LEAD US NOT.
After a long sojourn in kindlier climates, Miss Quisanté returned to
England some eighteen months after May Gaston's marriage. From various
hotels and boarding-houses she had watched with an interested eye the
progress of public affairs so far as they concerned her nephew. She had
seen how his name became more prominent and was more frequently mentioned,
how the hopes and fears about him grew, how he had gained glory by dashing
sorties in defence of the severely-pressed Government garrison; if the
garrison decided (as rumour said they would) to sally out and try fortune
in the open field of a General Election, and proved victorious, it could
not be doubted that they would bestow a handsome reward on their gallant
defender. Quisanté bid fair to eclipse his rivals and to justify to the
uttermost Dick Benyon's sagacity and enthusiasm. The bitterness of the
foe told the same story; unless a man is feared, he is not caricatured
in a comic paper in the guise of a juggler keeping three balls in the
air at once, the said balls being each of them legibly inscribed with
one of the three words, "Gas--Gabble--Grab." Such a straining of the
usual amenity of controversy witnesses to grave apprehension. Miss
Quisanté in her _pension_ at Florence smiled contentedly.
Of his private life her information had not been very ample. She had heard
several times from May, but May occupied her pen chiefly with her husband's
political aims. She had heard once from Sandro himself, when he informed
her that his wife had borne him a daughter and that all had gone very
well indeed. Again Miss Quisanté smiled approvingly. She sent her love to
May and expressed to Sandro the hope that the baby would resemble its
mother in appearance, constitution, and disposition; the passage was a
good example of that _expressio unius_ which is a most emphatic and
unmistakable _exclusio alterius_. In the letter she enclosed a cheque
for three hundred pounds; the _pensions_ were cheaper than the flat, and
thus this service had become possible.
The Quisantés had taken a house in Grosvenor Road, near Westminster for
Quisanté's convenience, by the river, in obedience to his wife's choice.
Here Miss Quisanté was welcomed by her nephew's wife and shown her
nephew's daughter. May watched the old lady's face as she perfunctorily
kissed and critically inspected the infant.
"Gaston!" said Aunt Maria at last; relief was clamorous in her tone.
"Yes, Miss Quisanté, Gaston, I think," said May, laughing.
The nurse admitted the predominance of Gaston, but with a professional
keenness of eye began to point out minor points in which the baby
"favoured" her father.
"Nonsense, my good woman," snapped Aunt Maria. "The child's got two legs
and two arms, I suppose, as its father has, but that's all the likeness."
Somewhat ruffled (her observations had been well meant) the nurse carried
off her charge.
"You look very well," Aunt Maria went on, "but older, my dear."
"I am both well and older," said May cheerfully. "Think of my
responsibilities! There's the baby! And then Alexander's been seedy. And
we aren't as rich as we should like to be; you of all people must know
that. And there's going to be an election and our seat's very shaky. So
the cares of the world are on me."
"Sandro's been doing well."
"Splendidly, simply splendidly. It's impossible to doubt that he'll do
great things if--if all goes well, and he doesn't make mistakes."
"Seems like making mistakes, does he?"
"Oh, no. I only said 'if.'"
"And you're as happy as you expected to be?"
"Quite, thanks."
"I see. Just about," was Miss Quisanté's next observation; since it was a
little hard to answer, May smiled and rang the bell for tea.
"You're very gay, I suppose?" asked the old lady.
"Just as many parties as I can find gowns for," May declared.
"Seen anything of the Benyons lately?"
A little shadow came on May's face. "I hardly ever see Jimmy except at
mother's," she answered. "Dick comes sometimes." She paused a moment, and
then added, "I expect him this afternoon."
"Is he still as devoted to Sandro?"
"He believes in his abilities as enthusiastically as ever." The dry laugh
which Miss Quisanté gave was as significant as her "Just about," a few
minutes before. This time May did not laugh, but looked gravely at Aunt
Maria. "They've had a little difference on a political matter. Did you
ever hear of what Dick calls the Crusade? His great Church movement, you
know."
"Lord, yes, my dear. Sandro once speechified to me about it for an hour."
"Well, he doesn't speechify so much now; he doesn't believe in it so
much, and Dick's annoyed. That's natural, I think, though perhaps it's a
little silly of him. However, if you wait, he'll tell you about it
himself."
"Why doesn't Sandro believe in it so much?"
