A Servant of the Public

What these things that were gradually insinuating themselves into the status of established facts meant to him he began to see. For the play was nothing to him, he had no share in the venture, and certainly he could not tour about the United States of America as a superfluous appendage to Mr. Hazlewood's theatrical company. The result was that she would go away from him, and that the interval before she went grew short. Up to the present time there was no change in their relations; as they had been before the coming and going of Jack Fenning, they were still. But such relations must in the end go forward or backward; had he chosen, he knew that they would have gone forward; more plainly than in words she had left that to him; but he had left the decision to the course of events, and that arbiter was deciding that the relations should go backward. She loved him still, tenderly always, sometimes passionately; but the phase of feeling in which her love had been the only thing in the world for her was passing away, as the counter-attraction of the play and the part increased in strength. The rest of her life, which love's lullaby had put to sleep, was awaking again. In him a resignation mingled with the misery brought by his recognition of this; unless he could resort to the "nosings" which Babba Flint suggested, he would lose her, she would drift away from him; he felt deadened at the prospect but was not nerved to resist it. He was paralysed by an underlying consciousness that this process was inevitable; the look in her eyes confirmed the feeling in him; now she seemed to look at him, even while she caressed him, from across a distance which lay between them. His encounter with Bertie Jewett after the wedding had been the incident which made him understand how he had passed out of Alice Muddock's life, and she out of his, his place in hers being filled by another, hers in his left empty. The fatalism of his resignation accepted a like ending for himself and Ora Pinsent. Presently she would be gone; there was no use in trying to weld into one lives irrevocably disassociated by the tendency of things. This was the conclusion which forced itself upon him, when he perceived that she would certainly act in the play and certainly go to America in the autumn.

The mists of love conceal life's landscape, wrapping all its features in a glowing haze. Presently the soft clouds lift, and little by little the scene comes back again; once more the old long roads stretch out, the quiet valleys spread, the peaks raise their heads; the traveller shoulders his knapsack and starts again on his path. He has lingered; here now are the roads to traverse and the peaks to climb; here is reality; where is that which was the sole reality? But at first the way seems very long, the sack is very heavy, and the peaks – are they worth the climbing?

"What's the matter, Ashley? You're glum," she said one day, after she had been describing to him the finest situation in the finest part in the finest play that had ever been written. It was a week before her theatre was to close and before a decision as to plans for the future must be wrung from her by the pressure of necessity.

The thought of how he stood had been so much with him that suddenly, almost without intention, he gave voice to it. She charmed him that day and he felt as though the inevitable must not and somehow could not happen, as though some paradox in the realm of fact would rescue him, as a witty saying redeems a conversation which has become to all appearance dull beyond hope of revival.

"I'm losing you, Ora," he said slowly and deliberately, fixing his eyes on her. "You'll take this play; you'll go to America; you're thinking more about that than anything else now."

A great change came on her face; he rose quickly and went to her.

"My dear, my dear, I didn't mean to say anything of that sort to you," he whispered as he bent over her. "It's quite natural, it's all as it should be. Good God, you don't think I'm reproaching you?" He bent lower still, meaning to kiss her. She caught him by the arms and held him there, so that he could come no nearer and yet could not draw back; she searched his face, then dropped her hands and lay back, looking up at him with quivering lips and eyes already full of tears. Blind to his feelings as she had been, yet her quickness shewed them all to her at his first hint, and she magnified his accusation till it grew into the bitterest condemnation of her.

"You've given simply everything for me," she said, speaking slowly as he had. "I don't know all you've done for me, but I know it's a great deal. I told you what Alice Muddock said I was; you remember?" She sprang to her feet suddenly and threw her arms round his neck; "I love you," she whispered to him; it was apology, protest, consolation, all in one. "Ashley, what do I care about the wretched play? Only I – I thought you were interested in it too. How lovely it would be if we could act it together!" Her smile dawned on her lips. "Only you'd be rather funny acting, wouldn't you?" she ended with a joyous little laugh.

