A Servant of the Public

CHAPTER XVII

AT SEA AND IN PORT

To Irene Kilnorton, occupied with the matter against her will and in face of self-contempt, the non-appearance of Jack Fenning was a source of renewed irritation and uneasiness. She could not smile with the world nor agree to dispose of the subject with the cynical and contented observation that she had never supposed the man would come and had her doubts about there being such a man at all. Her consideration of it was bound to be more elaborate, her view more individual. Hence came the self-contempt and anger which afflicted her without affecting facts. For the present indeed Ora was infatuated with Ashley Mead, a position of affairs deplorable on general grounds but reassuring on personal; but then where was her safety, what security had she? She let injustice trick her into panic – with such as Ora the infatuation of Monday afternoon might be followed by a new passion on Tuesday morning. The mixture of jealousy with her moral condemnation caused Irene to suffer an unhealthy attraction to the subject; she could not help talking about it; she talked about it with Bowdon to his great discomfort. He was not a good dissembler; he could respect a secret, but his manner was apt to betray that there was a secret; he was restless, impatient, now and then almost rude, when Irene harped on the string of Jack Fenning's strange behaviour. Or was it not Ora's? Had Ora at the last moment, for reasons unquestionably sufficient, countermanded her husband? Bowdon was pathetic in his plea of ignorance, but the plea did not ring true. Thus she was sore with her fiancé, vexed with Ashley Mead, and furious against Ora Pinsent. Yet, being a woman of the world, she was polite to Ora when they met, friendly if severe to Ashley, and, as has been said, interested in both of them with a reluctant intensity.

Any strangeness there might be in her own attitude was suggested to her for the first time by the very different behaviour of her friend Alice Muddock. Here she found a definiteness of mind, a resolution, and a relentlessness which she hardly knew whether to laugh at, to shudder at, or to admire. She knew what Ashley had been to Alice; she remembered how in the beginning Alice had taken a liking to Ora Pinsent. Yet now her own anger could hardly seem deep or serious beside Alice's silent condemnation; her moral disapproval, with its copious discussion and its lively interest, was mere frippery compared with her friend's eloquent ignoring of the very existence of the culprits. Having dropped in to talk the whole thing over, Irene was amazed to find that she was ashamed to introduce the subject. "I suppose I'm not really moral at all," thought Irene with a moment's insight into the radical differences between her friend and herself, between the talkative shockedness of society and the genuine grieved concern which finds in silence its only possible expression. "And I brought Ora here!" Irene reflected in mingled awe and amusement; her deed seemed now like throwing a lighted squib into a chapelfull of worshippers. "It's a little bit absurd," was suggested by her usual way of looking at things. "Quite proper, though," added her jealousy of Ora Pinsent. But the habitual had the last word with her. "I suppose the Muddocks were brought up in that way," she ended.

Alice had been brought up in that way; from that way she had struggled to escape with the help of some uncertain intellectual lights; but the lights had drawn their flickering radiance from the flame of her love for Ashley Mead. So long as she could she had believed the best, or had at least refused to believe the worst. But the lights did not now burn brightly, their oil gave out, and the prejudices (if they were prejudices) began to gather round, thick and darkening. A lax judgment on a matter of morals seldom survives defeat suffered at the hands of the sinner. This fortuitous buttressing of righteousness is all to the good. Yet because she did not see how her own feelings joined forces with her idea of right, how the fact of the argosy being laden with her own hopes intensified in her eyes the crime of the pirate, Alice Muddock became hard to the sinners as well as justly severe on their censurable doings; and, from having once tried to understand and excuse them, grew more certain that they could put forward no mitigating plea. Weeks passed and Ashley Mead was not asked to Kensington Palace Gardens.

"It's a little inhuman; she was fond of him," thought Irene. Then came a flash of light. "Bertie Jewett!" she cried inwardly, and her lips set in the stoniness of a new disapproval. Much as Bertie had conciliated her, the reaction went too far for Lady Kilnorton's taste. It is very well to be estimable, but it is very ill to be estimable and nothing else; and she thought that Bertie was nothing else, unless it were that he was also a little vulgar; to Bowdon she had denied this; to herself she admitted it.

