A Servant of the Public

"They say you're being very foolish," she answered in a low steady voice, not moving her eyes from his face. "Oh, Ashley, you're not going to – to do anything mad?"

A pause followed; presently he looked at her and said, with seeming surprise,

"Have you been thinking of that all the time?"

"No, only just now."

"Why? I mean, what made you think of it?"

"I've heard things. And you were so – I can't say what I mean! When people are very gay and in great spirits, and so on, don't the Scotch say they're fey, and that something will happen to them?"

"Most nations have said so," he answered lightly; but a slight frown came on his brow, as he added, "So I'm fey, am I?" His laugh was a little bitter.

"I've no right to speak to you."

"Every right." Whatever was in his face, there was neither offence nor resentment. "Only it's not worth your while to bother," he went on.

"You know I think it is," she answered with simple directness.

He looked at her wistfully; for a moment there came to him such a mood as had arrested Bowdon's steps and availed to turn his feet into a new path. But Ashley's temper was not the same. He did not say that because this path was the best it should be his, be the other ever so attractive; he admitted with a sigh that the other was more attractive, nay, was irresistible, and held on his way straight to it.

"You're one of the best people in the world, Alice," he said. And he added, smiling, "Don't believe all you hear. Everybody is behaving very properly."

"That's not the Kensington Palace Gardens' opinion."

"I'm afraid I'm damned for ever in Sir James' eyes. Bertie Jewett reigns in my stead."

"Yes, that's it exactly," she agreed.

He shrugged his shoulders petulantly. "So be it," said he, with contemptuous resignation. "Oh, I don't mean that I think you look at it like that," he added an instant later.

She wanted to speak to him about what Irene Kilnorton had told her; her desire was to hear from his own lips that he did not mean to take no notice of Mr. Fenning. The subject was difficult of approach, embarrassed by conventionalities and forbidden by her consciousness of a personal interest. Before she could find any way of attacking it indirectly, Ashley began to talk again fluently and merrily, and this mood lasted until she parted from him; she had no further chance of getting inside his guard, and went home, wondering still at his high spirits. On the whole she had drawn comfort from the evening. She decided to reject that far-fetched idea which called him fey because he was merry, and to repose on two solid facts: the first being that Ashley did not seem heart-broken, the second that Mr. Fenning was coming back to his wife. Among any people whom she could measure or understand, these two facts would have been of high importance, enough in themselves to determine the issue. But she felt about Ashley something of the same ignorance which paralysed all her efforts to understand Ora Pinsent or to forecast the actions of that gifted but bewildering lady. Certainly she would have been no more in her intellectual depth had she understood that the doings which were setting Babba Flint's tongue and all the other tongues a-wagging were simply a natural outcome and almost an integral part of a great scheme of renunciation.

She could not be blamed. Ashley Mead himself was hardly less at a loss on the occasions when he allowed himself to take thought concerning the matter. But they were few; he could despair of the situation, and this he did often when he was alone; he could accept it, as he came to do when with Ora; he could abandon himself to the gaiety of the moment, as in the mood in which Alice had found him. But he could not think out the course of events. He had now only one clear purpose, to make things as easy as he could to Ora, to obey her commands, to fall in with her idea, to say nothing which would disturb the artificial tranquillity which she seemed to have achieved. The letter had started on its way to Jack Fenning, the renunciation was set on foot. The few days, the week or two, that still remained to them seemed to make little difference. To scandal he had become indifferent, the arrival was to confute it; of pain he had become reckless since it was everywhere and in every course; the opinions of his friends he gathered merely as a source of bitter amusement; the good fortune on which he had allowed himself to descant to Alice Muddock had a very ironical flavour about it, since it chose to come at the time when it could afford him no real gratification, when he was engrossed with another interest, when he had room only for one sorrow and only for one triumph.

At supper at one of his clubs that night he chanced to find Mr. Sidney Hazlewood, who was a member. Ashley sat down beside him at the table, exchanging a careless nod. Mr. Hazlewood ate his supper with steady silent persistence; Ashley made rather poor work of a kidney; he had not really wanted supper, but preferred it to going home to bed.

