Chapter 19. Death Defied

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_ CHAPTER XIX. DEATH DEFIED

Constantine Blair, no less active and soon little less serene in opposition than in power, felt himself more than justified in all that he had ever said about Weston Marchmont when he received an intimation of Marchmont's intention to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds. Yet he was aghast at this voluntary retirement into the wilderness of private life, a life without bustle, without gossip, without that sense of being intimate with the march of affairs and behind the scenes of the national theatre. There were reasons assigned, of course. One was that Marchmont found himself ("I'll bet he does!" groaned Constantine with anticipatory resignation) more in agreement with the other side than with his own on an important question of foreign politics then to the front. But this state of matters had ceased to be unusual with him and hardly in itself accounted for the step he was now taking. The care of his estate was the second reason, properly dismissed as plainly frivolous. In the end of the letter more sincerity peeped out, as the writer lapsed from formality into friendship. "I know I shall surprise many people and grieve some, but I'm sick of the thing. I can't endure the perpetual haggling between what I ought to do and what I'm expected to do; the compromises that result satisfy me as little as anybody. In fine, my dear Constantine, I'm going back to my pictures, my books, my hills, and my friends." Constantine read with a genuine sorrow and criticised with a contemptuous sniff. Pictures, books--and hills! Hills! It was insulting his intelligence. And though friends were all very well, yet where was the use of them if a man deprived himself of all the sources of entertaining conversation? But there was nothing to be done--except to tell Lady Castlefort a day before the rest of the world knew. Constantine held her favour on that tenure. She showed no surprise.

"A loss to the country, but not to us," she said.

"Just what I think," agreed Constantine, with a revival of cheerfulness.

"If I hadn't known him since he was so high, I'd wish he had the what-do-you-call-it seizures instead of the other man."

"But Quisante's not going, he means to hold on," said Constantine. "I'm glad of it. Henstead's very shaky. But we shall hold Marchmont's seat all right. We're going to put up Dick Benyon."

"He's safe enough, he won't worry you," said Lady Castlefort. "You'll have to fight Henstead before long, all the same. The man'll die, you know."

"Think so?" asked Constantine uneasily.

"And he will be a loss--a loss to us, whatever one may think about the country." Constantine looked troubled. "Oh, it's not your business to think about the country--or mine either, thank goodness," she added rather irritably. She was more distressed about Weston Marchmont than she chose to tell; and it was impossible not to be annoyed at the perversity. Of the two men whom she had singled out for greatness one might go on but would not, the other asked nothing but to be allowed to go on, and found refusal at the hands of fate. There was another thing in her thoughts too. She had a strong belief in hostesses, natural to her, perhaps not unreasonable. In either of two events she had foreseen an ideal hostess for the party in the woman she still thought of as May Gaston. There was no need to detail the two events; suffice it to say that, whichever of them now happened, it appeared that May Gaston would not be able to figure as a great hostess; at least there would have to rise for her some star not yet visible in the heavens.

Marchmont and May had neither met nor written to one another since their talk under the tree at Ashwood. He had not doubted that she would understand silence and like silence best; from him any word seemed impossible. But on the day when his determination was made public he received a summons from her and at once obeyed it. He found her alone, though she told him that she expected Quisante back from the City in a little while.

"He wants to see you," she said. "I don't know why, unless it's just as a curiosity." She smiled for a moment. "I'm sorry you find you can't stand it," she went on.

"You understand? You've been in that state of mind or pretty near it, I know."

"Yes, pretty near at times, but I'm not as honest as you. I may see all you see, but I should always go on." She glanced at him. "I'm more like my husband than I'm like you," she ended.

"I don't believe that," he said gravely.

"I know you don't, but it's true. I daresay you never will understand it, because of the other May Gaston you've made for yourself. But it's true. And you know what he is. He's ready to give body and soul--Oh, I'm not just using a phrase--body and soul to keep the things that you've given up for your hills. How scornful your hills made Constantine Blair!"

"Are you importing metaphorical meanings into my hills?" he asked, sitting down near her.

"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Blair didn't, but I do."

"Perhaps it was rather a silly thing to say."

"No, I don't think so."

"I mean to Constantine."

"Oh, well then, perhaps it was," she admitted, smiling. "But that's all consistent, isn't it? You couldn't trim your sails to suit the breeze even in a letter like that."

"Are you rebuking me? Are you contemptuous? What are you?" He leant back and looked at her, smiling.

"If my husband would do what you've done, he might live," she said.

Marchmont nodded gravely; it was easy to see the odd way in which his action fitted into the drama of her life.

