A Servant of the Public

CHAPTER XII

AT CLOSE QUARTERS

The next few days were critical for the renunciation, and consequently for the reformation which was to accompany it. In the first place, Jack Fenning was now very near; secondly, Ashley Mead's behaviour was so perfect as to suggest almost irresistibly an alternative course; finally, thanks to Alice Muddock's outspokenness, Ora was inclined to call virtue thankless and to decide that one whom all the world held wicked might just as well for all the world be wicked. She had appealed from Alice to Irene Kilnorton, hinting at the cruelty to which she had been subjected. She found no comfort; there was an ominous tightening of Irene's lips. Ora flew home and threw herself – the metaphorical just avoids passing into the literal – on Ashley's bosom. There were tears and protests against universal injustice; she cried to him, "Take me away from all of them!" What answer did she expect or desire? He could not tell. Mr. Fenning was due on Sunday, and Ora's piece was running still. Yet at the moment it seemed as though she would fly into space with him and a hand-bag, leaving renunciations, reformations, virtues, careers, and livelihoods to look after themselves, surrendering herself to the rare sweetness of unhindered impulse. For himself, he was ready; he had come to that state of mind in regard to her. His ordinary outlook on life was blocked by her image, his plan of existence, with all its lines of reason, of hope, of ambition, blurred by the touch of her finger. Only very far behind, somewhere remote in the background, lay the haunting conviction that these last, and not his present madness, would prove in the end the abiding reality. What made him refuse, or rather evade, the embracing of her request was that same helplessness in her which had restrained his kisses in the inn parlour. If she turned on him later, crying, "You could do what you liked with me, why did you do this with me?" what would he have to answer? "We'll settle it to-morrow; you must start for the theatre now," he said. "So I must. Am I awfully late?" cried Ora.

That evening he dined with Bob Muddock. Bertie Jewett and Babba Flint were his fellow-guests. All three seemed to regard him with interest – Bob's, admiring; Bertie's, scornful; Babba's, amused. Bob envied the achievement of such a conquest; Bertie despised the man who wasted time on it; Babba was sympathetic and hinted confidential surprise that anybody made any bones about it. But they none of them doubted it; and of the renunciation none knew or took account. A course of action which fails to suggest itself to anybody incurs the suspicion of being mad, or at least wrong-headed and quixotic. Ashley told himself that his conduct was all these things, and had no countervailing grace of virtue. It was no virtue to fear a reproach in Ora's eyes; it was the merest cowardice; yet that fear was all that held him back.

After dinner Bob drew him to a sofa apart from their companions and began to discuss the dramatic profession. Ashley suffered patiently, but his endurance changed to amusement when Bob passed to the neighbouring art of music, found in it a marked superiority, and observed that he had been talking over the subject with Minna Soames.

"I don't see how anybody can object to singing at concerts," said Bob, with a shake of the head for inconceivable narrow-mindedness, "not even the governor."

"Sits the wind in that quarter?" asked Ashley, laughing.

"I've got my eye on her, if that's what you mean," answered Bob. "She's ripping, isn't she?"

The vague and violent charms which the epithet seemed to imply were not Minna's. Ashley replied that she was undoubtedly pretty and charming. Bob eyed him with a questioning air; it was as though a man who had been on a merry-go-round were consulted by one who thought of venturing on the trip.

"People talk a great deal of rot," Bob reflected. "A girl isn't degraded, or unsexed, or anything of that sort, just because she sings for her living."

"Surely not," smiled Ashley.

The prejudices were crying out in pain as Bob's newborn idea crushed and mangled them.

"But the governor's so against all that sort of thing," Bob complained. Then he looked up at his friend. "That's mostly your fault," he added, with an awkward laugh.

"My dear Bob, the cases are not parallel."

"Well, Miss Soames hasn't got a husband, of course."

There was no use in being angry, or even in representing that the remark which had seemed so obvious to Bob was a considerable liberty.

"Imagine her with a thousand husbands, and still the cases couldn't be parallel."

"She's not on the stage."

"And if she were, the distinctions run by people, not by professions," said Ashley.

"Well, I'm thinking of it," Bob announced. And he added, with a ludicrous air of desiring the suspicion, while he repudiated the fact, of dishonourable intentions, "All on the square, of course."

"Good heavens, I should think so!" said Ashley. The imagination of man could attribute no crooked dealings or irregular positions to Miss Soames.

"Still, I don't know about the governor," Bob ended, with a relapse into gloom.

"She'd retire from her work, of course?" Ashley suggested, smiling.

"If she married me? Oh, of course," said Bob decisively. "She wouldn't want the money, would she?" Any other end of a profession had not occurred to him, and his opinion that active and public avocations were not "unsexing" to women was limited by the proviso that such employments must be necessary for bread-and-butter.

