SANDRO'S WAY.
First to the City, then to the doctor, then to the House, then to the
dinner of the Imperial League; this was Quisanté's programme for the
second Wednesday in April. It promised a busy day. But of the doctor and
the House he made light; the first was a formality, the second held out
no prospect of excitement; the City and the dinner were the real things.
They were connected with and must be made to promote the two aims which
he had taken for his with perfect confidence. He wanted money and he
wanted position; he saw no reason why he should not attain both in the
fullest measure. Recent events had filled him with a sure and certain
hope. Not allowing for the value of the good manners which he lacked, he
failed to see that he excited any hostility or any distaste. Unless a
man were downright rude to him, he counted him an adherent; this streak
of a not unpleasing simplicity ran across his varied nature. He was far
from being alive to his disadvantages; every hour assured him of his
superiority. Most especially he counted on the aid and favour of women;
the future might prove him right or wrong in his expectation; but he
relied for its realisation not on the power which he did possess but on
an accomplishment of manner and an insinuating fascination which he most
absolutely lacked. The ultra-civility which repelled May Gaston was less
a device than an exhibition; he embarked on it more because he thought
he did it well than (as she supposed) from a desire to curry favour. He
was ill-bred, but he was not mean; he was a vaunter but not a coward; he
demanded adherence and did not beg alms. This was the attitude of his
mind, but unhappily it was often apparently contradicted by the cringing
of his body and the wheedling of his tongue. In attempting smoothness he
fell into oiliness; where he aimed at polished brilliance, the result
was blazing varnish. Had he known what to pray for, he would have
supplicated heaven that he might meet eyes able to see the man beneath
the ape. Such eyes, dimly penetrating with an unexpected vision, he had
won to his side in the Benyon brothers; the rest of the world still
stuck on the outside surface. But the brothers could only shield him,
they could not change him; they might promote his fortunes, they could
not cure his vices. He did not know that he had any vices; the first
stage of amendment was still to come.
He had a cousin in the City, a stock-jobber, who made and lost large
sums of money as fortune smiled or frowned. Quisanté had the first five
hundred of Aunt Maria's thousand pounds in his pocket and told his
kinsman to use it for him.
"A spec?" asked Mr. Josiah Mandeville. "Isn't that rather rough on Aunt
Maria?"
Quisanté looked surprised. "She gave it me, I haven't stolen it," he
said with a laugh.
"She gave it you to live on, to keep up your position, I suppose."
"I don't think she made any conditions. And if I can make money, I'll
give it back to her."
"Oh, you know best, I suppose," said Mandeville. "Only if I lose it?"
"Losing money's no worse than spending it." And then he mentioned a
certain venture in which the money might usefully be employed.
"How did you hear of that?" asked Mandeville with a stare; for his
cousin had laid his finger on a secret, on the very secret which
Mandeville had just decided not to reveal to him, kinsman though he was.
"I forget; somebody said something about it that made me think it would
be a good thing." Quisanté's tone was vaguely puzzled; he often knew
things when he could give no account of his knowledge.
"Well, you aren't far wrong. You'll take a small profit, I suppose?
Shall I use my discretion?"
"No," smiled Quisanté. "I shan't take a small profit, and I'll use mine.
But keep me well informed and you shan't be a loser."
Mr. Mandeville laughed. "One might think you had a million," he
observed. "Or are you proposing to tip me a fiver?" The thought of his
own thousands filled his tone with scorn; he did not do his speculating
with Aunt Maria's money.
"If you're too proud, I can take my business somewhere else--and the
name of the concern too," said Quisanté, lighting a cigar. Cousin
Mandeville's stare had not escaped his notice.
Mandeville hesitated; he was very much annoyed; he liked his money, if
not himself, to be respected. But business is business, to say nothing
of blood being thicker than water.
"Oh, well, I'll do it for you," he agreed with lofty benevolence.
Quisanté laughed. He would have covered his own retreat with much the
same device.
The riches then were on the way; Quisanté had a far-seeing eye, and Aunt
Maria's five hundred was to imagination already prolific of thousands. A
hansom carried him up to Harley Street; he had been there three months
before and had been told to come again in three weeks. The punishment
for his neglect was a severe verdict. "No liquor, no tobacco, and three
months' immediate and complete rest." Quisanté laughed--very much as he
had at his kinsman in the City. Both doctor and stock-jobber showed such
a curious ignorance of the conditions under which his life had to be
lived and of his reasons for caring to live it.
"What's the matter then?" he asked.
