events had filled him with a sure and certain
+hope. Not allowing for the value of the good manners which he lacked, he
+failed to see that he excited any hostility or any distaste. Unless a
+man were downright rude to him, he counted him an adherent; this streak
+of a not unpleasing simplicity ran across his varied nature. He was far
+from being alive to his disadvantages; every hour assured him of his
+superiority. Most especially he counted on the aid and favour of women;
+the future might prove him right or wrong in his expectation; but he
+relied for its realisation not on the power which he did possess but on
+an accomplishment of manner and an insinuating fascination which he most
+absolutely lacked. The ultra-civility which repelled May Gaston was less
+a device than an exhibition; he embarked on it more because he thought
+he did it well than (as she supposed) from a desire to curry favour. He
+was ill-bred, but he was not mean; he was a vaunter but not a coward; he
+demanded adherence and did not beg alms. This was the attitude of his
+mind, but unhappily it was often apparently contradicted by the cringing
+of his body and the wheedling of his tongue. In attempting smoothness he
+fell into oiliness; where he aimed at polished brilliance, the result
+was blazing varnish. Had he known what to pray for, he would have
+supplicated heaven that he might meet eyes able to see the man beneath
+the ape. Such eyes, dimly penetrating with an unexpected vision, he had
+won to his side in the Benyon brothers; the rest of the world still
+stuck on the outside surface. But the brothers could only shield him,
+they could not change him; they might promote his fortunes, they could
+not cure his vices. He did not know that he had any vices; the first
+stage of amendment was still to come.
+
+He had a cousin in the City, a stock-jobber, who made and lost large
+sums of money as fortune smiled or frowned. Quisante had the first five
+hundred of Aunt Maria's thousand pounds in his pocket and told his
+kinsman to use it for him.
+
+"A spec?" asked Mr. Josiah Mandeville. "Isn't that rather rough on Aunt
+Maria?"
+
+Quisante looked surprised. "She gave it me, I haven't stolen it," he
+said with a laugh.
+
+"She gave it you to live on, to keep up your position, I suppose."
+
+"I don't think she made any conditions. And if I can make money, I'll
+give it back to her."
+
+"Oh, you know best, I suppose," said Mandeville. "Only if I lose it?"
+
+"Losing money's no worse than spending it." And then he mentioned a
+certain venture in which the money might usefully be employed.
+
+"How did you hear of that?" asked Mandeville with a stare; for his
+cousin had laid his finger on a secret, on the very secret which
+Mandeville had just decided not to reveal to him, kinsman though he was.
+
+"I forget; somebody said something about it that made me think it would
+be a good thing." Quisante's tone was vaguely puzzled; he often knew
+things when he could give no account of his knowledge.
+
+"Well, you aren't far wrong. You'll take a small profit, I suppose?
+Shall I use my discretion?"
+
+"No," smiled Quisante. "I shan't take a small profit, and I'll use mine.
+But keep me well informed and you shan't be a loser."
+
+Mr. Mandeville laughed. "One might think you had a million," he
+observed. "Or are you proposing to tip me a fiver?" The thought of his
+own thousands filled his tone with scorn; he did not do his speculating
+with Aunt Maria's money.
+
+"If you're too proud, I can take my business somewhere else--and the
+name of the concern too," said Quisante, lighting a cigar. Cousin
+Mandeville's stare had not escaped his notice.
+
+Mandeville hesitated; he was very much annoyed; he liked his money, if
+not himself, to be respected. But business is business, to say nothing
+of blood being thicker than water.
+
+"Oh, well, I'll do it for you," he agreed with lofty benevolence.
+Quisante laughed. He would have covered his own retreat with much the
+same device.
+
+The riches then were on the way; Quisante had a far-seeing eye, and Aunt
+Maria's five hundred was to imagination already prolific of thousands. A
+hansom carried him up to Harley Street; he had been there three months
+before and had been told to come again in three weeks. The punishment
+for his neglect was a severe verdict. "No liquor, no tobacco, and three
+months' immediate and complete rest." Quisante laughed--very much as he
+had at his kinsman in the City. Both doctor and stock-jobber showed such
+a curious ignorance of the conditions under which his life had to be
+lived and of his reasons for caring to live it.
+
+"What's the matter then?" he asked.
+
+The doctor became very technical, though not quite unreserved; the heart
+and the stomach were in some unholy conspiracy; this was as much as
+Quisante really understood.
+
+"And if I don't do as you say?" he asked. The doctor smiled and shrugged
+his shoulders. "I shan't outlive Methuselah anyhow, I suppose?"
+
+"The present conditions of your life are very wearing," said the doctor.
+
+Quisante looked at him thoughtfully.
+
+"But if you'd live wisely, there's no reason why you shouldn't preserve
+good health till an advanced age."
+
+Aunt Maria's five hundred, invested in Consols, would bring in twelve
+pounds ten shillings or thereabouts every year for ever.
+
+"Thank you," said Quisante, rising and producing the fee. But he paused
+before going and said meditatively, "I should really like to be able to
+follow your advice, you know." His brow clouded in discontent; the one
+serious handicap he recognised was this arbitrary unfortunate doom of a
+body unequal to the necessary strain of an active life. "Anyhow I'm good
+for a little while?" he asked.
+
+"Dear me, you're in no sort of immediate danger, Mr. Quisante, or I
+should be more imperative. Only pray give yourself a chance."
+
+On his way from Harley Street to the House, and again from the House to
+his own rooms in Pall Mall, his mind was busy with the speech that he
+was to make at the dinner. He had only to respond to the toast of the
+guests; few words and simple would be expected. He was thus the more
+resolved on a great effort; the surprise that the mere attempt at an
+oration would arouse should pave the way for the astonishment his
+triumph must create. He had no rival in the programme; the Chairman was
+Dick Benyon, the great gun an eminent Colonial Statesman who relied for
+fame on his deeds rather than his words. With his curiously minute
+calculation of chances Quisante had discovered that there was no social
+occasion of great attraction to carry off his audience after dinner;
+they would stay and listen if he were worth listening to; the ladies in
+the gallery would stay too, if at the outset he could strike a note that
+would touch their hearts. This was his first really good chance, the
+first opening for such a _coup_ as he loved. His eyes were bright as he
+opened an atlas and verified with precision the exact position of the
+Colonial Statesman's Colony; he had known it before of course--roughly.
+
+Lady Richard had much affection in her nature and with it a fine spice
+of malice. The two ingredients combined to bring her to the gallery; she
+wished to please Dick, and she wished to be in a position to annoy him
+by deriding Quisante. So there she sat looking down on the men through a
+haze of cigar-smoke which afflicted the ladies' noses and threatened
+seriously to affect their gowns.
+
+"They might give up their tobacco for one night," muttered a girl near
+her.
+
+"They'd much rather give us up, my dear," retorted a dowager who felt
+that she would be considered a small sacrifice and was not unwilling to
+make others think the same about themselves.
+
+By Lady Richard's side sat May Gaston. The time is happily gone by when
+any one is allowed even to assume indifference about the Empire, yet it
+may be doubted whether interest in the Empire had the chief share in
+moving her to accept Lady Richard's invitation. Nor did she want to hear
+Dick Benyon, nor the Colonial Statesman; quite openly she desired and
+expressed her desire to see what Quisante would make of it.
+
+"How absurd!" said Lady Richard crossly. "Besides he's only got a few
+words to say."
+
+May smiled and glanced along the row of ladies. About ten places from
+her was a funny little old woman with an absurd false front of fair hair
+and a black silk gown cut in ancient fashion; her features showed vivid
+disgust at the atmosphere and she made frequent use of a large bottle of
+smelling-salts. Next to her, on the other side, was Mrs. Gellatly, who
+nodded and smiled effusively at May.
+
+"Who's the funny old woman?" May asked.
+
+Lady Richard looked round and made a constrained bow; the old lady
+smiled a little and sniffed the bottle again.
+
+"Oh, she's an aunt of the man's; come to hear him, I suppose. Oh, Dick's
+getting up."
+
+Amid polite attention and encouraging "Hear, hears" Dick made his way
+through a few appropriate sentences which his hearty sincerity redeemed
+from insignificance. The Colonial Statesman had a well-founded idea that
+the zeal of his audience outstripped its knowledge, and set himself to
+improve the latter rather than to inflame the former. His reward was a
+somewhat frigid reception. May noticed that old Miss Quisante was
+dozing, and Lady Richard said that she wished she was at home in bed:
+Quisante himself had assumed a smile of anticipation when the Statesman
+rose and preserved it unimpaired through the long course of the speech.
+The audience as a whole grew a little restless; while the next speaker
+addressed them, one or two men rose and slipped away unobtrusively. A
+quick frown and a sudden jerk of Quisante's head betrayed his fear that
+more would go before he could lay his grip on them.
+
+"Why doesn't this man stop?" whispered May.
+
+"I suppose, my dear, he thinks he may as well put Mr. Quisante off as
+long as possible," Lady Richard answered flippantly.
+
+Amid yawns, the laying down of burnt-out cigars, and glances at watches,
+Quisante rose to make his reply. Aunt Maria was wide-awake now, looking
+down at her nephew with her sour smile; Lady Richard leant back
+resignedly. Quisante pressed back his heavy smooth black hair, opened
+his wide thin-lipped mouth, and began with a courteous commonplace
+reference to those who shared with himself the honour of being guests
+that night. Ordinary as the frame-work was, there was a touch of
+originality in what he said; one or two men who had meant to go struck
+matches and lit fresh cigars. Dick Benyon looked up at the gallery and
+nodded to his wife. Then Quisante seemed suddenly to increase his
+stature by an inch or two and to let loose his arms; his voice was still
+not loud, but every syllable fell with incisive distinctness on his
+listener's ears. An old Member of Parliament whispered to an elderly
+barrister, "He can speak anyhow," and got an assenting nod for answer.
+And he was looking as he had when he spoke of his Empress among women,
+as he had when he declared that the Spirit of God could not live and
+move in the grave-clothes of dead prophets. He was far away from the
+guests now, and he was far away from himself; it was another moment; he
+was possessed again. Dick looked up with a radiant triumphant smile, but
+his wife was frowning, and May Gaston sat with a face like a mask.
+
+"By Jove!" murmured the elderly barrister.
+
+The whole speech was short; perhaps it had been meant to be longer, but
+suddenly Quisante's pale face turned paler still, he caught his hand to
+his side, he stopped for a moment, and stumbled over his words; than he
+recovered and, with his hand still on his side, raised his voice again.
+But the logical mind of the elderly barrister seemed to detect a lacuna
+in the reasoning; the speaker had skipped something and flown straight
+to his peroration. He gave it now in tones firm but slower than before,
+with a pause here and there, yet in the end summoning his forces to a
+last flood of impassioned words. Then he sat down, not straight, but
+falling just a little on one side and making a clutch at his neighbour's
+shoulder; and while they cheered he sat quite still with closed eyes and
+opened lips. "Has he fainted?" ran in a hushed whisper round the room;
+Dick Benyon sprang from his chair, a waiter was hurried off for brandy,
+and Lady Richard observed in her delicately scornful tones, "How
+extremely theatrical!"
+
+"Theatrical!" said May in a low indignant voice.
+
+"You don't suppose he's really fainting, my dear, do you? Oh, I've seen
+him do the same sort of thing once before!"
+
+An impulse carried May's eyes towards Miss Quisante; the old lady was
+smiling composedly and sniffing her bottle. Her demeanour was in strong
+contrast to Mrs. Gellatly's almost tearful excitement.
+
+"He couldn't, he couldn't!" May moaned in horror.
+
+If the untrue suspicion entertained by Lady Richard and possibly shared
+by Miss Quisante (the old lady's face was a riddle) spread at all to
+anybody else, the fault lay entirely at the sufferer's own door. He knew
+too well how real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the
+men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects.
+But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and
+smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness,
+but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated
+sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the
+extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs bring the frailty of
+his body to the front, not as an apology, but as an added claim to
+interest and a new title by which to win soft words, admiring looks, and
+sympathetic pressings from pretty hands. Who could blame Lady Richard for
+murmuring, "There, my dear, now you see!"? Who could wonder that Aunt
+Maria looked cynically indifferent? Was it strange that a good many
+people, without going to the length of declaring that the orator had
+suffered nothing at all, yet were inclined to think that he knew better
+than to waste, and quite well how to improve, the opportunity that a
+trifling fatigue or a passing touch of faintness gave him? "Knows how to
+fetch the women, doesn't he?" said somebody with a laugh. To be accused
+of that knowledge is not a passport to the admiration of men.
+
+Before May Gaston came near Quisante himself, Jimmy Benyon seized on her
+and introduced her to Aunt Maria. In reply to politely expressed phrases
+of concern the old lady's shrewd eyes twinkled.
+
+"Sandro'll soon come round, if they let him alone," she said.
+
+The words were consistent with either view of the occurrence, but the
+tone inclined them to the side of uncharitableness.
+
+"Is he liable to such attacks?" May asked.
+
+"He's always been rather sickly," Miss Quisante admitted grudgingly.
+
+"He's had a splendid triumph to-night. He was magnificent."
+
+"Sandro makes the most of a chance."
+
+May was surprised to find herself attracted to the dry old woman. Such an
+absence of feeling in regard to one who was her only relative and the
+hero of the evening might more naturally have aroused dislike; but Aunt
+Maria's coolness was funnily touched both by resignation and by humour;
+she mourned that things were as they were, but did not object to laughing
+at them. When immaculate Jimmy, a splendid type of the handsome dandified
+man about town, began to be enthusiastic over Quisante, she looked up at
+him with a sneering kindly smile, seeming to ask, "How in the world do
+you come to be mixed up with Sandro?" When May expressed the hope that he
+would be more careful of himself Aunt Maria's smile said, "If you knew as
+much about him as I do, you'd take it quietly. It's Sandro's way." Yet
+side by side with all this was the utter absence of any surprise at his
+exhibition of power or at the triumph he had won; these she seemed to
+take as the merest matter of course. She knew Quisante better than any
+living being knew him, and this was her attitude towards him. When they
+bade one another good-bye, May said that she was sure her mother would
+like to call on Miss Quisante. "Come yourself," said the old lady
+abruptly; she at least showed no oiliness, no violence of varnish; they
+were not in the family, it seemed.
+
+The crowd grew thinner, but the diminished publicity brought no
+improvement to Quisante's manner. He was with Lady Richard and the
+brothers now--May noticed that nephew and aunt had been content to
+exchange careless nods--and Lady Richard made him nearly his worst. He
+knew that she did not like him, but refused to accept the defeat; he
+plied her more and more freely with the airs and affectations that
+rendered him odious to her; he could not help thinking that by enough
+attention, enough deference, and enough of being interesting he must in
+the end conciliate her favour. When May joined the group, his manner
+appealed from her friend to her, bidding Lady Richard notice how much
+more responsive May was and how pleasant he was to those who were
+pleasant to him. May would have despised him utterly at that instant but
+for two things: she remembered his moments, and she perceived that all
+the time he was suffering and mastering severe, perhaps poignant, pain.
+But again, when she asked him how he was, he smirked and flourished, till
+Lady Richard turned away in disgust and even the brothers looked a little
+puzzled and distressed as they followed her to the buffet and ministered
+to her wants.
+
+"Sit down," said May, in a tone almost sharp. "No, sit at once, never
+mind whether I'm sitting or not."
+
+He obeyed her with an overdone gesture of protest, but his face showed
+relief. She got a chair for herself and sat down by him.
+
+"You spoke splendidly," she said, and hurried on, "No, no, don't thank
+me, don't tell me that you especially wished to please me, or that my
+approbation is your reward, or anything about beauty or bright eyes, or
+anything in the very least like that. It's all odious and I wonder why
+you--a man like you--should think it necessary to do it."
+
+Quisante looked startled; he had been leaning back in apparent
+exhaustion, but now he sat up straight and prepared to speak, a
+conciliatory smile on his lips.
+
+"No, don't sit up, lean back. Don't talk, don't smile, don't be agreeable."
+She had begun to laugh at herself by now, but the laughter did not stop
+her. "You were ill, you were very ill, you looked almost dead, and you
+battled with it splendidly, and beat it splendidly, and went on and won.
+And then you must--Oh, why do you?"
+
+"Why do I do what?" he asked, quietly enough now, with a new look of
+puzzle and bewilderment in his eyes, although his set smile had not
+disappeared.
+
+"Why, go on as if there'd been nothing much really the matter, as if
+you'd had the vapours or the flutters, or something women have, or used
+to have when they were even sillier than they are." She laughed again,
+adding, "Really I was expecting Dick Benyon to propose to cut your
+stay-laces."
+
+The Benyons were coming back; if she had more to say, there was no time
+for it; yet she managed a whisper as she shook hands with him, her
+gesture still forbidding him to rise. Her face, a little flushed with
+colour, bent down towards his and her voice was eager as she whispered,
+
+"Good-night. Be simple, be yourself; it's worth while."
+
+Then courage failed and she hurried off with a confused nervous farewell
+to her friends. Her breath came quick as she lay back in the brougham
+and closed her eyes.
+
+Quisante was tired and ill; he was unusually quiet in his parting talk
+with Lady Richard. Even she was sorry for him; and when pity entered
+little Lady Richard's heart it drove out all other emotions however
+strong, and routed all resolutions however well-founded.
+
+"You look dead-beat, you do indeed," she said. She turned to her
+husband. "Dick, Mr. Quisante must come and spend a few quiet days with
+us in the country. Something'll happen to him, if he doesn't."
+
+Dick could hardly believe his ears, and was full of delighted gratitude;
+hitherto Lady Richard had been resolute that their country house at
+least should be sacred from Quisante's feet. He took his wife's hand and
+pressed it as he joyfully seconded her invitation. Some of Quisante's
+effusive politeness displayed itself again, but still he was subdued,
+and Lady Richard, full of her impulse of compassion, escaped without
+realising fully the enormity of the step into which it had tempted her.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV.
+
+                            HE'S COMING!
+
+
+Dick Benyon was a man of plentiful ideas, but he found great difficulty
+in conveying them to others and even in expressing them to himself.
+Jimmy, his faithful disciple, could not help him here, and indeed was too
+much ashamed of harbouring such things as ideas to be of any service as
+an apostle. All the ideas were not Dick's own; in the case of the
+Imperial League, for example, he merely floated on the top of the
+flood-tide of opinion, and even the Crusade, his other and dearer
+pre-occupation, was the fruit of the Dean of St. Neot's brain as much as
+or even more than of his own. The Dean never got the credit of having
+ideas at all, first because he did not look like it, being short, stout,
+ruddy, and apparently very fond of his dinner, secondly because he never
+talked of his ideas to women. Mrs. Baxter did not care about ideas and
+possibly the Dean generalised rashly. More probably, perhaps, he had
+contracted a prejudice against talking confidentially to women from
+observing the ways of some of his brethren; he had dropped remarks which
+favoured this explanation. Anyhow he lost not only the soil most fruitful
+for propagation, but also the surest road to a reputation. Of the idea of
+the Crusade he was particularly careful to talk to men only; women, he
+felt sure, would tell him it was superb, and his wish was to be
+confronted with its difficulties and its absurdities, to overcome this
+initial opposition only with a struggle, and to enlist his antagonist as
+a fellow-warrior; he had especial belief in the persuasiveness of
+converts. Unluckily, however, as a rule only the first part of the
+programme passed into fact; he got the absurdities and difficulties
+pointed out freely enough, the conversions hung fire. Dick Benyon was
+almost the sole instance of the triumphant carrying-out of the whole
+scheme; but though Dick could believe and work, and could make Jimmy
+believe and nearly make Jimmy work, he could not preach himself nor make
+Jimmy preach in tones commanding enough to engage the respect and
+attention of the world. Who could then? Dick had answered "Weston
+Marchmont;" the Dean shook his head confidently but wistfully; he would
+have liked but did not expect to find a convert there.
+
+Weston Marchmont made, as might be expected, the Great Refusal, although
+not in the impressive or striking manner which such a phrase may seem to
+imply. Twisting his claret glass in his long thin fingers, he observed
+with low-voiced suavity that in ecclesiastical matters, as doubtless in
+most others, he was behind the times; he was a loyal Establishment man
+and had every intention of remaining such, and for his own part he found
+it possible to reconcile the ultimate postulates of faith with the
+ultimate truths of science. As soon as ultimates came on the scene, the
+Dean felt that the game was up; the Crusade depended on an appeal to
+classes which must be reached, if they could be reached at all, by
+something far short of ultimates. Ultimates were for the few; one reason,
+among others, why Marchmont fondly affected them. Marchmont proceeded to
+remark that in his doubtless out-of-date view the best thing was to
+preserve the traditions and the traditional limits of Church work and
+Church influence. He did not say in so many words that the Church was a
+good servant but a bad master, yet Dick and the Dean gathered that this
+was his opinion, and that he would look with apprehension on any movement
+directed to bringing ecclesiastical pressure to bear on secular affairs.
+In all this he assumed politely that the Crusade could succeed, but the
+lift of his brows which accompanied the concession was very eloquent.
+
+"Then," he ended apologetically, "there's the danger of vulgarity. One
+puts up with that in politics, but I confess I shrink from it in
+religion."
+
+"What appeals to everybody is not necessarily vulgar," said the Dean.
+
+"Not necessarily," Marchmont agreed, with the emphasis on the second
+word. "But," he added, "it's almost of necessity untrue, and after all
+religion has to do with truth." He was getting near his ultimates again.
+
+There was a pause; then Marchmont laughed and said jokingly,
+
+"You'll have to go to the Radicals, Dick. They're the dogmatic party
+nowadays, and they'll be just as ready to manage your soul for you as
+they are your property."
+
+"That's just what I don't mean to do," said Dick obstinately. But he
+looked a little uncomfortable. It was important to preserve the attitude
+that fighting the Radicals was no part of the scheme of the Crusade.
+Marchmont smiled at the Dean across the table.
+
+"I love the Church, Mr. Dean," he said, "but I'm afraid of the churchmen."
+
+"Much what I feel about politics and politicians."
+
+"Then if churchmen are politicians too----?" Marchmont suggested; the
+Dean's laughter admitted a verbal defeat. But when Marchmont had gone he
+shook his head over him again, saying, "He'll not be great; he's much too
+sane."
+
+"He's too scrupulous," said Dick. The Dean protested with a smile. "I
+mean too fastidious," Dick added, correcting himself.
+
+"Yes, yes, too fastidious," agreed the Dean contentedly. "And when I said
+sane perhaps I rather meant cautious, unimaginative, and cold." Both felt
+the happier for the withdrawal of their hastily chosen epithets.
+
+This conversation had occurred in the early days of Dick's acquaintance
+with Alexander Quisante, when, although already much taken with the man,
+he had a clearer view of what he was than enthusiasm allowed later on.
+Rejecting Marchmont, or rather acquiescing in Marchmont's refusal, on the
+ground of his excessive caution, his want of imagination, and his
+fastidiousness, he had hesitated to sound Quisante in regard to the great
+project. It seemed to him impossible to regard his new friend as an ideal
+leader for this purpose; one reason is enough to indicate--the ideal
+leader should be absolutely unselfish by nature. By nature Quisante was
+very far from that, and his circumstances were not such as to enable him
+to overcome the bent of his disposition; whatever else he was or might
+become, he would be self-seeking too, and it would be impossible ever to
+make him steadily and deliberately forgetful of himself.
+
+But as time went on, another way opened before Dick's eyes and was
+cautiously and tentatively hinted at to his confidant, the Dean. The
+Dean, having seen a little and heard much of Quisante, was inclined to be
+encouraging. There were in him possibilities not to be found in
+Marchmont. He was not fastidious, he would not trouble himself or other
+people about ultimates, above all he could be fired with imagination.
+Once that was achieved, he would speak and seem as though he were all
+that the ideal leader ought to be, as though inspiration filled him; he
+would express what Dick could only feel and the Dean do no more than
+adumbrate; nay, in time, as he grew zealous in the cause, his
+self-interest and personal ambition would be conquered, or at least would
+be so blended and fused with the nobility of the cause as to lose any
+grossness or meanness which might be thought to characterise them in an
+uncompounded condition. All this might be achieved if only the great idea
+could be made to seem great enough and the potentialities which lay in
+its realisation invested with enough pomp and dignity. After all was not
+such a blend of things personal and things beyond and higher than the
+personal as much as could reasonably be expected from human beings, and
+adequate to the needs of a work-a-day world?
+
+"I don't want to be a bishop, but I do mean to stick to my deanery
+through thick and thin," said the Dean, smiling. Dick understood him to
+mean that allowance must be made for the personal element, and that a man
+might serve a cause very usefully without being prepared to go quite as
+far as the stake, or even the workhouse, for it; if this were not so,
+there would be less competition for places in State and Church.
+
+Such great schemes for causing right ideas to prevail in things spiritual
+and temporal and for placing the right men in the right positions to
+ensure this important result are material here only so far as they
+influence the career or illustrate the character of individuals. The
+Crusade did not perhaps do as much towards altering the face of the
+world, or even of this island, as it was intended to, but it had a
+considerable, if temporary, effect on current politics, and it appeared
+to Quisante to be at once a fine conception and a notable opportunity;
+between these two aspects he did not, as Dick Benyon had foreseen, draw
+any very rigid line. To make the Church again a power with the masses;
+this done, to persuade the masses to use their power under the leadership
+of the Church; this done, to harmonise unimpaired liberty of conscience
+with a whole-hearted devotion to truth, and to devote both to ends which
+should unite the maximum of zeal for the Community with the minimum of
+political innovation, were aims which, if they were nothing else, might
+at least claim to be worthy to exercise the intellect of superior men and
+to inspire the eloquence of orators. That a set of people on the other
+side was professing to do the same things, with totally different and
+utterly wrong notions of the results to be obtained, afforded the whet of
+antagonism, and let in dialectic and partisanship as a seasoning to
+relieve the high severity of the main topic. Quisante's personal
+relations with the Church had never been intimate; he was perhaps the
+better able to lay hold of its romantic and picturesque aspect. The Dean,
+for instance, was hampered and at times discouraged by a knowledge of
+details. Dick Benyon had to struggle against the family point of view as
+regarded the family livings. Quisante came almost as a stranger, ready to
+be impressed, to take what suited him, to form the desired opinion and no
+other; if a legal metaphor may be allowed, to master what was in his
+brief, to use that to the full, and to know nothing to the contrary. The
+Empire was very well, but it was a crowded field; the new subject had
+advantages all its own and especial allurements.
+
+Yet Miss Quisante laughed, as a man's relatives often will although the
+rest of the world is unimpeachably grave. For any person engaged in
+getting a complete view of Alexander Quisante it was well to turn from
+Dick Benyon to Aunt Maria. So May Gaston found when she took the old
+woman at her word and went to see her, unaccompanied by Lady Attlebridge.
+She listened awhile to her caustic talk and then charged her roundly with
+not doing justice to her nephew.
+
+"Sandro's caught you too, has he?" was her hostess's immediate retort.
+
+"No, he hasn't caught me, as you call it, Miss Quisante," said May,
+smiling. "I dislike a great deal in him." She paused before adding,
+"What's more, I've told him so."
+
+"He'll be very pleased at that."
+
+"He didn't seem to be."
+
+"I didn't say he was pleased, I said he would be," remarked Aunt Maria
+placidly. "No doubt you vexed him at the time, but when he's thought it
+over, he'll be flattered at your showing so much interest in him."
+
+"I shouldn't like him to take it like that," said May thoughtfully.
+
+"It's the true way to take it, though."
+
+"Well then, I suppose it is. Except that there's no reason why my
+interest should flatter anybody." She determined on an offensive movement
+against the sharp confident old lady. "All his faults are merely faults
+of bringing up. You brought him up; why didn't you bring him up better?"
+
+Miss Quisante looked at her for several moments.
+
+"I didn't bring him up well, that's true enough," she said. "But, my
+dear, don't you run off with the idea that there's nothing wrong with
+Sandro except his manners."
+
+"That's exactly the idea I have about him," May persisted defiantly.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Aunt Maria resignedly. "Probably you'll never know him well
+enough to find out your mistake."
+
+Warnings pique curiosity as often as they arouse prudence.
+
+"I intend to know him much better if he'll let me," said May.
+
+"Oh, he'll let you." The old lady's gaze was very intent; she had by now
+made up her mind that this must be Sandro's Empress. Had she been
+omnipotent, she would at that moment have decreed that Sandro should
+never see his Empress again; she was quite clear that he and his Empress
+would not be good for one another. "I begin to hear them talking about
+him," she went on with a chuckle. "He's coming into fashion, he's to be
+the new man for a while. You London people love a new man just as you do
+a new craze. You're fine talkers too. I like your buzz. It's a great hum,
+hum, buzz, buzz. It turns some men's heads, but it only sharpens others'
+wits; it won't turn Sandro's head."
+
+"I'm glad you allow him some virtues."
+
+"Oh, if it's a virtue to look so straight forward to where you mean to
+get that nothing will turn your head away from it."
+
+"That's twisting your own words, Miss Quisante. I don't think he's that
+sort of man at all; he isn't the least your--your iron adventurer. He's
+full of emotion, of feeling, of--well, almost of poetry. Oh, not always
+good poetry, I know. But how funny that I should be defending him and you
+attacking him; it would be much more natural the other way round."
+
+"I don't see that. I know him better than you do. Now he's to champion
+the Church--or some such nonsense! What's Sandro got to do with your
+Church? What does he care about it?"
+
+"He cared about his subject the other evening; you must admit that."
+
+"Oh, his subject! Yes, he cares about it while it's his subject."
+
+May laughed. "I want to take just one liberty, Miss Quisante," she said.
+"May I? I want to tell you that I think you're a great deal more than
+half wrong about your nephew."
+
+"Even if I am, I'm right enough for practical purposes with the other
+part," said the obstinate old woman. She leant forward and spoke with a
+sudden bitter emphasis. "It's not all outside, he's wrong inside too."
+
+"It's too bad of you, oh, it really is," cried May indignantly. "You who
+ought to stand up for him and be his greatest friend!"
+
+"Oh, yes, I see! I've overshot my mark. I'm a blunderer."
+
+"Your mark? What mark? Why do you want to tell me about him at all?"
+
+"I don't," said Miss Quisante, folding her hands in her lap and assuming
+an air of resolute reticence. But her eyes dwelt now with an imperfectly
+disguised kindness on the tall fair girl who pleaded for justice and saw
+no justice in the answers that she got. But the more Aunt Maria inclined
+to like May Gaston, the more determined was she not to palter with truth,
+the more determined to have no hand in giving the girl a false idea of
+Sandro. So far as lay in her power, Sandro's Empress should know the
+whole truth about Sandro.
+
+The buzz of London, to which Miss Quisante referred as beginning to sound
+her nephew's name, revealed to the ear three tolerably distinct notes.
+There were the people who laughed and said the thing was no affair of
+theirs; this section was of course the largest, embracing all the
+naturally indifferent as well as the solid mass of the opposite political
+party. There were the people who were angry at Dick Benyon's interference
+and at his _protege's_ impudence; in the ranks of these were most of
+Dick's political comrades, together with their wives and daughters. Here
+the resentment was at the idea that there was any vacancy, actual or
+prospective, which could not be filled perfectly well without the
+intrusion of such a person as Quisante. Thirdly there was the small but
+gradually growing group which inclined to think that there was something
+in Dick's notions and a good deal in his friend's head. A reinforcement
+came no doubt from the persons who were naturally prone to love the new
+and took up Quisante as a welcome change, as something odd, with a
+flavour of the unknown and just a dash of the mystery-man about him.
+
+The Quisante-ites had undoubtedly something to say for themselves and
+something to show for their faith. Handicapped as he was by his
+sensational success at the Imperial League dinner, with its theatrical
+and faintly suspicious climax, Quisante had begun well in the House. He
+broke away from his mentor's advice; Dick had been for more sensation,
+for storming the House; Quisante rejected the idea and made a quiet,
+almost hesitating, entry on the scene. He displayed here a peculiarity
+which soon came to be remarked in him; on public occasions and in regard
+to public audiences he possessed a tact and a power of understanding the
+feelings of his company which entirely and even conspicuously failed him
+in private life. The House did not like being stormed, especially on the
+strength of an outside reputation; he addressed it modestly, bringing
+into play, however, resources with which he had not been credited--a
+touch of humour and a pretty turn of sarcasm. He knew his facts too, and
+disposed of contradictions with a Blue-book and a smile. The
+hypercritical were not silenced; Marchmont still found the smile oily,
+and his friends traced the humour to districts which they supposed to lie
+somewhere east of the London Hospital; but they were bound to admit
+sorrowfully that, although all this was true, it might not, under
+democratic institutions, prove fatal to a career.
+
+Dick Benyon was enthusiastic; he told his friend that he had scored
+absolutely off his own bat and that there was and could be no more
+question of help or obligation. He was rather surprised by a display of
+feeling on Quisante's part which seemed to indicate almost an excess of
+gratitude; but Quisante felt his foot on the ladder, and the wells of
+emotion were full to overflowing. Dick escaped in considerable
+embarrassment, telling himself that remarkable men could not be expected
+to behave just like other men, like his sort of man, but wishing they
+would. None the less he praised what he hardly liked, and the reputation
+of being a good friend was added to Quisante's credentials. Lastly, but
+far from least in importance, a story went the rounds that a very great
+veteran, who had taken a keen interest in Weston Marchmont, and
+designated him for high place in a future not remote, had recently warned
+him, in apparent jest indeed but with unmistakable significance, that it
+would not do to take things too easily, or let a rival obtain too long a
+start. There was nobody of whom the Statesman could be supposed to be
+thinking, except the dark horse that Dick Benyon had brought into the
+betting--Alexander Quisante! Such predictions from such quarters have no
+small power of self-verification; they predispose lesser men to a
+fatalistic acquiescence which smoothes the way of the prophecy.
+
+Marchmont, scorning the rival, was inclined to despise the dangers of the
+contest, but his supineness may have been in part due to the occupation
+of his mind by another interest. He had come to the conclusion that he
+wanted May Gaston for his wife and that she would accept his proposal. A
+few days before the Easter holidays began he betook himself to Lady
+Attlebridge's with the intention of settling the matter there and then.
+The purpose of his coming seemed to be divined; he was shown direct to
+May's own room, and found her there alone. She had been reading a letter
+and laid it down on a table by her; Marchmont could not help his eye
+catching the large printed address at the head of the sheet of paper,
+"Ashwood." Ashwood was Dick Benyon's country place. A moment later May
+explained the letter.
+
+"I've had a wail from Amy Benyon," she said. "She wants me to go to them
+for Easter and comfort her. Look what she writes: "You must come, dear. I
+must be helped through, I must have a refuge. How in the world I ever did
+such a thing I don't know! But I did and I can't help it now. He's
+coming! So you must come. We expect the Baxters and Mr. Morewood. But I
+want _you_.""
+
+"What has she done? Who's coming?" asked Marchmont.
+
+"Mr. Quisante."
+
+He paused for a moment before he said, "You won't go, I suppose?"
+
+"I must go if Amy wants me as much as that. Besides--well, perhaps it'll
+be interesting."
+
+A chill fell on Marchmont, and its influence spread to his companion.
+Here at least he had hoped to be rid of Quisante, to find a place where
+the man could not be met, and people to whom the man was as a friend
+impossible. May read his thoughts, but her purpose wavered. She liked him
+very much; that hot rebellious fit, which made her impatient of his
+limits, was not on her now. He had found her in a more reasonable normal
+mood, when his advantages pleaded hard for him, and the limits seemed
+figments of a disorderly transient fancy. Thus he had come happily, and
+success had been in the mood to kiss his standards.
+
+"I wonder you can endure the man in the same house with you," he said.
+
+She made no answer except to smile, and he spoke no more of Quisante. To
+him it seemed that his enemy passed then and there from thought, as his
+name disappeared from the conversation. But his own words had raised
+difficulties and turned the smooth path rough. They had renewed something
+of the rebellious fit and given fresh life to the disorderly fancies.
+They had roused her ready apprehensive pride, her swift resentment at the
+idea of having her friends or her associates chosen for her. She would
+have said most sincerely then that Marchmont was far more to her in her
+heart than Quisante was or could be, but neither from Marchmont nor from
+any man would she take orders to drop Quisante. While he opened his tale
+of love, her fingers played with the invitation to Ashwood and her eyes
+rested on Lady Richard's despairing declaration of the inevitable--"He's
+coming!"
+
+He almost won her; his soft "Can you love me?" went very near her heart.
+She wanted to answer "Yes" and felt sure that it would be in reality a
+true response, and that happiness would wait on and reward the decisive
+word. But she was held back by an unconquerable indecision, a refusal (as
+it seemed) of her whole being to be committed to the pledge. She had not
+resented the confidence of his wooing--she had given him some cause to be
+confident; she pitied and even hated the distress into which her doubt
+threw him. Yet she could do no more than say "I don't know yet." He moved
+away from her.
+
+"You'd better go away and leave me altogether," she said.
+
+"I won't do that. I can't."
+
+"I can say nothing else--I don't know yet. You must give me time."
+
+"Ah, you mean 'yes'!" His voice grew assured again and joyful.
+
+She weighed the words in which she answered him.
+
+"No. If I meant yes, I'd say it. I wouldn't shilly-shally. I simply don't
+know yet."
+
+He left her and paced the length of the room, frowning. Her hesitation
+puzzled him; he failed to trace its origin and fretted against a barrier
+that he felt but could not see. She sat silent, looking at him in a
+distressed fashion and restlessly fingering Lady Richard's invitation.
+She was no less troubled than he and almost as puzzled; for the feeling
+that held her back even while she wanted to go forward was vague,
+formless, empty of anything definite enough to lay hold of and bring
+forward as the plea that justified her wavering.
+
+"I ought to say no, since I can't say yes. This isn't fair to you," she
+murmured.
+
+He protested that anything was better than no, and his protest was
+manifestly eager and sincere; but a touch of resentment could not be kept
+out of his voice. She should have a reason to give him, something he
+could combat, disprove, or ridicule; she gave him no opening, he could
+not answer an objection that she would not formulate. He pressed this on
+her and she made no attempt to defend herself, merely repeating that she
+could not say yes now.
+
+"I've lost you, I suppose, and no doubt I shall be very sorry," she said.
+
+At that he came up to her again.
+
+"You haven't lost me and you never will," he said. "I'll come to you
+again before long. I think you're strange to-day, not quite yourself, not
+quite the old May. It's as if something had got between us. Well, I'll
+wait till it gets out of the way again."
+
+Not so much his words as his voice and his eyes told her of a love deeper
+in him and stronger than she had given him credit for; he lived so much
+in repression and exercised so careful a guard over any display of
+feeling. She liked the repression no less than the feeling and was again
+drawn towards him.
+
+"I wish I could," she murmured. "Honestly, I wish I could."
+
+He pressed her no more; if he had, she might possibly at last have given
+a reluctant assent. That he would not have, even had it been in his power
+to gain it.
+
+"I'll come back--after the holidays," he said.
+
+She looked up and met his glance.
+
+"Yes, after the holidays," she repeated absently.
+
+"You go to Ashwood?"
+
+There was a pause before she answered. It came into her mind suddenly
+that it would have been strange to go to Ashwood as Weston Marchmont's
+promised wife. Why she could not quite tell; perhaps because such a
+position would set her very much outside of all that was being thought
+and talked of there, indeed in a quasi-antagonism to it. Anyhow the
+position would make her feel quite differently towards it all.
+
+"Yes," she answered at last, and mustered a laugh as she added, "I'm not
+so particular as you, you know. And Amy wants me."
+
+"I wish you always did what people want you to," said he, smiling.
+
+Their parting was in this lighter vein, although on his side still tender
+and on hers penitent. In both was a consciousness of not understanding,
+of being somehow apart, of an inexplicable difficulty in taking one
+another's point of view. The solution of sympathy, the break that May had
+talked of, made itself apparent again. In spite of self-reproaches, her
+strongest feeling, when she was left alone, was of joy that her freedom
+still was hers.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER V.
+
+                          WHIMSY-WHAMSIES.
+
+
+At Ashwood the sun was sinking after a bright April afternoon. Mrs.
+Baxter sat in a chair on the lawn and discoursed wisdom to May Gaston and
+Morewood. The rest of the party had gone for a walk to the top of what
+Lady Richard called "Duty Hill"; it was the excursion obligatory on all
+guests.
+
+"The real reason," remarked Mrs. Baxter, who was making a garment--she
+was under spiritual contract to make two a month--"why the Dean hasn't
+risen higher is because he always has some whimsy-whamsy in his head."
+
+"What are they? I never have 'em," said Morewood, relighting his pipe.
+
+"You never have anything else," said Mrs. Baxter in a brief but
+sufficient aside. "And, my dear," she continued to May, "what you want in
+a bishop is reliability."
+
+"The only thing I want in a bishop is absence," grunted Morewood.
+
+"Reliability?" murmured May, half assenting, half questioning.
+
+"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Baxter, biting her thread. "Reliability. I
+shall finish this petticoat to-morrow unless I have to drive with Lady
+Richard. You don't want him to be original, or to do much, except his
+confirmations and so on, of course; but you do want to be sure that he
+won't fly out at something or somebody. Dan got a reputation for not
+being quite reliable. I don't know how, because I haven't time to go into
+his notions. But there it was. Somebody told the Prime Minister and he
+crossed out Dan's name and put in John Wentworth's."
+
+Morewood yawned obtrusively. "What a shame!" May murmured at random.
+
+"It's just the same with a husband," Mrs. Baxter observed.
+
+"Only it's rather more difficult to scratch out his name and put in John
+Wentworth's," Morewood suggested.
+
+May laughed. "But anyhow the Dean's a good husband, isn't he, Mrs.
+Baxter?"
+
+"Oh, yes, my dear. The same men very seldom fly out over notions and over
+women."
+
+Morewood raised himself to a sitting posture and observed solemnly,
+
+"The whole history of science, art, and literature contradicts that last
+observation."
+
+Mrs. Baxter looked at him for a brief moment and went on with the
+petticoat. May interpreted her look.
+
+"So much the worse for the whole history!" she laughed. But a moment
+later she went on, "I think I rather like whimsy-whamsies, though."
+
+"I should think you did," said Morewood.
+
+"A man ought to have a few," May suggested.
+
+"A sort of trimming to the leg of mutton? Only take care the mutton's
+there!"
+
+"Oh, not the mustard without the beef!" cried May.
+
+"Now there's Canon Grinling," said Mrs. Baxter. "That's the man I
+admire."
+
+"Pray tell us about him," urged Morewood.
+
+"He's content to preach in his turn and work his parish."
+
+"How much better than working his head!"
+
+"And he'll be a bishop--at least."
+
+"Is there anything worse?" growled Morewood disconsolately.
+
+Mrs. Baxter never became angry with him; she turned a fresh side of the
+petticoat, smiled sedately, and went on with her work.
+
+"We had whimsy-whamsies last night, hadn't we?" asked May.
+
+"I went to bed," said Morewood.
+
+"But Jenkins in the next parish, who has eight children, must take up
+with the Salvation Army. So there's an end of him," continued Mrs.
+Baxter. "Not that I pity him--only her."
+
+"They talked till two. I sat up, looking plainer and plainer every
+minute."
+
+"Who was talking?"
+
+"Oh, the Dean and Dick." She paused and added, "And later on Mr.
+Quisante."
+
+"Quisante grows more and more anomalous every day. It's monstrous of a
+man to defy one's power of judgment as he does."
+
+"Does he defy yours?"
+
+"Absolutely. And I hate it."
+
+"I rather like it. You know so well what most people are like in
+half-an-hour."
+
+"I'm splendidly forward," remarked Mrs. Baxter, "This isn't an April one.
+I've done them, and this is my first May."
+
+It was impossible not to applaud and sympathise, for it was no later than
+the 27th of April. The friendly task performed, Morewood went on,
+
+"You're friends again, aren't you?"
+
+"Well, partly. He spoke to me last night for almost the first time."
+
+"What was the quarrel?"
+
+"I told him his manners were bad; and he proved how right I was by
+getting into a temper." She was silent a moment. Morewood saw her smile
+and then frown in apparent vexation. Then she looked down at him suddenly
+and said, "But then--if you'd heard him last night!"
+
+"There it is again!" said Morewood. "That's what annoys me so. In common
+with most of mankind, I like to be able to label a man and put him in his
+compartment."
+
+"That's just what you can't do with Mr. Quisante."
+
+A loud merry boyish laugh sounded from the shrubbery behind him. Then
+Lady Richard came out, attended by young Fred Wentworth, son of that John
+whose name had been put in when the Dean's was scratched out owing to a
+suspicion of whimsy-whamsies. Fred was a lively fellow, whose trinity of
+occupations consisted of shooting, polo, and flirting; they are set down
+in his own order of merit; by profession he was a soldier, and just now
+he adored Lady Richard hopelessly; he was tall, handsome, and no more
+steady than the sons of ordinary men.
+
+"We gave them the slip beautifully, didn't we?" he was asking in
+exultation. "Think they're still on the top of the hill, jawing, Lady
+Richard?"
+
+"I don't mind how long they stay there," she answered, as she came across
+to the group on the lawn, a dainty youthful little figure, in her white
+frock and straw hat. "And how have you three been amusing yourselves?"
+she inquired. "I declare my head aches, Fred," she complained. "Now is
+the Church to swallow the State, or the other way round, or are they to
+swallow one another, or what?"
+
+"Such a fine day too!" observed Mrs. Baxter. Morewood burst into a laugh.
+
+"To waste it on whimsy-whamsies!" cried May, joining in his mirth.
+
+She looked so handsome in her merriment that Fred's eyes dwelt on her for
+a moment, a new notion showing in their pleasant expanse of blue
+simplicity. But loyalty's the thing--and a pleasant thing too when Lady
+Richard stood for it. Besides May Gaston was rather serious as a rule and
+given to asking questions; she might be able to flirt though; she just
+might--if there had happened to be anybody for her to flirt with; he
+pitied her a little because there was not.
+
+"Mrs. Baxter," said Morewood suddenly, "have you ever thought what would
+happen if you stopped making petticoats?" She did not answer. "It
+illustrates," he went on, "the absurd importance we attach to ourselves.
+The race would get itself clothed somehow, even as Church and State will
+go on, although they fail to settle that question of the swallowing on
+the top of the hill."
+
+May alone was listening. "Don't you think it all makes any difference?"
+she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Not enough to stop enjoying one's self about, or to take any risks for."
+
+"I disbelieve you with my whole heart and soul; and, what's more, you
+don't believe yourself," she said. "To take risks is what we were given
+life for, I believe."
+
+"Whimsy-whamsies!" he jeered, jerking his thumb warningly towards Mrs.
+Baxter.
+
+To May it seemed curious how an utter absence of speculation and an
+honest engrossment in everyday cares, hopes, and duties appeared to
+produce an attitude of mind similar in many ways to that caused by an
+extensive survey of thought and a careful detachment of spirit from the
+pursuits of the vulgar. The expression was different; the man who was now
+so much in her thoughts, Weston Marchmont, would not have denounced
+whimsy-whamsies. He would have claimed an open mind and protested that he
+was ready to entertain every notion on its merits. But temper and taste
+led to the same end as ignorance and simplicity; the philosopher and the
+housewife met on a common ground of disapproval and disdain. Mrs. Baxter
+kept her house and made petticoats. Marchmont read his books, mixed with
+his world, and did his share in his obvious duty of governing the
+country. Misty dreams, great cloudy visions, vague ideals, were forsworn
+of both; they were all whimsy-whamsies, the hardly excusable occupation
+of an idle day in the country. Was such a coincidence of opinion
+conclusive? Perhaps. But then, as she had hinted to Morewood, what of
+life? Was it not conclusive as to the merits of that also? Suddenly Fred
+Wentworth's voice broke across her meditation.
+
+"If you asked me what I wanted," he said in a tone of great seriousness,
+"upon my honour I don't know what I should say, except another pony." He
+paused and added, "A real good 'un, you know, Lady Richard."
+
+You might trust in God in an almost Quietist fashion (nothing less was at
+the bottom of Mrs. Baxter's homely serenity), you might exhaust
+philosophy and the researches of the wise, or you might merely be in
+excellent health and spirits. Any of these three seemed enough to exclude
+that painful reaching out to dim unlikely possibilities which must in her
+mind henceforward be nicknamed whimsy-whamsies. But to May's temper the
+question about life came up again. She swayed between the opposing sides,
+as she had swayed between yes and no when Marchmont challenged her with
+his love.
+
+Lady Richard's verdict about Quisante--she gave it with an air of
+laboured reasonableness--was that he proved worse on the whole than even
+she had anticipated. This pessimistic view was due in part to the
+constant and wearing difficulty of getting Fred Wentworth to be civil to
+him; yet May Gaston was half-inclined to fall in with it. The attitude of
+offence which he had at first maintained towards her was marked by
+peevishness, not by dignity, and when it was relaxed his old excessive
+politeness revived in full force. He had few 'moments' either; and the
+one reported to her with enthusiasm by Dick Benyon took place on Duty
+Hill while she was gossiping on the lawn. Disappointed in the
+half-conscious anticipation which had brought her to Ashwood, she began
+to veer towards the obvious, towards safety, and towards Weston
+Marchmont. He had allowed himself one letter, not urging her, but very
+gracefully and feelingly expressed. As she walked through the village,
+the telegraph-office tempted her; her life could be settled for sixpence,
+and there would be no need of further thought or trouble. She was again
+held back by a rather impalpable influence, by a vague unwillingness to
+cut herself off (as she would by such a step) from the mental stir which,
+beneath the apparent quiet of country-house life, permeated Ashwood. The
+stir was there, though it defied definition; it was not due to Dick or
+the Dean, though they shared in it; it was the mark of Quisante's
+presence, the atmosphere he carried with him. She recognised this with a
+mixture of feelings; she was ashamed to dwell on his small faults in face
+of such a thing; she was afraid to find how strong his attraction grew in
+spite of the intolerable drawbacks. Wavering again, she could not decide
+whether his faults were fatal defects or trifling foibles.
+
+She saw that the Dean shared her doubts and her puzzle. He had a little
+trick, an involuntary and unconscious shake of the head which indicated,
+as her study of it told her, not a mere difference of opinion, but a sort
+of moral distaste for what was said; it reminded her of a dog shaking his
+coat to get rid of a splash of dirty water. She came to watch for it when
+Alexander Quisante was talking, and to find that it agreed wonderfully
+well with the invisible movements of her own mind; it came when the man
+was petty, or facetious on untimely occasions, or when he betrayed
+blindness to the finer shades of right and wrong. But for all this the
+Dean did not give up Quisante; for all this he and Dick Benyon clung to
+their scheme and to the man who was to carry it out. In her urgent desire
+for guidance she took the Dean for a walk and tried to draw out his
+innermost opinions. He showed some surprise at her interest.
+
+"He's the last man I should have thought you'd care to know about, Lady
+May," he said.
+
+"That can be only because you think me stupid," she retorted, smiling.
+
+"No! But I thought you'd be stopped _in limine_--on the threshold, you
+know."
+
+"I see the threshold; and, yes, I don't like it. But tell me about the
+house too."
+
+"I've not seen it all," smiled the Dean. "Well, to drop our metaphor, I
+think Mr. Quisante has a wonderfully acute intellect."
+
+"Oh, yes, yes."
+
+"And hardly a wonderfully, but a rather noticeably, blunt conscience.
+Many men have, you'll say, I know. But most of the men we meet have
+substitutes."
+
+"Substitutes for conscience?" May laughed reprovingly at her companion.
+
+"Taste, tradition, the rules of society, what young men call 'good
+form.'"
+
+"Ah, yes. And he hasn't?"
+
+"His bringing up hasn't given them to him. He might learn them."
+
+"Who from?"
+
+"One would have hoped from our host, but I see no signs of it." The Dean
+paused, shaking his head "A woman might teach him." He paused again
+before adding with emphasis, "But I should be very sorry for her."
+
+"Why?" The brief question was asked with averted eyes.
+
+"Because the only woman who could do it must be the sort of woman
+who--whose teeth would be set on edge by him every day till the
+process--the quite uncertain process--was complete."
+
+"Yes, she'd have to be that," murmured May Gaston.
+
+"On the whole I think she'd have an unhappy life, and very likely fail.
+But I also think that it would be the only way." His round face broke
+again into its cheerful smile. "We shall have to make the best of him as
+he is, Lady May," he ended. "Heaven forbid that I should encourage any
+woman to the task!"
+
+"I certainly don't think you seem likely to," she said with a laugh. "It
+seems to come to this: his manners are bad and his morals are worse."
+
+"Yes, I think so."
+
+"But, as Dick Benyon would say, so were Napoleon's."
