Blair bustled off, with a parting mysterious hint that they must lose no time in preparing for the fray—it might begin any week now—and May's face relaxed into a more genuine smile.
"He does enjoy it so," she explained. But Marchmont was not thinking of Blair. He asked her abruptly,
"You'll go to Henstead and help him, I suppose?"
"Of course. I shall be with him right through. He'll want all the help I can give him. It's everything to him to win this time."
"Yes, I know." Her voice had become troubled again; she was very anxious for her husband's success; but was she anxious about something else too? "If I can help you, let me," he said as he rose to go.
She gave him her hand and looked in his face.
"I'm afraid that most likely I shouldn't be able to ask you," she said gravely. The answer, as she gave it, meant so much to him, and even seemed to admit so much, that he wondered at once at her insight into his thoughts and at her frankness in facing what she found there. For did she not in truth mean that she might want help most on some occasion when the loyalty he had himself approved would forbid her to reveal her distress to him or to seek his succour? He ventured, after an instant's hesitation, on one word.
"After all," he said, "you can't trundle the world's wheelbarrow in white kid gloves; at least you soil them."
"Then why trundle it?" she asked. "At any rate you needn't say that sort of thing. Leave that to Mr. Blair."
Not only was the time when everybody had to be bestirring themselves approaching rapidly, but the appearance of Sir Winterton Mildmay in the list quickened the Quisantés' departure for the scene of action. Rooms were taken at the Bull in Henstead, an election agent appointed, resources calculated—this involved a visit to Aunt Maria—and matters got into fighting trim. During this period May had again full cause to thank her power of humour; it almost scattered the gloomy and (as she told herself) fanciful apprehensions which had gathered round, and allowed her to study with amusement her husband's preparations. He talked very freely to her always about his political views, and now he consulted her on the very important question of his Election Address. He reminded her of a man packing his portmanteau for a trip and not quite knowing what he would want, whether (for example) shooting boots would come in useful, or warm underclothing be essential. Space was limited, needs difficult to foresee, climate very uncertain. Some things were obviously necessary, such as the cry on which the Government was going to the country; others were sure to be serviceable; in went "something for Labour" (she gathered the phrase from Quisanté's rough notes); odd corners held little pet articles of the owner's things which he had found unexpectedly useful on a previous journey, or which might seem especially adapted to the part of the world he was going to visit. On the local requirements Mr. Foster the maltster was a very Baedeker. With constant effort on Quisanté's part, with almost unfailing amusement on his wife's, the portmanteau got itself filled.