PRACTICAL POLITICS.
While Alexander Quisanté increased in promise and prominence, Weston
Marchmont had begun to cause some anxiety to his best friends. His
passion for ultimates grew upon him; sometimes it seemed as though he
would put up with nothing less. At the same time a personal fastidiousness
and a social exclusiveness, always to a certain extent characteristic of
the man, gathered greater dominion over him. He was not civil to the
people towards whom civility would be useful, and he refused to shut
his eyes to the logical defects or moral shortcomings in the measures
promoted by his party. His abilities were still conceded in ample terms,
his charm still handsomely and sincerely acknowledged. But a suspicion
gradually got about that he was impracticable, that he had a perverse
affection for unpopular causes, for reasons of approval or disapproval
that did not occur to the world at large, for having a private point of
view of his own, differentiated from the common view by distinctions as
unyielding as to the ordinary eye they were minute. The man who begins
merely by being uncompromising as to his own convictions may end in
finding an actual pleasure in disagreeing with those of others. Some
such development was, according to acute observers, taking place in
Marchmont; if the tendency became his master, farewell to the high
career to which he had appeared to be destined. Plain men would call him
finicking, and practical men would think it impossible to work with him.
No impression is more damning about a man engaged in public life; the
Whips have to put a query to his name, and he cannot be trusted to
confine his revolts to such occasions as those on which Mr. Foster of
Henstead thought an exhibition of independence a venial sin, or in
certain circumstances a prudent act.
"The fact is," Morewood said to Marchmont once, when they had been
talking over his various positions and opinions, "if you want to lead
ordinary people, you must keep on roads that ordinary people can travel,
roads broad enough for the _grande armée_. You may take them quicker or
slower, you may lead them downhill or get them to follow you uphill, but
you must keep to the road. A bye-path is all right and charming for
yourself, for a _tête-à-tête_, or a small party of friends, but you
don't take an army-corps along it."
The unusual length and the oratorical character of this warning were
strong evidence of the painter's feelings. Marchmont nodded a grave and
troubled assent.
"Still if I see the thing one way, I can't act as if I saw it the
other."
"You mustn't see it one way," said Morewood irritably. "If you must be
the slave of your conscience, hang it, you needn't be of your intellect.
Ask the Dean there." (The Dean, who had been drinking his port in
thoughtful peace, started a little.) "He'll tell you that belief is
largely or altogether--which is it?--an affair of the will."
The Dean was prudent; he smiled and finished his glass.
"If I chose to believe in the Crusade, I could," Morewood went on with a
satirical smile. "Or with an adequate effort I could think Jimmy Benyon
brilliant, or Fred Wentworth wise, or Alexander Quisanté honest. That's
it, eh, Mr. Dean?"
"Well, the ordinary view may be appreciated, even if it's not entirely
embraced," said the Dean diplomatically. "The points of agreement are
usually much more important, for practice at all events, than those of
difference."
"In fact--shut one eye and go ahead?" asked Marchmont.
"Oh, shut 'em both and walk by the sound of the feet and the cheering."
"Don't say more than you mean, Mr. Morewood," the Dean advised mildly.
"I know what he means," said Marchmont. "And, yes, I rather wish I could
do it."
Morewood began to instance the great men who had done it, including in
his list many whom the common opinion that he praised would not have
characterised at all in the same way. At each name Marchmont denied
either the greatness or the pliancy. The Dean could see with what ardour
he maintained his position; in spite of the unvarying suavity of his
manner there was something naturally repulsive to him in yielding a
hair's breadth in deference to the wishes or the weaknesses of a
majority.
"Your independence is really half a prejudice," said the Dean at the
end. "You're like a man who can't get a cab and misses his appointment
sooner than ride in a 'bus."
"I suppose so--and I'm much obliged to you. But--well, you can argue
against what a man does, but what's the use arguing against what he is?"
"No; he himself's the only man who can do that," said the Dean, but he
knew as well as Marchmont himself that such an argument would never be
victorious. The will to change was wanting; Marchmont might deplore what
he lost by being what he was, and at times he felt very sore about it;
but as a matter of taste he liked himself just as he was, even as he
liked the few people in whom he found some of the same flavour and the
same bent of mind.
