"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."