_ 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. _