SEVENTY-SEVEN AND SUSY SINNETT.
The course of events gave to the Henstead election an importance which
seemed rather adventitious to people not Henstead-born. It occurred among
the earliest; the cry was on its trial. Quisanté was a prominent
champion, his opponent commanded great influence, and the seat had always
been what Constantine Blair used to call "pivotal," and less diplomatic
tongues "wobbly." Such materials for conspicuousness were sure to lose
nothing in the hands of Quisanté. The consciousness that he fought a
larger than merely local fight, on a platform broader than parochial,
under more eyes than gazed at him from the floor of the Corn-Exchange,
was the spur he needed to urge him to supreme effort and rouse him to
moments of inspiration. Add to this the feeling that his own career was
at its crisis. Even Fanny Gaston, who rather unwillingly accompanied her
sister to the Bull, was in twenty-four hours caught by the spirit of
combat and acknowledged that Quisanté was a fine leader of a battle,
however much he left to be desired as a brother-in-law. She flung herself
into the fight with unstinted zeal, and was rewarded by Quisanté's
conviction that he had at last entirely overcome her dislike of him.
"He's really splendid in his own way," she wrote to Jimmy Benyon--by now
they had come to corresponding occasionally--"and I think that you
anyhow--I don't ask Dick, who's got a fight of his own--might come and
give him some help. People know how much you did for him, and it looks
rather odd that you should neither of you be here." So Jimmy, after a
struggle, packed up, and gave and received a reciprocal shock of surprise
when he got into the same railway carriage as the Dean and Mrs. Baxter.
"What, are you going too?" cried Jimmy.
Mrs. Baxter explained that they were not going to join Mr. Quisanté;
indeed they were bound for the opposite camp, being on their way to stay
with the Mildmays. The Dean added that his presence had no political
significance; the Mildmays were old friends, and the visit quite
unconnected with the election. "Although," the Dean added, "I shall find
it interesting to watch the fight." His manner indicated that his
sympathies were divided. Jimmy hastened to explain his presence.
"I'm only going because of May and Fanny. I don't care a straw about
Quisanté," he said, "although I'm loyal to the party, of course."
"I'm not a party man," observed the Dean. How should he be, when both
parties contemptuously showed his dear Crusade the door?
"I want Sir Winterton to win," said Mrs. Baxter with mild firmness.
"Oh, I say!" murmured Jimmy, who was very ready to be made to feel
uncomfortable. "Come now, why, Mrs. Baxter?"
Mrs. Baxter shook her head, and went on knitting the stocking which on
journeys took the place of the wonted petticoat.
"My wife's taken a prejudice against Mr. Quisanté," the Dean explained
apologetically.
"A prejudice!" said Mrs. Baxter with a patient withering smile; she
implied that her husband would be calling religion and the virtues
prejudices next.
"There's nothing particularly wrong with him," Jimmy protested weakly.
"There's nothing particularly right with him, Lord James. He's just like
that coachman of the Girdlestones'; he never told the truth and never
cleaned his harness, but, bless you, there was always a good reason for
it. What became of the man, Dan?"
"I don't know, my dear."
"I remember. They had to get rid of him, and the Canon got him made
night-watchman at the Institute. However, as I say, I called him Mr.
Reasons, and that's what I call Alexander Quisanté. Poor girl!" The last
words referred, by a somewhat abrupt transition, to Quisanté's wife.
The Dean smiled rather uneasily at Jimmy Benyon; Mrs. Baxter detected the
smile, but was not disturbed. She shook her head again, saying,
"Sir Winterton you can trust, but if I were he I'd keep a sharp eye on
all you Quisanté people."
"I say, hang it all!" moaned Jimmy Benyon. But his protest could not
soften the old lady's convinced hostility. "You ask his aunt," she ended
vindictively, and Jimmy was too timid to suggest that enquiries in such a
quarter were not the usual way of forming a judgment on rising statesmen.
Moreover he had no opportunity, for Miss Quisanté did not come to
Henstead; her explanation showed the mixture of malice and devotion which
was her usual attitude towards Sandro.