"But we've no hills," she went on. "You leave London--all London means--to wander on hills, high glorious hills; he'd leave it for a villa, a small villa at a seaside place."

"Metaphors again?"

"It comes easier to talk in them sometimes. And I--I'm of my husband's way of thinking."

"I don't believe it," he said again, but looking at her now with a little touch of doubt.

"You'll never come back, will you?" she asked.

"Never," said he with a quiet certainty.

She rose with a restless sigh and walked to the fireplace.

"I couldn't," he went on. "I'm not fit for it; that's the end of the matter. Use your own term of abuse. I shall hear plenty of them."

"I don't want to abuse you," she said. She walked quickly over to him, gave him her hand for a moment, and then returned to her place. "But it makes me feel rather strange to you." She looked full at him with a plain distress in her eyes, and her voice shook a little. "I'm coming to feel more strange towards you," she went on. "I thought we had got nearer at Ashwood, we did for the moment. But now I'm farther off again."

"I would have you always very near," he said in low tones, his eyes saying more than his lips.

"I know. And perhaps you've had thoughts----" She paused before she added, "Alexander's quite set on his course, nothing will stop him--except the thing that I expect to stop him. You know what I mean?"

Marchmont nodded again.

"And he's doing it a good deal because of me. I wonder if you understand that?"

"I don't know that I do."

"No; he knows more of me than you do."

She became silent, and he, watching her, was silent too. What was this strangeness of which she spoke? He felt it too but without understanding it. It caused in him a vague discomfort, an apprehension that some obstacle was between them, something more than any external hindrance, a thing which might perhaps remain though all external hindrance were removed. Her last words both puzzled and wounded him with their implication of a deeper sympathy between Quisante and herself than existed or could exist between her and him. That he did not understand, and could not without giving up his own idea of her, the May Gaston which, as she said, he had made for himself. Was his image gone indeed? Had Alexander Quisante's chisel altered the features beyond recognition and till true identity was gone? Yet Alexander Quisante was the man who had put on her the shame for which she had sobbed under the tree on that evening at Ashwood. Before such a seeming contradiction his penetration stood baffled. She had said then that her present life would, she supposed, go on right to the end, and had said it as though the prospect were unendurable; now a new and to him unnatural resignation seemed to have come upon her, just when her present life had shown that it was not likely to go on right to the end.

"I've prayed my husband to give up," she said, "I don't beg you not to give up. To begin with, you wouldn't listen to me any more than he did. And then, I suppose, you're right for yourself."

"You're about the only person who'll say so."

"I daresay. I've learnt about you in learning about myself. And I can feel it just as you do--Oh, how intolerably strongly sometimes!" She added with a smile, "We've only just missed suiting one another," and then, "Yes, but we have missed, you know."

"I don't believe it," he persisted, struggling to throw off the new doubt she was thrusting into his mind. His thought was that, once she got free of her husband, she would indeed be his. That he must hold to. It was Quisante, not she herself, who made her now feel strange to him; and Quisante's spell was not to last; her quiet certitude that her husband's days were numbered carried conviction to him also. "But I won't talk any more about it now," he said.

"No, it seems inhuman," she agreed. "I spend all my days cheating myself into a hope that he'll get better. I know you don't like him, but if you lived with him as I do, you'd come to hope as I do. Yes, in spite of all you know about us; and you know more than anybody alive. I've not been so--so disloyal--to anybody else." She smiled as she quoted the word against him.

"One must admire him," said Marchmont.

May Quisante laughed at his tone almost scornfully. "The way you say that shows how little you understand," she exclaimed. "It's not a bit like that." She took a step nearer to him. "When it comes," she said slowly, "I shan't shed a single tear, but I shall feel that my life's over. He'll have had it all."

"God forbid you should feel anything like that," he said, looking up at her.

She laughed again, asking bitterly, "Does God forbid what Alexander wants--except one thing? And what I tell you is what he would want. He would want to have had it all."

He raised his hand in protest.

"You're right; we won't talk any more," she said. "But don't think that it's all only because I'm overwrought, or something feminine of that kind. It's the truth. When it comes, Aunt Maria'll die and I shall live; but the difference won't be as great as it sounds."

This time he was about to speak, but she stopped him, saying, "No, no more now. Tell me about Dick Benyon. He's to have your seat, isn't he?"

"Yes, I'm gathered to my fathers, and Dick reigns in my stead."

"You're sorry?" she asked, forgetting Dick and coming back again to the man before her.

"Yes; but I accept the inevitable and contrive to be quite cheerful about it."

"We don't do either of those things. Hark, I hear my husband's step."

