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A Servant of the Public

by Anthony Hope · English · Gutenberg #48642 · 591,182 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Servant of the Public

Author: Anthony Hope

Illustrator: Harold Percival


        
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Language: English

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A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC


      *      *      *      *      *      *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  A MAN OF MARK
  MR. WITT'S WIDOW
  FATHER STAFFORD
  A CHANGE OF AIR
  HALF A HERO
  THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
  THE GOD IN THE CAR
  THE DOLLY DIALOGUES
  COMEDIES OF COURTSHIP
  THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO
  THE HEART OF PRINCESS OSRA
  PHROSO
  SIMON DALE
  RUPERT OF HENTZAU
  THE KING'S MIRROR
  QUISANTÉ

      *      *      *      *      *      *


[Illustration: "I SHOULD BE RATHER AFRAID NEVER TO CHANGE TO A PERSON.
IT WOULD MAKE HIM MEAN SO TERRIBLY MUCH TO ONE, WOULDN'T IT?" PAGE 62]


A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC

by

ANTHONY HOPE

With Four Illustrations by Harold Percival, A.R.E.







Methuen & Co.
36 Essex Street W.C.
London

First Published in 1905




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                             PAGE

      I. MUDDOCK AND MEAD                                1

     II. FIRST IMPRESSIONS                              15

    III. AN ARRANGEMENT FOR SUNDAY                      29

     IV. BY WAY OF PRECAUTION                           43

      V. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY                           55

     VI. AWAY WITH THE RIBBONS!                         70

    VII. UNDER THE NOSEGAY                              86

   VIII. THE LEGITIMATE CLAIMANT                       102

     IX. RENUNCIATION: A DRAMA                         118

      X. THE LICENCE OF VIRTUE                         133

     XI. WHAT IS TRUTH?                                149

    XII. AT CLOSE QUARTERS                             164

   XIII. THE HEROINE FAILS                             179

    XIV. AS MR. FLINT SAID                             194

     XV. THE MAN UPSTAIRS                              210

    XVI. MORALITY SMILES                               227

   XVII. AT SEA AND IN PORT                            243

  XVIII. THE PLAY AND THE PART                         257

    XIX. COLLATERAL EFFECTS                            270

     XX. THE WAYS DIVIDE                               286

    XXI. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?                            301

   XXII. OTHER WORLDS                                  316

  XXIII. THE MOST NATURAL THING                        332

   XXIV. "A GOOD SIGHT"                                348




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                      PAGE
  "I SHOULD BE RATHER AFRAID NEVER TO CHANGE TO A
    PERSON. IT WOULD MAKE HIM MEAN SO TERRIBLY MUCH
    TO ME, WOULDN'T IT?"                    _Frontispiece_

  "SOMEBODY'LL BE GLAD TO SEE ME, ANYHOW," HE ENDED,
    WITH A LAUGH                                       224

  THE CONTRACT PUNCTILIOUSLY SIGNED BY ALL THE
    PARTIES AND WITNESSED BY JANET THE MAID ... THEY
    HAD OPENED A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE                   301

  WALKED IN SILENCE SIDE BY SIDE                       360




A Servant of the Public




CHAPTER I

MUDDOCK AND MEAD


The social birth of a family, united by a chain of parallel events with
the commercial development of a business, is a spectacle strange to no
country but most common among the nation of shopkeepers; it presents,
however, interesting points and is likely to produce a group of persons
rather diverse in character. Some of the family breathe the new air
readily enough; with some the straw of the omnibus (there was straw in
omnibuses during the formative period) follows on silken skirts into the
landau. It takes, they say, three generations to make a gentleman; the
schools ticket them--National or Board, Commercial or Grammar, Eton or
Harrow. Three generations, not perhaps of human flesh, but of mercantile
growth, it takes to make a great Concern. The humble parent-tree in the
Commercial Road puts forth branches in Brixton, Camberwell, Stoke
Newington, wherever buyers are many and "turnover" quick: here is the
second period, when the business is already large and lucrative, but not
yet imposing. Then a new ambition stirs and works in the creator's mind;
there is still a world to conquer. Appearance is added to reality, show
to substance. A splendid block rises somewhere within the ken of
fashion; it is red, with white facings, a tower or two, perhaps a
clock. First and last, a good deal is said about it in talk and in
print. Possibly a luncheon is given. Now there are points of policy to
be practised, not directly productive of hard money, but powerful in the
long run. For example, the young ladies and gentlemen who serve the
counters should be well treated, and carefully looked after in regard to
their morals. And if this be done, there is no reason against having the
fact stated with the utmost available publicity. For this service,
sections of an all-embracing Press are ready and willing. In the eye of
the polite world this big block is now the business: the branches are
still profitable, but the ledgers alone sing their virtues; men cease to
judge the position or the purse of the family by their humble fronts.
For the family too has been on the move; it has passed, in orderly
progression, in an ascent of gentility, from Putney to Maida Vale, from
Maida Vale to Paddington, from Paddington to Kensington Palace Gardens.
At each stopping-place it may acquire members, at some it will lose
them; the graves where those lie who have dropped from the ranks are
themselves milestones on the march. The survivors have each some scent,
some trace, of their place of origin. To the architect of fortune the
Commercial Road is native and familiar; he lost his first love there and
buried her down East. His second wife dates from the latter end of the
Maida Vale time and is in all essentials of the Middle, or Paddington,
Period. The children recollect Paddington as childhood's home, have
extorted information about Maida Vale, talk of Putney with a laugh, and
seem almost of true Kensington Palace Gardens' blood. Yet even in them
there is an element which they are hardly conscious of, an element not
to be refined away till the third generation of human flesh has run.
Then comes the perfect product; a baronetcy is often supposed to mark,
but sometimes may be considered to precede, its appearance. Indeed--for
it is time to descend to the particular--Sir James Muddock was hardly
the perfect product; nay, he still strove valiantly to plume himself on
not being such. But with a wife and children it is hard to go on
exulting in a lowly origin. It is also rather selfish, and was certainly
so in Sir James' case, since Lady Muddock was very sensitive on the
subject. It would seem that being of the Middle Period is apt to produce
a sensitiveness of this sort; the pride of achievement is not there, the
pride of position is still new and uneasy.

Somewhat in this vein, but with a more malicious and humorous turn of
speech, Ashley Mead ran through the history of the firm of Muddock and
Mead for Lady Kilnorton's pleasure and information. She was interested
in them as phenomena and as neighbours; they were hardly more than
across the road from her house in Queen's Gate. Ashley spoke with full
knowledge; both business and family were familiar to him; he himself
represented an episode in the career of the concern which survived only
in its name. He used to say that he had just missed being a fit figure
for romance; his father had not been a scatter-brained genius bought out
of a splendid certainty of wealth for fifty pounds, but a lazy man who
very contentedly and with open eyes accepted fifteen thousand pounds and
leisure in preference to hard work and an off-chance of riches. This
elder Mead had come into the business with three thousand pounds when
capital was wanted for the Stoke Newington branch, and had gone out when
ambition began to whisper the name of Buckingham Palace Road. He had not
felt aggrieved at losing opulence, but had lived on his spoil--after
all, a good return for his investment--and died with it in cheerfulness.
But then he had not been born a trader. He came of the professions;
money-making was not in his blood nor bone of his bone, as it must be in
the frame of one who is to grow gradually by his own labour to the
status of a millionaire. The instinct of gain was not in his son either;
Ashley laughed with unreserved good-nature as he said:

"If my father hadn't gone out, I should have had half the business, I
suppose, instead of starving along on four hundred a year."

"You've your profession," observed Lady Kilnorton, hardly seriously.
"The Bar, you know."

"My profession?" he laughed, as he leant against the mantel-piece and
looked down at her. "I'm one of five thousand names on five hundred
doors, if that's a profession!"

"You might make it one," she suggested, but not as though the subject
interested her or were likely to interest him. The little rebuke had all
the perfunctoriness of duty and convention.

"The funny thing is," he went on, "that old Sir James would like to get
me back now; he's always hinting about it. Shall I go and sell the
ribbons?"

"Why can't Mr. Robert sell the ribbons?"

"Well, in the family we don't think Bob very bright, you see."

"Oh! Alice is bright, though; at least she's very clear-headed."

"More brains than any of them. And what did you think of My lady?"

"Of My lady?" Irene Kilnorton laughed a little, raised her brows a
little, and paused before she said: "Well, her hair's too fluffy, isn't
it? They don't beat her, do they? She looks rather like it."

"No, they don't beat her; but she's not quite sure that she's got the
grand manner."

"Isn't she?" said Lady Kilnorton, laughing again.

"And then Sir James insists on referring to Putney, especially by way of
acknowledging the goodness of God in family prayers. The servants are
there, of course, and--you understand?"

"Perfectly, Mr. Mead. In such a case I shouldn't like it myself."

"Lady Muddock has no objection to being thankful privately, but she
doesn't like it talked about."

"You go there a great deal?" she asked, with a glance at him.

"Yes, a good deal."

"And the girl--Alice--is very fond of you?"

"Not the least, I believe."

"Oh, you're bound to say that! Would she go with--with selling the
ribbons?" But she went on without waiting for an answer, perhaps because
she had risked a snub. "I was received with immense _empressement_."

"You're a bit of a swell, aren't you?"

"A poverty-stricken Irish widow! No, but I took some swells with me."

"Lord Bowdon, for instance?"

"Yes, Lord Bowdon. And a greater swell still--Miss Ora Pinsent."

A pause followed. Ashley looked over his hostess' head out of the
window. Then Lady Kilnorton added, "Lord Bowdon drove Miss Pinsent to
her house afterwards."

Another pause followed; each was wondering what the other's point of
view might be.

"Fancy Ora Pinsent at the Muddocks'!" reflected Ashley presently. "She
went to please you?"

"How do I know why she went? I don't suppose she knew herself."

"You're great friends, though?"

"I admire and despise, love and most bitterly hate, Ora Pinsent," said
Lady Kilnorton.

"All at once?" asked Ashley with a smile, and brows raised in protest.

"Yes, all at once, and successively, and alternately, and in all sorts
of various combinations."

"And Lord Bowdon drove her home?" His tone begged for a comment from his
companion.

"I told you so," she answered with a touch of irritation, which was as
significant as any comment.

The servant came in, bringing tea; they were silent while the
preparations were made. Ashley, however, covertly regarded his friend's
trim figure and pretty, small features. He often felt rather surprised
that he had no inclination to fall in love with, or even to make love
to, Irene Kilnorton. Many men had such an inclination, he knew; among
them he ranked this same Lord Bowdon who had driven Miss Pinsent to her
house. Lady Kilnorton was young, she was pretty, she had, if not wit, at
least the readiness of reply which is the common substitute provided by
the habit of conversing with wideawake people. It was, though, very
pleasant to have so charming a friend and to be in no danger of
transforming her into the doubtful and dangerous character of a woman he
loved; so he told himself, having no disposition to love her.

"She's got a husband, hasn't she?" he asked, as the door closed behind
the footman.

"Ora? Oh, yes, somewhere. He's a scamp, I think. He's called--oh, I
forget! But his name doesn't matter."

"They've always got a husband, he's always a scamp, and his name never
matters," remarked Ashley between mouthfuls of toast.

"Fenning! That's it! Fenning."

"Just as you like, Lady Kilnorton. It's the fact, not what you call it,
that's the thing, you know."

As he spoke the door was opened again and Lord Bowdon was announced. He
came in almost eagerly, like a man who has something to say, shook hands
hastily, and, the instant that he dropped into a chair, exclaimed, "What
a glorious creature!"

"I knew exactly what you were going to say before you opened your lips,"
remarked Lady Kilnorton. "You haven't been long, though." There was a
touch of malice in her tone.

"It wasn't left to me to fix the length of the interview. And she said
she liked driving fast. Well, Ashley, my boy, how are you?"

"I'm all right, Lord Bowdon."

"I've got a job for you. I'll write to you about it presently. It's a
Commission they've put me on, and I thought you might like to be
secretary."

"Anything with a stipend," agreed Ashley cheerfully.

"What a lot men think of money!" said Lady Kilnorton.

"I don't think I ever met a more fascinating creature," Lord Bowdon
mused.

"It's awfully good of you," continued Ashley. "I'm uncommonly hard-up
just now."

"Do you know her?" asked Bowdon.

"Met her once or twice," Ashley answered very carelessly. Bowdon seemed
to fall into a reverie, as he gently stirred his tea round and round.
Lady Kilnorton leant back and looked at the mantel-piece. But presently
he glanced at her, smiled pleasantly, and began to discuss the Muddocks.
Ashley left them thus engaged when he took his leave ten minutes later.