"I'd give my ears to come," she had told May, "to see the fun and hear
Sandro. But I'm old and ugly and scrubby, and Sandro won't want me. I'm
not a swell like you and your sister. I should do him harm, not good.
He'd be ashamed of me--oh, that'd only amuse me. But I'd best not come.
Write to me, my dear, and send me all his speeches."
"I wish you'd come. I want you to talk to," May said.
"Talk to your sister!" jeered Aunt Maria; it was nothing less than a
jeer, for she knew very well that May could not and would not talk to
Fanny.
One thing the Quisanté people (as Mrs. Baxter called them) found out
before they had been long in Henstead, and this was the important and
delicate nature of anything and everything that touched or affected Mr.
Japhet Williams. Something of this had been foreshadowed by Mr. Foster's
account of his friend, but the reality went far beyond. Japhet was a
small fretful-faced man; he was rich, liberal, and kind, but he plumed
himself on a scrupulous conscience and was the slave of a trifle-ridden
mind. As a member of a party, then, he was hard to work with, harder even
than Weston Marchmont, of whom he seemed sometimes to May to be a reduced
and travestied copy. Not a speech could be made, not a bill issued, but
Japhet Williams flew round to the Committee Room with an objection to
urge and a hole to pick. There he would find large, stout, shrewd old
Foster, installed in an arm-chair and ready with native diplomacy, or
Quisanté himself, earning Mrs. Baxter's nickname of "Mr. Reasons" by the
suave volubility of his explanations. May laughed at such scenes
half-a-dozen times in the first week of her stay at Henstead.
"Is he so very important to us?" she asked of Foster.
He answered her in a whisper behind a fat hand,
"His house is only a couple of miles from Sir Winterton's, and Lady
Mildmay's been civil. He employs a matter of two hundred men up at the
mills yonder."
"The position's very critical, isn't it, then?"
"So your good husband seems to think," said Foster, jerking his thumb
towards where Quisanté leant over Japhet's shoulder, almost caressing
him, and ingeniously justifying the statistics of an electioneering
placard. May's eyes followed the direction of the jerk. She sighed.
"Yes, it's a waste of Mr. Quisanté's time, but we can't help that,"
Foster sighed responsively. It was not, however, of Quisanté's time that
his wife had been thinking.
Japhet rose. Quisanté took his hand, shook it, and held it.
"Now you're satisfied, really satisfied, Mr. Williams?" he asked. "I give
you my word that what I've said is absolutely accurate."
"What that placard says, sir?"
"Yes, yes, certainly--what the placard says. It doesn't give the details
and explanations, of course, but the results are accurately stated."
"I'm much relieved to hear it, much relieved," said Japhet.
He left them; Foster sat down again, smiling. May had come to drive her
husband to a meeting and waited his leisure. He came across to Foster,
holding the suspected placard in his hand.
"Smoothed him down this time, sir?" asked Foster cheerily.
"Yes," answered Quisanté, passing his hand over his smooth hair. "I
think, Mr. Foster, we won't have any more of this Number 77. Make a note
of that, will you?"
"No more of 77," Foster noted on a piece of paper.
"It's not one of the most effective," said Quisanté thoughtfully.
"Sails a little near the wind, don't it?" asked Foster with a wink.
"Brief summaries of intricate subjects are almost inevitably open to
misunderstanding," observed Quisanté.
"Just so, just so," Foster hurried to say, his eyes grown quite grave
again. May remembered Mr. Constantine Blair's plagiarism of her husband's
style; had he been there, he must have appropriated this last example
also. "I shall end by becoming very fond of Japhet Williams," she said as
she got into the carriage. Quisanté glanced at her and did not ask her
why.
Meanwhile, however, the other side had got hold of No. 77, and Smiley,
the agent, a very clever fellow, wired up to the Temple for young Terence
McPhair, who had an acquaintance with the subject. Young Terence, who
possessed a ready tongue and no briefs to use it on, made fine play with
No. 77; accusations of misrepresentation, ignorant he hoped, fraudulent
he feared, flew about thick as snowflakes. The next morning Japhet was
round at the Committee Room by ten o'clock. Foster was there, and a boy
came up to the Bull with a message asking if Mr. Quisanté could make it
convenient to step round. It was a bad morning with Quisanté; his head
ached, his heart throbbed, and his stomach was sadly out of gear; he had
taken up a report of young Terence's speech, and read it in gloomy
silence while the others breakfasted. There was to be a great meeting
that night, and they had hoped that he would reserve what strength he had
for it. He heard the message, rose without a word, and went down to the
Committee Room.