+
+"Exactly, and, as we know, Napoleon's wife was not to be envied."
+
+May Gaston was silent for a moment; then she said meditatively, "Oh,
+don't you think so?", and fell again into a long silence. The Dean did
+not break it; his thoughts had wandered from the hypothetical lady who
+was to redeem Quisante to the realities of the great Crusade.
+
+There seemed to May something a little inhuman in the Dean's attitude,
+and indeed in the way in which everybody at Ashwood regarded Quisante.
+Not even Dick Benyon was altogether free from this reproach, in spite of
+his enthusiasm and his resulting blindness to Quisante's lesser, but not
+less galling, faults. Not even to Dick was he a real friend; none of them
+took him or offered to take him into their inner lives, or allowed him to
+share their deepest sympathies. Perhaps this was only to treat him as he
+deserved to be treated; if he asked nothing but a mutual usefulness and
+accommodation, that they should use him and he should rise by serving
+them, neither party was deceived and neither had any cause to complain.
+But if after all the man was like most men, if his chilly childhood and
+his lonely youth had left him with any desire for unreserved
+companionship, for true friendship, or for love, then to acquiesce in his
+bad manners and his worse morals, to be content (as the Dean said) to
+make the best of him--out of him would have been a more sincere form of
+expression--as he was, seemed in some sort cruelty; it was like growing
+rich out of the skill of your craftsmen and yet taking no interest in
+their happiness or welfare. It was to use him only as a means, and to be
+content in turn to be to him only a means; such a relative position
+excluded true human intercourse, and, it appeared to May, must intensify
+the faults from which it arose. Even here, in this house, Quisante was
+almost a stranger; the rest were easy with one another, their presence
+was natural and came of itself; he alone was there for a purpose, came
+from outside, and required to be accounted for. If the talk with the Dean
+confirmed apprehensions already existing, on the other hand it raised a
+new force of sympathy and a fresh impulse to kindness. But the sympathy
+and the apprehensions could make no treaty; fierce war waged between
+them.
+
+That night the turn of events served Quisante. He seemed ill and tired,
+yet he had flashes of brilliancy. Again it was made plain that, all said
+and done, his was the master mind there; even Lady Richard had to listen
+and Fred Wentworth to wonder unwillingly where the fellow got his
+notions. After dinner he talked to them, and they gave him all their ears
+until he chose to cease and sank back wearied in his chair. But then came
+the contrast. The Dean went to the library, Lady Richard strolled out of
+doors with Fred, Mrs. Baxter withdrew into seclusion with a novel and a
+petticoat, Dick Benyon asked May to walk in the garden with him, and when
+she refused went off to play billiards with Morewood. May had pleaded
+letters to write and sat down to the task. The man who a little while ago
+had been the centre of attention was left alone. He wandered about idly
+for a few moments, then dropped into a chair, seeming too tired to read,
+looking fretful, listless, solitary and sad. She watched him furtively
+for some time from behind the tall sides of the old-fashioned escritoire;
+he sat very still, stretched out, frowning, pale. Suddenly she rose and
+crossed the room.
+
+"It's too much trouble to write letters," she said. "Are you inclined for
+a stroll, Mr. Quisante?"
+
+He sprang up, a sudden gleam darting into his eyes. She was afraid he
+would make some ornate speech, but perhaps he was startled into
+simplicity, perhaps only at a loss; he stammered out no more than
+"Thanks, very much," and followed her through the doorway on to the
+gravel-walk. For a little while she did not speak, then she said,
+
+"It's good of you to be friends with me again. I was very impertinent
+that night after your speech. I don't know what made me do it."
+
+He did not answer, and she turned to find his eyes fixed intently on her
+face.
+
+"We are friends again, aren't we?" she asked rather nervously; she knew
+that she risked a renewal of the flirtation, and if it were again what it
+had been her friendship could scarcely survive the trial. "I shouldn't
+have said it," she went on, "if I hadn't--I mean, if your speech hadn't
+seemed so great to me. But you forgive me, don't you?"
+
+"Oh yes, Lady May. I know pretty well what you think of me." His lips
+shut obstinately for a moment. "But I shall go my way and do my work all
+the same--good manners or bad, you know."
+
+"Those are very bad ones," she said, with a little laugh. Then she grew
+grave and went on imploringly, "Don't take it like that. You talk as if
+we--I don't mean myself, I mean all of us--were enemies, people you had
+to fight and beat. Don't think of us like that. We want to be your
+friends, indeed we do."
+
+"For whom are you speaking?" he asked in a low hard voice.
+
+She glanced at him. Had he divined the thought which the Dean's talk had
+put into her head? Did he feel himself a mere tool, always an outsider,
+in the end friendless? If he discerned this truth, no words of hers could
+throw his keen-scented mind off the track. She fell back on simple
+honesty, on the strength of a personal assurance and a personal appeal.
+
+"At any rate I speak for myself," she said. "I can answer for myself. I
+want to be friends."
+
+"In spite of my manners?" He was bitter and defiant still.
+
+"They grow worse every minute; and your morals are no better, I'm told."
+
+"I daresay not," said Quisante with a short laugh.
+
+"Oh, say you won't be friends, if you don't want to! Be simple. There, I
+say it again. Be simple."
+
+Lady Richard's merry laugh rang through the garden, and a brusque "Damn
+it!" of Morewood's floated out from the open window of the billiard-room.
+There was an odd contrast to this cheerful levity in the man's pale drawn
+face as he looked into May Gaston's eyes.
+
+"Do you really mean what you say?" he asked. "Or are you only trying to
+be kind, to put me at my ease?"
+
+"It's nobody's fault but your own that you're not always at your ease,"
+she replied. The rest she let pass; when she asked him to walk with her
+she had only been trying to be kind, and she had been fearful of what her
+kindness might entail on her. But things went well; he was not flirting
+and he was not acting; his manners, if still bad, were just now at least
+not borrowed, they were home-grown.
+
+"I am at my ease," he told her. "At least, I was till----" He hesitated,
+and then went on slowly, "Don't you suppose I've been thinking about what
+you said?"
+
+"I hope not; it wasn't worth it."
+
+"It was. But how can I change?" His voice had a touch of despair as well
+as of defiance. "I don't see what you mean; I don't feel what you mean.
+Yes, and you talk of morals too. Well, don't I know that every now and
+then I--I don't see those either?" He paused. "A man must get on as well
+as he can with what he's got," he resumed. "If he's only got one eye, he
+must learn to be sharper than other men in looking round."
+
+They walked on in silence for some way. His pride and his recognition of
+his defects, his defiance and his pleading for himself, combined to touch
+her heart, and she could not at the moment speak to him more about them.
+And to find all that so near the surface, so eager for utterance, ready
+to break out at the least encouragement, at the first sign of sympathy!
+For it had not come home to her yet that another might have spoken to him
+as she had, but found no response and opened the gates to no confidence;
+she had not guessed what Aunt Maria had about the Empress among women.
+
+"You're ill too," she said.
+
+"No, not for me," he answered. "I'm pretty well for me."
+
+"Are you never really well?"
+
+"My body's not much better than the other things. But I must use that
+too, as long as it'll last." There was no appeal for pity in his voice;
+defiance was still uppermost. May felt that she must not let him see that
+she pitied him, either for his bad body, or his bad manners, or his bad
+morals, or his want of friends. He thought he had as much to give as to
+receive. She smiled for a moment. But swift came the question--Was he
+wrong? But whether he were in fact right or wrong, it was harder to deal
+with him on the basis of this equality than to stoop to him in the mere
+friendliness of compassion. The compassion touched him only, to accept
+the equality was to make admissions about herself.
+
+He was very silent and quiet; this might be due to illness or fatigue.
+But he was also curiously free from tricks, simple, not exhibiting
+himself. These were the signs of one of his moments; but what brought
+about a moment now? A moment needed a great subject, a spur to his
+imagination, an appeal to his deep emotions, a theme, an ideal. The
+moments had not seemed to May things that would enter into or have any
+concern with private life and intimate talks; they belonged to Dick
+Benyon's dark horse, not to the mere man Alexander Quisante. Or had she a
+little misunderstood the mere man? The thought crossed her mind that,
+even if she adopted this conclusion and contrived to come to a better
+understanding of him, it would be impossible to make the rest of the
+world, of the world in which she lived and to which she clung, see
+anything of what she saw. They would laugh if her new position were a
+passing whim; they would be scornful and angry if it were anything more.
+
+Suddenly Quisante spoke. What he said was not free from consciousness of
+self, from that perpetual presence of self to self which is common enough
+in men of great ability and ambition, and yet never ceases to be a flaw;
+but he said it soberly enough; there were no flourishes.
+
+"You can't be half-friends with me," he said. "I must be taken as I am,
+good and bad. You must let me alone, or take me for better for worse."
+
+May smiled at the phrase he had happened on and its familiar
+associations--surely so out of place here. But she followed his meaning
+and appreciated his seriousness. She could answer him neither by an only
+half-sincere assurance that she was ready to be entire friends, nor yet
+by a joking evasion of his point.
+
+"Yes, I see: I expect that is so," she said in a troubled voice; it was
+so very hard to take him for worse, and it was rather hard to resolve to
+make no effort at taking him for better. She forced a laugh, as she said,
+"I'll think about it, Mr. Quisante."
+
+As she spoke, she raised her eyes to his; a low, hardly audible
+exclamation escaped her lips before she was conscious of it. If ever a
+man spoke plainly without words what was in his soul, Quisante spoke it
+then. She could not miss the meaning of his eyes; all unprepared as she
+was, it came home to her in a minute with a shock of wonder that forbade
+either pain or pleasure and seemed to leave her numb. Now she saw how
+truly she, no less than the others, had treated him as an outsider, as a
+tool, as something to be used, not as one of their own world. For she had
+never thought of his falling in love with her, and had never considered
+him in that point of view at all. Yet he had, and here lay the reason why
+he flirted no more, and why he would have her sympathy only on even
+terms. Here also, it seemed, was the reason why his tricks were
+forgotten, why he was simple and direct; here was the incitement to
+imagination, the ideal, the passion that had power to fire and purge his
+soul.
+
+"We must go in," she whispered in a shaking voice. "We must go in, Mr.
+Quisante."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VI.
+
+                            ON DUTY HILL.
+
+
+Another week had gone by, and, although nothing very palpable had
+happened, there was a sort of vague scare in the house-party. It touched
+everybody, affecting them in different ways according to their characters,
+but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible
+and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in
+placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's
+cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly
+so serious. Lady Richard's alarm was the most outspoken, and her dismay
+the most clamorous; yet perhaps in Dick Benyon himself was the strongest
+fear. For if that did happen which seemed to be happening beneath the
+incredulous gaze of their eyes, who but he was responsible, to whose
+account save his could the result be laid? He had brought the man into
+the circle, into the house, into the knowledge of his friends; but for
+him Quisante might have been carving a career far away, or have given up
+any idea of one at all.
+
+More than this, Dick, seeking approval and sympathy, had looked round for
+open and intelligent souls who would share his interest, his hopes, and
+his enthusiasm, and on no soul had he spent more pains or built higher
+anticipations than May Gaston's. She was to sympathise, to share the
+hopes and to understand the enthusiasm. Had he not asked her to dinner,
+had he not brought her to the Imperial League banquet, had he not incited
+Lady Richard to have her at Ashwood? And now she spread this scare
+through the house; she outran the limits--all the reasonable limits--of
+interest, she did far more than ever he had asked of her, she cast
+reflections on his judgment by pushing it to extremes whither it had
+never been meant to stretch. She had been bidden to watch Alexander
+Quisante, to admire his great moments, to see a future for him, and to
+applaud the discerning eye which had seen that future first. But who had
+bidden her make a friend of the man, take him into the inner circle,
+treat him as one who belonged to the group of her intimates, to the
+company of her equals and of those with whom she had grown up? Almost
+passionately Dick disclaimed the responsibility for this; with no less
+heat his wife forced it on him; relentlessly the course of events seemed
+to charge him with it.
+
+What would happen he did not know; none of them at Ashwood professed to
+know; they refused to forecast the worst. But what had actually happened
+was that Quisante was undoubtedly in love with May Gaston, and that May
+Gaston was no less certainly wrapped up in Quisante. The difference of
+terms was fondly clung to; and indeed she showed no signs of love as love
+is generally understood; she displayed only an open preference for his
+society and an engrossed interest in him. It was bad enough; who could
+tell when it might become worse? "I will buy with you, sell with you,
+talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with
+you, drink with you, nor pray with you." Allowing for difference of times
+and customs, that had been the attitude of all towards Quisante; a
+caste-feeling, almost a race-feeling, dictated it and kept it alive and
+strong under all superficial alliance and outward friendliness. But May
+had seen the barrier only to throw it down in a passion of scorn for its
+narrowness and an impulse of indignation at its cruelty. If she had gone
+so far, he was bold who dared to say that she would not go farther, or
+would set a limit to her advance on the path that the rest of them had
+never trodden.
+
+"At any rate it shan't happen here," said Lady Richard. "I should never
+be able to look her mother in the face again."
+
+"It won't happen anywhere," Dick protested. "But you can't turn him out,
+you know."
+
+"I can't unless I absolutely literally do. He won't see that he isn't
+wanted."
+
+"No; and he may be excused if he thinks he is--by May Gaston at all
+events."
+
+The subject was one to be discussed between husbands and wives, Dick and
+Lady Richard, Mrs. Baxter and the Dean, rather than in any more public
+fashion, but the unexpressed thought pervaded every conversation, and was
+strongest when the presence of the persons concerned forbade even
+indirect reference. Once or twice Morewood broke into open comment to
+Lady Richard; he puzzled her rather, and did not console her at all.
+
+"I know why you object and how silly your grounds are," he said. "It's
+snobbery in you, you know. Now in me it's good sound sense. Because in
+the first place, if I were ten years younger, and ten times richer, and
+rather more of a man, I should like to marry her myself; and in the
+second place I'm not sure Quisante hasn't forged, or isn't about to
+forge, a cheque for a million."
+
+"Don't talk about it," shuddered little Lady Richard. "She can't care for
+him, she can't, you know."
+
+"Certainly not, in the sentimental sense that you women attach to that
+very weak form of expression."
+
+"And I'm sure there's nothing else to tempt her."
+
+"You'll be laying down what does and doesn't tempt me next."
+
+"I've known her since she was a child."
+
+"There's nothing that produces so many false judgments of people."
+
+Lady Richard was far too prostrate to accept any challenge.
+
+"You do hate it as much as I do, don't you?" she implored.
+
+"Quite," said he with restrained intensity. "But if you ask me, I think
+she'll do it."
+
+A pause followed. "Fred Wentworth must have been waiting ever so long for
+me," Lady Richard murmured apologetically, though an apology to Morewood
+could not soothe Fred. Her thoughts were busy, and a resolve was forming
+in her mind. "I shall ask Mrs. Baxter to speak to her," she announced at
+last.
+
+"That'll be amusing if it's nothing else. I should like to be there."
+
+Mrs. Baxter was by no means unwilling to help. She was mother to a large
+family and had seen all her children creditably married; such matters lay
+well within the sphere of legitimate feminine activity as she conceived
+it. Of course the Dean told her she had better leave the thing alone, but
+it was evident that this was no more than a disclaimer of responsibility
+in case her efforts did more harm than good.
+
+Mrs. Baxter advanced on approved and traditional lines. She slid into the
+special topic from a general survey of matrimonial desirability; May did
+not shy, but seemed ready to listen. Mrs. Baxter ignored the possibility
+of any serious purpose on May's side and pointed out with motherly
+gentleness that her impulsive interest in Quisante might possibly be
+misunderstood by him and give rise to an idea absolutely remote from any
+which it was May's intention to arouse. Then she would give pain;
+wouldn't it be better gradually, not roughly or rudely but by slow
+degrees, to diminish the time she spent with Quisante and the attention
+she bestowed on him? Mrs. Baxter's remonstrance, if somewhat
+conventional, yet was artistic in its way.
+
+But May Gaston laughed; it was all very familiar, sounded very old, and
+was ludicrously wide of the mark. She had not been careless, she had not
+suffered from the dangerous stupidity of ultra-maidenly blindness, she
+knew quite well how Quisante felt. Accordingly she would not acquiesce in
+Mrs. Baxter's diplomatic ignoring of the only material point--how she
+felt herself. Of course if all Mrs. Baxter meant to convey was her own
+disapproval of the idea,--well, she conveyed so much. But then nobody
+needed to be told of that; it was quite obvious and it was not important;
+it was an insignificant atom in the great inevitable mass of disapproval
+which any marked liking for Quisante (May shrank from even thinking of
+stronger terms) must arouse. She had far too much understanding of the
+disapproval and far too much sympathy with it to underrate the probable
+extent and depth of it; to a half of herself she was with it, heart and
+soul; to a half of herself the impulse that drove her towards Quisante
+was something hardly rational and wholly repulsive. What purpose, then,
+did Mrs. Baxter's traditional motherliness serve?
+
+There was one person with whom she wished to talk, who might, she
+thought, help her to understand herself and thus to guide her steps. For
+every day it became more and more obvious that the matter would have to
+be faced and ended one way or the other. Quisante was not patient, and he
+would not be dealt with by way of favour. And she herself was in a
+turmoil and a contradiction of feeling which she summed up antithetically
+by declaring that she disliked him more every hour he was there and
+missed him more every hour he was not; or, to adopt the Dean's metaphor,
+his presence set her teeth on edge and his absence made her feel as if
+she had nothing to eat. Morewood might help her; he would at least
+understand something of how she felt, if she could summon up courage to
+talk to him; they were old friends.
+
+One afternoon Quisante had been sitting with them on the lawn and, going
+off to walk with Dick, left them alone together. Quisante had not been in
+a happy vein; he had been trying to be light and flippant, and gossiping
+about people; here, where good taste makes the whole difference between
+what is acceptable and what is odious, was not the field for him.
+Morewood had growled and May had flinched several times. She sat looking
+after Quisante with troubled puzzled eyes.
+
+"How funnily people are mixed!" she murmured, more to herself than her
+companion. Then she turned to him and said with a laugh, "How you hate
+him, don't you?"
+
+"By all the nature of things you ought to hate him much more."
+
+"Yes," she agreed. "But do you think that's the only way to look at
+people, any more than it is at books? You like or dislike a novel,
+perhaps; but you don't like or dislike--oh, what shall I say? Gibbon's
+Roman Empire. There you admire or don't admire; or rather you study or
+neglect; because, if you study, you must admire. Don't think me learned;
+it's only an illustration."
+
+"Gibbon's a duty," said Morewood, "but I'm not clear that Alexander
+Quisante is."
+
+"Oh, no; exactly the opposite; for me at least."
+
+"Is he then a curriculum?"
+
+"He's partly a curriculum, and partly--I don't know--a taste for strong
+drink perhaps." She laughed reluctantly, adding, "I'm being absurd, I
+know."
+
+"In talk or in conduct?"
+
+"Both, Mr. Morewood. I can only see him in metaphors. I once thought of
+him as a mountain range; that's fine-sounding and dignified, isn't it?
+But now I'm humbler in my fancies; I think of him as a forest--as the
+bush, you know, full of wretched underwood that you keep tumbling over,
+but with splendid trees (I don't know whether there are in the bush,
+really) and every now and then a beautiful open space or a stately
+vista."
+
+"From all this riot of your fancy," said Morewood grimly, "one only thing
+emerges quite plainly."
+
+"Does even one thing?"
+
+"Yes. That you think about Quisante a mighty lot."
+
+"Oh, yes. Of course I do, a mighty lot," she admitted, laughing. "But you
+aren't very much more useful than Mrs. Baxter, who told me that my
+innocent heedlessness might give Mr. Quisante pain. I oughtn't to have
+told you that, but it was rather funny. I'm sure she's said it to all the
+Baxter girls in turn, and about all the girls that all the Baxter boys
+were ever in love with."
+
+"Possibly Mrs. Baxter only perceives the wretched underwood."
+
+"Inevitably," said May.
+
+"For heaven's sake don't drift into thinking that you're the only person
+who can understand him. Once think that about anybody and you're his
+slave."
+
+"Perhaps I'm the only person who takes the trouble. I don't claim genius,
+only diligence."
+
+"Well, you're very diligent," Morewood grunted.
+
+She sat looking straight in front of her for a few moments in silence,
+while Morewood admired the curve of her chin and the moulding of her
+throat.
+
+"I feel," she said in a low voice and slowly, "as if I must see what
+becomes of him and as if it ought to be seen at close quarters."
+
+Then Morewood spoke with deliberate plainness.
+
+"You know better than I do that he's not of your class; I mean in
+himself, not merely where he happens to come from. And for my part I'm
+not sure that he's an honest man, and I don't think he's a high-minded
+one."
+
+"Do you believe people are bound to be always just what they are now?"
+she asked.
+
+"Thinking you can improve them is the one thing more dangerous to
+yourself than thinking you've a special gift for understanding them. To
+be quite plain, both generally end in love-affairs and, what's more,
+unhappy love-affairs."
+
+"Oh, I'm not in love with Mr. Quisante. You're going back to your narrow
+loving-hating theory."
+
+"Hum. I'm inclined to think that nature shares my narrowness."
+
+If May got small comfort from this conversation, Morewood got less, and
+the rest of the party, judging from what he let drop about his
+impressions of May's state of mind, none at all. Lady Richard was of
+opinion that a crisis approached and re-echoed her cry, "Not here
+anyhow!" But Quisante's demeanour at once confirmed her fears and ignored
+her protest. He had many faults and weaknesses, but he was not the man to
+shrink from a big stake and a great throw. His confidence in his powers
+was the higher owing to his blindness to his defects. May Gaston had
+indeed opened his eyes to some degree, but here again, as she showed him
+continued favour, he found good excuse for dwelling on the interest which
+inspired rather than on the frankness which characterised her utterance.
+She had bidden him be himself; then to her that was a thing worth being.
+As he believed himself able to conquer all external obstacles in his
+path, so he vaguely supposed that he could overcome and obliterate
+anything there might be wrong in himself, or at any rate that he could so
+outweigh it by a more prodigal display of his gifts as to reduce it to
+utter insignificance; try as he might to see him self as she saw him, he
+could not fully understand the gravity of her objections. And anyhow,
+grave as she thought them, she was his friend; at the cost of defying,
+perhaps of losing, her friends, she elected to be his friend.
+
+To the appeal of this generosity his emotions responded passionately; now
+he worshipped his Empress among women for more than her grace, her
+stateliness, or her beauty; he loved her for her courage and her loyalty.
+There seemed nothing that he would not do for her; it did not, however,
+occur to him that perhaps the one thing he could do for her was to leave
+her. But short of this self-sacrifice--and to that even he might have
+risen had anyone pointed him the way--he was in just that state of
+exalted feeling which made him at his best, cured him of his tricks for
+the time being, and gave him the simplicity whose absence marred his
+ordinary hours. He always rose to the occasion, Dick Benyon maintained;
+and to this great occasion he came marvellously near to rising. This is
+not to say that he was altogether in the temper of a hero of romance. He
+loved the lady, but he loved the victory too, the report of it, the
+_eclat_, the talk it would make.
+
+The tendency of events might seem to justify his growing hopes and almost
+to excuse confidence, but May's mood, had he seen it fully, would have
+rebuked him. She hung doubtful. She had succeeded, by the help of her
+far-fetched metaphors, in describing to Morewood the nature of the
+attraction which Quisante exercised over her and of the force which drew
+her on; but to Morewood she had said nothing of the opposing influences.
+She had sent no letter to Marchmont, she had not yet refused to become
+his wife. Although she recognised the unfairness of this treatment of him
+she could not compel her hand to the writing of the letter; for Marchmont
+came to personify to her all that she lost, that at least she risked, if
+she yielded to her new impulse. Thus the hold which her liking for him,
+their old acquaintance, and all the obvious advantages gave him was
+further strengthened. Leaving on one side his position and the excellence
+of the match, things which now seemed to her less important, and coming
+to the more intimate and personal aspect of the matter, she realised with
+a pang how much Marchmont pleased her; he never offended her taste or
+jarred on her feelings; she would be absolutely safe with him, he would
+gratify almost every mood and satisfy almost every aspiration.
+
+Dealing very plainly with herself, formulating the question that she
+could not put to Morewood, she asked whether she would not rather go as a
+wife to Marchmont than to any other man she had met, whether Quisante or
+another. She had been, perhaps still was, more nearly in love with Weston
+Marchmont than with anybody else. But the "almosts" were obstinate; the
+nearly had never become the quite; she did not tell herself that it never
+could; on the contrary she recognised (though here she was inclined to
+shirk the probe) that if she married another, she might well awake to
+find herself loving Marchmont; she knew that she would not like Marchmont
+to love another woman. So far she carried her inquiry: then she grew in a
+way sick and disgusted with this exposure of her inmost feelings. She
+would not proceed to ask why precisely she could not say yes to Marchmont
+without being sensible of a loss greater than the gain. All she knew was
+that she would not think of becoming Quisante's wife if that were not the
+only way of getting all she wanted from Quisante. The wifehood she looked
+on as a means to something else, to what she could hardly say; in itself
+she did not desire it.
+
+Lady Richard's prayer was answered--no thanks to herself or her hints, no
+thanks either to Mrs. Baxter's motherly remonstrance or to Morewood's
+blunt speech. It was May herself who sent Quisante away. A thrill of
+relief ran round the table when he announced at dinner that if Lady
+Richard would excuse him he would leave by the early train. Excuse him!
+She would have hired a balloon to take him if he had declared a
+preference for that form of locomotion. But she expressed the proper
+regret and the proper interest in the reason (the pretext she called it
+in her own mind) for his departure. It appeared that a very large and
+important Meeting was to be held at Manchester; two Cabinet ministers
+were to be there; Quisante was invited to be the third speaker. He
+explained that he felt it would be a mistake to refuse the invitation,
+and the acceptance of it entailed a quiet day or two in London with his
+Blue-books and his papers. As he put it, the whole thing sounded like an
+excuse; Lady Richard hoped that it covered a retreat and that the retreat
+was after a decisive repulse from May Gaston. Even Dick was half inclined
+to share this opinion; for although he knew how a chance of shining with,
+and perhaps of outshining, such luminaries as were to adorn the
+Manchester platform would appeal to his friend, he did not think that for
+its sake Quisante would abandon any prospect of success in his suit. In
+fact the impression was general, and the relief proportionate. The Dean
+beamed and Mrs. Baxter purred; Morewood was good-natured, and Fred
+Wentworth was lightened of a burden of bewilderment which had pressed
+heavily on his youthful mind. Quisante was treated with a marked access
+of cordiality, and May was petted like a child who has displayed a strong
+inclination to be naughty, but has at last made up its mind to be good,
+and thereby saved those responsible for its moral welfare from the
+disagreeable necessity of showing displeasure and exercising discipline.
+She smiled to herself at the effusive affection with which Lady Richard
+bade her good-night.
+
+For these people did not know the history, and had not been present at
+the interview between May and Quisante on Duty Hill when the sun was
+sinking and the air was still. They did not know that it was by her
+command that he went and that his going rather strengthened than relaxed
+the bond there was between them. Always there stood out in her memory the
+scene on the hill, how he faced her there and told her that, great as the
+chance was and imperative as the call, yet he would not go; he could not
+leave her, he said, and then and there poured out his love for her. When
+he made love, he was not as when he flirted. Passion purged him; he was
+strong, direct, and simple; he was consumed then by what he felt and had
+no time to spoil the effect by asking what impression he made on others.
+Here was the thing that Marchmont could not give her, the great moment,
+the thrill, the sense of a power in the man which she had not measured,
+might spend her life in seeking to measure, and yet never to the end know
+in its fulness. But she answered not a word to his love-making, she
+neither accepted nor refused it; as often as he paused an instant and
+again when he came to the end, she had nothing to say or would say
+nothing except, "You must go."
+
+"You're the only person in the world for whose sake I would hesitate
+about going."
+
+She smiled. "That's not at all to your credit," she said; but she was not
+ill pleased.
+
+He came a step nearer to her and said, still soberly, still quietly,
+"I'll go away from here to-morrow."
+
+"Yes, to the meeting," she said, looking up at him brightly from her seat
+on the wooden bench on the hill-top.
+
+"Away from here," he repeated. "But not to the meeting unless you send
+me." Then he stood quite still opposite to her for a minute. "Because
+unless you care for me to do it, I don't care to do it," he went on.
+
+A long silence followed as she sat there, looking past him down into the
+rich valley that spread from the foot of the hill. The fascination was
+strong on her, the fear was strong on her too; but for the moment the
+repulsion was forgotten. For he had risen to the occasion, as Dick Benyon
+maintained that he always did; not a word too much, not an entreaty too
+extravagant, not an epithet too florid had found passage from his lips.
+His instinct of the way to treat a great and important situation had
+saved him and brought him triumphantly through all the perils. He did not
+ignore what he was, he did not disguise his knowledge of his powers;
+knowing what they were and the value of his offering, he laid them all at
+her feet and asked in return no more than her leave and her command to
+use them.
+
+She raised her eyes to his pale eager face.
+
+"I send you then," she said. "And now walk with me down the hill and tell
+me what you'll say at Manchester."
+
+That night, before she went to bed, she wrote to Weston Marchmont;
+
+    "Dear Friend,--I will not wait to see you again. I can't do what you
+    wish. Everything else I could do for you, and everything else that
+    you wish I wish for you. But I can't do that."
+
+Alas for the renewed peace of Lady Richard's mind, alas for the returning
+quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisante made his preparations for
+going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me;
+she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in
+the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and
+again fall, could hardly quite undo.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII.
+
+                        ADVICE FROM AUNT MARIA.
+
+
+The two Cabinet Ministers brought back from Manchester different accounts
+of Quisante's speech and its effects. One said it was frothy rhetoric
+heard in puzzled lethargy, the other that it was genuine eloquence
+received with the hush of profound attention, but hailed at the end with
+rapturous enthusiasm. This was a typical case of the division of opinion
+which began to prevail about Quisante, and was not disposed of by
+observing that the unfavourable Minister belonged to that "old gang"
+which it was Quisante's mission to shake up or shake out. Rich in merits,
+his speeches were nevertheless faulty to a critical ear; the ornate was
+apt to turn to the gaudy, the dignified to the pompous. To the critical,
+defects outweigh merits; but the mass of people, not being critical, fix
+on the fine things, contentedly and perhaps not unwisely ignoring the
+blemishes. So the speech was a great popular success, and Alexander
+Quisante conceived that he had more than justified his reputation and had
+ornamented his Lady's colours with the laurel of victory. He wrote to her
+to say that he was staying a few days in Lancashire and had arranged to
+speak at one or two other places. "If I do at all well," he wrote, "it is
+because I forget my audience and think that I speak only to you and to
+earn the praise of your eyes."
+
+"Oh, dear, why does he talk like that?" said May Gaston with a sigh and a
+smile. "Forget his audience! The praise of my eyes!" She read the
+compliment over again almost despairingly. "Yet he doesn't really think
+me an idiot," she ended. She had made up her mind to forgive him his
+habit of playing to the gallery, but he need not treat her as though she
+sat there. She felt able to understand the dumb and bewildered reproach
+which fronted her in her sister Fanny's face, but found spoken expression
+only in the news that Fanny had had a letter from Lady Richard.
+
+The next day she went to see Miss Quisante; the paying of this visit had
+been in her mind from the first moment she left Ashwood. In the little
+flat's narrow passage she had to squeeze by a short, stout, dark man,
+dressed with much elaboration; Miss Quisante explained afterwards that he
+was a sort of cousin of her own and Sandro's.
+
+"His name is Mandeville," she said. "His father's was Isaacs. You knew we
+had Jewish relations?"
+
+"I thought it not improbable."
+
+"I suppose we've got some of the blood, and some of it's a very good
+thing," pursued Aunt Maria. "This man's a stock-jobber; he came to talk
+to me about my money, but he let out a thing or two about Sandro."
+
+"About Mr. Quisante?"
+
+"Yes. Well, I'm not surprised; I never am surprised at Sandro. Only if he
+speculates with my money I shan't give it him."
+
+May listened and heard how Quisante had embarked the five hundred pounds
+given him to support his new position in a hazardous, although not
+unpromising, speculation. Whether he would win or lose was still
+uncertain; Mandeville had hopes.
+
+"And I don't know that it's exactly dishonest," said Aunt Maria
+meditatively. "But that's just like Sandro. He's always doing things that
+you can't be quite sure about--whether they're straight or not, you know.
+He was just the same as a boy."
+
+May had a sense of treachery in listening, but how should she not listen?
+Morewood's opinion came into her memory. Miss Quisante was confirming it
+out of her full acquaintance with its subject.
+
+"I gave him the money, it was his own, I've got nothing to show," said
+Miss Quisante with her vinegary little smile.
+
+"Perhaps he--he misunderstood what you meant; I mean, that you intended
+the money for any special purpose."
+
+"That's exactly what he'll say," remarked Aunt Maria with a triumphant
+nod.
+
+"But if it's true----"
+
+"I shan't know whether it's true or not. That's where Sandro's cleverness
+comes in."
+
+It was hard to realise that the old lady talked of the man whom her
+hearer had seen on Duty Hill.
+
+"I'm sure you don't do him justice." The plea sounded weak even to its
+utterer.
+
+"To an ounce," said Aunt Maria emphatically. May laughed. "I lived with
+him for twelve years, and I'm not a fool any more than he is. If you ask
+him about me, you'll get the truth, and you get it when you ask me about
+him. After twelve years I ought to know."
+
+"You've read his speech?" May asked. "Isn't it magnificent, parts of it
+anyhow?"
+
+"Very few men have a brain like Sandro's."
+
+"There I agree with you, Miss Quisante." But May's face was troubled as
+she added, a moment later, "He ought to give you back your money,
+though."
+
+"He will, if he makes a lot out of it, and he'll give me a nice present
+too. Then he'll feel that he's acted quite properly all through. And if
+he loses it--well, as I say, he's got his case, and I can't prove
+anything."
+
+"Men like him are often careless about money affairs. It's only that, I
+expect."
+
+"Careless! Sandro careless! Oh, dear me, no." and for once Miss Quisante
+laughed heartily. The beads on her cap shook as her dumpy little form
+swayed gently with mirth; she looked impishly delighted at such a
+misconception of her nephew's character. May felt very foolish, but could
+not help laughing herself.
+
+"Well, I won't plead his cause any more," she said. "Only I believe
+you're prejudiced." She paused, and then, looking the old woman in the
+face, added, "I ought to tell you that he and I have become great
+friends."
+
+Miss Quisante had stopped laughing; now she made a gesture which seemed
+to indicate that she washed her hands of any responsibility. But she
+appeared fretful and disturbed.
+
+"I'm immensely impressed by him; and I think these faults you talk so
+much about are only superficial. They can't really belong to his nature
+when so much that's fine does." Her voice shook a little as she implored
+a merciful judgment from the relentless old lady. Aunt Maria's shrewd
+eyes grew softer.
+
+"I used to say that to myself for ever so long," she said. "I catch
+myself saying it now and then even now."
+
+"You're disappointed at not--not getting on better with him, and it makes
+you bitter."
+
+"And you? You get on very well with him?"
+
+"I don't think I'm blind about him. I see what you mean and what a lot of
+people feel. If there is a pit, I've walked into it open-eyed."
+
+"He's in love with you, of course?"
+
+A denial was hardly worth while and quite useless. "You must ask him
+that, Miss Quisante," May replied. Aunt Maria nodded and gazed at her
+long and steadily.
+
+"Yes, you're his Empress among women," she said at last with a little
+sneer. "Sandro has a phrase for everything and everybody. And are you in
+love with him?"
+
+May had wanted to come to close quarters and was glad that Aunt Maria
+gave her a lead. But she did not return a direct answer to the question.
+
+"You wouldn't be encouraging, if I were thinking of becoming his wife."
+
+"It would be very extraordinary that you should."
+
+"I've no particular desire to be ordinary," said May, smiling.
+
+Miss Quisante leant forward suddenly and held up a short forefinger.
+
+"My dear, you'd be very unhappy," she said. Then she leant back again and
+received in complete stillness May's meditative gaze.
+
+"In a good many ways perhaps I should," said May at last with a sigh, and
+her brow puckered with wrinkles. "Yes, I suppose so," she sighed again.
+
+"But I know what it is. You've let yourself get interested in Sandro;
+you've let him lay hold of you." May nodded. "And it would seem rather
+dull now to lose him?" Again May nodded, laughing a little. Aunt Maria
+understood her feelings very well, it seemed. "I should be dull too if I
+lost him." The old lady folded her hands in her lap. "There is that about
+Sandro," she said with a touch of pride in her voice. "I don't like him;
+well, you've gathered that perhaps; but if anything happened to him, I
+should feel I might as well lie down and die. Of course I've got nobody
+else belonging to me; you're not like that." Again the forefinger was
+raised in admonition, and Miss Quisante gave a piece of practical advice.
+"Marry a nice man of your own sort, my dear, and when you're safely
+married, be as much interested in Sandro as you like."
+
+May was not quite sure of the morality of this counsel; it seemed
+possible that Aunt Maria shared the vagueness about right and wrong which
+she quarrelled with in her nephew. She laughed as she said,
+
+"But then Mr. Quisante would marry some other woman, and she mightn't
+like it. And my nice husband mightn't like it."
+
+It was possible to discuss the matter far more frankly with Miss Quisante
+than with anybody else, yet the talk with her was only the first of
+several in which May tried to glean what would be thought of such a step
+as marrying Alexander Quisante. Almost everywhere she found, not only the
+lack of encouragement which Aunt Maria had shown, but an amazement hardly
+distinguishable from horror and an utter failure to understand her point
+of view; her care to conceal any personal interest in the discussions she
+found means to bring about gained her very candid expressions of opinion
+about Quisante, and she became aware that her world would regard her as
+something like a lunatic if it awoke one morning to read of her
+engagement to the man.
+
+Yet side by side with this feeling there was a great and a growing
+expectancy with regard to him in his public aspect. He began to be a
+figure, somebody of whom account would have to be taken; Dick Benyon's
+infatuation was less often mentioned, his sagacity more often praised.
+May was struck again with the sharp line drawn between the man himself,
+and what he was to do, with the way in which everybody proposed to invite
+him to his house, but nobody contemplated admitting him to his heart. The
+inhumanity made her angry again, but she was alone in perceiving it; and
+she was half-aware that her perception of it would be far keener than
+Quisante's own. In fact it was very doubtful if he asked any more of the
+world than what the world was prepared to give him. But that, said May,
+was not because he lacked the power and the desire of love, but because
+his affections were withered by neglect or rusty from disuse. She knew
+well that they were there and would expand under the influence of
+sympathy. If people grew human towards him, he would respond in kind; in
+hitting on this idea she commended herself for a sagacity in questions of
+emotion not less than that which Dick Benyon had shown in matters of the
+intellect. Dick had discovered Quisante, as he thought; May told herself
+that he had discovered only half of Quisante, and that the other half had
+been left for her to explore, and to reveal to the world. The effect of
+her various conversations was rather to confirm her in her inclination
+towards Quisante than to frighten her out of it.
+
+There was one talk which she could not escape and had to face with what
+resolution she might. Weston Marchmont was not content with the brief
+dismissal which had reached him from Ashwood, and he was amazed beyond
+understanding at the hint of its cause which Dick Benyon had given him.
+He had no doubt some reason to think himself ill-used, but he was not
+inclined to press that side of the case. It was not his own failure so
+much as the threatened success of such a rival that staggered and
+horrified him. Few are wide-minded enough to feel a friendship quite
+untouched and unimpaired when their friend takes into equal intimacy a
+third person for whom they themselves entertain aversion or contempt; at
+the best they see in such conduct an unexpected failure of discernment;
+very often they detect in it evidence of a startling coarseness of
+feeling, an insensibility, and a grossness of taste difficult to tolerate
+in one to whom they have given their affection. Marchmont felt that, if
+May Gaston wronged him, she was wronging far more herself, and most of
+all his ideal of her. He could not believe such a thing of her without
+her own plain assurance, and would not suffer it until every effort to
+redeem and rescue her was exhausted.
+
+"You don't mean," he said at last openly and bluntly to Dick Benyon,
+"that you think it's possible she'll marry him?"
+
+"I do, quite," groaned poor Dick. "You can imagine how I feel about it;
+and if I didn't see it myself, Amy would soon let me know it."
+
+Marchmont said no more, feeling that discussion was difficult for one in
+his position, but Dick did not spare him a description of what had
+happened at Ashwood, from which he realised the gravity of the danger.
+
+"After all, he's a very remarkable man," Dick pleaded, in a forlorn
+effort at defending himself no less than the lady.
+
+Marchmont found May in a mood most favourable to the cause he had at
+heart, if he had known how to use his opportunity to the best advantage.
+From day to day now she wavered between the fear and the fascination, and
+on this day the fear was stronger and, working together with her
+affection for Marchmont, might well have gained him the victory.
+Ill-usage of Quisante would perhaps have been involved here, but May
+would not have stood at that, had it been made plain to her heart that in
+the end the man could not be accepted or endured. To win, Marchmont
+should have made love to her in his own way, refused to accept his
+dismissal, and pressed his own suit on his own merits, leaving his rival
+to stand the contrast as he best might, but not dragging him explicitly
+into the issue between himself and May. He did not take this course; to
+his pride it was difficult to plead passionately again when his former
+pleading had been rebuffed; and the intensity of his desire to show her
+the truth about Quisante, and at all costs to rescue her from Quisante,
+made him devote more energy to denouncing his rival than to recommending
+himself. Thus he set May to defend the absent friend rather than to pity
+and be drawn towards the suitor who was before her. Yet in spite of his
+mistaken tactics, he shook her sorely; all that was in his favour came
+home to her with renewed force; she looked on him with pleasure and heard
+his voice again with delight; it was very pleasant to her to be with him;
+she admitted to herself that very, very easily she might be in love with
+him. Old Miss Quisante's advice recurred to her mind; was this the nice
+husband who would give her a safety not incompatible with a continued
+interest in Alexander Quisante? She smiled regretfully; Marchmont did not
+fit at all into Aunt Maria's scheme.
+
+"I don't want to question you," he said, "but if you will speak plainly
+to me I shall be glad. The change came at Ashwood?"
+
+"There's been no change; there's been a failure to change. When I saw you
+last, I thought I might change so as to be able to do what you wanted.
+Now I know I can't."
+
+"And why?" She was silent; he went on, speaking lower. "Is there any
+truth at all in what Dick Benyon thinks? It seemed to me incredible. Will
+you tell me that I may utterly disbelieve that at all events?"
+
+"No, I can't tell you to disbelieve it utterly."
+
+The love for her which was his strongest appeal left his face; he looked
+aghast, at a loss, almost disgusted. His hands moved in a gesture of
+protest.
+
+"I don't tell you to believe it. I can tell you nothing about it just
+now. I admit you had a right to ask me, but I can say nothing more now."
+
+Again the chance offered for him to make her forget Quisante or remember
+him only by a disadvantageous comparison. His honest desire to save her
+combined again with bitter prejudice to lead him wrong.
+
+"I can't believe it of you," he declared. "I can't have been so wrong
+about you as that."
+
+"I see nothing to prevent you from having been absolutely wrong about
+me," she said coldly, "as wrong about me as you are about--other people."
+
+"If you mean----"
+
+"Oh, yes, let's be open with one another," she cried. "I mean Mr.
+Quisante; you're utterly wrong and prejudiced about him."
+
+"He's not even a gentleman."
+
+"I suppose he goes to the wrong tailor!" said May scornfully.
+
+He came a step nearer to her. "You know I don't mean that sort of thing,
+nor even other things that aren't vital to life though they're desirable
+in society. He hasn't the mind of a gentleman."
+
+Now she wavered; she sat looking at him with troubled eyes, feeling he
+was right, desiring to be persuaded, struggling against the opposing
+force. But Marchmont went on fretfully, almost peevishly,
+
+"The astonishing thing is that you're blind to that, that you don't see
+him as he really and truly is."
+
+"That's just what I do," she cried eagerly and almost angrily.
+Marchmont's words had brought back what Quisante could be; surely a man's
+best must be what he really and truly is? Then his true self shows itself
+untrammelled; the measure of it is rather the heights to which it can
+rise than the level on which it moves at ordinary times. She remembered
+Quisante on Duty Hill. "That's what I do, and you--you and all of
+them--don't. You fix on his small faults, faults of manner--oh, yes, and
+of breeding too, I daresay, perhaps of feeling too. But to see a man's
+faults is not to see the man." She rose to her feet and faced him. "I see
+him more truly than you do," she said proudly and defiantly. Then her
+face grew suddenly soft, and she caught his hand. "My dear friend, my
+dear, dear friend," she murmured, "don't be unkind to me. I'm not happy
+about it; how can I be happy about it? Don't make it worse for me; I'm
+trying to see the truth, and you might help me; but you only tell me what
+leaves out more than half the truth."
+
+He would not or could not respond to her gentleness; his evil spirit
+possessed him; he gave expression to his anger with her and his scorn of
+his rival, not to his own love and his own tenderness.
+
+"It turns me almost sick," he declared, "to think of you with him."
+
+She let go his hand, moved away, and sat down. "If you're like that, I
+can say no more," she said. Her eyes were full of tears as she looked at
+him, but his heart was hard to her; to him she seemed to be humiliating
+both him and herself; the victory of Quisante at once insulted him and
+degraded her. Here was a case where Alexander Quisante, with all his
+defects, would have gone right, while Marchmont went wrong. It was a
+crisis, and Quisante's insight would have taught him how to handle it, to
+assure her that whatever she did he would be the same to her, that though
+he might not understand he would be loyal, that his love only grew
+greater with his pain, that in everything that awaited her he would be
+ready with eager service and friendship unimpaired. None of this came
+from Marchmont's lips; he made no effort to amend or palliate his last
+bitter speech. He could not conquer his resentment, and it bred an
+answering resentment in her. "You must think what you like of me," she
+said, her voice growing cold again.
+
+With the end of this interview, with the departure of Marchmont, still
+sore, angry, and blind to her point of view, May felt that the matter had
+settled itself. She knew in her heart that she would not have turned
+Marchmont away unless she had meant to bid Quisante come. For a little
+while she struggled against finality, telling herself that the question
+was still an open one, and that to refuse one man was not of necessity to
+marry another. Other friends came and talked to her, but none of them got
+within her guard or induced her to speak freely to them. In the end she
+had to settle this thing for herself; and now it was settled.
+
+Even when undertaken in the conviction of a full harmony of feeling, a
+community of mind, and an identity of tastes, marriage may startle by the
+extent of its demands. She was to marry a man--she faced the matter and
+told herself this--a man from whom she was divided by the training of a
+lifetime, by antagonisms of feeling so acute as to bite deep into their
+every-day intercourse, by a jarring of tastes which made him sometimes
+odious to her. In spite of the resentment to which Marchmont's scorn had
+stung her, she understood very well how it was that her friends failed to
+appreciate the motives of her action. To herself she could not justify
+it; it was taken on impulse, not calculation, and had to rest in the end
+on the vague effects of what she had seen in Quisante, not continually,
+not in his normal state, but by fits and snatches, in scraps of time
+which, all added together, would scarcely fill the hours between luncheon
+and dinner. She took him on the strength of his moments; that was the
+case in plain English, reduced to its lowest terms and its baldest
+statement. Of confidence, of security, of trust she had none; their place
+was filled by a vague expectancy, an insistent curiosity, and a puzzled
+fearful fascination. Not promising materials these, out of which to make
+happiness. She surprised herself by finding how little happiness in its
+ordinary sense entered into her reckoning. Or if anything that we happen
+to want is to be called our happiness, then her happiness consisted in,
+and refused to be analysed into anything more definite than, a sort of
+necessity which she felt of being near to Alexander Quisante, of sharing
+his mind and partaking of his life. But if this were happiness, then
+happiness was not what she had been accustomed to think it; where were
+the rest, the contentment, the placidity and satisfaction which the word
+was usually considered to imply?
+
+                        *          *          *
+
+Quisante came to her, wreathed in triumph. It was a mood she liked him
+in; he offended her not when he celebrated success, but when he intrigued
+for it. His new-born confidence seemed to make any drawing-back on her
+part impossible; she had sent him, she was bound to reward the happy
+issue of her mission. Another thing touched her very deeply; while
+protesting his unworthiness of her, he based his humility on the special
+and wonderful knowledge of her that he possessed and referred it entirely
+to this inner secret excellence of hers and not in the least to her
+position or to any difference between his and hers. He did not suppose
+that society would be aghast or that the world at large would see cause
+for dismay in the marriage. He expected hearty congratulations for
+himself, but it was evident that he thought she would have her full share
+of them too; he had, in fact, no idea that May Gaston would not be
+thought to be doing very well for herself. This mixture of simplicity and
+self-appreciation, of ignorance of the mind of others combined with a
+knowledge of the claims of his own, took May's fancy; she laughed a
+little as she determined that the general opinion of the matter must be
+kept from his ears, and his robust confidence in the world's admiration
+of him preserved.
+
+"You say you know me so well," she said. "I know very, very little of
+you; and of what I know there's a lot that's bad."
+
+He was not in the temper that had inspired his confession of bad manners
+and bad morals on Duty Hill. He was inclined, as at such a moment he
+might be pardonably, to make light of his faults. He was not alarmed when
+she declared that if she found out anything very bad she would not after
+all become his wife.
+
+"At any moment that you repent, you're free," he said gaily. But she
+answered gravely,
+
+"There'll be a great many moments when I shall repent. You see I don't
+think I really love you." He looked puzzled. "You know what I mean? Real
+love is so beautifully undiscriminating, isn't it? I'm not a bit
+undiscriminating about you; and that'll make me miserable often; it'll
+make you angry too. You'll forget that I said all this, that I told you
+and warned you. I shall be (she smiled again for a moment) a critic on
+the hearth. And nobody hardly understands criticism as badly as you do."
+
+"What a lot of reasons for refusing me!" he said, still gay, though with
+a hint of disturbance in his manner. "And yet you don't refuse."
+
+The old answer which was all she could give to herself was all that she
+found herself able to give him.
+
+"Somehow I can't do without you, you see," she said. Then she suddenly
+leant forward and went on in a low imploring voice, "Don't be worse than
+I've ever thought. There are some things I couldn't stand. Please don't."
+Her eyes, fixed on to his, prayed a reassurance against a horde of vague
+dangers.
+
+He laughed off the question, not understanding how or why she came to put
+it, and their talk passed to a lighter vein. But presently he said, with
+a half-embarrassed, half-vexed laugh, "Need we sit so far from one
+another?"
+
+May had suffered from a dread of the beginning of sentiment. But she was
+laughing as she rose and, crossing the room, sat down by him on the sofa.
+"Here I am then," she said, "and you may kiss me. And if you will ask me
+I'll kiss you; only I don't particularly want to, you know. I don't think
+of you in the very least as a man to be kissed. I've thought of other men
+much more in that way--oh, only thought of them, Mr. Quisante!"
+
+The playful, yet not meaningless, defiance of a softer mood, and of his
+power to induce it in her, acted as a spark to Quisante's ardour. It was
+just the opposition that he had wanted to rescue him from awkwardness. He
+recovered the splendid intensity which had marked his declaration on Duty
+Hill. If he did not succeed in changing her feelings, at least he set her
+wondering why they did not change and wrung from her the smiling
+admission, "You're very picturesque anyhow." She did not deny vehemently
+when he told her that he would make her love him as he loved her. "Well,
+I never use the word impossible about you," she said. "Only--it hasn't
+happened yet, you know." She paused and added, with a touch of reviving
+apprehension, "And I mayn't always like you to behave as if it
+had--though I don't mind much to-night."
+
+His manner was good, almost defying criticism, as he reassured her on
+this point; and when he left her, her predominant impression was that, so
+far as their personal relations went, she had exaggerated the dangers and
+under-rated the attractions.
+
+"I think he'll always be rather nice to me and not do anything very
+dreadful. But then, what will he do to other people?"
+
+This was the fear which still possessed her and which no fine moment of
+his drove out. She seemed to have power to bring him to his best, to give
+him the cue for his fine scenes, to create in him the inspiration to
+great moments. But when he dealt with other people, her power would be
+useless. She would have to stand by and see him at his worst, looking on
+no longer as an irresponsible, as well as a helpless, spectator, but as
+one who had undertaken responsibility for him, who must feel for him what
+he did not for himself, who must be sensitive while he was callous,
+wounded while his skin went unpierced. She felt that she had taken up a
+very solitary position, between him and the world, not truly at home with
+either; a sense of loneliness came upon her.
+
+"I shall have to fight the whole world," she said. "I wonder if my cause
+is a good one?"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                            CONTRA MUNDUM.
