Weston Marchmont made, as might be expected, the Great Refusal, although not in the impressive or striking manner which such a phrase may seem to imply. Twisting his claret glass in his long thin fingers, he observed with low-voiced suavity that in ecclesiastical matters, as doubtless in most others, he was behind the times; he was a loyal Establishment man and had every intention of remaining such, and for his own part he found it possible to reconcile the ultimate postulates of faith with the ultimate truths of science. As soon as ultimates came on the scene, the Dean felt that the game was up; the Crusade depended on an appeal to classes which must be reached, if they could be reached at all, by something far short of ultimates. Ultimates were for the few; one reason, among others, why Marchmont fondly affected them. Marchmont proceeded to remark that in his doubtless out-of-date view the best thing was to preserve the traditions and the traditional limits of Church work and Church influence. He did not say in so many words that the Church was a good servant but a bad master, yet Dick and the Dean gathered that this was his opinion, and that he would look with apprehension on any movement directed to bringing ecclesiastical pressure to bear on secular affairs. In all this he assumed politely that the Crusade could succeed, but the lift of his brows which accompanied the concession was very eloquent.
"Then," he ended apologetically, "there's the danger of vulgarity. One puts up with that in politics, but I confess I shrink from it in religion."
"What appeals to everybody is not necessarily vulgar," said the Dean.
"Not necessarily," Marchmont agreed, with the emphasis on the second word. "But," he added, "it's almost of necessity untrue, and after all religion has to do with truth." He was getting near his ultimates again.
There was a pause; then Marchmont laughed and said jokingly,
"You'll have to go to the Radicals, Dick. They're the dogmatic party nowadays, and they'll be just as ready to manage your soul for you as they are your property."
"That's just what I don't mean to do," said Dick obstinately. But he looked a little uncomfortable. It was important to preserve the attitude that fighting the Radicals was no part of the scheme of the Crusade. Marchmont smiled at the Dean across the table.
"I love the Church, Mr. Dean," he said, "but I'm afraid of the churchmen."
"Much what I feel about politics and politicians."
"Then if churchmen are politicians too——?" Marchmont suggested; the Dean's laughter admitted a verbal defeat. But when Marchmont had gone he shook his head over him again, saying, "He'll not be great; he's much too sane."
"He's too scrupulous," said Dick. The Dean protested with a smile. "I mean too fastidious," Dick added, correcting himself.
"Yes, yes, too fastidious," agreed the Dean contentedly. "And when I said sane perhaps I rather meant cautious, unimaginative, and cold." Both felt the happier for the withdrawal of their hastily chosen epithets.
This conversation had occurred in the early days of Dick's acquaintance with Alexander Quisanté, when, although already much taken with the man, he had a clearer view of what he was than enthusiasm allowed later on. Rejecting Marchmont, or rather acquiescing in Marchmont's refusal, on the ground of his excessive caution, his want of imagination, and his fastidiousness, he had hesitated to sound Quisanté in regard to the great project. It seemed to him impossible to regard his new friend as an ideal leader for this purpose; one reason is enough to indicate—the ideal leader should be absolutely unselfish by nature. By nature Quisanté was very far from that, and his circumstances were not such as to enable him to overcome the bent of his disposition; whatever else he was or might become, he would be self-seeking too, and it would be impossible ever to make him steadily and deliberately forgetful of himself.
But as time went on, another way opened before Dick's eyes and was cautiously and tentatively hinted at to his confidant, the Dean. The Dean, having seen a little and heard much of Quisanté, was inclined to be encouraging. There were in him possibilities not to be found in Marchmont. He was not fastidious, he would not trouble himself or other people about ultimates, above all he could be fired with imagination. Once that was achieved, he would speak and seem as though he were all that the ideal leader ought to be, as though inspiration filled him; he would express what Dick could only feel and the Dean do no more than adumbrate; nay, in time, as he grew zealous in the cause, his self-interest and personal ambition would be conquered, or at least would be so blended and fused with the nobility of the cause as to lose any grossness or meanness which might be thought to characterise them in an uncompounded condition. All this might be achieved if only the great idea could be made to seem great enough and the potentialities which lay in its realisation invested with enough pomp and dignity. After all was not such a blend of things personal and things beyond and higher than the personal as much as could reasonably be expected from human beings, and adequate to the needs of a work-a-day world?
"I don't want to be a bishop, but I do mean to stick to my deanery through thick and thin," said the Dean, smiling. Dick understood him to mean that allowance must be made for the personal element, and that a man might serve a cause very usefully without being prepared to go quite as far as the stake, or even the workhouse, for it; if this were not so, there would be less competition for places in State and Church.
Such great schemes for causing right ideas to prevail in things spiritual and temporal and for placing the right men in the right positions to ensure this important result are material here only so far as they influence the career or illustrate the character of individuals. The Crusade did not perhaps do as much towards altering the face of the world, or even of this island, as it was intended to, but it had a considerable, if temporary, effect on current politics, and it appeared to Quisanté to be at once a fine conception and a notable opportunity; between these two aspects he did not, as Dick Benyon had foreseen, draw any very rigid line. To make the Church again a power with the masses; this done, to persuade the masses to use their power under the leadership of the Church; this done, to harmonise unimpaired liberty of conscience with a whole-hearted devotion to truth, and to devote both to ends which should unite the maximum of zeal for the Community with the minimum of political innovation, were aims which, if they were nothing else, might at least claim to be worthy to exercise the intellect of superior men and to inspire the eloquence of orators. That a set of people on the other side was professing to do the same things, with totally different and utterly wrong notions of the results to be obtained, afforded the whet of antagonism, and let in dialectic and partisanship as a seasoning to relieve the high severity of the main topic. Quisanté's personal relations with the Church had never been intimate; he was perhaps the better able to lay hold of its romantic and picturesque aspect. The Dean, for instance, was hampered and at times discouraged by a knowledge of details. Dick Benyon had to struggle against the family point of view as regarded the family livings. Quisanté came almost as a stranger, ready to be impressed, to take what suited him, to form the desired opinion and no other; if a legal metaphor may be allowed, to master what was in his brief, to use that to the full, and to know nothing to the contrary. The Empire was very well, but it was a crowded field; the new subject had advantages all its own and especial allurements.
Yet Miss Quisanté laughed, as a man's relatives often will although the rest of the world is unimpeachably grave. For any person engaged in getting a complete view of Alexander Quisanté it was well to turn from Dick Benyon to Aunt Maria. So May Gaston found when she took the old woman at her word and went to see her, unaccompanied by Lady Attlebridge. She listened awhile to her caustic talk and then charged her roundly with not doing justice to her nephew.
"Sandro's caught you too, has he?" was her hostess's immediate retort.
"No, he hasn't caught me, as you call it, Miss Quisanté," said May, smiling. "I dislike a great deal in him." She paused before adding, "What's more, I've told him so."
"He'll be very pleased at that."
"He didn't seem to be."
"I didn't say he was pleased, I said he would be," remarked Aunt Maria placidly. "No doubt you vexed him at the time, but when he's thought it over, he'll be flattered at your showing so much interest in him."
"I shouldn't like him to take it like that," said May thoughtfully.