"What'll he do?" asked Jimmy Benyon. "They gave us some nasty knocks last
night."
"He can prove that the placard has been withdrawn, at least that no more
are to be ordered," said Fanny Gaston. "It wasn't his fault; he's not
bound to defend it."
Quisanté came home to a late lunch; he was still ill, but his depression
had vanished; he ate, drank, and talked, his spirit rising above the woes
of his body.
"What have you done this morning?" Fanny asked.
"Held a meeting in the dinner-hour, had ten interviews, and the usual
palaver with Japhet."
"How are Mr. Williams' feelings?" asked May.
"He's all right now," said Quisanté, smiling. Then he added, "Oh, and
we've wired to town for two hundred and fifty more of 77."
Then May knew what was going to happen. Quisanté was roused. The placard
was untrue, at least misleading, and he knew it was; he might have
retreated before young Terence and sheltered himself by an inglorious
disclaimer. That, as Aunt Maria said, was not Sandro's way. No. 77 came
down by the afternoon train, a corps of bill-posters was let loose, and
as they drove to the evening meeting the town was red with it. Withdrawn,
disclaimed, apologised for? It was insisted on, relied on, made a trump
card of, flung full in young Terence's audacious face. May sat by her
husband in that strange mixed mood that he roused in her, half pride,
half humiliation; scorning him because he would not bow before the truth,
exulting in the audacity, the dash, and the daring of him, at the spirit
that caught victory out of danger and turned mistake into an occasion of
triumph. For triumph it was that night. Who could doubt his sincerity,
who question the injured honour that rang like a trumpet through his
words? And who could throw any further slur on No. 77, thus splendidly
championed, vindicated, and almost sanctified? Never yet in Henstead had
they heard him so inspired; to May herself it seemed the finest thing he
had yet done; and even young Terence, when he read it, felt glad that he
had left Henstead by the morning train.
As Quisanté sank into his chair amid a tumult of applause, Foster winked
across the platform at May; but little Japhet Williams was clapping his
hands as madly as any man among them. Who could not congratulate him, who
could not praise him, who could not feel that he was a man to be proud of
and a man to serve? Yet most undoubtedly No. 77 was untrue or at least
misleading, and Alexander Quisanté knew it. Undoubtedly he had said "No
more of it." And now he had pinned it as his colours to the mast. May
found herself looking at him with as fresh an interest and as great a
fear as in the first weeks of their marriage. Would she in her heart have
had him honest over No. 77, honest and inglorious? Or was she coming to
think as he did, and to ask little concerning honesty? What would Weston
Marchmont think of the affair? Or, short of that, how Morewood would
smile and the Dean shake his head!
The No. 77 episode was very typical of that time, and most typical of
Alexander Quisanté's conduct, of Sandro's way. His best and his worst,
his highest and his lowest, were called out; at one moment he wheedled an
ignorant fool with flattery, at another he roused keen honest men to fine
enthusiasm; now he seemed to have no thought that was not selfish and
mean, now imagination rapt him to a glow of heart-felt patriotism. The
good and the bad both stood him in stead, and hope reigned in his camp.
But all hung in the balance, for Sir Winterton was tall and handsome,
bluff and hearty, a good landlord, a good sportsman, a good man, a
neighbour to the town and a friend to half of it. And the great cry did
not seem like proving a great success.
"It's up-hill work against Sir Winterton," said Japhet Williams, rubbing
his thin little hands together.
A troubled look spread over the broad face of that provincial diplomatist,
Mr. Foster the maltster; he knew where the danger lay. They would come to
Quisanté's meetings, applaud him, admire him, be proud of his efforts to
please them; but when the day came would they not think (and would not
their wives remind them) that Sir Winterton was a neighbour and a friend
and that Lady Mildmay was kind and sweet? Then, having shouted for
Quisanté, would they not in the peaceful obscurity of the ballot put
their cross opposite Mildmay's name?