Ashley laughed too; he thought that he would certainly be funny acting; yet he was sure that if he could have acted with her he need not have lost her.

"But I think I liked you first because you were so different from all of them at the theatre," she went on, knitting her brows in a puzzled frown. He might have recollected that Alice Muddock had liked him because he was so different from all of them in Buckingham Palace Road. Well, Alice had turned again to Buckingham Palace Road, and Bertie Jewett's star was in the ascendant. "I should hate to have you act," she said, darting her hand out and clasping his.

They sat silent for some moments; Ora's fingers pressed his in a friendly understanding fashion.

"There's nobody in the world like you," she said. He smiled at the praise, since his reward was to be to lose her. Things would have their way, and he would lose her. As Alice back to the business, as Bowdon back to a suitable alliance, so she back to her theatre. As for himself, he happened to have nothing to go back to; somewhat absurdly, he was glad of it.

"All sorts of stupid people are quite happy," Ora reflected dolefully. "Everything seems to be arranged so comfortably for them. It's not only that I married Jack, you know."

She was right there, although she rather underrated the importance of the action she mentioned. Even without Jack there would have been difficulties. But her remark brought Jack, his associations and his associates, back into Ashley Mead's mind. "Perhaps I shall run across Jack in America," she added a moment later.

It was indeed not only Jack, but it was largely Jack. Jack, although he was not all, seemed to embody and personify all. Ashley's love for her was again faced and confronted with his distaste for everything about her. Herself he could see only with his own eyes, but her surroundings he saw clearly enough through the eyes of a world which did not truly know her – the world of Irene Bowdon, almost the world of Alice Muddock. Could he then take her from her surroundings? That could be done at a price to him definite though high; but what would be the price to her? The answer came in unhesitating tones; he would be taking from her the only life that was hers to live. Then he must tell her that? He almost laughed at the idea; he knew that he would not be able to endure for a second the pain there would be in her eyes. To wrench himself away from her would torture her too sorely; let her grow away from him and awake some day to find herself content without him.

"And what a fool all my friends would think me!" he reflected. But the reflexion did not weigh with him; he had protected her life from the incursion of Jack Fenning, he would protect it from his own tyranny. He leant forward towards her and spoke to her softly.

"Take the play, Ora," he said; "take the part, go to America, and become still more famous. That's what you can do and what you ought to do."

"And you? Will you come with me?"

"Why no," he said, smiling. "I must stay and roll my little stone here. Yours is a big stone and mine only a little one, but still I must roll my own."

"But I shall be away months."

"Yes, I know, long months. But I won't forget you."

"You won't really? I should die if you forgot me, Ashley. If I go I shall think of you every hour. Oh, but I'm afraid to go! I know you'll forget me."

He had but little doubt that the forgetfulness would come, and that it would not come first from him. She had no inkling of the idea that she could herself cease to feel for him all that she felt now. She extracted from him vows of constancy and revelled in the amplitude of his promises. Presently her mind overleapt the months of absence, saw in them nothing but a series of triumphs which would make him more proud of her, and a prospect of meeting him again growing ever nearer and nearer and sweetening her success with the approaching joy of sharing it all with him and telling him all about it. Anything became sweet, shared with him; witness the renunciation!

"If I hadn't you, I shouldn't care a bit about the rest of it," she said. "But somehow having you makes me want all the rest more. I wonder if all women are like that when they're as much in love as I am."

Ashley knew that all women were by no means like that, but he said that he suspected they were, and assured Ora that the state of feeling she described was entirely consistent with a great and permanent love. As, before, his one object had been to support her through the renunciation, to make it easy and possible for her, so now he found himself bending his energies and exerting his ingenuity to persuading her that there was no incompatibility between her love and her life, between her ambition and her passion, between him and the masterpiece for whose sake she was to leave him. He had seen her once in despair about herself and dared not encounter a second time the pain which that sight of her had given him; he himself might know the truth of what she was and the outcome of what she did; he determined that, so far as he could contrive and control the matter, she should not know it. She should go and win her triumph, she should go in the sure hope that he would not change, in the confidence that she would not, that their friendship would not, that nothing would. Then she would dry her tears, or weep only in natural sorrow and with no bitterness of self-accusation. It seemed worth while to him to embark again on oceans of pretence for her sake, just as it had seemed worth while to pretend to believe in the renunciation, and worth while to break his code by bribing Jack Fenning with a borrowed thousand pounds.