His character was knit consistently all through; whether he dealt with
public affairs or ordered his own life the same line of conduct was
followed. If he could not have things as he wanted them or do them as he
chose, he would not have them or do them at all. He was not modifiable.
For example, having failed to win May Gaston, he had no thought of
trying for Fanny, and this not (as Lady Richard had thought likely)
because he objected to any sort of connection with Quisanté; that point
of view did not occur to him; it was merely because Fanny was not May,
and May was what he had wanted and did want. Fanny he left to the
gradual, uphill, but probably finally successful, wooing of Jimmy
Benyon. Even with regard to May herself he very nearly achieved
consistency. His promise to be often at Quisanté's house had been
flagrantly and conspicuously broken. Quisanté had pressed him often; on
the three occasions on which he had called May had let him see how
gladly she would welcome him more often. He had not gone more often.
He was not sulking, for his temper was not touched; but he held aloof
because it was not to his taste to go under existing circumstances.
He knew that he gave pain to her and regretted the pain, but he could
not go, any more than he could give a vote because his good friend
Constantine Blair, the Whip, was very much put out when he wouldn't. "He
wants a party all to himself," said Constantine angrily. "And then I'm
hanged if he'd vote with it!"
Some of the things here indicated May Quisanté read about him in the
papers, some Quisanté brought home from the House, some she heard from
friends or divined for herself; and her heart went out to Marchmont
under the cunning lure of contrast. The Dissolution drew near now, and
political conferences, schemes, and manoeuvres were the order of the
day in Grosvenor Road and in many other houses which she frequented.
Perhaps she exaggerated what she disliked, but it seemed to her that
everybody, her husband of course among the first, was carefully
considering how many of his previous utterances and how much of his
existing opinions he might conveniently, and could plausibly, disclaim
and suppress, and on the other hand to what extent it might be
expedient, and would not be too startling, to copy and advocate
utterances and opinions which were in apparent conflict therewith. This,
she was told, was practical politics. Hence her impulse of longing to
renew friendship and intimacy with a man who was dubbed unpractical. The
change would be pleasant, and, if she found something to laugh at, she
would find something to admire, just as if in the practical politicians
she found something to frown at, she contrived to find also much matter
for legitimate mirth. She had begun by thinking that a gift of humour
would make her married life harder; she was conscious now that without
that form of insight it would be utterly intolerable.
"I hear you're behaving very badly," she said to Marchmont, when he came
in obedience to her invitation. "I was talking to Mr. Blair about you,
and he had no words strong enough to denounce you in."
"Yes, it's atrocious. I'm thinking for myself," he said with a shrug, as
he sat down.
"For yourself instead of about yourself! With a dissolution coming too!"
"Oh, I'm safe enough. I'm a martyr without a stake."
"Well, really, you're refreshing. I wish we were safe, and hadn't got to
make ourselves safe; I don't think it's a very elevating process." She
paused a moment and then added, "I ought to apologise for bringing you
into such an atmosphere of it. We conspire here like Fenians or Women
Suffragists, and I know how much you hate it all."
"And you?" he asked briefly.
"Oh, yes, as the clerk hates his desk or a girl her practising. The
duties of life, you know."
She had received him in an exuberance of spirits, much as though she
were the school-girl she spoke of and he a pleasant visitor from the
outside world. When she reproached him for not having come before, it
was only evidence of her pleasure that he had come now; in the days
when he saw her often and was always at her call, there had been no
such joy as this. Yet he had hesitated to add one more item to the score
of simple perversity, of not wanting when you can have and _vice versâ_;
what she said about the atmosphere she lived in showed him that his
hesitation had been right.
"And I know you didn't want to come," she went on. "You've only come out
of politeness, no, I mean out of kindness."
"There was an old invitation. An old promise too? Wasn't there?"
"One never withdrawn, the other terribly broken," she laughed. "You've
heard of our difference with poor Dick Benyon?"