+
+
+It was impossible not to admire the wealth of experience which Mrs.
+Baxter had gathered from a singularly quiet life; many men have gone half
+a dozen times round the world for less. Whatever the situation, whatever
+the action, she could supply a parallel and thereby forecast an issue.
+Superficial differences did not hinder her; she pierced to the underlying
+likeness. When all the world was piteously crying out that never in its
+life had it heard of such an affair as this of May Gaston's, Mrs. Baxter
+dived into her treasure-chest and serenely produced the case of the
+Nonconformist Minister's daughter and the Circus Proprietor. Set this
+affair side by side with the Quisante business, and a complete sum in
+double proportion at once made its appearance. The audacity of the man,
+the headlong folly of the girl, the hopeless mixing of incompatibles were
+common to the two cases; the issue of the earlier clearly indicated the
+fate that must attend the later. Lady Richard could do nothing but gasp
+out, "And what happened, Mrs. Baxter?"
+
+Mrs. Baxter told her, punctuating the story with stitches on a June
+petticoat.
+
+"She ran away from him twice; but he brought her back, and, they said,
+beat her well. At any rate she ended by settling down to her new life.
+They had seven children, all brought up to the circus; only the other day
+one was sent to prison for ill-treating the dancing bear. He's dead, but
+she still keeps the circus under his name. Of course all her old friends
+have dropped her; indeed I hear she drinks. Her father still preaches
+once on Sundays."
+
+It was easy to disentangle the relevant from the merely reminiscent; the
+running away, the beating, the settling down, the complete absorption in
+the new life (vividly indicated by the seven children and their habits),
+stood out saliently. Add the attitude of old friends, and Lady Richard
+could not deny the value of the parallel. She acknowledged it with a
+long-drawn sigh.
+
+"May Gaston must be mad," she observed. "You can imagine how Dick feels
+about it!"
+
+"And all the while her cousin in the Bank was quite ready to marry her
+and give her a nice little home. He was Church and sang in the choir at
+St. Dunstan's."
+
+Without consciously appreciating the nicety of the parallel here, Lady
+Richard began to think of Weston Marchmont.
+
+"I suppose Mr. Marchmont'll take Fanny now," she said. "I don't know,
+though; he won't like any sort of connection with Alexander Quisante. How
+selfish people are! They never think of what their marriages mean to
+their relations."
+
+This observation expressed a large part of what was felt by society; add
+friends to relations, and it summed up one side of the indictment against
+May Gaston. Lady Attlebridge's helpless and bewildered woe was one
+instance of its truth, Fanny's rage another; to look farther afield,
+May's friends and acquaintances discovered great cause for vexation in
+that they saw themselves somehow "let in for" Quisante. At least the
+alternative was to drop May Gaston as entirely as the unfortunate circus
+proprietor's wife had been dropped; and this alternative was a difficult
+one. Had Quisante's raid resulted in the seizure of some insignificant
+colourless girl who had been merely tolerated for the sake of who she was
+without possessing any claims in respect of what she was, the dropping
+would have been easy; but May was not of that kind. She was not only one
+of them, but very conspicuous among them, one of their ornaments, one in
+whom they took pride; they would have acknowledged in her a natural
+leader so soon as a suitable marriage gave her the necessary status and
+experience. Her treachery was the more flagrant, Quisante's presumption
+the more enormous, their own course of action the more puzzling to
+decide.
+
+Yet in their hearts they knew that they must swallow the man; events were
+too strong for them. Dick Benyon had forced him on them in one side of
+life, May Gaston now did the like in another; henceforward he must be and
+would be among them. This consciousness mingled an ingredient of asperity
+with their genuine pity for May. She would not merely have herself to
+thank for the troubles which would certainly come upon her; her
+misfortunes must be regarded as in part a proper punishment for the
+annoyance she was inflicting on her friends. As for Dick Benyon, it was
+impossible to speak to him without perceiving that if remorse be in truth
+the sharpest penalty of sin, he was already punished enough.
+
+The poor man's state was indeed such as to move compassion. Besides his
+old friend Lady Attlebridge's dumbly accusing eyes, besides Fanny's and
+Lady Richard's by no means dumb reproaches, a very heavy blow had fallen
+on him. In the words of his own complaint, his brother Jimmy had gone
+back on him--and back on his allegiance to Alexander Quisante. The
+engagement was too much for Jimmy, and in the revulsion of feeling he
+became downright hostile to Quisante's claims and pretensions. How could
+he not when Fanny Gaston imperiously and almost tearfully commanded him
+to attach himself to her banner, and to behold with her eyes the
+indignity suffered by the noble family of Gaston? Logic was not Jimmy's
+strong point, and he confounded poor Dick by the twofold assertion that
+the thing was utterly incredible, and that Dick and he had been most
+inconceivably idiotic not to have foreseen it from the first hour that
+they took up Quisante. In this stress of feeling the brothers spoke to
+one another with candour.
+
+"You know how I feel about Fanny," said Jimmy, "so you can imagine how
+much I like it."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know; and I quite understand that you wanted Marchmont to
+marry May," Dick retorted in an alien savageness born of his wounded
+spirit.
+
+Jimmy was taken aback by this direct onslaught, but his native honesty
+forbade him to deny the charge point-blank.
+
+"Supposing she came to like me," he grumbled, "it wouldn't be over and
+above pleasant to have Quisante for a brother-in-law."
+
+Dick was roused; he summoned up his old faith and his old admiration.
+
+"I tell you what," he said, "the only chance you have of your name being
+known to posterity is if you succeed in becoming his brother-in-law."
+
+"Damn posterity," said Jimmy, tugging at his moustache. He had never
+entertained the absurd idea of interesting future ages. He began to
+perceive more and more clearly how ridiculous his brother had made
+himself over the fellow; he had shared in the folly, but now at least he
+could repent and dissociate himself from it.
+
+"What does the Dean say?" he asked maliciously.
+
+"I dare say you won't understand," Dick answered in measured tones, "but
+the Dean's got sense enough to say nothing. Talking's no use, is it?"
+
+Few indeed shared the Dean's wisdom, or the somewhat limited view that
+talking is only to be practised when it chances to be useful. Are we
+never to discuss the obvious or to deplore the inevitable? From so stern
+a code human nature revolts, and the storm of volubility went on in spite
+of the silence of the Dean of St. Neot's. Even this silence was imperfect
+in so far as the Dean said a word or two in private to Morewood when he
+visited him in his studio, and the pair were looking at Quisante's
+picture. Dick Benyon was less anxious now to have it finished and sent
+home in the shortest possible time.
+
+"You've seen some good in him," said the Dean, pointing to the picture.
+
+"Well--something anyhow," said Morewood.
+
+"I think, you know," the Dean pursued meditatively, "that a great woman
+might succeed in what she's undertaken (Morewood did not need the mention
+of May Gaston's name), at the cost of sacrificing all her other interests
+and most of her feelings."
+
+Morewood was lighting his pipe and made no answer.
+
+"Is our dear young friend a great woman, though?" asked the Dean.
+
+"She aspires to be," said Morewood; he was sneering as usual, but rather
+at aspirations in general than at any unusual absurdity in May Gaston's;
+thus at least the Dean understood him.
+
+"You mean that that's at the bottom of the trouble?" he inquired, smiling
+a little.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Morewood, weary of indicating what was so apparent.
+
+"You've dived down to something in that picture; perhaps she has."
+
+"Yes, she has." Morewood looked straight at the Dean as he added, "But I
+can leave out the other things, you see. That's the difference."
+
+"And she can't? No. That is the difference. She'll have to live with the
+other things." He looked courageously at Morewood and ended, "We must
+trust in God." Either the sincerity or the unexpectedness of the remark
+kept Morewood silent.
+
+No such ambition as these two imputed to her consciously animated May
+Gaston. Just now she was content if she could persuade her mother that
+people after all said nothing very dreadful (for what was said was always
+more to Lady Attlebridge than what was true), could keep on something
+like friendly relations with her sister, and could maintain a cheerful
+view of her own position and of her experiment. Inevitably the hostility
+of his future mother-in-law and of Fanny brought out the worst side of
+Quisante's manners; in the effort to conciliate he almost fawned. May had
+to find consolation in a growth of openness and simplicity towards
+herself. And she had one notable triumph which more than anything else
+brought her through the trial with her purpose unshaken and her faith
+even a little strengthened. It was not a complete triumph, and in trying
+to push it too far she suffered a slight rebuff; but there was hope to be
+had from it, it seemed to open a prospect of successes more ample. She
+made Quisante send back Aunt Maria's five hundred pounds before Mr.
+Mandeville's operations had resulted either in safety or in gain.
+
+"You see, she never gave it you to use in speculation," she had said. "It
+isn't right, you must see it isn't. Have you got the money?"
+
+"Yes; but I meant to buy you----"
+
+"No, no, I wouldn't have it. Now do send it back. I know you see what I
+mean." Her voice grew doubtful and imploring.
+
+"Oh, yes, in a way. But I shan't lose it, you know."
+
+"That doesn't make the least difference."
+
+"If it pleases you, I'll send it back."
+
+"Well, do," she said with a little sigh. The motive was not that which
+she wished to rouse, but very likely it was that with which she must
+begin her work. Then she tried the further step. "And any profit you
+make, if you make any, you ought to send too," she said.
+
+Genuine surprise was exhibited on Quisante's face. "What, after sending
+back the five hundred?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, you ought." She made a little concession by adding, "Strictly, you
+know." Quisante looked at her, kissed her hand, and laughed. Her sense of
+humour, which she began to perceive would rather hamper her, made her
+join in the laugh. "Do you think me very absurd? No, no, not compliments!
+Truth, truth always!"
+
+"I call the suggestion rather--well, rather fanciful," said he.
+
+"Yes, I suppose you do," she sighed. "Do you know what I hope?" she went
+on. "I hope that some day that sort of suggestion will seem a matter of
+course to you."
+
+He stopped laughing and looked put out. She saw that his vanity was hurt.
+"But I hope all sorts of unusual things about you," she went on, her
+conscience rebuking her for using the wile of flattery. But it served
+well; the cloud passed from his face, as he begged her not to expect to
+see him a saint too soon.
+
+A few days later he came in radiant; the operation had gone splendidly,
+there was a cent. per cent. profit; she was to come with him and buy the
+necklace at once. May loved necklaces and liked him for being so eager to
+give her one. And she did not wish to appear in the light of a prig (that
+had probably been his impression of her) again so soon. But had he not
+the evening before, as they talked over their prospects, told her that he
+owed Dick Benyon a thousand pounds or more, and was in arrears with the
+instalments by which the debt was to be liquidated? By a not unnatural
+turn of her mind she found herself less able to allow him to forget his
+obligation, less able to indulge him in the temporary extravagance of a
+lover, than if he had been a man on whose punctilious honour in all
+matters of money she relied absolutely. She was more affectionate and
+more effusive to him than usual, and it was with a kiss that she
+whispered,
+
+"Give me the money, not the necklace."
+
+"The money?" he said in surprise.
+
+"Yes, to do what I like with. At least give me your promise to do what I
+ask with it."
+
+He was suspicious and his face showed it. She laughed. "Yes, I'm worrying
+again," she said. "I can now, you see. When we're married I shan't have
+the power."
+
+"You'll always have absolute power over me."
+
+"Oh, I wish that was true!" she said. "No, I don't," came an instant
+later. "If I thought that, I'd never speak to you again." Moving away a
+little, she turned her head back towards him and went on, "Use it to pay
+Dick Benyon. I'd rather you did that than gave me a thousand necklaces."
+
+"Oh, Dick's in no hurry; he's got lots of money." Quisante was visibly
+vexed this time. "Aren't you going to allow me to give you anything?" he
+asked.
+
+She had a struggle to win this time, and again had to call in the ally
+she distrusted, an appeal to his vanity. She told him that it hurt her
+idea, her great idea, of him, that he should be in any way under
+obligations to or dependent on anybody. This way of putting the matter
+caught his fancy, which had remained blind to the more prosaic aspect of
+the case. "You must stand by your own strength," she said. She had to go
+a step farther still. "It'll make Amy Benyon quite angry too; it'll take
+away one of her grievances. Don't pay only the arrears, pay all you can."
+Thus she won and was comforted, in spite of her suspicion of the weapons
+that she found herself obliged to use.
+
+Comfort she needed sadly, and it could come only from Quisante himself.
+For the rest the sense of loneliness was strong upon her, and with it a
+bitterness that this time in her life should be so different from what it
+was in the lives of most girls. The superficials were there; friends sent
+presents and Lady Attlebridge was as particular about the gowns and so
+forth as though the match had been absolutely to her liking. But there
+was no sincere congratulation, no sympathy, no envy. Her engagement was a
+mistake, her marriage a tragedy; that was the verdict; she saw it in
+every glance and discerned it under every civil speech. The common
+judgment, the opinion of the group we have lived with, has a force
+irrespective of its merit; there were times when May sank under the
+burden of it and almost retreated. Then she was outwardly most contented,
+took Quisante everywhere with her, tried (as people said) to thrust him
+down everybody's throat, even pretended a love which she had expressly
+denied to the man himself. All this done, she would fly to solitude and
+there be a victim to her fears, shudder at the risk she had elected to
+run, and pray for any strange convulsion of events to rescue her.
+
+None came; time went on, people settled down to the notion; only to a
+small circle the matter retained a predominant interest. The rest of the
+world could not go on talking about it for ever; they had a number of
+other people's affairs to attend to, and the vagaries of one fanciful
+young woman could not occupy their important minds for ever. None the
+less, they turned away with a pleasant sense that they might find good
+reason for turning back presently; let a year or two of the marriage run,
+and there might be something to look at again.
+
+But to one man the thing never became less strange, less engrossing, or
+less horrible. Weston Marchmont abandoned as pure folly the attempt to
+accustom his mind to it or to acquiesce in it; he had not the power to
+cease to think of it. It was unnatural; to that he returned always; and
+it ousted what surely was natural, what his whole being cried out was
+meant, if there were such a thing as a purpose in human lives at all.
+Disguised by his habit of self-repression before others, his passion was
+as strong as Quisante's own; it was backed by a harmony of tastes and a
+similarity of training which gave it increased intensity; it had been
+encouraged by an apparent promise of success, now turned to utter
+failure. Amy Benyon might think that he would now marry Fanny, if only he
+could endure such an indirect connection with Quisante. To himself it
+seemed so impossible to think of anyone but May that in face of facts he
+could not believe that he was not foremost in her heart. The facts meant
+marriage, it seemed; he denied that they meant love. He discerned what
+May had said to Quisante--although not of course that she had said
+it--and it filled him with a more unendurable revolt. He might have
+tolerated a defeat in love; not to be defeated and yet to suffer all the
+pains of the vanquished was not to be borne. But he was helpless, and
+when he had tried to plead his cause he had done himself no good. He had
+rather so conducted himself as to give May Gaston the right to shut the
+door on any further friendship with him; towards her future husband he
+had never varied from an attitude of cool disdain. It was more than a
+month since he had seen her, it was longer since he had done more than
+nod carelessly to Quisante as they passed one another in the lobby or the
+smoking-room.
+
+Then one day, a fortnight before the marriage, he met Quisante as they
+were both leaving the House about four o'clock. On a sudden impulse he
+joined his rival. He knew his man; Quisante received him with
+friendliness and even effusion, and invited him to join him in a call at
+Lady Attlebridge's. They went on together, Quisante elated at this new
+evidence of his power to reconcile opposition and conciliate support,
+Marchmont filled with a vague painful curiosity and a desire to see the
+two together at the cost of any suffering the sight might bring him.
+
+The drawing-room at Lady Attlebridge's was a double room; in one half May
+sat reading, in the other her mother dozed. May rose with a start as the
+men entered together; her face flushed as she greeted Marchmont and bade
+Quisante go and pay his respects to her mother.
+
+"I hardly expected ever to see you again," she said. "And I didn't expect
+Mr. Quisante to bring you." Her tone was oddly expressive at once of
+pleasure and regret, of anticipation and fear. "Have you made friends?"
+she asked.
+
+He answered under the impulse of his mood.
+
+"We must make friends," he said, "or I shall never see any more of you."
+
+"I thought you didn't want to." She liked him too well not to show a
+little coquetry, a little challenge.
+
+"I thought so too, or tried to think so."
+
+"I was sure you had deserted me. You said such--well, such severe
+things."
+
+"I say them all still."
+
+"But here you are!" she cried, laughing.
+
+"Yes, here I am," said he, but he was grave and looked intently at her.
+She grew red again as she met his gaze, and frowned a little.
+
+"I'm not sure I'm glad you've come after all," she said after a pause.
+"Why have you come? I don't quite understand."
+
+"I've come to see you, to look on at your happiness," he answered.
+
+"You've no right to talk like that."
+
+They became silent. From the inner room they heard Lady Attlebridge's
+nervous efforts at conversation and Quisante's fluent, too fluent,
+responses. He was telling the good lady about her great social influence,
+and, little as she liked him, she seemed to listen eagerly. Marchmont
+looked at May and smiled. He was disappointed when she returned his
+smile.
+
+"He's a little too much of a politician, isn't he?" she asked.
+
+Her refusal to perceive the insinuation of his smile made him ashamed of
+it.
+
+"We all are, when we've something to get, I suppose," he said with a
+shrug.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you need reproach yourself," she exclaimed, laughing.
+
+There was a short pause. Then he said suddenly,
+
+"You're the one person in the world to talk to."
+
+Now she neither laughed nor yet rebuked him, and, as his eyes met hers,
+he seemed to have no fear that she would do either the one or the other.
+Yet he could not quite understand her look; did she pity him or did she
+entreat for herself? For his life he could not answer. The only thing he
+knew was that she would follow her path and take for husband the man who
+flattered Lady Attlebridge in the inner room. Then she spoke in a low
+voice.
+
+"Yes, do come, come and see us afterwards, come as often as you like." He
+raised his eyes to hers again. "Because the oftener you come, the more
+you'll understand him, and the better you understand him, the better
+you'll know why I'm doing what I am."
+
+The soft look of pity or of entreaty vanished from her eyes now. She
+seemed to speak in a strong and even defiant confidence. But he met her
+with a resolute dissent.
+
+"If you want me, I'll come. But I shan't understand why you did what
+you're doing and I shall never see in him what you want me to see." He
+looked round and saw Quisante preparing to join them. "Am I to come,
+then?" he asked.
+
+Quisante was walking towards them; she answered with a nervous laugh, "I
+think you must come sometimes anyhow." Then she raised her voice and said
+to Quisante, "I'm telling Mr. Marchmont that I shall expect to see him
+often at our house."
+
+Quisante seconded her invitation with more than adequate enthusiasm; if
+Marchmont were converted to him, who could still be obstinate? The two
+men began to talk, May falling more and more into silence. She did not
+accuse Marchmont of deliberate malice, but by chance or the freak of some
+mischievous demon everything he said led Quisante on to display his
+weaknesses. She knew that Marchmont marked them every one; he was too
+well bred to show his consciousness by so much as the most fleeting
+glance at her; yet she could have met such a glance with understanding,
+yes, with sympathy, and would have had to summon up by artificial effort
+the resentment that convention demanded of her. The sight of the two men
+brought home to her with a new and an almost terrible sharpness the
+divorce between her emotional liking and her intellectual interest. And
+in a matter which all experience declared to concern the emotions
+primarily, she had elected to give foremost place to the intellect, to
+suffer under an ever recurring jar of the feelings for the sake of an
+occasional treat to the brain. That was her prospect unless she could
+transform the nature of Alexander Quisante. "Marry a nice man of your own
+sort, and then be as much interested as you like in Sandro." Aunt Maria's
+advice echoed in her ears as she watched the two men round whom the
+struggle of her soul centred, the struggle that she had thought was
+finished on the day when she promised to become Alexander Quisante's
+wife.
+
+"I shall keep you both to your word," said Marchmont when he left them.
+May nodded, smiling slightly. Quisante said all and more than all the
+proper things.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX.
+
+                             LEAD US NOT.
+
+
+After a long sojourn in kindlier climates, Miss Quisante returned to
+England some eighteen months after May Gaston's marriage. From various
+hotels and boarding-houses she had watched with an interested eye the
+progress of public affairs so far as they concerned her nephew. She had
+seen how his name became more prominent and was more frequently mentioned,
+how the hopes and fears about him grew, how he had gained glory by dashing
+sorties in defence of the severely-pressed Government garrison; if the
+garrison decided (as rumour said they would) to sally out and try fortune
+in the open field of a General Election, and proved victorious, it could
+not be doubted that they would bestow a handsome reward on their gallant
+defender. Quisante bid fair to eclipse his rivals and to justify to the
+uttermost Dick Benyon's sagacity and enthusiasm. The bitterness of the
+foe told the same story; unless a man is feared, he is not caricatured
+in a comic paper in the guise of a juggler keeping three balls in the
+air at once, the said balls being each of them legibly inscribed with
+one of the three words, "Gas--Gabble--Grab." Such a straining of the
+usual amenity of controversy witnesses to grave apprehension. Miss
+Quisante in her _pension_ at Florence smiled contentedly.
+
+Of his private life her information had not been very ample. She had heard
+several times from May, but May occupied her pen chiefly with her husband's
+political aims. She had heard once from Sandro himself, when he informed
+her that his wife had borne him a daughter and that all had gone very
+well indeed. Again Miss Quisante smiled approvingly. She sent her love to
+May and expressed to Sandro the hope that the baby would resemble its
+mother in appearance, constitution, and disposition; the passage was a
+good example of that _expressio unius_ which is a most emphatic and
+unmistakable _exclusio alterius_. In the letter she enclosed a cheque
+for three hundred pounds; the _pensions_ were cheaper than the flat, and
+thus this service had become possible.
+
+The Quisantes had taken a house in Grosvenor Road, near Westminster for
+Quisante's convenience, by the river, in obedience to his wife's choice.
+Here Miss Quisante was welcomed by her nephew's wife and shown her
+nephew's daughter. May watched the old lady's face as she perfunctorily
+kissed and critically inspected the infant.
+
+"Gaston!" said Aunt Maria at last; relief was clamorous in her tone.
+
+"Yes, Miss Quisante, Gaston, I think," said May, laughing.
+
+The nurse admitted the predominance of Gaston, but with a professional
+keenness of eye began to point out minor points in which the baby
+"favoured" her father.
+
+"Nonsense, my good woman," snapped Aunt Maria. "The child's got two legs
+and two arms, I suppose, as its father has, but that's all the likeness."
+Somewhat ruffled (her observations had been well meant) the nurse carried
+off her charge.
+
+"You look very well," Aunt Maria went on, "but older, my dear."
+
+"I am both well and older," said May cheerfully. "Think of my
+responsibilities! There's the baby! And then Alexander's been seedy. And
+we aren't as rich as we should like to be; you of all people must know
+that. And there's going to be an election and our seat's very shaky. So
+the cares of the world are on me."
+
+"Sandro's been doing well."
+
+"Splendidly, simply splendidly. It's impossible to doubt that he'll do
+great things if--if all goes well, and he doesn't make mistakes."
+
+"Seems like making mistakes, does he?"
+
+"Oh, no. I only said 'if.'"
+
+"And you're as happy as you expected to be?"
+
+"Quite, thanks."
+
+"I see. Just about," was Miss Quisante's next observation; since it was a
+little hard to answer, May smiled and rang the bell for tea.
+
+"You're very gay, I suppose?" asked the old lady.
+
+"Just as many parties as I can find gowns for," May declared.
+
+"Seen anything of the Benyons lately?"
+
+A little shadow came on May's face. "I hardly ever see Jimmy except at
+mother's," she answered. "Dick comes sometimes." She paused a moment, and
+then added, "I expect him this afternoon."
+
+"Is he still as devoted to Sandro?"
+
+"He believes in his abilities as enthusiastically as ever." The dry laugh
+which Miss Quisante gave was as significant as her "Just about," a few
+minutes before. This time May did not laugh, but looked gravely at Aunt
+Maria. "They've had a little difference on a political matter. Did you
+ever hear of what Dick calls the Crusade? His great Church movement, you
+know."
+
+"Lord, yes, my dear. Sandro once speechified to me about it for an hour."
+
+"Well, he doesn't speechify so much now; he doesn't believe in it so
+much, and Dick's annoyed. That's natural, I think, though perhaps it's a
+little silly of him. However, if you wait, he'll tell you about it
+himself."
+
+"Why doesn't Sandro believe in it so much?"
+
+"Perhaps I ought to have said that he doesn't think the present time a
+suitable one for pressing it."
+
+"I see," said Miss Quisante sipping her tea. May looked at her again and
+seemed about to speak, but in the end she only smiled. She was amused at
+the old lady's questions, impelled to speak plainly to her, and
+restrained only by the sense that any admission she might seem to make
+would be used to the full against her husband by his faithful and liberal
+aunt.
+
+"He says he has good reasons, and Dick Benyon says they're bad ones," she
+ended by explaining, though it was not much of an explanation after all.
+
+Miss Quisante had the curiosity to await Dick Benyon's coming, and, in
+spite of his evident expectation of a _tete-a-tete_, not to go
+immediately on his arrival. She was struck with the air of mingled
+affection and compassion with which he greeted his healthy, handsome,
+smiling young hostess. Moreover he was himself apologetic, as though
+suffering from a touch of remorse. He began to talk trifles, but May
+brought him to the point.
+
+"I read the speech after I got your letter," she said. "I'm sorry you
+don't like it, but Alexander must consider the practical aspect of the
+matter. You won't do your cause any good by urging it out of season."
+
+"In season and out of season; that's the only way."
+
+"You might be an Irish member," said May, smiling.
+
+Dick was too much in earnest to be diverted to mirth. The presence of
+Miss Quisante still seemed to make him a little uncomfortable, but the
+old lady did not move. May gave her no hint, and he was too full of his
+subject to hold his tongue.
+
+"I want you to speak to him about it," he went on.
+
+"To urge him to do what he thinks a mistake?"
+
+Dick grew a little hot. "To urge him not to go back on the cause and
+on--on his friends, and almost to laugh at them for----" He paused and
+looked at May; she was smiling steadily. He did not end quite as bluntly
+as he had meant. "I think that he has, unconsciously no doubt, allowed
+personal considerations to influence him."
+
+A short sudden chuckle came from Aunt Maria; she rose to her feet and
+crossed the room to May.
+
+"If he's going to abuse Sandro, I mustn't stay," she said. "I couldn't
+bear to lose any of my illusions, my dear." She kissed May and added,
+"You might tell him to come and see me, though. I should like to hear
+what he's got in his head now. Good-bye, Lord Richard. Don't you fret
+about your Crusade. Sandro'll take it up again when it's convenient." She
+chuckled again at the puzzled stare which accompanied Dick's shake of the
+hand.
+
+"A very kind old woman, but with a rather malicious tongue," said May.
+She walked to the hearth and stood there, facing her visitor. "Now, Dick,
+what is it?" she asked.
+
+"The Dean's tremendously hurt about it; he doesn't say much, but he feels
+it deeply."
+
+"I'm very sorry. What are the personal considerations?"
+
+"You know Henstead?" It was the borough for which Quisante sat. "There's
+an old Wesleyan colony there; several of them are very rich and employ a
+lot of labour and so on. They've always voted for us. And they've found a
+lot of the money. They found a lot when Quisante got in before."
+
+"Yes?" Her voice displayed interest but nothing more. Dick grew rather
+red and hurried on with his story.
+
+"Well, one of them, old Foster the maltster, came to your husband
+and--and told him they didn't like the Crusade and that it wouldn't do."
+He paused, glanced at May for an instant, and ended, "The seat's not
+safe, you know, and--and it wants money to fight it."
+
+A silence of some few minutes followed. Dick fidgeted with his hat, while
+May looked out of the window on to the river.
+
+"Why do you come and tell this to me?" she asked presently. "Supposing it
+was all true, what could I do?"
+
+Dick's resentment got the better of him; he answered hotly, "Well, you
+might tell him that it was playing it pretty low down on us."
+
+"Have you told him that?"
+
+"Yes, I have, or I shouldn't have come to you. I don't mean I used just
+those words, but I made my meaning clear enough."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He said he didn't see it in the light I did."
+
+A faint smile came on the face of Mr. Quisante's wife.
+
+"But you could make him see it," urged Dick. May smiled at him for a
+brief moment and then looked out to the river again.
+
+"It'll be deuced awkward for him if they get hold of his back speeches,"
+said Dick with gloomy satisfaction.
+
+"Oh, everybody's back speeches are what you call deuced awkward." A
+moment later she went on, "What does it all come to, after all? We must
+take things as they are; we mustn't be quixotic, we mustn't quarrel with
+our bread-and-butter."
+
+Dick looked at her with evident surprise, even with dismay.
+
+"You think it all right?" he asked.
+
+"It's not for me to say. Am I to sit in judgment on my husband? Anyhow
+people do just the same thing every day. You know that as well as I do,
+Dick." Just on the last words her voice grew softer; he might have caught
+a hint of entreaty, had not his mind been fixed on his own wrongs and the
+betrayal of his favourite cause. "I'm assuming that what you say is
+true," she added, more coldly again.
+
+When Dick left her, it was to go home to his wife and tell her, and Mrs.
+Gellatly whom he found with her, that he did not understand what had come
+over May Gaston--May Quisante, he corrected himself. Not understanding,
+he proved naturally quite unable to explain. Lady Richard was more equal
+to the occasion.
+
+"That man's simply got hold of her," she said. "She'll think black's
+white if he says it is. Still she must see that he's treating you
+shamefully."
+
+"She didn't seem to see it." moaned Dick mournfully. Then he laughed
+rather bitterly and added, "I tell you what, though. I think that old
+aunt of his has taken his measure pretty well."
+
+The innate nobility which underlay Lady Richard's nature showed up
+splendidly at this moment; she sympathised heartily with Dick, and
+forbore to remind him of what she had said from the beginning, contenting
+herself with remarking that for her part she never had considered and did
+not now consider Mr. Quisante even particularly clever.
+
+"He's as clever as the deuce," said Dick. That conviction, at least, he
+need not surrender.
+
+"I suppose," ventured Mrs. Gellatly, "that's how he convinces Lady May
+that he's always right."
+
+Dick looked at her with a touch of covert contempt; clever people could
+convince the intellect, but there were instincts of honour, of loyalty,
+and of fidelity which no arguments should be able to blunt or to turn.
+Here was the thing which, vaguely felt, had so puzzled him in regard to
+May Quisante; he had not doubted that she would see the thing as he had
+seen it--as Quisante had professed himself unable to see it.
+
+That evening Quisante brought home to dinner the gentleman whom Dick
+Benyon called old Foster the maltster, and who had been Mayor of Henstead
+three several times. He was a tall, stout, white-haired old man with a
+shrewd kindly face, dressed all in broadcloth, showing an expanse of
+white shirt-front decorated with a big black stud and a very small black
+wisp of a tie. His conversation indicated now and then that he gave
+thought to the other world, always that he knew the ways of this. May
+liked him in spite of the rather ponderous deference he showed to her;
+with Quisante, on the other hand, he was familiar, seeming to say that he
+could tell the younger man a thing or two; Quisante's manner did nothing
+to contradict this implied assumption.
+
+"What we want, sir," said Foster, "is to have you in the Government. Once
+you're there, you'll sit for Henstead till you die or go to the House of
+Lords. Nobody'll be able to touch you. But this time's critical, very
+critical. They'll have a strong candidate, and they'll do all they know
+to keep you out. It's not a time for offending anybody." He turned to
+May. "I hope your ladyship will let us see you very often in the town?"
+he said.
+
+"When the election begins, I shall come down with my husband and stay all
+the time."
+
+"That's right; you'll be worth a hundred votes." He threw himself back in
+his chair. "Under God," he said, "we ought to be safe. Your speech had an
+excellent effect; I sent it to Middleton, and Dunn, and Japhet Williams,
+and when I met 'em at the Council, they were all most pleasant about it.
+I think you've undone all the bad impression."
+
+"I only said what I thought," observed Quisante.
+
+"Yes, yes, just so; oh, just so, of course." His tone was not in the
+least ironical, but a little hurried, as though, having put the thing in
+a way that might sound ambiguous, he hastened to prevent any possible
+misapprehension. May had looked for a twinkle in his eye, but his eye was
+guilty of no such frivolity.
+
+"I had a letter from Mr. Japhet Williams the other day," said Quisante.
+"He was annoyed at a vote I gave in Committee on the Truck Act. You know
+I voted against the Government once, in favour of what I thought fairer
+treatment of the men; not that any real hardship on the employer was
+involved."
+
+"Just so, just so," said Mr. Foster. "That's the worst of Japhet. He
+doesn't look at the matter in a broad way. But I've put that all right,
+sir. I met him on the Cemetery Board, and walked home with him, and I
+said, 'Look here Japhet, that vote of Mr. Quisante's 'll be worth fifty
+votes among the men.' 'I don't care for that,' he said; 'I'm against
+interference.' 'So am I,' I told him; 'but where's the harm? Mr. Quisante
+must have his own opinion here and there--that comes of having a clever
+man--but (I said) the Government had a hundred majority there, and Mr.
+Quisante knew it.' Well, he saw that, and admitted that he'd been wrong
+to make a fuss about it."
+
+Quisante nodded grave appreciation. May gave a little laugh, and suddenly
+poured out a glass of claret for Mr. Foster; turning, he found her eyes
+on his face, sparkling with amusement. His own large features relaxed
+into a slow smile; something like the twinkle was to be detected now.
+
+"Nothing's the worse for a bit of putting, is it?" he said, and drank his
+wine at a gulp.
+
+"You're a diplomatist, Mr. Foster," said she.
+
+"Not to the detriment of truth; I assure you I don't sacrifice that," he
+replied, with renewed gravity and an apparently perfect sincerity.
+
+May was sorry when he took his leave, partly for the temporary loss of a
+study which amused her, more because his departure brought the time for
+telling Quisante of Dick Benyon's visit. She did not want to tell him and
+anticipated no result, yet she felt herself bound to let him know about
+it. To this mind her eighteen months of marriage had brought her. In the
+quite early days, while not blind to the way he looked at things when
+left to himself, she had been eager to show him how she looked at them,
+and, with the memory of her triumphs during their engagement, very
+sanguine that she would be able always to convert him from his view to
+hers, to open his eyes and show him the truth as it seemed to her. This
+hopeful mood she had for nearly a year past been gradually abandoning.
+She had once asked Morewood whether people must always remain what they
+were; now she inclined to answer yes to her own question. But she could
+not convince herself so thoroughly as to feel absolved from the duty of
+trying to prove that the true answer was no. She must offer her husband
+every chance still, she must not acquiesce, she must not give up the game
+yet; some day she might (she smiled at herself here) awake an impulse or
+happen on a moment so great as really to influence, to change, and to
+mould him. But she had come to hate this duty; she would rather have left
+things alone; as a simple matter of inclination, she wished that she felt
+free to sit and smile at Quisante as she had at old Foster the maltster.
+She could not; Foster was not part of her life, near and close to her,
+her chosen husband, the father of her child. Unless she clung to her
+effort, and to her paradoxical much-disappointed hope, her life and the
+thought of what she had done with it would become unendurable. Dick and
+his wife had not quite understood what had come over her.
+
+If Mr. Foster was diplomatic, so was she; she set before her husband
+neither Dick's complaints nor her own misgivings in their crudity; she
+started by asking how his change of front would affect people and
+instanced Dick and herself only as examples of how the thing might strike
+certain minds. She must feed him with the milk of rectitude, for its
+strong meat his stomach was hopelessly unready. But he was suspicious,
+and insisted on hearing what Dick Benyon had said; so she told him pretty
+accurately. His answer was a long disquisition on the political
+situation, to which she listened with the same faint smile with which she
+had heard Dick himself; at last he roundly stigmatised the Crusade as a
+visionary and impracticable scheme.
+
+"I stuck to it as long as I could," he said, "but you wouldn't have me
+risk everything for it?"
+
+"Or even anything?" she asked.
+
+The question was a spark to him. Gladly leaving the immediate question,
+he dilated on all that the coming contest meant to him, how victory would
+assure his prospects, how defeat might leave him hopelessly out in the
+cold, how it would be absurd to lose all that he was going to accomplish
+for the sake of a hasty promise and a cause that he had come to
+disbelieve in. "When did you come to disbelieve in it?" was the question
+in her heart; he saw it in her eyes.
+
+"It's a little hard to have to explain everything in private as well as
+in public," he complained. "And my head's fit to split."
+
+"Don't trouble any more about it; only I thought I'd better tell you what
+Dick said." She came to him as he lay back in his chair and put her hand
+on his brow. He was tired, not only looking tired; his head did ache, she
+had no doubt; to turn these afflictions to account had always been his
+way; so long ago as the Imperial League banquet she remembered it. "Go to
+bed," she said. "I'll write a few letters first."
+
+"I want you to understand me," he said. He loved her and she had made him
+uneasy; her good opinion was very necessary to his happiness.
+
+"I do understand you," she said, and persuaded him to go upstairs, while
+she sat down by the fire, forgetful apparently of the excuse that she had
+made for lingering.
+
+Did she repent? That question came often into her mind. She well might,
+for one of the great hopes with which she had married was quite gone by
+now. There was no longer any possibility of maintaining that the faults
+were of manner only, no longer any reasonable expectation that she would
+be able to banish or materially to diminish them. It was for better for
+worse with a vengeance then. But did she repent? There were times when
+she wept, times when she shuddered, times when she scorned, even times
+when she hated. But had she ever so felt as to be confident that if
+Omnipotence had offered to undo the past, she would have had the past
+undone? There had perhaps been one such occasion quite early in the
+marriage, and the woe of it had been terrible; but it was followed almost
+immediately by a "moment," by an inspired outbreak of his over some case
+in the paper, by a vow to see an injustice remedied, a ceaseless,
+unsparing, unpaid month's work to that end, a triumph over wrong and
+prejudice in the cause of a helpless woman. He had nearly killed himself
+over it, the doctor said, and May had watched by his bed, without tears,
+but with a conviction that if he died she must die also; because it
+seemed as though he had faced death rather than her condemnation. That
+was not the truth of it, of course, but she and he between them had made
+it seem the truth to her.
+
+And now, with all the meanness of this abandonment of his friends, with
+all this fawning on the moneyed Wesleyans before her eyes, she could not
+declare that she repented, lest he, waking again to greatness, should
+plunge her again into the depths of abasement. But that the same man
+should be great and mean, and should escape arraignment for his meanness
+by making play with his headache! She smiled now to remember how great
+the mere faults of manner had once seemed to her girlish fastidiousness;
+they were small to her now; her teeth were set on edge indeed, but by a
+sharper sourness than lay in them. To the faults of manner she had grown
+to some extent accustomed; she had become an adept in covering and
+excusing them. To-day, in her interview with Dick Benyon, she had turned
+alike art on to the other faults. A new thought and a new apprehension
+came into her mind.
+
+"If I go on defending him," she murmured, "shall I end by getting like
+him and really think it all right? I wonder!" For it was difficult not to
+identify herself with her cause, and he was now her cause. Who asks a
+lawyer to disbelieve his own client, who asks a citizen to be extreme to
+mark what is done amiss in his country's quarrel?
+
+"Now if the Dean did chance to do anything wrong, Mrs. Baxter simply
+wouldn't see that it was wrong," she meditated. "Neither would Amy
+Benyon, if Dick did. I see it's wrong and yet defend it. I'm the wrong
+sort of woman to have married Alexander."
+
+Yes, from that point of view, undoubtedly. But there was another. What
+would Mrs. Baxter or Lady Richard have made of him at the times when he
+woke to greatness? Dick had appreciated him then; Dick's wife never had;
+she saw only the worst. Well, it was plain to see. May saw it so plain
+that night that she sat where she was till the night was old because, if
+she went upstairs, she might find him there. And she fell to wishing that
+the seat at Henstead was not shaky; so much hung on it, her hopes for him
+as well as his own hopes, her passionate interest in him as well as his
+ambition. Nay, she had a feeling or a fear that more still hung on it.
+Pondering there alone in the night, assessing her opinion and reviewing
+her knowledge of him, she told herself that there was hardly anything
+that he would not do sooner than lose the seat. So that she dreaded the
+struggle for the strain it might put on him; strains of that sort she
+knew now that he was not able to bear. "Lead us not into temptation," was
+the prayer which must be on her lips for him; if that were not answered,
+he was well-nigh past praying for altogether. For with temptation came
+his blindness, and he no longer saw the thing that tempted him for what
+it was. Oh, and what a fool she had been to think that she could make him
+see!
+
+At last she went upstairs, slowly and reluctantly. Passing her own door,
+she mounted again to the baby's nursery, and entered softly. All was
+peace; both baby and nurse slept. May was smiling as she came down the
+stairs; she murmured, "Gaston!" mimicking the satisfied tones of old Aunt
+Maria's voice. Then she entered her own room; Quisante's bed was empty. A
+sense of great relief rose in her, but she went out again and softly
+turned the handle of his dressing-room door. He had elected to sleep
+there, as he often did. The light was still high; a book lay open by him
+on the bed. He was in deep sleep, looking very pale, very tired, very
+peaceful. She stood looking at him for a moment; again she smiled as she
+stole forward and peeped at the book. It was a work on Bimetallism. Did
+he mean to win Henstead with that? Oh, no; he meant to preach the Majesty
+of the British Sovereign, King of coins, good tender from China to Peru.
+She imagined him making some fine rhetoric out of it.
+
+He breathed gently and regularly; for once he rested, he really rested
+from his unresting efforts, from the cruel race he ran; he was for once
+free from all the thoughts of his brain, all the devices of his
+resourceful, unbaffled, unhesitating mind. With a sigh she turned away
+and lowered the light, that in darkness he might sleep more easily. In
+the darkness she stood a minute longer, seeing now only the dim outline
+of his body on the bed; again the smile came, but her lips moved to
+murmur softly, "Lead us not into temptation." And still murmuring the
+only prayer that might serve him, still smiling that it was the only
+prayer she could pray for her chosen husband, she left Quisante to his
+rest.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER X.
+
+                         PRACTICAL POLITICS.
+
+
+While Alexander Quisante increased in promise and prominence, Weston
+Marchmont had begun to cause some anxiety to his best friends. His
+passion for ultimates grew upon him; sometimes it seemed as though he
+would put up with nothing less. At the same time a personal fastidiousness
+and a social exclusiveness, always to a certain extent characteristic of
+the man, gathered greater dominion over him. He was not civil to the
+people towards whom civility would be useful, and he refused to shut
+his eyes to the logical defects or moral shortcomings in the measures
+promoted by his party. His abilities were still conceded in ample terms,
+his charm still handsomely and sincerely acknowledged. But a suspicion
+gradually got about that he was impracticable, that he had a perverse
+affection for unpopular causes, for reasons of approval or disapproval
+that did not occur to the world at large, for having a private point of
+view of his own, differentiated from the common view by distinctions as
+unyielding as to the ordinary eye they were minute. The man who begins
+merely by being uncompromising as to his own convictions may end in
+finding an actual pleasure in disagreeing with those of others. Some
+such development was, according to acute observers, taking place in
+Marchmont; if the tendency became his master, farewell to the high
+career to which he had appeared to be destined. Plain men would call him
+finicking, and practical men would think it impossible to work with him.
+No impression is more damning about a man engaged in public life; the
+Whips have to put a query to his name, and he cannot be trusted to
+confine his revolts to such occasions as those on which Mr. Foster of
+Henstead thought an exhibition of independence a venial sin, or in
+certain circumstances a prudent act.
+
+"The fact is," Morewood said to Marchmont once, when they had been
+talking over his various positions and opinions, "if you want to lead
+ordinary people, you must keep on roads that ordinary people can travel,
+roads broad enough for the _grande armee_. You may take them quicker or
+slower, you may lead them downhill or get them to follow you uphill, but
+you must keep to the road. A bye-path is all right and charming for
+yourself, for a _tete-a-tete_, or a small party of friends, but you
+don't take an army-corps along it."
+
+The unusual length and the oratorical character of this warning were
+strong evidence of the painter's feelings. Marchmont nodded a grave and
+troubled assent.
+
+"Still if I see the thing one way, I can't act as if I saw it the
+other."
+
+"You mustn't see it one way," said Morewood irritably. "If you must be
+the slave of your conscience, hang it, you needn't be of your intellect.
+Ask the Dean there." (The Dean, who had been drinking his port in
+thoughtful peace, started a little.) "He'll tell you that belief is
+largely or altogether--which is it?--an affair of the will."
+
+The Dean was prudent; he smiled and finished his glass.
+
+"If I chose to believe in the Crusade, I could," Morewood went on with a
+satirical smile. "Or with an adequate effort I could think Jimmy Benyon
+brilliant, or Fred Wentworth wise, or Alexander Quisante honest. That's
+it, eh, Mr. Dean?"
+
+"Well, the ordinary view may be appreciated, even if it's not entirely
+embraced," said the Dean diplomatically. "The points of agreement are
+usually much more important, for practice at all events, than those of
+difference."
+
+"In fact--shut one eye and go ahead?" asked Marchmont.
+
+"Oh, shut 'em both and walk by the sound of the feet and the cheering."
+
+"Don't say more than you mean, Mr. Morewood," the Dean advised mildly.
+
+"I know what he means," said Marchmont. "And, yes, I rather wish I could
+do it."
+
+Morewood began to instance the great men who had done it, including in
+his list many whom the common opinion that he praised would not have
+characterised at all in the same way. At each name Marchmont denied
+either the greatness or the pliancy. The Dean could see with what ardour
+he maintained his position; in spite of the unvarying suavity of his
+manner there was something naturally repulsive to him in yielding a
+hair's breadth in deference to the wishes or the weaknesses of a
+majority.
+
+"Your independence is really half a prejudice," said the Dean at the
+end. "You're like a man who can't get a cab and misses his appointment
+sooner than ride in a 'bus."
+
+"I suppose so--and I'm much obliged to you. But--well, you can argue
+against what a man does, but what's the use arguing against what he is?"
+
+"No; he himself's the only man who can do that," said the Dean, but he
+knew as well as Marchmont himself that such an argument would never be
+victorious. The will to change was wanting; Marchmont might deplore what
+he lost by being what he was, and at times he felt very sore about it;
+but as a matter of taste he liked himself just as he was, even as he
+liked the few people in whom he found some of the same flavour and the
+same bent of mind.
+
+His character was knit consistently all through; whether he dealt with
+public affairs or ordered his own life the same line of conduct was
+followed. If he could not have things as he wanted them or do them as he
+chose, he would not have them or do them at all. He was not modifiable.
+For example, having failed to win May Gaston, he had no thought of
+trying for Fanny, and this not (as Lady Richard had thought likely)
+because he objected to any sort of connection with Quisante; that point
+of view did not occur to him; it was merely because Fanny was not May,
+and May was what he had wanted and did want. Fanny he left to the
+gradual, uphill, but probably finally successful, wooing of Jimmy
+Benyon. Even with regard to May herself he very nearly achieved
+consistency. His promise to be often at Quisante's house had been
+flagrantly and conspicuously broken. Quisante had pressed him often; on
+the three occasions on which he had called May had let him see how
+gladly she would welcome him more often. He had not gone more often.
+He was not sulking, for his temper was not touched; but he held aloof
+because it was not to his taste to go under existing circumstances.
+He knew that he gave pain to her and regretted the pain, but he could
+not go, any more than he could give a vote because his good friend
+Constantine Blair, the Whip, was very much put out when he wouldn't. "He
+wants a party all to himself," said Constantine angrily. "And then I'm
+hanged if he'd vote with it!"
+
+Some of the things here indicated May Quisante read about him in the
+papers, some Quisante brought home from the House, some she heard from
+friends or divined for herself; and her heart went out to Marchmont
+under the cunning lure of contrast. The Dissolution drew near now, and
+political conferences, schemes, and manoeuvres were the order of the
+day in Grosvenor Road and in many other houses which she frequented.
+Perhaps she exaggerated what she disliked, but it seemed to her that
+everybody, her husband of course among the first, was carefully
+considering how many of his previous utterances and how much of his
+existing opinions he might conveniently, and could plausibly, disclaim
+and suppress, and on the other hand to what extent it might be
+expedient, and would not be too startling, to copy and advocate
+utterances and opinions which were in apparent conflict therewith. This,
+she was told, was practical politics. Hence her impulse of longing to
+renew friendship and intimacy with a man who was dubbed unpractical. The
+change would be pleasant, and, if she found something to laugh at, she
+would find something to admire, just as if in the practical politicians
+she found something to frown at, she contrived to find also much matter
+for legitimate mirth. She had begun by thinking that a gift of humour
+would make her married life harder; she was conscious now that without
+that form of insight it would be utterly intolerable.
+
+"I hear you're behaving very badly," she said to Marchmont, when he came
+in obedience to her invitation. "I was talking to Mr. Blair about you,
+and he had no words strong enough to denounce you in."
+
+"Yes, it's atrocious. I'm thinking for myself," he said with a shrug, as
+he sat down.
+
+"For yourself instead of about yourself! With a dissolution coming too!"
+
+"Oh, I'm safe enough. I'm a martyr without a stake."
+
+"Well, really, you're refreshing. I wish we were safe, and hadn't got to
+make ourselves safe; I don't think it's a very elevating process." She
+paused a moment and then added, "I ought to apologise for bringing you
+into such an atmosphere of it. We conspire here like Fenians or Women
+Suffragists, and I know how much you hate it all."
+
+"And you?" he asked briefly.
+
+"Oh, yes, as the clerk hates his desk or a girl her practising. The
+duties of life, you know."
+
+She had received him in an exuberance of spirits, much as though she
+were the school-girl she spoke of and he a pleasant visitor from the
+outside world. When she reproached him for not having come before, it
+was only evidence of her pleasure that he had come now; in the days
+when he saw her often and was always at her call, there had been no
+such joy as this. Yet he had hesitated to add one more item to the score
+of simple perversity, of not wanting when you can have and _vice versa_;
+what she said about the atmosphere she lived in showed him that his
+hesitation had been right.
+
+"And I know you didn't want to come," she went on. "You've only come out
+of politeness, no, I mean out of kindness."
+
+"There was an old invitation. An old promise too? Wasn't there?"
+
+"One never withdrawn, the other terribly broken," she laughed. "You've
+heard of our difference with poor Dick Benyon?"
+
+"Of your husband's?" May smiled slightly. "Yes, I have. Quisante's quite
+right now, you know; the only pity is that he didn't see it sooner."
+
+"Dick's not so charitable as you. He suspects our sincerity."
+
+It was on the tip of his tongue to say again "Your husband's?" but
+looking at her he found her eyes full of fun, and began to laugh
+himself.
+
+"I find it absolutely the only way," May explained. "I can't draw
+distinctions. Mrs. Baxter, now, says 'Our Cathedral' but 'My
+drawing-room.' Amy Benyon says 'Our relations,' when she means hers and
+'Dick's relations' when she means his. I've quite given up the attempt
+to discriminate; a thorough-going identification of husband and wife is
+the only thing. The We matrimonial must be as universal as the We
+editorial."
+
+"The theory is far-reaching, if you apply it to qualities."
+
+"Yes, I don't quite know how far."
+
+"Alliance becomes union, and union leads to fusion?"
+
+"And fusion leads where?"
+
+He escaped answering or covered inability to answer with a shrug.
+
+"I'm sorry you don't please Mr. Blair," she said.
+
+"Really I don't think I care so very much. I used to be ambitious,
+but----"
+
+"Oh, don't tell me it's not worth while being ambitious. It's all I've
+got."
+
+She had spoken on a hasty unthinking impulse; she grew a little red and
+laughed rather nervously when she found what she had said. His face did
+not change, his voice was quite unmoved, as he said, smiling, "In that
+case, no doubt, it is worth while."
+
+She wanted to applaud his excellent manners; at the same time they
+annoyed her rather. She had been indiscreet no doubt, but her
+indiscretion might, if he had liked, have led the way to matters of
+interest, to that opening of the heart to somebody for which she was
+pining. His polite care not to embarrass her shut the door.
+
+"I mean, just now," she resumed, "while our seat's so shaky, you know."
+
+"Ah, yes," said he half-absently.
+
+She leant back in her chair and looked at him.
+
+"I think," she said, "you look as if you did care, about Mr. Blair or
+about something else. I wanted to tell you that I don't agree in the
+least with the criticisms on you." She leant forward, asking in a lower
+voice, "Do they hurt you?"
+
+"Not much. A man likes to succeed, but there are things I like better."
+
+"Yes. Well, there's nothing we--_we_--like better, Mr. Marchmont."
+
+He rose and stood on the hearth; her eyes were upturned to his in a
+steady gaze.