"Perhaps I ought to have said that he doesn't think the present time a
suitable one for pressing it."
"I see," said Miss Quisanté sipping her tea. May looked at her again and
seemed about to speak, but in the end she only smiled. She was amused at
the old lady's questions, impelled to speak plainly to her, and
restrained only by the sense that any admission she might seem to make
would be used to the full against her husband by his faithful and liberal
aunt.
"He says he has good reasons, and Dick Benyon says they're bad ones," she
ended by explaining, though it was not much of an explanation after all.
Miss Quisanté had the curiosity to await Dick Benyon's coming, and, in
spite of his evident expectation of a _tête-à-tête_, not to go
immediately on his arrival. She was struck with the air of mingled
affection and compassion with which he greeted his healthy, handsome,
smiling young hostess. Moreover he was himself apologetic, as though
suffering from a touch of remorse. He began to talk trifles, but May
brought him to the point.
"I read the speech after I got your letter," she said. "I'm sorry you
don't like it, but Alexander must consider the practical aspect of the
matter. You won't do your cause any good by urging it out of season."
"In season and out of season; that's the only way."
"You might be an Irish member," said May, smiling.
Dick was too much in earnest to be diverted to mirth. The presence of
Miss Quisanté still seemed to make him a little uncomfortable, but the
old lady did not move. May gave her no hint, and he was too full of his
subject to hold his tongue.
"I want you to speak to him about it," he went on.
"To urge him to do what he thinks a mistake?"
Dick grew a little hot. "To urge him not to go back on the cause and
on--on his friends, and almost to laugh at them for----" He paused and
looked at May; she was smiling steadily. He did not end quite as bluntly
as he had meant. "I think that he has, unconsciously no doubt, allowed
personal considerations to influence him."
A short sudden chuckle came from Aunt Maria; she rose to her feet and
crossed the room to May.
"If he's going to abuse Sandro, I mustn't stay," she said. "I couldn't
bear to lose any of my illusions, my dear." She kissed May and added,
"You might tell him to come and see me, though. I should like to hear
what he's got in his head now. Good-bye, Lord Richard. Don't you fret
about your Crusade. Sandro'll take it up again when it's convenient." She
chuckled again at the puzzled stare which accompanied Dick's shake of the
hand.
"A very kind old woman, but with a rather malicious tongue," said May.
She walked to the hearth and stood there, facing her visitor. "Now, Dick,
what is it?" she asked.
"The Dean's tremendously hurt about it; he doesn't say much, but he feels
it deeply."
"I'm very sorry. What are the personal considerations?"
"You know Henstead?" It was the borough for which Quisanté sat. "There's
an old Wesleyan colony there; several of them are very rich and employ a
lot of labour and so on. They've always voted for us. And they've found a
lot of the money. They found a lot when Quisanté got in before."
"Yes?" Her voice displayed interest but nothing more. Dick grew rather
red and hurried on with his story.
"Well, one of them, old Foster the maltster, came to your husband
and--and told him they didn't like the Crusade and that it wouldn't do."
He paused, glanced at May for an instant, and ended, "The seat's not
safe, you know, and--and it wants money to fight it."
A silence of some few minutes followed. Dick fidgeted with his hat, while
May looked out of the window on to the river.
"Why do you come and tell this to me?" she asked presently. "Supposing it
was all true, what could I do?"
Dick's resentment got the better of him; he answered hotly, "Well, you
might tell him that it was playing it pretty low down on us."
"Have you told him that?"
"Yes, I have, or I shouldn't have come to you. I don't mean I used just
those words, but I made my meaning clear enough."
"And what did he say?"
"He said he didn't see it in the light I did."
A faint smile came on the face of Mr. Quisanté's wife.
"But you could make him see it," urged Dick. May smiled at him for a
brief moment and then looked out to the river again.
"It'll be deuced awkward for him if they get hold of his back speeches,"
said Dick with gloomy satisfaction.
"Oh, everybody's back speeches are what you call deuced awkward." A
moment later she went on, "What does it all come to, after all? We must
take things as they are; we mustn't be quixotic, we mustn't quarrel with
our bread-and-butter."
Dick looked at her with evident surprise, even with dismay.
"You think it all right?" he asked.