"I'm not easy about it, sir, that I'm not," said Foster, wiping his broad
red brow.
Quisanté was not easy either, as his lined face and his high-strung
manner showed; he was half-killing himself and he was not easy. So much
hung on it; before all England he had backed himself to win, and in the
strain of his excitement it seemed to him that the stake he laid was his
whole reputation. Was all that to go, and to go on no great issue, but
just because Sir Winterton was bluff and cheery and Lady Mildmay kind and
sweet? Another thing he knew about himself; if he lost this time, he must
be out in the cold at least for a long time; he could not endure another
contest, even if the offer of a candidature came to him, even though Aunt
Maria found the funds. Everything was on this fling of the dice then; and
it seemed to him almost iniquitous that he should lose because Sir
Winterton was bluff and cheery and his wife kind and sweet. His face was
hard and cunning as he leant across towards old Foster and said in a low
voice, with a sneering smile,
"I suppose there's nothing against this admirable gentleman?"
Old Foster started a little, recollecting perhaps that fine passage in
the speech which opened the campaign, the passage which defined the broad
public lines of the contest and loftily disclaimed any personal attack or
personal animosity. But the next moment he smiled in answer, smiled
thoughtfully, as he tapped his teeth with the handle of his pen-knife.
Quisanté sat puffing at a cigar and looking straight at him with
observant searching eyes.
"Anything against him, eh?" asked Foster in a ruminative tone.
"They've been ready enough to ask where I come from, and how I live, and
so on."
"They know all that about Sir Winterton, you see, sir."
"Yes, confound them." The keen eyes were still on Foster; the fat old man
shifted his position a little and ceased to meet their regard. "We don't
want to be beaten, you know," said Quisanté.
A silence of some minutes followed. Quisanté, rose and strolled off to a
table, where he began to sort papers; Foster sat where he was, frowning a
little, with his mouth pursed up. He stole a glance at Quisanté's back, a
curious enquiring glance.
"I know nothing about the rights of it one way or the other," he said at
last. "But some of the men up at the mills and in my place still remember
Tom Sinnett's affair. Only the other night, as Sir Winterton drove by,
one of them shouted out, 'Where's Susy Sinnett?'"
Quisanté went on sorting papers and did not turn round.
"Who the deuce is Susy Sinnett?" he asked indifferently, with a laugh.
"It was about five years ago--before Sir Winterton's split with the
Liberals. Tom was a keeper in Sir Winterton's employ, and Sir Winterton
charged him with netting game and sending it to London on his own
account." Foster's narrative ceased and he looked again at his
candidate's back. The papers rustled and the cigar smoke mounted to the
ceiling. "Well?" said Quisanté.
"Tom was found guilty at Sessions; but in the dock he declared Sir
Winterton had trumped up the charge to shut his mouth."
"What about?"
"Well, because he'd found Sir Winterton dangling after Susy, and
threatened to break his head if he found him there again." He paused,
Quisanté made no comment. "Tom got nine months, and when he came out all
the family emigrated to Manitoba."
After a short pause, filled by the arrangement of papers, Quisanté
observed, "That must have cost money. He'd saved out of what he got for
the game, eh?"
"It was supposed Sir Winterton found the money," said Foster, "but
nothing was known. Sir Winterton refused to make any statement. He said
his friends would know what to think, and he didn't care a damn (that was
his word) about anybody else. Still some weren't satisfied. But the talk
died away, except here and there among the men who'd been Tom's pals. I
daresay Tom gave 'em a rabbit now and again in exchange for a pot of
beer, and they missed him." Mr. Foster ended with a little chuckle.
"I think Sir Winterton might have been a little more explicit," Quisanté
remarked. "There's some excuse for thinking an explanation not
unnecessary. What became of the girl? Did she go to Manitoba?"
"I believe she did in the end, but she'd married a man from Dunn's works
and left the town three months after her father was sent to prison."
Quisanté came back to the hearth and stood looking down on old Foster.
"Rather a queer story," he said. "But I meant, was there anything against
him of a public nature, in his local record, anything of that sort, you
know."
