A Servant of the Public

Irene looked up with a little start; there had been a movement by her; she found Babba Flint gone and Ashley Mead in his place. His eyes left Ora and turned to her.

"Splendid, isn't she?" he said in a spontaneous unintended outburst.

"Yes; but – " Irene's fan moved almost imperceptibly, but its point was now towards Sidney Hazlewood. "Would you like it?" she asked in a half-whisper.

Ashley made no answer; his regard was fixed on Ora Pinsent. Ora was in conversation and did not perceive the pair who watched her so attentively. They heard her laugh; her face was upturned to the man she talked to in the old way, with its old suggestion of expecting to be kissed. Sidney Hazlewood had disappeared into the throng; yes, he seemed decidedly accidental, as accidental as Jack Fenning himself.

"There's my husband," said Irene, as Bowdon appeared from among the crowd and went up to Ora.

After a moment he pointed to where they were, and he and Ora came towards them together.

"Prepare to receive cavalry," said Irene with a nervous little laugh; the next instant her hands were caught in Ora's outstretched grasp. "What an age since I've seen you!" Ora cried, and kissed her very affectionately. She remembered Irene when she saw her again, as Babba had foretold.

The two women talked, the two men stood by and listened. Ora's greeting to Ashley had been friendly but quite ordinary; she did not say that it was an age since she had seen him, but met him as though they had parted yesterday. The situation seemed to fade away; the sense that after all nothing had happened recurred to Irene's mind. Sidney Hazlewood instead of Jack Fenning – that was all! But a passing glance at Ashley's face changed her mood; the smile with which he regarded Ora was not the smile he used to have for her. He was admiring still (how should he not?), but now he was analysing also; he was looking at her from the outside; he was no longer absorbed in her.

"Oh, my trip all seems like a dream," said Ora. "A lovely dream! You must come and see the piece when we play it here."

They all declared that they would come and see the play; it and it alone seemed to represent her trip to Ora's mind; the legal proceedings and Mr. Hazlewood were not thought of.

"I had lots of fun and no trouble," said Ora.

Ashley Mead gave a sudden short laugh. It made Irene start and she fell to fingering her fan in some embarrassment; Bowdon's smile also was uncomfortable. Ora looked at Ashley with an air of surprise.

"He's laughing at me for something," she said to Irene. "I don't know what. Will you tell me if I come down to supper with you, Ashley?"

She still called him Ashley; Irene was definitely displeased; she thought the use of his first name decidedly unseemly under the circumstances.

"I'll try," said Ashley. Ora took his arm and waved a gay adieu. "Come and see me very soon," she called, and, as she turned away, she shot a glance at Bowdon. "You come too; you haven't been for – " She paused and ended with a laugh. "Well, for almost longer than I can remember."

The supper-room was not very full; they got a little table to themselves and sat down. It was away in a corner: they were in effect alone.

"What were you laughing at? Me?"

"Yes, of course," answered Ashley.

She looked at him with a rather distrustful and inquisitive glance.

"How funnily everything has turned out," she began rather timidly. It was just as he had expected her to begin.

"Funnily? Oh, I don't see that. I call it all very natural," he said.

"Natural!" Ora repeated, lifting her brows. Ashley nodded, and drank some champagne.

Ora seemed disappointed to find him taking that view. The expression of her face set him smiling again.

"I don't think I like you to laugh," she said. "It seems rather unkind, I think."

He raised his eyes to hers suddenly. "Then I won't laugh," he said, in a lower tone. "But I wasn't laughing in that way at all, really." He had, at all events, grown grave now; he pushed his chair a little back and leant his elbow on the table, resting his head on his hand.

"If I told you all about how it happened – " she began.

"Your letter told me," he interrupted. "I don't want you to tell me again."

Her eyes grew affectionate. She laid a hand on his arm.

"Was it hard, dear Ashley?" she whispered.

"I knew how it would be from the moment you went away," was his answer.

"Then why did you let me go?" she asked quickly, and, as he fancied, rather reproachfully. She seemed to snatch at a chance of excusing herself.

"You wanted to go."

Ora looked a little troubled; she knit her brows and clasped her hands; she seemed to be turning what he said over in her mind. She did not deny its truth, but its truth distressed her vaguely.

"It's no use bothering ourselves trying to explain things," Ashley went on more lightly. "It's all over now, anyhow." He was conscious of the old weakness – he could not cause her pain. His impulse even now was to make her think that she had been in all things right.

"Yes." Her dark eyes rested on his face a moment. "You liked it while it lasted?"