Quisante ran quickly up the stairs and burst into the room. His face was alight with animation, and before greeting Marchmont he cried, "I've carried it, I've brought them round. We attack all along the line, and I open the ball at Henstead next week! They'll be out in six months, and I shall----" Suddenly he paused. "They'll be out in six months," he said again.

Marchmont rose and shook hands, "It doesn't matter to me now if they are," he said, laughing. "Blair's troubles and mine are both over now."

"I know," nodded Quisante. "Well, I suppose you know best. But hasn't May been trying to convert you?"

"No, I haven't tried to convert him," she said. "I'm not going to try to convert people any more."

After this she fell into silence, listening and watching while the two men talked. Talk between them could never be intimate and could hardly be even easy, but they interested one another to-day. On Quisante's face especially there was a look of searching, of wonder, of a kind of protest. Once he flung himself back and stared at his guest with a fixity of gaze painful to see. But he said nothing of what was passing in his mind. At last Marchmont turned to May again.

"I shall hear of you at Henstead," he said. "I'm going to pay the Mildmays a visit. I suppose, as you're on the war-path, you won't come over?"

"I might," she said, "if we were there long enough. I expect Alexander mustn't. Friendship with the enemy is not always appreciated."

"Oh, I might go," Quisante remarked. "The Alethea's an admirable excuse." He spoke with a laugh but then, glancing at his wife, saw her face flush. He turned to Marchmont and found him rising to his feet. Much puzzled, Quisante looked again from one to the other, noting the sudden constraint that had fallen on them. What had he said? What was there in the mention of the Alethea to disturb a conversation so harmonious? That there was something his quick wit told him in a moment. While Marchmont said good-bye to May he stood by, frowning a little, and then escorted his guest downstairs. While he was away his wife stood quite still in the middle of the room, a little flushed and breathing rather quickly.

Quisante came back, sat down, and took up a newspaper. May sat in her usual chair, doing nothing. Presently he asked, "Did I say anything wrong?"

"No. But I'd rather you didn't talk about the Alethea when Mr. Marchmont is with us." He looked up in, surprise. "It embarrasses me--and him too."

"Embarrasses you? Why should it?"

"There's no use in my telling you."

"I can't see why it should embarrass you. Pray tell me."

She sat silent for a moment or two. "It's no good," she said, looking over to him with a forlorn smile. He moved his hand impatiently. "Very well. At dinner at Ashwood, on the night you were taken ill, somebody talked about the Alethea and said Professor Maturin had told him there was a fatal defect in it. He hadn't seen the prospectus. And I----" She paused a moment. "I had to back up your version." Again she broke off for a moment. "And after dinner Mr. Marchmont talked to me; and I cried about it. So, you see, references are embarrassing."

After a pause of a minute or two Quisante said, "Cried about it? About what?"

She raised her eyes, looked at him a moment, and said simply, "About having to tell a lie to them." And she added with a sudden quiver in her voice, "I've known them all my life."

"Maturin was quite wrong. There's absolutely no doubt about that now."

"Was he?" she asked listlessly.

"What did you say?"

"That he'd expressed a favourable opinion about it to you. I kept to the prospectus. Oh, there's no use talking. It's only with Mr. Marchmont that it matters. I can't keep it up before him, because he found me crying, you know."

"Crying!" murmured Quisante. "Crying!" She nodded at him, with the same faint smile on her lips. The silence seemed very long as she looked at him and he gazed straight before him, the forgotten paper falling with a rustle from his knees on to the floor.

"You never told me," he said at last.

"Why should I? What was the good of telling you?"

"It was on the night of my--when I was taken ill?"

"Yes. The telegram came later in the evening. Don't bother about it now, Alexander."

"Did you hope it meant I was dead?"

For a moment she sat still; then she sprang up, ran across the room, and fell on her knees before him, grasping his arms in her hands. "No, no, no, I didn't. Indeed, indeed, I didn't."

He sat still in her clasp, looking intently in her face. His was hard and sneering.

"Yes, you did. You wished me dead. By God, you wish me dead now. Well, you can wait a little. I shall be dead soon." With a sudden rough movement he freed himself from her hands and pushed her away. "I suppose wives often wish their husbands dead, but they don't tell them so quite so plainly."

"It's not true, I've never told you so."

"Oh, I'm not a fool. I don't need to have it spelt out for me in syllables."

She rose slowly to her feet, and, turning, went back to her own chair. Quisante sat where he was, quite motionless. She could not endure to look at him and, rising, went and stood by the window, looking out on the river she loved. This moment was in strange contrast with their talk on Duty Hill; the two together summed up her married life and the nature of the man she had married. But it was not true that she wished him dead; not true now, at all events, even though the charge he brought against her of its having been so once might have some truth in it. For if ever that thought had crept into her mind as a dreaded shameful wish, it was when she seemed able to look forward to a new life. It seemed to her now that no new life was possible; that impression had grown and grown while she talked with Weston Marchmont, and it pressed upon her now with the weight of conviction.