"Of your husband's?" May smiled slightly. "Yes, I have. Quisanté's quite
right now, you know; the only pity is that he didn't see it sooner."
"Dick's not so charitable as you. He suspects our sincerity."
It was on the tip of his tongue to say again "Your husband's?" but
looking at her he found her eyes full of fun, and began to laugh
himself.
"I find it absolutely the only way," May explained. "I can't draw
distinctions. Mrs. Baxter, now, says 'Our Cathedral' but 'My
drawing-room.' Amy Benyon says 'Our relations,' when she means hers and
'Dick's relations' when she means his. I've quite given up the attempt
to discriminate; a thorough-going identification of husband and wife is
the only thing. The We matrimonial must be as universal as the We
editorial."
"The theory is far-reaching, if you apply it to qualities."
"Yes, I don't quite know how far."
"Alliance becomes union, and union leads to fusion?"
"And fusion leads where?"
He escaped answering or covered inability to answer with a shrug.
"I'm sorry you don't please Mr. Blair," she said.
"Really I don't think I care so very much. I used to be ambitious,
but----"
"Oh, don't tell me it's not worth while being ambitious. It's all I've
got."
She had spoken on a hasty unthinking impulse; she grew a little red and
laughed rather nervously when she found what she had said. His face did
not change, his voice was quite unmoved, as he said, smiling, "In that
case, no doubt, it is worth while."
She wanted to applaud his excellent manners; at the same time they
annoyed her rather. She had been indiscreet no doubt, but her
indiscretion might, if he had liked, have led the way to matters of
interest, to that opening of the heart to somebody for which she was
pining. His polite care not to embarrass her shut the door.
"I mean, just now," she resumed, "while our seat's so shaky, you know."
"Ah, yes," said he half-absently.
She leant back in her chair and looked at him.
"I think," she said, "you look as if you did care, about Mr. Blair or
about something else. I wanted to tell you that I don't agree in the
least with the criticisms on you." She leant forward, asking in a lower
voice, "Do they hurt you?"
"Not much. A man likes to succeed, but there are things I like better."
"Yes. Well, there's nothing we--_we_--like better, Mr. Marchmont."
He rose and stood on the hearth; her eyes were upturned to his in a
steady gaze.
"You were always very frank, weren't you?" he asked, looking down and
smiling. "Well, you've known what you say for a long while, haven't
you?"
"Oh, yes, even before--Oh, ever since the very beginning, you know.
There now! We've left 'We' and got to 'I,' and whenever that happens I
say something I oughtn't to. But one must sometimes. I believe I could
serve anybody to the death if only I were allowed to speak my whole mind
about him once a week. But it's disloyal, I suppose."
"Well, I suppose it is."
She laughed. "That's what Mr. Blair means," she said. "You must have
seen that I wanted you to say 'No, it isn't.' Perhaps you would have to
anybody else. You were always one of the people who attributed all the
virtues to me. You made it so hard for me to be good. I loathed the girl
you thought I was. One comfort is that as I am now----". Suddenly her
eyes met his; she stopped. "We'd better talk about 'we' again," she
ended with a laugh.
"Whom do you talk to?" he asked curiously.
"About 'we'? I talk to Miss Quisanté--You've met her? She's never tired
of talking about 'we'--though she doesn't like us; but she doesn't care
a bit to talk about me."
"Have a confidante," he suggested gravely.
"Yes--like Tilburina. Who shall I have?"
A run through their acquaintance suggested only Mrs. Gellatly, and her
May rejected as being too suitable, too much the traditional confidante.
"I should like one who might possibly have something to tell me in
return, and she never could," she said.
They were interrupted by the arrival of the man of whom they had spoken,
Constantine Blair. He came with important and, as he clearly considered,
disquieting news for Quisanté. Sir Winterton Mildmay, one of the richest
landowners near Henstead, who had been at loggerheads with his party,
had made up the quarrel and consented to stand in opposition to
Quisanté. "I thought the sooner your husband knew the better," said
Constantine with a very grave face. "It makes a difference, you see. We
only beat young Fortescue, a stranger in the town, by two hundred, and
they had four hundred the time before." He paused and added, "Lady
Mildmay's very much liked in the town."