"It's the true way to take it, though."
"Well then, I suppose it is. Except that there's no reason why my interest should flatter anybody." She determined on an offensive movement against the sharp confident old lady. "All his faults are merely faults of bringing up. You brought him up; why didn't you bring him up better?"
Miss Quisanté looked at her for several moments.
"I didn't bring him up well, that's true enough," she said. "But, my dear, don't you run off with the idea that there's nothing wrong with Sandro except his manners."
"That's exactly the idea I have about him," May persisted defiantly.
"Ah!" sighed Aunt Maria resignedly. "Probably you'll never know him well enough to find out your mistake."
Warnings pique curiosity as often as they arouse prudence.
"I intend to know him much better if he'll let me," said May.
"Oh, he'll let you." The old lady's gaze was very intent; she had by now made up her mind that this must be Sandro's Empress. Had she been omnipotent, she would at that moment have decreed that Sandro should never see his Empress again; she was quite clear that he and his Empress would not be good for one another. "I begin to hear them talking about him," she went on with a chuckle. "He's coming into fashion, he's to be the new man for a while. You London people love a new man just as you do a new craze. You're fine talkers too. I like your buzz. It's a great hum, hum, buzz, buzz. It turns some men's heads, but it only sharpens others' wits; it won't turn Sandro's head."
"I'm glad you allow him some virtues."
"Oh, if it's a virtue to look so straight forward to where you mean to get that nothing will turn your head away from it."
"That's twisting your own words, Miss Quisanté. I don't think he's that sort of man at all; he isn't the least your—your iron adventurer. He's full of emotion, of feeling, of—well, almost of poetry. Oh, not always good poetry, I know. But how funny that I should be defending him and you attacking him; it would be much more natural the other way round."
"I don't see that. I know him better than you do. Now he's to champion the Church—or some such nonsense! What's Sandro got to do with your Church? What does he care about it?"
"He cared about his subject the other evening; you must admit that."
"Oh, his subject! Yes, he cares about it while it's his subject."
May laughed. "I want to take just one liberty, Miss Quisanté," she said. "May I? I want to tell you that I think you're a great deal more than half wrong about your nephew."
"Even if I am, I'm right enough for practical purposes with the other part," said the obstinate old woman. She leant forward and spoke with a sudden bitter emphasis. "It's not all outside, he's wrong inside too."
"It's too bad of you, oh, it really is," cried May indignantly. "You who ought to stand up for him and be his greatest friend!"
"Oh, yes, I see! I've overshot my mark. I'm a blunderer."
"Your mark? What mark? Why do you want to tell me about him at all?"
"I don't," said Miss Quisanté, folding her hands in her lap and assuming an air of resolute reticence. But her eyes dwelt now with an imperfectly disguised kindness on the tall fair girl who pleaded for justice and saw no justice in the answers that she got. But the more Aunt Maria inclined to like May Gaston, the more determined was she not to palter with truth, the more determined to have no hand in giving the girl a false idea of Sandro. So far as lay in her power, Sandro's Empress should know the whole truth about Sandro.
The buzz of London, to which Miss Quisanté referred as beginning to sound her nephew's name, revealed to the ear three tolerably distinct notes. There were the people who laughed and said the thing was no affair of theirs; this section was of course the largest, embracing all the naturally indifferent as well as the solid mass of the opposite political party. There were the people who were angry at Dick Benyon's interference and at his protégé's impudence; in the ranks of these were most of Dick's political comrades, together with their wives and daughters. Here the resentment was at the idea that there was any vacancy, actual or prospective, which could not be filled perfectly well without the intrusion of such a person as Quisanté. Thirdly there was the small but gradually growing group which inclined to think that there was something in Dick's notions and a good deal in his friend's head. A reinforcement came no doubt from the persons who were naturally prone to love the new and took up Quisanté as a welcome change, as something odd, with a flavour of the unknown and just a dash of the mystery-man about him.
The Quisanté-ites had undoubtedly something to say for themselves and something to show for their faith. Handicapped as he was by his sensational success at the Imperial League dinner, with its theatrical and faintly suspicious climax, Quisanté had begun well in the House. He broke away from his mentor's advice; Dick had been for more sensation, for storming the House; Quisanté rejected the idea and made a quiet, almost hesitating, entry on the scene. He displayed here a peculiarity which soon came to be remarked in him; on public occasions and in regard to public audiences he possessed a tact and a power of understanding the feelings of his company which entirely and even conspicuously failed him in private life. The House did not like being stormed, especially on the strength of an outside reputation; he addressed it modestly, bringing into play, however, resources with which he had not been credited—a touch of humour and a pretty turn of sarcasm. He knew his facts too, and disposed of contradictions with a Blue-book and a smile. The hypercritical were not silenced; Marchmont still found the smile oily, and his friends traced the humour to districts which they supposed to lie somewhere east of the London Hospital; but they were bound to admit sorrowfully that, although all this was true, it might not, under democratic institutions, prove fatal to a career.
Dick Benyon was enthusiastic; he told his friend that he had scored absolutely off his own bat and that there was and could be no more question of help or obligation. He was rather surprised by a display of feeling on Quisanté's part which seemed to indicate almost an excess of gratitude; but Quisanté felt his foot on the ladder, and the wells of emotion were full to overflowing. Dick escaped in considerable embarrassment, telling himself that remarkable men could not be expected to behave just like other men, like his sort of man, but wishing they would. None the less he praised what he hardly liked, and the reputation of being a good friend was added to Quisanté's credentials. Lastly, but far from least in importance, a story went the rounds that a very great veteran, who had taken a keen interest in Weston Marchmont, and designated him for high place in a future not remote, had recently warned him, in apparent jest indeed but with unmistakable significance, that it would not do to take things too easily, or let a rival obtain too long a start. There was nobody of whom the Statesman could be supposed to be thinking, except the dark horse that Dick Benyon had brought into the betting—Alexander Quisanté! Such predictions from such quarters have no small power of self-verification; they predispose lesser men to a fatalistic acquiescence which smoothes the way of the prophecy.
Marchmont, scorning the rival, was inclined to despise the dangers of the contest, but his supineness may have been in part due to the occupation of his mind by another interest. He had come to the conclusion that he wanted May Gaston for his wife and that she would accept his proposal. A few days before the Easter holidays began he betook himself to Lady Attlebridge's with the intention of settling the matter there and then. The purpose of his coming seemed to be divined; he was shown direct to May's own room, and found her there alone. She had been reading a letter and laid it down on a table by her; Marchmont could not help his eye catching the large printed address at the head of the sheet of paper, "Ashwood." Ashwood was Dick Benyon's country place. A moment later May explained the letter.
"I've had a wail from Amy Benyon," she said. "She wants me to go to them for Easter and comfort her. Look what she writes: "You must come, dear. I must be helped through, I must have a refuge. How in the world I ever did such a thing I don't know! But I did and I can't help it now. He's coming! So you must come. We expect the Baxters and Mr. Morewood. But I want you.""
"What has she done? Who's coming?" asked Marchmont.
"Mr. Quisanté."
He paused for a moment before he said, "You won't go, I suppose?"