Lord Bowdon had lived a full and active life which now stretched over
forty-three years. In spite of much sport and amusement he had found
time for some soldiering, for the duties of his station, and for proving
himself an unexpectedly useful and sensible Member of Parliament. But he
had not found time to be married; that event he used to think of in his
earlier days as somehow connected with his father's death; when he
became Earl of Daresbury, he would marry. However, about a year back, he
had made Lady Kilnorton's acquaintance, had liked her, and had begun to
draw lazy and leisurely plans about her. He had not fallen in love with
her, any more than Ashley Mead had, but he had drifted into a
considerable affection for her. His father had lived to be old; he
himself had already grown more middle-aged than was desirable in a
bridegroom. During the last few weeks he had considered the project
seriously; and that he had assumed this attitude of mind could hardly
have escaped the lady's notice. He had detected, with some pleasure, her
hidden consciousness of his purpose and commended her for a gracefully
easy treatment of the position. She did not make at him, nor yet run
away from him, she neither hurried nor repulsed him. Thus by degrees the
thing had become very pleasant and satisfactory in imagination. It was
not quite what in by-gone years he had meant by being in love--he
thanked heaven for that, after reflection--but it was pleasant and
satisfactory. "Let it go on to the end," he would have said, with a
contentment hardly conscious of an element of resignation.

To-day there was a check, a set-back in his thoughts, and he was
uncomfortable lest it might shew in his manner. He talked too long about
the Muddocks, then too long about Ashley Mead, then about something
quite uninteresting. There was an unexplained check; it vexed and
puzzled him. Lady Kilnorton, with her usual directness, told him what it
was before they parted.

"You've been thinking about Ora Pinsent all the time," she said. "It
would have been better to have the courage of your ingratitude and go on
talking about her." The gay, good-humoured words were accompanied by a
rather nervous little smile.

"Who is she?" asked Bowdon bluntly and with undisguised curiosity.

"She's Mrs. Jack Fenning. I don't know and I don't care who Jack Fenning
is, only--"

"Only what?"

"Only he's not dead. I know you think that's the one thing he ought to
be."

"I'm not sure about that," he answered, looking in her face. The face
had suddenly become charming to him in its now apparent mixture of
annoyance and merriment. "Well, I must be going," he added with a sigh.
Then he laughed; Lady Kilnorton, after an instant's hesitation, joined
in his laugh.

"She liked me to drive as fast as I could, and straight home!" said he.
"Good-bye, Lady Kilnorton."

"Good-bye. I wonder you aren't a little more sensible at your age."

"She carries you off your feet, somehow," he murmured apologetically, as
he made for the door. He was feeling both rude and foolish, confessing
thereby the special relation towards his hostess which he had come to
occupy.

Left alone, Irene Kilnorton sat down and attempted a dispassionate
appraisement of herself. She was twenty-nine, a widow of four years'
standing. The world, which had seemed ended when her young husband died,
had revived for her; such is the world's persistent way. She was pretty,
not beautiful, bright, not brilliant, pleasant, but hardly fascinating.
She was pleased with the impartiality which conducted her so far. But at
this point the judgment of herself began to drift into a judgment of Ora
Pinsent, who seemed to be all that she herself had just missed being; in
assessing Ora the negatives fell out and the limitations had to be
discarded. Yet her mood was not one of envy for Ora Pinsent. She would
not be Ora Pinsent. Among those various feelings which she had for Ora,
there was one which she had described by saying "I despise her." The
mood, in truth, hung doubtful between pity and contempt; but it was
enough to save her from wishing to be Ora Pinsent. She would sooner put
up with the negatives and the limitations. But she might wish, and did
wish, that other people could take her own discerning view of her
friend. She did not call herself a jealous woman; but after all Lord
Bowdon had become in a rather special sense her property; now he was, as
he put it graphically enough, carried off his feet. That condition would
not last; he would find his feet and his feet would find the ground
again soon. Meanwhile, however, she could hardly be expected exactly to
like it. Men did such strange things--or so she had been told--just in
those brief spaces of time when the feet were off the ground; perhaps
women too did things rather strange in a similar case.

"And poor Ora's feet," she said to herself, "are never really on the
ground."

She was vaguely conscious that her mingled admiration and contempt
reflected in a rather commonplace fashion the habitual attitude of
good-sense towards genius. Not being in love with commonplace good-sense
as an intellectual ideal, she grew impatient with her thoughts, flung
the window open, and sought distraction in the sight of the people who
passed up and down the hill through the cool kindliness of the June
evening. The wayfarers caught her idle interest, and she had almost lost
herself in wondering whether the boy and girl at the corner would kiss
before they parted when she was recalled to her own sphere by seeing two
people whom she knew breasting the slope on bicycles. A dark young man
inclining to stoutness, very elaborately arrayed for the exercise on
which he was engaged, rode side by side with a dark young woman
inclining to leanness, plainly clad, with a face that a man might learn
to think attractive by much looking, but would not give a second thought
to in a London drawing-room. "The young Muddocks," said Irene, drawing
back and peering at them from behind her curtains. "Recovering
themselves after the party, I suppose."

She watched them till they were out of sight; why, she did not ask
herself. Of course there was the interest of wealth, perhaps a vulgar,
but seemingly an unavoidable, sensation which pounds much multiplied
enable their possessors to create. There was more; the Muddocks had come
somehow into her orbit. They were in the orbit of her friend Ashley
Mead; the girl might become the most important satellite there. Irene's
own act had perhaps brought them into Ora Pinsent's orbit--where storms
were apt to rage. Curiosity mingled with an absurd sense of
responsibility in her. "It's such a risk introducing Ora to anybody,"
she murmured, and with this her thoughts flew back to Bowdon and the
condition of men who are carried off their feet.

"It's simply that I'm jealous," she declared petulantly, as she shut the
window. But she was not yet to escape from Ora Pinsent. There on the
mantel-piece was a full-length photograph, representing Ora in her
latest part and signed with her autograph, a big O followed by a short
sprawl of letters, and a big P followed by a longer sprawl. Though not a
professed believer in the revelation of character by handwriting, Irene
found something significant in this signature, in the impulse which
seemed to die away to a fatigued perfunctory ending, in the bold
beginning that lagged on to a conclusion already wearisome. Her eyes
rose to the face of the portrait. It shewed a woman in a mood of
audacity, still merry and triumphant, but distantly apprehensive of some
new and yet unrealised danger. Exultation, barely yet most surely
touched with fear, filled the eyes and shaped the smile. It seemed to
Irene Kilnorton that, if Ora knew herself and her own temper, such
reasonably might be her disposition towards the world and her own life
as well as her pose in the play to which she now drew all the town; for
her power of enjoying greatly in all likelihood carried with it its old
companion, the power greatly to suffer. Yet to Irene a sort of
triviality affected both capacities, as though neither could be exactly
taken seriously, as though the enjoyment would always be childish, the
suffering none too genuine. Good-sense judged genius again; and again
the possessor of good-sense turned impatiently away, not knowing whether
her contempt should be for herself or for her friend.

Then she began to laugh, suddenly but heartily, at the recollection of
Lady Muddock. When Ora had passed on after the introduction, and Irene
was lingering in talk with her hostess, Lady Muddock had raised her
timid pale-blue eyes, nervously fingered that growth of hair which was
too fluffy for her years, and asked whether Miss Pinsent were "nice."
This adjective, maid-of-all-work on women's lips, had come with such
ludicrous inadequacy and pitiful inappropriateness that even at the
moment Irene had smiled. Now she laughed. Yet she was aware that Lady
Muddock had no more than this one epithet with which to achieve a
classification of humanity. You were nice or you were not nice; it was
simple dichotomy; there was the beginning, there the end of the matter.
So viewed, the question lost its artlessness and became a singularly
difficult and searching interrogation. For if the little adjective were
given its rich fulness of meaning, its widely representative character
(it had to sum up half a world!), if it were asked whether, on the
whole, Ora Pinsent were likely to be a good element in the world, or (if
it might be so put) a profitable speculation on the part of Nature,
Irene Kilnorton would have been quite at a loss to answer. In fact--she
asked, with a laugh still but now a puzzled laugh--was she nice or
wasn't she? The mixture of feelings which she had described to Ashley
Mead forbade any clear and definite response on her own behalf. On Lady
Muddock's, however, she owned that the verdict must be in the negative.
By the Muddock standards, nice Ora was not.

And what was this absent Jack Fenning like? There seemed no materials
for a judgment, except that he had married Ora Pinsent and was no longer
with Ora Pinsent. Here was a combination of facts about him remarkable
enough to invest him with a certain interest. The rest was blank
ignorance.

"And," said Irene with another slight laugh, "I suppose I'm the only
person who ever took the trouble to think about him. I'm sure Ora never
does!"




CHAPTER II

FIRST IMPRESSIONS


It was an indication of the changed character of the business that the
big block in Buckingham Palace Road closed early on Saturdays,
surrendering the hours in which the branches continued to do their most
roaring trade. The day after the party was a Saturday; Sir James and his
son were making their way back through the Park, timed to arrive at home
for a two o'clock luncheon. The custom was that Lady Muddock and Alice
should meet them at or about the entrance of Kensington Gardens, and the
four walk together to the house. There existed in the family close
union, modified by special adorations. Sir James walked with his
daughter, Bob with his stepmother; this order never varied, being
the natural outcome of the old man's clinging to Alice, and of
Lady Muddock's pathetic fidelity to Bob. She had no child of her
own; she looked up to Alice, but was conscious of an almost cruel
clear-sightedness in her which made demonstrations of affection seem
like the proffer of excuses. There are people so sensible that one
caresses them with an apology. Bob, on the other hand, was easy to
please; you had to look after his tastes, admire his wardrobe, and not
bother about the business out of hours; he asked no more, his stepmother
did no less. Thus while they crossed the Gardens Lady Muddock talked of
yesterday's party, while Sir James consulted his daughter as to the
affairs of the firm. Alice detected here and there in what he said an
undercurrent of discontent with Bob, on the score of a lack not of
diligence but of power, not of the willingness to buckle to, but of that
instinct for the true game--the right move, the best purchase, the
moment to stand for your price, the moment to throw all on the
market--whence spring riches. Sir James expressed his meaning clumsily,
but he ended clearly enough by wishing that there were another head in
the business; for he grew old, and, although he was now relieved from
Parliament, found the work heavy on him. Nothing of all this was new to
the listener; the tale was an old one and led always to the same climax,
the desire to get Ashley Mead back into the business. If Alice objected
that he was ignorant and untrained in commercial pursuits, Sir James
pushed the difficulty aside. "He's got the stuff in him," he would
persist, and then look at his daughter in a questioning way. With this
look also she was familiar; the question which the glance put was
whether she would be willing to do what Lady Kilnorton called "going
with selling the ribbons."

Such was the suggestion; Alice's mood (she treated herself with the
candour which she bestowed on others) towards it was that she would be
willing to go--to go to Ashley Mead, but not to go with selling the
ribbons. The point was not one of pride; it was partly that she seemed
to herself to be weary of the ribbons, not ashamed (she was free from
that little weakness, which beset Bob and made him sensitive to jokes
about his waistcoats being acquired at cost price), but secretly and
rather urgently desirous of a new setting and background for her life,
and of an escape from surroundings grown too habitual. But it was more
perhaps that she did not wish Ashley to sell ribbons or to make money.
She was touched with a culture of which Sir James did not dream; the
culture was in danger of producing fastidiousness. Ashley was precious
in her life because he did not sell ribbons, because he thought nothing
or too little of money, because he was poor. The children of the
amassers are often squanderers. Alice was no squanderer, but she felt
that enough money had been made, enough ribbons sold. With a new aim and
a new outlook life would turn sweet again. And she hated the thought
that to Ashley she meant ribbons. She did not fear that he would make
love to her merely for her money's sake; but the money would chink in
her pocket and the ribbons festoon about her gown; if she went to him,
she would like to leave all that behind and start a new existence. Yet
the instinct in her made the business sacred; a reverence of habit hung
about it, causing these dreams to seem unholy rebels which must not shew
their heads, and certainly could not be mentioned in answer to her
father's look. Moreover she wished Ashley to shew himself a man who, if
he took to ribbon-selling, would sell ribbons well; the qualities
remained great in her eyes though the pursuit had lost its charms.

At lunch they talked of their guests. Lady Kilnorton had pleased them
all; Lord Bowdon's presence was flattering to Lady Muddock and seemed
very friendly to her husband. Minna Soames, who had come to sing to the
party, was declared charming: hard if she had not been, since she spent
her life trying after that verdict! Lady Muddock added that she was very
nice, and sang only at concerts because of the atmosphere of the stage.
Ora Pinsent excited more discussion and difference of opinion, but here
also there was a solid foundation of agreement. They had all felt the
gulf between them and her; she might not be bad--Bob pretended that he
would have heard all about any scandal had there been one--but she was
hopelessly alien from them. They were not sorry that Lady Kilnorton had
brought her, for she had added to the _éclat_, but they could not feel
sure (nor perhaps eager to be sure) that they had secured a permanent
acquaintance, much less a possible friend. And then she had told her
hostess, quite casually, that Lord Bowdon (whom she had never met
before) was going to drive her home. Lord Bowdon was not an old man,
Miss Pinsent was quite a young woman; he was a lord and she was an
actress; of suspected classes, both of them. Every tenet and
preconception of the Middle Period combined to raise grave apprehension
in Lady Muddock's mind. Sir James nodded assent over his rice pudding.
The son and daughter shared the feeling, but with self-questioning; was
it not narrow, asked Alice, was it not unbecoming to a man of the world,
asked Bob. But there it was--in brother and sister both.