"Very much," he admitted, smiling again for a moment. "But it's over. I'm sorry it's over, you know."

"Are you, Ashley? Really sorry?" He nodded. "So am I," she said with a sigh.

He rose to his feet and she followed his example; but she would not let him take her back to where the people were, but made him sit down in a recess in the passage outside the drawing-room. She seemed to have fallen into a pensive mood; he was content to sit by her in silence until she spoke again.

"Sidney was very kind, and very helpful to me," she said at last. "I got to like him very much." She was pleading with Ashley in her praise of Hazlewood.

"Oh, yes, I know," he murmured. "Good heavens, you don't think I'm blaming you?"

He had said that to her before; she did not accept it so readily now.

"Yes, you are," she said, with a little temper. "You've set me down for something – as some sort of person. I know you have. You may say that's not blaming, but it's just as bad."

He was surprised at her penetration.

"I suppose you always felt like that really, down in your heart," she added thoughtfully. "But you used to like me."

"I should rather think I did," said Ashley.

"You don't now?"

"Yes, I do."

"Not so much? Not in the same way?" A touch of urgency had come into her tone.

"Should you expect that? And I'm sure you wouldn't wish it."

"Some people go on caring always – whatever happens."

He leant forward towards her and spoke in a low serious voice.

"I shall never be able to think of my life without thinking of you," he told her. After a pause he added, "That's the truth of it, but I don't know exactly how much it comes to. A good deal, I expect; more than generally happens in such cases."

"You'll marry somebody!" The prospect did not seem to please her.

"Very likely," he answered. "What difference does that make? Whatever happens, you're there. You put yourself there, and you can't take yourself away again."

"I don't want to," said Ora, with all her old sincerity in the avowal of her feelings.

"Of course you don't," he said, with a faint smile. She had spoken seriously, almost pathetically, as though she were asking to be allowed to stay with him in some such way as he had hinted at; for the first time he recognised the look of appeal once so familiar. It brought to him mingled pain and pleasure; it roused a tenderness which made him anxious above all to say nothing that would hurt her, and to leave her happy and content with herself when they parted; this also was quite in the old fashion.

"Why, you'll stand for the best time and the best thing in my life," he said. "You'll be my holiday, Ora. But we can't have holidays all the time."

"We had some lovely days together, hadn't we? I'm not sure the first wasn't best of all. You remember?"

"Oh, yes, I remember."

"You're laughing again." But now Ora laughed a little herself. The cloud was passing away; she was regaining the serenity of which too much self-examination had threatened to rob her, and the view of herself as the passive subject of occurrences at which she, in common with the rest of the world, was at liberty to sigh or smile in a detached irresponsibility.

A man passed by and bowed, saying, "How do you do, Mrs. Hazlewood?"

"Isn't that funny?" asked Ora. "Nobody thinks of calling me Mrs. Hazlewood."

"I certainly shan't think of calling you anything of the kind," said Ashley.

She laughed, seemed to hesitate a little, but then risked her shot.

"You wouldn't have expected me to be called Mrs. Mead, would you?" she asked.

"No, I shouldn't," he answered with a smile. The whole case seemed to be stated in her question. She not only would not have been called, but she would not really have been, Mrs. Mead – not in any sense which was of true importance. Neither had she been Mrs. Fenning; neither was she Mrs. Hazlewood; she was and would remain Ora Pinsent.

"Of course I don't mind it," Ora went on, with a smile whose graciousness was for both her actual husband in the drawing-room and her hypothetical husband in the recess. "But somehow it always sounds odd." She laughed, adding, "I suppose some people would call that odd – your friend Alice Muddock, for instance."

"I haven't the least doubt that Alice Muddock would call it very odd."

"She never liked me really, you know."

"Well, perhaps she didn't."

"But she did like you, Ashley."

"She certainly doesn't," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

"Oh, you'd never have got on with her," said Ora scornfully. Then she jumped up suddenly, crying, "There's Babba, I want to speak to him." But before she went, she said one word more. "You were the truest finest friend, Ashley. And I wasn't worthy." She looked at him in appeal. "No, not worthy," she repeated. "I think Alice Muddock's right about me." She threw out her hands in the saddest little protest, dumbly accusing the Power that had made her what she was. "I think you could still break my heart by being unhappy," said Ashley Mead. She gave him a little wistful smile, shook her head, and walked quickly away. Her voice rose gaily the next moment, crying, "Babba, Babba!" And that was all Babba's situation came to.

