Chapter 13. Not Superhuman

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_ CHAPTER XIII. NOT SUPERHUMAN

"I don't set up for being superhuman," said Alexander Quisante with a shrug and a smile at his sister-in-law, "and I should very soon be told of my mistake if I did. I had nothing to do with putting the story about. I never countenanced it in any way. But since it got about, since Mildmay chose to give himself airs and make a fool of himself, and then come to me to get him out of his trouble, I thought myself entitled to give him one little dig."

"Of course you were," agreed Fanny.

"And if they choose to decide the election on that instead of on the Government policy, why, in the first place we can't help it, and in the second we needn't talk about it." He paused and then added with greater gravity, "I have nothing to reproach myself with in the matter."

"What's Mr. Williams going to do?"

"Oh, he made one solemn protest and now, at my request, he'll hold his tongue."

"He's done all the mischief, though," said Jimmy Benyon with much satisfaction.

It was true enough, and the triumph at the Bull equalled the depression at Moors End, where the Dean was aghast at the result of his diplomacy, and Sir Winterton began to perceive that he had vindicated his honour at the cost of his good sense, and his dignity at the price of his popularity. It was not Henstead's moral sense that was against him now, but that far more formidable enemy, Henstead's wounded vanity. The best judges refused to estimate how many votes that ride on the high horse was likely to cost him; but all agreed that the bill would be heavy; even Smiley, his own agent, shook a rueful head over the probable figure. And all this advantage had accrued to the Quisante faction without involving any reproach or any charge of unfair tactics; rather were they praised for moderation, magnanimity, and good-nature.

"To tell the truth," Jimmy whispered to Fanny, "I never felt sure that Quisante would treat it in such a gentlemanly way."

"No, neither did I," Fanny confessed. "I'm so glad about it."

"He's rather proud of himself, though," chuckled Jimmy.

"Yes, I know. Well, we mustn't be too critical," urged Fanny. His public demeanour had been beyond reproach, and after all even persons of more delicate feeling and more exalted position than Quisante are apt to plume their feathers a little in the family circle.

In the whirl of these last few days there was however little time for scrutinising the fine shades of manner or speculating on nice points of conscience. They were all worked to death, they were all inflamed with enthusiasm and the determination to win. As was only becoming, Quisante's wife was the most enthusiastic and the most resolute; a thing not seeming so natural to herself was that she was also happier than she had ever been since her marriage. As the fight grew hotter, Quisante grew greater in her eyes; he had less time to make postures, she less leisure to criticise; if he forgot himself in what he was doing, she could come near to forgetting the side of him she disliked in an admiration of the qualities that attracted her. His praises were in men's mouths beyond Henstead; letters of congratulation came from great folk, and Quisante was told that his speeches had more than a local audience and more than a local influence. Sympathy joined with admiration; he was not only successful, he was brave; for it was a serious question whether his body and his nerves would last out, and every night found him utterly exhausted and prostrate. Yet he never spared himself, he was wherever work was to be done, refused no call, and surrendered not an inch to his old and hated enemy, the physical weakness which had always hindered him. May wrote to Miss Quisante that he was "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful." There she paused, and added after a moment's thought, "It's something to be his wife." And to Mr. Foster she said, "They must elect him, they can't help it, can they?"

"Well, I think we shall win now," said old Foster, smiling, but directing a rather inquisitive glance at her. "Japhet Williams has helped us; not so much as Sir Winterton himself, though."

May's face fell a little. "I didn't mean that," she said. "Oh, I suppose I want to win anyhow, but I'd much rather not win through that."

"Must take what we can get," murmured Foster, quite resignedly.

"I suppose so; and it's not as if my husband, or you, or any of his friends had taken any part in it."

The inquisitive glance ceased; Foster had found out the answer to what it had asked; there were limits to the confidence which existed between Lady May Quisante and her husband. But he only smiled comfortably; Quisante wouldn't talk, he himself was safe, and, if anything had cropped up in talk between him and Japhet, his skill and Japhet's vanity had ensured that the little man should think himself the initiator, inventor, and sole agent in the whole affair.

"We're not responsible for Japhet Williams," said he. "His vote's safe for us now, though, and it means a few besides his own."

"I sometimes wonder," mused May, "whether anybody at an election ever votes one way and not the other simply because he thinks that way right and the other wrong." She laughed, adding, "You don't get the impression that they ever do, canvassing and going about like this."

"Must allow for local feelings, Lady May."

"Yes, I know; and everybody has feelings, and I suppose every place is local. You say a lot of people'll vote for us because Sir Winterton wouldn't let Lady Mildmay come to the town?"

