A Servant of the Public

He was persuaded now that to go forward on this path would be wise, would make for the worthiness and dignity of his life, save him from unbecoming follies, and intrench him from dangers. If only he could again come to feel the thing sweet as well as wise! There was much to help him – his old impulses which now revived, her unusual brilliancy, the way in which she seemed to draw to him, to delight in talking to him, to make of him a friend more intimate than she had allowed him to consider himself before. He had meant the thing so definitely a few weeks ago; it seemed absurd not to mean it now, not to suppose it would be as pleasant and satisfactory now as it had seemed then. He had been in a delusion of feeling; here was sanity coming back again. He caught at it with an eager, detaining hand.

Suddenly Irene felt that the battle was won; she knew it clearly in an instant. There was a change in his manner, his tones, his eyes, his smile. Now he was making love to her and no longer thinking whether he should make love to her; and to her he could make love thus plainly with one purpose only, and only to one end. She had what she had striven for, in a very little while now it would be offered to her explicitly. For an instant she shrank back from plucking the fruit, now that she had bent the bough down within her reach. There was a revulsion to shame because she had tried, had fought, had set her teeth and struggled till she won. What she had said of Ora Pinsent rose up against her, declaring that its truth was no honest truth since it was not spoken honestly. Babba Flint and his horrible phrase wormed their way back into her mind. But she rose above these falterings; she would not go back now that she had won – had won that triumph which all the world would suppose to be so complete, and had avoided that defeat the thought of whose bitterness had armed her for battle and sustained her in the conflict. In view of Bowdon's former readiness it would be grossly unfair, surely, to speak of hers as the common case of a woman leading a man on; his implied offer had never been withdrawn; she chose now to accept it; that was the whole truth about the matter.

He asked her to be his wife with the fire and spirit of a passion seemingly sincere; she turned to him in a temporary fit of joy, which made her forget the road by which she had travelled to her end. Her low-voiced confession of love made him very glad that he had spoken, very glad for her sake as well as for his own; it was a great thing to make her so happy. If he had refrained, and then found out the anticipations he had raised in her and how he had taught her to build on him, he must have acknowledged a grave infraction of his code. She was, after the first outburst of fearful delight, very gentle and seemed to plead with him; he answered the pleading, half unconsciously, by telling her that he had been so long in finding words because she had encouraged him so little and kept him in such uncertainty. When she heard this she turned her face up to his again with a curiously timid deprecatory affection.

He was for announcing the engagement then and there, as publicly as possible. His avowed motive was his pride; a desire to commit himself beyond recall, to establish the fact and make it impregnable, was the secret spring. Irene would not face the whole assembly, but agreed that the news should be whispered to chosen friends.

"It'll come to the same thing in a very little while," he said with a relieved laugh.

Before the evening ended, the tidings thus disseminated reached Ashley Mead, and he hastened to Irene. Bowdon had left her for the moment, and he detached her easily from the grasp of a casual bore. His felicitations lacked nothing in heartiness.

"But it's no surprise," he laughed. "I was only wondering how long you'd put it off. I mean 'you' in the singular number."

That was pleasant to hear, just what she wanted to hear, just what she wished all the world to say. But she burned to ask him whether he had continued in the same state of anticipation during the last week or two. Suddenly he smiled in a meditative way.

"What's amusing you?" she demanded rather sharply.

"Nothing," he answered. He had been thinking of Bowdon's midnight confidence. He reflected how very different men were. Some day, no doubt, he himself would make a proper and reasonable choice; but he could not have gone so straight from the idea (however foolish the idea) of Ora Pinsent to the fact of Irene Kilnorton. It was to lay aside a rapturous lyric and take up a pleasantly written tale. He found several other such similes for it, the shadow of Sunday being over his mind. He was in great spirits and began to talk merrily and volubly, making fun of his companion, of love, of engaged folk, and so on. She listened very contentedly for awhile, but then began to wonder why Bowdon did not come back to her; she would have risked absurdity to be sure that he could not keep away. She knew men hated that risk above all; but surely he could come back now and talk to her again? She looked round and saw him standing alone; then he wanted to come. With her eyes she gave him a glad invitation; but as he approached there was a sort of embarrassment in his manner, a shamefacedness; he was too much a man of the world to wear that look simply because he had become a declared lover. And although Ashley was both cordial and sufficiently respectful there was a distant twinkle in his eye, as if he were enjoying some joke. Her apprehensions and her knowledge of the nature of her triumph made her almost unnaturally acute to detect the slightest shade of manner in either of the men. Men knew things about one another which were kept from women; had Ashley a knowledge which she lacked? Did it make her triumph seem to him not incomplete perhaps, but very strange? The glow of victory even so soon began to give place to discomfort and restlessness.