"You're not conversational," he observed at last to Hazlewood.

"Afraid of interrupting your reverie," Hazlewood explained with a grim smile.

"I shouldn't have sat down by you unless I'd wanted to talk. How's the piece going?"

"First-rate. Thought you'd have known; you're about pretty often."

"Yes, but I generally omit to enquire at the box office," said Ashley with an air of apology.

Mr. Hazlewood pushed back his chair and threw down his napkin. Then he lit a cigar with great care and took several whiffs. At last he spoke.

"Mind you, Mead," said he with a cautious air, "I don't say it's wrong of a man at your time of life to be a fool, and I don't say I haven't been just as great a fool myself, and I don't say that you haven't a better excuse for it than I ever had, and I don't say that half the men in town wouldn't be just as great fools as you if they had the chance."

"I'm glad you're not going to say any of those absurd things," remarked Ashley with gravity.

"But all I say is that you are a fool."

"Is that quite all?" asked Ashley.

Hazlewood's smile broadened a little.

"Not quite," said he. "I left out one word. An epithet."

Ashley surveyed him with a kindly and good-tempered smile.

"Well, old chap, I don't see how you could say anything else," he observed.

It was merely one, no doubt a typical one, of the opinions that had for the present to be disregarded. In due time the renunciation would confound them all. Of this Mr. Hazlewood and his like foresaw nothing; had it been shewn to them in a vision they would not have believed; if, per impossibile, they believed – Ashley's lips set tight and stern as imagination's ears listened to their cackling laughter. From of old virtue in man is by men praised with a sneer.

CHAPTER XI

WHAT IS TRUTH?

There was one aspect of the renunciation on which Ora had the tact not to dwell in conversation with her faithful ally; it was, however, an added source of comfort to herself, and proved very useful at moments when her resolve needed reinforcement. As an incidental result of its main object, as a kind of byproduct of beneficence, the renunciation was to make Alice Muddock happy. Ora had always given a corner to this idea. To use the metaphor which insisted on occurring to Ashley, Alice had a part – not a big part, but a pretty part; in the last act her faithful love was to be rewarded. She would not (and could not consistently with the plan of the whole piece) look to receive a passionate attachment, but a reasonable and sober affection, such as her modest wisdom must incline her to accept, would in the end be hers; from it was to spring, not rapturous joy, but a temperate happiness, and a permanent union with Ashley Mead. Ashley was to be led to regard this as the best solution, to fall in with it at first in a kind of resignation, and later on to come to see that it had been the best thing under the circumstances of the case. Ora could bring him to perceive this (though perhaps nobody else could); to her Alice would owe the temperate happiness, and Ashley a settlement in life from all points of view most advantageous. Ora herself continued to have a good deal to do with this hypothetical wedded life; she pictured herself making appearances in it from time to time, assuaging difficulties, removing misunderstandings, perhaps renewing to Ashley her proof of its desirability, and shewing him once again that, sweet as her life with him and his with her must have proved, yet the renunciation had been and remained true wisdom, as well as the only right course. These postnuptial scenes with Ashley were very attractive to Ora in her moods of gentle melancholy. The picture of the married life in the considerable intervals during which she made no appearance in it, but was somewhere with Mr. Fenning, was left vague and undefined.

Ora caught at a visit from Lord Bowdon as the first fruit of the renunciation and a promise of all that was to follow after. He had not come near her since the day when she dismissed him with her "Don't;" within a week from the announcement of Mr. Fenning's approaching return he paid a call on her. The inference was easy, and to a large extent it was correct. Ora could not resist drawing her visitor and Irene Kilnorton into the play; quite small parts were theirs, but they furnished the stage and heightened the general impression. Their married life also was to be tinged and coloured by the past; they also were to owe something to the renunciation; it had restored to them complete tranquillity, removed from him a wayward impulse, from her a jealous pang, and set them both on the straight path of unclouded happiness. She could not say any of this to Bowdon, but she hinted it to Ashley, who laughed, and when Bowdon came she hinted to him her hopes concerning Alice Muddock. He laughed like Ashley, but with a very doubtful expression in his eyes. By now the world was talking rather loudly about Miss Pinsent and Mr. Ashley Mead. Bowdon was inclined to think that his hostess was "humbugging" him in a somewhat transparent fashion. He did not resent it; he found, with an appreciable recrudescence of alarm, that he minded very little what she talked about so that she sat there and talked to him. His inward "Thank God, the fellow's coming!" was a triumphant vindication of part, at least, of Ora's faith in the renunciation. He pulled his moustache thoughtfully as he observed,