"It's not for me to say. Am I to sit in judgment on my husband? Anyhow
people do just the same thing every day. You know that as well as I do,
Dick." Just on the last words her voice grew softer; he might have caught
a hint of entreaty, had not his mind been fixed on his own wrongs and the
betrayal of his favourite cause. "I'm assuming that what you say is
true," she added, more coldly again.
When Dick left her, it was to go home to his wife and tell her, and Mrs.
Gellatly whom he found with her, that he did not understand what had come
over May Gaston--May Quisanté, he corrected himself. Not understanding,
he proved naturally quite unable to explain. Lady Richard was more equal
to the occasion.
"That man's simply got hold of her," she said. "She'll think black's
white if he says it is. Still she must see that he's treating you
shamefully."
"She didn't seem to see it." moaned Dick mournfully. Then he laughed
rather bitterly and added, "I tell you what, though. I think that old
aunt of his has taken his measure pretty well."
The innate nobility which underlay Lady Richard's nature showed up
splendidly at this moment; she sympathised heartily with Dick, and
forbore to remind him of what she had said from the beginning, contenting
herself with remarking that for her part she never had considered and did
not now consider Mr. Quisanté even particularly clever.
"He's as clever as the deuce," said Dick. That conviction, at least, he
need not surrender.
"I suppose," ventured Mrs. Gellatly, "that's how he convinces Lady May
that he's always right."
Dick looked at her with a touch of covert contempt; clever people could
convince the intellect, but there were instincts of honour, of loyalty,
and of fidelity which no arguments should be able to blunt or to turn.
Here was the thing which, vaguely felt, had so puzzled him in regard to
May Quisanté; he had not doubted that she would see the thing as he had
seen it--as Quisanté had professed himself unable to see it.
That evening Quisanté brought home to dinner the gentleman whom Dick
Benyon called old Foster the maltster, and who had been Mayor of Henstead
three several times. He was a tall, stout, white-haired old man with a
shrewd kindly face, dressed all in broadcloth, showing an expanse of
white shirt-front decorated with a big black stud and a very small black
wisp of a tie. His conversation indicated now and then that he gave
thought to the other world, always that he knew the ways of this. May
liked him in spite of the rather ponderous deference he showed to her;
with Quisanté, on the other hand, he was familiar, seeming to say that he
could tell the younger man a thing or two; Quisanté's manner did nothing
to contradict this implied assumption.
"What we want, sir," said Foster, "is to have you in the Government. Once
you're there, you'll sit for Henstead till you die or go to the House of
Lords. Nobody'll be able to touch you. But this time's critical, very
critical. They'll have a strong candidate, and they'll do all they know
to keep you out. It's not a time for offending anybody." He turned to
May. "I hope your ladyship will let us see you very often in the town?"
he said.
"When the election begins, I shall come down with my husband and stay all
the time."
"That's right; you'll be worth a hundred votes." He threw himself back in
his chair. "Under God," he said, "we ought to be safe. Your speech had an
excellent effect; I sent it to Middleton, and Dunn, and Japhet Williams,
and when I met 'em at the Council, they were all most pleasant about it.
I think you've undone all the bad impression."
"I only said what I thought," observed Quisanté.
"Yes, yes, just so; oh, just so, of course." His tone was not in the
least ironical, but a little hurried, as though, having put the thing in
a way that might sound ambiguous, he hastened to prevent any possible
misapprehension. May had looked for a twinkle in his eye, but his eye was
guilty of no such frivolity.
"I had a letter from Mr. Japhet Williams the other day," said Quisanté.
"He was annoyed at a vote I gave in Committee on the Truck Act. You know
I voted against the Government once, in favour of what I thought fairer
treatment of the men; not that any real hardship on the employer was
involved."
"Just so, just so," said Mr. Foster. "That's the worst of Japhet. He
doesn't look at the matter in a broad way. But I've put that all right,
sir. I met him on the Cemetery Board, and walked home with him, and I
said, 'Look here Japhet, that vote of Mr. Quisanté's 'll be worth fifty
votes among the men.' 'I don't care for that,' he said; 'I'm against
interference.' 'So am I,' I told him; 'but where's the harm? Mr. Quisanté
must have his own opinion here and there--that comes of having a clever
man--but (I said) the Government had a hundred majority there, and Mr.
Quisanté knew it.' Well, he saw that, and admitted that he'd been wrong
to make a fuss about it."