At this time a second stroke fell on old Sir James Muddock; worn out with work and money-making, he had no power to resist. The end came swiftly. It was announced to Ashley in a letter from Bertie Jewett. Lady Muddock was prostrate, Bob and Alice overwhelmed with duties. Bertie begged that his letter might be regarded as coming from the family; he shewed consideration in the way he put this request and assumed his position with delicacy. Ashley read with a wry smile, not blaming the writer but wondering scornfully at the turn of affairs. The old man had once been almost a father to him, the children near as brother and sister; now Bertie announced the old man's death and the children pleaded that they were too occupied to find time to write to him. He went to the funeral; through it all his sense of being outside, of having been put outside, persisted, sharing his mind with genuine grief. From whatever cause it comes that a man has been put outside, even although he may have much to say for himself and the expulsion be of very questionable justice, it is hard for him to avoid a sense of ignominy. Ashley felt humiliation even while he protested that all was done of his own choice. He spoke to the Muddocks no more than a few kind but ordinary words; he did not go to the house. Bertie invited him there and pressed the invitation with the subdued cordiality which was all that the occasion allowed; but he would not go on Bertie's invitation. The resentment which he could not altogether stifle settled on Bob. Bob was the true head of family and business now. Why did Bob abdicate? But he had himself been next in succession; Bob's abdication would have left the place open for him; he had refused and renounced; he could not, after all, be very hard on poor Bob.

Again a few days later came a letter from Bertie Jewett. This time he made no apology for writing; he wrote in his official capacity as one of Sir James's executors. By a will executed a month before death Sir James left to Ashley Mead, son of his late partner, the sum of one thousand pounds to be paid free of legacy duty. Ashley had no anger against the old man and accepted this acknowledgment of his father's position without contempt; it was not left to him but to his father's son; before the will was made he had been put outside.

"He might have left you more than that," said Ora.

"You see, I wouldn't go into the business," Ashley explained.

"No, and you wouldn't do anything he wanted," she added with a smile.

"It's really very good of him to leave me anything."

"I don't call a thousand pounds anything."

"That's all very well for you, with your wonderful play up your sleeve," said Ashley, smiling. "But, as it happens, a thousand pounds is particularly convenient to me, and I'm very much obliged to poor old Sir James."

For armed with Bertie Jewett's letter he had no difficulty in obtaining an overdraft at his bank and that same evening he wrote a cheque for a thousand pounds to the order of Lord Bowdon. In allotting old Sir James's money to this particular purpose he found a curious pleasure. The Muddock family had been hard on Ora and hard on him because of Ora; it seemed turning the tables on them a little to take a small fraction of their great hoard and by its means to make them benefactors to Ora, to make them ex post facto responsible for Jack Fenning's departure, and to connect them in this way with Ora's life. His action seemed to forge another link in the chain which bound together the destinies of the group among which he had moved. Sir James would have given the thousand for no such purpose; he had not laboured with any idea of benefiting Ora Pinsent. Bowdon would not like taking the thousand pounds; he had desired to lay his own gift at Ora's feet. But Sir James being dead should give, and Lord Bowdon being his lady's husband should take. So Ashley determined and wrote his cheque with a smile on his lips. Things turned out so very oddly.

"What have you done with your legacy?" asked Ora. When money came in to her, she always "did something" with at least a large proportion of it; in other words she got rid of it in some remarkable, salient, imagination-striking manner, obtaining by this means a sense of wealth and good fortune which a mere balance at the bank, whether large or small, could never give.

Ashley looked up at her as she stood before him.