"Ashley knows her, I think," Alice remarked.

"That doesn't prove anything," said Bob with a laugh. Lady Muddock
looked a little frightened. "I mean, Ashley knows everybody," he added
rather enviously.

"Ashley can take care of himself," the old man decided, as he pushed his
plate away.

"Anyhow I don't suppose we shall see much of her," said Alice. Her tone
had some regret in it; Ora Pinsent was at least far removed from the
making of money and the selling of ribbons; she was of another world.

With this the subject passed; nobody made mention of Mr. Jack Fenning
because nobody (not even well-informed Bob) had heard of him, and gloves
had hidden the unobtrusive wedding ring on Miss Pinsent's finger. Indeed
at all times it lay in the shadow of a very fine sapphire; the fanciful
might be pardoned for finding an allegory here.

The still recent fatigues of entertaining made Lady Muddock disinclined
to drive, and Alice went alone to the Park in the afternoon. The place
was very full, and motion slow and interrupted. Getting fast-set in a
block, she leant back resignedly, wondering why in the world she had
chosen this mode of spending a summer afternoon. Suddenly she heard her
name called and, turning round, found a small and unpretentious victoria
wedged close to the carriage. A lady sat in the victoria; Alice was
conscious of little more than a large hat, eyes, and a smile; when she
thought of the meeting later on, she was surprised to find herself
ignorant of what Ora Pinsent was wearing. But the smile she remembered;
it was so cordial and radiant, a smile quite without reserve, seeming to
express what was, for the instant at least, the whole and unclouded
happiness of a human being. Thus to smile is in itself a talent.

"Miss Pinsent!" she exclaimed in a flutter for which she had not time to
rebuke herself.

"I wasn't quite sure it was you," Ora explained. "But I thought I'd risk
it. Isn't it dull?" Her eloquent hands accused the whole surroundings.

"This block's so tiresome," observed Alice; she felt the obviousness of
the remark.

"Oh, I don't mind whether we move or not. I mean driving alone. But
perhaps you do it from choice. I don't. But he didn't come."

Alice looked at her and laughed.

"I should have thought he would," she said. She began to be amused.

"Yes, wouldn't you?" asked Ora. "But he didn't."

"I'm very sorry."

"Oh, I've stopped wanting him now. It's quite unsafe not to keep
appointments with me. You miss the time when you're wanted! Have you
seen Irene Kilnorton anywhere?"

"Not since yesterday."

There was a pause. Some way ahead a carriage crawled a few paces on; the
pack was going to break up. Ora's victoria got a start first; as it
moved she turned her head over her shoulder, saying:

"I suppose you wouldn't like to come and see me some day?"

Alice said that she would be delighted, but she felt that her expression
of pleasure in the prospect sounded purely conventional. In reality she
was amazed, inclined to be apprehensively gratified, and certainly
interested.

"Then do," smiled Miss Pinsent as she was borne away.

"I wonder who didn't come!" said Alice to herself, smiling; but the next
moment criticism revived. "How curious she should tell me about it!" she
reflected. "She doesn't know me a bit." Frown and smile stood on her
face together.

The way was cleared. Alice accomplished another round at a fairly quick
trot. Then she saw Miss Pinsent's victoria again. This time Miss Pinsent
was not alone; the victoria stood by the path and Lord Bowdon's foot was
on the step. He was talking to Ora; Ora leant back, looking past him
with an expression of utter inattention. Was he the man who didn't come?
Or was she inattentive because he was not? Alice gave up the riddle;
she had a sudden consciousness that generalisations which had hitherto
seemed tolerably trustworthy might prove most fallacious if applied to
Ora Pinsent. But there was a distinct regret in her mind when she lost
sight of the little victoria with the big man by its step. She had her
invitation; but in retrospect her invitation seemed woefully vague.

Ashley dropped in to dinner that evening, pleasant and talkative as
usual, but rather less alert and a trifle absent in manner. However he
had good news; he was to be secretary to Lord Bowdon's Commission; it
would last a long while, was probably meant to last as long as the
Government did (the grounds for this impression would be tedious to
relate, and open to controversy), and would enable him to pay bills.

"I suppose," he said to Alice, "you don't know what it is not to be able
to pay a bill?"

"I hardly ever have one," she said; "they're just sent in to father."

"It must be rather slow never to be hard-up," he remarked; he hardly
meant what he said, and was quite unaware how true his remark seemed to
Alice Muddock. "Then you never write cheques?" he went on.

"For charity I do."

"Good heavens, what a base use of a cheque book!"

Lady Muddock happened to hear this observation. She had failed to
accustom herself to remarks not meant for literal acceptance; the Middle
Period treats language seriously.

"We all ought to give a certain proportion," she remarked. "Oughtn't we,
James?" But Sir James had gone to sleep.

As Ashley sat and talked lightly about the secretaryship, his shifts to
live comfortably beyond his means, and the welcome help Lord Bowdon had
afforded, Alice felt a surprise at him growing in her. Had she been
placed as he was, she might not have married for money, but she would
inevitably have thought of such a step, probably have had a severe
struggle about it, and certainly have enjoyed a sense of victory in
putting it on one side. The money-taint had bitten so far into her; she
could disregard wealth but could not forget it. She hardly understood
Ashley; she felt curious to know what he would say if she stood before
him and offered herself and her thousands freely, unconditionally, the
money without the ribbons. Did he know that she was ready to do it? Did
he want her? There was an only half-occupied look in his eyes. She never
expected to see admiration gleam in the eyes of men, but she often,
indeed generally, excited interest and chained attention. To-night there
was hardly attention, certainly not whole-hearted engrossed interest.
All at once, for the first time in her simple sincere life, there came
over her a bitter regret that she was not pretty. It was a small thing
to be; small in itself, very small in the little changes of shape and
colour that made it. But how rich in consequences! Yes, she meditated,
how unfairly rich!

Pressed by thought, she found herself lapsing into long silences. She
started another line of talk, but the new topic sprang from the previous
meditation.

"I met Miss Pinsent in the Park to-day," she said. "She was looking so
beautiful. And what do you think, she asked me to go and see her! I was
very flattered."

Ashley smiled as he observed:

"She's asked me to go and see her too."

"Shall you go?" asked Alice, with a grave interest.

She was puzzled at the heartiness of his laugh over her question.

"Great heavens, of course I shall go," he said, laughing still.

"What are you laughing at?"

"Why, my dear Alice, there isn't a man in London who wouldn't go."

"Oh, I see," she said in a disappointed, almost irritable tone. She had
somehow expected a better explanation than lay in that, something that
might apply to herself, to a girl. She was even sure that there ought to
be something more about Miss Pinsent, that it was a man's fault if he
saw only what all men must see. Her tone did not escape the quick wit of
her companion.

"You must see that she's tremendously interesting?" he said. "Lady
Kilnorton says that Ora Pinsent's the most interesting person in the
world--except one."

"Except who?"

"Her husband," he answered, laughing again. "You look surprised. Oh,
yes, he exists. His name's Fenning."

"She--she's married?" Alice was leaning forward now; here was another
problem.

"Incredible, but true. You may let Bob meet her without the least danger
of spoiling that great match he's going to make."

"I'd no idea she was married."

Ashley was obviously amused at her wonder, perhaps at the importance she
attached to the circumstance which he had brought to her knowledge.

"Lady Kilnorton will have it that he must be a remarkable man," he went
on. "But it doesn't follow in the least, you know, rather the contrary.
Some women have unimpeachable taste in everything except marriage; or
perhaps we must all have our share of the ordinary, and they take theirs
out in their husbands. Anyhow, he's at the other end of the world
somewhere."

They talked a little while longer about Ora, Alice incidentally
mentioning Bowdon's appearance by the step of the victoria. Then Ashley
said good-night, and started to walk home to his rooms in one of the
streets which run down from the Strand to the Thames Embankment. Here he
dwelt humbly, commanding modest comforts and, if he craned his neck, a
sidelong view of a bit of the river by Charing Cross bridge. As he
walked, he was pleasantly and discursively thoughtful. His evening had
disposed him to reflexion on the very various types of people who
inhabited the world and flocked, one and all, to London. He knew many
sorts; yet within the limits of his acquaintance the Muddocks were
peculiar. And now, right at the other end of the scale, came this Miss
Pinsent. He thought about Miss Pinsent for a little while, and then
drifted idly into a trivial classification of women according to their
external advantages. Perhaps he had dimly discerned and caught something
of Alice Muddock's train of ideas. There were those beautiful to all,
those pretty to some, those plain to most. Miss Pinsent, Lady Kilnorton,
Alice Muddock, were the instances on which his generalities depended.
Superficial as the dividing principle was, he gained a hint of what had
come home to Alice while he talked to her, of the immense difference it
made to the persons divided. (That it made an immense difference to him
was in no way such a discovery as needed midnight meditation.) To them
the difference would surely become more than a source of greater or
less homage, attention, pleasure, or excitement. These immediate
results must so influence and affect life as to make the woman in the
end really a different being, a different inner as well as a different
outer creature, from what she would have been had she occupied a place
in another class than her own. It would be curious to take twin souls
(he allowed himself the hypothesis of souls), put them into diverse
kinds of bodies, leave them there ten years, from eighteen to
twenty-eight, say, then take them out and record the observed
variations. But that was hopeless; the experimental method, admirable
for all sorts of dull subjects, broke down just where it would become of
absorbing interest.

In Pall Mall he met Lord Bowdon coming out of the Reform Club. Bowdon's
family had always been Whigs; people might argue that historical parties
had changed their policies and their principles; Bowdon was not to be
caught by any such specious reasoning. The Liberals were heirs to the
Whigs; he was heir to his fathers; his conservative temperament
preserved his Liberal principles. But he did not seem to be occupied by
such matters to-night. He caught Ashley by the arm, turned him round the
Athenæum corner, and began to stroll gently along towards the steps.
Ashley thanked him again for procuring him the Secretaryship; Bowdon's
only answer was to nod absently. What Alice Muddock had told him
recurred to Ashley's mind.

"I hear you had an audience in the Park to-day," he said, laughing. "Her
Majesty distinguished you?"

"I did a most curious thing," said Bowdon slowly. "I had an appointment
to drive with her. I didn't go. Half-an-hour later I walked up to the
Park and looked for her till I found her. Doesn't that strike you as a
very silly proceeding?"

"Very," said Ashley with a laugh.

"In a man of forty-three?" pursued Bowdon with a whimsical gravity.

"Worse and worse. But where do you put the folly, in missing the
appointment or--?"

"Oh, in the combination! The combination makes it hopeless. You said you
knew her, didn't you?"

"Yes. I shouldn't miss the appointment."

Ashley had long been aware of his companion's kindness for him, one of
those partialities that arise without much apparent reason but are of
unquestionable genuineness. But Bowdon was considered reserved, and this
little outbreak of self-exposure was a surprise. It shewed that the man
was at least playing with a new emotion; if the emotion grew strong the
play might turn to earnest. Moreover Bowdon must know that his confidant
was a frequent visitor at Lady Kilnorton's. Bowdon stopped suddenly,
standing still on the pavement, and looking full in Ashley's face.

"Don't think I'm going to make a fool of myself, my boy," he said with
remarkable emphasis and energy. "Good-night;" and, hailing a cab, he was
off in an instant.

Ashley properly considered his friend's last remark an indication that
he was feeling rather inclined to, and just possibly might, make or try
to make (for often failure is salvation) a fool of himself. The man of
unshaken sobriety of purpose needs no such protests. Ashley strolled on
to his rooms, decidedly amused, somehow also a little vexed. Nothing had
happened except a further and needless proof that he had been right in
putting Ora in the first division of his classification. The vexation,
then, remained unaccounted for, and it was not until he had reached
home, lit his pipe, mixed his whiskey and water, and settled in his
arm-chair, that he discovered that he was a little annoyed just because
Lord Bowdon was apparently afraid of making a fool of himself. It was a
thing that Bowdon or any other man had a perfect right to do, so far as
the rest of the world was concerned. This sounded like a platitude;
Ashley was surprised to find in his own soul an indefinite but not weak
opposition to it. The instinct of exclusive possession was stirring in
him, that resentment of intrusion which is the forerunner of a claim to
property. Well, he was not forty-three but just thirty. His theory of
life did not forbid a certain amount of making a fool of himself; his
practice had included a rather larger quantity. Perturbation had been
the ruling factor in Bowdon, in Ashley a pleasurable anticipation was
predominant. In his case there were no very obvious reasons why he
should not make a fool of himself again, if he were so disposed; for,
dealing dispassionately with the situation and with his own standards,
he could not treat this Jack Fenning as a very obvious reason. He went
to bed with a vague sense of satisfaction; the last few days had brought
to birth a new element in life, or at least a new feature of this
season. It was altogether too soon to set about measuring the dimensions
of the fresh arrival or settling to what it might or might not grow.