The doctor became very technical, though not quite unreserved; the heart
and the stomach were in some unholy conspiracy; this was as much as
Quisanté really understood.
"And if I don't do as you say?" he asked. The doctor smiled and shrugged
his shoulders. "I shan't outlive Methuselah anyhow, I suppose?"
"The present conditions of your life are very wearing," said the doctor.
Quisanté looked at him thoughtfully.
"But if you'd live wisely, there's no reason why you shouldn't preserve
good health till an advanced age."
Aunt Maria's five hundred, invested in Consols, would bring in twelve
pounds ten shillings or thereabouts every year for ever.
"Thank you," said Quisanté, rising and producing the fee. But he paused
before going and said meditatively, "I should really like to be able to
follow your advice, you know." His brow clouded in discontent; the one
serious handicap he recognised was this arbitrary unfortunate doom of a
body unequal to the necessary strain of an active life. "Anyhow I'm good
for a little while?" he asked.
"Dear me, you're in no sort of immediate danger, Mr. Quisanté, or I
should be more imperative. Only pray give yourself a chance."
On his way from Harley Street to the House, and again from the House to
his own rooms in Pall Mall, his mind was busy with the speech that he
was to make at the dinner. He had only to respond to the toast of the
guests; few words and simple would be expected. He was thus the more
resolved on a great effort; the surprise that the mere attempt at an
oration would arouse should pave the way for the astonishment his
triumph must create. He had no rival in the programme; the Chairman was
Dick Benyon, the great gun an eminent Colonial Statesman who relied for
fame on his deeds rather than his words. With his curiously minute
calculation of chances Quisanté had discovered that there was no social
occasion of great attraction to carry off his audience after dinner;
they would stay and listen if he were worth listening to; the ladies in
the gallery would stay too, if at the outset he could strike a note that
would touch their hearts. This was his first really good chance, the
first opening for such a _coup_ as he loved. His eyes were bright as he
opened an atlas and verified with precision the exact position of the
Colonial Statesman's Colony; he had known it before of course--roughly.
Lady Richard had much affection in her nature and with it a fine spice
of malice. The two ingredients combined to bring her to the gallery; she
wished to please Dick, and she wished to be in a position to annoy him
by deriding Quisanté. So there she sat looking down on the men through a
haze of cigar-smoke which afflicted the ladies' noses and threatened
seriously to affect their gowns.
"They might give up their tobacco for one night," muttered a girl near
her.
"They'd much rather give us up, my dear," retorted a dowager who felt
that she would be considered a small sacrifice and was not unwilling to
make others think the same about themselves.
By Lady Richard's side sat May Gaston. The time is happily gone by when
any one is allowed even to assume indifference about the Empire, yet it
may be doubted whether interest in the Empire had the chief share in
moving her to accept Lady Richard's invitation. Nor did she want to hear
Dick Benyon, nor the Colonial Statesman; quite openly she desired and
expressed her desire to see what Quisanté would make of it.
"How absurd!" said Lady Richard crossly. "Besides he's only got a few
words to say."
May smiled and glanced along the row of ladies. About ten places from
her was a funny little old woman with an absurd false front of fair hair
and a black silk gown cut in ancient fashion; her features showed vivid
disgust at the atmosphere and she made frequent use of a large bottle of
smelling-salts. Next to her, on the other side, was Mrs. Gellatly, who
nodded and smiled effusively at May.
"Who's the funny old woman?" May asked.
Lady Richard looked round and made a constrained bow; the old lady
smiled a little and sniffed the bottle again.
"Oh, she's an aunt of the man's; come to hear him, I suppose. Oh, Dick's
getting up."
Amid polite attention and encouraging "Hear, hears" Dick made his way
through a few appropriate sentences which his hearty sincerity redeemed
from insignificance. The Colonial Statesman had a well-founded idea that
the zeal of his audience outstripped its knowledge, and set himself to
improve the latter rather than to inflame the former. His reward was a
somewhat frigid reception. May noticed that old Miss Quisanté was
dozing, and Lady Richard said that she wished she was at home in bed:
Quisanté himself had assumed a smile of anticipation when the Statesman
rose and preserved it unimpaired through the long course of the speech.
The audience as a whole grew a little restless; while the next speaker
addressed them, one or two men rose and slipped away unobtrusively. A
quick frown and a sudden jerk of Quisanté's head betrayed his fear that
more would go before he could lay his grip on them.
"Why doesn't this man stop?" whispered May.