"I must go if Amy wants me as much as that. Besides—well, perhaps it'll be interesting."
A chill fell on Marchmont, and its influence spread to his companion. Here at least he had hoped to be rid of Quisanté, to find a place where the man could not be met, and people to whom the man was as a friend impossible. May read his thoughts, but her purpose wavered. She liked him very much; that hot rebellious fit, which made her impatient of his limits, was not on her now. He had found her in a more reasonable normal mood, when his advantages pleaded hard for him, and the limits seemed figments of a disorderly transient fancy. Thus he had come happily, and success had been in the mood to kiss his standards.
"I wonder you can endure the man in the same house with you," he said.
She made no answer except to smile, and he spoke no more of Quisanté. To him it seemed that his enemy passed then and there from thought, as his name disappeared from the conversation. But his own words had raised difficulties and turned the smooth path rough. They had renewed something of the rebellious fit and given fresh life to the disorderly fancies. They had roused her ready apprehensive pride, her swift resentment at the idea of having her friends or her associates chosen for her. She would have said most sincerely then that Marchmont was far more to her in her heart than Quisanté was or could be, but neither from Marchmont nor from any man would she take orders to drop Quisanté. While he opened his tale of love, her fingers played with the invitation to Ashwood and her eyes rested on Lady Richard's despairing declaration of the inevitable—"He's coming!"
He almost won her; his soft "Can you love me?" went very near her heart. She wanted to answer "Yes" and felt sure that it would be in reality a true response, and that happiness would wait on and reward the decisive word. But she was held back by an unconquerable indecision, a refusal (as it seemed) of her whole being to be committed to the pledge. She had not resented the confidence of his wooing—she had given him some cause to be confident; she pitied and even hated the distress into which her doubt threw him. Yet she could do no more than say "I don't know yet." He moved away from her.
"You'd better go away and leave me altogether," she said.
"I won't do that. I can't."
"I can say nothing else—I don't know yet. You must give me time."
"Ah, you mean 'yes'!" His voice grew assured again and joyful.
She weighed the words in which she answered him.
"No. If I meant yes, I'd say it. I wouldn't shilly-shally. I simply don't know yet."
He left her and paced the length of the room, frowning. Her hesitation puzzled him; he failed to trace its origin and fretted against a barrier that he felt but could not see. She sat silent, looking at him in a distressed fashion and restlessly fingering Lady Richard's invitation. She was no less troubled than he and almost as puzzled; for the feeling that held her back even while she wanted to go forward was vague, formless, empty of anything definite enough to lay hold of and bring forward as the plea that justified her wavering.
"I ought to say no, since I can't say yes. This isn't fair to you," she murmured.
He protested that anything was better than no, and his protest was manifestly eager and sincere; but a touch of resentment could not be kept out of his voice. She should have a reason to give him, something he could combat, disprove, or ridicule; she gave him no opening, he could not answer an objection that she would not formulate. He pressed this on her and she made no attempt to defend herself, merely repeating that she could not say yes now.
"I've lost you, I suppose, and no doubt I shall be very sorry," she said.
At that he came up to her again.
"You haven't lost me and you never will," he said. "I'll come to you again before long. I think you're strange to-day, not quite yourself, not quite the old May. It's as if something had got between us. Well, I'll wait till it gets out of the way again."
Not so much his words as his voice and his eyes told her of a love deeper in him and stronger than she had given him credit for; he lived so much in repression and exercised so careful a guard over any display of feeling. She liked the repression no less than the feeling and was again drawn towards him.
"I wish I could," she murmured. "Honestly, I wish I could."
He pressed her no more; if he had, she might possibly at last have given a reluctant assent. That he would not have, even had it been in his power to gain it.
"I'll come back—after the holidays," he said.
She looked up and met his glance.
"Yes, after the holidays," she repeated absently.
"You go to Ashwood?"
There was a pause before she answered. It came into her mind suddenly that it would have been strange to go to Ashwood as Weston Marchmont's promised wife. Why she could not quite tell; perhaps because such a position would set her very much outside of all that was being thought and talked of there, indeed in a quasi-antagonism to it. Anyhow the position would make her feel quite differently towards it all.
"Yes," she answered at last, and mustered a laugh as she added, "I'm not so particular as you, you know. And Amy wants me."
"I wish you always did what people want you to," said he, smiling.
Their parting was in this lighter vein, although on his side still tender and on hers penitent. In both was a consciousness of not understanding, of being somehow apart, of an inexplicable difficulty in taking one another's point of view. The solution of sympathy, the break that May had talked of, made itself apparent again. In spite of self-reproaches, her strongest feeling, when she was left alone, was of joy that her freedom still was hers.
WHIMSY-WHAMSIES.
At Ashwood the sun was sinking after a bright April afternoon. Mrs. Baxter sat in a chair on the lawn and discoursed wisdom to May Gaston and Morewood. The rest of the party had gone for a walk to the top of what Lady Richard called "Duty Hill"; it was the excursion obligatory on all guests.
"The real reason," remarked Mrs. Baxter, who was making a garment—she was under spiritual contract to make two a month—"why the Dean hasn't risen higher is because he always has some whimsy-whamsy in his head."
"What are they? I never have 'em," said Morewood, relighting his pipe.
"You never have anything else," said Mrs. Baxter in a brief but sufficient aside. "And, my dear," she continued to May, "what you want in a bishop is reliability."
"The only thing I want in a bishop is absence," grunted Morewood.
"Reliability?" murmured May, half assenting, half questioning.
"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Baxter, biting her thread. "Reliability. I shall finish this petticoat to-morrow unless I have to drive with Lady Richard. You don't want him to be original, or to do much, except his confirmations and so on, of course; but you do want to be sure that he won't fly out at something or somebody. Dan got a reputation for not being quite reliable. I don't know how, because I haven't time to go into his notions. But there it was. Somebody told the Prime Minister and he crossed out Dan's name and put in John Wentworth's."
Morewood yawned obtrusively. "What a shame!" May murmured at random.
"It's just the same with a husband," Mrs. Baxter observed.
"Only it's rather more difficult to scratch out his name and put in John Wentworth's," Morewood suggested.
May laughed. "But anyhow the Dean's a good husband, isn't he, Mrs. Baxter?"
"Oh, yes, my dear. The same men very seldom fly out over notions and over women."
Morewood raised himself to a sitting posture and observed solemnly,
"The whole history of science, art, and literature contradicts that last observation."
Mrs. Baxter looked at him for a brief moment and went on with the petticoat. May interpreted her look.
"So much the worse for the whole history!" she laughed. But a moment later she went on, "I think I rather like whimsy-whamsies, though."
"I should think you did," said Morewood.
"A man ought to have a few," May suggested.
"A sort of trimming to the leg of mutton? Only take care the mutton's there!"
"Oh, not the mustard without the beef!" cried May.
"Now there's Canon Grinling," said Mrs. Baxter. "That's the man I admire."
"Pray tell us about him," urged Morewood.
"He's content to preach in his turn and work his parish."
"How much better than working his head!"
"And he'll be a bishop—at least."
"Is there anything worse?" growled Morewood disconsolately.
