A Servant of the Public

"Yes, I know I did. I think so still." But whether her reasons were quite the same was more doubtful than ever. "But I'm quite sure it suits me admirably. I should like really to work at it."

"Sir James always relied on your opinion about it."

"I suppose he wasn't so wrong as he looked," she said with a little laugh. "It's in our blood, and I seem to have a larger share of it than Bob. Why should we try to get away from it? It's made us what we are."

"You didn't use to think that quite."

"No, and you didn't use to – "

"Be quite such a fool as I am? No, I don't think I did," said Ashley. "Still – "

"Still you can't conceive how I can interest myself so much in the business?"

"Something like that," he admitted. Her phrase went as near to candour as it was possible for them to go together. They walked on in silence for a little way, then Ashley smiled and remarked,

"I believe we get a lot of our opinions simply by disliking what we see of other people's; we select their opposites."

"Reaction?"

"Yes; and then we feed what we've picked up till it grows quite strong."

They fell into silence again. Friendliness could not banish the sense of distance between them; they could agree, more or less, as to how they had come to be so far apart, but the understanding brought them no nearer. Even agreeing to differ is still differing. Both were rather sad, yet both were smiling faintly, as they walked side by side; it was very absurd that they had ever thought of being so much to one another. Yet it was a rather sorrowful thing that in future they were to be so very little to one another. Beneath their differences they had just enough of kinship to make them regret that the differences were so great, and so imperative in the conditions they imposed. A sudden impulse made Alice turn to him and say,

"I know you think I'm narrow; I hope you don't think I've been unkind or unfriendly. I did try to put myself in your place as well as I could; I never thought unkindly about you."

"How were you to put yourself in my place?" he asked, smiling at her. "I know you tried. But you'd have had to put yourself in somebody else's place as well."

"I suppose so," said Alice with a shake of her head; she certainly could not put herself in Ora Pinsent's place.

"After all, people are best in their own places," he went on. He paused for a moment, and added, "Supposing they can find out where their places are. You've found yours?"

"Yes," she answered. "Mine is the shop."

He sighed and smiled, lifting his hands. "I wonder where mine is," he said a moment later. For if his were not the shop, it had not seemed to be by Ora Pinsent either. "Perhaps I haven't got one," he went on. "And after all I don't know that I want one. Isn't it possible to keep moving about, trying one after another, you know?" He spoke lightly, making a jest of his question; but she had fallen into seriousness.

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

"Work and labour truly to get mine own living. As for the rest, really I haven't thought about it."

She wanted to ask him whether he still loved Ora Pinsent, whether he were waiting for her to come back to him, and still made that the great thing in his life. But she could find no words for these questions and no right in herself to ask them. The unuttered thoughts served only to check her sympathy for him; even if he did not look to Ora as the great thing in his future life, yet she had been so great in his past as to leave him not caring about the rest. "I'm hard at work, though," he said an instant after; it sounded as if he were seeking to defend himself.

Alice said something rather commonplace about the advantages of hard work; Ashley gave it the perfunctory assent it seemed to demand. Then came silence, and to both of them a sense that there was no more to be said between them.

In spite of this, perhaps because she would not acknowledge it, Alice asked him to dinner the next night, to meet the Bowdons and Bertie Jewett; he accepted with an odd sort of desire to make one of the family circle once again. His interest was mainly in Bertie; they sat on either side of Alice. Ashley's contempt for Bertie was now entirely for the type, and even there not very severe, for power of any kind extorts respect; it was in the main supplanted by the curiosity with which we look on people who are doing what we might have done had we so chosen, or been allowed by nature so to choose. There was a moment's pang when he perceived that Alice was more at ease and more comfortable in talking to Bertie; he was resigned to the change, but it was not very pleasant to look on at it in full operation. Irene, on his other side, allowed none of its significance to escape him; her glances pointed the moral; why she did this he could not understand, not tracing how part of her grudge against Ora attached to the man who had been so near and so much to Ora, and now recalled her so vividly to memory. Bowdon was polite to Lady Muddock, but far from gay. Merriment, animation, sallies of wit or chaff, a certain amount of what a hostile critic might call noisiness, had become habitual to Ashley in the society which he had recently frequented; he found himself declaring this little party very dull, overdone with good sense and sobriety, wanting in irresponsibility of spirit. He hinted something of this feeling to Irene Bowdon.