His anticipation would have been much heightened and the development of
his interest quickened had he been able to see what was at this time
happening to the lady who had made so abrupt and resolute an entry into
his thoughts as well as into Lord Bowdon's. Her distress would have been
sun and water to the growth of his feelings. For Mr. Sidney Hazlewood,
an accomplished comedian and Ora Pinsent's Manager, had urged that she
should try, and indeed must force herself, to regard a certain business
arrangement from a purely business point of view. To Ora, still charged
with the emotions of her performance in addition to her own natural and
large stock of emotions, this suggestion seemed mere brutality,
oblivious of humanity, and dictated solely by a ruthless and unhallowed
pursuit of gain. So she burst into tears, and a weary wrinkle knitted
itself on Mr. Hazlewood's brow. Lady Kilnorton had been blaming herself
for judging genius from the stand of common-sense; Mr. Hazlewood did not
theorise about the matter; that eloquent wrinkle was his sole protest
against the existence and the ways of genius. The wrinkle having failed
of effect, he observed that an agreement was an agreement and spoke, as
a man who contemplates regrettable necessities, of his solicitor. Ora
defied Mr. Hazlewood, the law, and the world, and went home still in
tears. She was not really happy again until she had got into her
dressing-gown, when quite suddenly she chanced on the idea that Mr.
Hazlewood had a good deal to say for himself. Then she began to laugh
merrily at the scene which had passed between them.

"He's very stupid, but he likes me and he's a good old creature," she
ended in a charitable way.




CHAPTER III

AN ARRANGEMENT FOR SUNDAY


"Elizabeth Aurora Pinsent; that's it. But Elizabeth was too solemn, and
Betty was too familiar, and Aurora too absurd. So I'm just Ora."

Lord Bowdon nodded gravely.

"And I think," she went on, lying back on the sofa, "that the world's
rather dull, and that you're rather like the world this afternoon."

He did not dispute the point. A man who wants to make love, but is
withheld by the sense that he ought not, is at his dullest. Bowdon's
state was this or even worse. Ora was a friend of Irene Kilnorton's; how
much had she guessed, observed, or been told? Would she think loyalty a
duty in herself and disloyalty in him a reproach? That would almost
certainly be her mood unless she liked him very much; and she gave no
sign of such a liking. On all grounds he was clear that he had better go
away at once and not come back again. He thought first of Irene
Kilnorton, then of his own peace and interest, lastly of Mr. Jack
Fenning; but it must be stated to his credit that he did think quite
perceptibly of Jack Fenning. Yet he did not go away immediately.

"You live all alone here?" he asked, looking round the bright little
room.

"Yes, I can, you see. That's the advantage of being married."

"I never looked at marriage in that light before."

"No," she laughed. "You've not looked at it in any light, you know; only
from the outer darkness."

As his eyes rested on her lying there in graceful repose, he felt a
grudge against the way fate was treating him. He wished he were ten or
fifteen years younger; he wished he had nothing to lose; he wished he
had no conscience. Given these desirable things, he believed that he
could break down this indifference and banish this repose. Ora had done
nothing to create such a belief; it grew out of his own sturdy and
usually justifiable self-confidence.

"Have you a conscience?" he asked her suddenly.

"Oh, yes," she answered, "afterwards."

"That's a harmless variety," he said wistfully.

"Tiresome, though," she murmured with her eyes upturned to the ceiling
as though she had forgotten his presence. "Only, you see, something else
happens soon and then you don't think any more about it." Ora seemed
glad that the cold wind of morality was thus tempered.

Such a remedy was not for the solid-minded man: he did think more about
it, notwithstanding that many things happened; and his was not merely
the harmless variety of conscience. Ora nestled lower on her cushions,
sighed and closed her eyes; she did not treat him with ceremony, if any
comfort lay in that. He rose, walked to the window, and looked out. He
felt intolerably absurd, but the perception of his absurdity did not
help him much. Again he complained of fate. This thing had come just
when such things should cease to come, just also when another thing had
begun to seem so pleasant, so satisfactory, so almost settled. He was
ashamed of himself; as he stood there he regretted his midnight
confidence to Ashley Mead a fortnight before. Since then he had made no
confidences to Ashley; he had not told him how often he came to this
house, nor how often he wished to come. Ora Pinsent's name had not been
mentioned between them, although they had met several times over the
initial business of launching their Commission.

He turned round and found her eyes on him. She began to laugh, sprang
up, ran across the room, laid a hand lightly on his sleeve, and looked
in his face, shaking her head with an air of determination.

"You must either go, or be a little more amusing," she said. "What's the
matter? Oh, I know! You're in love!"

"I suppose so," he admitted with a grim smile.

"Not with me, though!"

"You're sure of that? Nothing would make you doubt it?"

"Well, I thought it was Irene Kilnorton," she answered; her eyes
expressed interest and a little surprise.

"So it was; at least I thought so too," said Bowdon.

"Well, if you think so enough, it's all right," said Ora with a laugh.

"But I'm inclined to think differently now."

"Oh, I shouldn't think differently, if I were you," she murmured.
"Irene's so charming and clever. She'd just suit you."

"You're absolutely right," said Bowdon.

"Then why don't you?" She looked at him for a moment and he met her
gaze; a slight tint of colour came on her cheeks, and her lips curved in
amusement. "Oh, what nonsense!" she cried a moment later and drew back
from him till she leant against the opposite shutter and stood there,
smiling at him. The next moment she went on: "It is quite nonsense, you
know."

Lord Bowdon thought for a moment before he answered her.

"Nonsense is not the same as nothing," he said at last.

"You're not serious about it?" she asked with a passing appearance of
alarm. "But of course you aren't." She began to laugh again.

He was relieved to find that he had betrayed nothing more decisive than
an inclination to flirt. It would be an excellent thing to sail off
under cover of that; she would not be offended, he would be safe.

"Tragically serious," he answered, smiling.

"Oh, yes, I know!" she said. Then she grew grave, frowned a little and
looked down into the street. "You talk rather like Jack used to. You
reminded me of him for an instant," she remarked. "Though you're not
like him really, of course."

"Your husband?" His tone had surprise in it; she had never mentioned
Jack before; both the moment and the manner of her present reference to
him seemed strange.

"Yes. You never met him, did you? He used to be about London five or six
years ago."

"No, I never saw him. Where is he now?"

A shrug of her shoulders and a slight smile gave her answer.

"Why did he go away?"

"Oh, a thousand reasons! It doesn't matter. I liked him, though, once."

"Do you like him now?"

A moment more of gravity was followed by a sudden smile; her eyes
sparkled again and she laughed, as she answered,

"No, not just now, thank you, Lord Bowdon. What queer questions you ask,
don't you?"

"The answers interest me."

"I don't see why they should."

"Don't you?"

"I mean I don't see how they ought."

"Quite so."

"You're really getting a little bit more amusing," said Ora with a
grateful look.

He felt an impulse to be brutal with her, to do, in another sphere of
action, very much what Mr. Hazlewood had done when he insisted that a
business arrangement must be regarded in a business-like way. Suppose he
told her that questions of morals, with their cognate problems, ought to
be regarded in a moral way? He would perhaps be a strange preacher, but
surely she would forget that in amazement at the novelty of his
doctrine!

"How old are you?" he asked her, aghast this time at his question but
quite unable to resist it.

She glanced at him for a moment, smiled, and answered simply,

"Twenty-seven last December."

He was remorseful at having extracted an answer, but he bowed to her as
he said,

"You've paid me a high compliment. You're right, though; it wasn't
impertinence."

"Oh, no, you're all right in that way," she murmured with a careless
cordiality. "But why did you want to know?"

"I want to know all about you," he said in a low voice.

Again she looked at him for a moment, growing grave as she looked. Then
she laid her hand on his arm again and looked up in his face with a
pleading coaxing smile.

"Don't," she said.

There was silence for a moment. Then Lord Bowdon took her hand, kissed
it, smiled at her, and asked a prosaic question.

"Where's my hat?" said he.

But that prosaic question made it impossible to sail off under cover of
an inclination to flirt; it was not at all in that manner; it lacked the
colour, the flourish and the show. As he walked away, Bowdon was
conscious that whatever happened to the affair, good or evil, whether it
went on or stopped, it must be stamped with a certain genuineness. It
could not pass at once from his thoughts; he could not suppose that it
would be dismissed immediately from hers.

That he occupied her attention for a little while after he went away
happened to be the case, although it was by no means the certain result
he imagined. A mind for the moment vacant of new impressions allowed her
to wonder, rather idly, why she had said "Don't" so soon; he had done
nothing to elicit so direct a prohibition; it had put a stop to a
conversation only just becoming interesting, still far from threatening
inconvenience. Perhaps she was surprised to find her injunction so
effective. She had said the word, she supposed, because she was not much
taken with him; or rather because she liked him very definitely in one
way, and very definitely not in another, and so had been impelled to
deal fairly with him. Besides he had for a moment reminded her of Jack
Fenning; that also might have something to do with it. The remembrance
of her husband's love-making was not pleasant to her. It recalled the
greatest of all the blunders into which her trick of sudden likings had
led her, the one apparently irrevocable blunder. It brought back also
the memory of old delusions which had made the blunder seem something so
very different at the time it was committed. She walked about the room
for a few minutes with a doleful look, her lips dragged down and her
eyes woeful. It was only five; she did not dine till six. She was
supposed to rest this hour; if resting meant thinking of Jack Fenning
and Lord Bowdon and of the general harshness of the world, she would
have none of it. It occurred to her, almost as an insult, that here was
an hour in which she was at leisure and yet nobody seemed to desire her
society; such treatment was strange and uncomplimentary.

A ring at the bell scattered her gloom.

"That must be somebody amusing!" she cried, clasping her hands in the
joyful confidence that fate had taken a turn. "I wonder who it is!"

The visitor thus favoured by a prejudice of approbation proved to be
Ashley Mead. He had come once before, a week ago; three days back Ora
had in her own mind accused him of neglect and then charitably
congratulated him on indifference. Now she ran to him as though he were
the one person in the world she wished to see.

"How charming of you!" she cried. "I was bored to death. I do like
people who come at the right time!"

Ashley held her hand for a moment in sheer pleasure at the feel of it;
they sat down, she again on her sofa, he in a low chair close by.

"Tea?" she said.

"Goodness, no. Don't move from where you are, Miss Pinsent. I met Lord
Bowdon walking away."

"I sent him away."

"What delightful presentiments you have!"

"Indeed I'd no idea that you'd come. I don't think he wanted to stay,
though." She smiled meditatively. Lord Bowdon's prompt acceptance of her
"Don't" seemed now to take on a humorous air; his hesitation contrasted
so sharply with the confident readiness of her new visitor.

"I've come on business," said Ashley.

"Business?" she echoed, with an unpleasant reminiscence of Mr. Sidney
Hazlewood and his views as to the nature of an agreement.

"I want you to help me to organise something."

"Oh, I couldn't. I hate all that sort of thing. It's not a bazaar, is
it?"

"No. Perhaps we might call it a _fête_. It's a day in the country, Miss
Pinsent."

"Oh, I know! Children! You mean those children?"

He leant back in his chair and looked at her before he replied. She
seemed a little hurt and regretful, as though his visit were not proving
so pleasant as she had expected; a visit should be paid, as virtue
should be practised, for its own sake.

"No," he said. "Not those children. These children."

She took an instant to grasp the proposal; then her eyes signified her
understanding of it; but she did not answer it.

"Why not?" he urged, leaning forward.

She broke into a light laugh.

"There's no reason why not--"

"Ah, that's right!"

"Except that I'm not sure I want to," continued Ora. She put her head a
little on one side, with a critical air. "I wonder if you'd amuse me for
a whole day," she said.

"You quite mistake my point of view," he replied, smiling. "I never
expected to amuse you. I want you to amuse me. I'm quite selfish about
it."

"That's just making use of me," she objected. "I don't think I was
created only to amuse you, you know."

"Perhaps not; but let me have the amusement first. The trouble'll come
soon enough."

"Will it? Then why--"

"Oh, you understand that well enough really, Miss Pinsent."

"What would that nice serious girl you're going to marry say if she
heard of our outing?"

"I haven't received the news of my engagement yet."

"Irene says you're certain to marry her."

"Well, at any rate she doesn't say I've done it yet, does she?"

"No," admitted Ora, smiling.

"And that's the point, isn't it? Will you come on Sunday?"

Sunday had looked rather grey; there was nothing but a lunch party, to
meet a Dean who thought that the stage might be made an engine for good,
and therefore wished to be introduced to Miss Pinsent. Oh, and there was
a dinner to celebrate somebody's birthday--she had forgotten whose. Yes,
Sunday was quite a free day. The sun shone here; it would shine merrily
in the country. In short she wanted to go.

"Oh, well, I don't mind trying to prevent you being bored for just one
day," she said, with her eyes merry and mocking.

"That's very kind of you," observed Ashley in a composed tone. "I'll
call for you at eleven and carry you off."

"Where to?"

"I shall settle that. It's entirely for my sake we're going, you know,
so I shall have my choice."

"It sounds as if you might enjoy yourself, Mr. Mead."

"Yes, quite, doesn't it?" he answered, laughing. Ora joined in his
laugh; the world was no longer harsh; Lord Bowdon was nothing; there
were no more reminiscences of the way Jack Fenning used to talk. There
was frolic, there was a touch of adventure, a savour of mischief.