Yet she was very wrong. He might be vulgar; he was estimable; but he was much besides; hence it happened that the thing which seemed to her so impossible was in a fair way to come about. Old Sir James was dying, and stayed his last tottering steps on Bertie Jewett's arm; Bob came home day by day to tell how all the business hung on Bertie Jewett; Bob's echo, Lady Muddock, was of course in the same cry; the potent influence of the household, which so encircles the individual, ringed Alice round with the praises of Bertie Jewett. She had no passion for him, but now it seemed to her that passions were of doubtful advantage and that she at least was not meant for them; the idea of having one had been part of her great mistake. Bertie lay right on the true lines of her life, as training and fate – as God, she said to herself – had planned them for her; if she followed them, would she not come to Bertie? All this was much, yet not enough had he been only estimable. He was strong also, strong to advance and strong to wait; the keenness of his pale blue eyes saved him here as it saved him in the bargains that he made. It shewed him his hour and the plan of his attack. With cautious audacity he laid his siege, letting his deeds not his words speak for him, trusting not to his words but to his deeds to disparage his rival. The man had the instinct for success – or seemed to have it, because his desires and capabilities were so nicely adjusted and of such equal range. He could not have written a poem, but he never wanted to. Ora Pinsent would have suffered under him as under a long church service; but then he would never have tried to please that lady.

"Do you really like him?" Irene asked Alice as they walked in the garden.

"Yes," said Alice thoughtfully. "I really like him now."

"Oh, because he's helpful and handy, and looks after you all!"

"No, there's something more than that." She frowned a little. "You can rely on him; I don't mean to do things so much as to be things – the things you expect, you know. I think the one terrible thing would be to have to do with a person who was all fits and starts; it would seem as though there was no real person there at all."

"That's what I always feel about Ora Pinsent." Irene took courage and introduced the name deliberately.

"Yes," Alice assented briefly. Irene had no doubt that she was thinking of Miss Pinsent's friend also, and when she came to report the conversation to Bowdon this aspect of it took the foremost place.

"If she marries Mr. Jewett," said Irene, "it'll be just in a recoil from Ashley Mead."

Bowdon did not look at her but at the end of the cigarette which he was smoking by the window in Queen's Gate. He had no difficulty in understanding how a recoil might land one in a marriage; this was to him trodden ground.

"She'll be happier with him," Irene continued. "Ora has quite spoilt Ashley for any other woman."

Bowdon agreed that Miss Pinsent might very likely have some such effect, but he expressed the view quite carelessly.

"Besides, really, how could any self-respecting woman think of him now, any more than any man could of her?"

Bowdon made no answer to this question, which was, after all, purely rhetorical.

"But, hang it, Jewett!" he remarked after a pause.

"I know," said Irene, forgetting her former dialectical championship of Bertie. The matter was serious now. "She needn't have taken quite such an extreme remedy; but he was on the spot, you see; and – and it's the business. She's falling right back into the business, over head and ears and all. It's rather sad, but – " It seemed as though she meant that it was better than linking fortunes with a being all fits and starts. She rose and came near him. "I think we're just about right, you and I, Frank," she said. "We aren't Jewetts and we aren't Oras. I think we're the happy compromise."

"You are, no doubt, my dear. I'm a dull dog," said Bowdon.

She looked at him for a moment and turned away with a little sigh. The marriage was very near; was the work yet fully done, or had fits and starts still their power over him and their attraction for him? He made a remark the next moment which vexed her intensely.

"Well, you know," he said with a thoughtful smile, "I expect we seem to Miss Pinsent just what Jewett seems to us."

Irene walked away and sat down in a chair on the other side of the room.

"I'm sure I don't care what I seem to Ora Pinsent," she said very coldly; but Bowdon smoked on in pensive silence.

At this time both the triumph and the activity of Babba Flint were great. He was divided between the masterpiece of dramatic writing at whose birth he was assisting, and the masterpiece of prescience which he had himself displayed touching the matter of Mr. Fenning's return. When he contemplated these two achievements (and he took almost as much personal credit for the first as for the second) he said openly that he ought to find excuse for being "a bit above himself." It was no use to tell him that he was not writing the play, and neither of the men who knew chose to tell him that he had been wrong in regard to Jack Fenning. Thus left to a blessed self-conceit, he obtruded on Ashley Mead certain advice which was received with a curious bitter amusement.