Ashley looked at his watch.

"I shall go," he announced. "I've been betrayed." He spoke with a burlesque despair. "A certain lady – you can't monopolise the tender affections, Lady Kilnorton – told me she would be here – late. It's late, in fact very late, and she's not here."

"Who was she?" asked Irene.

"Can you doubt? But I suppose she felt lazy after the theatre."

"Oh, Ora?"

"Of course," said Ashley.

"How silly you are! Isn't he?" She turned to Bowdon.

"He's very young," said Bowdon, with a smile. "When he comes to my age – "

"You can't say much to-night anyhow, can you?" laughed Ashley.

"Ora never comes when she says she will."

"Oh, yes, she does sometimes," Ashley insisted, thinking of his Sunday.

"You have to go and drag her!"

"That's just what I should do."

No doubt Bowdon took as small a part in the conversation as he decently could. Still it seemed possible to talk about Ora; that to Irene's present mood was something gained. Nobody turned round on her and said, "He'd rather have had Ora, really," a fantastic occurrence which had become conceivable to her.

"Your Muddocks have gone, haven't they?" she asked Ashley.

"Yes, my Muddocks have gone," said Ashley, laughing. "But why 'my' Muddocks? Am I responsible for them?"

"They ought to be your Muddocks. I try to get him to be sensible." The last sentence she addressed to Bowdon with a smile. "But men won't be."

"None of them?" asked Bowdon, returning her smile.

"Oh, don't say you're being sensible," she cried, half-laughing, half-petulantly. "I don't want you to be; but I think Mr. Mead might."

"Marriage as a precautionary method doesn't recommend itself to me," said Ashley lightly, as he held out his hand in farewell. They both laughed and watched him as he went.

"Silly young man!" she said. "You'll take me to my carriage, won't you?"

Ashley might be silly; they were wise. But Wisdom often goes home troubled, Folly with a light heart. The hand of the future is needed to vindicate the one and to confound the other. No doubt it does. The future, however, is a vague and indefinite period of time.

CHAPTER V

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY

When Ashley Mead called for her at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning Miss Pinsent was not dressed. When she made her appearance at a quarter to twelve she was rather peevish; her repertory embraced some moods quite unamiable in a light way. She did not want to go, she said, and she would not go; she wondered how she had come to say she would go; was he sure she had said so?

"Oh, you must go now," said Ashley cheerfully and decisively.

"Why must I, if I don't want to?"

"Honour, justice, kindness, pity; take your choice of motives. Besides – " he paused, smiling at her.

"Well, what besides?"

"You mean to go." The stroke was bold, bold as that of Lady Kilnorton's about Ashley being one of a dozen.

"Are you a thought-reader, Mr. Mead?"

"A gown-reader on this occasion. If that frock means anything it means the country."

Ora smiled reluctantly, with a glance down the front of her gown.

"It's quite true I didn't mean to go," she said. "Besides I didn't think you'd come."

"A very doubtful truth, and a quite unnecessary fiction," said he. "Come along."

She came, obedient but still not gay; he did not force the talk. They went to Waterloo and took tickets for a quiet village. He gave her all the Sunday papers and for a time she read them, while he leant back, steadily and curiously regarding the white smooth brow which shewed itself over the top of the sheet. He was wondering how she kept the traces of her various emotions (she was credited with so many) off her face. For lines she might have been a child; for eyes too, it seemed to him sometimes, while at other moments all possibilities of feeling, if not of knowledge, spoke in her glance. After this, it seemed a poor conclusion to repeat that she was interesting.

Presently she threw away her paper and looked out of the window with a grave, almost bored, expression. Still Ashley bided his time; he took up the discarded journal and read; its pleasant, discursive, unimportant talk was content with half his mind.

"I suppose," she said absently, "that Irene and Lord Bowdon are spending the day together somewhere."