"I've paid an old debt with it," he said. "I was very glad to be able to. I'm quite free now."

"Were you in debt? Oh, why didn't you tell me? I've got a lot of money. How unkind of you, Ashley!"

"I couldn't take your money," said Ashley. "And I wasn't pressed. My creditor wouldn't have minded waiting for ever."

"What an angel!" said Ora. She was a little surprised that under the circumstances Ashley had felt called upon to pay.

"Exactly," he laughed. "It was Bowdon."

"He's got lots of money. I wonder he takes it."

"I shall make him take it. I borrowed it to get something I wanted, and I don't feel the thing's mine till I've paid him off."

"Oh, I understand that," said Ora.

"Don't tell him I told you."

"All right, I won't. I don't suppose I shall get a chance of telling Lord Bowdon anything. Irene was like ice to me at the wedding." In reality Irene had not failed to meet with a decent cordiality the outpouring of Ora's enthusiasm.

"Confound you, I didn't want it," was Lord Bowdon's form of receipt for the cheque; he scribbled it on half a sheet of note paper and signed it "B." This was just what Ashley had expected, and he found new pleasure in the constraint which he had placed on his friend's inclination. He shewed the document to Ora when he next went to see her.

"You were quite right," he said. "Bowdon didn't want the money. Look here."

Ora read the scrawl and sat turning it over and over in her fingers.

"But he had to take it," said Ashley with a laugh of triumph, almost of defiance.

"I should think he'd be a very good friend," said Ora. "If Irene would let him, I mean," she added with a smile. "Do you think he'd lend me a thousand pounds and not want it paid back?" she asked.

"From my knowledge of him," said Ashley, "I'm quite sure he would."

"People do an awful lot of things for me," said Ora with a reflective smile. She paused, and added, "But then other people are often very horrid to me. I suppose it works out, doesn't it?"

Ashley was engaged in a strenuous attempt to make it work out, but he had little idea in what way the balance of profit and loss, good and evil, pleasure and pain, was to be arrived at.

"You'd do simply anything for me, wouldn't you?" she went on.

Although he had certainly done much for her, yet he felt himself an impostor when she looked in his face and asked him that question. There seemed to him nothing that he would not suffer for her, no advantages, no prospects, and no friendships that he would not forgo and sacrifice for her. But he would not "do simply anything for her." There was much that he would not, as it appeared to him could not, do for her. Else what easier than to say, "We know so-and-so about your husband, and we can find out so-and-so by using the appropriate methods"? What easier than to say, "I'll go in your train to America, and while you win the triumphs I'll do the nosing"? For if he said that to her, if he opened to her the prospect of being rid, once and for all, of Jack Fenning, of levelling the only fence between him and her of which she was conscious, of enabling her to keep her masterpiece and her triumphs and yet not lose her lover, her joy would know no bounds and the world be transfigured for her into a vision of delight. But yet he could not. All was hers short of negativing himself, of ceasing to be what he was, of gulfing his life, his standards, his mind in hers. She judged by what she saw, and set no bounds to a devotion that seemed boundless. But to him her praise was accusation, and he charged himself with giving nothing because he could not give all.

Ora understood very little why he suddenly caught her in his arms and kissed her. But she thought it a charming way of answering her question.

"Poor Ashley!" she sighed, as she escaped from his embrace. She had occasional glimpses of the imperfection of his happiness, just as she had occasional pathetic intuitions of what her own nature was.