"It'll be rather fun," she mused softly, clasping her hands on her knee.

Behind the man's restrained bearing lay a sense of triumph. He had
carried out his little campaign well. He did not look ahead, the success
of the hour served. No doubt after that Sunday other things would happen
again, and might even be of importance; meanwhile except that Sunday
there was nothing. Merely that she came was not all--with her was not
even very much. But he knew that her heart was eager to come, and that
the Sunday was a joy to her also.

"It's dinner-time," she said, springing up. "Go away, Mr. Mead."

He was as obedient as Bowdon had been; enough had been done for to-day.
But a farewell may be said in many ways.

"Sunday, then," he said, taking both her hands which she had held out to
him in her cordial fashion. Lady Kilnorton said that Ora always seemed
to expect to be kissed. "Just manner, of course," she would add, since
Ora was her friend.

"Yes, Sunday--unless I change my mind. I often do."

"You won't this time." The assertion had not a shred of question about
it; it was positive and confident.

She looked up in his face, laughing.

"Good-bye," she said.

Bowdon had kissed her hand, but Ashley did not follow that example. They
enjoyed another laugh together, and he was laughing still as he left her
and took his way downstairs.

"Oh, dear!" she said, passing her hand over her eyes, as she went to get
ready for dinner. She felt a reaction from some kind of excitement; yet
what reason for excitement had there been?

With regard to the theatre the Muddock family displayed a variety of
practice. Sir James never went; Bob frequented with assiduity those
houses where the lighter forms of the drama were presented; Lady Muddock
and Alice were occasional visitors at the highest class of
entertainment. Neither cared much about evenings so spent as a rule; but
Lady Muddock, having entertained Miss Pinsent, was eager to see her act.
Ora was the only member of her profession whom Lady Muddock had met; to
be acquainted with one of the performers added a new flavour. Lady
Muddock felt an increased importance in herself as she looked round the
house; there must be a great many people there who knew nobody on the
stage; she knew Miss Pinsent; she would have liked the fact mentioned,
or at any rate to have it get about in some unobtrusive way. Before the
first act was over she had fully persuaded herself that Ora had noticed
her presence; she had looked twice quite directly at the box! The
little woman, flattered by this wholly fictitious recognition, decided
audaciously that Sir James' attitude towards the stage was old-fashioned
and rather uncharitable; everybody was not bad on the stage; she felt
sure that there were exceptions. Anyhow it was nice to know somebody; it
gave one a feeling of what Bob called--she smiled shyly to
herself--"being in it." She was very careful never to talk slang
herself, but sometimes it expressed just what she wanted to say. She
pulled out her pink silk sleeves to their fullest volume (sleeves were
large then) and leant forward in the box.

Between the acts Babba Flint came in. He was a club acquaintance of
Bob's, and had met the ladies of the family at a charity bazaar. It was
a slender basis for friendship, but Babba was not ceremonious. Nobody
knew why he was called Babba (which was not his name), but he always
was. He was a small fair man, very smartly dressed; he seldom stopped
talking and was generally considered agreeable. He talked now, and,
seeing the bent of Lady Muddock's interest, he made Ora his theme. Lady
Muddock was a little vexed to find that Babba also knew Ora, and most of
her colleagues besides; but there was recompense in his string of
anecdotes. Alice was silent, looking and wondering at Babba--strange to
be such a person!--and yet listening to what he was saying. Babba lisped
a little; at least when he said "Miss Pinsent," the S's were blurred and
indistinct. He had met her husband once a long while ago; "a fellow
named Denning, no, Fenning; a good-looking fellow." "A gentleman?" Babba
supposed so, but deuced hard-up and not very fond of work. She led him
no end of a life, Babba had heard; so at last he bolted to America or
somewhere. Babba expressed some surprise that Mr. Fenning did not now
return--he knew the amount of Ora's salary and mentioned it by way of
enforcing this point--and declared that he himself would put up with a
good deal at the hands of a lady so prepossessing as Miss Pinsent. Then
Lady Muddock asked whether Miss Pinsent were really nice, and Babba said
that she wasn't a bad sort to meet about the place but (Here he broke
into a quotation from a song popular in its day), "You never know what
happens downstairs." Lady Muddock tried to look as though she had
received information, and Babba withdrew, in order to refresh himself
before the rise of the curtain.

Ora played well that night, indeed played Mr. Hazlewood off the stage,
according to his own confession and phraseology. There was a ring in her
laugh, a rush in her passion, a triumph in her very walk. Alice found
herself wondering whether what happened to the woman herself had much
effect on her acting, how complete or incomplete the duality of person
was, how much was put on and put off with the stage dresses and the
stage paint. But, after all, the woman herself must be there before
them, the real creature, full of life and yet straining her great gift
of it to the full. Alice had heard men described as "living hard." That
phrase generally meant something foolish or disreputable; but you could
live hard without dissipation or folly, at least in the ordinary sense
of those words. You could take all there was in every hour out of it,
put all there was of you into every hour, taste everything, try
everything, feel everything, always be doing or suffering, blot out the
uneventful stretches of flat country so wide in most lives, for ever be
going up or down, breasting hills or rattling over the slopes. It must
be strange to be like that and to live like that. Was it also sweet? Or
very sweet when not too bitter? And when it was very bitter, what came
of it? Surely the mightiest temptation to lay it all aside and go to
sleep? Alice drew back with a sudden sense of repulsion, as though there
were no health or sanity in such lives and such people. Then she looked
again at the beautiful face, now strained in sorrow, with hands
stretched out in such marvellous appeal, the whole body a prayer. Her
heart went out in pity, and, with a sudden impulse, cried to go out in
love. But she could come to no final conclusion about Ora Pinsent, and,
vexed at her failure, was thinking when the curtain fell, "What does it
matter to me?"

The arrangement for a Sunday in the country, had she known of it, might
have made the question seem less simple to answer.




CHAPTER IV

BY WAY OF PRECAUTION


For some days back Irene Kilnorton had been finding it difficult to have
amiable thoughts about Ora. That they are attractive, that they make a
change where they come, that they are apt to upset what seemed to be
settling itself very comfortably before their arrival, are not things
which can reasonably be imputed as faults to the persons to whom they
are attached as incidents; but neither do they at all times commend
them. It could not be denied--at this moment Irene at least could not
deny--that there was a wantonness about Ora's intrusions; she went where
she might have known it was better that she should stay away, and
pursued acquaintances which were clearly safer left in an undeveloped
state. She was irresponsible, Lady Kilnorton complained; the grievance
was not unnatural in her since she felt that she was paying part of the
bill; it was Ora's debt really, but Ora was morally insolvent, and made
her friends unwilling guarantors. The pleasant confidence with which she
had awaited Bowdon's approaches and received his attentions was shaken;
she found that she had wanted him more than she had thought, that she
was less sure of getting him than she had supposed. He had been to see
her two or three times; there was no falling off in his courtesies, no
abrupt break in his assiduity. But a cloud hung about him. Being there,
he seemed half somewhere else; she suspected where the absent half of
his thoughts might be found. He wore an air almost remorseful and
certainly rather apologetic; Lady Kilnorton did not wish to be courted
by way of apology. She knew it was all Ora Pinsent, and, although she
was quite aware that there was a good deal to be pleaded on Ora's side
of the question, she itched to say something--no matter what, provided
it were pointed and unpleasant--about Jack Fenning. Babba Flint, with
whom she was acquainted, had once described some young lady to her as
his "second-best girl." Babba was deplorable, most deplorable; yet her
anger borrowed from his strange vocabulary. She did not want to be
anybody's "second-best girl." "Not," she added, "that I'm a girl at all.
No more is Ora, for that matter." The pleasure of the hit at Ora
outweighed the regret in her admission about herself.

With regard to Ashley Mead her mood was much lighter, and, as a
consequence, much less repressed. Since she did not care greatly whether
he came or not, she reproached him bitterly for not coming; being
tolerably indifferent as to how he managed his life, she exhorted him
not to be silly; having no concern in the disposal of his affections,
she gave him the best possible advice as to where he should bestow them.
This conversation happened at Mrs. Pocklington's, where everybody was,
and it seemed to amuse Ashley Mead very much. But it was Friday night
and Sunday was near, so that everything seemed to amuse and please him.
She told him that Alice Muddock was somewhere in the rooms; he said that
he had already paid his respects to Alice. Irene's glance charged him
with the blindest folly. "How women are always trying to give one
another away!" he exclaimed. "Oh, if you won't see, you won't," she
answered huffishly and leant back in her chair. The baffled mentor
harboured a grievance! He looked at her for a moment, smiled, and passed
on.

Presently Minna Soames came and sat down by her. Minna was one of those
girls to whom it is impossible to deny prettiness and impossible to
ascribe beauty; she sang very well and lived very comfortably by her
concerts; she might, of course (or so she said), have made more on the
stage, but then there was the atmosphere. Irene did not like her much
and was inclined to think her silly. What matter? She began to exercise
a circumscribed power of sarcasm on Ora Pinsent; in spite of a secret
sense of shame, Irene became more and more gracious. Praise be to those
who abuse whom we would abuse but cannot with propriety!

"I was quite surprised to see her at Lady Muddock's," observed Miss
Soames with prim maliciousness.

Irene cast a glance at her companion; the remark was evidently innocent,
so far as she was concerned; the malice was purely for Ora, not for her.
Miss Soames was not aware how Ora had come to be at the Muddocks'! Irene
reached the depths of self-contempt when, after ten minutes, Minna
Soames went away still in ignorance of this simple fact. "I'm a mean
wretch," Irene Kilnorton thought; and so at the moment she was--as the
best of us at certain moments are.

These same moments, in which we see ourselves as we are most careful
that others shall not see us, are not so pleasant that we seek to
prolong them. Irene plunged into the moving throng with the idea of
finding somebody to talk to her and take her to supper. With some
surprise, some pleasure, and more excitement than she was willing to
admit, she chanced to meet Bowdon almost immediately. Her temper rose
to the encounter as though to a challenge. She suggested supper. She
began to find herself in high spirits. The idea was in her that she
would not surrender, would not give up the game, would not make Ora
irresistible by shirking a fight with her. When they had secured a
little table and sat down she began to talk her best; in this she was
helped by the consciousness of looking her best; she did not fear to pin
his eyes to her with keenest attention. But the expression of the
watching eyes puzzled and annoyed her; they were eager and yet doubtful,
appreciative but wistful. Was he trying to think her all he had been on
the point of thinking her, still to see in her all that he wanted? Was
he unhappy because he could not so think and so see? He almost gave her
that impression. She was very gay and felt herself now almost brilliant;
her contest was with that most gay and brilliant shape which came
between his eyes and what she offered for their allurement. People
passing by, in the usual ignorance and the usual confidence of
passers-by, summed up the situation in a moment; Bowdon was only waiting
for her leave to speak, she was absolutely confident of him. They envied
her and said that she should not parade her captive quite so openly. She
guessed what they thought; she was glad and was fired to new efforts.
She alone would know how incomplete was the victory; for all the world
she would be triumphant. Even Ora might think herself defeated! But why
was he changed, why was she less charming to him, why must she strive
and toil and force? In the midst of her raillery and gaiety she could
have put her hands before her face, and hidden tears.

He was almost persuaded, he was eager to be persuaded. At this moment
she seemed all he wanted; he told himself angrily and persistently that
she was all that any man could or ought to want, that she stood for the
best and most reasonable thing, for sure happiness and stable content.
If he left her, for what would he leave her? For utter folly and worse.
She would be a wife to be proud of; there would be no need to apologise
for her. Even had there been no Jack Fenning, he knew that a marriage
with Ora Pinsent would seem even to himself to need some apology, that
he would fear to see smiles mingled with the congratulations, and to
hear a sunken murmur of sneers and laughter among the polite applause.
He cursed himself for a fool because he did not on that very instant
claim her for his. Why, the other woman would not even let him make love
to her! He smiled bitterly as he recollected that it was not open to him
to make a fool of himself, even if he would. He wanted the bad and could
not have it, but because he wanted it vainly, now he was refusing the
good. No raw boy could have sailed further in folly. Coming to that
conclusion he declared he would take a firm hold on himself. Failing
that, his danger was imminent.

They went up together from the supper-room. Now she was set to win or
for ever to lose; she could not play such a game twice. "Don't leave
me," she said, boldly and directly. "Everybody here is so tiresome.
Let's go to the little room at the end, it's generally empty." He
appeared to obey her readily, even eagerly, indeed to be grateful for
her invitation; it shewed that he had not betrayed himself. The little
room was empty and they sat down together. Now he was inclined to
silence and seemed thoughtful. Irene, in inward tumult, was outwardly no
more than excited to an unusual brightness. After one swift searching
glance at him, she faced the guns and hazarded her assault against the
full force of the enemy. She began to speak of Ora, dragging her name
into the conversation and keeping it there, in spite of his evident
desire to avoid the topic. Of Ora her friend she said nothing untrue,
nothing scandalous, nothing malicious; she watched her tongue with a
jealous care; conscience was awake in her; she would have no backbiting
to charge herself with. But she did not see why she should not speak the
truth; so she told herself; both the general truths that everybody knew
and the special truths which intimacy with Ora Pinsent had revealed to
her. Ora spoke plainly, even recklessly, of others; why should she not
be spoken about plainly, not recklessly, in her turn? And, no, she said
nothing untrue, nothing that she would not have said to Ora's face, in
the very, or almost the very, same words.

