_ 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. _