An eye for the variety of the human mind may make almost any society endurable. Here was Bob struggling with conscious daring against convention, as a prelude to paying his court to a lady who worshipped the god whom he persuaded himself to brave; here was Babba Flint drifting vulgarly, cheerfully, irresponsibly, through all his life and what money he happened from time to time to possess; here was Bertie Jewett, his feet set resolutely on the upward track, scorning diversion, crying "Excelsior" with exalted fervour as he pictured the gold he would gather and pocket on the summit of the hill; here, finally, was Ashley himself, who had once set out to climb another hill, and now eagerly turned his head to listen to a sweet voice that cried to him from the valley. Such differences may lie behind four precisely similar and equally spotless white shirt-fronts on the next sofa any evening that we drop into the club. Therefore it needs discrimination, and perhaps also some prepossessions, to assign degrees of merit to the different ideas of how time in this world had best be passed.

"The fact is," Babba was saying to Bertie Jewett, as he nodded a knowing head towards Ashley, "he was getting restive, so she made up this yarn about her husband." He yawned, as if the matter were plain to dulness.

"What an ass he is!" mused Bertie. "Don't you know the chance he had? He might have been where I am!"

Babba turned a rather supercilious look on his companion.

"The shop? Must be a damned grind, isn't it?"

Bertie was nettled; he revealed a little of what he had begun to learn that he ought to conceal.

"I bet you I earn a sovereign quicker than you earn a shilling," he remarked.

"Daresay you do," murmured Babba, regarding the end of his cigar. Babba was vulgar, but not with this sort of vulgarity.

"And more of 'em," pursued Bertie.

"But you have an infernally slow life of it," Babba assured him. Babba was ignorant of the engrossing charms that sparkle in the eyes of wealth, forbidding weariness in its courtship, making all else dull and void of allurement to its votaries. To each man his own hunger.

Back to his hunger went Ashley Mead, no less ravenous, yet seeing his craving in the new light of desires revealed to him, but still alien from him. All his world seemed now united in crying out to him to mind his steps, in pointing imploringly or mockingly to the abyss before his feet, in weeping, wondering, or laughing at him. That some of the protests were conscious, some unwitting, made no difference; the feeling of standing aloof from all the rest gave him a sense of doom, as though he were set apart for his work, and amidst condemnation, pity, and ridicule must go through with it. For to-morrow he thought that she would come with him, leaving Mr. Fenning desolate, Sidney Hazlewood groaning over agreements misunderstood as to their nature, friends heart-broken, and the world agape.

But the next day she would not come, or, rather, prayed not to be taken.

"You mustn't, you mustn't," she sobbed. "Alice Muddock had made me angry, oh, and hurt me so. I was ready to do anything. But don't, Ashley dear, don't! Do let me be good. That'll be the best way of answering her, won't it? I couldn't answer her then."

"Alice? What's Alice been saying?" he asked, for he had not been told the details of that particular case of cruelty.

"I can't tell you. Oh, it was horrible! Was it true? Say it wasn't true!"

"You haven't told me what it was," he objected.

"Oh dear me, neither I have!" cried Ora, drawing back from him; her eyes swam in tears, but her lips bent in smiles. "How awfully absurd of me!" she exclaimed, and broke into the low luxurious laughter that he loved. "Well, it was something bad of me; so it couldn't be true, could it?"

He pressed her to tell him what it was and she told him, becoming again sorrowful and wounded as she rehearsed the story; the point of view surprised her so. To Ashley it was no surprise, nothing more than a sharp unsparing utterance of the doubts of his own mind. His quarrel with Alice was that she said it, not that she thought it; she was bound to think it when he in all his infatuation could not stifle the thought. Was he in love then with a bundle of emotions and ready to give away his life in exchange for a handful of poses? In self-defence he embraced the conclusion and twisted it to serve his purpose. What more is anybody, he asked – what more than the sheet on which slide after slide is momentarily shewn?

"But still she was wrong," said Ora. "Oh, I can forgive her. Of course I forgive her. It's only because she's fond of you. I know I'm not really like that. It's not the true me, Ashley."

The idea of the "true me" delighted Ora, and the "true me" required that Mr. Fenning should be met punctually on Sunday next. The renunciation raised its head again.

"The 'true me,' then, is really a very sober and correct person?" asked Ashley.

"Yes," she answered, enjoying the paradox she asserted. Her interest in herself was frank and almost might be called artistic. "Do you think me strange?" she asked. "I believe you're laughing at me half the time."

"And the other half?"

"We weep together, don't we? Poor Ashley!"

On the Saturday he came to see her again in order to make final arrangements for their expedition of the next day. There was also a point on which they had never touched, to which, as he believed, Ora had given no consideration. Was Mr. Fenning to settle down in the little house at Chelsea? At present the establishment was in all its appearance and fittings so exclusively feminine that it seemed an impossible residence for a man. Ora was not in the room when Janet ushered him in; that respectable servant lingered near the door and, after a moment's apparent hesitation, spoke to him.

"I beg pardon, sir," she said, "but could you tell me where I can get some good whiskey?"

"Whiskey?" Ashley exclaimed in surprise.

"Mr. Fenning, sir, used to be particular about his whiskey, and as he's – "

"Oh, yes, of course, Janet." He thought for a moment and mentioned the wine merchant with whom Lord Bowdon dealt. "I think you'll be safe there," he ended with a nod.

Janet thanked him and went out.