"I suppose, my dear, he thinks he may as well put Mr. Quisanté off as
long as possible," Lady Richard answered flippantly.
Amid yawns, the laying down of burnt-out cigars, and glances at watches,
Quisanté rose to make his reply. Aunt Maria was wide-awake now, looking
down at her nephew with her sour smile; Lady Richard leant back
resignedly. Quisanté pressed back his heavy smooth black hair, opened
his wide thin-lipped mouth, and began with a courteous commonplace
reference to those who shared with himself the honour of being guests
that night. Ordinary as the frame-work was, there was a touch of
originality in what he said; one or two men who had meant to go struck
matches and lit fresh cigars. Dick Benyon looked up at the gallery and
nodded to his wife. Then Quisanté seemed suddenly to increase his
stature by an inch or two and to let loose his arms; his voice was still
not loud, but every syllable fell with incisive distinctness on his
listener's ears. An old Member of Parliament whispered to an elderly
barrister, "He can speak anyhow," and got an assenting nod for answer.
And he was looking as he had when he spoke of his Empress among women,
as he had when he declared that the Spirit of God could not live and
move in the grave-clothes of dead prophets. He was far away from the
guests now, and he was far away from himself; it was another moment; he
was possessed again. Dick looked up with a radiant triumphant smile, but
his wife was frowning, and May Gaston sat with a face like a mask.
"By Jove!" murmured the elderly barrister.
The whole speech was short; perhaps it had been meant to be longer, but
suddenly Quisanté's pale face turned paler still, he caught his hand to
his side, he stopped for a moment, and stumbled over his words; than he
recovered and, with his hand still on his side, raised his voice again.
But the logical mind of the elderly barrister seemed to detect a lacuna
in the reasoning; the speaker had skipped something and flown straight
to his peroration. He gave it now in tones firm but slower than before,
with a pause here and there, yet in the end summoning his forces to a
last flood of impassioned words. Then he sat down, not straight, but
falling just a little on one side and making a clutch at his neighbour's
shoulder; and while they cheered he sat quite still with closed eyes and
opened lips. "Has he fainted?" ran in a hushed whisper round the room;
Dick Benyon sprang from his chair, a waiter was hurried off for brandy,
and Lady Richard observed in her delicately scornful tones, "How
extremely theatrical!"
"Theatrical!" said May in a low indignant voice.
"You don't suppose he's really fainting, my dear, do you? Oh, I've seen
him do the same sort of thing once before!"
An impulse carried May's eyes towards Miss Quisanté; the old lady was
smiling composedly and sniffing her bottle. Her demeanour was in strong
contrast to Mrs. Gellatly's almost tearful excitement.
"He couldn't, he couldn't!" May moaned in horror.
If the untrue suspicion entertained by Lady Richard and possibly shared
by Miss Quisanté (the old lady's face was a riddle) spread at all to
anybody else, the fault lay entirely at the sufferer's own door. He knew
too well how real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the
men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects.
But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and
smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness,
but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated
sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the
extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs bring the frailty of
his body to the front, not as an apology, but as an added claim to
interest and a new title by which to win soft words, admiring looks, and
sympathetic pressings from pretty hands. Who could blame Lady Richard for
murmuring, "There, my dear, now you see!"? Who could wonder that Aunt
Maria looked cynically indifferent? Was it strange that a good many
people, without going to the length of declaring that the orator had
suffered nothing at all, yet were inclined to think that he knew better
than to waste, and quite well how to improve, the opportunity that a
trifling fatigue or a passing touch of faintness gave him? "Knows how to
fetch the women, doesn't he?" said somebody with a laugh. To be accused
of that knowledge is not a passport to the admiration of men.
Before May Gaston came near Quisanté himself, Jimmy Benyon seized on her
and introduced her to Aunt Maria. In reply to politely expressed phrases
of concern the old lady's shrewd eyes twinkled.
"Sandro'll soon come round, if they let him alone," she said.
The words were consistent with either view of the occurrence, but the
tone inclined them to the side of uncharitableness.
"Is he liable to such attacks?" May asked.
"He's always been rather sickly," Miss Quisanté admitted grudgingly.
"He's had a splendid triumph to-night. He was magnificent."
"Sandro makes the most of a chance."