Mrs. Baxter never became angry with him; she turned a fresh side of the petticoat, smiled sedately, and went on with her work.
"We had whimsy-whamsies last night, hadn't we?" asked May.
"I went to bed," said Morewood.
"But Jenkins in the next parish, who has eight children, must take up with the Salvation Army. So there's an end of him," continued Mrs. Baxter. "Not that I pity him—only her."
"They talked till two. I sat up, looking plainer and plainer every minute."
"Who was talking?"
"Oh, the Dean and Dick." She paused and added, "And later on Mr. Quisanté."
"Quisanté grows more and more anomalous every day. It's monstrous of a man to defy one's power of judgment as he does."
"Does he defy yours?"
"Absolutely. And I hate it."
"I rather like it. You know so well what most people are like in half-an-hour."
"I'm splendidly forward," remarked Mrs. Baxter, "This isn't an April one. I've done them, and this is my first May."
It was impossible not to applaud and sympathise, for it was no later than the 27th of April. The friendly task performed, Morewood went on,
"You're friends again, aren't you?"
"Well, partly. He spoke to me last night for almost the first time."
"What was the quarrel?"
"I told him his manners were bad; and he proved how right I was by getting into a temper." She was silent a moment. Morewood saw her smile and then frown in apparent vexation. Then she looked down at him suddenly and said, "But then—if you'd heard him last night!"
"There it is again!" said Morewood. "That's what annoys me so. In common with most of mankind, I like to be able to label a man and put him in his compartment."
"That's just what you can't do with Mr. Quisanté."
A loud merry boyish laugh sounded from the shrubbery behind him. Then Lady Richard came out, attended by young Fred Wentworth, son of that John whose name had been put in when the Dean's was scratched out owing to a suspicion of whimsy-whamsies. Fred was a lively fellow, whose trinity of occupations consisted of shooting, polo, and flirting; they are set down in his own order of merit; by profession he was a soldier, and just now he adored Lady Richard hopelessly; he was tall, handsome, and no more steady than the sons of ordinary men.
"We gave them the slip beautifully, didn't we?" he was asking in exultation. "Think they're still on the top of the hill, jawing, Lady Richard?"
"I don't mind how long they stay there," she answered, as she came across to the group on the lawn, a dainty youthful little figure, in her white frock and straw hat. "And how have you three been amusing yourselves?" she inquired. "I declare my head aches, Fred," she complained. "Now is the Church to swallow the State, or the other way round, or are they to swallow one another, or what?"
"Such a fine day too!" observed Mrs. Baxter. Morewood burst into a laugh.
"To waste it on whimsy-whamsies!" cried May, joining in his mirth.
She looked so handsome in her merriment that Fred's eyes dwelt on her for a moment, a new notion showing in their pleasant expanse of blue simplicity. But loyalty's the thing—and a pleasant thing too when Lady Richard stood for it. Besides May Gaston was rather serious as a rule and given to asking questions; she might be able to flirt though; she just might—if there had happened to be anybody for her to flirt with; he pitied her a little because there was not.
"Mrs. Baxter," said Morewood suddenly, "have you ever thought what would happen if you stopped making petticoats?" She did not answer. "It illustrates," he went on, "the absurd importance we attach to ourselves. The race would get itself clothed somehow, even as Church and State will go on, although they fail to settle that question of the swallowing on the top of the hill."
May alone was listening. "Don't you think it all makes any difference?" she asked in a low voice.
"Not enough to stop enjoying one's self about, or to take any risks for."
"I disbelieve you with my whole heart and soul; and, what's more, you don't believe yourself," she said. "To take risks is what we were given life for, I believe."
"Whimsy-whamsies!" he jeered, jerking his thumb warningly towards Mrs. Baxter.
To May it seemed curious how an utter absence of speculation and an honest engrossment in everyday cares, hopes, and duties appeared to produce an attitude of mind similar in many ways to that caused by an extensive survey of thought and a careful detachment of spirit from the pursuits of the vulgar. The expression was different; the man who was now so much in her thoughts, Weston Marchmont, would not have denounced whimsy-whamsies. He would have claimed an open mind and protested that he was ready to entertain every notion on its merits. But temper and taste led to the same end as ignorance and simplicity; the philosopher and the housewife met on a common ground of disapproval and disdain. Mrs. Baxter kept her house and made petticoats. Marchmont read his books, mixed with his world, and did his share in his obvious duty of governing the country. Misty dreams, great cloudy visions, vague ideals, were forsworn of both; they were all whimsy-whamsies, the hardly excusable occupation of an idle day in the country. Was such a coincidence of opinion conclusive? Perhaps. But then, as she had hinted to Morewood, what of life? Was it not conclusive as to the merits of that also? Suddenly Fred Wentworth's voice broke across her meditation.
"If you asked me what I wanted," he said in a tone of great seriousness, "upon my honour I don't know what I should say, except another pony." He paused and added, "A real good 'un, you know, Lady Richard."
You might trust in God in an almost Quietist fashion (nothing less was at the bottom of Mrs. Baxter's homely serenity), you might exhaust philosophy and the researches of the wise, or you might merely be in excellent health and spirits. Any of these three seemed enough to exclude that painful reaching out to dim unlikely possibilities which must in her mind henceforward be nicknamed whimsy-whamsies. But to May's temper the question about life came up again. She swayed between the opposing sides, as she had swayed between yes and no when Marchmont challenged her with his love.
Lady Richard's verdict about Quisanté—she gave it with an air of laboured reasonableness—was that he proved worse on the whole than even she had anticipated. This pessimistic view was due in part to the constant and wearing difficulty of getting Fred Wentworth to be civil to him; yet May Gaston was half-inclined to fall in with it. The attitude of offence which he had at first maintained towards her was marked by peevishness, not by dignity, and when it was relaxed his old excessive politeness revived in full force. He had few 'moments' either; and the one reported to her with enthusiasm by Dick Benyon took place on Duty Hill while she was gossiping on the lawn. Disappointed in the half-conscious anticipation which had brought her to Ashwood, she began to veer towards the obvious, towards safety, and towards Weston Marchmont. He had allowed himself one letter, not urging her, but very gracefully and feelingly expressed. As she walked through the village, the telegraph-office tempted her; her life could be settled for sixpence, and there would be no need of further thought or trouble. She was again held back by a rather impalpable influence, by a vague unwillingness to cut herself off (as she would by such a step) from the mental stir which, beneath the apparent quiet of country-house life, permeated Ashwood. The stir was there, though it defied definition; it was not due to Dick or the Dean, though they shared in it; it was the mark of Quisanté's presence, the atmosphere he carried with him. She recognised this with a mixture of feelings; she was ashamed to dwell on his small faults in face of such a thing; she was afraid to find how strong his attraction grew in spite of the intolerable drawbacks. Wavering again, she could not decide whether his faults were fatal defects or trifling foibles.