She heard her husband get up and go out of the room; his steps sounded going upstairs, in the direction of his study. She went and drew the chair up to the hearthrug, and sat down, resting her elbows on the arms and holding her head between her hands. It was very wanton that a chance allusion of his should have brought about this scene between them. Perhaps she could have put him off with excuses, but that had not occurred to her. The scene had told her nothing new, but it had torn away the last of the veil from before his eyes. He had known that she disapproved, he had even braved her disapproval when he could not hoodwink or evade it. It was a little strange that he should be moved to such a transport of bitterness by hearing that she had cried over telling a lie for him. Yet that was it; she was sure that he had not cared whether Marchmont saw her crying or not. The tears themselves made him think that she had wished him dead, yes, that she still wished him dead.

He must not die thinking that. She started across the room towards the door, at a quick step; it was in her mind to follow him and tell him again that it was not true, that he would ruin and empty her life if he died, that there was no man in the world who could be what he was to her. But her impulse failed her; he would sneer again. There was one thing that would drive away his sneer if she said it and got him to believe it--that she loved him as he loved her. Well, she couldn't tell him that, and he would not believe her if she did. She stopped and returned to her chair. She leant back now, resting her head on the cushion. The afternoon grew old, and a gleam of sinking sun, escaping from the grey red-edged clouds that hung over the river, troubled her eyes; she closed them and reclined in stillness. She felt very tired, worn out with the stress of it, with the conflict and the strain. Strange notions, half fancies, half dreams, began to flit through her mind. She saw the end come in many ways, now while they were alone together, now in some public place, even in the House, or while he addressed his shareholders. She seemed to hear the buzz of talk that followed the event, the wonder at him, the blame of her; she saw poor old Aunt Maria's trembling hands and hopeless face. Presently, as she fell into an unquiet drowsiness, she seemed to see even beyond the end, as though the end were no end and he were with her still, his spirit being about her, enveloping her, still wrapping her round so that the rest of the world was kept away and she was still with him, though she could not see him nor hear his voice. For her alone he existed now. Soon the rest who had wondered and praised and blamed and gossipped forgot about him; they had no more attention to give him, no more flattery, no more allegiance. For them he had ceased to exist. Only for her he went on existing still, nay, it seemed that it was through her that he clung to the life he had loved, and was even now not dead because he lived in and through her. And sometimes--she shivered in her broken sleep, for she had not the love which would have made the dream all joy--he became more than a spirit or an impalpable presence; he was again almost corporeal, almost to be felt and touched, almost a living man. Shrinking and fearing, yet she was glad; she welcomed his exemption from the grave and abetted him in his rebellion against death; and for her that restless spirit almost clothed itself again in flesh.

She sat up with a great start and a low cry. Her hand had been hanging over the arm of the chair, it had grown cold; now it was held in another cold hand, and it was raised. Awake but thinking she still dreamed, she waited in mingled fear and anticipation. Cold lips pressed her hand. She dreamed then, and in her dream he came from the grave to kiss her hand. He came not only back to the world where he had triumphed, he came also to the woman he had loved, who had not loved him. Again the kiss came cold on her hand. She fell back with a sudden sob, not knowing whether terror or repulsion or joy, held greater, sway in her. The kisses covered her hand. Ah, the marvel! They grew living, they were warm now and passionate. This was not a dead man's kiss. With a second cry she turned her head. Quisante himself knelt by her, kissing her hand. His eyes rose to hers, and she cried, "It is you! You're not dead! Thank God, thank God!"

His eyes were gleaming in the strong excitement of his heart; he knew how he had found her.

"No, not dead, not dead yet," he said. "But by heaven, when I am dead, I won't leave you. I can't leave you. As I kiss your hand now, so will I kiss it always, and with my soul I will worship you. But neither now nor then will I kiss your lips."

"You won't kiss my lips?"

"No. They have lied for me; I won't stain them any more."

For a moment she looked at him. Then she caught her hand away and flung her arms round his neck. She kissed him on his lips, crying, "For good or evil, for good or evil, but always, always, always!" Then she drew away, and, with her arms still round his neck, she broke into her low laugh: "Oh, but how like you to make that little speech about my lips!" _

Read next: Chapter 20. The Quiet Life To-Morrow

Read previous: Chapter 18. For Lack Of Love?

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