May was surprised to find herself attracted to the dry old woman. Such an
absence of feeling in regard to one who was her only relative and the
hero of the evening might more naturally have aroused dislike; but Aunt
Maria's coolness was funnily touched both by resignation and by humour;
she mourned that things were as they were, but did not object to laughing
at them. When immaculate Jimmy, a splendid type of the handsome dandified
man about town, began to be enthusiastic over Quisanté, she looked up at
him with a sneering kindly smile, seeming to ask, "How in the world do
you come to be mixed up with Sandro?" When May expressed the hope that he
would be more careful of himself Aunt Maria's smile said, "If you knew as
much about him as I do, you'd take it quietly. It's Sandro's way." Yet
side by side with all this was the utter absence of any surprise at his
exhibition of power or at the triumph he had won; these she seemed to
take as the merest matter of course. She knew Quisanté better than any
living being knew him, and this was her attitude towards him. When they
bade one another good-bye, May said that she was sure her mother would
like to call on Miss Quisanté. "Come yourself," said the old lady
abruptly; she at least showed no oiliness, no violence of varnish; they
were not in the family, it seemed.
The crowd grew thinner, but the diminished publicity brought no
improvement to Quisanté's manner. He was with Lady Richard and the
brothers now--May noticed that nephew and aunt had been content to
exchange careless nods--and Lady Richard made him nearly his worst. He
knew that she did not like him, but refused to accept the defeat; he
plied her more and more freely with the airs and affectations that
rendered him odious to her; he could not help thinking that by enough
attention, enough deference, and enough of being interesting he must in
the end conciliate her favour. When May joined the group, his manner
appealed from her friend to her, bidding Lady Richard notice how much
more responsive May was and how pleasant he was to those who were
pleasant to him. May would have despised him utterly at that instant but
for two things: she remembered his moments, and she perceived that all
the time he was suffering and mastering severe, perhaps poignant, pain.
But again, when she asked him how he was, he smirked and flourished, till
Lady Richard turned away in disgust and even the brothers looked a little
puzzled and distressed as they followed her to the buffet and ministered
to her wants.
"Sit down," said May, in a tone almost sharp. "No, sit at once, never
mind whether I'm sitting or not."
He obeyed her with an overdone gesture of protest, but his face showed
relief. She got a chair for herself and sat down by him.
"You spoke splendidly," she said, and hurried on, "No, no, don't thank
me, don't tell me that you especially wished to please me, or that my
approbation is your reward, or anything about beauty or bright eyes, or
anything in the very least like that. It's all odious and I wonder why
you--a man like you--should think it necessary to do it."
Quisanté looked startled; he had been leaning back in apparent
exhaustion, but now he sat up straight and prepared to speak, a
conciliatory smile on his lips.
"No, don't sit up, lean back. Don't talk, don't smile, don't be agreeable."
She had begun to laugh at herself by now, but the laughter did not stop
her. "You were ill, you were very ill, you looked almost dead, and you
battled with it splendidly, and beat it splendidly, and went on and won.
And then you must--Oh, why do you?"
"Why do I do what?" he asked, quietly enough now, with a new look of
puzzle and bewilderment in his eyes, although his set smile had not
disappeared.
"Why, go on as if there'd been nothing much really the matter, as if
you'd had the vapours or the flutters, or something women have, or used
to have when they were even sillier than they are." She laughed again,
adding, "Really I was expecting Dick Benyon to propose to cut your
stay-laces."
The Benyons were coming back; if she had more to say, there was no time
for it; yet she managed a whisper as she shook hands with him, her
gesture still forbidding him to rise. Her face, a little flushed with
colour, bent down towards his and her voice was eager as she whispered,
"Good-night. Be simple, be yourself; it's worth while."
Then courage failed and she hurried off with a confused nervous farewell
to her friends. Her breath came quick as she lay back in the brougham
and closed her eyes.
Quisanté was tired and ill; he was unusually quiet in his parting talk
with Lady Richard. Even she was sorry for him; and when pity entered
little Lady Richard's heart it drove out all other emotions however
strong, and routed all resolutions however well-founded.
"You look dead-beat, you do indeed," she said. She turned to her
husband. "Dick, Mr. Quisanté must come and spend a few quiet days with
us in the country. Something'll happen to him, if he doesn't."
Dick could hardly believe his ears, and was full of delighted gratitude;
hitherto Lady Richard had been resolute that their country house at
least should be sacred from Quisanté's feet. He took his wife's hand and
pressed it as he joyfully seconded her invitation. Some of Quisanté's
effusive politeness displayed itself again, but still he was subdued,
and Lady Richard, full of her impulse of compassion, escaped without
realising fully the enormity of the step into which it had tempted her.