She saw that the Dean shared her doubts and her puzzle. He had a little trick, an involuntary and unconscious shake of the head which indicated, as her study of it told her, not a mere difference of opinion, but a sort of moral distaste for what was said; it reminded her of a dog shaking his coat to get rid of a splash of dirty water. She came to watch for it when Alexander Quisanté was talking, and to find that it agreed wonderfully well with the invisible movements of her own mind; it came when the man was petty, or facetious on untimely occasions, or when he betrayed blindness to the finer shades of right and wrong. But for all this the Dean did not give up Quisanté; for all this he and Dick Benyon clung to their scheme and to the man who was to carry it out. In her urgent desire for guidance she took the Dean for a walk and tried to draw out his innermost opinions. He showed some surprise at her interest.
"He's the last man I should have thought you'd care to know about, Lady May," he said.
"That can be only because you think me stupid," she retorted, smiling.
"No! But I thought you'd be stopped in limine—on the threshold, you know."
"I see the threshold; and, yes, I don't like it. But tell me about the house too."
"I've not seen it all," smiled the Dean. "Well, to drop our metaphor, I think Mr. Quisanté has a wonderfully acute intellect."
"Oh, yes, yes."
"And hardly a wonderfully, but a rather noticeably, blunt conscience. Many men have, you'll say, I know. But most of the men we meet have substitutes."
"Substitutes for conscience?" May laughed reprovingly at her companion.
"Taste, tradition, the rules of society, what young men call 'good form.'"
"Ah, yes. And he hasn't?"
"His bringing up hasn't given them to him. He might learn them."
"Who from?"
"One would have hoped from our host, but I see no signs of it." The Dean paused, shaking his head "A woman might teach him." He paused again before adding with emphasis, "But I should be very sorry for her."
"Why?" The brief question was asked with averted eyes.
"Because the only woman who could do it must be the sort of woman who—whose teeth would be set on edge by him every day till the process—the quite uncertain process—was complete."
"Yes, she'd have to be that," murmured May Gaston.
"On the whole I think she'd have an unhappy life, and very likely fail. But I also think that it would be the only way." His round face broke again into its cheerful smile. "We shall have to make the best of him as he is, Lady May," he ended. "Heaven forbid that I should encourage any woman to the task!"
"I certainly don't think you seem likely to," she said with a laugh. "It seems to come to this: his manners are bad and his morals are worse."
"Yes, I think so."
"But, as Dick Benyon would say, so were Napoleon's."
"Exactly, and, as we know, Napoleon's wife was not to be envied."
May Gaston was silent for a moment; then she said meditatively, "Oh, don't you think so?", and fell again into a long silence. The Dean did not break it; his thoughts had wandered from the hypothetical lady who was to redeem Quisanté to the realities of the great Crusade.
There seemed to May something a little inhuman in the Dean's attitude, and indeed in the way in which everybody at Ashwood regarded Quisanté. Not even Dick Benyon was altogether free from this reproach, in spite of his enthusiasm and his resulting blindness to Quisanté's lesser, but not less galling, faults. Not even to Dick was he a real friend; none of them took him or offered to take him into their inner lives, or allowed him to share their deepest sympathies. Perhaps this was only to treat him as he deserved to be treated; if he asked nothing but a mutual usefulness and accommodation, that they should use him and he should rise by serving them, neither party was deceived and neither had any cause to complain. But if after all the man was like most men, if his chilly childhood and his lonely youth had left him with any desire for unreserved companionship, for true friendship, or for love, then to acquiesce in his bad manners and his worse morals, to be content (as the Dean said) to make the best of him—out of him would have been a more sincere form of expression—as he was, seemed in some sort cruelty; it was like growing rich out of the skill of your craftsmen and yet taking no interest in their happiness or welfare. It was to use him only as a means, and to be content in turn to be to him only a means; such a relative position excluded true human intercourse, and, it appeared to May, must intensify the faults from which it arose. Even here, in this house, Quisanté was almost a stranger; the rest were easy with one another, their presence was natural and came of itself; he alone was there for a purpose, came from outside, and required to be accounted for. If the talk with the Dean confirmed apprehensions already existing, on the other hand it raised a new force of sympathy and a fresh impulse to kindness. But the sympathy and the apprehensions could make no treaty; fierce war waged between them.
That night the turn of events served Quisanté. He seemed ill and tired, yet he had flashes of brilliancy. Again it was made plain that, all said and done, his was the master mind there; even Lady Richard had to listen and Fred Wentworth to wonder unwillingly where the fellow got his notions. After dinner he talked to them, and they gave him all their ears until he chose to cease and sank back wearied in his chair. But then came the contrast. The Dean went to the library, Lady Richard strolled out of doors with Fred, Mrs. Baxter withdrew into seclusion with a novel and a petticoat, Dick Benyon asked May to walk in the garden with him, and when she refused went off to play billiards with Morewood. May had pleaded letters to write and sat down to the task. The man who a little while ago had been the centre of attention was left alone. He wandered about idly for a few moments, then dropped into a chair, seeming too tired to read, looking fretful, listless, solitary and sad. She watched him furtively for some time from behind the tall sides of the old-fashioned escritoire; he sat very still, stretched out, frowning, pale. Suddenly she rose and crossed the room.
"It's too much trouble to write letters," she said. "Are you inclined for a stroll, Mr. Quisanté?"
He sprang up, a sudden gleam darting into his eyes. She was afraid he would make some ornate speech, but perhaps he was startled into simplicity, perhaps only at a loss; he stammered out no more than "Thanks, very much," and followed her through the doorway on to the gravel-walk. For a little while she did not speak, then she said,
"It's good of you to be friends with me again. I was very impertinent that night after your speech. I don't know what made me do it."
He did not answer, and she turned to find his eyes fixed intently on her face.
"We are friends again, aren't we?" she asked rather nervously; she knew that she risked a renewal of the flirtation, and if it were again what it had been her friendship could scarcely survive the trial. "I shouldn't have said it," she went on, "if I hadn't—I mean, if your speech hadn't seemed so great to me. But you forgive me, don't you?"
"Oh yes, Lady May. I know pretty well what you think of me." His lips shut obstinately for a moment. "But I shall go my way and do my work all the same—good manners or bad, you know."
"Those are very bad ones," she said, with a little laugh. Then she grew grave and went on imploringly, "Don't take it like that. You talk as if we—I don't mean myself, I mean all of us—were enemies, people you had to fight and beat. Don't think of us like that. We want to be your friends, indeed we do."
"For whom are you speaking?" he asked in a low hard voice.
She glanced at him. Had he divined the thought which the Dean's talk had put into her head? Did he feel himself a mere tool, always an outsider, in the end friendless? If he discerned this truth, no words of hers could throw his keen-scented mind off the track. She fell back on simple honesty, on the strength of a personal assurance and a personal appeal.
"At any rate I speak for myself," she said. "I can answer for myself. I want to be friends."
"In spite of my manners?" He was bitter and defiant still.
"They grow worse every minute; and your morals are no better, I'm told."
"I daresay not," said Quisanté with a short laugh.
"Oh, say you won't be friends, if you don't want to! Be simple. There, I say it again. Be simple."
Lady Richard's merry laugh rang through the garden, and a brusque "Damn it!" of Morewood's floated out from the open window of the billiard-room. There was an odd contrast to this cheerful levity in the man's pale drawn face as he looked into May Gaston's eyes.