"I suppose a match between Miss Muddock and Ashley was always an idea. Irene says old Sir James has been set on it for years."

Sir James made a quiet and unobtrusive entry on the stage, bringing (by a legitimate stretch of fancy) his sympathetic wife with him; even Ora could not make anything of Bob for scenic purposes.

"But Ashley's not a fellow to be forced into what he doesn't care about."

"Not forced, no," murmured Ora. The method was not so crude as that.

"And we've no right to take the lady's feelings for granted."

"Oh, no," said Ora earnestly.

"There are certainly no signs of anything of the sort at present."

"At present! No!" she cried almost indignantly. Then she detected a hint of amusement in Bowdon's eye and began to laugh. In spite of all the sorrow and pain involved in the renunciation, its spice of secrecy and mystification sometimes extorted a smile from her; people were so hopelessly puzzled about it, so very far from guessing the truth, and so wide of the mark in their conjectures. Bowdon evidently shared the general bewilderment and felt a difficulty in talking to her about Ashley Mead. She presented him with another topic.

"The news about you and Irene made me so happy," she said. "Irene's such a dear."

"You're very kind," he muttered. This topic was not much less awkward than the other, and Ora's enthusiasm had imparted to her manner the intense cordiality and sympathy which made Irene say that she conveyed the idea of expecting to be kissed; he preferred that she should not suggest that idea to him.

"It's such a lovely arrangement in every way," she pursued. "Isn't it?" Her eyes were raised to his; she had meant to be quite serious, but her look betrayed the sense of fun with which she offered her congratulations. She could not behave quite as though nothing had ever passed between them; she was willing to minimise but declined to annihilate a certain memory common to them. "I'm going to come and see you very often when you're married," she went on. Bowdon was willing enough to meet her subtly hinted mockery.

"I hope you'll be very discreet," he said with a smile.

"Oh, I'll be discreet. There isn't much to be discreet about, is there?"

"That's not my fault," he allowed himself to remark as he rose to take leave.

"Oh, you're not going yet?" she cried. "If you do I shall think it was simply a duty call. And it's so long since I've seen you." Her innate desire – it was almost an instinct – to have every man leave her with as much difficulty as possible imparted a pathetic earnestness to her tone. "Perhaps I shan't have many more chances of seeing you."

"Many – after I'm married," he reminded her, smiling.

"No, I'm serious now," she declared. "You – you know what's going to happen, Lord Bowdon?"

"Yes, I know."

"Of course when Jack comes home I shan't be so free. Besides – !" She did not end the sentence; the suppressed words would obviously have raised the question of Jack Fenning's acceptability to her friends. For his part Bowdon immediately became certain that Jack was a ruffian. He held out his hand, ostensibly in farewell; Ora took it and pressed it hard, her eyes the while demanding much sympathy. Bowdon found himself giving her intense sympathy; he had not before realised what this thing meant to her, he had been too much occupied with what it meant to him. He could not openly condole with her on her husband's return, but he came very near that point in his good-bye.

"Your friends will always want to see you, and – and be eager to do anything in the world they can for you," he said. The pressure of her hand thanked him, and then he departed. As he walked out of the hall-door, he put his hat very firmly on his head and drew a long breath. He was conscious of having escaped a danger; and he could not deny, in spite of poor Ora's hard fortune, that the return of Mr. Fenning was a good thing.

