A Servant of the Public

"Without a doubt – and win it," said Hazlewood.

"I hate agreements. I hate being committed to things. Oh, do give me a cigarette!"

After all, was it not strange that both the men should have done what they had for her? Was there not a touch of vulgarity in her? To the jealous eyes of a woman, perhaps. "But men don't see that," thought Irene Bowdon as she sat on the sofa; she was in that favourite seat of her hostess', by the little table, the portrait in its silver frame, and the flower-vase that once had hidden the letter from Bridgeport, Connecticut.

There was more in Ora's mood than her natural indecision, or her congenital dislike of being bound, or her ingrained dread of agreements which were agreements. The men did not see this; what do men see? But the observant woman on the sofa saw it. The power of the tour, the triumphs, and the thousands was fought by another power; the battle raged in the heart of the woman who would not sign, who chaffed and laughed and protested petulantly, who put off her persuaders by any art or device her beauty excused or her waywardness furnished, who would say neither yes nor no. The conflict declared itself in her nervous laughs, in her ridiculous puffings at an ill-used cigarette, in the air of attention which seemed to expect or hope for a new arrival, perhaps somebody to rescue her, to decide for her, to take the burden of choice from the shoulders that she shrugged so deprecatingly.

"It's awful to go wandering about over there for months," she said. "I hate you both, oh, how I hate you both!"

"The part – " began Babba.

"Do be quiet. I know it's a lovely part," cried Ora. Then she turned suddenly to Irene and began to laugh. "Don't tell anybody how silly I am, Irene," she said, and she looked at the clock again with that expectant hopeful air.

"It's now or never," declared Mr. Hazlewood, with much solemnity.

"Oh, nonsense!" said Ora peevishly. "It's now or to-morrow; and to-morrow will do just as well."

Hazlewood and Babba exchanged glances. After all, to-morrow would be just in time; they had wrestled long with her to-day.

"If you'll take your Bible oath to settle one way or the other to-morrow – " Babba began.

"I will, I will, oh, of course I will," Ora interrupted, infinite joy and relief lighting up her face. "I shall know quite well by to-morrow. Do go now, there's good men. I'll settle it all in five minutes to-morrow."

"Mind you do," said Babba, looking round for his hat. Hazlewood had his and was staring at the crown of it; a coach and four might have hazarded passage along the wrinkle now.

"You'll be just the same to-morrow," he observed, hardly reproachfully, but with an air of sad knowledge.

"I shan't," said Ora indignantly. "If you think that of me, I wonder you have anything to do with me. Oh, but I suppose I'm useful! Nobody cares for me – only just for the use I am to them!"

Both men smiled broadly; greatly to her surprise and disgust Irene found herself exchanging what she was obliged to call a grin with Babba Flint; she had not expected to live to do that.

"That's just it, Miss Pinsent," said Babba. "You ain't clever, and you ain't pleasant, and you ain't pretty; but the fool of a public happens to like you, so we've all got to pretend you are; and we mean to work you to the last tanner, don't you know?"

Mr. Hazlewood smiled sardonically; he did not admire Babba's wit.

"This time to-morrow then," said Ora, ringing the bell. "Oh, and take your agreement with you; I won't have the odious thing here." She flung it at Babba, who caught it cleverly. "I couldn't live in the room with it," she said.

Ora waited till she heard the house door shut upon her visitors. "Thank goodness!" she cried then, as she sank into a chair opposite Irene. "How good of you to come and see me," she went on.

Irene was hard on her search; she did not allow herself to be turned aside by mere civilities, however charming might be the cordiality with which they were uttered.

"Are you really going to America?" she asked.

Ora's face grew plaintive again; she thought that she had got rid of that question till the next day.

"Oh, I suppose so. Yes. I don't know, I'm sure." She leant forward towards her friend. "I suppose you're awfully happy, aren't you, Irene?"

Irene smiled; she had no intention of casting doubts on her bliss in her present company.

"Then do be kind to me, because I'm awfully miserable. Now you're looking as if you were going to tell me it was my own fault. Please don't, dear. That doesn't do any good at all."

"Not the least I'm sure, to you," said Irene Bowdon.