"Do you really mean what you say?" he asked. "Or are you only trying to be kind, to put me at my ease?"
"It's nobody's fault but your own that you're not always at your ease," she replied. The rest she let pass; when she asked him to walk with her she had only been trying to be kind, and she had been fearful of what her kindness might entail on her. But things went well; he was not flirting and he was not acting; his manners, if still bad, were just now at least not borrowed, they were home-grown.
"I am at my ease," he told her. "At least, I was till——" He hesitated, and then went on slowly, "Don't you suppose I've been thinking about what you said?"
"I hope not; it wasn't worth it."
"It was. But how can I change?" His voice had a touch of despair as well as of defiance. "I don't see what you mean; I don't feel what you mean. Yes, and you talk of morals too. Well, don't I know that every now and then I—I don't see those either?" He paused. "A man must get on as well as he can with what he's got," he resumed. "If he's only got one eye, he must learn to be sharper than other men in looking round."
They walked on in silence for some way. His pride and his recognition of his defects, his defiance and his pleading for himself, combined to touch her heart, and she could not at the moment speak to him more about them. And to find all that so near the surface, so eager for utterance, ready to break out at the least encouragement, at the first sign of sympathy! For it had not come home to her yet that another might have spoken to him as she had, but found no response and opened the gates to no confidence; she had not guessed what Aunt Maria had about the Empress among women.
"You're ill too," she said.
"No, not for me," he answered. "I'm pretty well for me."
"Are you never really well?"
"My body's not much better than the other things. But I must use that too, as long as it'll last." There was no appeal for pity in his voice; defiance was still uppermost. May felt that she must not let him see that she pitied him, either for his bad body, or his bad manners, or his bad morals, or his want of friends. He thought he had as much to give as to receive. She smiled for a moment. But swift came the question—Was he wrong? But whether he were in fact right or wrong, it was harder to deal with him on the basis of this equality than to stoop to him in the mere friendliness of compassion. The compassion touched him only, to accept the equality was to make admissions about herself.
He was very silent and quiet; this might be due to illness or fatigue. But he was also curiously free from tricks, simple, not exhibiting himself. These were the signs of one of his moments; but what brought about a moment now? A moment needed a great subject, a spur to his imagination, an appeal to his deep emotions, a theme, an ideal. The moments had not seemed to May things that would enter into or have any concern with private life and intimate talks; they belonged to Dick Benyon's dark horse, not to the mere man Alexander Quisanté. Or had she a little misunderstood the mere man? The thought crossed her mind that, even if she adopted this conclusion and contrived to come to a better understanding of him, it would be impossible to make the rest of the world, of the world in which she lived and to which she clung, see anything of what she saw. They would laugh if her new position were a passing whim; they would be scornful and angry if it were anything more.
Suddenly Quisanté spoke. What he said was not free from consciousness of self, from that perpetual presence of self to self which is common enough in men of great ability and ambition, and yet never ceases to be a flaw; but he said it soberly enough; there were no flourishes.
"You can't be half-friends with me," he said. "I must be taken as I am, good and bad. You must let me alone, or take me for better for worse."
May smiled at the phrase he had happened on and its familiar associations—surely so out of place here. But she followed his meaning and appreciated his seriousness. She could answer him neither by an only half-sincere assurance that she was ready to be entire friends, nor yet by a joking evasion of his point.
"Yes, I see: I expect that is so," she said in a troubled voice; it was so very hard to take him for worse, and it was rather hard to resolve to make no effort at taking him for better. She forced a laugh, as she said, "I'll think about it, Mr. Quisanté."
As she spoke, she raised her eyes to his; a low, hardly audible exclamation escaped her lips before she was conscious of it. If ever a man spoke plainly without words what was in his soul, Quisanté spoke it then. She could not miss the meaning of his eyes; all unprepared as she was, it came home to her in a minute with a shock of wonder that forbade either pain or pleasure and seemed to leave her numb. Now she saw how truly she, no less than the others, had treated him as an outsider, as a tool, as something to be used, not as one of their own world. For she had never thought of his falling in love with her, and had never considered him in that point of view at all. Yet he had, and here lay the reason why he flirted no more, and why he would have her sympathy only on even terms. Here also, it seemed, was the reason why his tricks were forgotten, why he was simple and direct; here was the incitement to imagination, the ideal, the passion that had power to fire and purge his soul.
"We must go in," she whispered in a shaking voice. "We must go in, Mr. Quisanté."
ON DUTY HILL.
Another week had gone by, and, although nothing very palpable had happened, there was a sort of vague scare in the house-party. It touched everybody, affecting them in different ways according to their characters, but raising in all an indignant protest against a fact hardly credible and a danger scarcely to be named. Not even Mrs. Baxter, entrenched in placidity and petticoats, quite escaped its influence; even Morewood's cynical humour hesitated to play on a situation so unexpected, possibly so serious. Lady Richard's alarm was the most outspoken, and her dismay the most clamorous; yet perhaps in Dick Benyon himself was the strongest fear. For if that did happen which seemed to be happening beneath the incredulous gaze of their eyes, who but he was responsible, to whose account save his could the result be laid? He had brought the man into the circle, into the house, into the knowledge of his friends; but for him Quisanté might have been carving a career far away, or have given up any idea of one at all.
More than this, Dick, seeking approval and sympathy, had looked round for open and intelligent souls who would share his interest, his hopes, and his enthusiasm, and on no soul had he spent more pains or built higher anticipations than May Gaston's. She was to sympathise, to share the hopes and to understand the enthusiasm. Had he not asked her to dinner, had he not brought her to the Imperial League banquet, had he not incited Lady Richard to have her at Ashwood? And now she spread this scare through the house; she outran the limits—all the reasonable limits—of interest, she did far more than ever he had asked of her, she cast reflections on his judgment by pushing it to extremes whither it had never been meant to stretch. She had been bidden to watch Alexander Quisanté, to admire his great moments, to see a future for him, and to applaud the discerning eye which had seen that future first. But who had bidden her make a friend of the man, take him into the inner circle, treat him as one who belonged to the group of her intimates, to the company of her equals and of those with whom she had grown up? Almost passionately Dick disclaimed the responsibility for this; with no less heat his wife forced it on him; relentlessly the course of events seemed to charge him with it.
What would happen he did not know; none of them at Ashwood professed to know; they refused to forecast the worst. But what had actually happened was that Quisanté was undoubtedly in love with May Gaston, and that May Gaston was no less certainly wrapped up in Quisanté. The difference of terms was fondly clung to; and indeed she showed no signs of love as love is generally understood; she displayed only an open preference for his society and an engrossed interest in him. It was bad enough; who could tell when it might become worse? "I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you." Allowing for difference of times and customs, that had been the attitude of all towards Quisanté; a caste-feeling, almost a race-feeling, dictated it and kept it alive and strong under all superficial alliance and outward friendliness. But May had seen the barrier only to throw it down in a passion of scorn for its narrowness and an impulse of indignation at its cruelty. If she had gone so far, he was bold who dared to say that she would not go farther, or would set a limit to her advance on the path that the rest of them had never trodden.