+
+"You were always very frank, weren't you?" he asked, looking down and
+smiling. "Well, you've known what you say for a long while, haven't
+you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, even before--Oh, ever since the very beginning, you know.
+There now! We've left 'We' and got to 'I,' and whenever that happens I
+say something I oughtn't to. But one must sometimes. I believe I could
+serve anybody to the death if only I were allowed to speak my whole mind
+about him once a week. But it's disloyal, I suppose."
+
+"Well, I suppose it is."
+
+She laughed. "That's what Mr. Blair means," she said. "You must have
+seen that I wanted you to say 'No, it isn't.' Perhaps you would have to
+anybody else. You were always one of the people who attributed all the
+virtues to me. You made it so hard for me to be good. I loathed the girl
+you thought I was. One comfort is that as I am now----". Suddenly her
+eyes met his; she stopped. "We'd better talk about 'we' again," she
+ended with a laugh.
+
+"Whom do you talk to?" he asked curiously.
+
+"About 'we'? I talk to Miss Quisante--You've met her? She's never tired
+of talking about 'we'--though she doesn't like us; but she doesn't care
+a bit to talk about me."
+
+"Have a confidante," he suggested gravely.
+
+"Yes--like Tilburina. Who shall I have?"
+
+A run through their acquaintance suggested only Mrs. Gellatly, and her
+May rejected as being too suitable, too much the traditional confidante.
+"I should like one who might possibly have something to tell me in
+return, and she never could," she said.
+
+They were interrupted by the arrival of the man of whom they had spoken,
+Constantine Blair. He came with important and, as he clearly considered,
+disquieting news for Quisante. Sir Winterton Mildmay, one of the richest
+landowners near Henstead, who had been at loggerheads with his party,
+had made up the quarrel and consented to stand in opposition to
+Quisante. "I thought the sooner your husband knew the better," said
+Constantine with a very grave face. "It makes a difference, you see. We
+only beat young Fortescue, a stranger in the town, by two hundred, and
+they had four hundred the time before." He paused and added, "Lady
+Mildmay's very much liked in the town."
+
+"Come, Blair, I'm sure we shan't be worse off in that respect anyhow,"
+said Marchmont, laughing.
+
+"Oh, I've nothing to do with you, I've given you up," cried Blair,
+twisting his good-humoured face into a fierce scowl. "He's a man with
+convictions, Lady May; he's no sort of use to me."
+
+Blair had convictions himself, but he and everybody else took them so
+much for granted that they might almost as well not have existed; they
+were polite convictions too, ready to give place not only to one another
+but even to circumstances, and waiting quite patiently their turn to be
+realised. He expected to be met in a like spirit, conceiving that the
+true function of a man's own opinions is to decide which party he shall
+belong to; with that decision their duty was ended. He possessed an
+extremely cordial manner, dressed perfectly, and never forgot anybody.
+He enjoyed his work immensely, quarrelling with nothing in it save that
+it often prevented him from being present at the first performances of
+new plays. May thought him pleasant, but did not welcome his appearance
+to-day; he smacked too strongly of those politics distinctively practical
+from which her talk with Marchmont had afforded a temporary escape.
+
+"I know Mildmay," said Marchmont. "He's a capital fellow and, I should
+think, very popular. He'll give you a bit of a run."
+
+"From what I hear he'll run us very close indeed," said Blair with an
+anxious look. "However I've unlimited confidence in your husband, Lady
+May. If Mildmay is to be beaten Quisante'll beat him; if there is a weak
+spot he'll find it out."
+
+May smiled faintly; what Blair said was so true.
+
+"Perhaps," smiled Marchmont, "you'll be able to ferret out something
+about him."
+
+May turned to him and said with a touch of sharpness, "We shall fight
+fairly anyhow, I hope." She saw that she surprised him and went on with
+a laugh, "You shouldn't talk as if we were going to set detectives on
+him and use their information for electioneering."
+
+"Well, hardly," said Constantine Blair. "Still, mind you, a constituency
+has a right to know that its member is an honourable and equitable man
+as well as a supporter of the principles it favours."
+
+"Excellently well put, Blair," said Marchmont languidly. "Is it your
+own?"
+
+"No!" said May, with a sudden laugh. "I believe it's my husband's."
+
+Blair looked a little put out, but his good-humour triumphed. "I'm not
+above borrowing from my betters," he said. "Quisante did say something
+of the sort to me, but how in the world did you know? Has he said it to
+you?"
+
+"Oh, no; I knew by--oh, just by the subtle sympathy that exists between
+husband and wife, Mr. Blair." She laughed again and glanced at Marchmont.
+"Sir Winterton must look out for the detectives, mustn't he?" she ended.
+
+Marchmont saw, though Blair did not, that she jested uneasily and reaped
+no pleasure, although she reaped amusement, from her clever recognition
+of her husband's style. She had spoken in much the same tone about the
+difference with Dick Benyon and the suspicions which Dick cast on "our
+sincerity." He came near to perceiving and understanding what was in her
+mind--what had been there as she watched Quisante sleeping. The first
+suggestion of ferreting out something had come from him, purely in the
+way of a cynical jeer, just because nobody would ever suspect him of
+seriously contemplating or taking part in such a thing. Well, May
+Quisante did not apparently feel quite so confident about her husband.
+
+Blair bustled off, with a parting mysterious hint that they must lose no
+time in preparing for the fray--it might begin any week now--and May's
+face relaxed into a more genuine smile.
+
+"He does enjoy it so," she explained. But Marchmont was not thinking of
+Blair. He asked her abruptly,
+
+"You'll go to Henstead and help him, I suppose?"
+
+"Of course. I shall be with him right through. He'll want all the help I
+can give him. It's everything to him to win this time."
+
+"Yes, I know." Her voice had become troubled again; she was very anxious
+for her husband's success; but was she anxious about something else too?
+"If I can help you, let me," he said as he rose to go.
+
+She gave him her hand and looked in his face.
+
+"I'm afraid that most likely I shouldn't be able to ask you," she said
+gravely. The answer, as she gave it, meant so much to him, and even
+seemed to admit so much, that he wondered at once at her insight into
+his thoughts and at her frankness in facing what she found there. For
+did she not in truth mean that she might want help most on some occasion
+when the loyalty he had himself approved would forbid her to reveal her
+distress to him or to seek his succour? He ventured, after an instant's
+hesitation, on one word.
+
+"After all," he said, "you can't trundle the world's wheelbarrow in
+white kid gloves; at least you soil them."
+
+"Then why trundle it?" she asked. "At any rate you needn't say that sort
+of thing. Leave that to Mr. Blair."
+
+Not only was the time when everybody had to be bestirring themselves
+approaching rapidly, but the appearance of Sir Winterton Mildmay in the
+list quickened the Quisantes' departure for the scene of action. Rooms
+were taken at the Bull in Henstead, an election agent appointed,
+resources calculated--this involved a visit to Aunt Maria--and matters
+got into fighting trim. During this period May had again full cause to
+thank her power of humour; it almost scattered the gloomy and (as she
+told herself) fanciful apprehensions which had gathered round, and
+allowed her to study with amusement her husband's preparations. He
+talked very freely to her always about his political views, and now he
+consulted her on the very important question of his Election Address. He
+reminded her of a man packing his portmanteau for a trip and not quite
+knowing what he would want, whether (for example) shooting boots would
+come in useful, or warm underclothing be essential. Space was limited,
+needs difficult to foresee, climate very uncertain. Some things were
+obviously necessary, such as the cry on which the Government was going
+to the country; others were sure to be serviceable; in went "something
+for Labour" (she gathered the phrase from Quisante's rough notes); odd
+corners held little pet articles of the owner's things which he had
+found unexpectedly useful on a previous journey, or which might seem
+especially adapted to the part of the world he was going to visit. On
+the local requirements Mr. Foster the maltster was a very Baedeker. With
+constant effort on Quisante's part, with almost unfailing amusement on
+his wife's, the portmanteau got itself filled.
+
+"Are you sure there's nothing else, Alexander?" she asked.
+
+"I think I've got everything that's of real service," said he. "I don't
+want to overload it."
+
+Of course not; excess luggage may be very expensive. May was smiling as
+she handed back the Address.
+
+"It's extraordinarily clever," she remarked. "You are extraordinarily
+clever, you know."
+
+"There's nothing in it that isn't pretty obvious," said he, though he
+was well pleased.
+
+"Oh, to you, yes, obvious to you; that's just it," she said.
+
+But amongst all that was in the portmanteau there was nothing that could
+be construed into a friendly word for the Crusade; and were not the
+anxious minds of the Henstead Wesleyans meant to read a disclaimer of
+that great movement in a reference to "the laudable and growing activity
+of all religious denominations, each within the sphere of its own
+action"? Quisante had put in "legitimate" before "sphere," but crossed
+it out again; the hint was plain enough without, and a superfluous word
+is a word too much. "Sphere," implies limitations; the Crusade had
+negatived them. This significant passage in the Address was fresh in
+May's mind when, a day or two later, her husband came in, fretful and
+out of humour. He flung a note down on the table, saying in a puzzled
+tone,
+
+"I can't think what's come over Dick Benyon. You know my fight'll be
+over before his is half-way through, and I wrote offering to go and make
+a couple of speeches for him. He writes back to say that under existing
+circumstances he thinks it'll be better for him not to trouble me. Read
+his note; it's very stiff and distant."
+
+"Can you wonder?" was what rose to her lips. She did not put the
+question. The odd thing was that most undoubtedly he could wonder and
+did wonder, that he did not understand why Dick should be aggrieved nor,
+probably, why, even though he chose to be aggrieved, he should therefore
+decline assistance of unquestionable value.
+
+"Well, there'll be a lot of people glad to have me," said Quisante in
+resentful peevishness. "And I daresay, if I have a big win, he'll change
+his mind. I shall be worth having then."
+
+"I don't think that would make any difference to Dick," she said.
+
+She spoke lightly, her tone was void of all offence, but Quisante left
+the room, frowning and vexed. She had seemed to rebuke him and to accuse
+him of not seeing or not understanding something that was plain to her.
+He had become very sensitive on this point. Left to himself, he had been
+a self-contented man, quite clear about what he meant to do, troubling
+very little about what he was, quite confident that he could reason from
+his own mind to the mind of his acquaintances with absolute safety. When
+he fell in love with May Gaston, however, part of her attraction for him
+had lain in his sense of a difference between them, of her grasp on
+things and on aspects of things which eluded him; in this mood he had
+been prepared to worship, to learn, to amend. These things for a little
+while he had done or attempted, and had been met by zealous efforts to
+the same end on her part. His great moments had been frequent then, and
+May had felt that the risky work she had undertaken might prosper and at
+last be crowned with success. As for some months back this idea of hers
+had been dying, even so Quisante's humble mood died. Now his suspicious
+vanity saw blame of what he was, or even contempt of him, in every word
+by which she might seem to invite him to become anything different.
+Though she had declared herself on his side by the most vital action of
+her life, he imputed to her a leaning towards treachery; her heart was
+more with his critics than with him. Yet he did not become indifferent
+to her praise or her blame, but rather grew morbidly sensitive and
+exacting, intolerant of questioning and disliking even a smile. He loved
+her, depended on her, and valued her opinion; but she became in a
+certain sense, if not an enemy, yet a person to be conciliated, to be
+hoodwinked, to be tricked into a favourable view. Hence there crept into
+his bearing towards her just that laboured insincerity which she had
+never ceased to blame in his attitude towards the world at large. He
+showed her the truth about himself now only as it were by accident, only
+when he failed to perceive that the truth would not be to her liking.
+But this was often, and every time it happened it seemed to him as well
+as to her at once to widen the gulf between them and to move further
+away any artificial means of crossing it. Thus the new sense of
+self-dissatisfaction and self-distrust which had grown upon him centred
+round his wife and seemed to owe its origin to her.
+
+On her side there came a sort of settled, resigned, not altogether
+unhumorous, despair. She saw that she had over-rated her power alike
+over him and over herself. She could not change what she hated in him,
+and she could not cease to hate it. She could neither make the normal
+level higher nor yet bear patiently with the normal lower level; the
+great moments would not become perpetual and the small moments grew more
+irritating and more humiliating. But the great moments recurred from
+time to time and never lost their charm. Thus she oscillated between the
+moods produced by an intense intellectual admiration on the one hand and
+an intense antipathy of the feelings on the other; and in this
+uncomfortable balancing she had the prospect of spending her life. Well,
+Aunt Maria had lived in it for years, and Aunt Maria could not be called
+an unhappy woman. If only Quisante would not do anything too outrageous,
+she felt that she would be able to endure. Since she could not change,
+she must be content to compromise, to ignore--if only he would not drive
+her from that refuge too.
+
+"I suppose she sees what the man is by now," said Lady Richard to
+Morewood, whom she had been trying to entice into sympathising with her
+over the scandalous treatment of the Crusade.
+
+"My dear Lady Richard, she always saw what he is much better than you
+do, even better than I do. But it's one thing to see what a man is and
+quite another to see what effect his being it will have on yourself from
+time to time."
+
+"What he's done about Dick and the Dean is so characteristic."
+
+"For example," Morewood pursued, "you know what a bore is, but at one
+time he kills you, at another he faintly amuses you. You know what a
+Dean is" (he raised his voice so as to let the Dean, who was reading in
+the window, overhear); "at one time the abuse exasperates you, at
+another such splendid indifference to the progress of thought catches
+your fancy. No doubt Lady May experiences the same varieties of feeling
+towards her worthy husband."
+
+"Well, I've done with him," said little Lady Richard. Morewood laughed.
+
+"The rest of us haven't," he said, "and I don't think we ever shall till
+the fellow dies somehow effectively."
+
+"What a blessing for poor May!" cried Lady Richard impulsively.
+
+Morewood was a long while answering; even in the end what he said could
+not be called an answer. But he annoyed Lady Richard by shaking his
+finger at her and observing,
+
+"Ah, there you raise a very interesting question."
+
+"Very," agreed the Dean from the window seat.
+
+"I didn't know you were listening," said Lady Richard, wheeling round.
+
+"I always listen about Mr. Quisante."
+
+"Exactly!" exclaimed Morewood. "I told you so!" But Lady Richard did not
+even pretend to understand his exultation or what he meant. Whatever he
+had happened to mean about poor May, the Dean was not Alexander
+Quisante's wife.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI.
+
+                   SEVENTY-SEVEN AND SUSY SINNETT.
+
+
+The course of events gave to the Henstead election an importance which
+seemed rather adventitious to people not Henstead-born. It occurred among
+the earliest; the cry was on its trial. Quisante was a prominent
+champion, his opponent commanded great influence, and the seat had always
+been what Constantine Blair used to call "pivotal," and less diplomatic
+tongues "wobbly." Such materials for conspicuousness were sure to lose
+nothing in the hands of Quisante. The consciousness that he fought a
+larger than merely local fight, on a platform broader than parochial,
+under more eyes than gazed at him from the floor of the Corn-Exchange,
+was the spur he needed to urge him to supreme effort and rouse him to
+moments of inspiration. Add to this the feeling that his own career was
+at its crisis. Even Fanny Gaston, who rather unwillingly accompanied her
+sister to the Bull, was in twenty-four hours caught by the spirit of
+combat and acknowledged that Quisante was a fine leader of a battle,
+however much he left to be desired as a brother-in-law. She flung herself
+into the fight with unstinted zeal, and was rewarded by Quisante's
+conviction that he had at last entirely overcome her dislike of him.
+
+"He's really splendid in his own way," she wrote to Jimmy Benyon--by now
+they had come to corresponding occasionally--"and I think that you
+anyhow--I don't ask Dick, who's got a fight of his own--might come and
+give him some help. People know how much you did for him, and it looks
+rather odd that you should neither of you be here." So Jimmy, after a
+struggle, packed up, and gave and received a reciprocal shock of surprise
+when he got into the same railway carriage as the Dean and Mrs. Baxter.
+
+"What, are you going too?" cried Jimmy.
+
+Mrs. Baxter explained that they were not going to join Mr. Quisante;
+indeed they were bound for the opposite camp, being on their way to stay
+with the Mildmays. The Dean added that his presence had no political
+significance; the Mildmays were old friends, and the visit quite
+unconnected with the election. "Although," the Dean added, "I shall find
+it interesting to watch the fight." His manner indicated that his
+sympathies were divided. Jimmy hastened to explain his presence.
+
+"I'm only going because of May and Fanny. I don't care a straw about
+Quisante," he said, "although I'm loyal to the party, of course."
+
+"I'm not a party man," observed the Dean. How should he be, when both
+parties contemptuously showed his dear Crusade the door?
+
+"I want Sir Winterton to win," said Mrs. Baxter with mild firmness.
+
+"Oh, I say!" murmured Jimmy, who was very ready to be made to feel
+uncomfortable. "Come now, why, Mrs. Baxter?"
+
+Mrs. Baxter shook her head, and went on knitting the stocking which on
+journeys took the place of the wonted petticoat.
+
+"My wife's taken a prejudice against Mr. Quisante," the Dean explained
+apologetically.
+
+"A prejudice!" said Mrs. Baxter with a patient withering smile; she
+implied that her husband would be calling religion and the virtues
+prejudices next.
+
+"There's nothing particularly wrong with him," Jimmy protested weakly.
+
+"There's nothing particularly right with him, Lord James. He's just like
+that coachman of the Girdlestones'; he never told the truth and never
+cleaned his harness, but, bless you, there was always a good reason for
+it. What became of the man, Dan?"
+
+"I don't know, my dear."
+
+"I remember. They had to get rid of him, and the Canon got him made
+night-watchman at the Institute. However, as I say, I called him Mr.
+Reasons, and that's what I call Alexander Quisante. Poor girl!" The last
+words referred, by a somewhat abrupt transition, to Quisante's wife.
+
+The Dean smiled rather uneasily at Jimmy Benyon; Mrs. Baxter detected the
+smile, but was not disturbed. She shook her head again, saying,
+
+"Sir Winterton you can trust, but if I were he I'd keep a sharp eye on
+all you Quisante people."
+
+"I say, hang it all!" moaned Jimmy Benyon. But his protest could not
+soften the old lady's convinced hostility. "You ask his aunt," she ended
+vindictively, and Jimmy was too timid to suggest that enquiries in such a
+quarter were not the usual way of forming a judgment on rising statesmen.
+
+Moreover he had no opportunity, for Miss Quisante did not come to
+Henstead; her explanation showed the mixture of malice and devotion which
+was her usual attitude towards Sandro.
+
+"I'd give my ears to come," she had told May, "to see the fun and hear
+Sandro. But I'm old and ugly and scrubby, and Sandro won't want me. I'm
+not a swell like you and your sister. I should do him harm, not good.
+He'd be ashamed of me--oh, that'd only amuse me. But I'd best not come.
+Write to me, my dear, and send me all his speeches."
+
+"I wish you'd come. I want you to talk to," May said.
+
+"Talk to your sister!" jeered Aunt Maria; it was nothing less than a
+jeer, for she knew very well that May could not and would not talk to
+Fanny.
+
+One thing the Quisante people (as Mrs. Baxter called them) found out
+before they had been long in Henstead, and this was the important and
+delicate nature of anything and everything that touched or affected Mr.
+Japhet Williams. Something of this had been foreshadowed by Mr. Foster's
+account of his friend, but the reality went far beyond. Japhet was a
+small fretful-faced man; he was rich, liberal, and kind, but he plumed
+himself on a scrupulous conscience and was the slave of a trifle-ridden
+mind. As a member of a party, then, he was hard to work with, harder even
+than Weston Marchmont, of whom he seemed sometimes to May to be a reduced
+and travestied copy. Not a speech could be made, not a bill issued, but
+Japhet Williams flew round to the Committee Room with an objection to
+urge and a hole to pick. There he would find large, stout, shrewd old
+Foster, installed in an arm-chair and ready with native diplomacy, or
+Quisante himself, earning Mrs. Baxter's nickname of "Mr. Reasons" by the
+suave volubility of his explanations. May laughed at such scenes
+half-a-dozen times in the first week of her stay at Henstead.
+
+"Is he so very important to us?" she asked of Foster.
+
+He answered her in a whisper behind a fat hand,
+
+"His house is only a couple of miles from Sir Winterton's, and Lady
+Mildmay's been civil. He employs a matter of two hundred men up at the
+mills yonder."
+
+"The position's very critical, isn't it, then?"
+
+"So your good husband seems to think," said Foster, jerking his thumb
+towards where Quisante leant over Japhet's shoulder, almost caressing
+him, and ingeniously justifying the statistics of an electioneering
+placard. May's eyes followed the direction of the jerk. She sighed.
+
+"Yes, it's a waste of Mr. Quisante's time, but we can't help that,"
+Foster sighed responsively. It was not, however, of Quisante's time that
+his wife had been thinking.
+
+Japhet rose. Quisante took his hand, shook it, and held it.
+
+"Now you're satisfied, really satisfied, Mr. Williams?" he asked. "I give
+you my word that what I've said is absolutely accurate."
+
+"What that placard says, sir?"
+
+"Yes, yes, certainly--what the placard says. It doesn't give the details
+and explanations, of course, but the results are accurately stated."
+
+"I'm much relieved to hear it, much relieved," said Japhet.
+
+He left them; Foster sat down again, smiling. May had come to drive her
+husband to a meeting and waited his leisure. He came across to Foster,
+holding the suspected placard in his hand.
+
+"Smoothed him down this time, sir?" asked Foster cheerily.
+
+"Yes," answered Quisante, passing his hand over his smooth hair. "I
+think, Mr. Foster, we won't have any more of this Number 77. Make a note
+of that, will you?"
+
+"No more of 77," Foster noted on a piece of paper.
+
+"It's not one of the most effective," said Quisante thoughtfully.
+
+"Sails a little near the wind, don't it?" asked Foster with a wink.
+
+"Brief summaries of intricate subjects are almost inevitably open to
+misunderstanding," observed Quisante.
+
+"Just so, just so," Foster hurried to say, his eyes grown quite grave
+again. May remembered Mr. Constantine Blair's plagiarism of her husband's
+style; had he been there, he must have appropriated this last example
+also. "I shall end by becoming very fond of Japhet Williams," she said as
+she got into the carriage. Quisante glanced at her and did not ask her
+why.
+
+Meanwhile, however, the other side had got hold of No. 77, and Smiley,
+the agent, a very clever fellow, wired up to the Temple for young Terence
+McPhair, who had an acquaintance with the subject. Young Terence, who
+possessed a ready tongue and no briefs to use it on, made fine play with
+No. 77; accusations of misrepresentation, ignorant he hoped, fraudulent
+he feared, flew about thick as snowflakes. The next morning Japhet was
+round at the Committee Room by ten o'clock. Foster was there, and a boy
+came up to the Bull with a message asking if Mr. Quisante could make it
+convenient to step round. It was a bad morning with Quisante; his head
+ached, his heart throbbed, and his stomach was sadly out of gear; he had
+taken up a report of young Terence's speech, and read it in gloomy
+silence while the others breakfasted. There was to be a great meeting
+that night, and they had hoped that he would reserve what strength he had
+for it. He heard the message, rose without a word, and went down to the
+Committee Room.
+
+"What'll he do?" asked Jimmy Benyon. "They gave us some nasty knocks last
+night."
+
+"He can prove that the placard has been withdrawn, at least that no more
+are to be ordered," said Fanny Gaston. "It wasn't his fault; he's not
+bound to defend it."
+
+Quisante came home to a late lunch; he was still ill, but his depression
+had vanished; he ate, drank, and talked, his spirit rising above the woes
+of his body.
+
+"What have you done this morning?" Fanny asked.
+
+"Held a meeting in the dinner-hour, had ten interviews, and the usual
+palaver with Japhet."
+
+"How are Mr. Williams' feelings?" asked May.
+
+"He's all right now," said Quisante, smiling. Then he added, "Oh, and
+we've wired to town for two hundred and fifty more of 77."
+
+Then May knew what was going to happen. Quisante was roused. The placard
+was untrue, at least misleading, and he knew it was; he might have
+retreated before young Terence and sheltered himself by an inglorious
+disclaimer. That, as Aunt Maria said, was not Sandro's way. No. 77 came
+down by the afternoon train, a corps of bill-posters was let loose, and
+as they drove to the evening meeting the town was red with it. Withdrawn,
+disclaimed, apologised for? It was insisted on, relied on, made a trump
+card of, flung full in young Terence's audacious face. May sat by her
+husband in that strange mixed mood that he roused in her, half pride,
+half humiliation; scorning him because he would not bow before the truth,
+exulting in the audacity, the dash, and the daring of him, at the spirit
+that caught victory out of danger and turned mistake into an occasion of
+triumph. For triumph it was that night. Who could doubt his sincerity,
+who question the injured honour that rang like a trumpet through his
+words? And who could throw any further slur on No. 77, thus splendidly
+championed, vindicated, and almost sanctified? Never yet in Henstead had
+they heard him so inspired; to May herself it seemed the finest thing he
+had yet done; and even young Terence, when he read it, felt glad that he
+had left Henstead by the morning train.
+
+As Quisante sank into his chair amid a tumult of applause, Foster winked
+across the platform at May; but little Japhet Williams was clapping his
+hands as madly as any man among them. Who could not congratulate him, who
+could not praise him, who could not feel that he was a man to be proud of
+and a man to serve? Yet most undoubtedly No. 77 was untrue or at least
+misleading, and Alexander Quisante knew it. Undoubtedly he had said "No
+more of it." And now he had pinned it as his colours to the mast. May
+found herself looking at him with as fresh an interest and as great a
+fear as in the first weeks of their marriage. Would she in her heart have
+had him honest over No. 77, honest and inglorious? Or was she coming to
+think as he did, and to ask little concerning honesty? What would Weston
+Marchmont think of the affair? Or, short of that, how Morewood would
+smile and the Dean shake his head!
+
+The No. 77 episode was very typical of that time, and most typical of
+Alexander Quisante's conduct, of Sandro's way. His best and his worst,
+his highest and his lowest, were called out; at one moment he wheedled an
+ignorant fool with flattery, at another he roused keen honest men to fine
+enthusiasm; now he seemed to have no thought that was not selfish and
+mean, now imagination rapt him to a glow of heart-felt patriotism. The
+good and the bad both stood him in stead, and hope reigned in his camp.
+But all hung in the balance, for Sir Winterton was tall and handsome,
+bluff and hearty, a good landlord, a good sportsman, a good man, a
+neighbour to the town and a friend to half of it. And the great cry did
+not seem like proving a great success.
+
+"It's up-hill work against Sir Winterton," said Japhet Williams, rubbing
+his thin little hands together.
+
+A troubled look spread over the broad face of that provincial diplomatist,
+Mr. Foster the maltster; he knew where the danger lay. They would come to
+Quisante's meetings, applaud him, admire him, be proud of his efforts to
+please them; but when the day came would they not think (and would not
+their wives remind them) that Sir Winterton was a neighbour and a friend
+and that Lady Mildmay was kind and sweet? Then, having shouted for
+Quisante, would they not in the peaceful obscurity of the ballot put
+their cross opposite Mildmay's name?
+
+"I'm not easy about it, sir, that I'm not," said Foster, wiping his broad
+red brow.
+
+Quisante was not easy either, as his lined face and his high-strung
+manner showed; he was half-killing himself and he was not easy. So much
+hung on it; before all England he had backed himself to win, and in the
+strain of his excitement it seemed to him that the stake he laid was his
+whole reputation. Was all that to go, and to go on no great issue, but
+just because Sir Winterton was bluff and cheery and Lady Mildmay kind and
+sweet? Another thing he knew about himself; if he lost this time, he must
+be out in the cold at least for a long time; he could not endure another
+contest, even if the offer of a candidature came to him, even though Aunt
+Maria found the funds. Everything was on this fling of the dice then; and
+it seemed to him almost iniquitous that he should lose because Sir
+Winterton was bluff and cheery and his wife kind and sweet. His face was
+hard and cunning as he leant across towards old Foster and said in a low
+voice, with a sneering smile,
+
+"I suppose there's nothing against this admirable gentleman?"
+
+Old Foster started a little, recollecting perhaps that fine passage in
+the speech which opened the campaign, the passage which defined the broad
+public lines of the contest and loftily disclaimed any personal attack or
+personal animosity. But the next moment he smiled in answer, smiled
+thoughtfully, as he tapped his teeth with the handle of his pen-knife.
+Quisante sat puffing at a cigar and looking straight at him with
+observant searching eyes.
+
+"Anything against him, eh?" asked Foster in a ruminative tone.
+
+"They've been ready enough to ask where I come from, and how I live, and
+so on."
+
+"They know all that about Sir Winterton, you see, sir."
+
+"Yes, confound them." The keen eyes were still on Foster; the fat old man
+shifted his position a little and ceased to meet their regard. "We don't
+want to be beaten, you know," said Quisante.
+
+A silence of some minutes followed. Quisante, rose and strolled off to a
+table, where he began to sort papers; Foster sat where he was, frowning a
+little, with his mouth pursed up. He stole a glance at Quisante's back, a
+curious enquiring glance.
+
+"I know nothing about the rights of it one way or the other," he said at
+last. "But some of the men up at the mills and in my place still remember
+Tom Sinnett's affair. Only the other night, as Sir Winterton drove by,
+one of them shouted out, 'Where's Susy Sinnett?'"
+
+Quisante went on sorting papers and did not turn round.
+
+"Who the deuce is Susy Sinnett?" he asked indifferently, with a laugh.
+
+"It was about five years ago--before Sir Winterton's split with the
+Liberals. Tom was a keeper in Sir Winterton's employ, and Sir Winterton
+charged him with netting game and sending it to London on his own
+account." Foster's narrative ceased and he looked again at his
+candidate's back. The papers rustled and the cigar smoke mounted to the
+ceiling. "Well?" said Quisante.
+
+"Tom was found guilty at Sessions; but in the dock he declared Sir
+Winterton had trumped up the charge to shut his mouth."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"Well, because he'd found Sir Winterton dangling after Susy, and
+threatened to break his head if he found him there again." He paused,
+Quisante made no comment. "Tom got nine months, and when he came out all
+the family emigrated to Manitoba."
+
+After a short pause, filled by the arrangement of papers, Quisante
+observed, "That must have cost money. He'd saved out of what he got for
+the game, eh?"
+
+"It was supposed Sir Winterton found the money," said Foster, "but
+nothing was known. Sir Winterton refused to make any statement. He said
+his friends would know what to think, and he didn't care a damn (that was
+his word) about anybody else. Still some weren't satisfied. But the talk
+died away, except here and there among the men who'd been Tom's pals. I
+daresay Tom gave 'em a rabbit now and again in exchange for a pot of
+beer, and they missed him." Mr. Foster ended with a little chuckle.
+
+"I think Sir Winterton might have been a little more explicit," Quisante
+remarked. "There's some excuse for thinking an explanation not
+unnecessary. What became of the girl? Did she go to Manitoba?"
+
+"I believe she did in the end, but she'd married a man from Dunn's works
+and left the town three months after her father was sent to prison."
+
+Quisante came back to the hearth and stood looking down on old Foster.
+
+"Rather a queer story," he said. "But I meant, was there anything against
+him of a public nature, in his local record, anything of that sort, you
+know."
+
+"I know nothing of that kind," said Foster, raising his eyes and meeting
+his leader's. He looked rather puzzled, as if he were still not quite
+sure what Quisante's question had meant, in spite of Quisante's
+explanation of it. "I'd almost forgotten this, but Japhet Williams
+mentioned it the other day. You know Japhet by now. He said he thought he
+ought to ask Sir Winterton to make a statement."
+
+A sudden gleam shot through Quisante's eyes.
+
+"Mr. Williams' active conscience at work again?" he asked with a sneering
+laugh.
+
+"That's it," said Foster, still looking stolidly at his chief. "But I
+know Sir Winterton; he'd only say what he did before."
+
+Quisante turned, flung the end of his cigar into the grate, and turned
+back to Foster, saying,
+
+"Mr. Williams must do as he thinks right; but of course I can't have any
+hand in a matter of that kind."
+
+"Just so, just so," murmured Foster as hurriedly but even more vaguely
+than usual. His chief was puzzling him still.
+
+"I can't have anything at all to do with it," Quisante repeated
+emphatically. Foster did not quite know whence he gathered the
+impression, but he was left with the feeling that, if he should chance
+ever to be asked what had passed between them on the subject, he must
+remember this sentence at least, whatever else of the conversation he
+recollected or forgot.
+
+"Of course you can't, sir. I only mentioned it in passing," said he.
+
+"And you'd better tell Japhet Williams so, if he mentions the matter."
+The slightest pause followed. "Or," added Quisante, grinding his heel
+into the hearth rug as though in absence of mind, "if it happens to crop
+up in talk between you."
+
+Whether the matter did crop up as suggested or not is one of those points
+of secret history which it seems useless to try to discover. But an
+incident which occurred the next evening showed that Japhet Williams'
+mind and conscience had, either of their own motion or under some outside
+direction, been concerning themselves with the question of Tom Sinnett
+and his daughter Susy. There was a full and enthusiastic meeting of Sir
+Winterton's supporters. In spite of Quisante's victory over No. 77,
+they were in good heart and fine fighting fettle; Sir Winterton was
+good-tempered and sanguine; there was enough opposition to give the
+affair go, not enough to make itself troublesome. But at the end, after
+a few of the usual questions and the usual verbal triumphs of the
+candidate, a small man rose from the middle of the hall. He was greeted
+by hoots, with a few cheers mingling. The Chairman begged silence for
+their worthy fellow-townsman, Councillor Japhet Williams.
+
+Japhet was perfectly self-possessed; he had been, he said, as a rule a
+supporter of the opposite party, but he kept his mind open and was free
+to admit that he had been considerably impressed by some of the arguments
+which had fallen from Sir Winterton Mildmay that evening. The meeting
+applauded, and Sir Winterton nodded and smiled. There was one matter,
+however, which he felt it his duty to mention. Now that Sir Winterton
+Mildmay (the full name came with punctilious courtesy every time) was
+appealing to a wider circle than that of his personal friends and
+acquaintances, now that he--was seeking the confidence of his
+fellow-townsmen in general (A voice "He's got it too," and cheers),
+would Sir Winterton Mildmay consider the desirability of reconsidering
+the attitude he had taken up some time ago, and consider the desirability
+(Japhet's speech was not very artistically phrased but he loved the long
+words) of making a fuller public statement with reference to what he (Mr.
+Japhet Williams) would term the Sinnett affair? And with this Japhet sat
+down, having caused what the reporters very properly described as a
+"Sensation"--and an infinite deal of hooting and groaning to boot. But
+there were cheers also from the back of the room, where a body of roughly
+dressed sturdy fellows sat sucking at black clay pipes; these were men
+from the various works, from Dunn's and from Japhet's own.
+
+As Japhet proceeded Sir Winterton's handsome face had grown ruddier and
+ruddier; when Japhet finished, he sat still through the hubbub, but his
+hand twitched and he clutched the elbow of his chair tightly. The
+platform collectively looked uncomfortable. The chairman--he was Green,
+the linen-draper in High Street--glanced uneasily at Sir Winterton and
+then whispered in his ear. Sir Winterton threw a short remark at him,
+the chairman shrank back with the appearance of having been snubbed. Sir
+Winterton rose slowly to his feet, still very red in the face, still
+controlling himself to a calmness of gesture and voice. But all he said
+in answer to that most respected and influential townsman Mr. Japhet
+Williams was,
+
+"No, I won't."
+
+And down he plumped into his chair again.
+
+Not a word of courtesy, not a word of respect for Japhet's motives, not
+even an appeal for trust, not even a simple pledge of his word! A curt
+and contemptuous "No, I won't," was all that Sir Winterton's feelings, or
+Sir Winterton's sensitiveness, or his temper, or his obstinacy, allowed
+him to utter. Sir Winterton was a great man, no doubt, but at election
+times the People also enjoys a transient sense of greatness and of power.
+The cheers were less hearty now, the groans more numerous; the audience
+felt that, in its own person and in the person of Japhet Williams, it was
+being treated with disrespect; already one or two asked, "If he's got a
+fair and square answer, why don't he give it?" The superfine sense of
+honour, which feels itself wounded by being asked for a denial and soiled
+by condescending to give one, is of a texture too delicate for common
+appreciation. "No, I won't," said Sir Winterton, red in the face, and the
+meeting felt snubbed. Why did he snub them? The meeting began to feel
+suspicious. There were no more questions; the proceedings were hurried
+through; Sir Winterton drove off, pompous in his anger, red from his hurt
+feelings, stiff in his obstinacy. The cheer that followed him had not its
+former heartiness.
+
+"I only did my duty," said Japhet to a group who surrounded him.
+
+"That's right, Mr. Williams," he was answered. "We know you. Don't you
+let yourself be silenced, sir." For everybody now remembered the Sinnett
+affair, which had seemed so forgotten, everybody had a detail to tell
+concerning it, his own views to set forth, or those of some shrewd friend
+to repeat. That night the taverns in the town were full of it, and at
+many a supper table the story was told over again. As for Japhet, he
+dropped in at Mr. Foster's and told what he had done, complaining
+bitterly of how Sir Winterton had treated him, declaring that he had been
+prepared to listen to any explanation, almost to take Sir Winterton's
+simple word, but that he was not to be bullied in a matter in which his
+own conscience and the rights of the constituency were plainly and deeply
+involved. Mr. Foster said as little as he could.
+
+"It won't do for me to take any part," he remarked. "I'm too closely
+connected with Mr. Quisante, and I know he wouldn't wish to enter into
+such a matter."
+
+"I'm not acting as a party man," said Japhet Williams, "and this isn't a
+party matter. But a plain answer to a plain question isn't much to ask,
+and I mean to ask for it till I get it, or know the reason why I can't."
+
+Dim rumours of a "row" at Sir Winterton's meeting reached the Bull that
+night, brought by Jimmy Benyon, who had been at a minor meeting across
+the railway bridge among the railway men. Somebody had brought up an old
+scandal, and the candidate's answer had not given satisfaction. The
+ladies showed no curiosity; Quisante, very tired, lay on the sofa doing
+nothing, neither reading, nor talking, nor sleeping. His eyes were fixed
+on the ceiling, he seemed hardly to hear what Jimmy said, and he also
+asked no questions. So Jimmy, dismissing the matter from his mind, went
+to bed, leaving Quisante still lying there, with wide-open eyes.
+
+There he lay a long while alone; once or twice he frowned, once or twice
+he smiled. Was he thinking over the opportunity that offered, and the
+instrument that presented itself? What chances might lie in Sir
+Winterton's dogged honour and tender sensitiveness on the one hand, and
+on the other in that conscience of little Japhet's, stronger now in its
+alliance with hurt pride and outraged self-importance! And nobody could
+say that Quisante himself had had any part in it; he had spoken to nobody
+except Foster, and he had told Foster most plainly that he would have
+nothing to do with such a matter. There he lay, making his case, the case
+he could tell to all the world, the case Foster also could tell, the case
+that both Foster and he could and would tell, if need be, to all the
+world, to all the world--and to May Quisante.
+
+"Sandro always has a case," said Aunt Maria. He had a case about what
+Japhet termed the Sinnett affair, just as he had had a case, and a very
+strong one as it had proved, about placard No. 77. When at last he
+dragged his weary overdone body to bed, his lips were set tight and his
+eyes were eager. It was the look that meant something in his mind, good
+or bad, but anyhow a resolution, and the prospect of work to be done. Had
+May seen him then, she would have known the look, and hoped and feared.
+But she was sleeping, and none asked Quisante what was in his mind that
+night.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII.
+
+                      A HIGHLY CORRECT ATTITUDE.
+
+
+Up to the present time all had gone most smoothly at Moors End, the
+Mildmays' old manor-house, eight miles from Henstead, and Lady Mildmay had
+confided many quiet self-congratulations to Mrs. Baxter's ear. For it had
+seemed possible that the election might prove a cause of perturbation.
+Lady Mildmay was still in love with her handsome well-preserved husband,
+and had every confidence in him, but to a chosen friend she would
+sometimes admit that he was "difficult"; she called him not proud and
+obstinate, but sensitive and a little touchy; she hinted that he could not
+bear unpleasant looks, and yet was not very ready to make concessions to
+friendship. No doubt he needed some management, and Lady Mildmay, like
+many wives, found one of her chief functions to consist in acting as a
+buffer between her husband and a world which did not always approach him
+with enough gentleness and consideration. Hence her joy at the prosperous
+passage of a critical time, at the enthusiasm of their supporters, and at
+the gratification and urbanity of Sir Winterton. Satisfaction begat
+charity, and Lady Mildmay had laughingly dismissed some portentous hints
+which Mrs. Baxter let fall about the certain character and the probable
+tactics of Mr. Quisante.
+
+"His wife looks so nice, he can't be very bad," said kind Lady Mildmay,
+using an argument of most uncritical charity.
+
+Although the Dean, if pressed, must have ranked himself among his host's
+political opponents, he was so little of a party man and had so many
+points of sympathy with Sir Winterton (especially on Church matters) that
+he very contentedly witnessed the contest from Moors End and no longer
+troubled himself to conceal his hopes of a Moors End triumph. Nevertheless
+he was judiciously reticent about Quisante, generously eulogistic of May.
+Sir Winterton looked forward to making the acquaintance of both, but
+thought that the occasion had better be postponed till they had ceased to
+be opponents.
+
+"But I hope you and your wife'll go over as often as you like," he said
+to the Dean very cordially. But the Dean and Mrs. Baxter did not go,
+perhaps preferring not to divide their sympathies, perhaps fearing that
+they might seem like spies and be suspected of carrying back information
+to the rival camp. "I dare say you're wise," said Sir Winterton, rather
+relieved; he had made the suggestion because it was the handsome thing to
+do, but was not eager that it should be accepted. To do the handsome
+thing and to meet with pleasant looks were the two requisites most
+essential to Sir Winterton's happiness; given these he was at his best
+and his best was a fine specimen of the class to which he belonged. There
+was, however, a weak side to these two desires of his, as the history of
+the Sinnett affair to some extent indicated.
+
+The first shock to Sir Winterton's good temper had been the matter of No.
+77; until then he had been lavish of the usual polite compliments to his
+opponent's personal character. After No 77's prodigal reappearance and
+Quisante's rhetorical effort in defence of it these assurances were no
+more on his lips, and for a time he bore himself with strict reserve when
+Quisante was mentioned. He had been right in the dispute, and he had been
+beaten; silence was the utmost that could be expected of his tolerance or
+his self-control; his refusal to speak on the subject showed his opinion
+well enough, and he must not be blamed too severely if he listened without
+protest and perhaps with pleasure to Mrs. Baxter's pungent criticisms. Of
+course she had been reminded of something--of the strictures which a
+certain Provincial Editor had passed on the household arrangements of a
+certain Minor Canon; a libel action had ensued, and the jury had been
+beguiled into finding for the defendant on a bare literal construction of
+words which to anybody acquainted with local circumstances bore another
+and much blacker meaning. This Mrs. Baxter called a pettifogging trick,
+and she pursued her parallel till the same terms were obviously indicated
+as appropriate to Quisante's conduct.
+
+"My dear!" said the Dean in mild protest; but Sir Winterton laughed as
+though he had enjoyed the story. He was at once favoured with the further
+parallel of the Girdlestones' coachman and, as the conversation drifted to
+May, of the Nonconformist Minister's daughter and the Circus Proprietor.
+All Mrs. Baxter's armoury of reminiscence was heartily at his service.
+
+But No. 77 did not after all touch Sir Winterton very closely. His temper
+had begun to recover and he had nearly forgiven Quisante when suddenly
+Japhet Williams produced a far more severe and deadly shock. His action
+was a bomb, and a bomb thrown from a hand which Moors End had been fain to
+think was or might be friendly. Was not Japhet a neighbour, only two miles
+off along the Henstead Road, and did not Lady Mildmay and Mrs. Williams,
+religious differences notwithstanding, work together every year on the
+Committee of the Cottage Gardens and Window-Boxes Show? Had not Japhet
+himself been understood to be reconsidering his political opinions? There
+was even more. The Sinnett affair was the one subject utterly forbidden,
+most rigidly tabooed, at Moors End. All Sir Winterton's relatives,
+friends, acquaintances, and dependents knew that well. Sir Winterton's
+honour and temper had never been so wounded as over that affair. By
+Japhet's hand it was dragged into light again; the odious thing became
+once more the gossip of Henstead, once more a disgusting topic which it
+was impossible wholly to ignore at Moors End. This was plain enough since,
+on the morning after Japhet's question had been put, Lady Mildmay was
+discussing the position with Mrs. Baxter in the morning-room, while the
+Dean and Sir Winterton walked round and round the lawn in gloomy
+conversation punctuated by gloomier silences.
+
+What the actual history was Lady Mildmay's narrative showed pretty
+accurately. Sir Winterton's predominant desires, to do the handsome thing
+and to meet with pleasant looks, evidently had played a large part. Lady
+Mildmay blushed a little and smiled as she began by observing that Sir
+Winterton had distinguished the girl by some kind notice; he liked her, he
+always liked nice-spoken nice-looking girls; for her sake and her mother's
+(a very decent woman), he had forgiven Tom many irregularities. At last
+his patience gave out and Tom was prosecuted; when arrested, Tom had tried
+blackmail; Sir Winterton was not to be bullied, and Tom's speech from the
+dock was no more than an outburst of defeated malice.
+
+Then came on the scene Sir Winterton's kind heart and his predominant
+desires. He had made the girl a present to facilitate her marriage and
+had got the husband work away from the town, where no gossip would have
+reached. This seemed enough, and so Doctor Tillman, an old and wise
+friend, urged. But as the time of Tom's release approached and his wife
+made preparations for receiving him in a cottage just on the edge of Sir
+Winterton's estate, it became odious to think of the black looks and
+scowls which would embitter every ride in that direction. "I want to
+forget the whole thing, to get rid of it, to blot it all out," said Sir
+Winterton fretfully. Prison had induced reason in Tom Sinnett; he made
+his submission and accepted the liberal help which carried him and his
+wife, his daughter and her husband, to a new life across the seas. Then
+Sir Winterton had peace in his heart and abroad; he had behaved most
+handsomely, and there were no scowling faces to remind him of the hateful
+episode. He had met the gossip boldly and defiantly; it had died away and
+had seemed utterly forgotten and extinct; the low grumbles and not very
+seemly jokes which still lingered among the men at the various works in
+Henstead, where Tom had been a _persona grata_, never reached the ears of
+the great folk at Moors End; it is perhaps only at election times that
+such things become audible in such quarters.
+
+The poor lady ended with a careworn smile; she had suffered much during
+the episode, and perhaps the more because her faith in her husband had
+never wavered.
+
+"I did so hope it was all over," she said.
+
+"That's a good deal to hope about anything," observed Mrs. Baxter rather
+grimly.
+
+"It does annoy Winterton so terribly. I'm afraid it'll quite upset him."
+
+Mrs. Baxter had her own opinion about Sir Winterton; amid much that was
+favourable, she had no doubt that he was far too ready to get on the high
+horse.
+
+"Well, my dear," she said, "Sir Winterton'll have to do what many people
+have; he must swallow his pride and tell the truth about it."
+
+"I don't think he will," sighed Lady Mildmay, looking out at her
+husband's tall imposing figure, and marking the angry energy with which
+he was impressing his views on the Dean.
+
+In this case at least Mrs. Baxter was right. Sir Winterton had got on the
+very highest of horses; he had mounted at the meeting, flinging back his
+"No, I won't," as he sprang to the saddle; he was firmly seated; having
+got up, he declared that he could not think of coming down. There, for
+good or evil, he sat. The Dean looked vexed and puzzled.
+
+"This Mr. Williams is an honest man, I suppose?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, honest as the day, too honest. But he's an infernal little ass,"
+said Sir Winterton. "Somebody's got hold of him and is using him, or he's
+heard some gossip and caught it up. I won't say a word." And he went on
+to ask if he were to degrade himself by making explanations and excuses
+for his personal conduct to all the rowdies and loafers of Henstead. "If
+I have to do that to get in, why, I'll stay out, and be hanged to them."
+His face suggested that his language would have been still more vigorous
+but for a respect due to the Dean's cloth.
+
+Later in the day they all had a turn at him, his wife pleading tenderly,
+Mrs. Baxter exhorting trenchantly (he came nearer to being told he was a
+fool than had ever happened to him before), the Dean suggesting possible
+diplomacies, Dr. Tillman, whom they sent for as a reinforcement, declaring
+that a few simple words, authorised by Sir Winterton, would put the whole
+matter right. He was obstinate; he had taken up his position and meant to
+stand by it; his conscience was clear and his honour safe in his own
+keeping; he would not speak himself and explicitly forbade any statement
+to be made on his behalf. Surely some power fought for Alexander Quisante
+in giving him an opponent of this temper!
+
+"If any statement is to be made in reference to the matter," said Sir
+Winterton, rather red in the face again by now, "I confess to thinking
+that it would come best from Mr. Quisante. In fact I think that a few
+words would come very gracefully from Mr. Quisante."
+
+Lady Mildmay caught at the hope. "If it was suggested to him, I'm
+sure----"
+
+"Suggested!" cried Sir Winterton. "Is it likely I should suggest it or
+permit any of my friends to do so? I was merely speculating on what might
+not unnaturally suggest itself to a gentleman in Mr. Quisante's position."
+
+Mrs. Baxter's smile was very eloquent of her opinion on this particular
+point. The Dean frowned perplexedly.
+
+"There are exigencies to be considered," he stammered. "The views of his
+supporters----"
+
+"In a matter like this?" asked Sir Winterton in a tone of lofty surprise.
+The Dean felt that he had rather committed himself, and did not venture
+to remind his sensitive host that after all Quisante had no knowledge of
+the truth or falsehood of the story, and could say nothing beyond that he
+had none. Mrs. Baxter, however, spoke plainly.
+
+"Let me tell you," she said, "that if you expect anything of the sort
+from Alexander Quisante, you'll find yourself mistaken."
+
+"I don't know that I agree with you there, my dear," said the Dean,
+entering his usual _caveat_. "I think very likely Mr. Quisante would
+be willing to do the proper thing if it were pointed out to him."
+
+"Pointed out!" murmured Sir Winterton, raising his brows. Did gentlemen
+need to have the proper thing pointed out to them? Did they not see it
+for themselves and do it? Nay, one might look for more than the mere
+naked proper thing; from a gentleman the handsome thing was to be
+expected, and that of his own motion. There could, in Sir Winterton's
+view, be no doubt of what was in this case the handsome thing.
+
+Unhappily, there is no subject on which greater divergence of opinion
+exists than that of the proper thing to be done under given
+circumstances. Here was Sir Winterton holding one view; Japhet Williams
+held another, and it is to be feared that a section of the inhabitants of
+Henstead adopted a third. Sir Winterton's cry was honour, Japhet's was
+duty; the inhabitants would have differed rather even among themselves as
+to how to describe their motive; party spirit, curiosity, the zest of a
+personal question, interest in a promising quarrel, mere mischief, all
+had a hand in producing the applause which greeted Japhet when he rose
+the next evening and with absolute imperturbability repeated the same
+question as nearly as possible in the same words. Sir Winterton's answer
+was not in the same words, but entirely to the same effect. "I've
+answered that question once, and I won't answer it again," he said. Then
+came the tumult, and after that a dull unenthusiastic ending, and the
+drive off through a grinning crowd, which enjoyed Sir Winterton's fury
+and added to it by a few hateful cries of "Where's Susy Sinnett?" From
+the outskirts of the town till his own gates were reached Sir Winterton
+did not speak to his wife. Then he turned to her and said very
+courteously but most decisively,
+
+"Marion dear, you will oblige me by not accompanying me to any more
+meetings at present and by not visiting the town just now. I don't choose
+to expose you to any more such scenes. I can't teach these fellows to
+respect a lady's presence, but I can protect my wife by ensuring her
+absence." He looked very chivalrous and very handsome as he made this
+little speech. But his wife's heart sank; such an attitude could mean
+nothing but defeat.
+
+"Can't you help us?" she implored of the Dean, when she had got him alone
+and told him of this new development of her husband's pride or temper. It
+was evident that Japhet Williams meant, as he had said, to go on putting
+his plain question till he got a plain answer, and so long as he put his
+question, Lady Mildmay was not to be present. How soon would Henstead
+understand that the gentleman who sought to be its member openly declared
+that he did not consider it a fit place for his wife to enter?
+
+"Something must really be done," said the Dean nervously. "At all
+hazards." They both knew that "at all hazards" meant in spite of the
+prohibition and in face of the wrath of Sir Winterton.