Quisanté nodded grave appreciation. May gave a little laugh, and suddenly
poured out a glass of claret for Mr. Foster; turning, he found her eyes
on his face, sparkling with amusement. His own large features relaxed
into a slow smile; something like the twinkle was to be detected now.
"Nothing's the worse for a bit of putting, is it?" he said, and drank his
wine at a gulp.
"You're a diplomatist, Mr. Foster," said she.
"Not to the detriment of truth; I assure you I don't sacrifice that," he
replied, with renewed gravity and an apparently perfect sincerity.
May was sorry when he took his leave, partly for the temporary loss of a
study which amused her, more because his departure brought the time for
telling Quisanté of Dick Benyon's visit. She did not want to tell him and
anticipated no result, yet she felt herself bound to let him know about
it. To this mind her eighteen months of marriage had brought her. In the
quite early days, while not blind to the way he looked at things when
left to himself, she had been eager to show him how she looked at them,
and, with the memory of her triumphs during their engagement, very
sanguine that she would be able always to convert him from his view to
hers, to open his eyes and show him the truth as it seemed to her. This
hopeful mood she had for nearly a year past been gradually abandoning.
She had once asked Morewood whether people must always remain what they
were; now she inclined to answer yes to her own question. But she could
not convince herself so thoroughly as to feel absolved from the duty of
trying to prove that the true answer was no. She must offer her husband
every chance still, she must not acquiesce, she must not give up the game
yet; some day she might (she smiled at herself here) awake an impulse or
happen on a moment so great as really to influence, to change, and to
mould him. But she had come to hate this duty; she would rather have left
things alone; as a simple matter of inclination, she wished that she felt
free to sit and smile at Quisanté as she had at old Foster the maltster.
She could not; Foster was not part of her life, near and close to her,
her chosen husband, the father of her child. Unless she clung to her
effort, and to her paradoxical much-disappointed hope, her life and the
thought of what she had done with it would become unendurable. Dick and
his wife had not quite understood what had come over her.
If Mr. Foster was diplomatic, so was she; she set before her husband
neither Dick's complaints nor her own misgivings in their crudity; she
started by asking how his change of front would affect people and
instanced Dick and herself only as examples of how the thing might strike
certain minds. She must feed him with the milk of rectitude, for its
strong meat his stomach was hopelessly unready. But he was suspicious,
and insisted on hearing what Dick Benyon had said; so she told him pretty
accurately. His answer was a long disquisition on the political
situation, to which she listened with the same faint smile with which she
had heard Dick himself; at last he roundly stigmatised the Crusade as a
visionary and impracticable scheme.
"I stuck to it as long as I could," he said, "but you wouldn't have me
risk everything for it?"
"Or even anything?" she asked.
The question was a spark to him. Gladly leaving the immediate question,
he dilated on all that the coming contest meant to him, how victory would
assure his prospects, how defeat might leave him hopelessly out in the
cold, how it would be absurd to lose all that he was going to accomplish
for the sake of a hasty promise and a cause that he had come to
disbelieve in. "When did you come to disbelieve in it?" was the question
in her heart; he saw it in her eyes.
"It's a little hard to have to explain everything in private as well as
in public," he complained. "And my head's fit to split."
"Don't trouble any more about it; only I thought I'd better tell you what
Dick said." She came to him as he lay back in his chair and put her hand
on his brow. He was tired, not only looking tired; his head did ache, she
had no doubt; to turn these afflictions to account had always been his
way; so long ago as the Imperial League banquet she remembered it. "Go to
bed," she said. "I'll write a few letters first."
"I want you to understand me," he said. He loved her and she had made him
uneasy; her good opinion was very necessary to his happiness.
"I do understand you," she said, and persuaded him to go upstairs, while
she sat down by the fire, forgetful apparently of the excuse that she had
made for lingering.
Did she repent? That question came often into her mind. She well might,
for one of the great hopes with which she had married was quite gone by
now. There was no longer any possibility of maintaining that the faults
were of manner only, no longer any reasonable expectation that she would
be able to banish or materially to diminish them. It was for better for
worse with a vengeance then. But did she repent? There were times when
she wept, times when she shuddered, times when she scorned, even times
when she hated. But had she ever so felt as to be confident that if
Omnipotence had offered to undo the past, she would have had the past
undone? There had perhaps been one such occasion quite early in the
marriage, and the woe of it had been terrible; but it was followed almost
immediately by a "moment," by an inspired outbreak of his over some case
in the paper, by a vow to see an injustice remedied, a ceaseless,
unsparing, unpaid month's work to that end, a triumph over wrong and
prejudice in the cause of a helpless woman. He had nearly killed himself
over it, the doctor said, and May had watched by his bed, without tears,
but with a conviction that if he died she must die also; because it
seemed as though he had faced death rather than her condemnation. That
was not the truth of it, of course, but she and he between them had made
it seem the truth to her.