"Yes, she's a strange creature," assented Bowdon.

"Now Ashley Mead's mad about her! But of course he's only one of a
dozen."

Here was dangerous ground; she might have stirred a jealousy which would
have undone all that was begun; with many men this result would have
been almost certain. But with Bowdon there was wisdom in her line of
attack; she roused pride in him, the haughtiness which was in his heart
though never in his bearing, the instinct of exclusiveness, the quiet
feeling of born superiority to the crowd, the innate dislike of being
one of a dozen, of scrambling for a prize instead of reaching out to
accept a proffered gift. Ashley Mead, the secretary of his Commission,
his _protégé_--and a dozen more! The memory of his confidence to Ashley
became very bitter; if Ashley were favoured, he would laugh over the
recollection of that talk! He felt eager to shew Ashley that it was all
no more than a whim, hardly more than a joke. Well, there was a ready
way to shew Ashley that--and, he told himself, to shew it to himself
too, to convince himself of it, at least to put it out of his own power
henceforth to question it by word or deed. The great and the little, the
conviction of his mind and the prick of his vanity, worked together in
him.

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."

Her prohibition or request had availed with Bowdon's hesitating
conscience-ridden impulse; perhaps there was small cause to wonder at
that. It availed now no less with Ashley Mead's impetuous passion. Her
low whisper protected her absolutely; the confession it hinted disarmed
him; he caught both her hands and held them in a long clasp, looking the
while into her appealing eyes. But he entreated her no more and he
kissed her no more. A moment later he rose, went and sat on the
window-sill, and lit a cigarette; the glow seemed a tiny beacon of fire
to shew the harbour, that danger was past, that her orders were
understood and accepted. She lay very quiet, looking at him with steady,
grateful, loving eyes, acknowledging a kindness that she had not doubted
and yet found fine in him. His transgression--perhaps she hardly counted
it one--was forgiven because he stayed his steps at her bidding. He knew
that she trusted him; and in spite of her prohibition he believed that
she loved him.

Now one of the riddles about her seemed to find an explanation. He
understood how she had passed through the dangers and the ordeal, and
had come out still with her freshness and her innocence; how her taste
had saved her from those who would have been deaf to the appeal that had
arrested him, how powerful and sufficing a shield that appeal was to any
man whom her taste would allow to come close to her in comradeship. You
could not be false to a confidence like that; if you were a man who
could, you would never have the chance. Thus Ashley summed up a case
which a little while ago had seemed to him very strange. It seemed
strange and unusual still, with a peculiar charm of its own. It was
weakness breeding strength, surrender made security. It put a man on his
honour; it took away the resistance which might make honour forget
itself in the passion of victory. It was like being made guardian of
another's treasure; you were careful of it, however heedless you were of
your own.

As they journeyed home, she was mirthful and joyous. This day was done,
but she did not despair of the world; there should be other days, and
the work of this day should endure. She made plans by which they were to
meet, to be much together, to unite their lives by many ties. She let
him see how much he had entered into her schemes; she told him plainly
again and again that he had become to her quite different from all other
men. She revealed to him her little habits, her tempers, her ways, her
manoeuvres, her tricks; she had plenty of all of them. She shewed an
open delight in the love which she had won from him and made no pretence
of concealing anything of what he was to her. Of Jack Fenning she said
not a word; of caution in the externals of her own behaviour, of what
people might think or say, of any possible difficulties in their
relation to one another, not a word. She was happy and she was grateful.
He took her to the door of her own house; she was not hurt but seemed a
little surprised that he would not go in. He did not offer to kiss her
again, but could not avoid thinking that she would have been neither
angry nor grieved if he had. His last memory was of her looking round
her door, smiling delightedly and nodding to him, her eyes full of a
thousand confidences. "Come soon," she called at last before she hid
herself from his sight.

When he reached his own rooms, he found awaiting him a note from Sir
James Muddock, begging him to come to the office at Buckingham Palace
Road at eleven the next morning. "I have had an interview with my
doctor," the old man wrote, "which makes it necessary for me to consider
very seriously certain immediate steps. I hope that I shall be able to
rely on your assistance." The note was sent by hand and marked
"Immediate." Its meaning was plain enough. The long-expected verdict had
come; Sir James must be relieved; another head was wanted in the firm of
Muddock and Mead. With his brain still full of Ora Pinsent the matter of
the message seemed remote to Ashley, but he forced himself to descend to
it. He was to have the offer of a partnership, the offer of great
wealth, the opportunity of a career limited only by his own talents and
no longer clogged by poverty. Would the offer be free, or hampered by a
tacit unacknowledged understanding? He knew well enough Sir James' mind
about his future. How strange that future looked in the after-glow of
this day! Yet what future had this day? Here was a question that he
could not bring himself to discuss patiently. Future or no future, this
day had altered his life, seemed at this moment to have altered it so
completely that on it and on what had happened in it would turn his
answer to the offer of great wealth and the prospect of a career. Even
in his own thoughts he observed that reticence about Alice Muddock which
would have governed his tongue in speaking of her to another; but,
affect as he would, or thought himself obliged to, he knew that she
formed a factor in the situation, that she was in her father's mind when
he wrote, no less than that other object of the old man's love, the
great firm in Buckingham Palace Road.

"It's strange," he thought, "that the thing, after dragging on so long,
should come to a head now, to-night, just when--." He broke off his
reflexions and, going to the window, looked out on the lights of the
bridge and listened to the lessening noise of the town. He was dimly
conscious that in this day of long idleness, by the slow low river and
in the little inn, he had done more to draw the lines and map the course
of his life than in any hour of labour, however successful and however
strenuous. Fate had surprised him with a point-blank question, the
Stand-and-deliver of a direct choice. Saying he would think it all over,
he sat late that night. But thoughts will not always be compelled and
disciplined; his vigil was but a pictured repetition of the day that he
had lived. The day had been Ora's day. Hers also was the night.




CHAPTER VI

AWAY WITH THE RIBBONS!


Few things make the natural man, a being who still occupies a large
apartment in the soul of each of us, more impatient than to find people
refusing to conform to his idea of the way in which they ought to seek
and find happiness. So far as sane and sensible folk are
concerned--there is no need to bring the Asylums into the argument--his
way is the way; deviations from it, whether perversely deliberate or
instinctive and unreasoned, are so many wanderings from the only right
track. He likes money--then only fools omit to strive for it. Stability
of mind is his ideal--what more wretched than to be tossed from mood to
mood? A regular life is the sole means of preserving health in stomach
and brain--it is melancholy to see persons preferring haphazard and
ill-regulated existences. Nay, it makes this natural man rather vexed if
we do not like his furniture, his favourite vegetable, his dentist, and
so forth; his murmured "_De gustibus_" has a touch of scorn in it. He
conceives a grudge against us for upsetting established standards of
excellence in matters of life, conduct, upholstery, and the table. Our
likings for people in whom he sees nothing puzzle and annoy him equally;
the shrug with which he says, of a newly married couple for instance,
"They seem very happy," adds quite clearly, "But on no reasonable
grounds have they a right to be, and in my heart I can't quite believe
they are."

Sir James Muddock--once again the occasion of generalisations--had never
been able to understand why Ashley Mead did not jump at the chance of
Alice Muddock's hand and a share in Buckingham Palace Road. The lad was
poor, his prospects were uncertain, at the best they could not yield
wealth as Sir James had learnt to count it; the prejudice against trade
is only against trade on a small scale; any ambitions, social or
political, would be promoted, not thwarted, by his entry into the firm.
As for Alice, she was the best girl in the world, clever, kind,
trustworthy; she was very fond of him; he was fond of her and
appreciated her company. Ashley was turned thirty; he was not asked to
surrender the liberty of early youth. He had had his fling, and to
sensible men this fling was a temporary episode, to be enjoyed and done
with. It was time for him to get into harness; the harness offered was
very handsome, the manger well filled, the treatment all that could be
desired. When Sir James summed up the case thus, he had no suspicion of
what had passed during one Sunday in the country; it is fair to add that
it would have made no difference in his ideas, if he had known of it.
The day in the country with Ora Pinsent would have been ticketed as part
of the fling and thus relegated to after-dinner memories. Sir James did
not understand people to whom the fling was more than an episode, to
whom all life went on being a series of flings of ever-changing dice,
till at last and only in old age the box fell from paralysed fingers.
Therefore he did not understand all that was in the nature of Ashley
Mead; he would have understood nothing at all of what was in Ora
Pinsent's.

Ashley's decision had taken itself, as it seemed, without any help or
effort on his part. Here was the warrant of its inevitability. He
thought, when he first read the old man's summons, that he was in for a
great struggle and faced with a hard problem, with an anxious weighing
of facts and a curious forecast of possibilities, that he must sit down
to the scrutiny in idleness and solemnity. But somehow, as he slept or
dressed or breakfasted, between glances at his paper and whiffs of his
pipe, he decided to refuse many thousands a year and to ignore the
implied offer of Alice Muddock's hand. In themselves thousands were
good, there was nothing to be said against them; and of Alice he had
been so fond and to her so accustomed that for several years back he had
considered her as his most likely wife. She and the thousands were now
dismissed from his life--both good things, but not good for him. He
sighed once with a passing wish that he could be different; but being
what he was he felt himself hopelessly at war with Sir James' scheme as
a whole, and with every part of it. Contrast it with the moods, the
thoughts, the atmosphere of life which had filled his yesterday! And
yesterday's was his native air; thus it seemed to him, and he was so
infected with this air that he did not ask whether but for yesterday his
decision would have been as easy and unfaltering.

The old man was hurt, grieved, and, in spite of previous less direct
rebuffs, bitterly disappointed; he had not thought that his offer would
be refused when expressly made; he had not looked to see his hints about
his daughter more openly ignored the more open they themselves became.
His anger expressed itself in an ultimatum; he flung himself back in his
elbow chair, saying,

"Well, my lad, for the last time, take it or leave it. If you take it,
we'll soon put you through your facings, and then you'll be the best
head in the business. But if you won't have it, I must take in somebody
else."

"I know, Sir James. Don't think I expect you to go on giving me
chances."

"If it's not you, it's got to be Bertie Jewett." Bertie Jewett was
Herbert, son of Peter Jewett who had served through all the changes and
lately died as Manager in Buckingham Palace Road. "He won't refuse,
anyhow." The tone added, "He's not such a fool."

"No, he's not such an ass as I am," said Ashley, answering the tone and
smiling at poor Sir James with an appealing friendliness.

"That's your word, not mine; but I'm not going to quarrel with it," said
Sir James without a sign of softening. "What you're after I can't see.
What do you want?"

Ashley found himself unable to tell the Head of the Firm what he wanted.

"I can get along," he said lamely. "I make a bit writing for the papers,
and there's a brief once in a blue moon; and of course I've got a
little; and this secretaryship helps for the time."

This beggarly catalogue of inadequate means increased Sir James' scorn
and bewilderment.

"Are you above it?" he asked with sudden heat.

"Good God, sir, don't think me a snob as well as an ass," prayed Ashley.

"Then I don't know what you do want."

Matters seemed to have reached a standstill. But Sir James had a last
shot in his locker.

"Go up and lunch in Kensington Palace Gardens," he said. "Talk it over
with the ladies, talk it over with Alice."

Ashley wanted to refuse; on this day he had no desire to see Alice. But
refusal seemed impossible.

"All right, Sir James, I will," he said.

"Take a week, take a week more. If you say no then, it's Bertie
Jewett--and your chance is gone for ever. For Heaven's sake don't make a
fool of yourself." Affection mingling with wrath in the entreaty made it
harder to resist.

Ashley walked off with the last words ringing in his ears; they recalled
Lord Bowdon and the Athenæum corner. After reflexion and against
inclination Bowdon had determined not to make a fool of himself, and had
intrenched his resolution with apparent security against the possibility
of a relapse into a less sensible course. Here was Ashley's example; but
he shied at it.

"And how the devil am I to talk to Alice about it?" he exclaimed
petulantly, as he struck across the front of Buckingham Palace and
headed up Constitution Hill. There had been a general impression that he
would marry Alice Muddock, and a general impression about us assumes to
ourselves a vaguely obligatory force. We may not justify it, but we feel
the need for some apology if we refuse. Besides Ashley had, up to a
certain point, shared the impression, although in a faint far-off way,
regarding the suggested alliance not as the aim of his life but as a
possible and not unacceptable bourn of his youth. His entrance into the
firm was a topic so closely connected that he felt much awkwardness in
discussing it with Alice Muddock. Of her feelings he thought less than
of his own; he was not by nature a selfish man, but he had now fallen
into the selfishness of a great pre-occupation. The smallest joy or the
lightest sorrow for Ora Pinsent would have filled his mind. It is
difficult to feel in anything like this way towards more than one person
at a time. His sympathy for Alice Muddock was blunted and he excused its
want of acuteness by an affected modesty which questioned her concern in
him.