"I know nothing of that kind," said Foster, raising his eyes and meeting
his leader's. He looked rather puzzled, as if he were still not quite
sure what Quisanté's question had meant, in spite of Quisanté's
explanation of it. "I'd almost forgotten this, but Japhet Williams
mentioned it the other day. You know Japhet by now. He said he thought he
ought to ask Sir Winterton to make a statement."
A sudden gleam shot through Quisanté's eyes.
"Mr. Williams' active conscience at work again?" he asked with a sneering
laugh.
"That's it," said Foster, still looking stolidly at his chief. "But I
know Sir Winterton; he'd only say what he did before."
Quisanté turned, flung the end of his cigar into the grate, and turned
back to Foster, saying,
"Mr. Williams must do as he thinks right; but of course I can't have any
hand in a matter of that kind."
"Just so, just so," murmured Foster as hurriedly but even more vaguely
than usual. His chief was puzzling him still.
"I can't have anything at all to do with it," Quisanté repeated
emphatically. Foster did not quite know whence he gathered the
impression, but he was left with the feeling that, if he should chance
ever to be asked what had passed between them on the subject, he must
remember this sentence at least, whatever else of the conversation he
recollected or forgot.
"Of course you can't, sir. I only mentioned it in passing," said he.
"And you'd better tell Japhet Williams so, if he mentions the matter."
The slightest pause followed. "Or," added Quisanté, grinding his heel
into the hearth rug as though in absence of mind, "if it happens to crop
up in talk between you."
Whether the matter did crop up as suggested or not is one of those points
of secret history which it seems useless to try to discover. But an
incident which occurred the next evening showed that Japhet Williams'
mind and conscience had, either of their own motion or under some outside
direction, been concerning themselves with the question of Tom Sinnett
and his daughter Susy. There was a full and enthusiastic meeting of Sir
Winterton's supporters. In spite of Quisanté's victory over No. 77,
they were in good heart and fine fighting fettle; Sir Winterton was
good-tempered and sanguine; there was enough opposition to give the
affair go, not enough to make itself troublesome. But at the end, after
a few of the usual questions and the usual verbal triumphs of the
candidate, a small man rose from the middle of the hall. He was greeted
by hoots, with a few cheers mingling. The Chairman begged silence for
their worthy fellow-townsman, Councillor Japhet Williams.
Japhet was perfectly self-possessed; he had been, he said, as a rule a
supporter of the opposite party, but he kept his mind open and was free
to admit that he had been considerably impressed by some of the arguments
which had fallen from Sir Winterton Mildmay that evening. The meeting
applauded, and Sir Winterton nodded and smiled. There was one matter,
however, which he felt it his duty to mention. Now that Sir Winterton
Mildmay (the full name came with punctilious courtesy every time) was
appealing to a wider circle than that of his personal friends and
acquaintances, now that he--was seeking the confidence of his
fellow-townsmen in general (A voice "He's got it too," and cheers),
would Sir Winterton Mildmay consider the desirability of reconsidering
the attitude he had taken up some time ago, and consider the desirability
(Japhet's speech was not very artistically phrased but he loved the long
words) of making a fuller public statement with reference to what he (Mr.
Japhet Williams) would term the Sinnett affair? And with this Japhet sat
down, having caused what the reporters very properly described as a
"Sensation"--and an infinite deal of hooting and groaning to boot. But
there were cheers also from the back of the room, where a body of roughly
dressed sturdy fellows sat sucking at black clay pipes; these were men
from the various works, from Dunn's and from Japhet's own.
As Japhet proceeded Sir Winterton's handsome face had grown ruddier and
ruddier; when Japhet finished, he sat still through the hubbub, but his
hand twitched and he clutched the elbow of his chair tightly. The
platform collectively looked uncomfortable. The chairman--he was Green,
the linen-draper in High Street--glanced uneasily at Sir Winterton and
then whispered in his ear. Sir Winterton threw a short remark at him,
the chairman shrank back with the appearance of having been snubbed. Sir
Winterton rose slowly to his feet, still very red in the face, still
controlling himself to a calmness of gesture and voice. But all he said
in answer to that most respected and influential townsman Mr. Japhet
Williams was,
"No, I won't."