"If I were you, I'd find out something about the fellow," he said. "I mean – why didn't he come?" He looked very sly. "Cherchez la femme," he added.

"And if I found her?" asked Ashley.

"Oh, well, you know best about that," said Babba. He conceded that it was entirely for Ashley to say whether he would greet a chance of establishing his relations with Ora on a regular and respectable basis. "But, depend on it, she's there," he added, waving his hand in the supposed direction of the United States.

"I shouldn't wonder at all," Ashley remarked, his recollection fixed on Miss Macpherson's portrait.

"Now if we all go over in the winter – " began Babba.

"You all? Who do you mean?"

"Why, if we take the play. Have I told you about – ?"

"Oh, Lord, yes, Babba, twenty times. But I'd forgotten."

"Well, if Hazlewood and Miss Pinsent and I go – we can't ask you, I'm afraid, you know – we can nose about a bit."

Ashley looked at him with a helpless smile; the picture conjured up by his expression lacked no repulsive feature. Here was a hideously apt summary of the prospect which had been in his own thoughts; if he followed the clue, he must nose about or get somebody to nose about for him.

"Shut up, Babba," he commanded, rudely enough; but Babba smiled and told him to think it over. Babba did not recognise any defect in the manner of offering his services or anything objectionable in the substance of them. He had flung open a door; he could not be expected to guarantee the cleanliness of the threshold, since he had not a very fine eye with which to guide the broom.

Whatever Ashley might think about the opportunities supposed to be afforded by the suggested excursion to America, he could not avoid giving consideration to the tour itself. The London season drew to a close; Mr. Hazlewood wanted to make his plans; Babba and his associates were urgent for a Yes or a No. If Ora said Yes, after a brief rest she would set to work at rehearsals and in a few weeks cross the seas; if she said No, she had the prospect of a long holiday, to be spent how she would, where she would, with whom she would. This position of affairs raised the great question in a concrete and urgent form; it pressed itself on Ashley Mead; he began to wonder when it would make an impression on Ora. For up to the present time she did not seem to have looked ahead; she had fallen back into the state of irresponsible happiness from which her husband's letter had roused her. She considered the tour with interest and even eagerness, but without bringing it into relation with Ashley Mead; in other moments she talked rapturously about the delights of a holiday, but either ignored or tacitly presupposed the manner and the company in which she was to spend it. She never referred to her husband; she had, and apparently expected to have, no letter from him. He was gone; Ora seemed as unconscious of the problem to which his disappearance gave rise as she was ignorant of the means by which the disappearance had been brought about. She had left to Ashley the decision as to whether she should or should not undertake the renunciation and reformation; so she appeared to leave it to him now to make up his mind what must be done since the reformation had become impossible and the renunciation of no effect. Meanwhile she was delightfully happy.

It was this unmeditated joy in her which made it at once impossible for Ashley to leave her and impossible to shape plans by which he should be enabled to stay with her. To do either was to spoil what he had, was to soil a simple perfection, was to run up against the world, against the world's severe cold Alice Muddocks with their scorn of emotions, and its Babba Flints with their intolerable manœuvres and hints of profitable nosings. That a choice of courses should be forced on him became irksome. Things were very well as they were; she was happy, he was happy, Jack Fenning was gone, and – well, some day he would pay Lord Bowdon a thousand pounds.

He was in this mood when the American tour faced him with its peremptory summons, with its business-like calculations of profit, its romantic involving of despair, its abominable possibilities of nosing. Babba spoke of it to him, so did Mr. Hazlewood, both with an air of curiosity; Ora herself speculated about it more and more, sometimes in her artistic, sometimes in her financial, sometimes in her fatalistic mood. She was strange about it; now she would talk as though he were to be with her, again as if he were to be at work here at home and his letters her only comfort. She never faced facts; she did not even look at them from the corner of an eye, over the shoulder.

"Shall I go or not?" she would ask him, as though it were a question between keeping some trivial engagement and breaking it for a pleasanter. "Now, shall I go, Ashley dear?"