Ora scanned her friend's face anxiously and timidly. She was speculating on the amount of sympathy to be expected; she knew that on occasion Irene could be almost as unjust as Alice Muddock. She was afraid that Irene would break out on her. Irene was in no such mood; coldly, critically, jealously observant, she waited for this woman to throw new lights on herself, to exhibit the kind of creature she was, to betray her weakness and to explain her power.

"Can't you make up your mind whether to go or not?" she asked with a smile.

"If you only knew what going means to me!" cried Ora. Suddenly she rose and flung herself on her knees beside her friend. Irene had an impulse to push her away; but she sat quite still and suffered Ora to take her hand. "You see, he can't come with me," Ora went on, with a pathetic air which seemed to bemoan the wanton impossibility of what might, had it been so disposed, have been quite possible.

"Who can't go with you? Mr. Mead?"

"Yes, Ashley; who else could I mean?"

"Well, I don't suppose he can." Irene gave a short laugh.

"No," said Ora resentfully. "He can't, you see." She looked up in Irene's face. "At least I suppose he can't?" she said in a coaxing voice; then dreariness conquered and reigned in her whole air as she added mournfully, "Anyhow, I'm sure he won't."

"I hope to goodness he won't," said Irene Bowdon.

Ora drew a little away, as though surprised; then she nodded and smiled faintly.

"I knew you'd say that," she remarked.

"What in the world else should I say?" Irene demanded.

"Nothing, I suppose," sighed Ora. "It would be quite out of the question, wouldn't it?"

"Quite," said Irene, and shut her lips close as the one word left them. Her patience was failing. There were two possible things, to be respectable, and not to be respectable; but there was no such third course as Ora seemed to expect to have found for her.

"Of course if I give up the tour," said Ora, in a meditative tone, "things could go on as they are."

"Could they?" cried Irene. "Oh, I don't know how they are, and I don't want to ask. Well, then, I suppose I don't believe the worst or I shouldn't be here; but almost everybody does, and if you go on much longer quite everybody will."

"I don't mind a bit about that," remarked Ora. Her tone was simple and matter-of-fact; she was neither making a confession nor claiming a merit. "How can I be expected to? I lost all feeling of that sort when Jack didn't come. He was the person who ought to have cared, and he didn't care enough to come when I said he might."

The reference to Mr. Fenning touched Irene's wound, and it smarted again. But she was loyal to her husband's injunction and gave no hint which might disturb Ora's certainty that Jack Fenning had not come.

"I think you'd better go away before you've quite ruined Ashley Mead's life," she said in cold and deliberate tones; "and before you've ruined yourself too, if you care about that."

She expected to be met by one of Ora's old pitiful protests against harsh and unsympathetic judgments; the look in Ora's eyes a little while ago had foreshadowed such an appeal. But it did not come now. Ora regarded her with a faint smile and brows slightly raised.

"I don't see," she said, "how all sorts of different people can be expected all to behave in exactly the same way."

"What's that got to do with it?" asked Irene irritably.

"Well, that's what it comes to, if you listen to what people say."

"Do you mean if you listen to what I say?"

"Yes," said Ora, with a smile, "you and Miss Muddock and all the rest of them. And I suppose you've made Lord Bowdon as bad by now? I'm not going to think about it any more." She shook her head as though to clear away these mists of conventional propriety. "If people can be happy anyhow, why shouldn't they?" she added.

"I believe," said Irene, "that you really think you're coming to a new resolution. As if you'd ever thought of anything except what you liked!"

Ora shook her head again, this time in gentle denial; memories of infinite sacrifices to the Ideal rose before her; for example, there was the recalling of her husband. But she would not argue as to her own merits; she had ceased to expect justice or to hope for approbation.

"It's all no use," she said despondently. "I may say what I like, but he won't come." Again she spoke as though she would not give up the tour and would sign the agreement on the morrow, and would do this although she knew that Ashley would not come. Then they would separate! To her own sheer amazement and downright shame Irene Bowdon felt a sharp pang of sorrow; for Ora looked puzzled and forlorn, as though she did what she could not help and suffered keenly at the price she had to pay. Their eyes met, and Ora divined the newly born sympathy. "You are sorry for me, aren't you?" she murmured, stretching her hands out towards her friend.