Good or bad, the coming was near now. The brief and business-like letter had reached Bridgeport, Connecticut, and had elicited a reply by cable. In eight days Mr. Fenning might be expected at Southampton. As the event approached, it seemed to become less and less real to Ashley; he found himself wondering whether a man who is to be hanged on Monday has more than the barest intellectual belief in the fact, whether it really sinks into his consciousness until the rope is absolutely round his neck. Accidents by sea and land suggested themselves to an irresponsible and non-indictable fancy; or Jack had merely meant to extort a gift of money; or his unstable purpose would change. The world that held himself and Ora seemed incapable of opening to receive Jack Fenning; something would happen. Nothing did happen except that the last days went on accomplishing themselves in their unmoved way, and when Ashley went to bed each night Jack Fenning was twenty-four hours nearer. Ora's conduct increased the sense of unreality. She wanted him always with her; she dissipated his scruples with radiant raillery or drowned them in threatened tears. On the other hand, she was full of Jack Fenning now; often talking about him, oftener still about how she would receive him. She sketched his career for Ashley's information; the son of a poor clergyman, he had obtained a berth in a shipowner's office at Hamburg; he had lost it and come home; he had made the acquaintance of a Jewish gentleman and been his clerk on the Stock Exchange; he had written a play and induced the Jewish gentleman to furnish money for its production; disaster followed; Jack became an auctioneer's clerk; the Jewish gentleman, with commendable forgivingness, had put him in the way of a successful gold mine (that is, a successfully floated gold mine); he had made two thousand pounds. "Then he married me," Ora interpolated into her summary narrative. The money was soon spent. Then came darker times, debts, queer expedients for avoiding, and queerer for contriving, payment, and at last a conviction that the air of America would suit him better for a time. The picture of a worthless, weak, idle, plausible rascal emerged tolerably complete from these scattered touches. One thing she added, new to her hearer and in a way unwelcome: Jack was – had been, she put it, still treating him as belonging to the past – extremely handsome. "Handsomer than you, much," she said, laughing, with her face very near his over his shoulder as he sat moodily by the window. He did not look round at her, until, by accident as it seemed and just possibly was, a curl of her dark hair touched his cheek; then he forgave her the handsomeness of Jack Fenning.

Irene Kilnorton had been with her that day and had told her that, since she chose to have the man back, she must treat him properly and look as though she were glad to see him; that she must, in fact, give a fair trial to the experiment which she had decided to allow. Being thoroughly in harmony with the theory of renunciation, this advice made a great impression on Ora. She professed her joy that Jack was to arrive on a Sunday, because she would thus be free from the theatre and able to meet him at Southampton. To meet him at Southampton was an admirable way of treating him properly and of giving a fair trial to the experiment. Ashley's raised brows hinted that this excess of welcome was hardly due to the Prodigal. Ora insisted on it. He was past surprise by now, or he would have wondered when she went on:

"But of course I can't go alone; I hate travelling alone; and I don't know anything about how the boats come in or anything. You must come with me, you know."

"Oh, I'm to go with you, am I?"

"Yes; and you'll go and find him and bring him to me. Somebody'll tell you which is him."

"And then I'm to leave you with him and come back to town alone?"

Ora's smile suddenly vanished. "Don't, dear," she said, laying her hand on his arm. That was her way always when he touched on the black side of the situation. Her plans and pictures still stopped short with the arrival of the boat. "It'll be our last time quite alone and uninterrupted together," she reminded him, as though he could forget the object of the expedition and be happy in the thought that it meant two hours with her.

"I don't see why you shouldn't travel back with us," she added a moment later. "Oh, of course you will!"

He chafed at her use of the word "us," for now it meant herself and Jack, and had the true matrimonial ring, asserting for Mr. Fenning a position which the law only, and not Ashley's habit of thought, accorded him. But he would have to accustom himself to this "us" and all that it conveyed. He forced himself to smile as he observed, "Perhaps Fenning'll want to smoke!"

Ora laughed merrily and said that she hoped he would. Even to Ashley it seemed odd that the notion appeared to her rather as a happy possibility than as a reductio ad absurdum of her attitude; she really thought it conceivable that Jack might go and smoke, while she and Ashley had another "last time quite alone together." But she had such an extraordinary power of commending absurdities to serious consideration that he caught himself rehearsing the best terms in which to make the suggestion to Mr. Fenning.

