In a flash, by an instinct, May knew what their course would be and at whose dictation it would be followed.
"Of course," said Quisanté, "all this is strictly between ourselves."
Her cheek flushed a little. "You mustn't tell me any more business secrets. I don't like them," said she, and she turned away to escape the quick, would-be covert glance that she knew he would direct at her.
Money was necessary; votes had been necessary; old Foster smiled in fat shrewdness from the mantelpiece. May Quisanté was less sure that she knew the worst.
A STRANGE IDEA.
The next few weeks were a time of restless activity with Alexander Quisanté. Again he was like an electric current, not travelling now from constituency to constituency, but between Westminster and his cousin Mandeville's offices in the City. In both places he was very busy. His leader had declared for a waiting policy, and an interval in which the demoralisation of defeat should pass away; the party must feel its feet again, the great man said. Constantine Blair was full of precedents for the course, quoting Lord Melbourne, Sir Robert Peel, Sir James Graham, and all the gods of the Parliamentarian. Brusquely and almost rudely Quisanté brushed him, his gods, and his leader on one side, and raised the standard of fierce and immediate battle. The majority was composite; his quick eye saw the spot where a wedge might be inserted between the two component parts and driven home till the gap yawned wide and scission threatened. The fighting men needed only to be shown where to fight; they followed enthusiastically the man who led them to the field. Leaders shook grey heads, and leader-writers disclaimed a responsibility which primá facie had never rested on them; Quisanté was told that he would wreck the party for a quarter of a century to come. It would perhaps have been possible to meet Constantine Blair's precedents with other precedents, to quote newer gods against his established deities. That was not "Sandro's way"; here again he was content to be an ancestor, the originator of his methods, and the sufficient authority for them.
He was justified. The spirit of his fighting men ran high, and his fighting men's wives grew gracious to him. The majority, if they scowled at him (as was only to be hoped), began to scowl furtively at one another also and to say that certain questions, on which they were by no means of one mind, could not permanently be shirked and kept in the background. Some of them asked what their constituents had sent them to Westminster for, a question always indicative of perturbation in the parliamentary mind; in quiet times it is not raised. The Government papers took to observing that they did not desire to hurry or embarrass the Government, but that time was running on and it would be no true friendship to advise it to ignore the feeling which existed among an important, if numerically small, section of its followers. Altogether at the opening of the session the majority was much less happy, the minority in far finer feather, than anybody had expected. Only officialdom or ignorance could refuse the main credit to Alexander Quisanté.
"I declare," said Lady Castlefort—and her opinion was not one to neglect—"May Gaston was right to take the man after all. He'll be Prime Minister." And she settled her pince-nez and looked round for contradiction. She loved argument but had made the mistake of growing too important to be differed from. None the less on this occasion a sweet little voice spoke up in the circle.
"I wouldn't marry him if he were fifty times Prime Minister," said Lady Richard Benyon. "He's odious."