"Come, Blair, I'm sure we shan't be worse off in that respect anyhow,"
said Marchmont, laughing.
"Oh, I've nothing to do with you, I've given you up," cried Blair,
twisting his good-humoured face into a fierce scowl. "He's a man with
convictions, Lady May; he's no sort of use to me."
Blair had convictions himself, but he and everybody else took them so
much for granted that they might almost as well not have existed; they
were polite convictions too, ready to give place not only to one another
but even to circumstances, and waiting quite patiently their turn to be
realised. He expected to be met in a like spirit, conceiving that the
true function of a man's own opinions is to decide which party he shall
belong to; with that decision their duty was ended. He possessed an
extremely cordial manner, dressed perfectly, and never forgot anybody.
He enjoyed his work immensely, quarrelling with nothing in it save that
it often prevented him from being present at the first performances of
new plays. May thought him pleasant, but did not welcome his appearance
to-day; he smacked too strongly of those politics distinctively practical
from which her talk with Marchmont had afforded a temporary escape.
"I know Mildmay," said Marchmont. "He's a capital fellow and, I should
think, very popular. He'll give you a bit of a run."
"From what I hear he'll run us very close indeed," said Blair with an
anxious look. "However I've unlimited confidence in your husband, Lady
May. If Mildmay is to be beaten Quisanté'll beat him; if there is a weak
spot he'll find it out."
May smiled faintly; what Blair said was so true.
"Perhaps," smiled Marchmont, "you'll be able to ferret out something
about him."
May turned to him and said with a touch of sharpness, "We shall fight
fairly anyhow, I hope." She saw that she surprised him and went on with
a laugh, "You shouldn't talk as if we were going to set detectives on
him and use their information for electioneering."
"Well, hardly," said Constantine Blair. "Still, mind you, a constituency
has a right to know that its member is an honourable and equitable man
as well as a supporter of the principles it favours."
"Excellently well put, Blair," said Marchmont languidly. "Is it your
own?"
"No!" said May, with a sudden laugh. "I believe it's my husband's."
Blair looked a little put out, but his good-humour triumphed. "I'm not
above borrowing from my betters," he said. "Quisanté did say something
of the sort to me, but how in the world did you know? Has he said it to
you?"
"Oh, no; I knew by--oh, just by the subtle sympathy that exists between
husband and wife, Mr. Blair." She laughed again and glanced at Marchmont.
"Sir Winterton must look out for the detectives, mustn't he?" she ended.
Marchmont saw, though Blair did not, that she jested uneasily and reaped
no pleasure, although she reaped amusement, from her clever recognition
of her husband's style. She had spoken in much the same tone about the
difference with Dick Benyon and the suspicions which Dick cast on "our
sincerity." He came near to perceiving and understanding what was in her
mind--what had been there as she watched Quisanté sleeping. The first
suggestion of ferreting out something had come from him, purely in the
way of a cynical jeer, just because nobody would ever suspect him of
seriously contemplating or taking part in such a thing. Well, May
Quisanté did not apparently feel quite so confident about her husband.
Blair bustled off, with a parting mysterious hint that they must lose no
time in preparing for the fray--it might begin any week now--and May's
face relaxed into a more genuine smile.
"He does enjoy it so," she explained. But Marchmont was not thinking of
Blair. He asked her abruptly,
"You'll go to Henstead and help him, I suppose?"
"Of course. I shall be with him right through. He'll want all the help I
can give him. It's everything to him to win this time."
"Yes, I know." Her voice had become troubled again; she was very anxious
for her husband's success; but was she anxious about something else too?
"If I can help you, let me," he said as he rose to go.
She gave him her hand and looked in his face.
