This was the fear which still possessed her and which no fine moment of his drove out. She seemed to have power to bring him to his best, to give him the cue for his fine scenes, to create in him the inspiration to great moments. But when he dealt with other people, her power would be useless. She would have to stand by and see him at his worst, looking on no longer as an irresponsible, as well as a helpless, spectator, but as one who had undertaken responsibility for him, who must feel for him what he did not for himself, who must be sensitive while he was callous, wounded while his skin went unpierced. She felt that she had taken up a very solitary position, between him and the world, not truly at home with either; a sense of loneliness came upon her.
"I shall have to fight the whole world," she said. "I wonder if my cause is a good one?"
CONTRA MUNDUM.
It was impossible not to admire the wealth of experience which Mrs. Baxter had gathered from a singularly quiet life; many men have gone half a dozen times round the world for less. Whatever the situation, whatever the action, she could supply a parallel and thereby forecast an issue. Superficial differences did not hinder her; she pierced to the underlying likeness. When all the world was piteously crying out that never in its life had it heard of such an affair as this of May Gaston's, Mrs. Baxter dived into her treasure-chest and serenely produced the case of the Nonconformist Minister's daughter and the Circus Proprietor. Set this affair side by side with the Quisanté business, and a complete sum in double proportion at once made its appearance. The audacity of the man, the headlong folly of the girl, the hopeless mixing of incompatibles were common to the two cases; the issue of the earlier clearly indicated the fate that must attend the later. Lady Richard could do nothing but gasp out, "And what happened, Mrs. Baxter?"
Mrs. Baxter told her, punctuating the story with stitches on a June petticoat.
"She ran away from him twice; but he brought her back, and, they said, beat her well. At any rate she ended by settling down to her new life. They had seven children, all brought up to the circus; only the other day one was sent to prison for ill-treating the dancing bear. He's dead, but she still keeps the circus under his name. Of course all her old friends have dropped her; indeed I hear she drinks. Her father still preaches once on Sundays."
It was easy to disentangle the relevant from the merely reminiscent; the running away, the beating, the settling down, the complete absorption in the new life (vividly indicated by the seven children and their habits), stood out saliently. Add the attitude of old friends, and Lady Richard could not deny the value of the parallel. She acknowledged it with a long-drawn sigh.
"May Gaston must be mad," she observed. "You can imagine how Dick feels about it!"
"And all the while her cousin in the Bank was quite ready to marry her and give her a nice little home. He was Church and sang in the choir at St. Dunstan's."