And now, with all the meanness of this abandonment of his friends, with
all this fawning on the moneyed Wesleyans before her eyes, she could not
declare that she repented, lest he, waking again to greatness, should
plunge her again into the depths of abasement. But that the same man
should be great and mean, and should escape arraignment for his meanness
by making play with his headache! She smiled now to remember how great
the mere faults of manner had once seemed to her girlish fastidiousness;
they were small to her now; her teeth were set on edge indeed, but by a
sharper sourness than lay in them. To the faults of manner she had grown
to some extent accustomed; she had become an adept in covering and
excusing them. To-day, in her interview with Dick Benyon, she had turned
alike art on to the other faults. A new thought and a new apprehension
came into her mind.
"If I go on defending him," she murmured, "shall I end by getting like
him and really think it all right? I wonder!" For it was difficult not to
identify herself with her cause, and he was now her cause. Who asks a
lawyer to disbelieve his own client, who asks a citizen to be extreme to
mark what is done amiss in his country's quarrel?
"Now if the Dean did chance to do anything wrong, Mrs. Baxter simply
wouldn't see that it was wrong," she meditated. "Neither would Amy
Benyon, if Dick did. I see it's wrong and yet defend it. I'm the wrong
sort of woman to have married Alexander."
Yes, from that point of view, undoubtedly. But there was another. What
would Mrs. Baxter or Lady Richard have made of him at the times when he
woke to greatness? Dick had appreciated him then; Dick's wife never had;
she saw only the worst. Well, it was plain to see. May saw it so plain
that night that she sat where she was till the night was old because, if
she went upstairs, she might find him there. And she fell to wishing that
the seat at Henstead was not shaky; so much hung on it, her hopes for him
as well as his own hopes, her passionate interest in him as well as his
ambition. Nay, she had a feeling or a fear that more still hung on it.
Pondering there alone in the night, assessing her opinion and reviewing
her knowledge of him, she told herself that there was hardly anything
that he would not do sooner than lose the seat. So that she dreaded the
struggle for the strain it might put on him; strains of that sort she
knew now that he was not able to bear. "Lead us not into temptation," was
the prayer which must be on her lips for him; if that were not answered,
he was well-nigh past praying for altogether. For with temptation came
his blindness, and he no longer saw the thing that tempted him for what
it was. Oh, and what a fool she had been to think that she could make him
see!
At last she went upstairs, slowly and reluctantly. Passing her own door,
she mounted again to the baby's nursery, and entered softly. All was
peace; both baby and nurse slept. May was smiling as she came down the
stairs; she murmured, "Gaston!" mimicking the satisfied tones of old Aunt
Maria's voice. Then she entered her own room; Quisanté's bed was empty. A
sense of great relief rose in her, but she went out again and softly
turned the handle of his dressing-room door. He had elected to sleep
there, as he often did. The light was still high; a book lay open by him
on the bed. He was in deep sleep, looking very pale, very tired, very
peaceful. She stood looking at him for a moment; again she smiled as she
stole forward and peeped at the book. It was a work on Bimetallism. Did
he mean to win Henstead with that? Oh, no; he meant to preach the Majesty
of the British Sovereign, King of coins, good tender from China to Peru.
She imagined him making some fine rhetoric out of it.
He breathed gently and regularly; for once he rested, he really rested
from his unresting efforts, from the cruel race he ran; he was for once
free from all the thoughts of his brain, all the devices of his
resourceful, unbaffled, unhesitating mind. With a sigh she turned away
and lowered the light, that in darkness he might sleep more easily. In
the darkness she stood a minute longer, seeing now only the dim outline
of his body on the bed; again the smile came, but her lips moved to
murmur softly, "Lead us not into temptation." And still murmuring the
only prayer that might serve him, still smiling that it was the only
prayer she could pray for her chosen husband, she left Quisanté to his
rest.