"I'm afraid that most likely I shouldn't be able to ask you," she said
gravely. The answer, as she gave it, meant so much to him, and even
seemed to admit so much, that he wondered at once at her insight into
his thoughts and at her frankness in facing what she found there. For
did she not in truth mean that she might want help most on some occasion
when the loyalty he had himself approved would forbid her to reveal her
distress to him or to seek his succour? He ventured, after an instant's
hesitation, on one word.
"After all," he said, "you can't trundle the world's wheelbarrow in
white kid gloves; at least you soil them."
"Then why trundle it?" she asked. "At any rate you needn't say that sort
of thing. Leave that to Mr. Blair."
Not only was the time when everybody had to be bestirring themselves
approaching rapidly, but the appearance of Sir Winterton Mildmay in the
list quickened the Quisantés' departure for the scene of action. Rooms
were taken at the Bull in Henstead, an election agent appointed,
resources calculated--this involved a visit to Aunt Maria--and matters
got into fighting trim. During this period May had again full cause to
thank her power of humour; it almost scattered the gloomy and (as she
told herself) fanciful apprehensions which had gathered round, and
allowed her to study with amusement her husband's preparations. He
talked very freely to her always about his political views, and now he
consulted her on the very important question of his Election Address. He
reminded her of a man packing his portmanteau for a trip and not quite
knowing what he would want, whether (for example) shooting boots would
come in useful, or warm underclothing be essential. Space was limited,
needs difficult to foresee, climate very uncertain. Some things were
obviously necessary, such as the cry on which the Government was going
to the country; others were sure to be serviceable; in went "something
for Labour" (she gathered the phrase from Quisanté's rough notes); odd
corners held little pet articles of the owner's things which he had
found unexpectedly useful on a previous journey, or which might seem
especially adapted to the part of the world he was going to visit. On
the local requirements Mr. Foster the maltster was a very Baedeker. With
constant effort on Quisanté's part, with almost unfailing amusement on
his wife's, the portmanteau got itself filled.
"Are you sure there's nothing else, Alexander?" she asked.
"I think I've got everything that's of real service," said he. "I don't
want to overload it."
Of course not; excess luggage may be very expensive. May was smiling as
she handed back the Address.
"It's extraordinarily clever," she remarked. "You are extraordinarily
clever, you know."
"There's nothing in it that isn't pretty obvious," said he, though he
was well pleased.
"Oh, to you, yes, obvious to you; that's just it," she said.
But amongst all that was in the portmanteau there was nothing that could
be construed into a friendly word for the Crusade; and were not the
anxious minds of the Henstead Wesleyans meant to read a disclaimer of
that great movement in a reference to "the laudable and growing activity
of all religious denominations, each within the sphere of its own
action"? Quisanté had put in "legitimate" before "sphere," but crossed
it out again; the hint was plain enough without, and a superfluous word
is a word too much. "Sphere," implies limitations; the Crusade had
negatived them. This significant passage in the Address was fresh in
May's mind when, a day or two later, her husband came in, fretful and
out of humour. He flung a note down on the table, saying in a puzzled
tone,
"I can't think what's come over Dick Benyon. You know my fight'll be
over before his is half-way through, and I wrote offering to go and make
a couple of speeches for him. He writes back to say that under existing
circumstances he thinks it'll be better for him not to trouble me. Read
his note; it's very stiff and distant."
"Can you wonder?" was what rose to her lips. She did not put the
question. The odd thing was that most undoubtedly he could wonder and
did wonder, that he did not understand why Dick should be aggrieved nor,
probably, why, even though he chose to be aggrieved, he should therefore
decline assistance of unquestionable value.
"Well, there'll be a lot of people glad to have me," said Quisanté in
resentful peevishness. "And I daresay, if I have a big win, he'll change
his mind. I shall be worth having then."
"I don't think that would make any difference to Dick," she said.
She spoke lightly, her tone was void of all offence, but Quisanté left
the room, frowning and vexed. She had seemed to rebuke him and to accuse
him of not seeing or not understanding something that was plain to her.