Had she no notion of what things meant? Away from her he often asked this question; when he was with her, it died away on his lips. Then he declared that, if he could so cheat necessity and beguile the inevitable from its path, she should never know what things meant, never take a hard reckoning with the world, never be forced to assess herself. She had forgotten what Irene and what Alice had said to her, or had persuaded herself that they spoke for form's sake, or in jealousy, or in ignorance, or because their clergyman had such influence over them, or for some such cause. She was now as simply unreasoning as she was simply happy; she was altogether at his disposal, ready to go or stay, to do what he ordered, even (as he knew) to leave him in tears and sorrow, if that were his will. She left it all to him; and, having it all left to him, he left it to Mr. Hazlewood, to Babba Flint, or to any other superficially inadequate embodiment in which the Necessary chose to clothe itself.

But Bowdon's thousand pounds? Such a man as Ashley – or as his creditor – will be careless of all things in earth or heaven save a woman's secret, his given word, the etiquette of his profession, and a debt of honour. The thousand pounds was in the fullest sense a debt of honour. He had not a thousand pounds. To save was impossible while Ora went everywhere with him. Money to her was like manna and seemed to entail the same obligation that none of the day's bounty should be left to the next morning. Ashley was hard-up; the prosaic fact shot across his mental embarrassments in a humorous streak. He laughed at it, at himself when he bought Ora bouquets or the last fancy in blotting-pads, at her when she asked him for a sovereign, because she had no place convenient for the carrying of a purse. At a word she would have repaid, and besides flung all she had into his hands. But that word he would not speak. The Commission drew near to its close; brief bred brief but slowly; and as long as he owed Bowdon a thousand pounds he seemed to himself more than criminal. But did he owe it? Yes, a thousand times. For if he did not, then Bowdon was something more to Ora Pinsent than a chance acquaintance or a friend's fiancé. He acknowledged the hearty good comradeship which had shewn itself in the loan; but it had been a loan; only by repaying it could he appropriate the service to himself and remove another's offering from the shrine at which he worshipped.

Matters standing in this position, time, with its usual disregard of the state of our private affairs, brought on the wedding of Irene Kilnorton and Lord Bowdon. Irene had found no sufficient reason for objecting to Ashley's presence. Logic then demanded that an invitation should be sent to Miss Pinsent. As it chanced, it pleased Ora to come in conspicuous fashion, in a gown which the papers were bound to notice, in a hat of mark, rather late, full of exuberant sympathy with the performance. She arrived only a minute before the bride, while Bowdon and Ashley Mead stood side by side close to the altar-rails. Both saw her the moment she came in, both looked at her, neither made any comment on her appearance. As soon as the procession entered she made an effort to relapse into decorous obscurity, but, willy-nilly, she halved attention with the proper heroine of the day. A wedding affected Ora; the ready tears stood in her eyes as the solemn confident vows were spoken. Ashley almost laughed as he listened to Bowdon's; he had a sudden sense that it would be rather absurd if Ora and he took such vows; he had a distinct knowledge that the woman of whom he himself thought was in the minds of bride and bridegroom also. He glanced at her, she smiled at him with her innocent disregard of appearances. He looked the other way and found Alice Muddock with eyes firm set on her prayer-book. The officiating minister delivered a little discourse, one of his own writing, in lieu of the homily. Looking again, Ashley found Alice's eyes on the minister with a grave meditative gaze, as though she weighed his words and assessed the duties and the difficulties they set forth; but Ora was glancing round the church, finding acquaintances. When the ceremony ended and they had come out of the vestry, he walked past Ora in the wake of the procession. Ora smiled in a comprehending, rather compassionate way; her emotion was quite gone. Now she seemed to bid him take the ceremony for what it was worth. He had watched to see whether Bowdon looked at her; Bowdon had not looked. That was because the ceremony had seemed of importance to him. Ashley broke into a smile; it would have been more encouraging, if also more commonplace, had Ora's tears not been so obviously merely a tribute to the literary gifts of the composers of the service.

