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."