"Yes," said Irene, with a laugh. "I actually am." She was beginning to understand the transaction which had sent Jack Fenning away richer by a thousand pounds.

"I know you'd help me if you could," Ora went on, "but nobody can; that's the worst of it." She paused for a moment, and then remarked with a mournful smile, "And suppose Babba's wrong and the play does no good after all!"

Irene's warmth of feeling was chilled; she did not understand the glamour of the play so well as she appreciated the pathos of the parting. The strength of the tie came home to her, the power which fought against it was beyond her experience or imagination.

"I wonder you can think about the play at all," she said.

"Oh, you've no idea what a part it is for me!" cried Ora. But her plea sounded weak, even flippant, to Irene; she condemned it as the fruit of vanity and the sign of shallowness. Ora caused in others changes of mood almost as quick as those she herself suffered.

"Well, if you go because you like the part, you can't expect me to be very sorry for you. It's a very good thing you should go; and your part will console you for – for what you leave behind."

Ora made no answer; her look of indecision and puzzle had returned; it was useless to try to make another understand what she herself failed to analyse. But as the business drew Alice Muddock, so the play drew her; and the business had helped to turn Alice's heart from Ashley Mead. He had not been able there to conquer what was in the blood and mingled its roots with the roots of life. No thought of a parallel came to Irene Bowdon; any point of likeness between the two women or their circumstances would have seemed to her impossible and the idea of it absurd; they were wide asunder as the poles. What she did dimly feel was the fashion in which Ashley seemed to stand midway between them, within hearing of both and yet divided from each; she approached the conclusion that he was not really made for either, because he had points which likened him to both. But this was little more than a passing gleam of insight; she fell back on the simpler notion that after all Ashley and Ora could not be so very much in love with one another. If they were victims of the desperate passion she had supposed, one or other or both would give up everything else in the world. They were both shallow then; and probably they would do nothing very outrageous. Relief, disappointment, almost scorn, mingled together in her as she arrived at this conclusion.

"I'm sure you and Mr. Mead will end by being sensible," she said to Ora, with a smile which was less friendly than she wished it to appear. "You've been very foolish, but you both seem to see that it can't go on." She leant forward and looked keenly at Ora.

"Well?" said Ora, put on her defence by this scrutiny.

"Do you really care much about him? I wonder if you could really care much about anybody!" She was rather surprised to find herself speaking so openly about an attachment which her traditions taught her should be sternly ignored; but she was there to learn what the woman was like.

"I don't love people often, but I love Ashley," was Ora's answer; it was given with her own blend of intensity and innocence. To Irene Bowdon, even armoured as she was in prejudice, it carried conviction. "It'll almost kill me to go away from him."

"You'll forget all about him."

"Should I be any happier if I believed that? Should you be happier for thinking that you'd stop loving your husband?"

"If I had to lose him – " Irene began.

"No, no, no," insisted Ora; her eyes were full of tears. "Oh, you don't understand, how can you understand? I suppose you think it's Jack? I tell you it would be the same if Jack had never existed. No, I don't know. But anyhow it would be the same if he didn't exist now." She began to walk about the room, her hands clasped tight on one another.

As she spoke the door opened and Ashley came in. Irene started, but did not move: she had not wished to see them together; the sight of their meeting revived her disapprobation; the thing, being made palpable, became again offensive to her. But escape was impossible. Ora seemed entirely forgetful of the presence of any onlooker; she ran straight to Ashley, crying his name, and caught him by both his hands. He looked across at Irene, then raised Ora's hands in his and kissed each of them. He seemed tired.

"I'm late," he said. "I've had a busy day." He released Ora and came towards Irene. "They've actually taken to sending me briefs! How are you, Lady Bowdon?"

"And the briefs keep him from me," said Ora; she was standing now in the middle of the room.

"Yes," he said with a smile at her. "The world's a very selfish thing; it wants a big share." He paused a moment, and went on, "I smell much tobacco; who's been here?"