"At any rate it shan't happen here," said Lady Richard. "I should never be able to look her mother in the face again."
"It won't happen anywhere," Dick protested. "But you can't turn him out, you know."
"I can't unless I absolutely literally do. He won't see that he isn't wanted."
"No; and he may be excused if he thinks he is—by May Gaston at all events."
The subject was one to be discussed between husbands and wives, Dick and Lady Richard, Mrs. Baxter and the Dean, rather than in any more public fashion, but the unexpressed thought pervaded every conversation, and was strongest when the presence of the persons concerned forbade even indirect reference. Once or twice Morewood broke into open comment to Lady Richard; he puzzled her rather, and did not console her at all.
"I know why you object and how silly your grounds are," he said. "It's snobbery in you, you know. Now in me it's good sound sense. Because in the first place, if I were ten years younger, and ten times richer, and rather more of a man, I should like to marry her myself; and in the second place I'm not sure Quisanté hasn't forged, or isn't about to forge, a cheque for a million."
"Don't talk about it," shuddered little Lady Richard. "She can't care for him, she can't, you know."
"Certainly not, in the sentimental sense that you women attach to that very weak form of expression."
"And I'm sure there's nothing else to tempt her."
"You'll be laying down what does and doesn't tempt me next."
"I've known her since she was a child."
"There's nothing that produces so many false judgments of people."
Lady Richard was far too prostrate to accept any challenge.
"You do hate it as much as I do, don't you?" she implored.
"Quite," said he with restrained intensity. "But if you ask me, I think she'll do it."
A pause followed. "Fred Wentworth must have been waiting ever so long for me," Lady Richard murmured apologetically, though an apology to Morewood could not soothe Fred. Her thoughts were busy, and a resolve was forming in her mind. "I shall ask Mrs. Baxter to speak to her," she announced at last.
"That'll be amusing if it's nothing else. I should like to be there."
Mrs. Baxter was by no means unwilling to help. She was mother to a large family and had seen all her children creditably married; such matters lay well within the sphere of legitimate feminine activity as she conceived it. Of course the Dean told her she had better leave the thing alone, but it was evident that this was no more than a disclaimer of responsibility in case her efforts did more harm than good.
Mrs. Baxter advanced on approved and traditional lines. She slid into the special topic from a general survey of matrimonial desirability; May did not shy, but seemed ready to listen. Mrs. Baxter ignored the possibility of any serious purpose on May's side and pointed out with motherly gentleness that her impulsive interest in Quisanté might possibly be misunderstood by him and give rise to an idea absolutely remote from any which it was May's intention to arouse. Then she would give pain; wouldn't it be better gradually, not roughly or rudely but by slow degrees, to diminish the time she spent with Quisanté and the attention she bestowed on him? Mrs. Baxter's remonstrance, if somewhat conventional, yet was artistic in its way.
But May Gaston laughed; it was all very familiar, sounded very old, and was ludicrously wide of the mark. She had not been careless, she had not suffered from the dangerous stupidity of ultra-maidenly blindness, she knew quite well how Quisanté felt. Accordingly she would not acquiesce in Mrs. Baxter's diplomatic ignoring of the only material point—how she felt herself. Of course if all Mrs. Baxter meant to convey was her own disapproval of the idea,—well, she conveyed so much. But then nobody needed to be told of that; it was quite obvious and it was not important; it was an insignificant atom in the great inevitable mass of disapproval which any marked liking for Quisanté (May shrank from even thinking of stronger terms) must arouse. She had far too much understanding of the disapproval and far too much sympathy with it to underrate the probable extent and depth of it; to a half of herself she was with it, heart and soul; to a half of herself the impulse that drove her towards Quisanté was something hardly rational and wholly repulsive. What purpose, then, did Mrs. Baxter's traditional motherliness serve?
There was one person with whom she wished to talk, who might, she thought, help her to understand herself and thus to guide her steps. For every day it became more and more obvious that the matter would have to be faced and ended one way or the other. Quisanté was not patient, and he would not be dealt with by way of favour. And she herself was in a turmoil and a contradiction of feeling which she summed up antithetically by declaring that she disliked him more every hour he was there and missed him more every hour he was not; or, to adopt the Dean's metaphor, his presence set her teeth on edge and his absence made her feel as if she had nothing to eat. Morewood might help her; he would at least understand something of how she felt, if she could summon up courage to talk to him; they were old friends.
One afternoon Quisanté had been sitting with them on the lawn and, going off to walk with Dick, left them alone together. Quisanté had not been in a happy vein; he had been trying to be light and flippant, and gossiping about people; here, where good taste makes the whole difference between what is acceptable and what is odious, was not the field for him. Morewood had growled and May had flinched several times. She sat looking after Quisanté with troubled puzzled eyes.
"How funnily people are mixed!" she murmured, more to herself than her companion. Then she turned to him and said with a laugh, "How you hate him, don't you?"
"By all the nature of things you ought to hate him much more."
"Yes," she agreed. "But do you think that's the only way to look at people, any more than it is at books? You like or dislike a novel, perhaps; but you don't like or dislike—oh, what shall I say? Gibbon's Roman Empire. There you admire or don't admire; or rather you study or neglect; because, if you study, you must admire. Don't think me learned; it's only an illustration."
"Gibbon's a duty," said Morewood, "but I'm not clear that Alexander Quisanté is."
"Oh, no; exactly the opposite; for me at least."
"Is he then a curriculum?"
"He's partly a curriculum, and partly—I don't know—a taste for strong drink perhaps." She laughed reluctantly, adding, "I'm being absurd, I know."
"In talk or in conduct?"
"Both, Mr. Morewood. I can only see him in metaphors. I once thought of him as a mountain range; that's fine-sounding and dignified, isn't it? But now I'm humbler in my fancies; I think of him as a forest—as the bush, you know, full of wretched underwood that you keep tumbling over, but with splendid trees (I don't know whether there are in the bush, really) and every now and then a beautiful open space or a stately vista."
"From all this riot of your fancy," said Morewood grimly, "one only thing emerges quite plainly."
"Does even one thing?"
"Yes. That you think about Quisanté a mighty lot."
"Oh, yes. Of course I do, a mighty lot," she admitted, laughing. "But you aren't very much more useful than Mrs. Baxter, who told me that my innocent heedlessness might give Mr. Quisanté pain. I oughtn't to have told you that, but it was rather funny. I'm sure she's said it to all the Baxter girls in turn, and about all the girls that all the Baxter boys were ever in love with."
"Possibly Mrs. Baxter only perceives the wretched underwood."
"Inevitably," said May.
"For heaven's sake don't drift into thinking that you're the only person who can understand him. Once think that about anybody and you're his slave."
"Perhaps I'm the only person who takes the trouble. I don't claim genius, only diligence."
"Well, you're very diligent," Morewood grunted.
She sat looking straight in front of her for a few moments in silence, while Morewood admired the curve of her chin and the moulding of her throat.
"I feel," she said in a low voice and slowly, "as if I must see what becomes of him and as if it ought to be seen at close quarters."
Then Morewood spoke with deliberate plainness.