"I suppose so; they ought to be, anyhow."

A long pause followed, Ashley still reading his column of gossip with an appearance of sufficient attention. Ora glanced at him, her brows raised a little in protest. At last she seemed to understand the position.

"I'm ready to be agreeable as soon as you are," she announced.

"Why, then, it's most delightful of you to come," was his answer, as he leant forward to her; the paper fell on the floor and he pushed it away with his foot. "Will they enjoy themselves, that couple?"

"She wrote to me about it yesterday, quite a long letter."

"Giving reasons?"

"Yes; reasons of a sort, you know."

"I thought so," he nodded. "Somehow both of them seemed anxious to have reasons, good sound reasons."

"Oh, well, but she's in love with him," said Ora. "I suppose that's a reason."

"And he with her?"

"Of course."

It had been Ora's firm intention not to refer in the most distant manner to what had passed between Bowdon and herself. But our lips and eyes are traitors to our careful tongues; and there are people who draw out a joke from any hiding-place.

"He's done a very wise thing," said Ashley, looking straight into her eyes. She blushed and laughed. "I admire wise things," he added, laughing in his turn.

"But don't do them?"

"Oh, sometimes. To-day for example! What can be wiser than to refresh myself with a day in the country, to spend a few hours in fresh air and – and pleasant surroundings?"

She looked at him for a moment, then settled herself more luxuriously on the seat as she murmured, "I like being wise too."

The one porter at the little station eyed Ora with grave appreciation; the landlady of the little inn where they procured a plain lunch seemed divided between distrust of the lady and admiration of her garments. Ashley ordered an early dinner and then invited his friend to come out of doors.

He had brought her to no show view, no famous prospect. There was only a low slow stream dawdling along through the meadows, a belt of trees a quarter of a mile away behind them, in front a stretch of flat land beyond the river, and on the water's edge, here and there, a few willows. She found a convenient slope in the bank and sat down, he lying beside her, smoking a cigar. The sun shone, but the breeze was fresh. Ora had been merry at lunch but now she became silent again. When Ashley Mead threw the stump of his cigar into the stream, she seemed to rouse herself from a reverie and watched it bob lazily away.

"Sleepy after lunch?" he asked.

"No, I'm not sleepy," she answered. "I was letting things pass through my head." She turned to him rather abruptly. "Why did you bring me here to-day?" she asked, with a touch of protest in her voice.

"Purely a desire for pleasure; I wanted to enjoy myself."

"Are you like that too? Because I am." She seemed to search his face. "But there's something else in you."

"Yes, at other times," he admitted. "But just then there wasn't, so I brought you. And just now there isn't."

She laughed, rather nervously as it seemed to him.

"And what do the other things, when they're there, say to it?" she asked.

"Oh, they're sure of their innings in the end!" His tone was careless, but his eyes did not leave her face. He had meant not to make love to her; he would not have admitted that he was making love to her. But to have her face there and not look at it had become impossible; it chained him with its power of exciting that curiosity mingled with attraction which is roughly dubbed fascination. He felt that he must not only see more of her but know more of her; there was a demand of the brain as well as a craving of the emotions. She seemed moved to tell him nothing; she made no disclosures of her past life, where she had been born or bred, how she had fared, how come where she was, how become Mrs. Jack Fenning, or how now again turned to Ora Pinsent. She left him to find out anything he wanted to know. Her assumption that there was nothing to tell, or no reason to tell anything, spurred him to further study of her. That he studied at his peril he knew well and had known from the first; it was but another prick of the spur to him.

She had been gazing across the stream, at the meadows and the cattle. Now her eyes returned to him and, meeting his glance, she laughed again in that half-amused, half-embarrassed way.

"Shall I make up a life for you?" he asked. "Listen now. You weren't pretty as a young girl; you were considered very naughty, rather good-for-nothing; I think they were a bit down on you, tried to drill you into being like other people, to – what's the word? – eradicate your faults, to give you the virtues. All that made you rather unhappy; you'd a good deal rather have been petted. But you weren't drilled, your faults weren't eradicated, you never got the virtues."

She was listening with a smile and amused eyes.

"The training broke down because you began to grow beautiful and coaxing; they couldn't drill you any more; it wasn't in their hearts. They began to see that they'd got something uncommon; or perhaps they just despaired. They said it was Ora's way. – "

"Lizzie's way," she corrected with a merry nod.