In those days he had it always in mind to tell her a thing on which he was resolutely determined, which even she could not make him falter about. With the entry of Jack Fenning must come his own exit. He did not deceive himself as to his grounds for this resolve, or deck in any gorgeous colours of high principle what was at best no more than a dictate of self-respect and more probably in the main an instinct of pride. But from the hour of the arrival of the boat he meant to be no more an intimate friend of hers. Had his business engagements allowed he would have arranged to leave London. Absence from town was impossible to him without a loss which he could not encounter, but London is a large place, where people need not be met unless they are sought. He would deliver her over to her husband and go his way. But he did not tell her; she would either be very woeful, and that calamity he could not face, or she would give a thoughtless assent and go on making her pictures just the same. The resolution abode in his own heart as the one fixed point, as the one definite end to all this strange period of provisional indiscretion and unreal imaginings. When he thought of it, he rose to the wish that Jack might be still handsome and might prove more reputable and kinder than he had been in the old days. Ora herself was beginning to have hopes of Jack, or hopes of what she might make of him by her zealous care and dutiful fidelity; Ashley encouraged these hopes and they throve under his watering. In the course of the last week there was added to the great idea of a renunciation of Ashley the hardly less seductive and fascinating project of a reformation of Jack Fenning. This conception broadened and enriched the plot of the fanciful drama, added a fine scene or two, and supplied a new motive for the heroine. In the end Ora had great hopes of Jack in the future and a very much more charitable opinion of him in the past.

She paid her promised visit to Alice Muddock on the Wednesday, Jack Fenning being due on the following Sunday. In these last days Ora devoted herself entirely to people who were, in some way or other, within the four corners of the scheme of renunciation. Alice was amazed to find in her a feeling about her husband's arrival hardly distinguishable from pleasure; at least she was sure that a cable message that he was not coming would have inflicted a serious disappointment on her visitor. But at the same time this strange creature was obviously, openly – a few weeks ago Alice would not have hesitated to say shamelessly – in love with Ashley Mead. The two men's names alternated on her lips; it seemed moral polyandry or little better. Alice's formulas were indeed at fault. And through it all ran the implied assertion that Alice was interested in the affair for a stronger reason than the friendship which she was so good as to offer to Ora. Here again, according to Ora's method, Irene Kilnorton's share in the scheme was hinted at, while Alice was left to infer her own. She did so readily enough, having drawn the inference on her own account beforehand, but her wonder at finding it in Ora's mind was not diminished. To be passionately in love with a man and to give him up was conceivable; any heights of self-sacrifice were within the purview of Alice's mind. To find a luxury in giving him up was beyond her. To return to a husband from a sense of duty would have been to Alice almost a matter of course, however bad the man might be; to set to work to make out that the man was not bad clashed directly with the honest perspicacity of her intellect. And, to crown all, in the interval, as a preparation for resuming the path of duty, to set all the town talking scandal and greet the scandal with a defiance terribly near to enjoyment! Alice, utterly at fault, grew impatient; her hard-won toleration was hard tried.

"I'm sure you understand all I feel," said Ora, taking her friend's hand between hers.

"Indeed I don't," replied Alice bluntly.

"Anyhow you're sorry for me?" Ora pleaded. Here Alice could give the desired assurance. Ora was content; sympathy was what she wanted; whether it came from brain or heart was of small moment.

By a coincidence, which at first sight looked perverse, Bob brought Babba Flint into Alice's room at tea-time. Alice did not like Babba, and feared that his coming would interrupt the revelation of herself which Ora in innocent unconsciousness was employed in giving. The result proved quite different. Babba had declared to Irene Kilnorton that the coming of Mr. Fenning was a figment concocted from caprice or perhaps with an indirect motive; he advanced the same view to Ora herself with unabashed impudence, yet with a seriousness which forbade the opinion that he merely jested.

"Of course I can't tell whether you expect him, Miss Pinsent. All I know is he won't come." Babba's eye-glass fell from his eye in its most conclusive manner.