"Sidney Hazlewood and Babba," Ora answered. "They came about the play. They want me to sign the agreement to-morrow."

"Ah, yes," he said wearily. "They're very persistent gentlemen. Your husband all right, Lady Bowdon?"

"Quite, thanks." Irene rose. She had a desire to get away. She did not follow the lines of the play nor understand the point of the tragedy; but the sight of them together made her sure that there was a tragedy, and she did not wish to see it played. In the first place, that there should be a tragedy was all wrong, and her presence must not sanction it; in the second place, the tragedy looked as if it might be intolerably distressing and must be utterly hopeless. They would find no way out; his weariness declared that as plainly as the helplessness of Ora's puzzled distress. Irene decided to go home; she would be better there; for although she had her own little tragedy, she could keep it safely under lock and key. The secret purpose of her visit stood accomplished; if she had realised Ora in distress, she would have sorrowed to send Jack Fenning back to her. The difference between doing it with sorrow and refusing to do it altogether was no greater than might be expected between a woman and men in such a case. To have got thus far without having seen Mr. Fenning must stand for an achievement to Lady Bowdon's credit.

Ora let her go without resistance. At the last Irene was full of friendly feeling, but of feeling that here was the end of a friendship. By one way or another Ora was drifting from her; they would not see much more of one another. Perhaps it had never been natural that they should see much of one another; atoms from different worlds, they had met fortuitously; the chance union yielded now before the dissolving force of their permanent connexions. But even such meetings leave results, and Ora, passing out of her friend's life as a presence, would not be forgotten; she left behind her the effect that she had had, the difference that she had made. She could never be forgotten; she would only be unmentioned and ignored; there must be many minutes in which Irene would think of her and know that she was in Bowdon's thoughts also. The way of things seemed to be that people should come into one's life, do something to it, and then go away again; the coming was not their fault, what they did seemed hardly their own doing. She was no longer angry with Ora; she was sorry for Ora, and she was sorry for herself. Was there not some wantonness somewhere? Else why had Ora's raid on her little treasure-house come about? It had done harm to her, and no good to Ora. But she kissed Ora with fondness as she left her.

"I'm glad to find you here," said Ashley, as he escorted her downstairs. "It shews you don't believe the gossip about her – about her and me."

Irene turned to him, but made no comment.

"Oh, I don't know that there's any particular credit to anybody in the gossip not being true; still as a fact it isn't true. She hasn't got you here on false pretences."

Irene seemed now not to care whether the gossip were true or not. She did not get into her carriage, but detained Ashley on the doorstep.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Haven't you talked about it to Ora?" he enquired.

"Yes, but Ora doesn't know what to do." She was possessed with a longing to tell him that she knew about Jack Fenning, but her loyalty to Bowdon still restrained her.

Ashley looked at her; his face struck her again as being very tired and fretted, but it wore his old friendly smile; he seemed to take her into his confidence and to appeal to a common knowledge as he answered her.

"Oh, you know, she'll go to America," he said. "It'll end in that."

"Does she want to go?" asked Irene.

His eyes dwelt steadily on hers and he nodded his head. "Yes, she wants to go," he said, smiling still. "She doesn't know it, poor dear, but she wants to go."

"She'd stop if you told her!" exclaimed Irene impulsively. How came she to make such a suggestion? She spent half the evening trying to discover.

"Yes, that's so too," he said.

"And – and of course you can't go with her?"

"I shan't go with her," said Ashley. "I can't, if you like to put it that way."

She pressed him; her curiosity would not be satisfied.

"You don't want to go?" she asked.

His answer was very slow in coming this time, but he faced the question at last.

"No," he said, "I don't want to go." He paused, glanced at her again, and again smiled. "So, you see, we shall both have what we really like, and there's no reason to pity us, is there, Lady Bowdon?"

Then she got into her carriage, and, as she shook hands with him, she said,

"Well, I don't know that you're worse off than a good many other people."

"I don't know that we are," said Ashley.

And, as she went home, she added that they had themselves to thank for their troubles, whereas the greater part of hers could not fairly be laid at her own door. "If that makes it any better, you know," she murmured, half aloud.