"Oh, no. Hang Lizzie! They said it was Ora's way, and that it was no use bullying the girl. Your father said it first and had some trouble in convincing your mother. But he did at last. Then you grew up, and everybody made love to you. And I expect somebody died and home wasn't so comfortable. So some time or other you took a flight away, and the stage became a reality. I suppose it had been a dream. And at some time or other you took a certain step. Then I don't know anything more except what's written in the Chronicles of Queen Ora Pinsent." He ended the story, which had been punctuated by pauses in which he gathered fresh information from her face.

"You've done well to find out so much. It wasn't very unlike that. Now tell me the future. What's going to happen to me?"

"You're going to be young and beautiful for ever and ever."

She laughed joyfully.

"Oh, yes!" she cried. "Let me see. I shall be young – young enough – for ten years more, and with the proper appliances beautiful for twenty."

His laugh was reluctant; the mention of the proper appliances jarred on him a little. She saw it in an instant and answered with a defiance: "I rouge now when I want it."

"Are you rouged to-day?"

"You can look and see."

"I can look, but perhaps I can't see."

She rubbed her cheek hard with her hand and then showed him the palm.

"I hope that's proof," he said, "but these contrivances are so cunning now-a-days."

"Men think them even more cunning than they are," laughed Ora. "And what have you done?" she went on. "What's your life been?"

"The deplorably usual – preparatory school, public school, Oxford, Bar. I'm a full-blown specimen of the ordinary Englishman of the professional classes."

"And what are you going to do?"

"Oh, I'm sure I don't know. As little work as I must and as little harm as I can, I suppose."

She laughed as she said: "At any rate you aren't doing much work to-day, are you? And no harm at all! But you've left out what you put in for me – a certain step."

"Well, you've taken it, and I haven't."

"You will. Oh, Irene Kilnorton has told me all about it. It seems you can't help it, Mr. Mead. I liked her; I asked her to come and see me, but she's never been."

He made a little grimace, wrinkling brow and nose. Ora laughed again. "You won't be able to help it," she declared, nodding her head. "And then no more Sundays out with actresses!"

"Even as matters stand, it's not a habit of mine," he protested.

She smoked a cigarette of his, investing the act of luxury with a grace which made it meritorious; as she blew out the last of the smoke, she sighed, saying,

"I wish to-day would last for ever."

"Do you?" he asked in a low voice. The tone startled her to a sudden quick glance at his face. Her words had given expression to his longing that this simple perfection of existence should never pass.

"Just the meadows, and the river, and the sunshine."

"You leave me out?"

"No," she said, "you may be somewhere in it, if you like. Because if nothing was going to change, I shouldn't change either; and I like you being here now, so I should like you being here always."

"Do you always expect to change to people?"

"It's not altogether me. They change to me, I think."

"If I don't change to you, will you promise not to change to me?" He laughed as he spoke, but he looked at her intently. She turned away, saying,

"I should be rather afraid never to change to a person. It would make him mean so terribly much to one, wouldn't it?"

"But you married?" he whispered, whether in seriousness or in mockery he himself could hardly tell.

"Yes," she said. She seemed to agree that there was a puzzle, but to be unable to give any explanation of it. The fact was there, not to be mended by theorising about it.

In long intimate talk the hours were wearing away. His impulse was delicately to press her to reveal herself, to shew her mind, her way of thought, her disposition towards him. But side by side with his interest came the growing charm of her; he hardly knew whether to talk to her or to be silent with her, to elicit and trace the changes animation made, or to admire the dainty beauty of her features in repose. Movement and rest alike became her so well that to drive out either for the other seemed a gain burdened with an equal loss; her quick transitions from expression to expression were ruthless as well as bountiful. She appeared very happy, forgetful now of the puzzle that he had called to her mind, of the distrust that had afflicted her, entirely given over to the pleasure of living and of being there. Then she liked him; he was no jar, no unwelcome element. But there was still a distance between them, marked by her occasional nervousness, her ignoring of a remark that pressed her too closely, her skirting round topics which threatened to prove too serious. She seemed to ask him not to compel her to any issue, not to make her face any questions or attempt any determination, to let her go on being happy as long as might be possible without driving her to ask why she was happy or how long she would be. Happy she was; as they rose reluctantly to go back to the inn she turned to him, saying:

"I shall never forget the day you've given me."

