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.
"Away from here," he repeated. "But not to the meeting unless you send
me." Then he stood quite still opposite to her for a minute. "Because
unless you care for me to do it, I don't care to do it," he went on.
A long silence followed as she sat there, looking past him down into the
rich valley that spread from the foot of the hill. The fascination was
strong on her, the fear was strong on her too; but for the moment the
repulsion was forgotten. For he had risen to the occasion, as Dick Benyon
maintained that he always did; not a word too much, not an entreaty too
extravagant, not an epithet too florid had found passage from his lips.
His instinct of the way to treat a great and important situation had
saved him and brought him triumphantly through all the perils. He did not
ignore what he was, he did not disguise his knowledge of his powers;
knowing what they were and the value of his offering, he laid them all at
her feet and asked in return no more than her leave and her command to
use them.
She raised her eyes to his pale eager face.
"I send you then," she said. "And now walk with me down the hill and tell
me what you'll say at Manchester."
That night, before she went to bed, she wrote to Weston Marchmont;
"Dear Friend,--I will not wait to see you again. I can't do what you
wish. Everything else I could do for you, and everything else that
you wish I wish for you. But I can't do that."
Alas for the renewed peace of Lady Richard's mind, alas for the returning
quiet of Dick Benyon's conscience! Quisanté made his preparations for
going with his eyes all agleam, murmuring again and again, "She sends me;
she shall see what I'm worth." For one of his great moments had come in
the nick of time and done a work that he himself, low as he might now and
again fall, could hardly quite undo.