"Oh, we don't go in for being brilliant," she said with a double touch of malice; she meant to hit at Ora and Ora's friends, and also perversely to include herself in his hinted depreciation of the company; this she liked to do because the depreciation came, as she knew, from a recollection of Ora and Ora's sort of society.

"Being brilliant isn't in itself a crime," pleaded Ashley; "even if it were, it's so rare that there's no need for an exemplary sentence."

"Why don't you talk to Alice?" she whispered.

"She prefers to talk to Mr. Jewett."

"I'm glad it annoys you."

"Are you? I'm rather surprised it does. I don't know why it should, you see."

Irene turned her shoulder on him with emphasised impatience. What right had he to find it dull? Did Bowdon also find it dull? Then came the worst irritation – the admission that it was dull. She turned back to Ashley with a sudden twist.

"What right have you to expect to be always amused?" she demanded.

"None; but I suppose I may mention it when I'm not," said he.

"Do you know what you remind me of? You'll be angry if I tell you."

"Then I couldn't deprive you of the pleasure of telling me, Lady Bowdon."

"You're like a drunkard put on lemonade," she said with a vicious little laugh.

Ashley made no immediate answer; he looked at her with lifted brows; then he also laughed.

"The metaphor's rather strong," said he, "but – if you like!"

"Well, you're very good-tempered," she conceded with a remorseful glance. "I should feel better if you'd hit me back."

"I've no weapon."

"Yes, you have." Her tone was marked and significant; he looked straight and attentively in her face; her eyes were not on his watching face but on her husband whose head was bent in courteous attention to Lady Muddock's doubtfully expounded platitudes.

"Look here, do you know anything?" he asked.

"Yes," said she without turning towards him.

He grew surer of his ground and hazarded his shot with confidence.

"About a thousand pounds?"

"Yes."

"Ah, married men, married men! It wasn't his secret. And why in heaven's name did he tell you?"

"He was right to tell me. I like the truth."

"Oh, don't talk about truth! I'm fresh from a surfeit of it. I shouldn't have thought it made you any more – " He paused, in difficulty how to say enough and not too much.

"Any happier to know?"

"Well – if you like," said Ashley, again accepting her phrase.

"No, it doesn't," she said briefly. Then she added, "I promised not to tell you; don't let him know I have."

"I'll try to prove a better confidant than he is," said Ashley. "And why did you tell me?"

"You half guessed. I didn't tell. But – don't you think we might sympathise a little?"

"We'll sympathise all we can," said Ashley with a laugh.

"We might almost all sympathise; she's made a difference to almost all of us."

"Who has?"

"She – she – she," said Irene Bowdon, as she rose in answer to her hostess' signal.

"Well, yes, she has," Ashley admitted, as he drew back the chairs. And while she was still in earshot he added, "But it's all over now."

"Indeed it isn't, it never will be," said Irene over her shoulder, as she swept away.

"How ready people are with these eternal negatives," he thought as he sat down to his glass of wine.

Then he fell to speculating why Bowdon had told her about Jack Fenning and the thousand pounds, and why she had revealed that Bowdon had told her. To him the second question seemed the more difficult to answer, but he found an explanation, partly in her desire to defend or apologise for a certain bitterness towards Ora which she had betrayed, more perhaps in the simple fact that she was brimming over with the thing and could not restrain herself in the presence of one to whom her disclosure would be so interesting and significant. She had been tempted to show him that she knew more of the situation than he supposed, and must not be treated as an outsider when Ora and her affairs came up for discussion. Anyhow there the disclosure was, with its proof that, even although the eternal negative might be rashly asserted, for the time at all events Ora had very materially affected other lives than his own.

"Of course I never expected to be where I am; at any rate not till much later."

Bertie Jewett was talking to Bowdon about his success and his new position; he talked unaffectedly enough, although perhaps it could hardly be said that he talked modestly. Perceiving that his remark had roused Ashley to attention, he went on, "Among other things, I've got to thank your dislike of a commercial life, Mead. That let me in, you see."