+
+Indeed this impulsive gentleman, seated on his high horse, was in urgent
+need of being saved from himself. Hitherto Japhet's importunity and the
+attacks of less conscientious opponents had had the natural effect of
+rousing his supporters to greater enthusiasm and greater zeal. When his
+fresh step began to be understood, when Lady Mildmay came with him no
+more, and it dawned upon Henstead that Sir Winterton would not bring
+her, the very supporters felt themselves offended. Were a few ribald
+cries and the folly of a wrong-headed old Japhet Williams to outweigh all
+their loyalty and devotion? Was the town to be judged by its rowdies?
+They could not but remember that Lady May Quisante sat smiling through
+the hottest meetings, and one evening had at the last moment saved her
+husband's platform from being stormed by sitting, composed and immovable,
+in the very middle of it till the rioters came to a stand a foot from
+her, and then retreated cowed before her laughter. That was the sort of
+thing Henstead liked; to be told that it was unworthy of Lady Mildmay's
+presence was not what it liked. A strong deputation came out to Sir
+Winterton; he replied from his high horse; the deputation averred that
+they could not answer for the consequences; Sir Winterton said he did not
+care a rush about the consequences; the deputation ventured timidly to
+hint that an excessive care to shield Lady Mildmay's ears from any
+mention of the Sinnett affair might be misunderstood; Sir Winterton said
+that he had nothing to do with that; his first duty was to his wife, his
+second to himself. The deputation retired downcast and annoyed.
+
+"If you're going to do anything, Dan, you'd better do it at once," said
+Mrs. Baxter.
+
+The Dean, resolved to risk Sir Winterton's anger in Sir Winterton's
+interest, did something; he wrote covertly to Jimmy Benyon at the Bull,
+begging him to be riding on the Henstead road at ten o'clock the next
+morning; the Dean would take a walk and the pair would meet, as it was to
+seem, accidentally; nothing had been said to Sir Winterton, nothing was
+to be said at present to Mr. Quisante. The Dean was, in fact, most
+carefully unofficial, and in no small fright besides; yet he was also
+curious to know how this new phase of the fight was regarded at the
+Quisante headquarters.
+
+Jimmy came punctually, greeted the Dean most heartily, and listened to
+all that he said. The Dean could not quite make out his mood; he seemed
+uncomfortable and vexed, but he was not embarrassed, and was able to
+state what the Dean took to be the Quisante position with so much
+clearness that the Dean could not help wondering whether he had received
+instructions.
+
+"Quisante's line has been to take absolutely no notice of the whole
+thing," said Jimmy. "He knows nothing about it, and has had nothing to do
+with its being brought forward; he's never mentioned it, and he won't.
+But on the other hand he doesn't feel called upon to fight Mildmay's
+battle, or to offend his own supporters by defending a man who won't
+defend himself. As for this business about Lady Mildmay, if Mildmay likes
+to make such an ass of himself he must take the consequences."
+
+The Dean felt that the Quisante case even put thus bluntly by Jimmy was
+very strong; Quisante's deft tongue and skilful brain could make it
+appear irresistible. Strategically retiring from the ground of strict
+justice, he made an appeal to the feelings.
+
+"Surely neither Mr. Quisante himself nor any of you would wish to win
+through such an occurrence as this? That would be no satisfaction to
+you."
+
+"Of course we'd rather win without it," said Jimmy irritably. "It's not
+our fault. Go to Japhet Williams, or, best of all, persuade Mildmay not
+to be a fool. Why won't he answer?"
+
+"Have you had any talk with Quisante about it?"
+
+"Very little. He thinks pretty much what I've said."
+
+"Or with Lady May?" asked the Dean with a direct glance.
+
+"She's never mentioned it to me."
+
+"The whole affair is deplorable."
+
+"I don't see what we can do." Jimmy's tone was rather defiant.
+
+The Dean fell into thought and, as the result thereof, made a proposition;
+it was very much that suggestion to Quisante on which Sir Winterton had
+frowned so scornfully.
+
+"If," said he, "I could persuade Sir Winterton to give Mr. Quisante a
+private assurance that the scandal is entirely baseless, would Mr.
+Quisante state publicly that he was convinced of its falsity and did not
+wish it to influence the electors in any way?"
+
+"Perhaps he would," said Jimmy.
+
+"I think it would be only the proper thing for him to do," said the Dean
+rather warmly.
+
+"I don't know about that. Why can't Mildmay say it for himself? But I'll
+ask Quisante, if you like."
+
+The Dean was only too conscious of the weakness of his cause; he became
+humble again in thanking Jimmy for this small promise. "And Mr.
+Quisante'll be glad to have done it, I know, whatever the issue of the
+fight may be," he ended. The remark received for answer no more than a
+smile from Jimmy. Jimmy was not sure that among the stress of emotions
+filling Quisante's heart in case of defeat there would be room for any
+consoling consciousness of moral rectitude. Perhaps Jimmy himself would
+not care much about such a solatium. He wanted to win and he wanted
+Quisante to win; such was the effect of being much with Quisante; and in
+this matter at least, so far as Jimmy's knowledge went, his champion had
+acted with perfect correctness. At other times Jimmy might have been, like
+Sir Winterton, apt to exact something a little beyond correctness, but now
+the spirit of the fight was on him.
+
+The Dean returned with the rather scanty results of his mission, and after
+luncheon took his courage in both hands and told Sir Winterton what he had
+done. But for his years and his station, Sir Winterton would, at the first
+blush, have called him impertinent; the Dean divined the suppressed
+epithet and defended himself with skill, but, alas, not without verging on
+the confines of truth. To say that he had happened to meet Jimmy Benyon
+was to give less than its due credit to his own ingenuity; to say that
+Jimmy and he had agreed on the proper thing was rather to interpret than
+to record Jimmy's brief and not very sanguine utterances. However the
+Dean's motive was very good, and before the meal ended Sir Winterton
+forgave him, while still sternly negativing the course which his diplomacy
+suggested. In fact Sir Winterton was very hard to manage; the Dean
+understood the Quisante position better and better; Mrs. Baxter gave up
+her efforts; she had an almost exaggerated belief in the inutility of
+braying fools in a mortar; she was content to show them the mortar, and if
+that were not enough to leave them alone. Only the wife persevered, for
+she thought neither of herself nor of what was right, but only of what
+might serve her husband. To the meetings he would not speak, to Quisante
+he might be got to speak; she would not let him alone while there was a
+chance of it. And at last she prevailed, not by convincing his reason
+(which indeed was little involved in the matter either way), not by taming
+his pride, and not by pointing to his interest, but by the old illogical,
+perhaps in the strictest view immoral, appeal--"For my sake, because I
+ask you for your love of me!" For his love of her Sir Winterton consented
+to write a private note to Alexander Quisante, stating for his own
+satisfaction and for his opponent's information the outline of the true
+facts of the Sinnett affair. Sir Winterton disliked his task very much
+but, having to do it, he did it as he did everything, as a gentleman
+would, frankly, simply, cordially, with an obvious trust in Quisante's
+chivalry, good faith, and reluctance to fight with any weapons that were
+not stainless.
+
+"Now we've put it straight," said the Dean gleefully. "He's bound to
+mention your note and to accept your account, and if he accepts it, his
+supporters can't help themselves, they must do the same." Sir Winterton
+agreed that, distasteful as this quasi-appeal to his opponent had been,
+it could not fail to have the beneficial results which the Dean forecast.
+There was more cheerfulness at Moors End that evening than had been seen
+since Japhet Williams rose from the body of the hall, a small but
+determined Accusing Angel.
+
+It is not so easy to put straight what has once gone crooked, nor so
+safe to undertake to advise other folks, however much the task may by
+habit seem to lose half its seriousness. In his heart the Dean was
+thinking that he had "cornered" Quisante, and Sir Winterton was hoping
+that he had combined the advantages of pliancy with the privilege of
+pride. The note that Quisante wrote in answer did nothing to disturb
+this comfortable state of feeling--unless indeed any danger were
+foreshadowed in the last line or two; "While, as I have said, most ready
+to accept your assurance, and desirous, as I have always been, of
+keeping all purely personal questions in the background, I do not feel
+myself called upon to express any opinion on the course which you have,
+doubtless after full consideration, adopted in regard to the requests
+for a public explanation which have been addressed to you by duly
+qualified electors of the borough." The Dean felt a little uneasy when
+that sentence was read out to him; was it possible that he had
+underrated Quisante's resources and not perceived quite how many ways of
+escaping from a corner that talented gentleman might discover? Yet there
+was nothing to quarrel with in the sentence; at the outside it was a
+courteous intimation of a difference of opinion and of the view (held by
+every man in the place except Sir Winterton himself) that a simple
+explanation on a public occasion would have done Sir Winterton's honour
+no harm and his cause a great deal of good.
+
+Such was the private answer; the public reference was no less neat. First
+came a ready and ample acceptance of the explanation which Sir Winterton
+had given. "I accept it unreservedly, I do not repeat it only because it
+was given to me privately." Then followed an expression of gratitude for
+the manly and straightforward way in which the speaker felt himself to
+have been treated by his opponent; then there was an expression of hope
+that these personal matters might disappear from the contest. "Had I been
+sensitive, I in my turn might have found matter for complaint, but I was
+content to place myself in your hands, trusting to your good sense and
+fairness." (Sir Winterton had not been so content.) "I trust that the
+episode may be regarded as at an end." Then a pause and--"It is not for
+me, as I have already observed to my honourable opponent, to express any
+judgment on the course which he has seen fit to adopt. I have only to
+accept his word, which I do unhesitatingly, and it is no part of my duty
+to ask why he preferred to make his explanation to one who is trying to
+prevent him from sitting in Parliament rather than to those whom he seeks
+to represent in that high assembly."
+
+This was said gravely and was much cheered. As the cheering went on, a
+smile gradually bent the speaker's broad expressive mouth; the crowded
+benches became silent, waiting the fulfilment of the smile's promise. A
+roguish look came into Quisante's face, he glanced at his audience,
+then at his friends on the platform, lastly at his wife who sat on the
+other side of the chairman's table. He spoke lower than was his wont,
+colloquially, almost carelessly, with an amused intonation. "At any
+rate," he said, "I trust that Henstead may once more be thought worthy
+of the presence of----" He paused, spread out his hands, and sank his
+voice in mock humility--"of other ladies besides--my wife."
+
+It was well done. May's ready laugh was but the first of a chorus, and
+Quisante, sitting down, knew that his shaft had sped home when somebody
+cried, "Three cheers for Lady May Quisante!" and they gave them again and
+again, all standing on their feet. Alas for the Dean! For some men there
+are many ways out of a corner.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XIII.
+
+                           NOT SUPERHUMAN.
+
+
+"I don't set up for being superhuman," said Alexander Quisante with a
+shrug and a smile at his sister-in-law, "and I should very soon be told
+of my mistake if I did. I had nothing to do with putting the story
+about. I never countenanced it in any way. But since it got about, since
+Mildmay chose to give himself airs and make a fool of himself, and then
+come to me to get him out of his trouble, I thought myself entitled to
+give him one little dig."
+
+"Of course you were," agreed Fanny.
+
+"And if they choose to decide the election on that instead of on the
+Government policy, why, in the first place we can't help it, and in the
+second we needn't talk about it." He paused and then added with greater
+gravity, "I have nothing to reproach myself with in the matter."
+
+"What's Mr. Williams going to do?"
+
+"Oh, he made one solemn protest and now, at my request, he'll hold his
+tongue."
+
+"He's done all the mischief, though," said Jimmy Benyon with much
+satisfaction.
+
+It was true enough, and the triumph at the Bull equalled the depression
+at Moors End, where the Dean was aghast at the result of his diplomacy,
+and Sir Winterton began to perceive that he had vindicated his honour at
+the cost of his good sense, and his dignity at the price of his
+popularity. It was not Henstead's moral sense that was against him now,
+but that far more formidable enemy, Henstead's wounded vanity. The best
+judges refused to estimate how many votes that ride on the high horse
+was likely to cost him; but all agreed that the bill would be heavy;
+even Smiley, his own agent, shook a rueful head over the probable
+figure. And all this advantage had accrued to the Quisante faction
+without involving any reproach or any charge of unfair tactics; rather
+were they praised for moderation, magnanimity, and good-nature.
+
+"To tell the truth," Jimmy whispered to Fanny, "I never felt sure that
+Quisante would treat it in such a gentlemanly way."
+
+"No, neither did I," Fanny confessed. "I'm so glad about it."
+
+"He's rather proud of himself, though," chuckled Jimmy.
+
+"Yes, I know. Well, we mustn't be too critical," urged Fanny. His public
+demeanour had been beyond reproach, and after all even persons of more
+delicate feeling and more exalted position than Quisante are apt to
+plume their feathers a little in the family circle.
+
+In the whirl of these last few days there was however little time for
+scrutinising the fine shades of manner or speculating on nice points of
+conscience. They were all worked to death, they were all inflamed with
+enthusiasm and the determination to win. As was only becoming,
+Quisante's wife was the most enthusiastic and the most resolute; a thing
+not seeming so natural to herself was that she was also happier than she
+had ever been since her marriage. As the fight grew hotter, Quisante
+grew greater in her eyes; he had less time to make postures, she less
+leisure to criticise; if he forgot himself in what he was doing, she
+could come near to forgetting the side of him she disliked in an
+admiration of the qualities that attracted her. His praises were in
+men's mouths beyond Henstead; letters of congratulation came from great
+folk, and Quisante was told that his speeches had more than a local
+audience and more than a local influence. Sympathy joined with
+admiration; he was not only successful, he was brave; for it was a
+serious question whether his body and his nerves would last out, and
+every night found him utterly exhausted and prostrate. Yet he never
+spared himself, he was wherever work was to be done, refused no call,
+and surrendered not an inch to his old and hated enemy, the physical
+weakness which had always hindered him. May wrote to Miss Quisante that
+he was "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful." There she paused, and added
+after a moment's thought, "It's something to be his wife." And to Mr.
+Foster she said, "They must elect him, they can't help it, can they?"
+
+"Well, I think we shall win now," said old Foster, smiling, but
+directing a rather inquisitive glance at her. "Japhet Williams has
+helped us; not so much as Sir Winterton himself, though."
+
+May's face fell a little. "I didn't mean that," she said. "Oh, I suppose
+I want to win anyhow, but I'd much rather not win through that."
+
+"Must take what we can get," murmured Foster, quite resignedly.
+
+"I suppose so; and it's not as if my husband, or you, or any of his
+friends had taken any part in it."
+
+The inquisitive glance ceased; Foster had found out the answer to what
+it had asked; there were limits to the confidence which existed between
+Lady May Quisante and her husband. But he only smiled comfortably;
+Quisante wouldn't talk, he himself was safe, and, if anything had
+cropped up in talk between him and Japhet, his skill and Japhet's vanity
+had ensured that the little man should think himself the initiator,
+inventor, and sole agent in the whole affair.
+
+"We're not responsible for Japhet Williams," said he. "His vote's safe
+for us now, though, and it means a few besides his own."
+
+"I sometimes wonder," mused May, "whether anybody at an election ever
+votes one way and not the other simply because he thinks that way right
+and the other wrong." She laughed, adding, "You don't get the impression
+that they ever do, canvassing and going about like this."
+
+"Must allow for local feelings, Lady May."
+
+"Yes, I know; and everybody has feelings, and I suppose every place is
+local. You say a lot of people'll vote for us because Sir Winterton
+wouldn't let Lady Mildmay come to the town?"
+
+"A better stroke for us than any even Mr. Quisante has done."
+
+"And there's something like that in every constituency, I suppose! How
+do we get governed even as well as we do?"
+
+Foster looked thoughtful and nursed his foot (in which he had a touch of
+the gout). "It's all under God," he said gravely. "He turns things to
+account in ways we can't foresee, Lady May." Was it possible that he was
+remembering the peculiar qualities of Mr. Japhet Williams? May did not
+laugh, for Mr. Foster was obviously sincere, but she looked at him with
+surprise; his religion came in such odd flashes across the homely tints
+of his worldly wisdom and placid acceptance of things and men as he
+happened to find them. Henstead was not the Kingdom of Heaven, and he
+did not pretend to think it wise to act on the assumption that it was.
+Like Quisante, he did not set up for being superhuman--nor set other
+people up for it either. May felt that there were lessons to be learnt
+here; nay, that she was making some progress in them; though she
+wondered now and then what Weston Marchmont would think of the lessons
+and of her progress in them.
+
+"The worst of it is," she went on, "that I'm afraid one has to say a lot
+of things that are not exactly quite true."
+
+"Truer than the other side," Mr. Foster affirmed emphatically, his
+corpulence seeming to give weight to the dictum as he threw himself
+forward in his chair.
+
+"Relative truth!" laughed May. "Like No. 77?"
+
+"You must ask Mr. Quisante about that."
+
+"Oh, no, I won't. I'll listen to his speeches about it." She grew grave
+as she went on. "I've only asked him about one thing all through the
+election. I had to ask him about that."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Foster, cautiously, vaguely, safely.
+
+"This wretched story about Sir Winterton, you know. And I got into
+terrible trouble by my question." She laughed a little. "He doesn't as a
+rule scold me, you know, but he really did. I was very much surprised.
+Fancy boring you with this! Well, I asked him if he'd had anything to do
+with reviving the story. I asked him right straight out. Did you think I
+was like that, Mr. Foster?"
+
+"Pretty well, pretty well," said old Foster; he was smiling, but he was
+watching her again.
+
+"Was it insulting? Well, you see----" She stopped abruptly; Foster was
+not, after all, Aunt Maria, and she could not tell him how it was that
+she might ask her husband questions that sounded insulting. "Anyhow he
+was very much offended."
+
+Foster still nursed his foot, and now he shifted a little in his chair.
+
+"He gave me his word directly, but told me he was very much hurt at my
+asking him." She smiled again. "There's a confession of a conjugal
+quarrel for you, Mr. Foster. Don't talk about it, or Mr. Smiley will
+have a caricature of us throwing the furniture at one another. I've been
+very humble ever since, I assure you."
+
+Mr. Foster chuckled. May imagined that his fancy was touched by her
+suggestion of the caricature; in fact he was picturing Alexander
+Quisante's indignant disclaimer.
+
+"Don't tell him I said anything to you about it," she added.
+
+"You may be sure I won't," he promised.
+
+It would not have been out of harmony with Mr. Foster's general
+theological position to consider the sudden and serious development of
+his gout as a direct judgment on him for a diplomacy that perhaps
+overstepped legitimate limits, and in another man's case he might have
+adopted such a view with considerable complacency. When, however, he was
+laid up and placed _hors du combat_ in the last three critical days, he
+needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable
+instances of the workings of Providence. His grumbles were loud and long,
+and the directions which he sent from his sick bed were tinged with
+irritability. For at last the other side had come to its senses; Sir
+Winterton was affable again, Lady Mildmay was canvassing, and Mr. Smiley
+had high hopes. Despondency would have fallen on Foster's spirit but for
+the report of Quisante's exploits, performed in the teeth of the orders
+of that same Dr. Tillman who had given Sir Winterton such excellent
+unprofessional advice touching the affair of Tom Sinnett. He gave
+Quisante just as good counsel, and with just as little result. Then he
+tried Quisante's wife and found in her what he thought a hardness or an
+insensibility, or, if that were an unjust view, a sort of fatalism which
+forbade her to seek to interfere, and reduced her to being a spectator of
+her husband's doings and destiny rather than a partner in them.
+
+"How can he lie by now?" she asked. "It's impossible; he must see this
+out whatever happens." Quisante had said exactly the same thing, but his
+wife's perfect agreement in it seemed strange to the doctor. It was
+making the man's success more than the man; there was too much of the
+Spartan wife about it, without the Spartan wife's excuse of patriotism.
+Something of these feelings found expression in the look with which he
+regarded May, and he allowed himself to express them more freely to Lady
+Mildmay, who would have disappointed the most important meeting sooner
+than face the risk of Sir Winterton's taking cold. He told her how May
+had said, "He won't stand being coddled," and then had added, with a
+frankness which the doctor had not become accustomed to, "Besides I
+should never do it. We aren't in the least like that to one another."
+
+"I felt rather sorry for the man," said the doctor. "It's as if he was a
+racehorse, and they didn't think so much about him as about a win for
+the stable."
+
+"Do you like him?" asked Lady Mildmay, merely in natural curiosity. But
+the doctor started a little as he answered, "Why, no, I don't like him
+at all." And as he drove home he was thoughtful.
+
+"Well, here we are at last!" said Jimmy Benyon as he sat down to
+breakfast on the morning of the polling day. "I'm told Mildmay's people
+were asking for six to four last night. Where's Quisante?"
+
+"He went out just before eight, to catch some of the men who work on the
+line and can't be back to vote in the evening," said May.
+
+"Lord!" sighed Jimmy in a self-reproachful tone; it was past nine now,
+and he was only just out of bed. "What are you going to do?"
+
+"Drive and bow and smile and shake hands," said May. "And you're going
+to and fro in a wagonette of Mr. Williams'--without any springs, you
+know. And Mr. Dunn's going to take Fanny in one of his waggons; she'll
+have to sit on a plank without a back all day, so I told her to stay in
+bed till she has to start at ten."
+
+"It's a devilish difficult question," said Jimmy meditatively, "whether
+it's all worth it, you know."
+
+"Oh, it's worth more than that," said May lightly, as she sprang up and
+put on her hat. "It's worth--well, almost anything. Six to four? They
+expect us to win then?"
+
+"By a neck, yes." He glanced at her and added rather uneasily, "They say
+friend Japhet's done the trick for us." She made no answer, and he went
+on hastily, "Old Foster's still in bed, and the waiter says he's written
+five notes to your husband already--a regular row of them in the bar,
+you know."
+
+"Last instructions?"
+
+"Oh, somebody else to be nobbled, don't you know; some fellow who wants
+to marry his deceased wife's sister--or else is afraid he'll have to if
+they pass the Bill. And there's the butcher in Market Street who's got
+some trouble about slaughterhouses that I'm simply hanged if I can
+understand. I jawed with him for half-an-hour yesterday, and then didn't
+hook him safe."
+
+"Alexander must find time to go and hook him," said May, smiling.
+"Alexander'll be great on slaughter-houses."
+
+"And at the last minute Smiley's been hinting something about Mildmay
+giving a bit of land to extend the Recreation Ground. A beastly
+unscrupulous fellow I call Smiley."
+
+"Oh, poor Mr. Smiley! He wants to win."
+
+"He might play fair, though."
+
+"Might he? Oh, well, I suppose so. We've played fair anyhow--pretty
+fair, haven't we?"
+
+"Rather!"
+
+"You really think so, Jimmy?" She was serious now; Jimmy reached out his
+hand and touched hers for a moment; he divined that she was asking him
+for a verdict and was anxious what it might be.
+
+"Rather!" he said again. "That's all right. We've kept to the rules
+square enough."
+
+"Then I'm off to bow and smile!" she cried. As she went by she touched
+his hand again. "Thanks, Jimmy," she said.
+
+Jimmy, left alone, stretched himself, sighed, and lit a cigar; they were
+nearly out of the wood now, and they had managed to play pretty fair.
+For his own sake he was glad, since he had been mixed up in the
+campaign; he had perception enough to be far more glad for May
+Quisante's.
+
+Through all the fever of that day the same gladness and relief were in
+her heart in a form a thousandfold more intense. They enabled her to do
+her bowing and smiling, to hope eagerly, to work unceasingly, to be gay
+and happy in the excitement of fighting and the prospect of victory. She
+could put aside the memory of Tom Sinnett; they had not been to blame;
+let that affair be set off against Smiley's hypothetical extension of
+the Recreation Ground. She felt that she could face people, above all
+that she could face the Mildmays when the time came for her to meet them
+at the declaration of the poll. And as regarded her husband she could do
+more than praise and more than admire; she could feel tenderness and a
+touch of remorse as she saw him battling against worse than the enemy,
+against a deadly weariness and weakness to which he would not yield.
+From to-morrow she determined to lay to heart the doctor's counsel, to
+try whether he could not be persuaded to stand a little coddling,
+whether he might not be brought to, if only she could persuade herself
+to show him more love. When she looked at the Mildmays she understood
+what had perhaps been in the doctor's mind; dear Lady Mildmay (she was a
+woman who immediately claimed that epithet with its expression of
+mingled affection and ridicule) no doubt overdid a little her pleasant
+part. She made Sir Winterton a trifle absurd. But then with what
+chivalry he faced and covered the touch of absurdity, or avoided it
+without offending the love that caused it! Very glad she was that, when
+Lady Mildmay asked to be introduced, she could clasp hands with the
+consciousness that her side had played fair, and by a delicate distant
+reference could honestly assure the enemy's wife that both she and her
+husband had looked with disfavour on that unpleasant episode.
+
+She had known she would like Sir Winterton and was not disappointed; she
+saw that he was very favourably impressed by her, largely, no doubt,
+because she was handsome, even more because their ways of looking at
+things would be very much the same; they had the same pride and the same
+sensitiveness; in humour he was not her match, or he would not have
+ridden his high horse. She felt that he complimented her in begging her
+to make him known to Quisante; and this office also she was able to
+perform with pleasure, because they had played fair. Hope was high in
+her that night, not merely for this contest, not merely now for her
+husband's career, but for her life and his, for her and him themselves.
+If her old fears had been proved wrong, if in face of temptation he had
+not yielded, if now by honourable means he had made good his footing,
+things might go better in the future, that constant terror vanish, and
+there be left only what she admired and what attracted her. For they had
+kept to the rules square enough; Quisante had played fair.
+
+She heard Sir Winterton tell him so in a friendly phrase, just touched
+with a pleasantly ornate pompousness; eagerly looking, she saw Quisante
+accept the compliment just as he should, as a graceful tribute from an
+antagonist, as no more than his due from anyone who knew him. She smiled
+to think that she could write and tell Aunt Maria that Sandro was
+improving, that even his manners grew better and better as success gave
+him confidence, and confidence produced simplicity. Making a friendly
+group with their rivals in the ante-room, they were able to forget the
+little fretful man who paced up and down, carefully avoiding Sir
+Winterton's eye, but asserting by the obstinate pose of his head and the
+fierce pucker on his brow that he had done no more than his duty in
+asking a plain answer to a plain question, and that on Sir Winterton's
+head, not on his, lay the consequences of evasion.
+
+Presently the group separated. The little heaps of paper on the long
+table in the inner room had grown from tens to hundreds; the end was
+near. Quisante's agent stood motionless behind the clerks who counted,
+Jimmy Benyon looking over his shoulder eagerly. Smiley regarded the
+heaps for a moment or two and then walked across to Sir Winterton.
+Through the doorway May saw Sir Winterton bend his head, listen, nod,
+smile, and turn and whisper to his friends. At the next moment Jimmy
+Benyon came to the door, caught her eye, smiled, and nodded
+energetically. The presiding officer looked down the row of men counting
+to right and left. "Are you all agreed on your figures?" he asked. They
+exchanged papers, counted, whispered a little, recovered their own
+papers. "Yes," ran along the row, and the presiding officer pushed back
+his chair. In a single instant Quisante was the centre of a throng of
+people shaking his hand, and everybody crowded into the inner room.
+
+"How many?" asked Sir Winterton Mildmay.
+
+"Forty-seven, Sir Winterton," answered Smiley.
+
+So it was over, and Alexander Quisante was again Member for Henstead.
+"Send somebody to tell Foster," May heard him say before he followed to
+the window from which the announcement was to be made. He was very pale
+and walked rather unsteadily. "Stay by Mr. Quisante; I think he's not
+very well," she whispered to the agent. The next moment two of Sir
+Winterton's prominent supporters passed her; one spoke to the other half
+in a whisper. "That damned Sinnett business has done us," he said.
+
+Her cheek flushed suddenly; it was horrible to think that. Still they
+had played fair, and it was no fault of theirs.
+
+"Let me be the first to congratulate you," said a gentle voice.
+
+She turned and found Lady Mildmay beside her; Sir Winterton's wife was
+smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"And do get your husband home to bed; he looks terribly, terribly tired.
+I'm afraid he's not nearly as strong as Winterton; but I'm sure you take
+great care of him."
+
+"Not so much as I ought to." Lady Mildmay, accustomed to straightforward
+emotions, was puzzled at the half-bitter half-merry tone. "I mean I egg
+him on when perhaps I ought to hold him back. I know he ought to rest,
+but I never want him to--never really want it, you know." Lady Mildmay
+still looked puzzled. "He's at his best working," said May.
+
+"Well, but you must want him to yourself sometimes anyhow, and that's a
+rest for him."
+
+Oh, the differences of people and fates! That was May's not original but
+irresistible reflection when Lady Mildmay left her. Want him to herself!
+Never--or never as Lady Mildmay meant, anyhow. She only wanted a good
+place whence to look at him.
+
+She had one more encounter before Jimmy Benyon came to take her home.
+Japhet Williams came up to her and made her shake hands.
+
+"We have got a representative in whom we can have confidence," he said.
+
+"I hope so, Mr. Williams." She smiled to think how exactly she was
+speaking the truth--a rare privilege in social intercourse.
+
+"Don't think that I resent in any way the distant attitude which Mr.
+Quisante thought it desirable to take up in regard to my action,"
+pursued Japhet; it seemed odd that such a coil of words could be
+unrolled from so small a body. "My course was incumbent on me. I
+recognise that his attitude was proper for him."
+
+"I'm so glad, Mr. Williams," May murmured vaguely.
+
+"I could take the course I did because I had nothing to gain by it,
+nothing personally. Being personally interested, he could not have moved
+in the matter. I hope you see my point of view as well as his, Lady
+May?"
+
+"Oh, perfectly. I--I'm sure you're both right."
+
+"My conscience doesn't blame me," said Japhet solemnly; and something in
+his manner made May remark to Jimmy, when he came to take her home,
+"What a lot of excellent people are spoilt by their consciences!"
+
+Quisante had disappeared, engulfed in a vortex of triumphant supporters,
+carried off by arms linked in his, or perhaps hoisted in uncomfortable
+grandeur on enthusiastic but unsteady shoulders. The street was densely
+packed, and Jimmy's apparently simple course of returning straight to
+the hotel proved to be a work of much time and difficulty. But the stir
+of life was there, all around them, and May's eyes grew bright as she
+felt it. Now at least it could not seem a difficult question whether the
+result were worth the effort; triumph drove out such doubts.
+
+"I'm so glad we've won; I'm so glad we've won," she kept repeating in
+simple girlish enthusiasm as Jimmy steered her through the crowd,
+heading towards the Bull whenever he could make a yard or two. "Though
+I'm awfully sorry for Lady Mildmay," she added once.
+
+So long were they in getting through that on their arrival they found
+that Quisante had reached home before them. His journey had been
+hurried; he had been taken faint and the rejoicings were of necessity
+interrupted; he was upstairs now on the sofa. May ran up, followed by
+Fanny and Jimmy, passing many groups of anxious friends on the way.
+Quisante was stretched in a sort of stupor; he was quite white, his eyes
+were closed. She knelt down by him and called him by his name.
+
+"He's quite done up," said Jimmy, and he went to the sideboard and got
+hold of the brandy.
+
+"Do keep everybody out," called May, and Fanny shut the door oh
+half-a-dozen inquisitive people. Both she and Jimmy were looking very
+serious; May grew frightened when she turned and saw their faces.
+
+"He's only tired; he'll be all right again soon," she protested. "Give
+me a little brandy and water, Jimmy."
+
+They stood looking at her while she did her best for him; a slight
+surprise was in their faces; they had never seen her minister to him
+before. Did she really love him? The question escaped from Jimmy's eyes,
+and Fanny's acknowledged without answering it. Presently Quisante sighed
+and opened his eyes.
+
+"Drink some of this," said his wife low and tenderly. "Do drink some."
+She was kneeling by him, one arm under his shoulder, the other offering
+the glass.
+
+"We've done it, haven't we?" he murmured, as she tilted the glass to his
+lips. The drink revived him; with her help he hoisted himself higher on
+the sofa and looked at her. A smile came on his face; they heard him
+whisper, "My darling!" Again it struck them both as a little strange
+that he should call her that. But she smiled in answer and made him
+drink again.
+
+"Yes, you've won; you always win," they heard her whisper softly. She
+had forgotten all now, except that he had won, that her faith stood
+justified, and he lay half-dead from the work of vindicating it. At that
+moment she would have been no man's if she could not be Alexander
+Quisante's.
+
+There was a knock at the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came
+back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband
+in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He
+glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me,
+please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was
+as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing of a man in bed,
+with a stump of pencil. Old Mr. Foster wrote better when he was up and
+abroad, so much better that Quisante's tired eyes had not marked the
+hand for his. "Read it out to me," said Quisante, his eyes now dwelling
+gratefully on his wife's face, his brain at last resting from the long
+strain of weeks of effort.
+
+"Yes, I'll read it," she said cheerfully, almost merrily. "We shall be
+full of congratulations for days now, shan't we?"
+
+She smoothed out the sheet of paper; there were but two or three lines
+of writing, and she read them aloud. She read aloud the simple
+indiscreet little hymn of triumph which victory and the safety of a
+private note lured from old Mr. Foster's usually diplomatic lips:--
+
+"Just done it, thank God. Shouldn't have without Tom Sinnett, and we've
+got you to thank for that idea too."
+
+She read it all before she seemed to put any meaning into it. A silence
+followed her reading. She knelt there by him, holding the sheet of
+note-paper in her hands. Fanny and Jimmy stood without moving, their
+eyes on her and Quisante. Slowly May rose to her feet. Quisante closed
+his eyes and moved restlessly on the sofa; he sighed and put his hand up
+to his head. The slightest of smiles came on May's lips as she stood
+looking at him for a minute; then she turned to Fanny, saying, "I think
+he'd better have a little more brandy-and-water." She walked across to
+the mantelpiece, the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand. She looked at
+Fanny with the little smile still on her lips as she lit a candle and
+burnt the note in its flame, dropping the ashes into the grate. Quisante
+lay as though unconscious, taking no heed of his sister-in-law's
+proffered services. Jimmy Benyon stood in awkward stillness, looking at
+May. Suddenly May broke into a laugh.
+
+"Just as well to burn it; it might be misunderstood," said she. Jimmy
+moved towards her quickly and impulsively. "No, no, I'm all right," she
+went on. "And we've won, haven't we? I'm going to my room. Look after
+him." She paused and added, smiling still, "His head's very bad, you
+know." And so, pale and smiling, she left her husband to their care.
+
+The ashes of Mr. Foster's note seemed to crinkle into a sour grin where
+they lay on the black-leaded floor of the fire-grate.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV.
+
+                              OPEN EYES.
+
+
+It is a matter of common observation that the local influences and
+peculiarities which loom so large before the eyes of both parties during
+such a struggle as that at Henstead seem to be entirely forgotten after
+the declaration of the poll, at least by the victorious faction and their
+friends in the Press and the country. Out of a congeries of conflicting
+views, fancies, fads, interests, quarrels, and misunderstandings a
+reasoned and single political verdict is considered to emerge, and great
+is the credit of the advocate who extracts it from the multitudinous
+jury. When Quisante had won Henstead, little more was heard of the
+gentleman with a deceased wife's sister, of the butcher in trouble about
+slaughter-houses, of Japhet Williams' conscience or Tom Sinnett's affair.
+The result was taken as an augury of triumph for the party all over the
+country, where these things had never been heard of and the voices of
+Henstead did not reach. Unhappily however, as events proved, the victory
+of Henstead had in the end to be regarded not as the inauguration of a
+triumphant campaign but as a brilliant exploit performed in face of an
+overwhelming enemy. To be brief, the Government was beaten, somewhat
+badly beaten, the great cry was a failure, and there were many casualties
+in the ranks. Marchmont kept his seat by virtue of personal and
+hereditary popularity; but Dick Benyon, who had been considered quite
+safe, lost his, a fate shared by many who had deemed themselves no less
+secure.
+
+"I suppose you preached your miserable Crusade, as you call it?" said
+Constantine Blair. They were at dinner at Marchmont's, Morewood and the
+Dean also being of the company.
+
+"I did, and without it I should have got a worse thrashing," said Dick
+stoutly; it would be unkind to scrutinise too closely the sincerity of
+this statement.
+
+"Quisante had the sense to throw it over," growled Constantine; his
+equanimity was not up to its usual standard.
+
+"It's wisdom to lighten the ship in a storm," smiled Marchmont.
+
+"Yes, and to jettison other people's heavy luggage first," said Morewood.
+
+"The duty of a captain, I suppose," murmured the Dean with a smile.
+
+"You needn't begin with your best guns," argued Dick, a little hotly.
+
+"We can't let Dick appropriate our metaphor to his own purposes," said
+Marchmont. "As a matter of fact now, had the Crusade much to do with it?"
+
+Morewood interposed before Dick could answer.
+
+"Oh, only as a Crusade. 'Causes' of any kind are properly suspected,"
+said he. "For my part I should imitate the noble simplicity of municipal
+election bills. 'Down with the rates!' Quite enough, you know. The end is
+indisputably attractive, and you aren't such an ass as to try to indicate
+the means. So you get in."
+
+"And don't do it?" The question was Marchmont's.
+
+"Of course not--or what would you have to say next time?"
+
+"The other side has always prevented your doing it?" the Dean suggested.
+
+"Mostly, yes--by factious opposition."
+
+"You fellows don't seem to care," observed Constantine Blair moodily,
+"but I tell you we're out for four or five years at least."
+
+There was a pause; the accused persons looked at one another; then
+Marchmont had the courage to observe that the country would perhaps live
+through the period of calamity before it.
+
+"The country, yes, but how about some of the party?" asked Morewood. "How
+about that, Blair? You're supposed to be the man who feeds the ravens and
+providently caters for the sparrows, you know. You'll have your hands
+full, I should think."
+
+Blair's look expressed the opinion that they trenched on mysteries; he
+had these little traits of self-importance, sitting funnily on a round
+and merry face. Marchmont laughed as he turned to Dick and enquired after
+Jimmy.
+
+"He was helping you, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, after Quisante was in. He's all right." Dick's tone was slightly
+reserved.
+
+"Did Quisante help you? He seems to have helped everybody; the man ran
+about like an electric current."
+
+"I didn't ask him to come to me. I felt, you know----"
+
+"Yes, I see. But Jimmy didn't?"
+
+Dick looked rather puzzled. "I don't quite make Jimmy out about Quisante,"
+he remarked. "He worked for him like a horse all the time, and wrote me
+letters praising him to the skies. Then when he was in and everybody was
+cracking him up Jimmy wouldn't open his mouth about him--seemed not to
+like the subject, you know."
+
+Nobody spoke; they had heard rumours of an event which would bring Jimmy
+into new relations with Quisante, and they waited for possible information.
+But Dick did not go on, so it was left to Morewood to make the necessary
+intrusion into private affairs; he did it willingly, with a malicious
+grin.
+
+"Thinking him over in the light of a relation, perhaps?" he suggested.
+
+"It would only be a connection anyhow," Dick corrected rather sharply.
+
+"Oh, if that comforts you!" said Morewood, laughing.
+
+"She's a charming girl and I'm awfully glad it's come off."
+
+"Oh, it has?" asked Marchmont.
+
+"Yes, the other day."
+
+"And you're glad in spite of----?"
+
+"Yes, I am. Besides I don't mean anything of that sort. I suppose I know
+as well as anybody what Quisante is."
+
+"As far as I'm concerned I'll admit you do, and still feel you don't know
+much," remarked the Dean.
+
+"Well, I wish there were more men like him," said Blair, nodding
+vigorously.
+
+"Some men would sacrifice anything for their party," remarked Morewood.
+
+Marchmont took no part in the talk about Quisante; he could not praise;
+for reasons very plain to himself he would not say a word in blame or
+depreciation. Not only had he been Quisante's rival, but ever since his
+talk with May he had felt himself the repository of special information,
+imperfect indeed and shadowy, yet beyond that which the outside world
+possessed. Besides he had received two letters from her, one written in
+the course of the fight, gay in tone, expressing an eager interest in her
+husband's fortunes, keenly appreciative of her husband's brilliancy and
+bravery. The second, in reply to his telegram of congratulation, had run
+in another key; an utter weariness and an almost disgusted satiety seemed
+to have superseded her former interest. Side by side with these he had
+discovered in the repressed but eloquent words of her greeting to him an
+intense desire to see him. "I want a change so badly," she wrote. "I want
+somebody unpractical, unpushing. You must come directly we're back in
+town." They had been back in town ten days, he knew, but he had not yet
+obeyed her summons. The thought crossed his mind that the contrast
+between her two letters was an odd parallel to Dick's description of the
+puzzling demeanour of his brother Jimmy. Was it a characteristic of the
+man's to produce these sudden and startling changes of mood towards
+himself? Marchmont was puzzled at the notion; he was too little able to
+sympathise with the attraction to find himself capable of understanding
+the force and extent of the revulsion. "At all events she must be pretty
+well prepared for what he is by now," he said to himself with the mixture
+of pity and resentment which his love for her and her rejection of him in
+Quisante's favour had bred in his mind. For her he was very sorry; it was
+harder to be quite simply and sincerely sorry that her blindness to what
+had been so obvious was working out its inevitable result; he would like
+to console her in any way short of refraining from pointing out how wrong
+she had been proved.
+
+When, in obedience to another note, he went, he did not at first find May
+alone. Although he knew Sir Winterton Mildmay, he was not acquainted with
+his wife, and was surprised when the kind-looking woman who sat with May
+was introduced to him as Lady Mildmay. This was a quick and thorough
+burying of the hatchet indeed. "Would you see this in any country except
+England?" he asked jokingly. Lady Mildmay declared not, adding that there
+was no bitterness in England because there was only upstanding fighting
+which left no rancour and indeed bred personal liking. Marchmont thought
+to himself that Quisante must have been very clever--or that this dear
+woman (he gave her the epithet at once as everybody did) was not very
+clever, no cleverer than he had long known handsome Sir Winterton to be.
+Glancing across at May, he seemed to see an expression of absolute pain
+on her face, as Lady Mildmay developed these amiable theories.
+
+"I don't believe my husband will ever stand against yours again," she
+said.
+
+May looked at Marchmont. "They really have taken quite a fancy to one
+another," she said with a laugh that sounded rather forced. "Funny, isn't
+it?"
+
+"The speech you invite me to would be a very unfortunate one to address
+to the wives of the two gentlemen," he answered, smiling. "Funny indeed!
+I prefer to call it inevitable, don't you, Lady Mildmay?"
+
+May made the slightest gesture of impatience, but a moment later smiled
+again at Lady Mildmay, saying, "Yes, I suppose that's what I ought to
+have said."
+
+The visitor rose to go; approaching May, she first shook hands and then
+stood for a moment with a half-expectant half-imploring air. It was plain
+that she suggested a kiss. Marchmont looked on rather amused; he knew
+that May Quisante was not given to effusiveness. It would, however, have
+been cruel not to kiss Lady Mildmay, and May kissed her with an excellent
+grace.
+
+"Well," said Marchmont when the door was shut, "she takes defeat
+prettily. Evidently you've made a conquest, as well as your husband."
+
+"I wish she wouldn't come here," said May, wandering to the window and
+speaking in a disconsolate voice.
+
+"You don't like her?"
+
+"Like her? Oh, of course I like the dear creature! Who wouldn't? And I
+like him too." She turned round, smiling a little. "He's so nice, and
+large, and clean, and direct, and obvious, and simple, you know. I like
+him just as I like a great rosy apple."
+
+"Hum! I don't eat many of those, do you?"
+
+She laughed, but rather reluctantly. "Perhaps that's more your fault than
+the apple's. Still I agree. A bite now and then. But they're mostly only
+to dress the table."
+
+"Why don't you want her to come?"
+
+May sat down and fidgeted with a nick-nack on the table.
+
+"Don't you think being forgiven's rather tiresome work?" she asked. "They
+don't mean that, I know, but I can't help feeling as if they did."
+
+"I don't see why you should."
+
+She looked full at him for a moment. "No, I didn't suppose you would see
+it," she said. "Don't stand there, come and sit here,--near me. I've
+written you three letters, but you don't seem to understand yet that I
+want to see you." He took the chair near her to which she had pointed;
+she looked at him, evidently with both pleasure and amusement. "You don't
+look the least as if you'd been electioneering," she told him in an
+admiring congratulatory tone.
+
+"I've had the egg-marks brushed off," he explained with the insincere
+gravity that he knew she liked.
+
+"Will they brush off? Will they always brush off?" she asked, her voice
+low, her hands nursing her knee, her eyes on his.
+
+"Parables, my lady?"
+
+"Yes. Do you know that we won the election because rosy Sir Winterton was
+supposed to have flirted with his keeper's daughter, and wouldn't say he
+hadn't, and wouldn't bring that dear soul where anybody was likely to say
+he had?"
+
+"No, I hadn't heard that. I thought your husband's----"
+
+"Oh, yes, all that helped. He was splendid. But we shouldn't have done it
+without the keeper's daughter."
+
+"_Vox populi, vox Dei_; they're both so hard to understand."
+
+"I've been longing for you," she said, seeming to awake suddenly from her
+half-dreamy half-playful account of the life she had been living. The
+speech, with its cruel frankness and its more cruel affection, embittered
+him.
+
+"When you're tired of a rosy apple, you like a bite at a bitter cherry?
+One bite; the rest of me, I suppose, is only to dress the table."
+
+She understood him.
+
+"Well, then, you shouldn't come," she protested. "I've been fair about
+it."
+
+"No, not always; what you write and say now and then isn't fair unless it
+means something more."
+
+"Oh, I don't know what it means."
+
+Her misery drove away his resentment, and pity filled its place.
+
+"You seem more than usually down on your luck," he said with a smile.
+
+"Yes, a little," she confessed. "It's the Mildmays and--and--the general
+sham of it, you know." She glanced across at him, smiling. "That's why I
+longed for you," she said.
+
+It seemed to him that never had fate and never had woman been so cruel.
+The one so nearly had given what he wanted, the other tantalised with the
+exhibition of a feeling only just short of what he hoped for, but the
+more merciless because it seemed not to understand by how narrow an inch
+it failed of his desires. He spoke to her hardly and coldly.
+
+"You seem to me to choose to try a bit of everything and a bit of
+everybody," he said. "That's your affair. But I'm not surprised that you
+don't find it satisfactory."
+
+"I have to try more than I like of some things and some people," she
+replied. She went on quickly, "I know, oh, I know! Now you're calling me
+disloyal!"
+
+A curious vexation laid hold of him. Once he had liked her to speak of
+him in this strain, even as once he had loved to see in her the type of
+the pure, calm, gracious maiden. Now he knew better both her and himself.
+The impulse was on him to say that he cared nothing for her disloyalty so
+that he himself was the cause of it and he himself to reap the benefit.
+He was quick to read her, and he read in her restless misery some sore
+discontent with the lot that she had chosen. But he refrained from the
+words, not in his turn from any loyalty, but rather still from
+bitterness, from a perverse desire to give her nothing of what she had
+refused, to leave her in the solitude of spirit which came of her own
+action. Besides his fastidiousness revolted from plunging him into a
+position which was so common, and which he, with his dislike of things
+common, had always counted vulgar. Thus he was silent, and she also sat
+silent, looking straight before her. At last, however, she spoke.
+
+"Alexander's gone to the city," she said, "to see his stockbroker. The
+stockbroker's a cousin of--ours." She smiled for a moment. "His name's
+Mandeville. Since the party's out, we've got to see if we can make some
+money."
+
+His pity revived; whatever she deserved, it was not this horrible
+common-place lot of wanting money; that sat so ill on his still stately,
+no longer faultless, image of her.
+
+"To make some money?" he repeated, half-scornful, half-puzzled.
+
+"Oh, you're rich--you don't know. We spent a lot at Henstead. We must
+have money: I spend a lot, so does Alexander." She glanced at him, and he
+saw that something had nearly escaped her lips of which she repented. "Do
+you ever feel," she went on, apparently by way of amendment, "as if you
+might be dishonest--under stress of circumstances, you know?"
+
+"I suppose I might. I've never thought about it."
+
+"So dishonest as--as to get into trouble and be sent to prison and so
+on?"
+
+"Oh, I should hope to be skilful enough to avoid that," he laughed.
+"Fools ought never to be dishonest; so they invented the 'best policy'
+proverb to keep themselves straight."
+
+May nodded. "That's it, I think," she said, and fell into silence again.
+This time he spoke.
+
+"I don't like your wanting money," he said in a low voice.
+
+"No, I know," she smiled. "It's not like what you've always chosen to
+think I'm like. I ought to live in gilded halls and scatter largesse,
+oughtn't I?" She laughed a little bitterly. "Perhaps I will, if cousin
+Mandeville does his duty."
+
+"Meanwhile you feel the temptation to dishonesty?" He paused, but then
+went on deliberately, "Or, to follow your rule of complete
+identification, shall I say 'we feel a temptation to dishonesty, do we?'"
+
+"Oh, but we should be clever enough not to be found out, shouldn't we?"
+
+"I think you would."
+
+"You've not half such good reason to think it as I have." She rose,
+walked to the hearth-rug, and stood facing the grate, her back turned to
+him. She seemed to him to be looking at a photograph which he noticed now
+for the first time on the mantelpiece, the picture of a stout elderly man
+with large clean-shaven face and an expression of tolerant shrewdness.
+Marchmont moved close to her shoulder and looked also. Perceiving him,
+she half turned her head towards him. "That's my husband's right-hand man
+at Henstead," she said. "They understand each other perfectly."
+
+"He looks a sharp fellow."
+
+"So he may be able to understand Alexander? Thank you. I like to have his
+picture here." Suddenly she turned round full on him, stretching out her
+hand. "I wish you'd go now," she said. "Have you turned stupid, or don't
+you see that you must leave me alone, or--or I shall say all sorts of
+things I mustn't? That man on the mantelpiece there typifies it all.
+Bless his dear old fat face! I like him so much--and he's such a humbug,
+and I don't think he knows that he's in the least a humbug. Is sincerity
+just stupidity?" Her mirth broke out. "Alexander hates my having him
+there," she whispered; then she drew away, crying, "Go, go."
+
+"I'm off," said he. "But why doesn't Quisante like the old gentleman's
+picture, and why do you keep it there if he doesn't?"
+
+"And why are none of us perfect--except perhaps the Mildmays? Good-bye."
+She gave him her hand. "Oh, by the way," she went on, calling him back
+after he had turned, "have you ever had anything to do with promoting
+companies or anything of that kind?"
+
+"Well, no, I can't say I have."
+
+"Is it necessarily disreputable?"
+
+"Oh, no," he smiled. "Not necessarily. In fact it's an essential feature
+in the life of a commercial nation." He was mockingly grave again.
+
+"Thank you very much, Mr. Marchmont. An essential feature of the life in
+a commercial nation! That's very good." She broke into a laugh. "Now I've
+got something agreeable to say," she said. He did not move till she shook
+her head violently at him and pointed to the door. As he went out, she
+turned back to Mr. Foster's picture, murmuring, "It's no use my setting
+up for a martyr. Martyrs don't giggle half the time." Had Marchmont heard
+her, the word "giggle" would have stirred him to real indignation; it was
+so inappropriate to that low reluctant mirth-laden laugh of hers, which
+seemed to reveal the feeling that it mocked and extorted the pity that it
+could not but deride. It sounded again as she stood looking at old Foster
+the maltster's picture there on the mantelpiece where Quisante did not
+like to see it.
+
+For what was the meaning of it to her, declared by her perverse
+determination to keep it there and plain enough to her husband's quick
+wit? It was the outward sign that her malicious fancy chose of the new
+state of feeling and the new relation between them which had emerged from
+the tempest of emotion that Foster's congratulatory note had thrown her
+into. The tempest had raged in solitude and silence; she had not spoken a
+word to her sister, or to Jimmy Benyon, hardly a word to Quisante
+himself. He had his case of course, and she was obliged to hear it, to
+hear also Foster's own account of how he came to express himself so
+awkwardly and to write as though Mr. Quisante had originally set the
+story afloat, whereas he meant only to applaud the tact with which his
+leader had regulated their conduct towards it after it was started. May
+said she was quite sure he had meant only this, thanked him for all his
+services, and begged the photograph. Quisante approved this bearing
+towards the third party but was not deceived by it himself. When the
+picture was set on the mantelpiece, he understood that his case was not
+convincing, that the episode would not fall into the oblivion which he
+had suggested for it; it would not be forgotten and could not be
+forgiven. Deeply resentful of this treatment--for he saw nothing very bad
+in his manoeuvre--he had been moved to protest passionately, to explain
+volubly, and to offer pledge on pledge. Protests, plaints, and promises
+broke uselessly against the cool, composed, indulgent friendliness of her
+bearing. She gave him to understand that no pretences were longer
+possible between them, but that they would get along without them. She
+allowed him to see that the one fear left to her on his account was the
+apprehension that some day he would be found out by other people. Here
+her terror was as great as it had ever been, for her pride was unbroken;
+but she did not show him the full extent of her anxiety.