He had become very sensitive on this point. Left to himself, he had been
a self-contented man, quite clear about what he meant to do, troubling
very little about what he was, quite confident that he could reason from
his own mind to the mind of his acquaintances with absolute safety. When
he fell in love with May Gaston, however, part of her attraction for him
had lain in his sense of a difference between them, of her grasp on
things and on aspects of things which eluded him; in this mood he had
been prepared to worship, to learn, to amend. These things for a little
while he had done or attempted, and had been met by zealous efforts to
the same end on her part. His great moments had been frequent then, and
May had felt that the risky work she had undertaken might prosper and at
last be crowned with success. As for some months back this idea of hers
had been dying, even so Quisanté's humble mood died. Now his suspicious
vanity saw blame of what he was, or even contempt of him, in every word
by which she might seem to invite him to become anything different.
Though she had declared herself on his side by the most vital action of
her life, he imputed to her a leaning towards treachery; her heart was
more with his critics than with him. Yet he did not become indifferent
to her praise or her blame, but rather grew morbidly sensitive and
exacting, intolerant of questioning and disliking even a smile. He loved
her, depended on her, and valued her opinion; but she became in a
certain sense, if not an enemy, yet a person to be conciliated, to be
hoodwinked, to be tricked into a favourable view. Hence there crept into
his bearing towards her just that laboured insincerity which she had
never ceased to blame in his attitude towards the world at large. He
showed her the truth about himself now only as it were by accident, only
when he failed to perceive that the truth would not be to her liking.
But this was often, and every time it happened it seemed to him as well
as to her at once to widen the gulf between them and to move further
away any artificial means of crossing it. Thus the new sense of
self-dissatisfaction and self-distrust which had grown upon him centred
round his wife and seemed to owe its origin to her.
On her side there came a sort of settled, resigned, not altogether
unhumorous, despair. She saw that she had over-rated her power alike
over him and over herself. She could not change what she hated in him,
and she could not cease to hate it. She could neither make the normal
level higher nor yet bear patiently with the normal lower level; the
great moments would not become perpetual and the small moments grew more
irritating and more humiliating. But the great moments recurred from
time to time and never lost their charm. Thus she oscillated between the
moods produced by an intense intellectual admiration on the one hand and
an intense antipathy of the feelings on the other; and in this
uncomfortable balancing she had the prospect of spending her life. Well,
Aunt Maria had lived in it for years, and Aunt Maria could not be called
an unhappy woman. If only Quisanté would not do anything too outrageous,
she felt that she would be able to endure. Since she could not change,
she must be content to compromise, to ignore--if only he would not drive
her from that refuge too.
"I suppose she sees what the man is by now," said Lady Richard to
Morewood, whom she had been trying to entice into sympathising with her
over the scandalous treatment of the Crusade.
"My dear Lady Richard, she always saw what he is much better than you
do, even better than I do. But it's one thing to see what a man is and
quite another to see what effect his being it will have on yourself from
time to time."
"What he's done about Dick and the Dean is so characteristic."
"For example," Morewood pursued, "you know what a bore is, but at one
time he kills you, at another he faintly amuses you. You know what a
Dean is" (he raised his voice so as to let the Dean, who was reading in
the window, overhear); "at one time the abuse exasperates you, at
another such splendid indifference to the progress of thought catches
your fancy. No doubt Lady May experiences the same varieties of feeling
towards her worthy husband."
"Well, I've done with him," said little Lady Richard. Morewood laughed.
"The rest of us haven't," he said, "and I don't think we ever shall till
the fellow dies somehow effectively."
"What a blessing for poor May!" cried Lady Richard impulsively.
Morewood was a long while answering; even in the end what he said could
not be called an answer. But he annoyed Lady Richard by shaking his
finger at her and observing,
"Ah, there you raise a very interesting question."
"Very," agreed the Dean from the window seat.
"I didn't know you were listening," said Lady Richard, wheeling round.
"I always listen about Mr. Quisanté."
"Exactly!" exclaimed Morewood. "I told you so!" But Lady Richard did not
even pretend to understand his exultation or what he meant. Whatever he
had happened to mean about poor May, the Dean was not Alexander
Quisanté's wife.