"Come, Ashley," laughed Bowdon, "here's something to your credit!"

"Really the exact train of circumstances that has resulted in putting me practically at the head of the concern is rather curious to consider," pursued Bertie. Bowdon listened with a tolerant, Ashley with a malicious smile. "It all seemed to be made so easy for me. I had only to wait, and all the difficulties cleared out of the way. I can talk of it because I had nothing to do with it, except taking what I was offered, I mean."

"Well, everybody's not equal to that, by any means," said Bowdon. "But certainly fortune's treated you well."

It was on Ashley's lips to say "You owe it all to Ora Pinsent." But the thing would have been absurd and quite inadmissible to say. Perhaps it was also rather absurd to think; he knew the trick he had of magnifying and extending his own whimsical view of events until it seemed to cover the whole field. None the less, an intimate knowledge of the circumstances, of the exact train of circumstances as Bertie put it, forbade him to rob Miss Pinsent of all credit for the result on which he and Bowdon were congratulating Mr. Jewett. Why should not poor Ora, towards whom so many people were bearing a grudge, have gratitude when she deserved it?

"The fact is," said Bowdon, tugging his moustache, "things happen very queerly in this world."

"After that startling observation, let's go into the garden and smoke," said Ashley, rising with a laugh.

In the garden Ashley talked to Lady Muddock, and had the opportunity of observing how a seventh heaven of satisfaction might be constructed without a single scrap of material which seemed to him heavenly. Such a spectacle should serve as a useful corrective for a judgment of the way of the world too personal and relative in character; it had on Ashley the perverse effect of increasing his discontent. If happiness were so easy a thing and placidity so simply come by, if nothing extraordinary were needed for them and nothing dazzling essential, why, what fools were people who went after the extraordinary and the dazzling, and yet in the end failed completely in their quest! And that you were a fool by your very nature was no comfort, but rather increased the hopelessness of the position.

"I can't help thinking how wonderfully everything has happened for the best," said Lady Muddock, her eyes resting on Alice and Bertie who were walking side by side, a few paces behind Bowdon and his wife.

"You're rather too optimistic for me," said Ashley with a laugh. "I think we do the world rough justice if we admit that most things happen for the second-best."

"We are taught – " Lady Muddock began.

"Yes, but, my dear Lady Muddock, we're most of us shocking bad pupils."

Lady Muddock made a few efforts to convert him to the creed of the best, in distinction from that of the second-best; but Ashley would not be persuaded. The idea of the second-best gained on him. What had happened to the little circle about him was certainly not ideal, yet it was not calamity; it could hardly claim to be tragedy, yet you were in danger of being brought up short by some sudden pang if you tried to laugh at it. It wanted then a formula to express its peculiar variety, its halting midway between prosperity and misfortune, between what one would have wished and what one might have had to take. The formula of the second-best seemed to suit it very well. Even his own individual position, of which he had not taken a sanguine view, fitted itself into the formula with just a little pressing and clipping and management. His life was not ruined; he found himself left with too many interests and ambitions, with too keen an appreciation of all that was going on about him, to yield to the hysteria of such a sentimental conclusion; but it was not, and now would not be, quite what he had once dreamed and even lately hoped. He took courage and decided that he need not fall below the formula of the second-best. And what of Ora? Would she also and her life fit into the formula? She had never fitted into any formula yet; here lay her charm, the difficulty and the hopelessness of her. But then the new formula was very elastic. She might find a second-best for herself, or accept one if it were offered to her.