CHAPTER XIX

COLLATERAL EFFECTS

On the whole Irene Bowdon felt that she ought to thank heaven, not perhaps in any rapturous outpouring of tremulous joy, but in a sober give-and-take spirit which set possible evil against actual good, struck the balance, and made an entry of a reasonably large figure on the credit side of the sheet. Surely it was in this spirit that sensible people dealt with heaven? If once or twice in her life she had not been sensible, to repeat such aberrations would little become an experienced and twice-married woman. You could not have everything; and Lord Bowdon's conduct had been extremely satisfactory. Only for two days of one week had he relapsed into that apparent moodiness, that alternation of absent-mindedness with uncomfortable apologies, which had immediately succeeded the offer of his hand. On this occasion something in a letter from Ashley Mead seemed to upset him. The letter had a cheque in it, and Irene believed that the letter and cheque vexed her husband. She had too much tact to ask questions, and contented herself, so far as outward behaviour went, with Bowdon's remark that Ashley was a young fool. But her instinct, sharpened by the old jealousy, had loudly cried, "Ora Pinsent!" She was glad to read in the papers that Ora was to go to America. Yes, on the whole she would thank heaven, and assure herself that Lord Bowdon would have made her his wife anyhow; that is, in any case, and without – She never finished the phrase which began with this "without."

So Ora Pinsent was going to America. Surely madness stopped somewhere? Surely Ashley Mead would not go with her? Irene had never given up hopes of Ashley, and at this first glimmer of a chance she was prepared to do battle for him. She had never quite reconciled herself to Bertie Jewett; her old dislike of the ribbon-selling man and the ribbon-selling atmosphere so far persisted that she had accepted, rather than welcomed, the prospect of Bertie. She wrote and begged Alice Muddock to come across to tea. She and Bowdon were in her house in Queen's Gate, his not being yet prepared to receive her. She fancied that she saw her way to putting everything right, to restoring the status quo ante, and to obliterating altogether the effect of Ora Pinsent's incursion; she still felt a responsibility for the incursion. Of course she was aware that just now matrimonial projects must be in the background at Kensington Palace Gardens; but the way might be felt and the country explored.

"Mr. Jewett, Mr. Jewett, Mr. Jewett;" this seemed the burden of Alice's conversation. The name was not mentioned in a romantic way, nor in connexion with romantic subjects; it cropped up when they talked of the death, of the funeral, of the business, of money matters, future arrangements, everything that goes to make up the ordinary round of life. Alice was quite free from embarrassment and shewed no self-consciousness about the name; but its ubiquity was in the highest degree significant in Irene's eyes. She knew well that the man who has made himself indispensable has gone more than half-way towards making any other man superfluous, and she seemed to be faced with the established fact of Bertie Jewett's indispensability. The time would come when he would ask his reward; either he must receive it or he must vanish, carrying off with him all the comfort his presence had given and breaking the habit of looking to him and leaning on him which had become so strong and constant. If Irene meant to enter the lists against Bertie, she would be challenging an opponent who knew how to fight.

"Have you seen anything of Ashley Mead?" she asked, as she lifted the teapot and poured out the tea.

"He came to the funeral, but of course we had no talk, and he's not been since."

"You haven't been asking people, I suppose?"

"We haven't asked him," said Alice calmly. She took her tea and looked at her hostess with perfect composure.

"He couldn't come just now without being invited, you know," Irene suggested.

"Perhaps not," said Alice, rather doubtfully. "I don't think he wants to come." She paused, and then added deliberately, "And I don't want him to come." Now she flushed a very little, although her face remained steady and calm. She did not seem to shrink from the discussion to which her friend opened the way. "It would be nonsense to pretend that he's what he used to be to us," she went on. "You know that as well as I do, Irene."

"I don't know anything about it," declared Irene pettishly. "I think you're hard on him; all men are foolish sometimes; it doesn't last long." Had not Lord Bowdon soon returned to grace, soon and entirely?

"Oh, it's just that you see what they are," said Alice. She set down her cup and gazed absently out of the window. Irene was irritated; her view had been that momentary weaknesses in a man were to be combated, and were not to be accepted as final indications of what the man was; she had acted on that view in regard to her husband, and, as has been stated, on the whole she thanked heaven. She thought that Alice also might, if she chose, bring herself to a position in which she could thank heaven moderately; but it was not to be done by slamming the door in the face of a prodigal possibly repentant. She cast about for a delicate method of remarking that Ora Pinsent was going to America.

"It was quite inevitable that he should drift away from us," Alice continued. "I see that now. I don't think we're any of us bitter about it."