+
+"You ought to be particularly careful, so many people would like to see
+you come to grief." This, or something like it, was what she had said, by
+way of dismissing the subject for ever from their conversation with one
+another. It expressed very well her new position, how she had abandoned
+those mad hopes of changing him and fallen back on the resolve to see the
+truth of him herself and make the best of him to others. But the very
+calmness and friendliness of the warning told him how resolutely she had
+chosen her path, while they concealed the shame and the fear with which
+she set herself to tread it. One thing only Quisante understood quite
+clearly; it was no use acting to her any more; what she wished was that
+he should cease to act to her. Yet, knowing this, he could not cease, it
+was not in his nature to cease, and he went on playing his part before
+eyes that he knew were not imposed on but saw through all his disguises.
+His old furtiveness of manner came back now when he talked over himself
+and his affairs with his wife.
+
+But even here he had his triumph, he was not at her mercy, he wielded a
+power of his own; she recognised it with a smile. Like Aunt Maria,
+whatever she might think of him she was bound to think constantly of him,
+to be occupied with his doings and his success, to want to know what was
+in his mind, yes, although it might be what she hated to find there. For
+a while he had withdrawn himself from her, ceasing to tell of his life,
+aims, and doings. If he sought thus to bring her to terms, she proved an
+easy conquest; she surrendered at once, laughing at herself and at him.
+"We're partners," she said, "and I must hear all about what you're doing.
+I can't live without that, you know." And as the price of what she must
+have she gave him friendship, sympathy, and comradeship, crossing his
+wishes in nothing and never allowing herself to upbraid except in that
+small tacit jeer of Mr. Foster's picture on the mantelpiece. For now she
+believed herself to know the worst, and yet to be able to endure.
+
+What sort of life promised to form itself out of this state of affairs?
+For after all she was at the beginning of life, and he hardly well into
+the middle of his. Neither of the two obvious things seemed possible;
+devotion was out of the question, alienation was forbidden by her
+unconquerable interest in him and his irrepressible instinct to hold her
+mind, even if he could not chain her affections. Perhaps a third thing
+was more usual still, tolerance. But for her at least neither was
+tolerance the mood, for that is ill to build out of a mixture of intense
+admiration and scornful contempt. These seemed likely to be the
+predominant features of her life with her husband, sharing it so equally
+that the one could never drive out the other nor yet come to fair terms
+and, dividing the territory, live at peace.
+
+"Perhaps they will some day," she thought, "when I get old and quiet."
+She was neither old nor quiet now, and her youth cried out against so
+poor a consolation. Then she told herself that she had the child, only to
+reproach herself, a moment later, with the insincere repetition of a
+commonplace. The child was not enough; had her nature been such as to
+find the child enough, she would certainly never have become Alexander
+Quisante's wife. Always when she was most strongly repelled by him, there
+was in the back of her mind the feeling that it was something to be his
+wife. Only--he mustn't be found out. The worst terror of all, at which
+her half-jesting words to Marchmont had hinted, came back as she
+murmured, "I wish we had more money." For money was necessary, as votes
+had been, and--her eyes strayed to old Foster's portrait on the
+mantelpiece. The election had cost a lot; no salary was to be looked for
+now; both by policy and by instinct Quisante was lavish; she herself had
+no aptitude for small economies. Money was wanted very much indeed in
+Grosvenor Road.
+
+It was on the way, though. This was the news that Quisante, in the
+interval between his return from electioneering and the meeting of
+Parliament, brought back day by day from his excursions to the City and
+his conversations with Mandeville. He was careful to explain to his wife
+that he was no "guinea-pig," that he did not approve of the animal, and
+would never use his position to pick up gain in that way. But he had
+leisure--at least he could make time--and some of it he proposed to
+devote to starting a really legitimate and highly lucrative undertaking.
+The Alethea Printing Press was to revolutionise a great many things
+besides the condition of Quisante's finances; it was not an ordinary
+speculative company. Marchmont's phrase came in here, and May used it
+neatly and graciously. Quisante, much encouraged, plunged into an account
+of the great invention; if only it worked as it was certain to work,
+there was not one fortune but many fortunes in it. "And it will work?"
+she asked. "If we can get the capital," he answered with a confident air.
+"I shall try to interest all my friends in it," he went on. "You can help
+me there." May looked doubtful, and Quisante grew more eloquent. At last
+he held up a sheaf of papers, saying triumphantly,
+
+"Here are favourable reports from all the leading experts. We shall have
+an array of them in the prospectus. Of course they're absolutely
+impartial, and they really leave no room for doubt." He held them out to
+her, but she leant back with her hands in her lap.
+
+"I shouldn't understand them," she protested. "But they all agree, do
+they?"
+
+"Yes, all," he said emphatically. "Well, all except one." His brow
+wrinkled a little. "Mandeville insisted on having an opinion from
+Professor Maturin. I was against it. Maturin's absurdly pessimistic."
+
+"He's a great man, isn't he?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I suppose so,--he's got a great reputation anyhow."
+
+"And he's against you?"
+
+"The fact is that his is only--only a draft report. So far as it goes,
+it's not encouraging, but he's never had the facts really laid before
+him."
+
+"You'd better go and lay them before him," she said very gravely.
+
+Quisante caught eagerly at the suggestion.
+
+"Exactly what I proposed to Mandeville!" he cried. "The prospectus won't
+be out for nearly a month yet, and I shall go and see Maturin. I
+know----" He rose and began to walk about. "I know Maturin is wrong, and
+I know that I can show him he's wrong. I only want an hour with him to
+bring him round to my view, to the true view."
+
+"Well, why haven't you been to see him?"
+
+"I tried to go, but he's ill and not equal to business. As soon as he
+gets better I shall go. To put his report in as it stands would not only
+do us infinite harm--in fact we couldn't think of it--but it wouldn't be
+just to him."
+
+"But if he won't change his opinion?"
+
+"Oh, he must, he will. I tell you it's as plain as a pikestaff, when once
+it's properly explained."
+
+"I'm sure you'll be able to convert him, if anyone can," said May
+soothingly.
+
+"I must," said Quisante briefly, and sat down to his papers again.
+
+For an hour or two he worked steadily, without a pause, without an
+apparent hesitation. That fine machine of his was ploughing its straight
+unfaltering way through details previously unfamiliar and through
+problems which he had never studied. From five to seven she sat with a
+book in her hands, feigning to read, really watching her husband. He
+could not fail, she said to herself; he would make the Alethea Printing
+Press a success, irrespective of the actual merits of it. Was that
+possible? It seemed almost possible as she looked at him.
+
+"It's bound to go," he said at last, pushing away the papers. "I'm primed
+now, and I can convince old Maturin in half an hour." He held up the
+Professor's report. "He must withdraw this and give us another."
+
+Alas, there are things before which even will and energy and brains must
+bow. As he spoke the servant came in, bringing the _Evening Standard_.
+May took it, glanced at the middle page, and then, with a little start,
+looked across at her husband. He saw her glance. "Any news?" he asked.
+
+"The Professor can't be convinced," she said. "His illness took a sudden
+turn for the worse last night and he died this afternoon at three
+o'clock."
+
+Quisante sat quite still for a few minutes, the dead Professor's report
+on the Alethea Printing Press still in his fingers.
+
+"What'll you do now?" she asked, with the smile of curiosity which she
+always had ready for his plans. Would he pursue the Professor beyond
+Charon's stream?
+
+He hesitated a little, glancing at her rather uneasily. At last he spoke.
+
+"One thing at all events is clear to me," he said. "This thing doesn't
+represent a reasoned and well-informed opinion." He folded it up
+carefully and placed it by itself in a long envelope. "We must consider
+our course," he ended.
+
+In a flash, by an instinct, May knew what their course would be and at
+whose dictation it would be followed.
+
+"Of course," said Quisante, "all this is strictly between ourselves."
+
+Her cheek flushed a little. "You mustn't tell me any more business
+secrets. I don't like them," said she, and she turned away to escape the
+quick, would-be covert glance that she knew he would direct at her.
+
+Money was necessary; votes had been necessary; old Foster smiled in fat
+shrewdness from the mantelpiece. May Quisante was less sure that she knew
+the worst.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XV.
+
+                           A STRANGE IDEA.
+
+
+The next few weeks were a time of restless activity with Alexander
+Quisante. Again he was like an electric current, not travelling now from
+constituency to constituency, but between Westminster and his cousin
+Mandeville's offices in the City. In both places he was very busy. His
+leader had declared for a waiting policy, and an interval in which the
+demoralisation of defeat should pass away; the party must feel its feet
+again, the great man said. Constantine Blair was full of precedents for
+the course, quoting Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham,
+and all the gods of the Parliamentarian. Brusquely and almost rudely
+Quisante brushed him, his gods, and his leader on one side, and raised
+the standard of fierce and immediate battle. The majority was composite;
+his quick eye saw the spot where a wedge might be inserted between the
+two component parts and driven home till the gap yawned wide and scission
+threatened. The fighting men needed only to be shown where to fight; they
+followed enthusiastically the man who led them to the field. Leaders
+shook grey heads, and leader-writers disclaimed a responsibility which
+_prima facie_ had never rested on them; Quisante was told that he would
+wreck the party for a quarter of a century to come. It would perhaps
+have been possible to meet Constantine Blair's precedents with other
+precedents, to quote newer gods against his established deities. That
+was not "Sandro's way"; here again he was content to be an ancestor,
+the originator of his methods, and the sufficient authority for them.
+
+He was justified. The spirit of his fighting men ran high, and his
+fighting men's wives grew gracious to him. The majority, if they scowled
+at him (as was only to be hoped), began to scowl furtively at one another
+also and to say that certain questions, on which they were by no means of
+one mind, could not permanently be shirked and kept in the background.
+Some of them asked what their constituents had sent them to Westminster
+for, a question always indicative of perturbation in the parliamentary
+mind; in quiet times it is not raised. The Government papers took to
+observing that they did not desire to hurry or embarrass the Government,
+but that time was running on and it would be no true friendship to advise
+it to ignore the feeling which existed among an important, if numerically
+small, section of its followers. Altogether at the opening of the session
+the majority was much less happy, the minority in far finer feather, than
+anybody had expected. Only officialdom or ignorance could refuse the main
+credit to Alexander Quisante.
+
+"I declare," said Lady Castlefort--and her opinion was not one to
+neglect--"May Gaston was right to take the man after all. He'll be Prime
+Minister." And she settled her _pince-nez_ and looked round for
+contradiction. She loved argument but had made the mistake of growing too
+important to be differed from. None the less on this occasion a sweet
+little voice spoke up in the circle.
+
+"I wouldn't marry him if he were fifty times Prime Minister," said Lady
+Richard Benyon. "He's odious."
+
+"God bless me!" murmured the Countess, genuinely startled. "Well, you'll
+see, my dear," she went on, nodding emphatically. "He's the only man
+among them." Her eye fell on Weston Marchmont. "Oh, yes, I see you're
+there," she said, "and I'm very glad you should be."
+
+"It's always a pleasure to be here," he smiled urbanely.
+
+"Especially, apparently, when you ought to be at the House," she
+retorted, glancing at the clock. "However to-day you've heard more truth
+here than you're likely to there, so I forgive you."
+
+"More truth here? But Quisante's making a speech!"
+
+"Oh, you're very neat," she said with an open impatience. "You can score
+off a woman at her tea-table; go and score off the other side, Weston,
+and then you may do it as much as you like to me. As if anybody cared
+whether Mr. Quisante speaks the truth or not!" He came up to her and held
+out his hand, smiling good-naturedly. She gave him hers with a laugh, for
+she liked him much and did not like Quisante at all. "It's your own
+fault, that's why you're so exasperating," she half-whispered as she bade
+him good-bye.
+
+Here was one side; on the other the men of the City came to know Quisante
+too, but, as befitted persons engaged in the serious pursuit of dealing
+with money, gave more hesitating and guarded opinions; no party spirit
+led them astray or fired them to desperate ventures. However there was no
+denying that the Alethea Printing Press sounded a very good thing, and
+moreover no denying that measures had been skilfully taken to prevent
+anybody having a share in that good thing without paying handsomely for
+the privilege. The Syndicate, speaking through Mr. Mandeville its
+mouthpiece, by no means implored support or canvassed new partners; it
+was prepared to admit one or two names of weight in return for
+substantial aid. Mandeville did nothing of himself; he referred to the
+Board, and the Board's answers came after Alexander Quisante's hansom had
+flashed back to Westminster. But a few did gain admittance, and these few
+were much struck by the reports on the Alethea, all of which had been
+sent back for revision to their respective authors, accompanied by some
+new and important facts. These latter did not, as it turned out, alter
+the tenor of the reports, but it had been thought as well to afford an
+opportunity for reconsideration in the light of them; so Mandeville
+explained, seeming always just a little nervous over this matter of the
+reports.
+
+"We had hoped," he said to one gentleman who was rather important and
+rather hard to satisfy, "to fortify ourselves with Professor Maturin's
+opinion. But unfortunately he died before he could complete his
+examination, and nothing on the subject was found among his papers."
+
+"That's a pity. Maturin would have carried great weight."
+
+"We were quite alive to that," Mandeville assured him with a somewhat
+uneasy smile. His feelings were not unlike those of a quiet steady-going
+member of Quisante's party in Parliament. "We have no doubt of what his
+opinion would have been, had he been able to study our additional facts
+and been spared to complete his report. As it was, he had only discussed
+the matter informally with one or two of us." And when he was left alone,
+he murmured softly, "I suppose that's how Alexander meant me to put it."
+But he rather wished that Alexander had been there to put it himself.
+
+It is perhaps needless to say that Aunt Maria, sturdily fulfilling her
+destiny in life, was deeply concerned in the fortunes of the Alethea
+Printing Press. But large as was her stake--and the possibilities of loss
+at least were for her very large--she was not disturbed; she said that
+heaven alone knew whether there was anything in the thing, but that she
+knew that Sandro would make people think there was. Nor did she share in
+any serious degree the fears which afflicted her nephew's wife; Sandro
+always had a case, and she did not doubt that he would have a very good
+one whereby to justify any proceedings he might take in regard to the
+Alethea. So she lived frugally, hoped magnificently, and came often to
+Grosvenor Road to pick up what crumbs of information she could. Here she
+met Lady Castlefort and nodded her rusty bonnet at that great personage
+with the remark that she was glad people were waking up to what there was
+in Sandro; it was time, goodness knew. Lady Castlefort was for the moment
+taken aback.
+
+"Mr. Quisante has had certain--er--difficulties to overcome," she
+murmured rather vaguely, and was not reassured by a dry chuckle and the
+heartfelt exclamation, "I should think so!" Altogether it was difficult
+to make out exactly what Mr. Quisante's aunt thought of him.
+
+Here the old lady met also the Dean of St. Neot's, who called every now
+and then because he liked May and wished to show that he bore no malice
+about the Crusade; but the subject was still a sore one, and he was as
+little prepared to be chuckled at over it as Lady Castlefort had been
+over her diplomatic indication of the fact that Quisante's blood was not
+blue nor his manners those of a grand old English gentleman.
+
+"Sandro knew all along that there wasn't much in that, but it was
+something to begin with," Aunt Maria remarked to the uncomfortable Dean.
+She herself had dragged in the Crusade, to which she referred so
+contemptuously.
+
+"Miss Quisante will do anything in the world for my husband," May
+interposed, "but nothing'll persuade her to say a good word for him."
+
+"As long as that's understood, she does him no harm. We discount all you
+say, Miss Quisante."
+
+The Dean's affability was thrown away on Aunt Maria.
+
+"I know what I'm talking about," she remarked grimly, "and as far as your
+Crusade goes, I should think you'd have seen it yourself by now."
+
+The Dean had seen it himself by now, but he did not wish to say so in the
+presence of Quisante's wife. May's laugh relieved him a little.
+
+"The Dean's very forgiving," she said, "and Alexander's doing well now,
+anyhow, isn't he?"
+
+The Dean agreed that he was doing well now--for in spite of his
+disclaimers of partisanship there was a spice of the fighting man in the
+Dean--and repeated Lady Castlefort's prophecy, reported to him by Lady
+Richard. The rusty black bonnet nodded approvingly. "I knew that was a
+sensible woman, in spite of her airs," said Miss Quisante.
+
+Lastly, among those whom Miss Quisante encountered at her nephew's house
+was Lady Mildmay, and this interview took a rather more serious turn. In
+after days May used to look back to it as the first faint sign of the new
+factor which from now began to make itself felt in her life and to become
+a very pressing presence to her. She did not enjoy the friendship which
+the Mildmays forced on her, but it was impossible to receive it otherwise
+than with outward graciousness; the cordiality was so kind, the interest
+so frank, Sir Winterton's gallantry so chivalrous, his wife's gentleness
+so appealing. When Lady Mildmay was announced May found time for a hasty
+whisper to Aunt Maria: "Take care what you say about Alexander before
+her." Doubts must not be stirred in the Mildmay mind; the Mildmays must
+be kept in their delusion; to help in this was one of the duties of
+Quisante's wife.
+
+Lady Mildmay smiled gladly on Aunt Maria.
+
+"I'm so pleased you're here," she said, "because I know you'll second me
+in what I'm going to venture to say to Lady May. I know I'm taking a
+liberty, but I can't help it. Meeting people now and then, you do
+sometimes see what people who are always with them don't. Now don't you,
+Miss Quisante?"
+
+"And _vice versa_," murmured Aunt Maria; but May's eye rested on her
+warningly, and she refrained from pointing her observation by any
+reference to Sandro.
+
+"I'm quite sure your husband is overdoing himself terribly," Lady Mildmay
+went on. "I saw him the other day walking through the Park, and he looked
+ghastly. I stopped him and told him so, but he said he'd just been to his
+doctor, and that there was really nothing the matter with him."
+
+"I didn't know he'd been to the doctor lately. He seemed pretty well for
+him," said May. Aunt Maria said nothing; her keen little eyes were
+watching the visitor very closely.
+
+"I've seen a lot of illness," pursued Lady Mildmay in her gentle voice,
+"and I know. He's working himself to death; he's killing himself." She
+raised her eyes and looked at May. Kind as the glance was, May felt in it
+a wonder, almost a reproach. "How comes it that you, his wife, haven't
+seen it too?" the eyes seemed to say in plaintive surprise. "Are you sure
+there's nothing wrong with him?" she asked.
+
+"Wrong with him? What do you mean?" The question was Aunt Maria's, asked
+abruptly, roughly, almost indignantly. Lady Mildmay started. "I--I don't
+want to alarm you, I'm sure," she murmured, "but I don't like his looks.
+Do, do persuade him to take a rest."
+
+Both of them were silent now; Lady Mildmay's wonder grew; she did not
+understand them; she saw them exchange a glance whose expression she
+could not analyse.
+
+"He wants absolute rest and care, the care you could give him, my dear,"
+she said to May--such a care she meant as her loving heart and hands
+would give to handsome Sir Winterton. "Go away with him for a few months
+and take care of him, now do. Keep all worries and--and ambitions and so
+on away from him."
+
+May's face was grave and strained in a painful attention; but on Miss
+Quisante's lips there came slowly a bitter little smile. What a picture
+this good lady drew of Sandro and his loving wife, together, apart from
+the world, with ambitions and worries set aside! Must the outlines of
+that picture be followed if--well, if Sandro was to live?
+
+"I hope you're not offended? Seeing him only now and then I notice the
+change. Winterton and I have both been feeling anxious about it, and we
+decided that you wouldn't mind if I spoke to you."
+
+"You're too good, too good," said May. "We don't deserve it." Lady
+Mildmay smiled.
+
+"I know what a strain the election was," said she. "Even Winterton felt
+it, and Mr. Quisante never seems to rest, does he?" She rose to go, but,
+as she said good-bye, she spoke one more word, half in a whisper and
+timidly, "I daresay I'm wrong, but are you sure his heart's quite sound?"
+And so she left them, excusing herself to the last for what might seem an
+intrusion, or even a slight on the careful watch that an affectionate
+wife keeps over her husband's health.
+
+May walked to the hearthrug and stood there; Aunt Maria, sitting very
+still, glanced up with a frightened gaze, but her speech came bitter with
+aggressive scorn.
+
+"What does the silly creature mean?" she asked. "There's nothing the
+matter with Sandro, is there?"
+
+"I don't know that there is," May answered slowly.
+
+"The woman talks as if he was going to die." Still the tone was
+contemptuous, still the look frightened. "Such nonsense!"
+
+"I hope it is. He's not strong though, is he?"
+
+Miss Quisante had often said the same, but now she received the remark
+irritably. "Strong! He's not a buffalo like some men, like Jimmy Benyon
+or, I suppose, that poor creature's husband she's always talking about.
+But there's nothing the matter with him, there's no reason he
+shouldn't--no reason he should fall ill at all."
+
+"She thinks he ought to rest, perhaps give up altogether."
+
+"Altogether? Nonsense!" The tone was sharp.
+
+"Well, then, for a long while."
+
+"And go away, and let you coddle him?"
+
+"Yes, and let me coddle him." May looked down on Aunt Maria, and for the
+first time smiled faintly.
+
+"The woman's out of her senses," declared Aunt Maria testily. "Don't you
+think so? Don't you think so?"
+
+"I don't know," was all May could say in answer either to the irritation
+of the voice or to the fear of the eyes. The old lady's hands were
+trembling as she raised them and gave a pull to the bow of her
+bonnet-strings.
+
+"He'll see me out anyhow, I'll be bound," she said obstinately. She was
+fighting against the bare idea of being left with a remnant of life to
+live and no Sandro to fill it for her; what a miserable fag-end of empty
+waiting that would be! She glanced sharply at his wife; she did not know
+what his wife was thinking of.
+
+"I'll ask him," said May, "and I must insist on knowing." She paused and
+added, "I ought to have noticed and I ought to have asked before. But
+somehow----" The sentence went unfinished, and Aunt Maria's sharp
+unsatisfied eyes drew no further answer. May kissed her when they parted;
+whatever this idea might mean to her, whatever the strange tumult it
+might raise in her, she read well enough the story of the old lady's
+rough tones, shaking hands and frightened eyes. To the old woman Sandro
+was the sum of life. She might sneer, she might scorn, she might rail,
+she might and would suffer at his hands. But he was the one thing, the
+sole support, she had to cling to; he kept her alive. Yet the last words
+that Miss Quisante said were, "I expect Sandro wanted to wheedle
+something out of that woman, and has been playing one of his tricks to
+get a bit of sympathy." Then she climbed slowly and totteringly down the
+stairs.
+
+Left alone, May Quisante sat in apparent idleness, letting her thoughts
+play with a freedom which some people consider in itself blameworthy,
+though certainly no action and often no desire accompany the picture
+which the mind draws. She said to herself, "Supposing this is true, or
+that more than this is true, supposing his heart is unsound, what does it
+mean to me?" What it excluded was easier to realise than what it meant.
+Unless Quisante were to have not existence only, but also health, such
+health at least as enables a man to do work although not, may be, to
+glory in the doing of it, unless there were to the engine wheels sound
+enough to answer to the spur of the steam that his brain's furnace made,
+nothing could come about of what Lady Castlefort's Mightiness prophesied,
+nothing of what friends and enemies had begun to look for, nothing of
+what May herself had grown to regard as his future and hers, as the
+basis, the condition, the circumstances, of her life and of his. An old
+thought of her own came to her, back from the dim region of ante-marriage
+days, the idea to which the Henstead doctor had given a terse, if
+metaphorical, expression. Quisante was their race-horse, their money was
+on him, they wanted a win for the stable. If this or more than this were
+true, then there would be no win for the stable; the horse was a grand
+horse, but he wouldn't stand training. What was left then? An invalid and
+the wife of an invalid, coddlings, cossetings, devotion, ambition far
+away, life kept in him by loving heart and loving hands. Hers must be the
+heart and the hands. Hers also were the keen eyes that knew every
+weakness, every baseness, of the man to whom heart and hands must
+minister, but would see no more the battle and the triumph and the
+brilliance which set them sparkling and seemed to make the world alight
+for them.
+
+For a little while the third thing, the remaining possibility, was
+unformulated in her thoughts; perhaps she had a scruple which made her
+turn away from it. But her speculations would not be denied their
+irresponsible freedom of ranging over all the field of chance. If it were
+true, if more than it, more than the kind timid woman had dared to say,
+were true, he might die. He might die, not in some dim far-off time when
+nature made the thing seem inevitable, when he had lived his life, been
+Prime Minister and so forth, and she had lived hers, filling it with work
+for him, and with looking on at him and with endurance of him, but
+sooner, much sooner, almost now, when he had not lived his life, while
+hers was not exhausted, when there would still be left to her another of
+her own to live after he was gone. It was strange to think of that, to
+see how what had seemed to be irrevocable and for ever, to stretch in
+unfaltering perpetuity to the limits of old age, might so easily, by the
+occasion of so small a matter as a heart not sound, turn out to be a
+passing thing, and there come to her again freedom, choice, a life to be
+re-made. If that happened, how would she feel? At the new-learnt chance
+of that happening, how did she feel? Very strange, very bewildered, very
+upset; that was her answer. Such a thing--Quisante's death she
+meant--would mean so much, change so much, take away so much--and might
+give so much. Her thoughts flew off to the new life that she might live
+then, to the new freedom from embarrassments, from fears and from
+disgusts, to a new love which it might be hers to gain and to enjoy.
+People said that it was always impossible to go back--_vestigia nulla_.
+But that event would open to her a sort of going back, such a return to
+her old life and her surroundings as might some day make the time she
+had spent with Quisante and its experiences seem but an episode, studding
+the belt of long days with one strange bizarre ornament.
+
+And on the other side? There was the greatest difficulty, the greatest
+puzzle. She had not failed to understand the roughness of Aunt Maria's
+tones, her frightened eyes and the shaking of her hands. It would be very
+strange to see an end of him, to know that he would never be Prime
+Minister and so forth, to look on at a world devoid of him, to live a
+life in which he was only a memory. How were the scales to be held, which
+way did the balance incline? She could not tell, and at last she smiled
+at her inability to answer the riddle. It would amuse people so much, and
+shock some people so much and doubtless so properly, if they knew that
+she was sitting in her drawing-room in the afternoon, trying to make up
+her mind whether she would rather her husband lived or that he died. Even
+there the fallacy crept in; she was not desiring either way; she was
+simply looking at the two pictures which the two events painted for her
+fancy; and she did not know which picture she preferred. So all was still
+bewilderment, all still rocking from the sudden gust that had proceeded
+out of dear Lady Mildmay's gentle lips. But the undercurrent of wonder
+and of reproach that there had been in the warning May Quisante now
+almost missed. By an effort at last she realised its presence, the
+naturalness of it, and its rightness. But still it seemed to her a little
+conventional, something that might be supposed to be appropriate, but was
+not, if the truth were faced. "Alexander and I have never been like that
+to one another--at least never for more than a very little while," was
+the form her thought about it took.
+
+When he came in that evening, she found herself looking at him with
+wonder, and with a sort of scepticism about what her visitor had said. He
+seemed so full of life; it was impossible to think of him as being
+likely, or even able, to die. But she had made up her mind to open the
+subject to him, to force something from him, and to learn about this
+visit to the doctor which he had so studiously concealed from her. She
+gave him tea, and was so far affected by her mood as to show unusual
+kindness towards him, or rather to let her uniform friendliness be tinged
+by an affection which was not part of her habitual bearing; with the help
+of this she hoped to lead up to a subject which her own strangely mixed
+meditations somehow made it hard for her to approach. But Quisante also
+had a scheme; he also was watching and working for an opportunity, and
+seeing one now in her great cordiality of manner he seized it with his
+rapid decisiveness, cutting in before his wife had time to develop her
+attack. He pressed her hand as she gave him his cup, sighed as though in
+weariness, took a paper from his pocket, and laid it on the table, giving
+it a tentative gentle push in the direction of her chair.
+
+"We've got the Alethea afloat at last," he said. "There's the prospectus,
+if you care to look at it." With this he glanced at the clock, sighed
+again and added, "I must be at the House early this evening. By Jove, I'm
+tired though!" This little odd ineradicable trick of his made May smile;
+he was never so tired as when he had a risky card to play; then, indeed,
+he affected for his purposes some sort of reconcilability with those
+incongruous ideas of collapse and mortality that Lady Mildmay had
+suggested. He inspired May, as he did sometimes now, with a malicious
+wish to make him show himself at his trickiest. Fingering the prospectus
+carelessly, she asked,
+
+"I suppose it sets out all the wonderful merits of the Alethea, doesn't
+it? Well, I've heard a good deal about them. I don't think I need read
+it."
+
+"It gives a full account of the invention," said Quisante, wearily
+passing his hand across his brow.
+
+"Have you put in Professor Maturin's report?" She was not looking at him,
+but smiling over to Mr. Foster on the mantelpiece. There was a moment's
+pause.
+
+"The facts about Maturin are fully stated. You'll find it on the third
+page." He rose with a sigh and threw himself on the sofa; he groaned a
+little and shut his eyes. May glanced at him, smiled, and turned to the
+third page.
+
+"In addition to the foregoing very authoritative opinions, steps were
+taken to obtain a report from the late Professor Maturin, F.R.S.
+Professor Maturin was very favourably impressed with several features of
+the invention, and was about to pursue his investigations with the aid of
+further information furnished to him, when he was unfortunately attacked
+by the illness of which he recently died. The Directors therefore regret
+to be unable to present any report of his examination. But they have
+every reason to believe that his opinion would have been no less
+encouraging than those of the other gentlemen consulted."
+
+May turned back to the list of directors. Three out of the six she did
+not know; the other three were Quisante himself, Jimmy Benyon, and Sir
+Winterton Mildmay. The presence of these two last names filled May with a
+feeling of helplessness; this was worse than she had expected. Of course
+neither Jimmy nor Sir Winterton had heard anything about the Maturin
+report; of the other three she knew nothing and took no thought. Jimmy,
+not warned, alas, by that affair of old Foster's note, and Sir Winterton,
+in the chivalrous confidence of perfect trust, had given their support to
+Quisante. The use he made of their names was to attach them to a
+statement which she who knew of the Maturin report could describe only in
+one way. She looked round at her husband's pale face and closed eyes.
+
+"I thought you were supposed to tell the--I mean, to state all the facts
+in a prospectus?" she said.
+
+Quisante sat up suddenly, leant forward, and spread his hands out. "My
+dear May," he replied with a smile, "the facts are stated, stated very
+fully."
+
+"There's nothing about the report the Professor did give. You remember
+you told me about it?"
+
+"Oh, no, he gave no report."
+
+"Well, you called it a draft report."
+
+"No, no, did I? That was a careless way of speaking if I did. He
+certainly sent me some considerations which had occurred to him at the
+beginning of his inquiry, but they were based on insufficient information
+and were purely provisional. They did not in any sense constitute a
+report. It would have been positively misleading to speak of them in any
+such way." He was growing eager, animated, almost excited.
+
+May was not inclined to cross-examine him; she knew that he would develop
+his case for himself if she sat and listened.
+
+"The whole thing was so inchoate as to be worth nothing," he went on. "We
+simply discarded it from our minds; we didn't let it weigh one way or the
+other."
+
+"The directors didn't?" That little question she could not resist asking.
+
+"Oh, it was never laid before them. As I tell you, Mandeville and I
+decided that it could not be regarded as a report, or even as an
+indication of Maturin's opinion. We only referred to Maturin at all
+because--because we wanted to be absolutely candid."
+
+May smiled; absolute candour resulted, as it seemed to her, in giving
+rise to an impression that the Professor had been in favour of the merits
+of the Alethea.
+
+"And you won't show it to the directors?"
+
+"No," said Quisante, "certainly not." He paused for a moment and then
+added slowly, "In fact it has not been preserved. What is stated there is
+based on my own personal discussions with the Professor, and on
+Mandeville's; the few lines he wrote added nothing."
+
+It had not been preserved; it had sunk from a report to a draft report,
+from a draft report to considerations, from considerations to a few lines
+which added nothing; the minimising process, pursued a little further,
+had ended in a total disappearance. And nobody knew that it had ever
+existed, even as considerations, even as a few lines adding nothing,
+except her husband, cousin Mandeville, and herself.
+
+"If the Professor himself," Quisante resumed, "had considered it of any
+moment, he would have kept a copy or some memorandum of it; but there was
+not a word about it among his papers."
+
+There was safety, then, so far as the Professor was concerned; and so far
+as Quisante was concerned; of course, also, so far as cousin Mandeville
+was concerned. But Quisante's restless eyes seemed to ask whether there
+were perfect safety all round, no possibility of Jimmy or Sir Winterton
+or anybody else picking up false ideas from careless talk about the few
+lines in which the Professor had added nothing. For an instant May's eyes
+met his, and she understood what he asked of her. She was to hold her
+tongue; that sounded simple. She had held her tongue before, and thus it
+happened that Sir Winterton was her husband's friend and trusted him. Now
+she was again to be a party to deceiving him, and this time Jimmy Benyon
+was to be hoodwinked too. She was to hold her tongue; if by any chance
+need arose, she was to lie. That was the request Quisante made of her,
+part of the price of being Quisante's wife.
+
+She gave him no pledge in words; a touch of the tact that taught him how
+to deal with difficult points prevented him from asking one of her. But
+it was quite understood between them; no reference was to be made to the
+few lines that the Professor had written. Quisante's uneasiness passed
+away, his headache seemed to become less severe; he was in good spirits
+as he made his preparations to go to the House. Apparently he had no
+consciousness of having asked anything great of her. He had been far more
+nervous and shamefaced about his betrayal of the Crusade, far more upset
+by the untoward incident of Mr. Foster's letter. May told herself that
+she understood why; he was getting accustomed to her and she to him; he
+knew her point of view and allowed for it, expecting a similar toleration
+in return. As she put it, they were getting equalised, approaching more
+nearly to one another's level. You could not aid in queer doings and reap
+the fruits of them without suffering some gradual subtle moral change
+which must end in making them seem less queer. As the years passed by,
+the longer their companionship lasted, the more their partnership
+demanded in its community of interest and effort, the more this process
+must go on. As they rose before the world--for rise they would (even the
+Alethea would succeed in spite of the Professor's burked report)--they
+would fall in their own hearts and in one another's eyes. This was the
+prospect that stretched before her, as she sat again alone in the
+drawing-room, after Quisante had set out, much better, greatly rested, in
+good spirits, serene and safe, and after she had pledged herself to his
+fortunes by the sacrifice of loyalty to friends and to truth.
+
+Yes, that was the prospect unless--she started a little. She had
+forgotten what she had meant to ask him; she had not inquired about his
+visit to the doctor nor told him that kind Lady Mildmay was anxious about
+his health. It had all been driven out of her head, she said to herself
+in excuse at first. Then she faced her feelings more boldly. Just then
+she could have put no such questions, feigned no such interest, and
+assumed no show of affection or solicitude. That evening such things
+would have been mere hypocrisy, pretences of a desire to keep him for
+herself when her whole nature was in revolt at having to be near him. Her
+horror now was not that she might lose him, but of the prospect that lay
+before her and the road she must tread with him. Trodden it must be;
+unless by any chance there were truth, or less than the truth, in what
+good Lady Mildmay said.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI.
+
+                           THE IRREVOCABLE.
+
+
+So far as May Quisante's distress had its rise in her husband's treatment
+of Sir Winterton Mildmay, she was entitled to take some comfort from that
+gentleman's extreme happiness. He had lost a seat in Parliament, thanks
+to Tom Sinnett and the account to which Tom Sinnett had been turned; he
+had been caused to represent to the world that the Alethea Printing Press
+had lost Professor Maturin's express approval only by the accident of the
+Professor's lamented decease. The one wrong he forgot, the other he did
+not know. It was a favourite tenet of his that an English gentleman ought
+to be able to turn his hand to everything--everything honourable, of
+course--and should at once shine in any sphere of practical activity. He
+saw the triumph of his opinion, and found his own delight, in his new
+part of a business man. His brougham rolled down to Dowgate Hill almost
+every day; he delighted to lunch with Mandeville or to entertain the
+Secretary of the Company at the midday meal; business could be made to
+last till three when there was no Board, till four if there were; then
+Sir Winterton drove to his club and sat down to his cards with a rich
+consciousness of commercial importance. He believed in the Alethea with a
+devotion and a thoroughness second only to the unquestioning faith and
+obedience which he now had at the service of Alexander Quisante. Many an
+amazed secret stare and many a sour smile his eulogies drew from cousin
+Mandeville; for even in his enthusiasm Sir Winterton praised with
+discrimination; it was the sterling worth, the heart of the man, that he
+admired; shallow people stuck at superficial defects of manner; not such
+was Sir Winterton. "I trust him as I do myself," he used to say to Lady
+Mildmay, and she, in honest joy, posted off with the testimonial to May
+Quisante; besides she was eager to seize a chance of throwing out another
+hint or two about Quisante's health.
+
+The Alethea, at least, seemed to be going to prove worthy of these
+laudations. There really had, it appeared, been some good reason why the
+Professor should reconsider his considerations. The invention stood the
+test of criticism and experiment; it saved a lot of expense; the idea got
+about more and more that it was an uncommonly good thing; the two or
+three papers which were inquisitive about the actual views of the
+Professor were treated with disdain (one with advertisements also) and
+their clamour went almost unnoticed. There was a demand for the shares.
+Sir Winterton pointed out to Weston Marchmont what a mistake he had
+committed in not accepting the offer of an allotment which had been made
+to him.
+
+"The only thing for which I value independent means," said Marchmont, "is
+that they relieve me from the necessity of imposing on the public. I
+suppose my ancestors did it for me."
+
+Sir Winterton laughed serenely. "We're serving the public," said he. Then
+he remembered the new man of business in him, and added, with a slyness
+obvious from across the street, "Oh, and ourselves too, ourselves too, I
+admit that."
+
+"And you, Jimmy?" asked Marchmont, turning to him; they made a group of
+three at the club.
+
+"I don't think Quisante'll go far wrong," said Jimmy. "You know Dick's
+gone in too?"
+
+"What, after the Crusade?"
+
+"This is another sort of game," said Jimmy, with a grim smile; he had
+gone in after both the Crusade and the Sinnett affair. He turned to Sir
+Winterton; "Old Foster of Henstead's in it too; he's pretty wide-awake,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, we Henstead fellows have heads on our shoulders," said Sir
+Winterton, but he looked a little less happy; he had never acquitted
+Foster with the confidence that Quisante had won from him.
+
+"And you'll grow rich against your wedding, Jimmy?" asked Marchmont.
+
+Again Jimmy smiled. The wedding was near now, and the next day he was
+going to Ashwood to meet Fanny Gaston.
+
+"You're going to Dick's on Friday, aren't you?" he said to Marchmont.
+
+"I believe I am."
+
+"Ah, then you shall hear about our show from Quisante himself."
+
+"What?" Weston Marchmont's tone expressed surprise rather than pleasure.
+
+"May's going to be there, and he's coming for the Sunday. Amy fought
+hard, but Dick said he must come, because he was going to be a
+connection." Jimmy's slow smile endured all through this speech; he had a
+sense of humour which he treated gravely.
+
+"I didn't know he was coming," said Marchmont. Sir Winterton broke into a
+hearty laugh.
+
+"You're the most prejudiced fellow in the world, Marchmont," he said. "I
+tell you what, though," he went on. "Do persuade Lady May to take care of
+her husband, or get him to take care of himself. My wife's been at her
+again and again, but nothing's done. The man's not well, he'll break up
+if they aren't careful." He paused, and a puzzled look came over his
+handsome candid face. "If I was half as bad as he is, my wife'd have me
+in bed or off to the seaside in a jiffy," he ended.
+
+The silence that followed struck him much as May's and Aunt Maria's had
+struck his wife. Neither he nor his wife were accustomed to the way in
+which people who knew Quisante close at hand came to stand towards him.
+
+"I suppose Lady May's not what you'd call a very domestic woman?" he
+hazarded. "Charming, most charming, but full of politics and that sort of
+thing, eh?"
+
+To Weston Marchmont it seemed simplest to laugh and say, "I suppose so."
+Sir Winterton's mind had need of categories, and was best not burdened
+with the complexities of an individual. But Jimmy was not so wise.
+
+"I don't think she cares a hang about politics, except so far as
+Quisante's concerned in them," he said.
+
+Sir Winterton looked more puzzled still. "Nothing's any good unless he
+keeps his health," he murmured. He was uncomfortable; he liked May very
+much, and did not welcome the thought of there being any truth in the
+idea of indifference and carelessness about her husband at which Lady
+Mildmay had sorrowfully hinted. "That's his wife's first business
+anyhow," he ended, a trifle defiantly. But his challenge was not taken up
+by either of his friends. He went home with his high spirits rather
+dashed.
+
+On the Friday Marchmont found himself travelling down to Ashwood in
+company with Mr. Morewood. The painter had an extreme fit of his mocking
+acidity; he refrained his tongue from nobody and showed no respect for
+what might be guessed to be delicate points with his companion.
+Quisante's success was his principal theme; he exhibited it in its four
+aspects, political, social, commercial, and matrimonial.
+
+"I've talked," he said, "to Constantine Blair, to Lady Castlefort, to
+Winterton Mildmay, and to Jimmy Benyon. There's nothing left for all of
+us but to fall down and worship. On to your knees with the rest of us, my
+friend! In every relation of life the man is great. You'll say he's
+objectionable. Quite so. Greatness always is. You're still pleasant,
+because you haven't become great."
+
+"A few people think you a great artist."
+
+"Quite a few," grinned Morewood. "I can still set up for being pleasant."
+
+This mood did not leave him with his arrival at Ashwood. He reminded
+Marchmont of a monkey who had some trick to play, and grinned and
+chattered in anticipation of his cruel fun; his smile was most mocking
+when he greeted May Quisante. She was in high spirits; girlish gaiety
+marked a holiday mood in her. Morewood seemed to encourage it with
+malicious care, letting it grow that he might strike at it with better
+effect later on. Yet what did the man know, what could he do? And though
+Dick Benyon winced at his darts, and Jimmy grew a little sulky, May
+herself seemed unconscious of them. She was ready to meet him in talk
+about her husband and her husband's plans; she laughed at his jibes in
+all the apparent security of a happy confidence. Such a state of things
+exactly suited Lady Richard; she would not wish May to be pained, but she
+enjoyed infinitely any legitimate "dig" at her old enemy. May fought with
+equal gallantry and good temper.
+
+"Success is our crime," she said gaily at dinner. "Mr. Morewood can't
+forgive it. You call us Philistines now, I expect, don't you?"
+
+"Philistines in the very highest degree," he nodded.
+
+"I know," she cried. "The only really cultivated thing is to fail
+elegantly."
+
+"Let's bow our acknowledgments," Morewood called across to Marchmont.
+
+"Oh, no, Mr. Marchmont isn't like that. He doesn't even try. Well,
+perhaps that's still more superior." She smiled at Marchmont, shaking her
+head. "But we try, we try everything."
+
+The "we" grated still on Marchmont's feelings, and the worse because it
+seemed to come more easily and naturally from her lips. Yet that might be
+only the result of practice; she had looked at him in a merry defiance as
+the last words left her lips.
+
+"And you get other people to try your things too," pursued Morewood.
+
+"Look here, you don't mean me, do you?" Jimmy Benyon put in. "Because I'm
+not trying Fanny; on the contrary, she's trying me."
+
+"What, already?" asked Dick with exaggerated apprehension. "What'll it be
+when you're married?"
+
+"Ah," said Morewood, "now what is it when you're married? Does any duly
+qualified person wish to answer the question?" His mischievous glance
+rested again on May Quisante.
+
+"Oh, marriage is all right," said Dick, raising his voice to allow his
+wife to hear. "At least it's not so bad as things go in this world. It's
+giving a shilling and getting back eleven-pence."
+
+There was a little murmur of applause. "I declare every married person at
+the table seems to endorse the opinion," said Marchmont with a laugh.
+"We'll keep our shillings, I think, Morewood."
+
+"You'd better wait till somebody offers you change," advised Lady
+Richard.
+
+"Meanwhile we've had an admirable expert opinion," said Marchmont.
+
+"Which we believe," added Morewood, "as implicitly as we do in the
+excellence of the Alethea Printing Press."
+
+"Hallo, are you in it too?" cried Dick. "You see we're all disciples," he
+added to May. She smiled slightly and turned to Jimmy Benyon who was by
+her, as though to speak to him; but Morewood's voice cut across her
+remark.
+
+"No, I'm not. I'm a sceptic there," he said.
+
+"Oh, well, you don't know anything about it," Dick assured him placidly.
+If plain-speaking were the order of the day, the Benyon family could hold
+their own.
+
+"I bet he hasn't read the prospectus," said Jimmy.
+
+"Couldn't understand it, if he had," added Dick, after a comforting gulp
+of champagne.
+
+"You're really splendid people to be in with," said May, looking
+gratefully from one brother to the other. They were so staunch, and alas,
+how had they been treated!
+
+For a moment Morewood said nothing; he sat smiling maliciously.
+
+"Shall I give my authority?" he asked. "It won't do you any harm if I do,
+because I can't call him to give evidence."
+
+"We had all the best authorities," said Dick Benyon, "as you'd know if
+you'd read the prospectus."
+
+"Hang the prospectus! What's the good of reading a man's puff of his own
+wares? But I'm certain you hadn't one authority."
+
+"Well, who's your authority?" asked Jimmy, with a contempt that he took
+no trouble to conceal.
+
+"What he said was confidential, you know----"
+
+"Oh, you won't get out of it like that. We're all friends here. Fire
+away."
+
+Thus exhorted, and indeed nothing loth--for he had not read the prospectus
+and knew not the full extent of what he did--Morewood drew his malicious
+little bow and shot his arrow, sharper-pointed than he fancied. "I
+suppose you'll admit," said he with the exaggerated carelessness of a
+man with an unanswerable case, "that poor old Maturin was some authority,
+and he told me in confidence--I asked him about it, you know, just to be
+able to warn you fellows--that there was an absolutely fatal defect in
+your machine."
+
+To score too great a triumph is sometimes as disconcerting as to fail.
+There was no chorus of indignation, no denial of Maturin's authority, no
+good-natured scoffing such as Morewood had expected. He looked round on
+faces fallen into a sudden troubled seriousness; no voice was raised in
+protest, gay or grave. In an instant he knew that he had done something
+far beyond what his humour had suggested; but what it was or how it came
+about, he could not tell.
+
+The Benyon brothers were not over-ready of speech in a difficulty; their
+thoughts were busy now, but their tongues tied. Marchmont found nothing
+to say; he could not help raising his eyes under half-drooped lids till
+they rested on May Quisante's face. There was a moment more of silence;
+then, answering the tacit summons of the table, May Quisante spoke. She
+leant forward a little, smiling, and spoke clearly and composedly.
+
+"Oh, you misunderstood him," she said. "He was consulted, but fell ill
+before he could go into all the facts or write his report. But he had
+expressed a favourable opinion of the Alethea to my husband." She paused,
+and then added, "If you'd taken the trouble to read the prospectus you'd
+have known that, Mr. Morewood."
+
+Little Lady Richard laughed nervously, glanced round, and rose from the
+table; it was sooner than the ladies were wont to move but, as she said,
+nobody seemed to be eating any fruit, and so there was nothing to stay
+for. The men sat down again. Morewood perceived very clearly that a
+constraint had come upon them; but he was possessed by curiosity.
+
+"Well, I should like to see the prospectus now," he said.
+
+"You'll find one or two over there," said Dick, jerking his head towards
+a writing-table, but not rising.
+
+Morewood made in the direction indicated, a low mutter from Dick
+following him. Then Jimmy observed:
+
+"He doesn't understand a thing about it, you know, and of course he
+didn't follow what Maturin said."
+
+The others nodded. This explanation was indeed the simple one; in most
+cases it would have been accepted without demur; or recourse would have
+been had to the hypothesis of a sudden change in the Professor's opinion;
+indeed Marchmont broached this solution in an off-hand way. Neither view
+was explicitly rejected, but a third possibility was in their minds, one
+which would not and could not have been there, had any one of the three
+had the settling of the prospectus and conducted the business with
+Maturin. But Alexander Quisante, assisted only by cousin Mandeville, had
+conducted the business and drawn the prospectus.
+
+Morewood came back, sat down, and poured out a glass of wine.
+
+"Yes, I see what it says," he observed. His mood of malice was gone, he
+looked troubled and rather remorseful. "Well, I only repeated what
+Maturin said. I'd no idea there was anything about him in the
+prospectus."
+
+The two reasonable views were suggested again by Dick and Marchmont.
+
+"It's impossible that I misunderstood him, but of course he may have
+changed his mind." He paused, seeming to think. "I gather that he put
+nothing in writing?" he went on. "He only talked to you about it?"
+
+After a little pause Jimmy Benyon said, "Not exactly to us--to the people
+at the office, you know. And there was nothing in writing as you say--at
+least so I understand too."
+
+Morewood passed his hand through his hair; the ruffled locks intensified
+the ruefulness of his aspect; he had before his eyes the picture of May
+Quisante's silence and her so careful, so deliberate little speech after
+it. He tossed off his wine almost angrily, as Dick Benyon rose, saying,
+"Let's have coffee in the garden. It's a splendid night." He added with a
+rather uneasy laugh, "Quisante's coming to-morrow! We'll leave him to
+tackle you himself, Morewood."
+
+Lady Richard and Fanny Gaston were sitting in the garden by the
+drawing-room window when the men joined them; Morewood dropped into a
+chair by Lady Richard and, looking across the lawn, saw May strolling by
+herself on the walk that bounded the shrubberies. He took his coffee in
+silence and then lighted his pipe; the vanity of cigarettes was not for
+him. At last he said confidentially,
+
+"I've a sort of feeling that I've made an ass of myself."
+
+Lady Richard glanced round; Fanny had gone across to the other group;
+nobody was in hearing.
+
+"Do you know," she said in a low voice, "I believe that man's been up to
+some trick again. You know how he treated us over the Crusade? Now I
+suppose he's going to ruin us!" The satisfaction of a justified prophet
+seemed to mingle with the dismay of a wife and the anger of a sufferer;
+Lady Richard had expected nothing less all along!
+
+"I'm afraid I rather--well, that Lady May didn't like it."
+
+"Poor dear May must know what to expect by now."
+
+"Perhaps she never knows what to expect. That'd be worse." The remark was
+a little too subtle for Lady Richard's half-attentive ear. She contented
+herself with sighing expressively. Morewood looked across the lawn again;
+the slow-walking figure had disappeared, presumably into the shrubberies.
+Two or three moments later he saw Marchmont strolling off in that
+direction, cigar in mouth and hands in pockets. He rose, shook himself,
+and cried to the brothers, "Oh, in heaven's name, come and play pool."
+Jimmy refused and paired off with his _fiancee_, but Dick agreed to
+billiards, saying as they went in, "It'll keep you from making a fool of
+yourself any more." Morewood, finding his own impression of his conduct
+thus confirmed, grunted remorsefully as he took down his cue.
+
+Marchmont crossed the lawn and the path, and was hidden by the
+shrubberies. Lady Richard watched till she could see him no more, and
+then went indoors with another sigh; this last was a disclaimer of
+responsibility; if Marchmont liked to comfort May, it was no business of
+hers.
+
+He loitered on, not admitting that he was looking for May, but very sore
+to think that she had wandered away to a sad solitude rather than be with
+her friends; since she did that, she was wounded indeed. There was a seat
+round an old tree-trunk at the farther side of the shrubbery; the memory
+of it really directed his apparently aimless steps, and as he approached
+it he threw away his half-smoked cigar; he thought he would find her
+there; what he would say to her he did not know.
+
+He was right. There, she sat, very still, and looking pale under the
+moon. Coming up to her he said, "I know you want to be alone, don't you?"
+She smiled and answered, "No, stay. I'm glad to have you," and he sat
+down by her. She was silent, her eyes gazing steadily in front of her;
+the air was sweet and very still. Now he needed no telling that his guess
+at the situation had been right, that she had shielded her husband at her
+own cost; her face told him what the cost seemed to her. A great
+indignation against the man filled him, gaining unacknowledged
+reinforcement from the love he himself had for the woman. He had wrought
+for himself a masterpiece of pure and faultless beauty; when another took
+it from him, he had endured; now the other spoilt and stained and defiled
+it; could he still endure? It seems sometimes as though the deep silence
+of night carries thoughts from heart to heart that would be lost in the
+passage through the broken tumultuous sea of day. The thought that was in
+him he felt to be in her also, changed as her mind would change it, yet
+in essence the same. She had now no ironical smiles for him, no fencing,
+and no playing with her fate; and he had for her no talk of loyalty. The
+time for these was gone in the light of the confidence that her silence
+gave him; it told him everything, and he had no rebuke for its openness.