In the notion that he has learnt or begun to learn the ways of the world and how to take it there lies a subtle and powerful appeal to a man's vanity. There is a delicate flavour in the feeling, surpassing the more obvious delights which may be gained from the proof of intellectual superiority or the consciousness of personal charm. It is not only that the idea makes him seem wiser than his fellows, for the conviction of greater wisdom would not appear to carry much pleasure; it makes him feel better-tempered, better-mannered, better-bred – if it may so be put, more of a gentleman. He is no longer one of the pushing jostling throng, eager to force a way into the front places, to have the best view of the show or the largest share of the presents which are to be distributed; he stands on the outskirts in cool leisureliness, smiling rather superciliously, not exactly happy, but convinced that any effort would turn his negative condition into a positive discomfort. Or the old metaphor of the banquet comes back into his mind; when the dish goes round he does not snatch at it; if it is long in coming, he feels and betrays no impatience; if it is finished before it reaches him, he waits for the next course, and meanwhile engages in polite conversation; he does not call out, nor make gestures, nor abuse the waiters (they are great folk in disguise). The rest of the company, who do all these things, commit gross breaches of taste; and although he may go home hungry he will be fed and warmed by the satisfaction of his graceful attitude and the glow of his suavity. Of course graceful attitudes are a little tiring and suavity is always more or less of a mask, but here it is that good-breeding finds its field and rewards him who displays it with its peculiar guerdon. Perhaps he would have liked the presents or the dishes, and he has not got them; but then his coat is not torn, his shirt is not crumpled, his collar is not limp. The successful betray all these unbecoming signs of a triumph in reality disgraceful; how have they the audacity to exhibit themselves red-faced, puffing, perspiring, hugging their prizes to their breasts and casting round furtive suspicious glances, fearful that they may still be robbed? Surely the vulgarity of the means sticks to the end and soils that also?

Here were very ingenious arguments to prove that the second-best was in a true view the best; so treated and managed, the formula should surely assume new attractions?

But if a man be very hungry? The argument is not fairly put. He gets fed, though not on his favourite delicacy. But if he cannot eat rough fare? Well, in that case, so much the worse for him; he should not have a dainty stomach.

It is a long way from Kensington Palace Gardens to Charing Cross; there is time for many philosophical reflexions as a man walks from one to the other on a fine night. But at the end, when he has arrived, should his heart beat and his hand dart out eagerly at the sight of an envelope bearing an American postage stamp? Does such a paradox impugn his conclusions or merely accuse his weakness? Human nature will crop out, and hunger is hunger, however it may be caused. Perhaps these backslidings must be allowed; they come only now and then; they will not last, will at least come more seldom. The emptiness will not always vent angry abuse on the good manners which are the cause of it.

The letter was a long one, or looked long because it covered many pages – it was understamped, a circumstance prettily characteristic – but Ora wrote large, and there was not really a great deal in it. What there was was mostly about the play and the part, the flattering reception, the killing work, the unreasonableness of everybody else. All this was just Ora, Ora who was neither to be approved of, nor admired, nor imitated, but who was on no account to be changed. Ashley read with the same smile which had shewn itself on his face when he commended the formula of the second-best to Lady Muddock's candid consideration. He came near the end. Would there be no touch of the other Ora, of his own special secret Ora, the one he knew and other people did not? There was hardly a touch; but just on the last page, just before the "yours, Ora," there came, "Oh, my dear, if only you were with me! But I seem to have got into another world. And I'm lonely, Ashley dear."

The great clock down at Westminster struck one, the hum of the town ran low, the little room was quiet. Perhaps moments like these are not the fittest for the formula of the second-best. Does it not, after all, need an audience to smile pleased and appreciative applause of it? Is it as independent, as grandly independent, as it sounds? Does it comfort a man when he is quite alone? Is it equal to fighting the contrasts between what is and what might have been?

"I seem to have got into another world. And I'm lonely, Ashley dear."

Heavens, how many worlds were there, that all his friends should be getting into others and leaving him alone in his?

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MOST NATURAL THING

By reason of the Government's blunders or of the Opposition's factiousness – the point awaits the decision of a candid historian in case he should deem it worth his attention – Parliament had to assemble in the autumn of this year; the Bowdons were back in town in November, the Commission met to wind up its work, and Ashley Mead was in dutiful attendance. Before this Irene had made up her mind that things were going tolerably, would go better, and in the end would turn out as well as could reasonably be expected. The recuperative effect of a vagrant autumn had produced a healthier state of feeling in her. She had begun to be less fretful about herself, less nervous and inquisitive about her husband; she had resigned herself to the course of events in a hopeful temper. Bowdon's bearing towards her was all that she could desire; it was losing that touch of exaggerated chivalry which had smacked of apology and remorse; it was assuming the air of a genuine and contented comradeship. She was inclined to think that their troubles were over. If one or two other things were over with the troubles, the principle of compensation must be accepted manfully. After all, love's alternate joy and woe is not the stuff to make a permanently happy home or the best setting for a useful public career; on the other hand, these can co-exist with a few memories of which one does not speak and a cupboard or two kept carefully locked.