It chanced that Lady Kilnorton was at lunch. She seemed in high spirits
and talked vigorously. Her theme was the artistic temperament; she
blamed its slavishness to the moment. Lady Muddock showed an anxiety to
be furnished with details for purposes of increased disapproval; Alice
was judicial. One man among three women, Ashley would have been content
to listen, but, when appealed to, he defended the aspersed disposition.
He felt the conversation approaching Ora Pinsent, step by step; she was
in all their minds; the only case in point known to Lady Muddock, the
instance most interesting to Alice, an unwelcome persistent presence to
Irene, to him a subject to be neither encouraged nor avoided without
risk of self-betrayal. It was curious how she had come into the circle
of their lives, and having entered seemed to dominate it. But presently
he grew sure of his face and, for the rest, preferred that they should
abuse her rather than not speak of her; he grudged every abstraction of
his thoughts which banished her image.

The discussion brought its trials. Irene's well-restrained jealousy and
Lady Muddock's inquisitive disapproval were merely amusing; it was
Alice's judicial attitude which stirred him to resentment. To assess and
assay with this cold-blooded scientific accuracy seemed inhuman, almost
from its excess of science unscientific, since it was a method so
unsuited to the subject.

"Now take Ora," said Irene, at last grasping the nettle. "There's
nothing she wouldn't do for you at one moment, the next she wouldn't do
anything at all for you."

"For her acquaintances, you mean?" Alice asked.

"Oh, no, my dear. For anybody, for her best friend. You can't call her
either good or bad. She's just fluke, pure fluke."

"Well, I know it's the thing to pretend not to like flukes--" Ashley
began. The thin jocularity served for a shield.

"Oh, what's the use of asking a man? He just sees her face, that's all.
Nobody's denying her looks." Lady Kilnorton seemed petulant.

"Of course a life like hers," observed Lady Muddock, "is very
demoralising."

"My dear Lady Muddock, why?" asked Ashley, growing exasperated.

"Well, I only know what Minna Soames says, and--"

"Mother dear, Minna Soames is a goose," Alice remarked. Ashley was
grateful, but still with reservations as to the judicial tone.

Irene Kilnorton, engaged in her secret task of justifying herself and
taking a rosy view of Bowdon's feelings, talked more for her own ends
than for those of the company.

"That sort of people suit one another very well," she went on. "They
know what to expect of each other. Harm comes only when people of a
different sort get entangled with them."

"You're vague," said Ashley. "What different sort?" He had partly
fathomed her mood now, and his eyes were mischievous as he looked at
her.

"Sensible people, Mr. Mead." There was a touch of asperity in the brief
retort, which made a thrust from him seem excusable.

"Suppose Lord Bowdon had never seen you," he said with plausible
gravity, "and, being in that state of darkness, had fallen in love with
Miss Pinsent; would it have been so very surprising?"

"Very," said Irene Kilnorton.

"And dreadful?"

"Well, bad for him. He'd never have got on with her and--"

"There's Mr. Fenning," interposed Alice with a quiet laugh. A moment's
pause ensued. Ashley had been startled at the introduction of the name,
but he recovered himself directly.

"Oh, well," he said, "of course there's Mr. Fenning. I'd forgotten him.
But he's quite accidental. Leave him out. He's not part of the case."

"But there's so often a Mr. Fenning," Alice persisted. "Can he be
considered quite accidental?"

Ashley had made much the same remark in different words to Irene
Kilnorton a few weeks before; but remarks do not bear transplanting.

"Isn't that rather a traditional view?" he asked.

"You mean a prejudiced one?"

"Well, yes."

"I suppose so. But prejudices start somehow, don't they?" Her smile was
very gentle, but still, to his mind, horribly aloof and judicial. Could
she not understand how a woman might be carried away, and blunder into a
Mr. Fenning, _per incuriam_ and all in a minute (so to speak)? In such a
case was it to be expected that the Mr. Fenning in question should be
all in all to her? In some ways perhaps she must acknowledge his
existence; but at any rate she needn't Darby-and-Joan it with him!

"Poor dear Ora!" said Irene Kilnorton after a pause. Yet she was not
naturally malicious any more than Ashley Mead was naturally selfish. If
we are responsible for the moods we raise in others Miss Pinsent's
account was mounting up. Ashley allowed himself the retort of a laugh
as Lady Muddock rose from the table.

"I came to talk to you," he said to Alice, as she passed him.

"Then drink your coffee quick, and come into the garden," she answered
with her usual frank kindness. When she looked at him her aspect and air
became less judicial.

In the garden he opened the subject of Sir James' proposal; his eyes
were set straight in front of him, hers on the ground. Her answer would
have dismayed Sir James, and it surprised Ashley. She was energetically,
almost passionately, opposed to his entering the business.

"It's not your line, or your taste, or your proper work," she said.
"What's the good of being rich if you're doing what you hate all the
time?"

"I felt just like that," he said gratefully, "but I was afraid that I
felt like it because I was a fool."

"You can make your own way. Don't sell yourself to the business."

He glanced at her stealthily; her colour had risen and her lip trembled.
Did she think of anything besides the business when she bade him not
sell himself? A moment later she laughed uneasily, as, with a reference
to the conversation at lunch, she said,

"You've too much of the artistic temperament for Buckingham Palace
Road."

"I? I the artistic temperament?" He accepted the trite phrase as a
useful enough symbol of what they both meant.

"Yes," she answered steadily. "A good deal of it."

"Then I come under Irene Kilnorton's censures?"

"Under a good many of them, yes."

Something in her manner again annoyed and piqued him. She was judging
again, and judging him. But she was interesting him also. She spoke of
him; she knew him well: and just now he was in some doubt about himself.

"I don't know what you mean," he said, seeking to draw her out.

"Oh, things carry you away; and you like it. You don't want to get to a
comfortable place and stay there. I'm not saying anything you mind?"

"No. I don't think so, at least."

She glanced at him full for a moment as she said,

"I never think anything you'd mind, Ashley." Then she went on hastily.
"But you must be prepared to see Bertie Jewett in great prosperity--a
big house and so on--and to know it might all have been yours."

"I'm prepared for that," he said absently. He did not at all realise the
things he was abandoning.

"But of course you'll get on. You'll be something better than rich."

"Perhaps, if I don't--don't play the fool."

"You keep calling yourself a fool to-day. Why do you? You're not a
fool."

"It's only a way of speaking and not quite my own way, really," he
laughed. "It means if I don't enjoy life a little instead of spoiling it
all by trying to get something that isn't particularly well worth
having; it means, in fact, if I don't allow scope to my artistic
temperament." It meant also if he did not spend more days in the country
with Ora Pinsent; for though he did not (as he had hinted) call that
folly to himself, he was now on his defence against a world which would
call it folly with no doubtful voice, and would exhort him earnestly to
imitate Lord Bowdon's decisive measures of self-protection. It was in
the power of this clear-sighted girl thus to put him on his defence,
even in the full swing of his attraction towards Ora Pinsent; better
than anyone, she could shew him the other side of the picture. He fell
into a silence occupied with puzzled thoughts. She grew grave, except
for a sober little smile; she was thinking that it was easy to be wise
for others, for all the world except herself; while she was playing the
judicial prudent friend to him, the idea of another part was in her
head. There may be hope without expectation; it would not have been
human in her to hope nothing from this talk in the garden, to build no
fancies on it. But she rebuked her imagination; whatever it was that
filled his mind--and his occasional air of distraction had caught her
notice--she had little share in it, she knew that well.

"The talk at lunch was _à propos_," she said presently. "I'm going to
call on Miss Pinsent this afternoon."

"You're going to call--?" The surprise was plain in his voice. This
sudden throwing of the two together seemed an odd trick of
circumstances! His tone brought her eyes quickly round to him and she
looked at him steadily.

"Why not? She asked me. I told you so," she said. Ashley could not deny
it; he shrugged his shoulders. "Shan't I like her?"

"Everybody must like her, I think," he answered, awkward, almost
abashed. But then there came on him a desire to talk about Ora, not so
much to justify himself as to tell another what she was, to exhibit her
charm, to infect a hearer with his own fever. He contrived to preserve a
cool tone, aiming at what might seem a dispassionate analysis of a
fascination which everybody admitted to exist; but he was at once too
copious and too happy in his description and his images. The girl beside
him listened with that little smile; it could not be merry, she would
not let it grow bitter, but schooled it to the neutrality of polite
attention. She soon saw the state of his mind and the discovery was hard
for her to bear. Yet it was not so hard as if he had come to tell her of
an ordinary attachment, of a decorous engagement to some young lady of
their common acquaintance, and of a decorous marriage to follow in due
course. Then she would have asked, "Why her and not me?" With Ora
Pinsent no such question was possible. Neither for good nor for evil
could any comparison be drawn. And another thought crept in, although
she did not give it willing admittance. Ora was not only exceptional;
she was impossible. Impossibility might be nothing to him now, but it
could not remain nothing forever. The pain was there, but the disaster
not irrevocable. Among the somewhat strange chances which had marked the
life of Mr. Fenning there was now to be reckoned a certain shamefaced
comfort which he all unwittingly afforded to Alice Muddock. But Alice
was not proud of the alliance.

Ashley broke off in a mixture of remorse and embarrassment. His
description could not be very grateful to its hearer; it must have come
very near to betraying its utterer. Alice did not pretend that it left
her quite in the dark; she laughed a little and said jokingly:

"One would think you were in love with her. I suppose it's that artistic
temperament again. Well, this afternoon I'll look and see whether she's
really all you say. The male judgment needs correction."

As their talk went on he perceived in her a brightening of spirits, a
partial revival of serenity, a sort of relief; they came as a surprise
to him. The lightness with which she now spoke of Ora appeared, to a
large degree at least, genuine. He did not understand that she
attributed to him, in more sincerity than her manner had suggested, the
temper which had formed the subject of their half-serious half-jesting
talk. Her impression of him did not make him less attractive to her; he
was not all of the temper she blamed and feared; he had, she persuaded
herself, just enough of it to save him from the purely ribbon-selling
nature and (here came the point to which she fondly conducted herself)
to give her both hope and patience in regard to her own relations with
him. She could not help picturing herself as the fixed point to which he
would, after his veerings, return in the end; meanwhile his share of the
temperament excused the veerings. Lady Kilnorton had forced the game
with entire apparent success, but Alice's quick eyes questioned the real
completeness of that victory. She would play a waiting game. There was
no question of an orthodox marriage with the young lady from over the
way or round the corner, an arrangement which would have been odious in
its commonplace humiliation and heart-breaking in its orderly finality.
But Ora Pinsent was not a finality, any more than she was the embodiment
of an orderly arrangement. That fortunate impossibility which attached
to her, by virtue of Jack Fenning's existence, forbade despair, just as
her fascination and her irresistibility seemed to prevent humiliation
and lessen jealousy. The thing was a transient craze, such as men fell
into; it would pass. If she joined her life to Ashley Mead's she was
prepared (so she assured herself) for such brief wanderings of
allegiance, now and then; as time went on, they would grow fewer and
fewer, until at last she conquered altogether the tendency towards them.
"And she must be ten years older than I am," her reflections ended; that
the real interval was but seven did not destroy the importance of the
point.

Having offered Ashley a lift to Piccadilly, she went off to get ready,
and presently Bowdon, who had called to pick up Irene, strolled into the
garden for a cigarette.

"Hullo, what are you doing here? You ought to be making your living," he
cried good-humouredly.

"I've been throwing it away instead," said Ashley. "Should you like to
be a partner in Muddock and Mead?"

"A sleeping one," said Bowdon with a meditative pull at his moustache.

Ashley explained that he would have been expected to take an active
part. Bowdon evidently thought that he ought to have been glad to take
any part, and rebuked him for his refusal.

"Take the offer and marry the girl," he counselled. "She'd have you all
right, and she seems a very good sort."

"I don't feel like settling down all of a sudden," said Ashley with a
smile.

They walked side by side for a few paces; then Bowdon remarked,

"Depend upon it, it's a good thing to do, though."

"It's a question of the best date," said Ashley, much amused at his
companion. "Now at your age, Lord Bowdon--"

"Confound you, Ashley, I'm not a hundred! I say it's a good thing to do.
And, by Jove, when it means a lump of money too!"

A pause followed; they walked and smoked in silence.

"Good creatures, women," remarked Bowdon.

Ashley did not find the remark abrupt; he traced its birth. Alice had
left much the same impression behind her in his mind.

"Awfully," he answered; there was in his voice also a note of remorse,
of the feeling that comes when we cannot respond to a kindness so
liberally as it deserves.

"Of course they aren't all alike, though," pursued Bowdon, as though he
were reasoning out an intricate subject and coming on unexpected
conclusions. "In fact they differ curiously, wonderfully."

His thoughts had passed, or were passing, from Irene Kilnorton to Ora
Pinsent; obedient to this guidance Ashley's followed in a parallel track
from Alice Muddock to Ora Pinsent.

"They're charming in different ways," said he with a slight laugh.
Bowdon shewed no signs of mirth; he was frowning a little and smoked
rather fast.