"This really brings it home," said Ashley, dropping into a chair and laughing weakly to himself. "Tomorrow night Jack Fenning'll sit here and drink that whiskey, while I – "

He rose abruptly and walked about the room. His portrait in the silver frame was still on the little table by Ora's favourite seat; not even a letter from Bridgeport, Connecticut, was there to hint of Mr. Fenning. The demand for a good whiskey seemed the sole forerunner of the wanderer's return.

"She doesn't know in the least what she's doing," Ashley muttered as he flung himself into his seat again.

That afternoon she was in the mood hardest for him to bear. She was sanguine about her husband; she recalled the short time they had contrived to be happy together, dwelt on the amiable points in his character, ascribed his weaknesses more to circumstances than to nature, and took on her own shoulders a generous share of blame for the household's shipwreck. All this is to say that the reformation for the instant took precedence of the renunciation, and a belief in the possibility, not perhaps of being happy with Jack, but at least of making Jack happy, was bedecked in the robes of a virtuous aspiration. "It would be no use having him back if I couldn't make him happy, would it?" she asked. She shewed sometimes this strange forgetfulness of her friend's feelings.

"I know I've got a photograph of him somewhere," she said with a troubled little frown. "I wonder where it is!" Then a lucky thought brought a smile. "I expect he'd like to see it on the mantel-piece, wouldn't he?" she cried, turning to Ashley.

"I should think he'd be very touched. He might even believe it had been there all the time."

"Don't be sarcastic," said Ora good-humouredly. "I'll ask Janet where I've put it."

Janet, being summoned and questioned, knew where Miss Pinsent had put the photograph, or anyhow where it was to be found. In a few minutes she produced it.

"It is handsome, you see," said Ora, handing it across to Ashley. She appeared anxious for a favourable opinion from him.

The face was certainly handsome. The features were straight, the eyes large, the brow well formed; there was no great appearance of intellect or resolution, but the smile was amiable. Ashley handed it back with a nod of assent, and Ora set it on the mantel-piece. Ashley's bitterness overflowed.

"Put it in the frame instead of mine," he said, stretching out his hand to take his own portrait.

In an instant Ora was across to the table and snatched up the picture. She held it close to her with both hands and stood fronting him defiantly.

"No," she said, "no. You shan't touch it. Nobody shall touch it."

He leant back with a smile of despairing amusement. She put down the portrait and came close to him, looking at him intently; then she dropped on her knees beside him and took his hand between hers.

"Fancy you daring to think that!" she said. A look of terror came into her eyes. "You're not going to be like that?" she moaned. "I can't go on if you're going to be like that."

He meant far more than he had hinted in his bitter speech; this afternoon he had intended to tell her his resolution; this was his last visit to the little house; from to-morrow afternoon he would be an acquaintance to whom she bowed in the streets, whom she met now and then by chance. He might tell her that now – now while she held his hands between hers. And if he told her that and convinced her of it, she would not go to meet Jack Fenning. He sat silent as she looked up in his eyes. His struggle was short; it lacked the dramatic presentment of Ora's mental conflicts, it had no heroic poses; but there emerged again clearly from the fight the old feeling that to use her love and his power in this fashion would not be playing fair; he must let her have her chance with her husband.

"I was a brute, Ora," he said. "I'll do just what you like, dear."

With a bound she was back to merriment and her sanguine view of favourable possibilities in Mr. Fenning. She built more and more on these last, growing excited as she pictured how recent years might, nay must, have improved him, how the faults of youth might, indeed would, have fallen away, and how the true man should be revealed. "And if he wants a friend, you'll always be one to him," she ended. Ashley, surrendering at discretion, promised to be a friend to Jack Fenning.

The next day found her in the same temper. She was eager and high-strung, merry and full of laughs, thoughtfully kind, and again thoughtlessly most cruel. When he called for her in the morning she was ready, waiting for him; from her air they might have been starting again for a day in the country by themselves, going to sit again in the meadow by the river, going to dine again in the inn parlour whose window opened on the sweet old garden. No such reminiscences, so sharp in pain for him, seemed to rise in her or to mar her triumph. For triumphant she was; her great purpose was being carried out; renunciation accomplished, reformation on the point of beginning. Prosperously the play had run up to its last great scene; soon must the wondering applause of friends fall on her ear; soon would Alice Muddock own that her virtue had been too cruel, and Babba Flint confess his worldly sagacity at fault. To herself now she was a heroine, and she rejoiced in her achievements with the innocent vanity of a child who displays her accomplishments to friendly eyes. How much she had suffered, how much forgone, how much resisted! Now she was to reap her reward.

Their train was late; if the boat had made a good passage it would be in before them; the passengers who had friends to meet them would be in waiting. They might find Jack Fenning on the platform as their engine steamed into the station. They had talked over this half way through the journey, and Ora seemed rather pleased at the prospect; Ashley took advantage of her happy mood to point out that it would be better for him to leave her alone with Jack; he would get a plate of cold meat somewhere, and go back to town by himself later on. She acquiesced reluctantly but without much resistance. "We can tell you about our journey afterwards," she said. Then had come more rosy pictures of the future. At last they were finished. There was a few minutes' silence. Ashley looked out of the window and then at his watch.