And down he plumped into his chair again.
Not a word of courtesy, not a word of respect for Japhet's motives, not
even an appeal for trust, not even a simple pledge of his word! A curt
and contemptuous "No, I won't," was all that Sir Winterton's feelings, or
Sir Winterton's sensitiveness, or his temper, or his obstinacy, allowed
him to utter. Sir Winterton was a great man, no doubt, but at election
times the People also enjoys a transient sense of greatness and of power.
The cheers were less hearty now, the groans more numerous; the audience
felt that, in its own person and in the person of Japhet Williams, it was
being treated with disrespect; already one or two asked, "If he's got a
fair and square answer, why don't he give it?" The superfine sense of
honour, which feels itself wounded by being asked for a denial and soiled
by condescending to give one, is of a texture too delicate for common
appreciation. "No, I won't," said Sir Winterton, red in the face, and the
meeting felt snubbed. Why did he snub them? The meeting began to feel
suspicious. There were no more questions; the proceedings were hurried
through; Sir Winterton drove off, pompous in his anger, red from his hurt
feelings, stiff in his obstinacy. The cheer that followed him had not its
former heartiness.
"I only did my duty," said Japhet to a group who surrounded him.
"That's right, Mr. Williams," he was answered. "We know you. Don't you
let yourself be silenced, sir." For everybody now remembered the Sinnett
affair, which had seemed so forgotten, everybody had a detail to tell
concerning it, his own views to set forth, or those of some shrewd friend
to repeat. That night the taverns in the town were full of it, and at
many a supper table the story was told over again. As for Japhet, he
dropped in at Mr. Foster's and told what he had done, complaining
bitterly of how Sir Winterton had treated him, declaring that he had been
prepared to listen to any explanation, almost to take Sir Winterton's
simple word, but that he was not to be bullied in a matter in which his
own conscience and the rights of the constituency were plainly and deeply
involved. Mr. Foster said as little as he could.
"It won't do for me to take any part," he remarked. "I'm too closely
connected with Mr. Quisanté, and I know he wouldn't wish to enter into
such a matter."
"I'm not acting as a party man," said Japhet Williams, "and this isn't a
party matter. But a plain answer to a plain question isn't much to ask,
and I mean to ask for it till I get it, or know the reason why I can't."
Dim rumours of a "row" at Sir Winterton's meeting reached the Bull that
night, brought by Jimmy Benyon, who had been at a minor meeting across
the railway bridge among the railway men. Somebody had brought up an old
scandal, and the candidate's answer had not given satisfaction. The
ladies showed no curiosity; Quisanté, very tired, lay on the sofa doing
nothing, neither reading, nor talking, nor sleeping. His eyes were fixed
on the ceiling, he seemed hardly to hear what Jimmy said, and he also
asked no questions. So Jimmy, dismissing the matter from his mind, went
to bed, leaving Quisanté still lying there, with wide-open eyes.
There he lay a long while alone; once or twice he frowned, once or twice
he smiled. Was he thinking over the opportunity that offered, and the
instrument that presented itself? What chances might lie in Sir
Winterton's dogged honour and tender sensitiveness on the one hand, and
on the other in that conscience of little Japhet's, stronger now in its
alliance with hurt pride and outraged self-importance! And nobody could
say that Quisanté himself had had any part in it; he had spoken to nobody
except Foster, and he had told Foster most plainly that he would have
nothing to do with such a matter. There he lay, making his case, the case
he could tell to all the world, the case Foster also could tell, the case
that both Foster and he could and would tell, if need be, to all the
world, to all the world--and to May Quisanté.
"Sandro always has a case," said Aunt Maria. He had a case about what
Japhet termed the Sinnett affair, just as he had had a case, and a very
strong one as it had proved, about placard No. 77. When at last he
dragged his weary overdone body to bed, his lips were set tight and his
eyes were eager. It was the look that meant something in his mind, good
or bad, but anyhow a resolution, and the prospect of work to be done. Had
May seen him then, she would have known the look, and hoped and feared.
But she was sleeping, and none asked Quisanté what was in his mind that
night.