+At last he put out his hand and lightly pressed hers for a moment. She
+turned her eyes on him.
+
+"It's a little hard, isn't it?" she asked. "I can stand most things, but
+it's hard to have to tell lies to your friends." Her voice rose a little
+and shook as the composure which she had so long kept failed her. "And
+they know I'm lying. Oh, I don't deceive them, however hard I try. They
+don't tell me so, but they know. I can't help it, I must do it. I must
+sit and do it, knowing that they know it's a lie. For decency's sake I
+must do it, though. Some people believe, the Mildmays believe; but you
+here don't. You know me too well, and you know him too well."
+
+"For God's sake, don't talk like that," said Marchmont.
+
+"Don't talk like that! The talk's not the harm. If you could tell me how
+not to live like that!" Her self-control broke utterly; she covered her
+face with her hands and sobbed.
+
+"For God's sake!" he murmured again.
+
+"Oh, you don't know. This is only the crown of it. It goes on every day.
+I'm coming not to know myself, not to be myself. I live scheming and
+lying. I've given everything, all my life. Must I give myself, my own
+self, too? Must I lose that for him?"
+
+Her bitter despairing words seemed to him what at that moment her mood
+made them seem to herself, the all-sufficient all-embracing summary of
+her life; she had then no thought of another side to it, and into that
+she gave him no insight. He counted as dead for her all the high hopes
+and the attractive imaginings with which Quisante once had fired her.
+Dead for her they were at that moment; she could see nothing but her
+husband's baseness and a baseness bred by it in herself; her bond to him
+was an obligation to dishonour and a chain of treachery. She abandoned to
+Marchmont's eyes all the hidden secrets of her misery; in this she seemed
+also to display before him the dead body of her hopes, her interest, her
+ambitions. Giving all, she had gained nothing; so her sobs said. But only
+for moments does life seem so simple that a sob can cover all of it.
+
+Presently she grew calmer. "I've never broken out like this before," she
+said, "but it's rather bad to have to look forward to a life of it. And
+it'll get worse, not better; or if it doesn't get worse it'll mean that
+I'm getting worse, and that'll be worse than all." She smiled forlornly.
+"What a tangle of 'worses' I've tied it up in, haven't I?"
+
+She did not seem to be ashamed of her breaking-out, but rather to be
+relieved by it, and to feel that it had helped to establish or renew an
+intimacy in which she found some pleasure and some consolation; at least
+there was one friend now who knew exactly how she stood and would not set
+down to that own self of hers the actions that he might see her perform
+in Quisante's service. "You once told me I ought to take a confidante,"
+she reminded him. "I don't suppose you thought I should take you,
+though."
+
+She had had her outburst; his was still to come. Yet it seemed rather as
+though he acted on a deliberate purpose than was carried away by any
+irresistible impulse; he spoke simply and plainly.
+
+"I love you as I've always loved you," he said.
+
+"I know, and I've taken advantage of it to inflict all this on you." Her
+eyes rested on his for some moments, and she answered his glance. "No, I
+can't escape that way. I'm not talking of running away; of course I
+couldn't do that." She laughed a little and even he smiled. "But I can't
+escape even in--in spirit by it. Sometimes I wish I could. It would
+change the centre of my life, wouldn't it? Perhaps I shouldn't mind the
+things that distress me so much now. But I can't."
+
+"You don't love me? Well, you never did." He paused an instant and added
+in a puzzled way, "Somehow."
+
+"Yes, it's all 'somehow.' Somehow I didn't; I ought to have. Somehow I've
+got where I am; and somehow, I suppose, I shall endure it." She laid her
+hand on his. "I should actually like to love you--in a way I do. I'm
+afraid I've very little conscience about it. But somehow--yes, somehow
+again--it's all a hopeless puzzle--I can't altogether, not as you mean. I
+understand it very little myself, and I know you won't understand it at
+all, but--well, Alexander imprisons me; I can't escape from him; as long
+as he's there he keeps me." She looked in Marchmont's face and then shook
+her head, half-sadly, half-playfully. "You don't understand a bit, do
+you?" she asked.
+
+"No, I don't," he said bluntly, with an accent of impatience and almost
+of exasperation. Recognising it, she gave the slightest shrug of her
+shoulders.
+
+"It's my infatuation again, I suppose, as you all said when I married
+him. It makes you all angry. Oh, it makes me angry too, as far as that
+goes."
+
+"He's ruining your whole life."
+
+She made no answer, relapsing into the still silence which had preceded
+her tears. Marchmont was baffled again by his old inability to follow the
+movements of her mind and the old sense of blindness in dealing with her
+to which it gave rise. Owing to this he had lost her at the first; now it
+seemed to prevent him from repairing the loss. In spite of all that they
+had in common, in spite of the strong attraction she felt towards him and
+of the love he bore her, there was always, as she had said once, at last
+a break somewhere, some solution in the chain of sympathy that should
+have bound them together. But he would not admit this, and chose to see
+the only barrier between them in the man who was ruining her life.
+
+"You'd be yourself again if only you could get away from him," he
+murmured resentfully.
+
+"Perhaps; I never shall, though." She added, laughing a little, "Neither
+will you. I've made you an accomplice, you're bound to a guilty silence
+now." Then, growing grave, she leant towards him. "Don't look like that,"
+she said, "pray, pray, pray don't. I haven't spoilt your life as well as
+my own? No, you mustn't tell me that." Her voice grew very tender and
+low. "But I can say almost all you want. I wish I had loved you, I wish I
+had married you. Oh, how I wish it! I should have been happy, I think,
+and I know I--I shouldn't have had to live as I do now and do the things
+I have to do now. Well, it's too late."
+
+"You're very young," he said in a voice as low as hers. "It mayn't always
+be too late."
+
+She started a little, drawing away from him. He had brought back thoughts
+which the stress of pain and excitement had banished from her mind.
+
+"You mean----?" she murmured. "I know what you mean, though." Her face
+showed again a sort of puzzle. "I can't think of that happening. I tried
+the other day--_a propos_ of something else; but I couldn't. I couldn't
+see it, you know. It doesn't fit my ideas about him. No, that won't
+happen. We must just go on."
+
+The wind had begun to rise, the trees stirred, leaves rustled, the whole
+making, or seeming to her ears to make, a sad whimsical moaning. She
+rose, gathering her lace scarf closer round her neck, and saying, "Do you
+hear the wood crying for us? It's sorry for our little troubles." She
+stood facing him and he took both her hands in his. "You look so
+unhappy," she said in a fresh access of pity. "No use, no use; it'll all
+go on, right to the end of everything. So--good-bye."
+
+"He's coming to-morrow, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, he's coming to-morrow. Good-bye." She smiled a little, feeling
+Marchmont's hands drawing her to him. "Oh, kiss me then," she said,
+turning her cheek to him. "It'll feel friendly. And now we'll go in."
+
+They had just started to return when they heard steps in the wood, and a
+moment later her name was called in Dick Benyon's voice. Marchmont
+shouted in answer, "Here we are," and Dick came along the path.
+
+"I couldn't think where you'd got to," he said.
+
+"That's because you've no romance in you," said May. "Or you'd have known
+we should be wandering in the wood in the moonlight. Ah, she's gone under
+a cloud now, but she was beautiful. Are we wanted, though?"
+
+"Well, in the first place I think you've been quite long enough for
+propriety, and in the second a man's brought a wire for you, and he's
+waiting to see if there's an answer."
+
+"Under that combination of moral and practical reasons we'll go in," said
+May, laughing. Marchmont, less ready in putting on his mask, said nothing
+but followed a step or two behind. "I expect the wire's from Alexander,"
+she went on, "to say he's going to make a speech somewhere and won't come
+to-morrow."
+
+Dick turned to her with a quick jerk of the head; a moment later he was
+covered with confusion, for her bitter little smile told him that he had
+betrayed the joy which such a notion gave him. To all of them it would be
+a great relief that Quisante should not come while the memory of the
+scene that Morewood had caused at dinner was still so fresh. Dick, though
+he attempted no excuse, felt himself forgiven when May took his arm and
+thus walked back to the house.
+
+    "Your husband had a slight seizure while dining with us to-night.
+    He is comfortable now, and there is no immediate reason for anxiety.
+    But doctor thinks you had better come up earliest convenient train
+    to-morrow. Winterton Mildmay."
+
+May read the telegram, standing between Marchmont and Dick. She handed it
+to Dick, saying, "Read it, and will you send an answer that I'll come as
+early as possible in the morning;" then she walked to the table and sat
+down by it. Dick gave Marchmont the slip of paper and went off to
+despatch the answer. Nobody else was in the room, except Fanny Gaston,
+who was playing softly on the piano in the corner. Marchmont came up to
+May and put the telegram down on the table by her.
+
+"I'm so sorry," he said formally and constrainedly.
+
+"I don't suppose it's very serious," she said. "But I must go, of course."
+She went on under the cover of Fanny's gentle music. "It's all rather odd
+though--its coming to-night and its happening at the Mildmays'. I forgot,
+though, you don't know why I feel that so odd. How Lady Mildmay'll nurse
+him! I expect I shall have a struggle to get him out of the house and
+home again."
+
+Marchmont made no answer but stood looking down on her face. She met his
+glance fairly, and knew what it was that had forced itself into his mind
+and now found expression in his eyes. She had declared to him that her
+fate was irrevocable, that the lines of her life were set, that nothing
+but death could alter them, and that death had no part in her thoughts
+about her husband. The telegram did not prove her wrong; yet seizure was
+a vague word under which much might lie hidden. But her mood and her
+feeling still remained; it was not in hope or in any attempt at
+self-consolation, but in the expression of an obstinate conviction which
+dominated her mind that she said in answer to Marchmont's glance, "I
+can't believe it's anything really amiss. I expect I shall find him at
+work again when I get back to-morrow."
+
+With a little movement of his hands Marchmont turned away. He had at
+command no conventional phrases in which to express a desire that she
+might prove right. It was impossible to say that he wished she might
+prove wrong; even in his own mind a man leaves a hope like that vague and
+unformulated. But he marvelled, still without understanding, at the
+strange obstinate idea which seemed almost to exalt Quisante above the
+ordinary lot of mortals, to see in him a force so living that it could
+not perish, a vitality so intense that death could lay no hand on it. He
+glanced at her as he crossed the room to the piano; she sat now with the
+telegram in her hands and her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. It
+needed a sharper summons, a nearer reality, to rouse her from the
+conviction that her life was bound for ever to that of the man whom she
+had chosen and for whom she had given so much. It would all go on, right
+to the end of everything. The telegram had not shaken that faith in her,
+nor altered that despair.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XVII.
+
+                             DONE FOR?
+
+
+A knotty point of casuistry was engaging the thoughts of the Dean of St.
+Neot's. Morewood had been to see him, had told without disguise the whole
+story of his blunder at the dinner-table at Ashwood, had referred to
+Alexander Quisante's serious illness, and had finally, without apology
+and without periphrasis, expressed the hope that Alexander Quisante would
+die. The Dean's rebuke had produced a strenuous effort at justification.
+Quisante was, the painter pointed out, no doubt a force, but a force
+essentially immoral (Morewood took up morality when it suited his
+purpose); he did work, but he made unhappiness; he affected people's
+lives, but not so as to promote their well-being. Or if the Dean chose to
+champion the man, Morewood was ready for him again. If Quisante were
+good, were moral, were deserving of defence, then the merely natural
+process lugubriously described as death, and fantastically treated with
+black plumes and crape, would, so far as he himself was concerned, be no
+more than a transition to a better state of existence, while certain
+solid and indisputable benefits would accrue to those who were condemned
+to wait a little longer for their summons. Whether the Dean elected to be
+for Quisante or against him, Morewood claimed a verdict.
+
+This challenging of a man's general notions by the putting of a thorny
+special case was rather resented by the Dean; it reminded him of the
+voluble atheist in Hyde Park, who bases his attack on the supernatural on
+the obsolete enactments of the Book of Leviticus. None the less he was
+rather puzzled as to what he had a right to wish about Alexander
+Quisante, and so he had recourse to his usual remedy--a consultation with
+his wife. He had the greatest faith in Mrs. Baxter's eye for morality;
+perhaps generations of clerical ancestry had bred in her such an instinct
+as we see in sporting-dogs; she could not go wrong. On this question she
+was immediately satisfactory.
+
+"We are forbidden," she said, removing a piece of tape from her mouth,
+"to wish anybody's death; you know that as well as I do, Dan." She made a
+stitch or two. "We must leave it to Providence," she ended serenely.
+
+At first sight there was nothing much in this dictum; it appeared even
+commonplace. But Mrs. Baxter had been lunching with the Mildmays, had
+heard a full account of what the doctors said about Quisante, and had
+expressed her conviction that he could not possibly last long. So far as
+could be judged then, the confidence which she proposed to show ran no
+appreciable risk of being misplaced, while at the same time she avoided
+committing herself by any expression of a personal opinion.
+
+"Doubtless, my dear," said the Dean with a little cough.
+
+"If he had thought less about himself and more about other people----" she
+resumed.
+
+"That can't have anything to do with an apoplectic seizure," the Dean
+pleaded.
+
+Mrs. Baxter looked up with a patient smile.
+
+"If you weren't in such a hurry, Dan, to show what you call your
+enlightenment (though heaven knows you may be wrong all the time, and a
+judgment is a perfectly possible thing) you'd have found out that I was
+only going to say that, if he'd thought more of other people, he'd find
+other people thinking more about him now."
+
+"There I quite agree with you, my dear."
+
+Mrs. Baxter looked less grateful than she might have for this endorsement
+of her views; self-confidence is apt to hold external support in cheap
+esteem.
+
+"When the first Mrs. Greening died," she remarked, "they gave the maids
+very nice black frocks, with a narrow edging of good crape. The very
+first Sunday-out that Elizabeth had--the butcher's daughter near the Red
+Cow--you remember?--she stuck a red ribbon round the neck."
+
+The Dean looked puzzled.
+
+"Mrs. Greening was the most selfish woman I've ever known," explained
+Mrs. Baxter; and she added with a pensive smile, "And I've lived in a
+Cathedral town for thirty years."
+
+The red-ribbon became intelligible; it fell into line with Morewood's
+ill-disciplined wish. Both signified an absence of love, such a departing
+without being desired as serves for the epitaph of a Jewish king. The
+Dean cast round for somebody who would prove such an inscription false on
+Alexander Quisante's tomb.
+
+"Anyhow it would break the old aunt's heart," he said.
+
+"It'd save her money," observed Mrs. Baxter.
+
+"And his wife!" mused the Dean. It was impossible to say whether there
+were a question in his words or not. But his first instance had not been
+Quisante's wife; the old aunt offered a surer case.
+
+"If you always knew what a man's wife thought about him, you'd know a
+great deal," said Mrs. Baxter. She possessed in the fullest degree her
+sex's sense of an ultimate superiority in perception; men knew neither
+what their wives did nor what they were; wives might not know what their
+husbands did, but they always knew what they were. It would be rash to
+differ from a person of her observation and experience; half a dozen
+examples would at once have confounded the objector.
+
+Mrs. Baxter took perhaps a too private and domestic view of the man whose
+fate she was discussing; she judged the husband and friend, she had
+nothing to say to the public character. The voices of his political
+associates and acquaintances, of his fellow-workers in business, of his
+followers and enthusiastic adherents in his constituency, did not reach
+her ears, and perhaps, if they had, would not have won much attention.
+The consternation of Constantine Blair, Lady Castlefort's dismay, the sad
+gossiping and head-shaking that went on in the streets of Henstead and
+round old Mr. Foster's comfortable board, witnessed to a side of Quisante
+in which Mrs. Baxter did not take much interest. She did not understand
+the sort of stupor with which they who had lived with him and worked with
+him saw the force he wielded and the anticipations he filled them with
+both struck down by a sudden blow; she did not share the feeling that all
+at once a gap had been made in life.
+
+But something of this sort was the effect in all the circles which
+Quisante had invaded and in which he had moved. The philosophical might
+already be saying that there was no necessary man; to the generality that
+reflection would come only later, when they had found a new leader, a
+fresh inspiration, and another personality in which to see the embodiment
+of their hopes. Now the loss was too fresh and too complete; for although
+it might be doubtful how long Quisante's life would last, there seemed no
+chance of his ever filling the place to which he had appeared to be
+destined. Only a miracle could give that back to one who must cling to
+life, if he could keep his hold on it at all, at the cost of abandoning
+all the efforts and all the activities which had made it what it was
+alike for himself and for others. He was rallying slowly and painfully
+from his blow; a repetition of it would be the certain penalty of any
+strenuous mental exertion or any sustained strain of labour. In
+inactivity, in retirement, in the placid existence of a recognised
+invalid he might live years, indeed probably would; but otherwise the
+authorities declined to promise him any life at all. His body had played
+him false in the end. Constantine Blair began to look out for a candidate
+for Henstead and to wonder whether Sir Winterton would again expose
+himself to the unpleasantness of a contested election; Lady Castlefort
+must find another Prime Minister, the fighting men another champion, even
+the Alethea Printing Press Limited a new chairman. The places he had
+filled or made himself heir to were open to other occupants and fresh
+pretenders. That the change seemed so considerable proved how great a
+figure he had become in men's eyes no less than how utterly his career
+was overthrown. The comments on his public life were very flattering, but
+already they praised in the tone of an obituary notice, and the hopes
+they expressed of his being able some day to return to the arena were
+well understood to be no more than a kind or polite refusal to display
+naked truth in the merciless clearness of print.
+
+Here was the state of things which extorted from Morewood the blunt wish
+that Quisante might die. Such a desire was hardly cruel to the man
+himself, since he must now lose all that he had loved best in the market
+of the world; but it was not the man himself who had been most in
+Morewood's thoughts. With a penetration sharpened by the memory of his
+blunder he had appreciated the perverse calamity which had fallen on the
+man's wife, and had passed swiftly to the conclusion that for her an end
+by death was the only chance, the only turn of events which could give
+back to her the chance of a real life to be lived. He knew by what
+Quisante had attracted and held her; all that, it seemed, was gone now.
+He divined also in what Quisante repelled and almost terrified her; that
+would remain so long as breath was in the man and might grow even more
+intense. A sense of fairness somehow impelled him to his wish; her
+bargain had turned out so badly; the underlying basis of her marriage was
+broken; she was left to pay the price to the last penny, but was to get
+nothing of what she had looked to purchase. Was it not then the part of a
+courageous man to face his instinctive wish, and to accept it boldly?
+Cant and tradition apart, it must be the wish of every sensible person.
+For she knew, she had realised most completely on the very evening when
+Quisante was struck down, what manner of man he was. She might have
+endured if she had still been able to tell herself of the wonderful
+things that he would do. No such comfort was open now. The man was still
+what he was; but he would do nothing. There came the change.
+
+"That's the weak point about marriage as compared with other contractual
+arrangements," said Morewood to Dick Benyon. "You can never in any
+bargain ensure people getting what they expect to get--because to do that
+you'd have to give all of them sense--but in most you can to a certain
+extent see that they're allowed to keep what they actually did get. In
+marriage you can't. Something of this sort happens and the whole
+understanding on which the arrangement was based breaks down."
+
+"Do people marry on understandings?" asked Dick doubtfully.
+
+"The only way of getting anything like justice for her is that he should
+die. You must see that?"
+
+"I don't know anything about it," said Dick morosely, "but I hear there's
+no particular likelihood of his dying if he obeys orders and keeps
+quiet."
+
+"Just so, just so," said Morewood. "That's exactly what I mean. Do you
+suppose she'd ever have taken him if he'd been going to keep quiet? You
+know why you took him up; well, she did just the same. You know what you
+found him; she's found him just the same. What's left now? The _role_ of
+a loving nurse! She's not born a nurse; and how in the devil's name is
+she to be expected to love him?"
+
+Dick Benyon found no answer to questions which put with a brutal
+truthfulness the salient facts of the position. The one thing necessary,
+the one thing which would have made the calamity bearable, perhaps better
+than bearable, was wanting. She might love or have loved things in him,
+or about him, or done by him; himself she did not love; and now nothing
+but himself remained to her. Seeing the matter in this light, Dick was
+dumb before Morewood's challenge to him to say, if he dared, that he
+hoped a long life for Alexander Quisante. Yet neither would he wish his
+death; for Dick had been an enthusiast, the spell had been very strong on
+him, and there still hung about him something of that inability to think
+of Quisante as dead or dying, something of the idea that he must live and
+must by very strength of will find strength of body, which had prevented
+May herself from believing that the news which came in her telegram could
+mean anything really serious. While Quisante lived, there would always be
+to Dick a possibility that he would rise up from his sickness and get to
+work again. Death would end this, death with its finality and its utter
+incongruous stillness. Death was repose, and neither for good nor for
+evil had Quisante ever embraced repose. He had never been quiet; when he
+was not achieving, he had been grimacing. In death he could do neither.
+
+"I can't fancy the fellow dead," said Dick to his wife and his brother.
+"I should be expecting him to jump up again every minute."
+
+Lady Richard shuddered. The actual Quisante had been bad; the idea of a
+dead Quisante horribly galvanized into movement by a restlessness that
+the tomb could not stifle was hideous. Jimmy came to her aid with a
+rather unfeeling but apparently serious suggestion.
+
+"We must cremate him," he said gravely.
+
+"No, but, barring rot," Dick pursued, "I don't believe he'll die, you
+know."
+
+"Poor May!" said Lady Richard. Neither of them pressed her to explain the
+precise point in May Quisante's position which produced this exclamation
+of pity. It might have been that the death was possible, or that the
+death was not certain, or at least not near, or it might have sprung from
+a purely general reflection on the unhappiness of having life coupled
+with the life of such a man as Quisante.
+
+All these voices of a much interested, much pitying, much (and on the
+whole not unenjoyably) discussing world were heard only in dim echoes in
+the Mildmays' big quiet house in Carlton-House Terrace, where Quisante
+had been stricken by his blow. There May had found him on her hasty
+return from Ashwood, and here he was still, thanks to the host's and
+hostess's urgent entreaties. They declared that he was not fit to be
+moved; the doctors hardly endorsed this view heartily but went so far as
+to say that any disturbance was no doubt bad in its degree; Lady Mildmay
+seized eagerly on the grudging support. "Let him stay here till he's fit
+to go to the country," she urged. "I'm sure we can make him comfortable.
+And--" she smiled apologetically, "I'm a good nurse, if I'm nothing else,
+you know."
+
+"But won't Sir Winterton----?"
+
+"My dear, you don't know what a lot Winterton thinks of Mr. Quisante;
+he's proud to be of the least service to him. And you do know, I think,
+how it delights him to be any use at all to you."
+
+In spite of that reason buried in her own heart which made every kindness
+received from these kind hands bitter to her, May let him stay. He wanted
+to stay, she thought, so far as his relaxed face and dimmed eyes gave
+evidence of any desire. And besides--yes, Lady Mildmay was a good nurse;
+he might find none so good if he were moved away. No sense of duty, no
+punctilious performance of offices, no such constancy of attendance as a
+wife is bound to render, could give what Lady Mildmay gave. Yet more than
+these May could not achieve. It was rather cruel, as it seemed to her,
+that the great and sudden call on her sympathy should come at the moment
+of all others when the spring of her sympathy was choked, when anger
+still burnt in her heart, when passionate resentment for a wound to her
+own pride and her own honour still inflamed her, when the mood in which
+she had broken out in her talk with Marchmont was still predominant. Such
+a falling-out of events sometimes made this real and heavy sickness seem
+like one of Quisante's tricks, of at least suggested that he might be
+making the most of it in his old way, as he had of his faintness at the
+Imperial League banquet, or of his headache when old Foster's letter
+followed on the declaration of the poll at Henstead. Such feelings as
+these, strong enough to chill her pity till Lady Mildmay wondered at a
+wife so cold, were not deep or sincere enough to blind May Quisante's
+eyes. Even without the doctor's story--which she had insisted on being
+told in all its plainness--she thought that she would have known the
+meaning of what had befallen her husband and herself, and have grasped at
+once its two great features, the great certainty and the great
+uncertainty; the certainty that his career was at an end, the uncertainty
+as to how near his life was to its end. Such a position chimed in too
+well with the bitter mood of Ashwood not to seem sent to crown it by a
+malicious device of fate's. At the very moment when she least could love,
+she was left no resource but love; at the moment when she would have
+turned her eyes most away from him and most towards his deeds, the deeds
+were taken away and he only was left; at the time when her hot anger
+against him drove her into a cry for release, she received no promise of
+release, or a promise deferred beyond an indefinitely stretching period
+of a worse imprisonment. For she clung to no such hope as that which made
+Dick Benyon dream of a resurrection of activity and of power, and had
+nothing to look for save years of a life both to herself and to him
+miserable. It might be sin to wish him dead; but was it sin to wish him
+either alive or dead, either in vigour or at rest? Sin or no sin, that
+was the desire in her heart, and it would not be stifled however much she
+accused its inhumanity or recognised the want of love in it. Was the
+fault all hers? With her lips still burning from the lie that she had
+told for him, she could not answer 'yes.'
+
+Still and silent Quisante lay on his bed. His head was quite clear now
+and his eyes grew brighter. He watched Lady Mildmay as she ministered to
+him, and he watched his wife with his old quick furtive glances, so keen
+to mark every shade of her manner towards him. She had never really
+deceived him as to her thoughts of him; she did not deceive him now. He
+knew that her sympathies were estranged, more estranged than they had
+ever been before. So far as the reason lay in the incident of Ashwood, it
+was hidden from him; he knew nothing of the last great shame that he had
+put on her. But long before this he had recognised where his power over
+her lay, by what means he had gained and by what he kept it; he had been
+well aware that if she were still to be under his sway, the conquest must
+be held by his achievements; he himself was as nothing beside them. Now,
+as he lay, he was thinking what would happen. He also had heard the
+doctor's story or enough of it to enable him to guess the purport of
+their sentence on him; he was to live as an invalid, to abandon all his
+ambitions, to throw away all that made people admire him or made him
+something in the world's eyes and something great in hers. On these terms
+and on these only life was offered to him now; if he refused, if he
+defied nature, then he must go on with the sword ever hanging over him,
+in the knowledge that it soon must fall. He told himself that, yet was
+but half-convinced. Need it fall? With the first spurt of renewed
+strength he raised that question and argued it, till he seemed able to
+say 'It may fall,' rather than 'It must.'
+
+What should be his course then? The world thought it had done with him.
+All seemed gone for which his wife had prized him. Should he accept that,
+and in its acceptance take up his life as valetudinarian, his life
+forgotten of the world which he had loved to conquer, barren of interest
+for the woman whom it had been his strongest passion to win against her
+instincts, to hold as it were against her will, and to fascinate in face
+of her distaste? Such were the terms offered; Alexander Quisante lay long
+hours open-eyed and thought of them. There had come into his head an idea
+that attracted him mightily and suited well with his nature, so oddly
+mixed of strength and weakness, greatness and smallness, courage and
+bravado, the idea of a means by which he might keep the world's applause
+and his wife's fascinated interest, aye, and increase them too, till they
+should be more intense than they had ever been. That would be a triumph,
+played before admiring eyes. But what would be the price of it, and was
+the price one that he would pay. It might be the biggest price a mortal
+man can pay. So for a few days more Alexander Quisante lay and thought
+about it.
+
+Once old Miss Quisante came to see him, at his summons, not of her own
+volunteering. Since the blow fell she had neither come nor written, and
+May, with a sense of relief, had caught at the excuse for doing no more
+than sending now and again a sick-room report. Aunt Maria looked old,
+frail, and very yellow, as she made her way to a chair by her nephew's
+bed. He turned to her with the smile of mockery so familiar to her eyes.
+
+"You haven't been in any hurry to see me, Aunt Maria," said he.
+
+"You've always sent for me when you wanted me before, Sandro, and I
+supposed you would this time."
+
+"May's kept you posted up? You know what those fools of doctors say?" The
+old woman nodded. Quisante was smiling still. "I'm done then, eh?" he
+asked.
+
+Her hands were trembling, but her voice was hard and unsympathetic. "It
+sounds like it," she said.
+
+Quisante raised himself on his elbow.
+
+"You'll see me out after all," said he, "if I'm not careful. That's what
+it comes to." He gave a low laugh as Aunt Maria's lips moved but no words
+came. He leant over a little nearer to her and asked, "Have you had any
+talk with my wife about it?"
+
+"No," said Aunt Maria. "Not a word, Sandro."
+
+"Nothing to be said, eh? What does she think, though? Oh, you know!
+You've got your wits about you. Don't take to considering my feelings at
+this time of day."
+
+Now the old woman smiled too.
+
+"I'm sorry you're done for, Sandro," she said. "So's your wife, I'll be
+bound."
+
+"You both love me so much?" he sneered.
+
+"We've always understood one another," said Aunt Maria.
+
+"I tell you, I love my wife." Aunt Maria made no remark. "And you both
+think I'm done for? Well, we'll see!"
+
+Aunt Maria looked up with a gleam of new interest in her sharp eyes, so
+like the eyes of the man on the bed. Quisante met her glance and
+understood it; it appealed at once to his malice and to his vanity; it
+was a foretaste of the wonder he would raise and the applause he would
+win, if he determined to face the price that might have to be paid for
+them. He had listened with exasperated impatience to kind Lady Mildmay's
+pleadings with him, to her motherly insisting on perfect rest for his
+mind, and to her pathetically hopeful picture of the new interests and
+the new pleasure he would find in days of rest and peace, with his wife
+tenderly looking after him. To such charming as that his ears were deaf;
+they pricked at the faintest sound of distant cheering. It would be
+something to show even Aunt Maria that he was not done with; what would
+it not be to show it to the world--and to that wife of his whom he loved
+and could hold only by his deeds?
+
+"I only know what the doctors say," remarked Miss Quisante. "They say you
+must throw up everything."
+
+"You wouldn't have me risk another of those damned strokes, would you?"
+he asked, the mockery most evident now in his voice and look. "Lady
+Mildmay implores me to be careful, almost with tears. I suppose my own
+aunt'll be still more anxious, and my own wife too?"
+
+"Doctors aren't infallible. And they don't know you, Sandro. You're not
+like other men." Hard as the tone was, his ears drank in the words
+eagerly. "They don't know how much there is in you."
+
+Again he leant forward and said almost in a whisper,
+
+"May thinks I'm done for?" Aunt Maria nodded. "And she'll nurse me? Take
+me to some infernal invalids' place, full of bath-chairs, and walk beside
+mine, eh?" Aunt Maria smiled grimly. "She'll like that, won't she?" he
+asked.
+
+"You won't die," she said suddenly and abruptly, her eyes fixed on his.
+
+"What?" he asked sharply. "Well, who said I was going to die?"
+
+"The doctors--unless you go to the invalids' place."
+
+"Oh, and my dear aunt doesn't agree with them?" Eagerness now broke
+through the mockery in his tones. He had longed so for a word of hope,
+for someone to persuade him that he might still live and could still
+work. "But suppose they proved right? Well, that's no worse than the
+other anyhow."
+
+"Not much," said Aunt Maria. "But I don't believe 'em." Her faith in him
+came back at his first summons of it. He had but to tell her that he
+would live and need not die, and she would believe him. Sandro's ways
+were not as other men's; she could not believe that for Sandro as for
+other men there were necessities not to be avoided, and a fate not to be
+mastered by any defiant human will. So there she sat, persuading him that
+he was not mortal; and he lay listening, mocking, embittered, yet still
+lending an ear to the story, eager to believe her fable, rejoicing in the
+power that he had over her mind. If he felt all this for Aunt Maria, what
+would he not feel for the world, and for that wife of his? If old Aunt
+Maria could so wake in him the love of life and the hatred of that living
+death to which he had been condemned, what passionate will to live would
+rise in answer to the world's wonder and his wife's?
+
+"I wish you'd give me that little book on the table there," he said. Aunt
+Maria obeyed. "My engagement-book," he explained. "Look. I had things
+booked for five months ahead. See--speeches, meetings, committees, the
+Alethea--so on--so on. They're all what they call cancelled now." He
+turned the leaves and Aunt Maria stood by him, watching.
+
+"They won't get anybody to do 'em like you, Sandro," she said.
+
+He flung the book down on the floor in sudden peevishness, with an oath
+of anger and exasperation.
+
+"By God, why haven't I a fair chance?" he asked, and fell back on his
+pillows.
+
+Lady Mildmay would have come and whispered softly to him, patted his
+hand, given him lemonade, and bade him try to sleep while she read softly
+to him. His old Aunt Maria Quisante stood motionless, saying not a word,
+looking away from him. Yet she was nearer to his mood and suited him
+better than kind Lady Mildmay.
+
+"You've done a good bit already, Sandro," she said. "And you're only
+thirty-nine."
+
+"And I'm to die at thirty-nine, or else live like an idiot, bored to
+death, and boring to death everybody about me!"
+
+"I shall go now," said Aunt Maria. "Good-bye, Sandro. Send for me again
+when you want me."
+
+"Aunt Maria!" She stopped at his call. "Go and see May. Go and talk to
+her."
+
+"Yes, Sandro."
+
+"Tell her what you think. You know: I mean, tell her that perhaps it's
+not as bad as the doctors say; that I may get about a bit soon and--and
+so on--You know."
+
+"I'm to tell her that?" asked Aunt Maria.
+
+"She's not to conclude it's all over with me yet." Miss Quisante nodded
+and moved towards the door.
+
+"Oh, and before you go, just pick up that book and give it me again, will
+you?"
+
+She returned, picked up the engagement-book and gave it him; then she
+stood for a moment by the bed, beginning to smile a little.
+
+"You've got a lot to fret about," she said. "Don't you fret about money,
+Sandro. I can manage a thousand in a month or so. No use hoarding it; it
+looks as if we should neither of us want it long."
+
+"You've got a thousand? What, now? Available?"
+
+"In a week or so it could be."
+
+"Then in God's name put it in the Alethea. What are you thinking about?
+It's the biggest thing out."
+
+"In the Alethea? I meant to give it to you."
+
+"All right. I shall put it in, if you do. I tell you that in three years'
+time you'll be rich out of it, and I shall draw an income of a couple of
+thousand a year at least as long as the patent lasts, if not longer."
+
+"How long does it last?"
+
+"Fourteen years; then we'll try for an extension, for another seven, you
+know, and we ought to get it. First and last I expect to get fifty
+thousand out of the Alethea alone, besides another thing that I've talked
+over with Mandeville. I'll tell you about it some day, I can't to-day.
+I--I'm a little tired. But anyhow the Alethea's sure. I'll put the
+thousand into it for you, and I'll hand you back double the money this
+time next year."
+
+He was leaning on his left elbow, talking volubly; his eyes were bright,
+his right hand moved in rapid apt gestures; his voice was sanguine as he
+spoke of the seven years' extension of the Alethea patent; he had
+forgotten his stroke and the verdict of his doctors. Aunt Maria nodded
+her head to him, saying, "I'll send it you as soon as I can," and made
+for the door. She was smiling now; Sandro seemed more himself again. He,
+left alone, lay back on his pillow, breathing fast, rather exhausted; but
+after awhile he opened the engagement-book again and ran his eyes up and
+down its columns. Lady Mildmay found him thus occupied when she came to
+give him a cup of milk.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+                          FOR LACK OF LOVE?
+
+
+Weston Marchmont, punctilious to the verge of fastidiousness, or even
+over it, in his conduct towards the world and his friends, allowed
+himself easily enough a liberty of speculative opinion which the Dean of
+St. Neot's would have hesitated about and the Dean's wife decidedly
+veiled by a reference to Providence. To him the blow that had fallen on
+Quisante seemed no public evil. Allowing the man's talents, he distrusted
+both his aims and his methods; they would not have come to good; the
+removal of his personality meant relief from an influence which was not
+healthy and an example which taught nothing beyond the satisfaction of
+ambition and the pursuit of power. It was well then if Quisante were
+indeed, as he himself said, "done with," so far as public activity went.
+Marchmont, not concealing his particular interest but rather facing it
+and declaring it just, went on to say that, since Quisante was done with
+publicly, it was well that he should be done with privately also, and
+that as speedily as might be. Love for May Quisante might be the moving
+spring of this conclusion, but he insisted that it was not necessary
+thereto. Any reasonable person her friend, nay, anybody whose attention
+was fairly directed to the case, must hold the same view. There was a
+hideous mistake to be undone, and only one way of undoing it. Permanent
+unions in marriage, immense and indispensable engines of civilisation,
+yet exacted their price. One instance of the compensating payment was
+that deaths sometimes became desirable; you had to wish a death sooner
+than life-long misery for a friend; to wish it was not wrong, though to
+have to wish it might be distasteful. In this self-justification he
+contrived to subordinate, while he admitted, his own strong interest in
+the death and his violent dislike of the sufferer which robbed the death
+of its pain so far as he was concerned. People's infatuation with
+Quisante, above all May's infatuation, had so irritated him that he did
+not scruple to accept the only means of ending them; that they would be
+thus ended it never came into his mind to doubt. His regret was only for
+the stretch of delay, for the time of waiting, for the respite promised
+to the doomed man if he would be docile and obedient; for all of them
+life was passing, and too much had already in tragic mistake been spent
+on Alexander Quisante.
+
+"I think you're damnably inhuman," said Dick Benyon, expressing, as he
+often did, an unsophisticated but not perhaps an altogether unsound
+popular judgment. "He's a remarkable man. And after all she married him.
+She needn't have. As for the party--well, I don't know how we shall
+replace him."
+
+"I don't want him replaced," said Marchmont. "Everything that he was
+doing had better be left undone; and everything that he is had better not
+be. You call me inhuman. Well, people who repress their pity for
+individuals in the interests of the general welfare are always called
+that."
+
+"Yes, but you don't pity him," retorted Dick.
+
+Marchmont thought for a moment. "No, I don't," he admitted. "I see why
+one might; but I can't do it myself." He paused and added, smiling, "I
+suppose that's the weak point in my attitude."
+
+"One of them," said Dick, but he said no more. There are limits to candid
+discussion even among the closest friends; he could not tell Marchmont in
+so many words that he wanted Quisante dead so as to be able to marry
+Quisante's wife, however well aware of the fact he might be and Marchmont
+might suspect him to be. Or, if he had said this, he could have said it
+only in vigorous reproof, perhaps even in horror; and to this he was not
+equal. For Dick was sorely torn. On the one hand he had never ceased to
+hang on Quisante's words and to count on Quisante's deeds; on the other,
+he had never acquitted himself of responsibility for a marriage which he
+believed to have been most disastrous. Worst of all then for him was what
+threatened now, an end of the illuminating words and the stirring deeds,
+but no end to the marriage yet in sight. To him too death seemed the best
+thing, unless that wonderful unlikely resurrection of activity and power
+could come. And even then--Dick remembered the face of Quisante's wife as
+she lied for him to her friends at Ashwood. The resurrection must be not
+only with a renewed but with a transformed mind, if it were to bring
+happiness, and to bring no more of things like that.
+
+The world at large, conceiving that the last word had been said and the
+last scene in which it was interested played, had soon turned its curious
+eyes away from Quisante's sick bed, leaving only the gaze of the smaller
+circle personally concerned in the dull and long-drawn-out ending of a
+piece once so full of dramatic incident. But the world found itself
+wrong, and all the eyes spun round in amazed staring when the sick man
+leapt from his bed and declared that he was himself again. The news came
+in paragraphs, to the effect that after another week's rest Mr. Quisante,
+whose health had made a rapid and great improvement, hoped to return to
+his Parliamentary duties and to fulfil the more urgent of his public
+engagements. Here was matter enough for surprise, but it was needful to
+add the fast-following well-authenticated stories of how the doctors had
+protested, how Sir Rufus Beaming had washed his hands of the case, and
+how Dr. Claud Manton had addressed an energetic warning to Lady May
+Quisante. This last item came home most closely to the general feeling,
+and the general voice asked what Lady May was thinking of. There was
+warrant for the question in the wondering despair of Lady Mildmay and the
+sad embarrassment of debonair Sir Winterton. The Mildmays knew all about
+it, the whole thing had happened in their house; but Sir Winterton,
+challenged with the story about Sir Rufus, could only hum and ha, and
+Lady Mildmay had not denied the interview between Quisante's wife and the
+energetic Dr. Manton. What was the meaning of it? And, once again, what
+was Lady May Quisante thinking of? Was she blind, was she careless? Or
+were the doctors idiots? The world, conscious of its own physical
+frailty, shrank from the last question and confined its serious attention
+to the two preceding ones. "Does she want to kill him?" asked the honest
+graspers of the obvious. "Does she think him above all laws?" was the
+question of those who wished to be more subtle. At least she was a
+puzzle. All agreed on that.
+
+Lady Richard discountenanced all speculation and all questionings. For
+her part she did her duty, mentioning to Mrs. Baxter that this was what
+she meant to do and that, whatever happened, she intended to be able,
+_salva conscientia_, to tell herself that she had done it; Mrs. Baxter
+approved, saying that this was what the second Mrs. Greening had done
+when her husband's sister's daughter, a very emancipated young woman as
+it seemed, had incomprehensibly flirted with the auctioneer's apprentice
+and had scouted Mrs. Greening's control; Mrs. Greening had told the
+girl's mother and sent the girl home, second class, under the care of the
+guard. Similarly then Lady Richard, without embarking on any consideration
+of ultimate problems, wrote to May, suggesting that Mr. Quisante wanted
+rest and putting Ashwood at her disposal for so long as she and her
+husband might be pleased to occupy it. "If they don't choose to go, it's
+not my fault," said Lady Richard with the sigh which declares that every
+reasonable requirement of conscience has been fulfilled. Happy lady, to
+be able to repose in this conviction by the simple expedient of lending a
+house not otherwise required at the moment! So kind are we to our own
+actions that Lady Richard felt meritorious.
+
+They chose to go, and went unaccompanied save by their baby girl and Aunt
+Maria--this last a strange addition made at Quisante's own request. He
+had not been wont to show such a desire for the old lady's society when
+there was nothing to be gained by seeking it; nor had it seemed to May
+altogether certain that Miss Quisante would come. Yet she came with
+ardent eagerness and her nephew was plainly glad to have her. It took May
+a little while to understand why, but soon she saw the reason. Aunt Maria
+was deep in the conspiracy, or the infatuation, or whatever it was to be
+called; she flattered Quisante's hope of life, she applauded his defiance
+of the inevitable; she hung on him more and more, herself forgetting and
+making him forget the peril of the way he trod. He wanted to be told that
+he was right, and he wanted an applauding audience. In both ways Aunt
+Maria satisfied him. She would talk of the present as though it were no
+more than a passing interruption of a long career, of the future as
+though it stretched in assured leisure through years of great
+achievement, of his life and his life's work as though both were in his
+own hand and subject to nothing save his own will and power. She was to
+him the readiest echo of the world's wonder and applause, the readiest
+assurance that his great effort was not going unrecognised. Hence he
+would have her with him, though there seemed no more love and no more
+tenderness between them than when in old days they had quarrelled and he
+had grumbled and she had flung him her money with a bitter jeer. But she
+lived in him and could think of him only as living, and through her he
+could cheat himself into an assurance that indeed he could live and work.
+
+Then Aunt Maria was very bad for him. That could not be denied, but
+something more nearly touching herself pressed on May Quisante. She had
+seen the Mildmays' painful puzzle; she had listened to Dr. Claud Manton's
+energetic warning; it was before her, no less than before the patient,
+that Sir Rufus had washed his hands. She was not ignorant of the
+questions the world asked. She was not careless, nor was she any longer
+the dupe of her old delusion that such a man as Quisante could not die.
+Her eye for truth had conquered; now she believed that, if he persisted
+in his rebellion, he must surely die; unless all medical knowledge went
+for nothing, he would surely die, and die not after long years of
+lingering, but soon, perhaps very soon. A moment of excitement, say one
+of the moments that she had loved so much, might kill him; so Claud
+Manton said. A life of excitement would surely and early do the work. And
+why was he rebellious? She accused himself, she accused Aunt Maria, she
+accused the foolishly wondering, foolishly chattering world; and in every
+accusation there was some justice. Was there enough to acquit the other
+defendant who stood arraigned? To that she dared not answer "Yes,"
+because of the fear which was in her that the strongest amongst all the
+various impulses driving him to his defiance was in the end to be found
+in his relations to her, in the attitude of his own wife towards him.
+Ashwood was full of associations; there was Duty Hill, where he had risen
+to his greatest and thereby won her; there was the tree beneath which she
+had sat with Marchmont on the evening when the knowledge of her husband's
+worst side had been driven like a sharp knife into her very heart. But
+more vivid than these memories now was the recollection of that first
+evening when she had seen him sitting alone, nobody's friend, and had
+determined to be human towards him and to treat him in a human way. There
+had been the true beginning of her great experiment. Now she told herself
+that she had failed in it, had never been human to him, and had never
+treated him in a human way, had not been what a man's wife should be, had
+stood always outside, a follower, an admirer, a critic, an accuser, never
+simply the woman who was his wife. His fault or hers, or that of both--it
+seemed to matter little. The experiment had been hers; and because she
+had made it and failed, it seemed to her that he was braving death. Had
+she been different, perhaps he would not have rebelled and could have
+lived the quiet life with her. It needed little more to make her tell
+herself that she drove him to his death, that she was with the enemy,
+with the chattering world and with poor deluded old Aunt Maria; she was
+of the conspirators; she egged him on to brave his doom.
+
+In darker vein still ran her musings sometimes, when there came over her
+that haunting self-distrust; the fear that she was juggling with herself,
+shutting her eyes to the sin of her own heart, and, in spite of all her
+protestations, was really inspired by a secret hope too black and
+treacherous to put in words. However passionately she repudiated it, it
+still cried mockingly, "I am here!" It asked if her prayers for her
+husband's life were sincere, if her care for him were more than a due
+paid to decency, if the doom were in truth a thing she dreaded, and not a
+deliverance which convention alone forbade her openly to desire. Plainly,
+plainly--did she wish the doom to fall, did she wish him dead, was the
+rebellion that threatened death the course which the secret craving of
+her heart urged him to take? To do everything for him was not enough, if
+the doubt still lurked that her heart was not in the doing. For now she
+could no more ask coolly what she wished; the thing had come too near; it
+was odious to have a thought except of saving him by all means and at
+every cost; it was intolerable not to know at least that no part of the
+impulse which drove him to his rebellion lay at her door, not to feel at
+least that she had nothing but dread and horror for the threatened doom.
+She had no love for him; it came home to her now with a strange new sense
+of self-condemnation; she had married him for her own pleasure, because
+he interested her and made life seem dull without him. She pleaded no
+more that he had killed her love; it had never been there to kill. Had
+she left him to find a woman who loved him in and for himself, not for
+his doings, not for the interest of him, that woman might now be winning
+him by love from the open jaws of death.
+
+Yet again laughter, obstinate and irrepressible, shot often in a jarring
+streak of inharmonious colour across the sombre fabric of her thoughts.
+He was not only mad, not only splendid--he seemed both to her--he was
+absurd too at moments, often when he was with Aunt Maria. Letters came in
+great numbers, from political followers, from women prominent in society,
+from constituents, from old Foster and Japhet Williams at Henstead, even
+from puissant Lady Castlefort; they wondered, applauded, implored,
+flattered, in every key of that sweet instrument called praise. Quisante
+read them out, pluming and preening his feathers, strutting about,
+crowing. He would repeat the passages he liked, asking his wife's
+approbation; that he must have, it seemed. She gave it with what
+heartiness she could, and laughed only in her sleeve. Surely a man facing
+death could have forgotten all this? Not Alexander Quisante. He could
+die, and die bravely; but the world must stand by his bedside. So till
+the end, whenever that most uncertainly dated end might come, the old
+mixture promised to go on, the great and small, the mean and grand, the
+call for tears and throbs of the heart alternating with the obstinate
+curling or curving of lips swift to respond to the vision of the
+contemptible or the ludicrous.
+
+But she had her appeal to make, the one thing, it seemed, she could do to
+put herself at all in the right, the offer she must make, and try to make
+with a sincerity which should rise unimpaired from the conflicts of her
+heart. She had caught at coming to Ashwood because she thought she could
+make it best there, not indeed in the room where she had lied for him,
+nor by the tree where she had turned to Marchmont in a pang of wild
+regret, but there, on Duty Hill, where he had won her, had touched his
+highest, and had seemed a conqueror. She took him there, climbing with
+him very slowly, very gently; there she made him sit and sat by him.
+Again it was a quiet evening, and still the valley stretched below;
+nothing changed here made all the changes of her life seem half unreal.
+Here she told him he must live, he must be docile and must live.
+
+"You may get strong again, but for the time you must do as the doctors
+say. You ought to; for the little girl's sake, if for nothing else, you
+ought to. You know you're risking another seizure now, and you know what
+that might mean."
+
+His eyes were fixed keenly on her, though he lay back motionless in
+weariness.
+
+"You ought to live for your daughter." She paused a minute and added,
+"And some day we might have a son, and you'd live again in him; we both
+should; we should feel that we were doing--that you were doing--everything
+he did. I think your son would be a great man, and I should be proud to
+be his mother. Isn't the hope of that worth something?"
+
+He was silent, watching her closely still.
+
+"I know what you think of me," she continued. "You think an active life
+essential to me, that I can't do without it. God knows I loved all you
+did, I loved your triumphs, I loved to hear you speak and see them
+listen. You know I loved all that, loved it too much perhaps. But I'll do
+without it. I'm your wife, your fate's mine. It'll be the braver thing
+for you to face it, really; I'm ready to face it with you."
+
+Still he would only look at her.
+
+"We know what we both are," she went on with a little smile. "We're not
+Mildmays, you and I. But let's try. I must tell you. I can't bear to
+think that it's partly at least because of me that you won't try, that if
+I were a different sort of woman it might be much easier for you to try.
+If it's that at all, imagine what I should feel if--if anything happened
+such as the doctors are afraid of."
+
+"I've chosen my course. I believe the doctors are all wrong."
+
+"Do you really believe that?" she asked quickly.
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, seeming to say that he would not discuss it.
+"A great many considerations influence me," he said with a touch of
+pompousness.
+
+"Am I one of them?" she persisted. "Because I don't want to be. I'm ready
+to share your life, whatever it is."
+
+"Are you?" he asked, with something of the same malicious smile that he
+was wont to bestow on Aunt Maria. "Do you think you could share my life?
+Do you think you have?"
+
+"I know what you mean," she said, flushing a little. "I daresay I've been
+hard and--and didn't take the pains to understand, and was uncharitable
+perhaps. Anyhow there'll be no opportunity for any more--any more
+misunderstandings of that sort."
+
+"No; the understanding's clear enough now," said he.
+
+She looked at him almost despairingly; he seemed so strangely hostile, so
+bitterly sensitive to her judgment of him.
+
+"You think me," he went on, with his persistent eyes unwaveringly set on
+her, "a not over-honest mountebank; that's what you and your friends
+think me."
+
+"Oh, I wish I'd never tried to talk to you about it!" she cried. "You
+take hold of some hasty mood or look of mine and treat it as if it were
+everything. You know it isn't."
+
+"It's there, though."
+
+"It never need be, never, never."
+
+"You'll forget it all when we're settled down at--where was it?--Torquay
+or somewhere--in our villa, like two old tabby-cats sitting in the sun?
+No time to think it all over then? No, only all the hours of every day!"
+He paused and then added in a low hard voice, "I'm damned if I'll do it.
+I may have to die, but I'll die standing." His eyes gleamed now, and for
+the first time they turned from her and roamed over the prospect that lay
+below Duty Hill. But they were back on her face soon.
+
+"No, no," she implored. "Not because of me, for heaven's sake, not
+because of me!"
+
+"Because of it all. Yes, and because of you too. You don't love me, you
+never have." He leant towards her. "But I love you," he said, "yes, as I
+loved you when I asked you to be my wife on this hill where we are. Then
+don't you understand? I won't go and live that old cat's life with you."
+He laid his hand on hers. "Your eyes shall still sparkle for me, your
+breath shall still come quick for me, your heart beat for me; or I'll
+have no more of it at all."