"You know better than I do that he's not of your class; I mean in himself, not merely where he happens to come from. And for my part I'm not sure that he's an honest man, and I don't think he's a high-minded one."
"Do you believe people are bound to be always just what they are now?" she asked.
"Thinking you can improve them is the one thing more dangerous to yourself than thinking you've a special gift for understanding them. To be quite plain, both generally end in love-affairs and, what's more, unhappy love-affairs."
"Oh, I'm not in love with Mr. Quisanté. You're going back to your narrow loving-hating theory."
"Hum. I'm inclined to think that nature shares my narrowness."
If May got small comfort from this conversation, Morewood got less, and the rest of the party, judging from what he let drop about his impressions of May's state of mind, none at all. Lady Richard was of opinion that a crisis approached and re-echoed her cry, "Not here anyhow!" But Quisanté's demeanour at once confirmed her fears and ignored her protest. He had many faults and weaknesses, but he was not the man to shrink from a big stake and a great throw. His confidence in his powers was the higher owing to his blindness to his defects. May Gaston had indeed opened his eyes to some degree, but here again, as she showed him continued favour, he found good excuse for dwelling on the interest which inspired rather than on the frankness which characterised her utterance. She had bidden him be himself; then to her that was a thing worth being. As he believed himself able to conquer all external obstacles in his path, so he vaguely supposed that he could overcome and obliterate anything there might be wrong in himself, or at any rate that he could so outweigh it by a more prodigal display of his gifts as to reduce it to utter insignificance; try as he might to see him self as she saw him, he could not fully understand the gravity of her objections. And anyhow, grave as she thought them, she was his friend; at the cost of defying, perhaps of losing, her friends, she elected to be his friend.
To the appeal of this generosity his emotions responded passionately; now he worshipped his Empress among women for more than her grace, her stateliness, or her beauty; he loved her for her courage and her loyalty. There seemed nothing that he would not do for her; it did not, however, occur to him that perhaps the one thing he could do for her was to leave her. But short of this self-sacrifice—and to that even he might have risen had anyone pointed him the way—he was in just that state of exalted feeling which made him at his best, cured him of his tricks for the time being, and gave him the simplicity whose absence marred his ordinary hours. He always rose to the occasion, Dick Benyon maintained; and to this great occasion he came marvellously near to rising. This is not to say that he was altogether in the temper of a hero of romance. He loved the lady, but he loved the victory too, the report of it, the éclat, the talk it would make.
The tendency of events might seem to justify his growing hopes and almost to excuse confidence, but May's mood, had he seen it fully, would have rebuked him. She hung doubtful. She had succeeded, by the help of her far-fetched metaphors, in describing to Morewood the nature of the attraction which Quisanté exercised over her and of the force which drew her on; but to Morewood she had said nothing of the opposing influences. She had sent no letter to Marchmont, she had not yet refused to become his wife. Although she recognised the unfairness of this treatment of him she could not compel her hand to the writing of the letter; for Marchmont came to personify to her all that she lost, that at least she risked, if she yielded to her new impulse. Thus the hold which her liking for him, their old acquaintance, and all the obvious advantages gave him was further strengthened. Leaving on one side his position and the excellence of the match, things which now seemed to her less important, and coming to the more intimate and personal aspect of the matter, she realised with a pang how much Marchmont pleased her; he never offended her taste or jarred on her feelings; she would be absolutely safe with him, he would gratify almost every mood and satisfy almost every aspiration.
Dealing very plainly with herself, formulating the question that she could not put to Morewood, she asked whether she would not rather go as a wife to Marchmont than to any other man she had met, whether Quisanté or another. She had been, perhaps still was, more nearly in love with Weston Marchmont than with anybody else. But the "almosts" were obstinate; the nearly had never become the quite; she did not tell herself that it never could; on the contrary she recognised (though here she was inclined to shirk the probe) that if she married another, she might well awake to find herself loving Marchmont; she knew that she would not like Marchmont to love another woman. So far she carried her inquiry: then she grew in a way sick and disgusted with this exposure of her inmost feelings. She would not proceed to ask why precisely she could not say yes to Marchmont without being sensible of a loss greater than the gain. All she knew was that she would not think of becoming Quisanté's wife if that were not the only way of getting all she wanted from Quisanté. The wifehood she looked on as a means to something else, to what she could hardly say; in itself she did not desire it.
Lady Richard's prayer was answered—no thanks to herself or her hints, no thanks either to Mrs. Baxter's motherly remonstrance or to Morewood's blunt speech. It was May herself who sent Quisanté away. A thrill of relief ran round the table when he announced at dinner that if Lady Richard would excuse him he would leave by the early train. Excuse him! She would have hired a balloon to take him if he had declared a preference for that form of locomotion. But she expressed the proper regret and the proper interest in the reason (the pretext she called it in her own mind) for his departure. It appeared that a very large and important Meeting was to be held at Manchester; two Cabinet ministers were to be there; Quisanté was invited to be the third speaker. He explained that he felt it would be a mistake to refuse the invitation, and the acceptance of it entailed a quiet day or two in London with his Blue-books and his papers. As he put it, the whole thing sounded like an excuse; Lady Richard hoped that it covered a retreat and that the retreat was after a decisive repulse from May Gaston. Even Dick was half inclined to share this opinion; for although he knew how a chance of shining with, and perhaps of outshining, such luminaries as were to adorn the Manchester platform would appeal to his friend, he did not think that for its sake Quisanté would abandon any prospect of success in his suit. In fact the impression was general, and the relief proportionate. The Dean beamed and Mrs. Baxter purred; Morewood was good-natured, and Fred Wentworth was lightened of a burden of bewilderment which had pressed heavily on his youthful mind. Quisanté was treated with a marked access of cordiality, and May was petted like a child who has displayed a strong inclination to be naughty, but has at last made up its mind to be good, and thereby saved those responsible for its moral welfare from the disagreeable necessity of showing displeasure and exercising discipline. She smiled to herself at the effusive affection with which Lady Richard bade her good-night.
For these people did not know the history, and had not been present at the interview between May and Quisanté on Duty Hill when the sun was sinking and the air was still. They did not know that it was by her command that he went and that his going rather strengthened than relaxed the bond there was between them. Always there stood out in her memory the scene on the hill, how he faced her there and told her that, great as the chance was and imperative as the call, yet he would not go; he could not leave her, he said, and then and there poured out his love for her. When he made love, he was not as when he flirted. Passion purged him; he was strong, direct, and simple; he was consumed then by what he felt and had no time to spoil the effect by asking what impression he made on others. Here was the thing that Marchmont could not give her, the great moment, the thrill, the sense of a power in the man which she had not measured, might spend her life in seeking to measure, and yet never to the end know in its fulness. But she answered not a word to his love-making, she neither accepted nor refused it; as often as he paused an instant and again when he came to the end, she had nothing to say or would say nothing except, "You must go."
"You're the only person in the world for whose sake I would hesitate about going."
She smiled. "That's not at all to your credit," she said; but she was not ill pleased.
He came a step nearer to her and said, still soberly, still quietly, "I'll go away from here to-morrow."
"Yes, to the meeting," she said, looking up at him brightly from her seat on the wooden bench on the hill-top.