But, arrived at the inn, she forgot her love of the meadows. Now she was glad to be in the snug parlour, glad dinner was near, glad to sit in a chair again. She went upstairs under the escort of the questioning admiring landlady, and came down fresh and radiant. In passing she gave him her hand, still cool and moist from water. "Isn't that nice?" she asked, and laughed merrily when he answered, "Oh, well, nice enough." The window opened on a little garden; she flung it wide. "There's nobody to spy on how much we eat," she said, "and the evening smells sweet. Oh, do let's begin!" And she clapped her hands when the meal came. Ashley found a sort of pity mingling with his other feelings for her, compassion for the simplicity and readiness of emotion which expose their possessor to so many chances of sorrow as well as to a certainty of recurrent joys. But he fell in with her mood and they joined in a childish pretence that they were at a great banquet, dignifying the simple chicken with titles they recollected from menu or constructed from imagination, while the claret, which could make no great claims on intrinsic merit, became a succession of costly vintages, and the fictitious bill, by which she declared she would measure his devotion to her, grew by leaps and bounds. It was strange to realise that in twenty-four hours she would be back in her theatre, a great, at least a notorious, personage, talked of, stared at, canvassed, blamed, admired, the life she herself made so simple a thing given over to a thousand others for their pleasure and curiosity. A touch of jealousy made itself felt in his reflexions.

"I'm beginning rather to hate your audiences," he said.

A shrug and a smile sent the audiences to a limbo of inexpressible unimportance.

"You'll think differently about that to-morrow," he warned her.

"Be content with what I feel to-night; I am."

They had finished dinner; both again had smoked cigarettes.

"How long before the train?" she asked.

"An hour and a half," he answered with a hint of triumph in his voice; the end was not yet; even after the time for the train there was the journey.

Evening fell slowly, as it seemed with a sympathetic unwillingness to end their day. She moved to an arm-chair by the side of the window and he sat near her. Talk died away unmissed and silence came unnoticed. She looked a little tired and leant back in her seat; her face shewed pale in the frame of dark hair that clustered round it; her eyes were larger and more eloquent. The fate that he had braved, or in truth invited, was come; he loved her, he so loved her that he must needs touch her. Yet there was that about her which made his touch timid and light; a delicacy, an innocence which he was inclined to call paradoxical, the appeal of helplessness, a sort of unsubstantiality that made her seem the love for a man's soul only. One of her hands lay on the arm of her chair; he laid his lightly on it and when she turned smiled at her. She smiled back at him with deprecation but with perfect understanding. She knew why he did that; she did not resent it. She turned her hand over and very lightly grasped his fingers in a friendly tender pressure; she gazed again into the little garden while their hands were thus distantly clasped. She seemed to yield what she must and to beg him to ask no more. He longed to be able to do her will as it was and not to seek to change it, to offer her no violence of entreaty and to bring her into no distress. But the sweetness of love's gradual venturing allured him; it might be still that she only tolerated, that she gave a return for her day's happiness, and allowed this much lest she should wound a man she liked. With that he was not content, he was hotly and keenly discontent. She had become everything to him; he must be everything to her; if it must be, everything in sorrow and renunciation, but everything; if not for always, at least for now, for the end of this golden day, everything. He could not go home without the memory of her lips. He leant forward towards her; she turned to him. For a moment she smiled, then grew grave again; she let him draw her nearer to him, and with averted face and averted eyes suffered his kiss on her cheek. In the very midst of his emotion he smiled; she preserved so wonderfully the air of not being responsible for the thing, of neither accepting nor rejecting, of being quite passive, of just having it happen to her. He kissed her again; after much entreaty, once she kissed him lightly, shyly, under protest as it were, yet with a sincerity and gladness which called out a new tenderness in him; they seemed to say that she had wanted to do it very much long before she did it, and would want to do it again, and yet would not do it again. The kiss, which from many women would have levelled all barriers, seemed to raise new ones round her. He was ashamed of himself when his love drove him to besiege her more. Even now she was not resentful, she did not upbraid or repel him; she broke into that little nervous laugh of hers, as she lay back passive in the chair, and murmured so low that he hardly caught the words, "Don't. Don't make love to me any more now."