But perhaps one minded to deal with her as faithfully as she thought that Ora should be dealt with, might have observed that not to become Lady Bowdon had once been a thing in her power.

CHAPTER XXI

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

The bargain was struck, the agreement made, the contract punctiliously signed by all the parties, and witnessed by Janet the maid. There were two copies; Mr. Hazlewood had one, Ora the other; Babba possessed himself of a memorandum. They had opened a bottle of champagne and drunk success to the enterprise; prospective triumphs, thousands, fame, bubbled out into the glasses. Babba was wildly hilarious, and vulgar with a profusion of debased phrases beyond even his wont. Mr. Hazlewood smoothed his brow provisionally; he knew that it must wrinkle again many times ere the tour was done and the thousands pocketed. Ora talked very fast, smoked two cigarettes, and darted to and fro about the room, restless as quicksilver, utterly refusing to take her seat on the sofa. The arrangements suspended during her days of indecision could now swiftly be put in working order; men waited for the word at the end of cables and telephones across the Atlantic. The announcements needed only the final touches of Babba's practised pen; the berths on the boat would be booked before to-morrow's sun rose. The thing was settled; beyond all other agreements, this agreement was an agreement; beyond all other undertakings, this undertaking bound them all. For they were launched on a great venture and none could now draw back. It had ended in Ora's consenting to go, as Ashley Mead had said it would.

Babba Flint and Sidney Hazlewood were gone; Janet, who also had drunk a glass of champagne, had withdrawn below again; it was very quiet in the drawing-room of the little house in Chelsea. Ora was in her seat now, by the small table, the portrait, and the vase of fresh roses which from day to day were never wanting. She lay back there, looking at the ceiling with wide-opened eyes; she did not move except when her fingers plucked fretfully at a trimming of lace on her gown; she was thinking what she had done, what it came to, what it would end in. She remembered her uncomfortable talk with Ashley the day before, after Irene had gone, when he would not say "Sign," nor yet, "For God's sake, darling, don't sign, don't go, don't leave me;" but would only smile and say, "You want to go, don't you, Ora?" She had been able to say neither, "Yes, I want to go," nor yet, "For all the world I wouldn't leave you;" but had been perverse and peevish, and at last had sent him away with a petulant dismissal. But all the time they both had known that she would sign and that she would go, because things were setting irresistibly in that direction and it was impossible to say No to fate. Fate does not take denials; its invitations are courteously but persistently renewed. So now she had signed and she was going.

Of course it meant much more than appeared on the surface; she had felt that even at the moment, in spite of Babba's jokes and Hazlewood's business-like attitude. When she was left alone, the feeling came on her in tenfold strength; the drama of her action started to light, its suppressed meaning became manifest, all its effects unrolled themselves before her. Yet how shortly all could be put; she was going away from Ashley Mead; the sweet companionship was to be broken. Did such things come twice, could threads so dropped ever be picked up again? But all this happened by her own act. She faced the charge with a denial that there was more than the most superficial of truths in it. She had not been able to help her action; it was hers in a sense, no doubt, but it was the action of a self over which not she as she knew herself, but this mysterious irresistible bent of things, held control. And the control was very tyrannous. Ashley was bound too; for in all the uncomfortable talk there had been never a suggestion that he should come with her; for both of them that had become an impossibility not to be taken into account. As things would have it, he could not go and she could not stay. There assailed her such a storm of fear and horror as had beset her once before, when her fine scheme of renunciation and reformation was shattered by the little hard fact that the train drew near to the station and in ten minutes Ashley would be gone and Jack Fenning come. She caught Ashley's picture and kissed it passionately; then she laid her head down on the cushions and began to sob. She knew now what she had done; she had driven Ashley out of her life, and life without him was not worth having. How had she been so mad as to sign, to deliver herself bound hand and foot to these men who only wanted to make money out of her, to think that any triumph could console her for the loss of her love? Was it too late, would not a telegram undo all that had been done? She sat up with a sudden abrupt movement; should she write one? They might send her to prison, she supposed, or anyhow make her pay a lot of money. They would think she used them very badly. Oh, what was all that? They could get somebody else to play her part —