"A better stroke for us than any even Mr. Quisante has done."

"And there's something like that in every constituency, I suppose! How do we get governed even as well as we do?"

Foster looked thoughtful and nursed his foot (in which he had a touch of the gout). "It's all under God," he said gravely. "He turns things to account in ways we can't foresee, Lady May." Was it possible that he was remembering the peculiar qualities of Mr. Japhet Williams? May did not laugh, for Mr. Foster was obviously sincere, but she looked at him with surprise; his religion came in such odd flashes across the homely tints of his worldly wisdom and placid acceptance of things and men as he happened to find them. Henstead was not the Kingdom of Heaven, and he did not pretend to think it wise to act on the assumption that it was. Like Quisante, he did not set up for being superhuman--nor set other people up for it either. May felt that there were lessons to be learnt here; nay, that she was making some progress in them; though she wondered now and then what Weston Marchmont would think of the lessons and of her progress in them.

"The worst of it is," she went on, "that I'm afraid one has to say a lot of things that are not exactly quite true."

"Truer than the other side," Mr. Foster affirmed emphatically, his corpulence seeming to give weight to the dictum as he threw himself forward in his chair.

"Relative truth!" laughed May. "Like No. 77?"

"You must ask Mr. Quisante about that."

"Oh, no, I won't. I'll listen to his speeches about it." She grew grave as she went on. "I've only asked him about one thing all through the election. I had to ask him about that."

"Ah!" murmured Foster, cautiously, vaguely, safely.

"This wretched story about Sir Winterton, you know. And I got into terrible trouble by my question." She laughed a little. "He doesn't as a rule scold me, you know, but he really did. I was very much surprised. Fancy boring you with this! Well, I asked him if he'd had anything to do with reviving the story. I asked him right straight out. Did you think I was like that, Mr. Foster?"

"Pretty well, pretty well," said old Foster; he was smiling, but he was watching her again.

"Was it insulting? Well, you see----" She stopped abruptly; Foster was not, after all, Aunt Maria, and she could not tell him how it was that she might ask her husband questions that sounded insulting. "Anyhow he was very much offended."

Foster still nursed his foot, and now he shifted a little in his chair.

"He gave me his word directly, but told me he was very much hurt at my asking him." She smiled again. "There's a confession of a conjugal quarrel for you, Mr. Foster. Don't talk about it, or Mr. Smiley will have a caricature of us throwing the furniture at one another. I've been very humble ever since, I assure you."

Mr. Foster chuckled. May imagined that his fancy was touched by her suggestion of the caricature; in fact he was picturing Alexander Quisante's indignant disclaimer.

"Don't tell him I said anything to you about it," she added.

"You may be sure I won't," he promised.

It would not have been out of harmony with Mr. Foster's general theological position to consider the sudden and serious development of his gout as a direct judgment on him for a diplomacy that perhaps overstepped legitimate limits, and in another man's case he might have adopted such a view with considerable complacency. When, however, he was laid up and placed _hors du combat_ in the last three critical days, he needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable instances of the workings of Providence. His grumbles were loud and long, and the directions which he sent from his sick bed were tinged with irritability. For at last the other side had come to its senses; Sir Winterton was affable again, Lady Mildmay was canvassing, and Mr. Smiley had high hopes. Despondency would have fallen on Foster's spirit but for the report of Quisante's exploits, performed in the teeth of the orders of that same Dr. Tillman who had given Sir Winterton such excellent unprofessional advice touching the affair of Tom Sinnett. He gave Quisante just as good counsel, and with just as little result. Then he tried Quisante's wife and found in her what he thought a hardness or an insensibility, or, if that were an unjust view, a sort of fatalism which forbade her to seek to interfere, and reduced her to being a spectator of her husband's doings and destiny rather than a partner in them.

"How can he lie by now?" she asked. "It's impossible; he must see this out whatever happens." Quisante had said exactly the same thing, but his wife's perfect agreement in it seemed strange to the doctor. It was making the man's success more than the man; there was too much of the Spartan wife about it, without the Spartan wife's excuse of patriotism. Something of these feelings found expression in the look with which he regarded May, and he allowed himself to express them more freely to Lady Mildmay, who would have disappointed the most important meeting sooner than face the risk of Sir Winterton's taking cold. He told her how May had said, "He won't stand being coddled," and then had added, with a frankness which the doctor had not become accustomed to, "Besides I should never do it. We aren't in the least like that to one another."

"I felt rather sorry for the man," said the doctor. "It's as if he was a racehorse, and they didn't think so much about him as about a win for the stable."