At the reception afterwards – it was quiet and small – one thing happened which seemed to have a queer significance. He found Ora, and took her round the rooms. As they made their circuit they came on Alice Muddock; she was talking to Bertie Jewett. She looked up, bowed to Ashley, and smiled; she took no notice at all of Ora Pinsent. Ashley felt himself turn red, and his lips shaped themselves into angry words; he turned to Ora. Ora was looking the other way. She had been cut; but she had not seen it; she had not noticed Alice Muddock. But Ashley understood that the two women had parted asunder, that to be the friend of one was in future not to be a friend to the other.

It was a queer moment also when Ora, full again of overflowing emotions, flung herself on Irene's breast, kissed her, blessed her, praised her, prayed for her, laughed at her, lauded her gown, and told her that she had never looked better in her life. Irene laughed and returned the kiss; then she looked at her husband, next at Ashley, lastly at Ora Pinsent. There was a moment of silent embarrassment in all the three; Ora glanced round at them and broke into her low laugh.

"Why, what have I done to you all?" she cried. "Have I hypnotised you all?"

Bowdon raised his eyes, let them rest on her a moment, then turned to Ashley Mead. The two women began to talk again. For a moment the two men stood looking at one another. They had their secret. Each telegraphed to the other, "Not a word about the thousand!" Then they shook hands heartily. Ora and Ashley passed on. For a moment Bowdon looked after them. Then he turned to his bride and found her eyes on him. He took her hand and pressed it. Her eyes were bright as she looked at him for an instant before a new friend claimed her notice. As she greeted the friend, Bowdon gave a little sigh.

He was in port! But the laughing, dancing, buffeting, dangerous waves are also sweet.

"I'm glad I went," said Ora, as Ashley handed her into her victoria. She laughed as she lay back on the cushions.

"It was so funny at my wedding," she said. "Jack lost the ring." She waved her hand merrily as she was driven away.

"Come soon," she cried over her shoulder.

He waved his hand in response and turned to go back into the house. In his path stood Bertie Jewett. For an instant Ashley stood still.

"I suppose it's about over," he said carelessly.

"Just about. I must get back to the shop," said Bertie, looking at his watch. But he did not move. Ashley, glancing beyond him, saw Alice Muddock coming towards the door.

"So must I," he said, clapping on his hat and hailing a hansom. He jumped in and was carried away.

One of Bowdon's servants brought his walking-stick to his rooms the next day. He had forgotten it in a passing recollection of old days, when Alice and he used to laugh together over the manœuvres by which they got rid of Bertie Jewett.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PLAY AND THE PART

Babba Flint's dramatic masterpiece progressed and took shape rapidly. "The beggar's got at it at last," Babba said, in one of his infrequent references to the author. Mr. Hazlewood did not talk much, but was plainly of opinion that there might be a great deal of money made. Ora was enthusiastic. She had seen the scenario and had read the first draft of the great scene in the third act. The author had declared his conviction that no woman save Ora could play this scene; Ora was certain that it would be intolerable to her that any other woman should. She did not then and there make up her mind to play it, but it began to be certain that she would play it and would accept such arrangements of her life and her time as made her playing of it possible. In this way things, when suggested or proposed, slid into actual facts with her; they grew insensibly, as acquaintances grow; she found herself committed to them without any conscious act of decision. "Let her alone, she'll do it," said Hazlewood to Babba, and Babba did no more than throw out, on the one side, conjectures as to the talent which certain ladies whom he named might display in the rôle, and, on the other, forecasts of the sure triumph which would await Ora herself. Finally he added that Ora had better see the whole piece before she arrived at a conclusion. Hazlewood approved and seconded these indirect but skilful tactics. With every such discussion the play and the part made their footing more and more secure in Ora's mind. She began to talk as though, in the absence of unforeseen circumstances, she would be "opening" in New York with the play and the part in October; when she spoke thus to Ashley Mead, the old look of vague questioning was in her eyes; it seemed to him as though the old look of apprehension or appeal were there also, as though she were a little afraid that he would forbid her to go and prevent her from playing the part. But in this look lay the only reference that she made to her present position, and her only admission that it held any difficulties. His answer to it was to talk to her about the play and the part; this he could not do without the implied assumption that she would act the part in the play, would act it with Sidney Hazlewood, and would act it in America in October.