+
+The touch of rhetoric, so characteristic of him, so unlike anything that
+Marchmont or Dick Benyon would have used in such a case, did not
+displease her then. And it hit the truth as his penetration was wont to
+hit it. That was what he wanted, that was what she could and should and
+must give, or he would have nothing from her. Here was the truth; but the
+truth was what she had struggled so hard to deny and feared so terribly
+to find true. He was not indeed led by a sense of obligation towards her;
+the need was for himself. It was not that he felt in her a right to call
+on him for exertions or for a performance of his side of the bargain; it
+was that he could not bear to lose his tribute from her. But still she
+stood self-condemned. Again the thought came--with a woman who loved him
+there might have been another tribute that she could have paid and he
+been content to levy. He would have believed such a woman if she told him
+that he would be as much to her, and she as much absorbed in him, in the
+villa at Torquay as ever in the great world; and perhaps--oh, only
+perhaps, it is true--he would have made shift with that and fed his
+appetite on the homage of one, since his wretched body denied him the
+rows on rows of applauding spectators that he loved. But from his wife's
+lips he would not accept any such assurance, and from her no such homage
+could be hoped for to solace him.
+
+Then the strange creature began to talk to her, not of what he had done,
+nor even of what he had hoped to do, but of what he meant and was going
+to do; how he would grow greater and richer, of schemes in politics and
+in business, of the fervour and devotion of the fighting men behind him
+and how they were sick of the old gang and would have no leader but
+Alexander Quisante; of the prosperity of the Alethea, how the shares
+rose, how big orders came in, how utterly poor old Maturin had blundered.
+He spoke like a strong man with a wealth of years and store-houses of
+force, who sees life stretched long before him, material to be shaped by
+his hand and forced into what he will make it. He talked low and fast,
+his eyes again roaming over the prospect; the evening fell while he still
+talked. Almost it seemed then that the doctors were wrong, that his
+courage was no folly, that indeed he would not die. O for the faith to
+believe that! For his spell was on her again now, and now she would not
+have him die. Once again he had his desire; once more her heart beat and
+her eyes gleamed for him. But then it came on her, with a sudden fierce
+light of conviction, that all this was hollow, useless, vain, that the
+sentence was written and the doom pronounced. No pleading however
+eloquent could alter it. Quisante was stopped in mid-career by a short
+sharp sob that escaped from his wife's lips. He turned and looked at her,
+breaking off the sentence that he had begun. She met his glance with a
+frightened look in her eyes.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked slowly, rather resentfully.
+
+"Nothing, nothing," she stammered. "I--I was excited by what you were
+saying." She tried to laugh. "I'm emotional, you know, and you can always
+rouse my emotions."
+
+"Was it that?" For a moment longer he sat upright, looking hard at her;
+then his body relaxed, and he lay back, his lower lip dropping and his
+eyes half closed. An expression of great weariness and despair came over
+him. He had read the meaning of her sob; and now he hid his face in his
+hands. His pretences failed him, and he was assailed by the bitterness of
+truth and of death.
+
+She rose, saying, "It's late, we must go in; you'll be over-tired."
+
+After an instant Quisante rose slowly and falteringly; he laid his arm in
+hers, and they stood side by side, gazing down into the valley. This hill
+had come to mean much in their lives, and somehow now they seemed to be
+saying good-bye to it.
+
+"I could never forget this hill," she said, "any more than I could forget
+you. You told me just now that I didn't love you. Well, as you mean it,
+perhaps not. But you've been almost everything in the world to me.
+Everything in the world isn't all good, but it's--everything." She turned
+to him suddenly and kissed him on the cheek. "Lean on me as we go down
+the hill," she said. There was pity and tenderness in the words and the
+tone. But Quisante drew his arm sharply away and braced his body to
+uprightness.
+
+"I'm not tired. I can go quite well by myself. You look more tired than I
+do," he said. "Come, we shall be late," and he set off down the hill at a
+brisk pace.
+
+Her appeal then had failed; this last little incident told her that with
+unpitying plainness. If he had yielded for a moment before the face of
+reality, he soon recovered himself, turned away from the sight, and went
+back to his masquerading. She lacked the power to lead him from it, and
+again she feared that she lacked the power because her will was not
+sincere and single. Now they must go on to that uncertain end, he playing
+his part before the world, before her and Aunt Maria, she looking on,
+sometimes in admiration, sometimes in contempt, always in fear of the
+moment when the actor's speeches would be suddenly cut short and the
+curtain, falling on the interrupted scene, hide him for ever from the
+audience whom he had made wondering applauding partners in his
+counterfeit. The last of his life was to be like the rest of it, with the
+same elements of tragedy and of farce, of what attracted and of what
+revolted, of the great and the little. It was to be like in another way
+too; it was to be lived alone, without any true companion for his soul,
+without the love that he had not asked except of one, and, asking of that
+one, had not obtained. As the days went on, the fascination of the
+spectacle she watched grew on her; it was more poignant now than in the
+former time, and it filled all her life. Thus in some sort Alexander
+Quisante had his way; his hold on her was not relaxed, his dominion over
+her not abrogated, to the end of his life he would be what she told him
+he had been--almost everything. When the end came, what would he be? The
+question crossed her thoughts, but found no answer; some day it would
+fall to be answered. Now she could only watch and wait, half persuaded
+that the pretence was no pretence, yet always dreading the summons of
+reality to end the play. So the world asked in vain what May Quisante was
+thinking of, whether she wanted to kill him, or whether she thought him
+above all laws. A puzzle to the world and a puzzle to her friends, she
+waited for the falling of the blow which Quisante daily challenged.
+
+Sir Rufus Beaming met Dr. Claud Manton at the Athenaeum and showed him a
+newspaper paragraph.
+
+"To address a great meeting at Henstead!" said Manton, raising his brows
+and shaping his lips for a whistle. "'From his own and neighbouring
+constituencies.'"
+
+"He might just as well take chloroform comfortably by his fireside," said
+Sir Rufus. "It would be a little quicker, perhaps, but not a bit more
+sure."
+
+And again they washed their hands of the whole affair very solemnly.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX.
+
+                            DEATH DEFIED.
+
+
+Constantine Blair, no less active and soon little less serene in
+opposition than in power, felt himself more than justified in all that he
+had ever said about Weston Marchmont when he received an intimation of
+Marchmont's intention to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. Yet he was
+aghast at this voluntary retirement into the wilderness of private life,
+a life without bustle, without gossip, without that sense of being
+intimate with the march of affairs and behind the scenes of the national
+theatre. There were reasons assigned, of course. One was that Marchmont
+found himself ("I'll bet he does!" groaned Constantine with anticipatory
+resignation) more in agreement with the other side than with his own on
+an important question of foreign politics then to the front. But this
+state of matters had ceased to be unusual with him and hardly in itself
+accounted for the step he was now taking. The care of his estate was the
+second reason, properly dismissed as plainly frivolous. In the end of the
+letter more sincerity peeped out, as the writer lapsed from formality
+into friendship. "I know I shall surprise many people and grieve some,
+but I'm sick of the thing. I can't endure the perpetual haggling between
+what I ought to do and what I'm expected to do; the compromises that
+result satisfy me as little as anybody. In fine, my dear Constantine, I'm
+going back to my pictures, my books, my hills, and my friends." Constantine
+read with a genuine sorrow and criticised with a contemptuous sniff.
+Pictures, books--and hills! Hills! It was insulting his intelligence. And
+though friends were all very well, yet where was the use of them if a man
+deprived himself of all the sources of entertaining conversation? But
+there was nothing to be done--except to tell Lady Castlefort a day before
+the rest of the world knew. Constantine held her favour on that tenure.
+She showed no surprise.
+
+"A loss to the country, but not to us," she said.
+
+"Just what I think," agreed Constantine, with a revival of cheerfulness.
+
+"If I hadn't known him since he was so high, I'd wish he had the
+what-do-you-call-it seizures instead of the other man."
+
+"But Quisante's not going, he means to hold on," said Constantine. "I'm
+glad of it. Henstead's very shaky. But we shall hold Marchmont's seat all
+right. We're going to put up Dick Benyon."
+
+"He's safe enough, he won't worry you," said Lady Castlefort. "You'll
+have to fight Henstead before long, all the same. The man'll die, you
+know."
+
+"Think so?" asked Constantine uneasily.
+
+"And he will be a loss--a loss to us, whatever one may think about the
+country." Constantine looked troubled. "Oh, it's not your business to
+think about the country--or mine either, thank goodness," she added
+rather irritably. She was more distressed about Weston Marchmont than she
+chose to tell; and it was impossible not to be annoyed at the perversity.
+Of the two men whom she had singled out for greatness one might go on but
+would not, the other asked nothing but to be allowed to go on, and found
+refusal at the hands of fate. There was another thing in her thoughts
+too. She had a strong belief in hostesses, natural to her, perhaps not
+unreasonable. In either of two events she had foreseen an ideal hostess
+for the party in the woman she still thought of as May Gaston. There was
+no need to detail the two events; suffice it to say that, whichever of
+them now happened, it appeared that May Gaston would not be able to
+figure as a great hostess; at least there would have to rise for her some
+star not yet visible in the heavens.
+
+Marchmont and May had neither met nor written to one another since their
+talk under the tree at Ashwood. He had not doubted that she would
+understand silence and like silence best; from him any word seemed
+impossible. But on the day when his determination was made public he
+received a summons from her and at once obeyed it. He found her alone,
+though she told him that she expected Quisante back from the City in a
+little while.
+
+"He wants to see you," she said. "I don't know why, unless it's just as a
+curiosity." She smiled for a moment. "I'm sorry you find you can't stand
+it," she went on.
+
+"You understand? You've been in that state of mind or pretty near it, I
+know."
+
+"Yes, pretty near at times, but I'm not as honest as you. I may see all
+you see, but I should always go on." She glanced at him. "I'm more like
+my husband than I'm like you," she ended.
+
+"I don't believe that," he said gravely.
+
+"I know you don't, but it's true. I daresay you never will understand it,
+because of the other May Gaston you've made for yourself. But it's true.
+And you know what he is. He's ready to give body and soul--Oh, I'm not
+just using a phrase--body and soul to keep the things that you've given
+up for your hills. How scornful your hills made Constantine Blair!"
+
+"Are you importing metaphorical meanings into my hills?" he asked,
+sitting down near her.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Blair didn't, but I do."
+
+"Perhaps it was rather a silly thing to say."
+
+"No, I don't think so."
+
+"I mean to Constantine."
+
+"Oh, well then, perhaps it was," she admitted, smiling. "But that's all
+consistent, isn't it? You couldn't trim your sails to suit the breeze
+even in a letter like that."
+
+"Are you rebuking me? Are you contemptuous? What are you?" He leant back
+and looked at her, smiling.
+
+"If my husband would do what you've done, he might live," she said.
+
+Marchmont nodded gravely; it was easy to see the odd way in which his
+action fitted into the drama of her life.
+
+"But we've no hills," she went on. "You leave London--all London
+means--to wander on hills, high glorious hills; he'd leave it for a
+villa, a small villa at a seaside place."
+
+"Metaphors again?"
+
+"It comes easier to talk in them sometimes. And I--I'm of my husband's
+way of thinking."
+
+"I don't believe it," he said again, but looking at her now with a little
+touch of doubt.
+
+"You'll never come back, will you?" she asked.
+
+"Never," said he with a quiet certainty.
+
+She rose with a restless sigh and walked to the fireplace.
+
+"I couldn't," he went on. "I'm not fit for it; that's the end of the
+matter. Use your own term of abuse. I shall hear plenty of them."
+
+"I don't want to abuse you," she said. She walked quickly over to him,
+gave him her hand for a moment, and then returned to her place. "But it
+makes me feel rather strange to you." She looked full at him with a plain
+distress in her eyes, and her voice shook a little. "I'm coming to feel
+more strange towards you," she went on. "I thought we had got nearer at
+Ashwood, we did for the moment. But now I'm farther off again."
+
+"I would have you always very near," he said in low tones, his eyes
+saying more than his lips.
+
+"I know. And perhaps you've had thoughts----" She paused before she added,
+"Alexander's quite set on his course, nothing will stop him--except the
+thing that I expect to stop him. You know what I mean?"
+
+Marchmont nodded again.
+
+"And he's doing it a good deal because of me. I wonder if you understand
+that?"
+
+"I don't know that I do."
+
+"No; he knows more of me than you do."
+
+She became silent, and he, watching her, was silent too. What was this
+strangeness of which she spoke? He felt it too but without understanding
+it. It caused in him a vague discomfort, an apprehension that some
+obstacle was between them, something more than any external hindrance, a
+thing which might perhaps remain though all external hindrance were
+removed. Her last words both puzzled and wounded him with their
+implication of a deeper sympathy between Quisante and herself than
+existed or could exist between her and him. That he did not understand,
+and could not without giving up his own idea of her, the May Gaston
+which, as she said, he had made for himself. Was his image gone indeed?
+Had Alexander Quisante's chisel altered the features beyond recognition
+and till true identity was gone? Yet Alexander Quisante was the man who
+had put on her the shame for which she had sobbed under the tree on that
+evening at Ashwood. Before such a seeming contradiction his penetration
+stood baffled. She had said then that her present life would, she
+supposed, go on right to the end, and had said it as though the prospect
+were unendurable; now a new and to him unnatural resignation seemed to
+have come upon her, just when her present life had shown that it was not
+likely to go on right to the end.
+
+"I've prayed my husband to give up," she said, "I don't beg you not to
+give up. To begin with, you wouldn't listen to me any more than he did.
+And then, I suppose, you're right for yourself."
+
+"You're about the only person who'll say so."
+
+"I daresay. I've learnt about you in learning about myself. And I can
+feel it just as you do--Oh, how intolerably strongly sometimes!" She
+added with a smile, "We've only just missed suiting one another," and
+then, "Yes, but we have missed, you know."
+
+"I don't believe it," he persisted, struggling to throw off the new doubt
+she was thrusting into his mind. His thought was that, once she got free
+of her husband, she would indeed be his. That he must hold to. It was
+Quisante, not she herself, who made her now feel strange to him; and
+Quisante's spell was not to last; her quiet certitude that her husband's
+days were numbered carried conviction to him also. "But I won't talk any
+more about it now," he said.
+
+"No, it seems inhuman," she agreed. "I spend all my days cheating myself
+into a hope that he'll get better. I know you don't like him, but if you
+lived with him as I do, you'd come to hope as I do. Yes, in spite of all
+you know about us; and you know more than anybody alive. I've not been
+so--so disloyal--to anybody else." She smiled as she quoted the word
+against him.
+
+"One must admire him," said Marchmont.
+
+May Quisante laughed at his tone almost scornfully. "The way you say that
+shows how little you understand," she exclaimed. "It's not a bit like
+that." She took a step nearer to him. "When it comes," she said slowly,
+"I shan't shed a single tear, but I shall feel that my life's over. He'll
+have had it all."
+
+"God forbid you should feel anything like that," he said, looking up at
+her.
+
+She laughed again, asking bitterly, "Does God forbid what Alexander
+wants--except one thing? And what I tell you is what he would want. He
+would want to have had it all."
+
+He raised his hand in protest.
+
+"You're right; we won't talk any more," she said. "But don't think that
+it's all only because I'm overwrought, or something feminine of that
+kind. It's the truth. When it comes, Aunt Maria'll die and I shall live;
+but the difference won't be as great as it sounds."
+
+This time he was about to speak, but she stopped him, saying, "No, no
+more now. Tell me about Dick Benyon. He's to have your seat, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, I'm gathered to my fathers, and Dick reigns in my stead."
+
+"You're sorry?" she asked, forgetting Dick and coming back again to the
+man before her.
+
+"Yes; but I accept the inevitable and contrive to be quite cheerful about
+it."
+
+"We don't do either of those things. Hark, I hear my husband's step."
+
+Quisante ran quickly up the stairs and burst into the room. His face was
+alight with animation, and before greeting Marchmont he cried, "I've
+carried it, I've brought them round. We attack all along the line, and I
+open the ball at Henstead next week! They'll be out in six months, and I
+shall----" Suddenly he paused. "They'll be out in six months," he said
+again.
+
+Marchmont rose and shook hands, "It doesn't matter to me now if they
+are," he said, laughing. "Blair's troubles and mine are both over now."
+
+"I know," nodded Quisante. "Well, I suppose you know best. But hasn't May
+been trying to convert you?"
+
+"No, I haven't tried to convert him," she said. "I'm not going to try to
+convert people any more."
+
+After this she fell into silence, listening and watching while the two
+men talked. Talk between them could never be intimate and could hardly be
+even easy, but they interested one another to-day. On Quisante's face
+especially there was a look of searching, of wonder, of a kind of
+protest. Once he flung himself back and stared at his guest with a fixity
+of gaze painful to see. But he said nothing of what was passing in his
+mind. At last Marchmont turned to May again.
+
+"I shall hear of you at Henstead," he said. "I'm going to pay the
+Mildmays a visit. I suppose, as you're on the war-path, you won't come
+over?"
+
+"I might," she said, "if we were there long enough. I expect Alexander
+mustn't. Friendship with the enemy is not always appreciated."
+
+"Oh, I might go," Quisante remarked. "The Alethea's an admirable excuse."
+He spoke with a laugh but then, glancing at his wife, saw her face flush.
+He turned to Marchmont and found him rising to his feet. Much puzzled,
+Quisante looked again from one to the other, noting the sudden constraint
+that had fallen on them. What had he said? What was there in the mention
+of the Alethea to disturb a conversation so harmonious? That there was
+something his quick wit told him in a moment. While Marchmont said
+good-bye to May he stood by, frowning a little, and then escorted his
+guest downstairs. While he was away his wife stood quite still in the
+middle of the room, a little flushed and breathing rather quickly.
+
+Quisante came back, sat down, and took up a newspaper. May sat in her
+usual chair, doing nothing. Presently he asked, "Did I say anything
+wrong?"
+
+"No. But I'd rather you didn't talk about the Alethea when Mr. Marchmont
+is with us." He looked up in, surprise. "It embarrasses me--and him too."
+
+"Embarrasses you? Why should it?"
+
+"There's no use in my telling you."
+
+"I can't see why it should embarrass you. Pray tell me."
+
+She sat silent for a moment or two. "It's no good," she said, looking
+over to him with a forlorn smile. He moved his hand impatiently. "Very
+well. At dinner at Ashwood, on the night you were taken ill, somebody
+talked about the Alethea and said Professor Maturin had told him there
+was a fatal defect in it. He hadn't seen the prospectus. And I----" She
+paused a moment. "I had to back up your version." Again she broke off for
+a moment. "And after dinner Mr. Marchmont talked to me; and I cried about
+it. So, you see, references are embarrassing."
+
+After a pause of a minute or two Quisante said, "Cried about it? About
+what?"
+
+She raised her eyes, looked at him a moment, and said simply, "About
+having to tell a lie to them." And she added with a sudden quiver in her
+voice, "I've known them all my life."
+
+"Maturin was quite wrong. There's absolutely no doubt about that now."
+
+"Was he?" she asked listlessly.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"That he'd expressed a favourable opinion about it to you. I kept to the
+prospectus. Oh, there's no use talking. It's only with Mr. Marchmont that
+it matters. I can't keep it up before him, because he found me crying,
+you know."
+
+"Crying!" murmured Quisante. "Crying!" She nodded at him, with the same
+faint smile on her lips. The silence seemed very long as she looked at
+him and he gazed straight before him, the forgotten paper falling with a
+rustle from his knees on to the floor.
+
+"You never told me," he said at last.
+
+"Why should I? What was the good of telling you?"
+
+"It was on the night of my--when I was taken ill?"
+
+"Yes. The telegram came later in the evening. Don't bother about it now,
+Alexander."
+
+"Did you hope it meant I was dead?"
+
+For a moment she sat still; then she sprang up, ran across the room, and
+fell on her knees before him, grasping his arms in her hands. "No, no,
+no, I didn't. Indeed, indeed, I didn't."
+
+He sat still in her clasp, looking intently in her face. His was hard and
+sneering.
+
+"Yes, you did. You wished me dead. By God, you wish me dead now. Well,
+you can wait a little. I shall be dead soon." With a sudden rough
+movement he freed himself from her hands and pushed her away. "I suppose
+wives often wish their husbands dead, but they don't tell them so quite
+so plainly."
+
+"It's not true, I've never told you so."
+
+"Oh, I'm not a fool. I don't need to have it spelt out for me in
+syllables."
+
+She rose slowly to her feet, and, turning, went back to her own chair.
+Quisante sat where he was, quite motionless. She could not endure to look
+at him and, rising, went and stood by the window, looking out on the
+river she loved. This moment was in strange contrast with their talk on
+Duty Hill; the two together summed up her married life and the nature of
+the man she had married. But it was not true that she wished him dead;
+not true now, at all events, even though the charge he brought against
+her of its having been so once might have some truth in it. For if ever
+that thought had crept into her mind as a dreaded shameful wish, it was
+when she seemed able to look forward to a new life. It seemed to her now
+that no new life was possible; that impression had grown and grown while
+she talked with Weston Marchmont, and it pressed upon her now with the
+weight of conviction.
+
+She heard her husband get up and go out of the room; his steps sounded
+going upstairs, in the direction of his study. She went and drew the
+chair up to the hearthrug, and sat down, resting her elbows on the arms
+and holding her head between her hands. It was very wanton that a chance
+allusion of his should have brought about this scene between them.
+Perhaps she could have put him off with excuses, but that had not
+occurred to her. The scene had told her nothing new, but it had torn away
+the last of the veil from before his eyes. He had known that she
+disapproved, he had even braved her disapproval when he could not
+hoodwink or evade it. It was a little strange that he should be moved to
+such a transport of bitterness by hearing that she had cried over telling
+a lie for him. Yet that was it; she was sure that he had not cared
+whether Marchmont saw her crying or not. The tears themselves made him
+think that she had wished him dead, yes, that she still wished him dead.
+
+He must not die thinking that. She started across the room towards the
+door, at a quick step; it was in her mind to follow him and tell him
+again that it was not true, that he would ruin and empty her life if he
+died, that there was no man in the world who could be what he was to her.
+But her impulse failed her; he would sneer again. There was one thing
+that would drive away his sneer if she said it and got him to believe
+it--that she loved him as he loved her. Well, she couldn't tell him that,
+and he would not believe her if she did. She stopped and returned to her
+chair. She leant back now, resting her head on the cushion. The afternoon
+grew old, and a gleam of sinking sun, escaping from the grey red-edged
+clouds that hung over the river, troubled her eyes; she closed them and
+reclined in stillness. She felt very tired, worn out with the stress of
+it, with the conflict and the strain. Strange notions, half fancies, half
+dreams, began to flit through her mind. She saw the end come in many
+ways, now while they were alone together, now in some public place, even
+in the House, or while he addressed his shareholders. She seemed to hear
+the buzz of talk that followed the event, the wonder at him, the blame of
+her; she saw poor old Aunt Maria's trembling hands and hopeless face.
+Presently, as she fell into an unquiet drowsiness, she seemed to see even
+beyond the end, as though the end were no end and he were with her still,
+his spirit being about her, enveloping her, still wrapping her round so
+that the rest of the world was kept away and she was still with him,
+though she could not see him nor hear his voice. For her alone he existed
+now. Soon the rest who had wondered and praised and blamed and gossipped
+forgot about him; they had no more attention to give him, no more
+flattery, no more allegiance. For them he had ceased to exist. Only for
+her he went on existing still, nay, it seemed that it was through her
+that he clung to the life he had loved, and was even now not dead because
+he lived in and through her. And sometimes--she shivered in her broken
+sleep, for she had not the love which would have made the dream all
+joy--he became more than a spirit or an impalpable presence; he was again
+almost corporeal, almost to be felt and touched, almost a living man.
+Shrinking and fearing, yet she was glad; she welcomed his exemption from
+the grave and abetted him in his rebellion against death; and for her
+that restless spirit almost clothed itself again in flesh.
+
+She sat up with a great start and a low cry. Her hand had been hanging
+over the arm of the chair, it had grown cold; now it was held in another
+cold hand, and it was raised. Awake but thinking she still dreamed, she
+waited in mingled fear and anticipation. Cold lips pressed her hand. She
+dreamed then, and in her dream he came from the grave to kiss her hand.
+He came not only back to the world where he had triumphed, he came also
+to the woman he had loved, who had not loved him. Again the kiss came
+cold on her hand. She fell back with a sudden sob, not knowing whether
+terror or repulsion or joy, held greater, sway in her. The kisses covered
+her hand. Ah, the marvel! They grew living, they were warm now and
+passionate. This was not a dead man's kiss. With a second cry she turned
+her head. Quisante himself knelt by her, kissing her hand. His eyes rose
+to hers, and she cried, "It is you! You're not dead! Thank God, thank
+God!"
+
+His eyes were gleaming in the strong excitement of his heart; he knew how
+he had found her.
+
+"No, not dead, not dead yet," he said. "But by heaven, when I am dead, I
+won't leave you. I can't leave you. As I kiss your hand now, so will I
+kiss it always, and with my soul I will worship you. But neither now nor
+then will I kiss your lips."
+
+"You won't kiss my lips?"
+
+"No. They have lied for me; I won't stain them any more."
+
+For a moment she looked at him. Then she caught her hand away and flung
+her arms round his neck. She kissed him on his lips, crying, "For good or
+evil, for good or evil, but always, always, always!" Then she drew away,
+and, with her arms still round his neck, she broke into her low laugh:
+"Oh, but how like you to make that little speech about my lips!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XX.
+
+                      THE QUIET LIFE TO-MORROW.
+
+
+Old Miss Quisante was not as sympathetic as might have been wished. She
+acquiesced indeed (as who would not?) in the new programme of at least a
+year's complete rest; she offered to find funds--happily it was not
+necessary, since the sale of some Alethea shares at a handsome premium
+supplied them; she admitted that May had done her duty in persuading her
+husband to yield a limited obedience to his doctors' orders. But she
+looked disappointed, uninterested, dull; she awoke only for a sparkle of
+malice, when she remarked how happy they would be together in the
+country, with nothing to disturb them, nothing but just their two selves.
+
+"Not as unhappy as you think," said May, smiling.
+
+"All nonsense, I call it," pursued the old lady. "Sandro knew best; now
+you've put notions into his head. Oh, I daresay you were bound to, my
+dear."
+
+"How can you be so blind?" murmured May. Aunt Maria shook her head
+derisively; she was not blind, it was the wife and the doctors who were
+blind. "You're not to say that sort of thing to Alexander," May went on
+imperiously. Aunt Maria put her head on one side and smiled sardonically.
+
+"You used to agree with me," she said. "Has the Mildmay woman been here
+again?"
+
+"No; she's at home. We shall see her perhaps at Henstead."
+
+"Henstead! What are you going there for?"
+
+"And you said you knew Alexander!" laughed May. "You don't suppose he's
+going into retirement without a display of fireworks? The Henstead speech
+is to be made. Then we put up the shutters--for a year at least, as I
+say."
+
+"That's something. Is he interested in it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, working all day. But he's wonderfully well. I've never seen him
+better." She hesitated and laughed a little. "How shall we ever stick to
+our year?" she asked. "He means it now and I mean it. But----"
+
+"You won't do it," said Aunt Maria emphatically. "Nobody could keep
+Sandro quiet for a year!"
+
+"Don't tell me that. We're going to try."
+
+"Oh, I won't interfere, my dear. Try away. After all he'll be young
+still, and they won't forget him in a year. Or if they do, he'll soon
+make them remember him again."
+
+The buoyant confidence was hard to resist. It seemed to grow greater in
+face of all reason, and more and more to fill the old woman's mind as she
+herself descended towards the grave which she scorned as a possibility
+for Sandro. For now she was very small and frail, thin and yellow; she
+too, like her nephew, seemed to hold on to life rather because she chose
+of her arbitrary will, than thanks to any physical justification that she
+could adduce. Could Quisante not only make himself live but make Aunt
+Maria live too? Full of the influence of that last great moment, May,
+laughing at herself, yet hesitated to answer "No." But the year was to be
+tried, lest, if die he must, he should die to please her or thinking that
+she wanted him to die. He did not think now that she wanted that; she was
+happier with him than she had ever been before. She had found a new
+indulgence for him, even for what she had hated in him. Justice would
+have turned to harshness, clearness of vision to a Pharisaic strictness,
+had she not found indulgence for the man who had crept back to kiss her
+hand. She was very indulgent towards him, and he seemed happy, save that
+now and then he looked at her wistfully, and began to fall into the way
+of reminding her of past occasions when he had shone and she admired,
+asking whether she remembered this and that. He dropped hints too that
+the Henstead speech was to be memorable. She was a little afraid that
+already he was feeling indulgence insufficient and mere kindness, or
+indeed mere affection, not the great thing that he asked of her, just as
+peace and quiet, or pictures, books, and hills, were not the things that
+he asked of life. If this were so, the compromise she had brought him to
+consent to was precarious; it was, as she had hinted to Aunt Maria,
+doubtful whether they could stick to their year.
+
+There was another question in her mind, not less persistent, not less
+troubling. Perhaps the greater harmony between them, which had induced
+and enabled her to obtain that consent from him, was as precarious as the
+compromise itself; it too was liable to be overthrown by a return of
+Quisante's old self, or at least of that side of him which was for the
+time hidden. The temptation to work would overthrow the compromise, the
+temptation to win might again produce action in him and impose action on
+her which would bring death to their newly-achieved harmony, even as
+exertion would to his worn-out body.
+
+The great speech, the last speech, was to be on Wednesday. They arrived
+in Henstead on Tuesday morning and were plunged at once into a turmoil of
+business. There was a luncheon, a deputation, a meeting of the party
+association; Japhet Williams had half a dozen difficulties, and old
+Foster as many bits of shrewd counsel. Over all and through all was the
+air of congratulation, of relief from the fear of losing Quisante, of
+enthusiastic applause for his magnificently courageous struggle against
+illness and its triumphant issue. When May hinted at a period of
+rest--the full extent of it was not disclosed--Foster nodded tolerantly,
+Japhet said times were critical, and the rest declared that they would
+not flog a willing horse, but knew that Mr. Quisante would do his duty.
+Unquestionably Henstead's effect was bad, both for the compromise and for
+Quisante. Minute by minute May saw how the old fascination grew on him,
+how more and more he forgot that this was to be the last effort, that it
+was an end, not a beginning. He gave pledges of action, he would not
+positively decline engagements, he talked as though he would be in his
+place in Parliament throughout the session. While doing all this he
+avoided meeting her eye; he would have found nothing worse than pity
+touched with amusement. But he kept declaring to her, when they had a
+chance of being alone, that he was loyal to their compact. "Though it's
+pretty hard," he added with a renewal of his bitterness against the fate
+that constrained him.
+
+"We ought never to have come," she said. "It makes it worse. I wish we
+hadn't."
+
+"Wait till you've heard me to-morrow night," he whispered, pressing her
+hand and looking into her eyes with the glee of anticipated triumph.
+
+He was going to make a great speech, she knew that very well; there were
+all the signs about him, the glee, the pride, the occasional absence of
+mind, the frequent appeal for sympathy, the need of a confidence to
+answer and confirm his own. Such a mood, in spite of its element of
+childishness, was yet a good one with him. It raised him above pettiness
+and made him impatient of old Foster's cunning little devices for
+capturing an enemy or confirming the allegiance of a doubtful friend. He
+had for the time forgotten himself in his work, the position in what he
+meant to do with it; he would have delivered that speech now if the price
+had been the loss of his seat; whatever the price was, that speech now
+would have its way, all of it, whole and unimpaired, even the passage on
+which Foster was consulted with the result that its suppression was
+declared imperative in view of Japhet Williams' feelings. "Damn Japhet
+Williams," said Quisante with a laugh, and Quisante's wife found herself
+wishing that he would "damn" a few more men and things. It was just the
+habit that he wanted, just the thing that Marchmont and Dick Benyon and
+men like them had. Oh, if he could win and keep it!
+
+"He must consider local feeling," said old Foster, pinching a fat chin in
+fear and doubt.
+
+"No, he needn't, no, he needn't now," she cried. "He'll carry it with
+him, whatever he does now. Don't you see? He can take them all with him
+now. Wait till you've heard him to-morrow night!"
+
+Here was happiness for her and for him, but where else? Not in the
+compromise, not in the year of quiet. It seemed to be for this that they
+had come together, in this that they could help one another, feel with
+one another, be really at one. And this could not be. The tears stood in
+May Quisante's eyes as she turned away from the pleasant shrewd old
+schemer; his picture should stand no more on the mantelpiece. But now it
+seemed again strange and incredible that this, the great career, could
+not be; Aunt Maria's was the creed for a time like this.
+
+The great night came, and a great crowd in the Corn Exchange. Old Foster
+was in the chair and the place seemed full of familiar faces; the butcher
+who was troubled about slaughter-houses sat side by side with the man who
+was uneasy about his deceased wife's sister; Japhet Williams was on the
+platform and his men sat in close ranks at the back of the hall, they and
+Dunn's contingent hard-by smoking their pipes as the custom was at
+Henstead. There were other faces, not so usual; for far away, in a
+purposely chosen obscurity, May saw Weston Marchmont and the Dean of St.
+Neot's. The Mildmays themselves could not be present, but these two had
+come over from Moors End and sat there now, the Dean beaming in
+anticipation of a treat, Marchmont with a rather supercilious smile and
+an air of weariness. May could not catch their eyes but she felt glad to
+have them there; it was always pleasant to her that her friends should
+see Quisante when he was at his best, and he was going to be at his best
+to-night.
+
+"We are rejoiced to welcome our Member back among us in good health and
+strength again," old Foster began, quite in the Aunt Maria style, and he
+went on to describe the grief caused by Quisante's illness and the joy
+now felt at the prospect of his being able to render services to his
+Queen, his country, and his constituency no less long than valuable and
+brilliant. Quisante listened with a smile, gently tapping the table with
+his fingers. May turned from him to seek again her friends' faces in the
+hall; this time she met their gaze; they were both looking at her with
+pitying eyes; the instant they saw her glance, they avoided it. What did
+that mean? It meant that they were not of Aunt Maria's party. The kindly
+compassionate look of those two men went to her heart; it brought back
+reality and pierced through the pretence, the grand pretence, which
+everybody, herself included, had been weaving. An impulse of fear laid
+hold of her; involuntarily she put out her hand towards Foster who had
+just finished his speech and was sitting down. She meant to tell him to
+stop the meeting, to send the people home, to help her to persuade
+Quisante to go back to the hotel and not to speak. Foster looked round to
+see what she wanted, but at the moment Quisante was already on his feet.
+"It's nothing," May whispered, withdrawing her hand. It was too late now,
+the thing must go forward now, whatever the end of it might be, whatever
+the friendly pity of those eyes might seem to say. To-morrow quiet would
+begin; but she had a new, strange, intense terror of to-night. This
+feeling lasted through the early part of Quisante's speech, when he was
+still in a quiet vein and showed some signs of physical weakness. But as
+he went on it vanished and in its place came the old faith and the old
+illusion. For he gathered force, he put out his strength, he exhaled
+vitality. Again she sought her friends' faces and marked with joy and
+triumph that their eyes were now set on the speaker and their attention
+held firmly, as the fine resonant voice filled the building and seemed to
+resent the confinement of its walls, or even more when a whisper, heard
+only by a miracle as she thought, thrilled even the most distant
+listener. The speech was being all that it had been going to be, his
+confidence and hers were to be justified. The pronouncement that the
+country waited for was coming, the fighting men were to get the lead they
+wanted, the attack was sounded, the battle was being opened to the sound
+of a trumpet-call. May leant forward, listening. A period reached its
+close, and applause delayed the beginning of the next. Quisante glanced
+round and saw his wife; their eyes met; a slow smile came on his lips, a
+smile of great delight. Once more her heart beat and her eyes gleamed for
+him, once more she would be no man's if she could not be his. His air was
+gay and his face joyful as, the next minute, he threw himself into a
+flood of eloquence where indignation mingled with ridicule; he made men
+doubt whether they must laugh or fight. Now he had all that he desired,
+men hung on his words, and she sat by, and saw, and felt, and shared.
+
+At the next pause, when the cheering again imposed a momentary silence,
+the Dean turned to Marchmont, raising his hands and dropping them again.
+
+"Yes, he can do it," said Marchmont in a curious tone; envy and scorn and
+admiration all seemed to find expression.
+
+"Look at her!" whispered the Dean, but this time Marchmont made no
+answer. He had been looking at her, and knew now why she had tied her
+life to Alexander Quisante's.
+
+"If I could do it like that I couldn't stop doing it," said the Dean.
+
+"He never will as long as he lives," answered Marchmont with a shrug of
+his shoulders.
+
+"But he won't live?" whispered the Dean. "You mean that?"
+
+The applause ended; there was no need for Marchmont to answer, even if he
+could have found an answer. Quisante took up his work again. He was near
+the end now, an hour and a quarter had passed. May's eyes never left him;
+he was going to get through, she thought, and she had no thought now of
+the compromise or the year of quiet, no thought except of his triumph
+that to-morrow would ring through the land. He paused an instant, whether
+in faltering or for effect she could not tell, and then began his
+peroration. It was short, but he gave every word slowly, apart, as it
+were in a place of its own, in the sure and superb confidence that every
+word had its own office, its own weight, and its own effect. But before
+he ended there came one interruption. Suddenly, as though moved by an
+impulse foreign to himself, old Foster pushed back his chair and rose to
+his feet; after an instant the whole audience imitated him. Quisante
+paused and looked round; again he smiled; then, taking a step forward to
+clear himself of those who surrounded him, he went on. Thus he ended his
+speech, he standing, to men and women one and all standing about and
+before him.
+
+"I never saw such a thing," whispered the Dean of St. Neot's. But his
+words were lost in the cheers, and Weston Marchmont's "Bravo" rang out so
+loud that May Quisante heard it on the platform and bent forward to kiss
+her hand to him.
+
+In the tea-room, to which all the important persons withdrew after the
+meeting, festivity reigned. Quisante was surrounded by admirers, busy
+listening to compliments and congratulations, and receiving the advice of
+the local wise men. May did not attempt to get near him, but surrendered
+herself to a like process. Old Foster came up to her and shook hands,
+saying, "I'm proud to have had a hand in making Mr. Quisante member for
+Henstead. You were right too; he can say what he likes now."
+
+Then came Japhet Williams' thin voice. "I hope it won't be many days
+before Mr. Quisante tells the House of Commons what he's told us
+to-night."
+
+Should she say that he would not tell anything to the House of Commons
+for many days, probably not ever, that his voice would not be heard
+there? They would not believe her, she hardly would believe herself. In
+that hour illness and retirement seemed dim and distant, unreal and a
+little ludicrous. She abandoned herself to the temptation pressed upon
+her and talked as though her husband were to lead all through the
+campaign that he had opened.
+
+"I never saw him looking better in my life," said Foster.
+
+As he spoke a short thick-set man with grey hair pushed by him. Old
+Foster caught him by the wrist, crying with a laugh, "Why, Doctor, what
+are you doing here? You're one of the enemy!"
+
+"I came to hear the speech."
+
+"A good'un, eh?"
+
+"Never mind the speech. Take me over to Mr. Quisante--now, directly."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"He must go home."
+
+"Go home? Nonsense. He's all right."
+
+Dr. Tillman wrenched his hand away, shook his head scornfully, and
+started across the room toward where Quisante was. May laid her hand on
+old Foster's arm.
+
+"What did he say? Does he think my husband ill?"
+
+"I don't know. It's all nonsense."
+
+Another voice broke in.
+
+"A triumph, Lady May, a triumph indeed!"
+
+She turned to find the Dean and Marchmont close behind her, and the Dean
+holding out his hand as he spoke.
+
+"Yes, yes," she said hurriedly and uncomfortably. "It was fine, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"It was magnificent," said Marchmont.
+
+"Thanks, thanks." Her tone was still hurried, absent, ungracious. The two
+looked at her in surprise. Where was the radiance of triumph that had lit
+up her face as she signalled to them from the platform? They had expected
+to find her full of the speech and had been prepared to give her joy by
+the warmth and sincerity of their praise.
+
+"What's the matter?" whispered Marchmont.
+
+"Do you see that short man, the one with grey hair, trying to get near
+Alexander It's the doctor--Dr. Tillman. He can't get near Alexander."
+
+"What does he want?"
+
+"I don't know. He thinks he ought to go home. He thinks--Ah, now he's
+getting to him! Look! He's speaking to him now!"
+
+They saw the doctor come up to Quisante and Quisante smile as he waited
+for the visitor to introduce himself. The doctor began to speak quickly
+and energetically. "Oh, thank you very much, but I'm all right," came
+suddenly in loud clear tones from Quisante. The doctor spoke again.
+Quisante shook his head, laughing merrily. Marchmont looked at May; her
+eyes were on her husband and they were full of fear. "I'd forgotten," he
+heard her murmur. She turned to him with an imploring air. "He won't
+listen," she said.
+
+A burst of laughter came from Quisante's group; he had made some joke and
+they all applauded him. Tillman stood for a moment longer before him,
+then gave a queer jerk of his head, and turned sharp round on his heel.
+He came back towards where she stood. She took a step forward and thus
+crossed his path, Marchmont and the Dean standing on either side of her.
+
+"You remember me, Dr. Tillman?" she asked. "I'm Mr. Quisante's wife, you
+know."
+
+He stood still, looking at her angrily from under his bushy eyebrows.
+
+"Take him home then," he said sharply. "It was madness to let him come
+here at all. You're flying in the face of the advice you've had. Oh, I
+know about it. Let me tell you, you're very lucky to have got through so
+far."
+
+"We--we're through all right now," she said.
+
+"Are you? I hope so. The man's in a high state of excitement now, and
+high states of excitement aren't good for him." He paused and added
+impatiently, "Have you no influence over him? Can none of you do anything
+with him?"
+
+"He won't like it if I go to him," May whispered.
+
+"I'll go," said the Dean, stepping forward.
+
+"Yes," said Tillman, "go and tell him Lady May Quisante wants him."
+
+The Dean started off on his errand. The doctor's manner grew a little
+gentler.
+
+"You couldn't be expected to know," he said. "But in a thing like this
+you mustn't think he's all right because he looks all right. He'll look
+his best just at the time when there's most--well, when he isn't. I hope
+he's going to keep quiet after this?"
+
+"Yes, yes. At least we've arranged that. Weston, do go and bring him to
+me."
+
+"Look, he's coming now with the Dean."
+
+Quisante's group opened, and he began to move towards them. But at every
+step somebody stopped him, to shake hands and to say a few words of
+thanks or praise. The Dean kept urging him on gently, but he would not be
+hurried.
+
+"Now take him straight home," said Tillman. "Good-night." And hardly
+waiting for May's bow he turned away and disappeared among the throng
+that was making for the door.
+
+Quisante, at last escaping from his admirers, came up to his wife. His
+eyes were very bright, and he ran to her, holding out both his hands. She
+put hers in his and said, "We must go home. You'll be worn out."
+
+"Worn out? Not I! But you look worn out. Come along. Ah, Marchmont, this
+is a compliment indeed."
+
+They were almost alone in the room now. May took her husband's arm and
+they walked thus together.
+
+"Are you pleased?" he whispered.
+
+"Am I pleased!" she said with the laugh he knew and an upward glance of
+her eyes. Quisante himself laughed and drew himself to his full height,
+carrying his head defiantly. For though he sought and loved to please
+all, it was pleasing her that had been foremost in his mind that night.
+He had remembered the boast he made on Duty Hill; now it was justified,
+and he had once again tasted his sweetest pleasure.
+
+They had to wait in an ante-room while their carriage was sent for. Here
+the Dean and Marchmont joined them again. They were there when old Foster
+rushed in in great excitement.
+
+"The whole town's in the square," he cried. "There's never been anything
+like it in Henstead. You'll say just a word to them from the steps, sir?
+Only a word! They're all waiting there for you. You'll say just a word?
+I'll be back in an instant." And he bustled out again.
+
+Quisante walked across to a window that opened on to the Market Square.
+He looked out, then turned and beckoned to his wife. The whole town
+seemed to be in the square, as Foster said, and the people caught sight
+of him as he stood in the window with the lighted room behind him. They
+broke into loud cheering. Quisante bowed to them. Then a sudden short
+shiver seemed to run through him; he put his hand first to his side, then
+to his head.
+
+"I feel queer" he said to his wife. "I think I--I won't--I won't speak
+any more. I feel so--so queer." Her eyes were fixed on him now, and his
+on hers. He smiled and tapped his forehead lightly with his hand. "It's
+nothing," he said. "You were pleased, weren't you, to-night?" Again he
+put his hands in hers. She found no word to say and they stood like this
+for a moment. The cheers ceased, the crowd outside was puzzled. Marchmont
+jumped up from his chair and walked forward hastily.
+
+"Anything wrong?" he asked.
+
+Neither heeded him. May's eyes were set in terror on her husband's face;
+for now she was holding him up by the power of her hands gripped in his;
+without them he would fall. Nay, he would fall now!
+
+He spoke in a low thick voice. "It's come," he said, "it's come." And he
+sank back into Weston Marchmont's arms, his wife letting go his hands and
+standing rigid.
+
+Old Foster ran in again, calling, "Are you ready, sir?" He found his
+answer. Alexander Quisante would speak no more in Henstead. He was
+leaning against Marchmont, breathing heavily and with sore difficulty.
+May went to him; she was very white and very calm; she took his hand and
+kissed it.
+
+"I--I--I spoke well?" he muttered. "Didn't I?"
+
+"Very very finely, Alexander."
+
+"They were--were all wrong in saying I couldn't do it," he murmured. He
+shivered again and then was still. The Dean had brought a chair and they
+put him in it. But he moved no more. May looked at old Foster who stood
+by, his face wrung with helpless distress and consternation.
+
+"We've killed him among us, I and you and the people out there," she said.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                              A RELICT.
+
+
+"Yes, I asked her," said Weston Marchmont, "but--Well, I don't think
+she'd mind you reading her letter, and I should rather like you to." He
+flung it across the table to Dick Benyon. "I half see what she means,"
+said he, lighting a cigarette.
+
+Dick took the letter with an impatient frown. "I don't," he said, as he
+settled himself to read it.
+
+    "My dear Friend, I have thought it over, many times, in many
+    different moods, and in all of them I have always wanted to do what
+    you ask. Not for your sake, not because you ask me, but for my own.
+    I think I should be very happy, and as you know I have never yet
+    been very happy. I wasn't while my husband was alive. Imagine my
+    finding side by side in his desk the doctor's letter saying it was
+    certain death to go to Henstead and that report of Professor
+    Maturin's which he suppressed and told me had been destroyed. That
+    brought him back to me just as he was. With you I think I should be
+    happy. I should never be afraid, I should never be ashamed. What
+    fear and what shame I used to feel! I write very openly to you about
+    myself and about him; if I were answering as you wish, I would not
+    say a word against him. But I can't. That's just the feeling. You
+    tell me I am free, that two years have gone by, that I might find a
+    new life for myself, that you love me. I know it all, but except the
+    last none of it sounds true. You know that once I thought about
+    being free and that then you were in my thoughts. Who should be, if
+    you were not? Except him and you I have never thought of any man.
+    And I want to come to you now. He is too strong for me. Is it really
+    two years ago? Surely not! I seem still to hear his speech, and
+    still to see him fall into your arms. I should always hear him, and
+    always see that. I'm afraid you won't understand me, least of all
+    when I say I don't feel sure that I want him back. That would mean
+    the fear and the shame again. But he was so marvellous. How right he
+    was! They followed the lead he gave them at Henstead; and even you,
+    dear recluse, know that there was a change of Government last year.
+    And I am quite rich out of the Alethea. For he was right and the
+    poor Professor, who was supposed to know all about it, was
+    absolutely, utterly, hopelessly wrong. And the Crusade's come to
+    nothing, and--and so on.
+
+    I wish I was convincing you; but I never did. You didn't understand
+    why I married him, why in face of everything I behaved pretty well
+    to him, why his death left everything blank to me. Nobody quite
+    understood, except old Aunt Maria who just quietly died as soon as
+    he was gone. And you'll understand me no better now. I resent the
+    way the world forgets him. There seems nothing of him left. My
+    little girl is all Gaston; she lives with Gastons, she has the
+    Gaston face and the Gaston ways. She's not a bit Quisante; she's
+    nothing of him, nothing that he has left behind. If we'd had a son,
+    a boy like him, I might feel differently. But, as it is, what's
+    left? Only me. I am left, and I am not altogether a Gaston now,
+    though it's the Gaston and nothing else that you like. No, I'm not
+    all Gaston now. I've become Quisante in part--not in every way, or I
+    shouldn't have felt as I did when I found the Professor's report.
+    But he has laid hold of me, and he doesn't let go. I can't help
+    thinking that he needn't have died except on my account. You feel
+    sore that I don't love you, not as you want me to. He was sore too
+    because I didn't love him; and since he couldn't make me love him,
+    he had to make me wonder at him; he was doing that when he died. So
+    I feel that I can't do anything to blot him out, and that I must
+    stay Quisante, somebody bearing his name, representing him, keeping
+    him in a way alive, being still his and not anybody else's.
+
+    For I still feel his and I still feel him alive. You can love
+    people, and then forget them, and love somebody else; or love
+    somebody else without forgetting. Love is simple and gentle and, I
+    suppose, gives way. Alexander doesn't give way. I shall hurt you
+    now, I'm afraid, but I must say it. After him there can be no other
+    man for me. I think I'm sorry I ever married him, for I could have
+    loved somebody else and yet looked on at him. Or couldn't I? You'll
+    say I couldn't. Anyhow, as it is, I've come too near to him, seen
+    too much of him, become too much a part of him. You might think me
+    mad if I told you he often seemed to be with me and that I'm not
+    frightened, but admire and laugh as I used; I needn't fear any more.
+    So it is; and since it is so, how can I come to you? What is it they
+    call widows on tombstones and in the _Times_? Relicts, isn't it? I'm
+    literally his relict, something he's left behind. As I say, the only
+    thing. He can't come back for me, I suppose. But I feel as if he'd
+    pick me up somewhere some time, and we should begin over again, and
+    go on together. Where to I don't know. I never knew where he would
+    end by taking me to. And you, dear friend, mustn't make his relict
+    your wife. It's not right for you, it wouldn't be right for me. We
+    should pretend that nothing had happened, that I'd made a mistake,
+    that it was luckily and happily over, and that I was doing now what
+    I ought to have done in the beginning. All that's quite false. I
+    suppose everybody has one great thing to do in life, one thing that
+    determines what they're to be and how they're to end. I did my great
+    thing, for good or evil, when I became his wife. I can't undo it or
+    go back on it, I can't become what I was before I did it. I can't be
+    now what you think me and wish me to be. His stamp is on me.
+
+    I write very sadly; for I didn't love him. And now I can love
+    nobody. I shall never quite know what that means. Or is it possible
+    that I loved him without knowing it, and hated him sometimes just
+    because of that? I mean, felt so terribly the times when he
+    was--well, what you know he was sometimes. I find no answer to that.
+    It never was what I thought love meant, what they tell you it means.
+    But if love can mean sinking yourself in another person, living in
+    and through him, meaning him when you say life, then I did love him.
+    At any rate, whatever it was, there it is. Yet I'm not very unhappy.
+    I have a feeling--it will seem strange to you, like all my
+    feelings--that I have had a great share in something great, that
+    without me he wouldn't have been what he was, that I gave as well as
+    took, and brought my part into the common stock. We did odd things,
+    he and I in our partnership, things never to be told. My poor cheeks
+    burn still, and you remember that I cried. But we did great things
+    too, he and I, and at the end we were for a little while together in
+    heart. It wouldn't have lasted? Perhaps not. As it was it lasted
+    long enough--till 'it came', as he said, and he died asking me to
+    tell him that he had spoken well. I'm very glad he knew that I
+    thought he had spoken well.
+
+    So out of this rambling letter comes the end of it. Be kind to me,
+    be my friend, and be somebody else's lover, dear Weston. For I am
+    spoilt for you. 'Her mad folly'--that was what you thought it. Well,
+    it isn't ended, not even death has ended it. He reaches me still
+    from where he is--Ah, and what is he doing? I can't think of him
+    doing nothing. Shall I hear of all he's done some day? Will he tell
+    me himself, and watch my lips and my eyes as I listen to him? I
+    don't know. These are dreams, and perhaps I wouldn't have them come
+    true; for he might do dreadful things again. But I can't marry you.
+    For to me he is not dead, he lives still, and I am his. I can as
+    little say whether I like it as I could while he was here. But now,
+    as then, it is so; whether I like it is little; it is what has come
+    to me, my lot, my place, my fate, the end of me, the first and last
+    word about me. And--yes--I am content to have it so. He loved me
+    very much, and he was a very great man. You'll wonder again, but I'm
+    a proud woman among women, Weston dear. Goodbye."
+
+Dick Benyon laid down the letter, and pushed it back to Weston Marchmont.
+
+"Yes, I see," said he.
+
+
+
+              TURNBULL AND SPEARS. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Quisante, by Anthony Hope
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