"Do you like him?" asked Lady Mildmay, merely in natural curiosity. But the doctor started a little as he answered, "Why, no, I don't like him at all." And as he drove home he was thoughtful.

"Well, here we are at last!" said Jimmy Benyon as he sat down to breakfast on the morning of the polling day. "I'm told Mildmay's people were asking for six to four last night. Where's Quisante?"

"He went out just before eight, to catch some of the men who work on the line and can't be back to vote in the evening," said May.

"Lord!" sighed Jimmy in a self-reproachful tone; it was past nine now, and he was only just out of bed. "What are you going to do?"

"Drive and bow and smile and shake hands," said May. "And you're going to and fro in a wagonette of Mr. Williams'--without any springs, you know. And Mr. Dunn's going to take Fanny in one of his waggons; she'll have to sit on a plank without a back all day, so I told her to stay in bed till she has to start at ten."

"It's a devilish difficult question," said Jimmy meditatively, "whether it's all worth it, you know."

"Oh, it's worth more than that," said May lightly, as she sprang up and put on her hat. "It's worth--well, almost anything. Six to four? They expect us to win then?"

"By a neck, yes." He glanced at her and added rather uneasily, "They say friend Japhet's done the trick for us." She made no answer, and he went on hastily, "Old Foster's still in bed, and the waiter says he's written five notes to your husband already--a regular row of them in the bar, you know."

"Last instructions?"

"Oh, somebody else to be nobbled, don't you know; some fellow who wants to marry his deceased wife's sister--or else is afraid he'll have to if they pass the Bill. And there's the butcher in Market Street who's got some trouble about slaughterhouses that I'm simply hanged if I can understand. I jawed with him for half-an-hour yesterday, and then didn't hook him safe."

"Alexander must find time to go and hook him," said May, smiling. "Alexander'll be great on slaughter-houses."

"And at the last minute Smiley's been hinting something about Mildmay giving a bit of land to extend the Recreation Ground. A beastly unscrupulous fellow I call Smiley."

"Oh, poor Mr. Smiley! He wants to win."

"He might play fair, though."

"Might he? Oh, well, I suppose so. We've played fair anyhow--pretty fair, haven't we?"

"Rather!"

"You really think so, Jimmy?" She was serious now; Jimmy reached out his hand and touched hers for a moment; he divined that she was asking him for a verdict and was anxious what it might be.

"Rather!" he said again. "That's all right. We've kept to the rules square enough."

"Then I'm off to bow and smile!" she cried. As she went by she touched his hand again. "Thanks, Jimmy," she said.

Jimmy, left alone, stretched himself, sighed, and lit a cigar; they were nearly out of the wood now, and they had managed to play pretty fair. For his own sake he was glad, since he had been mixed up in the campaign; he had perception enough to be far more glad for May Quisante's.

Through all the fever of that day the same gladness and relief were in her heart in a form a thousandfold more intense. They enabled her to do her bowing and smiling, to hope eagerly, to work unceasingly, to be gay and happy in the excitement of fighting and the prospect of victory. She could put aside the memory of Tom Sinnett; they had not been to blame; let that affair be set off against Smiley's hypothetical extension of the Recreation Ground. She felt that she could face people, above all that she could face the Mildmays when the time came for her to meet them at the declaration of the poll. And as regarded her husband she could do more than praise and more than admire; she could feel tenderness and a touch of remorse as she saw him battling against worse than the enemy, against a deadly weariness and weakness to which he would not yield. From to-morrow she determined to lay to heart the doctor's counsel, to try whether he could not be persuaded to stand a little coddling, whether he might not be brought to, if only she could persuade herself to show him more love. When she looked at the Mildmays she understood what had perhaps been in the doctor's mind; dear Lady Mildmay (she was a woman who immediately claimed that epithet with its expression of mingled affection and ridicule) no doubt overdid a little her pleasant part. She made Sir Winterton a trifle absurd. But then with what chivalry he faced and covered the touch of absurdity, or avoided it without offending the love that caused it! Very glad she was that, when Lady Mildmay asked to be introduced, she could clasp hands with the consciousness that her side had played fair, and by a delicate distant reference could honestly assure the enemy's wife that both she and her husband had looked with disfavour on that unpleasant episode.

She had known she would like Sir Winterton and was not disappointed; she saw that he was very favourably impressed by her, largely, no doubt, because she was handsome, even more because their ways of looking at things would be very much the same; they had the same pride and the same sensitiveness; in humour he was not her match, or he would not have ridden his high horse. She felt that he complimented her in begging her to make him known to Quisante; and this office also she was able to perform with pleasure, because they had played fair. Hope was high in her that night, not merely for this contest, not merely now for her husband's career, but for her life and his, for her and him themselves. If her old fears had been proved wrong, if in face of temptation he had not yielded, if now by honourable means he had made good his footing, things might go better in the future, that constant terror vanish, and there be left only what she admired and what attracted her. For they had kept to the rules square enough; Quisante had played fair.