There was in fact no situation; there was only a state of things; so Ashley decided as he sat on alone. Perhaps rather a strange state of things, but certainly no more than that. Her being here in town, liable to be met, having to be spoken to, being again a presence as well as a memory – all this made his position different from what it had been while she was over seas. But stranger still was the knowledge that, however often she were met and spoken to, the presence would be and would rest different from the memory. He had recognised the possibility that all which had come to him in the months of separation would vanish again at her living touch and that the old feelings would revive in their imperious exclusive sway. He had known that this might happen; he had not known whether he hoped or feared its happening; because, if it happened, there was no telling what else might happen. Now he became aware that it would not happen, and (perhaps this was strangest of all) that the insuperable obstacle came from himself and not from her. She had not ceased, and could not cease, to attract, amuse, and charm, or even to be the woman with whom out of all women he would best like to be. But here the power of her presence stopped; it owned limits; it had not a boundless empire; that belonged now only to the memory of her. It was then the memory, not the presence, which he would always think of when he thought of his life, which would be the great thing to him, which would abide always with him, unchanged, unweakened, unspoilt either by what she was now or in the future might be. She was beyond her own power; herself, as she had been to him, she could neither efface nor mar. He had idealised her; he was rich in the possession of the image his idealising had made; but the woman before his eyes was different or seen with different eyes. As this came home to his mind, a sense of relief rose for a moment in him; he hailed its appearance with eagerness; but its appearance was brief; it was drowned in a sense of loss. He was free; that was the undoubted meaning of what he felt; but he was free at a great cost. It was as though a man got rid of his fetters by cutting off the limb that carried them.

He strolled back into the drawing-room. The throng had grown thin. Alice Muddock and Bertie Jewett were gone; Alice had kept out of Ora's way. Babba Flint was just saying good-bye; the Bowdons, Ora, and Hazlewood were standing in a group together in the middle of the room. He noticed that Hazlewood shifted his position a little so as to present a fullback view. Really Hazlewood need not feel uncomfortable. Hazlewood as an individual was of such very small importance. However Ashley did not thrust his presence on him, but went off and talked for a few moments with his hostess. Meanwhile the group separated; Ora came towards Mrs. Pocklington, Hazlewood following. Ashley hastily said his own farewell and sauntered off; Ora waved her hand to him with her lavish freedom and airy grace of gesture, calling, "Good-night, Ashley!" Hazlewood exchanged a nod with him; then the pair passed out.

In the hall Bowdon suggested that they should walk a little way together, the night being fine. Irene knew well why they wanted to walk together, but got into her carriage without objection; she had no more to fear from Ora. As for Ashley, so for her Ora's work lay in the past, not in the present or the future. The difference in her life, as in his, had been made once and for all; nothing that came now could either increase it or take it away. Her fears, her jealousy, her grudge, were for the memory, not for the presence.

The two men who had wanted to talk to one another walked in silence, side by side. But presently the silence seemed absurd, and they spoke of trivial matters. Then came silence again.

"I mustn't come much further," said Bowdon at last, "or I shan't get home to-night."

"Oh, come on a little way; it'll do you good," said Ashley.

So they went on a little way. And at last Bowdon spoke.

"She doesn't look a day older," he said.

"Oh, no. She won't look a day older for ever so long."

"And old Hazlewood's just the same, wrinkle and all."

"She won't smooth that away," said Ashley with a laugh.

Bowdon took his arm and they walked on together for a little way further. Then Bowdon stopped.

"I'm going home," he said, dropping Ashley's arm. "Good-night."

"Good-night," Ashley answered.

But for a moment Bowdon did not go. With a smile at once confidential and apologetic he put the question which was in his mind: "It's infernally impertinent of me, but, I say, Ashley, are you still in love with her?"

Ashley looked him full in the face for a moment, and then gave his answer. "No, I'm not, but I wish to God I was!" he said.

For in that love his life had done its uttermost; it would do no such good thing again. He had called Ora's time his holiday time. It was over. The rare quality of its pleasure he would taste no more. Bowdon nodded in understanding. "A wonderful creature!" he said, as he turned away.

A wonderful creature! Or, as Babba Flint had preferred to put it, "A good sight." Yes, that must be the way to look at her, the right way to look at her existence, the truth about it. Only when Ashley remembered that little gesture of dumb protest, the truth seemed rather hard – and hard not for himself alone. If she sacrificed others, if her nature were shaped to that, was she not a sacrifice herself – sacrificed that beautiful things might be set before the eyes and in the hearts of men? Let judgment then be gentle, and love unashamed.