Having brought herself to this point, and feeling both praiseworthy and sensible in attaining so much, she allowed herself some astonishment at Ashley Mead, who seemed to have started in an even worse condition and yet to have achieved so much more. He appeared to have passed a complete Act of Oblivion for himself, and to have passed it with a rapidity which (from one or other of the reasons above referred to) would have been quite impossible to the Legislature. Surely in him, if in anybody, the period of convalescence should have been long? Resolution is good, so is resignation, so are common-sense and strength of will; but there is a decency in things, and to recover too quickly from a folly confirms the charge of levity and instability incurred by its original commission. Ashley should not be behaving just for all the world as though nothing had happened; such conduct was exasperating to persons who had reason to know and to feel how much really had happened. To be cheerful, to be gay, to be prospering greatly, to be dining out frequently, to have suppressed entirely all hint of emotions lately so acute and even overpowering, was not creditable to him, and cheated his friends of a singularly interesting subject for observation and comment, as well as of a sympathetic melancholy to which they had perhaps allowed themselves to look forward. It was no defence that Irene herself aimed at what he appeared to have achieved, as at a far-off ideal; she had not been, to the knowledge of all London, desperately in love with Ora Pinsent; she had not thrown up brilliant business prospects, lost an admirable match, and seriously impaired her reputation in the eyes of all respectable people. Neither had she bribed Jack Fenning to go away at the cost of a thousand pounds.

"Surely all men aren't like that?" she cried with marked indignation.

She broke out on Ashley once when he came to tea and they chanced to be alone; he met her in a way which increased her annoyance.

"Well, what has happened after all?" he asked, leaning back in his chair and smiling at her. "I don't see that anything has. Ora has gone on a visit to America; from what I hear, a very successful visit. Presently, I suppose, she'll come back. A visit to America doesn't in these days mean a final separation from all one holds dear in the old country. I believe one almost always finds the man who lives next door in London dining at the same table in New York; then one makes his acquaintance."

"Do you ever hear from her? I never do."

"I hear from her every now and then. Oh, I admit at once what your look means; yes, not so often as at first." He laughed at the flush of vexation on Lady Bowdon's face. "I write seldomer too; I can do anything for a friend except carry on a correspondence."

"I expect every day to hear of Alice Muddock's engagement."

"Do you really think about it every day?" he asked, raising his brows. "What an eye you keep on your acquaintances!"

Was he genuine? Or was he only perfectly, coolly, securely on his guard? Irene felt baffled and puzzled; but it was bad enough that he should be able even to pretend so well to her; pretending that nothing had happened was not always easy.

"Do you think Ora will come back?" she asked. "If she's successful she may stay."

"Oh, she'll come," he nodded. "We shall have her back in Chelsea before six months are out."

"And when she does?"

Irene's curiosity had overcome her, but Ashley laughed again as he answered, "Ascribe what emotions you like to me, Lady Bowdon; but I haven't heard that Jack Fenning's health's failing."

There was some pretence about the attitude so puzzling and exasperating to Irene Bowdon, but more of reality. The passing of the months had brought a sense of remoteness; it was intensified by a gradual cessation of the interchange of letters. Ora had told him that she seemed to have got into another world and was lonely; she was, without doubt, still in another world; whether still lonely he could not tell. She was in all senses a long way off; what he had chosen, or at least accepted as the lesser evil, was happening; she and her life were diverging from him and his life. He recognised all this very clearly as he ate his chop at the club that evening. She had found him living one life; she had given him another while she was with him; she left him a third different from either of the other two. That evening, whether from some mood of his own or because of what Irene had said, she seemed irrevocably departed and separated from him. But even in that hour she was to come back to him so as to be very near in feeling though still across the seas in fact.