She heard Sir Winterton tell him so in a friendly phrase, just touched with a pleasantly ornate pompousness; eagerly looking, she saw Quisante accept the compliment just as he should, as a graceful tribute from an antagonist, as no more than his due from anyone who knew him. She smiled to think that she could write and tell Aunt Maria that Sandro was improving, that even his manners grew better and better as success gave him confidence, and confidence produced simplicity. Making a friendly group with their rivals in the ante-room, they were able to forget the little fretful man who paced up and down, carefully avoiding Sir Winterton's eye, but asserting by the obstinate pose of his head and the fierce pucker on his brow that he had done no more than his duty in asking a plain answer to a plain question, and that on Sir Winterton's head, not on his, lay the consequences of evasion.

Presently the group separated. The little heaps of paper on the long table in the inner room had grown from tens to hundreds; the end was near. Quisante's agent stood motionless behind the clerks who counted, Jimmy Benyon looking over his shoulder eagerly. Smiley regarded the heaps for a moment or two and then walked across to Sir Winterton. Through the doorway May saw Sir Winterton bend his head, listen, nod, smile, and turn and whisper to his friends. At the next moment Jimmy Benyon came to the door, caught her eye, smiled, and nodded energetically. The presiding officer looked down the row of men counting to right and left. "Are you all agreed on your figures?" he asked. They exchanged papers, counted, whispered a little, recovered their own papers. "Yes," ran along the row, and the presiding officer pushed back his chair. In a single instant Quisante was the centre of a throng of people shaking his hand, and everybody crowded into the inner room.

"How many?" asked Sir Winterton Mildmay.

"Forty-seven, Sir Winterton," answered Smiley.

So it was over, and Alexander Quisante was again Member for Henstead. "Send somebody to tell Foster," May heard him say before he followed to the window from which the announcement was to be made. He was very pale and walked rather unsteadily. "Stay by Mr. Quisante; I think he's not very well," she whispered to the agent. The next moment two of Sir Winterton's prominent supporters passed her; one spoke to the other half in a whisper. "That damned Sinnett business has done us," he said.

Her cheek flushed suddenly; it was horrible to think that. Still they had played fair, and it was no fault of theirs.

"Let me be the first to congratulate you," said a gentle voice.

She turned and found Lady Mildmay beside her; Sir Winterton's wife was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.

"And do get your husband home to bed; he looks terribly, terribly tired. I'm afraid he's not nearly as strong as Winterton; but I'm sure you take great care of him."

"Not so much as I ought to." Lady Mildmay, accustomed to straightforward emotions, was puzzled at the half-bitter half-merry tone. "I mean I egg him on when perhaps I ought to hold him back. I know he ought to rest, but I never want him to--never really want it, you know." Lady Mildmay still looked puzzled. "He's at his best working," said May.

"Well, but you must want him to yourself sometimes anyhow, and that's a rest for him."

Oh, the differences of people and fates! That was May's not original but irresistible reflection when Lady Mildmay left her. Want him to herself! Never--or never as Lady Mildmay meant, anyhow. She only wanted a good place whence to look at him.

She had one more encounter before Jimmy Benyon came to take her home. Japhet Williams came up to her and made her shake hands.

"We have got a representative in whom we can have confidence," he said.

"I hope so, Mr. Williams." She smiled to think how exactly she was speaking the truth--a rare privilege in social intercourse.

"Don't think that I resent in any way the distant attitude which Mr. Quisante thought it desirable to take up in regard to my action," pursued Japhet; it seemed odd that such a coil of words could be unrolled from so small a body. "My course was incumbent on me. I recognise that his attitude was proper for him."

"I'm so glad, Mr. Williams," May murmured vaguely.

"I could take the course I did because I had nothing to gain by it, nothing personally. Being personally interested, he could not have moved in the matter. I hope you see my point of view as well as his, Lady May?"

"Oh, perfectly. I--I'm sure you're both right."

"My conscience doesn't blame me," said Japhet solemnly; and something in his manner made May remark to Jimmy, when he came to take her home, "What a lot of excellent people are spoilt by their consciences!"

Quisante had disappeared, engulfed in a vortex of triumphant supporters, carried off by arms linked in his, or perhaps hoisted in uncomfortable grandeur on enthusiastic but unsteady shoulders. The street was densely packed, and Jimmy's apparently simple course of returning straight to the hotel proved to be a work of much time and difficulty. But the stir of life was there, all around them, and May's eyes grew bright as she felt it. Now at least it could not seem a difficult question whether the result were worth the effort; triumph drove out such doubts.

"I'm so glad we've won; I'm so glad we've won," she kept repeating in simple girlish enthusiasm as Jimmy steered her through the crowd, heading towards the Bull whenever he could make a yard or two. "Though I'm awfully sorry for Lady Mildmay," she added once.

So long were they in getting through that on their arrival they found that Quisante had reached home before them. His journey had been hurried; he had been taken faint and the rejoicings were of necessity interrupted; he was upstairs now on the sofa. May ran up, followed by Fanny and Jimmy, passing many groups of anxious friends on the way. Quisante was stretched in a sort of stupor; he was quite white, his eyes were closed. She knelt down by him and called him by his name.

"He's quite done up," said Jimmy, and he went to the sideboard and got hold of the brandy.

"Do keep everybody out," called May, and Fanny shut the door oh half-a-dozen inquisitive people. Both she and Jimmy were looking very serious; May grew frightened when she turned and saw their faces.

"He's only tired; he'll be all right again soon," she protested. "Give me a little brandy and water, Jimmy."

They stood looking at her while she did her best for him; a slight surprise was in their faces; they had never seen her minister to him before. Did she really love him? The question escaped from Jimmy's eyes, and Fanny's acknowledged without answering it. Presently Quisante sighed and opened his eyes.

"Drink some of this," said his wife low and tenderly. "Do drink some." She was kneeling by him, one arm under his shoulder, the other offering the glass.

"We've done it, haven't we?" he murmured, as she tilted the glass to his lips. The drink revived him; with her help he hoisted himself higher on the sofa and looked at her. A smile came on his face; they heard him whisper, "My darling!" Again it struck them both as a little strange that he should call her that. But she smiled in answer and made him drink again.

"Yes, you've won; you always win," they heard her whisper softly. She had forgotten all now, except that he had won, that her faith stood justified, and he lay half-dead from the work of vindicating it. At that moment she would have been no man's if she could not be Alexander Quisante's.

There was a knock at the door; Jimmy Benyon went and opened it; he came back holding a note, and gave it to May; it was addressed to her husband in a pencil scrawl. "A congratulation for you," she said to Quisante. He glanced carelessly and languidly at it, murmuring, "Read it to me, please," and she broke open the sealed envelope. Inside the writing was as negligent a scribble as on the outside, the writing of a man in bed, with a stump of pencil. Old Mr. Foster wrote better when he was up and abroad, so much better that Quisante's tired eyes had not marked the hand for his. "Read it out to me," said Quisante, his eyes now dwelling gratefully on his wife's face, his brain at last resting from the long strain of weeks of effort.

"Yes, I'll read it," she said cheerfully, almost merrily. "We shall be full of congratulations for days now, shan't we?"

She smoothed out the sheet of paper; there were but two or three lines of writing, and she read them aloud. She read aloud the simple indiscreet little hymn of triumph which victory and the safety of a private note lured from old Mr. Foster's usually diplomatic lips:--

"Just done it, thank God. Shouldn't have without Tom Sinnett, and we've got you to thank for that idea too."

She read it all before she seemed to put any meaning into it. A silence followed her reading. She knelt there by him, holding the sheet of note-paper in her hands. Fanny and Jimmy stood without moving, their eyes on her and Quisante. Slowly May rose to her feet. Quisante closed his eyes and moved restlessly on the sofa; he sighed and put his hand up to his head. The slightest of smiles came on May's lips as she stood looking at him for a minute; then she turned to Fanny, saying, "I think he'd better have a little more brandy-and-water." She walked across to the mantelpiece, the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand. She looked at Fanny with the little smile still on her lips as she lit a candle and burnt the note in its flame, dropping the ashes into the grate. Quisante lay as though unconscious, taking no heed of his sister-in-law's proffered services. Jimmy Benyon stood in awkward stillness, looking at May. Suddenly May broke into a laugh.

"Just as well to burn it; it might be misunderstood," said she. Jimmy moved towards her quickly and impulsively. "No, no, I'm all right," she went on. "And we've won, haven't we? I'm going to my room. Look after him." She paused and added, smiling still, "His head's very bad, you know." And so, pale and smiling, she left her husband to their care.

The ashes of Mr. Foster's note seemed to crinkle into a sour grin where they lay on the black-leaded floor of the fire-grate. _

Read next: Chapter 14. Open Eyes

Read previous: Chapter 12. A Highly Correct Attitude

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