"And men are often great asses," he observed a few moments later. Again
Ashley had kept pace, but his face was more doubtful than his
companion's and there was hesitation in his voice as he replied,

"Yes, I suppose they are."

This subterranean conversation, shewing above ground only faint
indications of what it really meant to each of the talkers, had carried
them to the end of the garden. Turning round at the fence, they saw
Irene and Alice walking towards them, side by side. Both ladies were
well dressed, Irene rather brilliantly, Alice with quiet, subdued good
taste; both seemed attractive, Irene for her bright vivacity and merry
kindness, Alice for her strength of regard and a fine steady
friendliness. A man who was fortunate enough to gain either of them
would win a wife of whom he might justly be proud when he talked with
the enemy in the gate, and moreover would enjoy an unusually good
prospect of being happy in his own house. The man who had won one, and
the man who could, if he would, win the other, approached them in a slow
leisurely stroll.

"Yes, great asses," repeated Bowdon in a reflective tone.

"I didn't say we weren't," protested Ashley Mead with an irritated
laugh.

They would have found a most heartfelt endorsement of the view which
they reluctantly adopted, had Sir James Muddock known how small a share
of Ashley's visit had been honestly devoted to a consideration of the
advantages of a partnership in Muddock and Mead, and how much larger a
part had been given to a subject concerning which Sir James could have
only one opinion.




CHAPTER VII

UNDER THE NOSEGAY


When Alice Muddock reached Ora's little house in Chelsea and was shewn
into the drawing-room, she found herself enjoying an introduction to Mr.
Sidney Hazlewood and forced to shake hands with Babba Flint. Hazlewood
struck her favourably; there was a repressed resolution about him, a
suggestion of being able to get most of what he might happen to want; no
doubt, though, his desires would be limited and mainly professional.
Babba was, as usual, quite inexplicable to her and almost intolerable.
The pair had, it seemed, come on business, and, after an apology, Ora
went on talking business to them for fully a quarter of an hour. She was
in a businesslike, even a commercial money-grubbing mood; so were the
men; amid a number of technical terms which fell on Alice's ignorant
ears the question of what they would make was always coming uppermost.
There was indeed a touch of insincerity in Ora's graspingness; it did
not seem exactly affectation, but rather like a part for which she was
cast on this occasion and into which she threw herself with artistic
zeal. She had to play up to her companions. There was in her neither the
quiet absorption in the pecuniary aspect which marked Mr. Hazlewood, nor
the tremulous eagerness with which Babba counted imaginary thousands,
the fruit of presupposed successes. Hazlewood, a clean-shaven hard-lined
man of close on fifty, and Babba with his long moustache, his smooth
cheeks, his dandiness, and his youth, treated Ora exactly in the same
way--first as a possible partner, then as a possible property. They told
her what she would make if she became a partner and how much they could
afford to pay her as a property if she would hire herself out to them.
Ora had her alternative capacities clearly grasped and weighed their
relative advantages with a knowing hand. Alice thought it a strange
scene by which to make her first more intimate study of the irresistible
impossible Miss Pinsent, the Miss Pinsent of uncontrollable emotions and
unknowable whims. What images the world made of people! Yet somehow, in
the end, had not the world a way of being just right enough to save its
credit?

At last the conference appeared to be about to break up. Alice was
almost sorry; she could have gone on learning from it.

"Only remember," said Mr. Hazlewood, "that if we do make a deal, why, it
is a deal!"

Ora began to laugh; an agreement was an agreement, she remembered, and a
deal, by parity of reasoning, a deal. Hazlewood's wrinkle clamoured for
seriousness; hard money was at stake, and over that surely even genius
could look grave.

"Oh, she won't want to cry off this," said Babba with a sagacious nod.

Alice had never known how Babba lived (any more than she knew why). It
appeared now that he supported himself by speculations of this
description; she fancied that he asserted himself so much because the
other two seemed to consider him, in the end, rather superfluous; more
than once he had to remind them that he was indispensable; they yielded
the point good-naturedly. She was interrupted in her thoughts by
Hazlewood, who made a suave remark to her and held out his hand with a
low bow. Ora was chaffing Babba about a very large flower in his
buttonhole.

"Is Miss Pinsent a good woman of business?" Alice asked in an impulse of
curiosity.

Hazlewood glanced at Ora; she was entirely occupied with Babba.

"Miss Pinsent," said he, with his overworked but still expressive smile,
"is just exactly what you happen to find her. But if you call often
enough, there'll come a time when you'll find her with a good head on
her shoulders."

Alice felt vaguely sorry for Mr. Hazlewood; it must be wearing to deal
with such unstable quantities. She could imagine herself exchanging
sympathy with him on the vagaries of the artistic temperament; would she
grow a wrinkle, of brow or of heart, over Ashley Mead? Or had she grown
one?

"Well, you've had a lot of experience of her, haven't you?" she asked,
laughing, and wondering what he thought of Ora. His answer expressed no
great affection.

"Good Lord, yes," he sighed, furrowing his brow again.

Ora darted up to him, put an arm through his, and clasped her hands over
his sleeve.

"Abusing me?" she said, turning her face round to his. For a moment
Alice thought that she was going to kiss him and hoped vaguely she would
not; but she felt that she did not know the etiquette; it might be
usual.

"Telling the truth," said Mr. Hazlewood with stout courage; then with
pronounced gallantry he raised his arm with Ora's hands on it and
kissed one of the hands; his manner now was quite different from his
business manner of a few moments ago; his eyes were different too,
hardly affectionate, but very indulgent.

"He likes me really, you know, though I worry him dreadfully," said Ora
to Alice.

Babba came up; he had been arranging the big flower before a mirror.

"Seen Lady Kilnorton lately? She's brought it off with Bowdon, I hear,"
he said to Alice.

"She's engaged to Lord Bowdon," said Alice stiffly.

"Deuced lucky woman," observed Babba, blind to the rebuke which lay in
Alice's formality of phrase.

"Take him away," Ora commanded Mr. Hazlewood. "We've done with him and
we don't want him any more. We aren't sure we like him."

"Oh, come now, I ain't a bad chap, Miss Pinsent," pleaded Babba
piteously.

"We're not at all sure we like him," said Ora inexorably. "Take him away
at once, please, Mr. Hazlewood." And Hazlewood led him out, protesting
bitterly.

For a moment or two Ora moved about, touching the furniture into the
places in which she wanted it, and fingering the flowers in the vases.
Then she came quickly to Alice, sat down by her side, and cried
expansively,

"It's really charming of you to come. And you're like--you're like
something--Oh, I don't know! I mean you're a lovely change from those
men and their business and their money."

"I like Mr. Hazlewood."

"Oh, so do I. But my life's so much Mr. Hazlewood. Why did you come?"

"You asked me," said Alice.

"Yes, I know, but I hardly thought you'd come." She darted back to the
previous conversation. "I'm going to make a lot of money, though, and
then I'm going to have a long holiday, and a villa somewhere in Italy."

"Oh, they won't let you rest long."

"It won't be very long really, because I shall spend all the money," Ora
explained with a smile. "Let's have some tea."

She rang, and tea was brought by a very respectable middle-aged woman.
Ora addressed her maid as Janet and gave her a series of orders; Janet
listened to them with a non-committal air, as though she would consider
whether they were reasonable or not, and act according to her
conclusion. Alice noticed that she called her mistress "Ma'am;" the
reference to Mr. Fenning was very indirect, but it was the first that
Alice had ever heard made in Ora's presence. It seemed to her also that
Janet laid some slight emphasis on the designation, as though it served,
or might be made to serve, some purpose besides that of indicating the
proper respect of a servant. She found herself wondering whether Janet
dated from the time when Mr. Fenning was still a present fact and formed
a member of the united Fenning household (which, by the way, was an odd
entity to contemplate). If that were the case, a conversation with Janet
might be very interesting; knowledge might be gained about the bulwark;
Alice had begun to look on Mr. Fenning as a bulwark--and to tell herself
that she did no such thing.

A large number of photographs stood on the mantel-piece and about the
room, most of them signed by their originals. Many were of men; one
might be of Mr. Fenning. A silver frame stood on a little table just by
the sofa. Alice's intuitive perception told her that here was Ora's
favourite place; her traditions caused her to conclude that the frame
(its back was towards her) held Mr. Fenning's portrait. She was not
undiplomatic, only less diplomatic than many other women; she took a
tour of inspection, saying how pretty the room was and declaring that
she must look closer at the photograph of an eminent tragedian on the
opposite wall. Her return movement shewed her the face of the portrait
which she had guessed to be Mr. Fenning's; it was that of her friend
Ashley Mead.

"Yes," said Ora, "he sent me that yesterday. I was so glad to have it."

"You gave him a return?" asked Alice with a careless laugh, the laugh
appropriate to the moment.

"He chose one and I wrote on it. Sugar, Miss Muddock?"

Alice took sugar.

"You've known him ever so long, haven't you?" asked Ora, handing the
cup.

"Ages, ever since we were children. He's very nice and very clever."

"I've only known him quite a little while." Ora paused and laughed.
"Some people would say that's why his picture's in the place of honour."

"You like change?" asked Alice. Ashley liked change also. But Ora made
her old defence.

"People change, so of course I change to them." The explanation did not
quite satisfy herself. "Oh, I don't know," she said impatiently. "Anyhow
I haven't left off liking Ashley yet. I may, you know."

Alice, conscious that she herself in her hostess' position would have
said "Mr. Mead," tried to make the obvious allowances; it was just like
that clasping of the hands round Hazlewood's arm, just like the air of
expecting to be kissed. Fully aware of insurgent prejudices, she beat
them down with a despotic judgment; she would not follow in the wake of
her stepmother nor adopt the formulas of Minna Soames. Curiously enough
Ora was in somewhat the same or a parallel state of mind, although she
did not realise it so clearly. She too was struggling to understand and
to appreciate. She was sure she would be friends with Miss Muddock, if
she could get within her guard; but why did people have guards, or why
not drop them when other people shewed themselves friendly? You might
have to keep the Babba Flints at their distance, no doubt, but even that
was better done by ridicule than by stiffness.

"We still see a good deal of him," said Alice, "although he has an
immense lot of engagements. He generally comes to lunch on Sunday."

Ora reflected that he had not followed his usual practice on one Sunday.
Alice went on to give a brief description of Ashley's general relation
to the Muddock family, and referred to her father's wish that he should
enter the business.

"He came to talk to me about it to-day," she said, "but it wouldn't suit
him in the least, and I told him so."

"Oh, no, it wouldn't," cried Ora. "I'm so glad you told him right."

Their eyes met in a sudden glance. Did they both know so much of Ashley
Mead, of his tastes, his temper, and what would suit him? An
embarrassment arrested their talk. Alice was conscious that her hostess'
eyes rested on her with an inquisitive glance; it had just occurred to
Ora that in meeting this girl she had encountered a part of the life of
Ashley Mead hitherto unknown to her. "What part? How much?" her eyes
seemed to ask. She was not jealous of Alice Muddock, but she was
inclined to be jealous of all that life of Ashley's of which she knew
nothing, which her visitor had shared. With a sudden longing she yearned
for the inn parlour where he had no other life than a life with her; the
sudden force of the feeling took her unawares and set her heart beating.

She came again to Alice and sat down by her; silence had somehow become
significant and impossible.

"I like your frock," she said, gently fingering the stuff. "At least I
like it for you. I shouldn't like it for me."

The relativity of frocks, being, like that of morals, an extensive and
curious subject, detained them for a few moments and left them with a
rather better opinion of one another. Incidentally it revealed a common
scorn of Minna Soames, who dressed as though she were stately when she
was only pretty; this also knit them together. But they progressed
nearer to liking than to understanding one another. Small points of
agreement, such as the unsuitability of the business to Ashley and the
inappropriateness of her gowns to Minna Soames, made intercourse
pleasant but could not bridge the gulf between them; they were no more
than hands stretched out from distant banks.

Alice began to talk of Irene Kilnorton and Bowdon. While attributing to
them all proper happiness and the finality of attachment incidental to
their present position, she told Ora, with a laugh, that they had all
seen how much Bowdon had been struck with her.

"I think he did like me," said Ora with a ruminative smile. "He's safe
now, isn't he?" she added a moment later. The thought had been Alice's
own, but it needed an effort for her to look at it from Ora's point of
view. To be a danger and to know yourself to be a danger, to be aware of
your perilousness in a matter-of-fact way, without either exultation or
remorse, was a thing quite outside Alice's experience. On the whole to
expect men to fall in love with you and to be justified in this
anticipation by events would create a life so alien from hers that she
could not realise its incidents or the state of mind it would create.

"I like Lord Bowdon," said Ora. "But--" she paused and went on,
laughing, "He's rather too sensible for me. He'll just suit Irene
Kilnorton. But really I must write and tell him to come and see me. I
haven't seen him since the engagement."

"You'd much better not," was on the tip of Alice's tongue, but she
suspected that the impulse to say it was born of her still struggling
prejudices. "Ask them together," she suggested instead.

"Oh, no," said Ora pathetically. "He'd hate it."

Alice did not see exactly why he should hate it. Engaged people always
went about together; surely always?

"Were you ever engaged?" Ora went on.

"Never," said Alice with a laugh.

"I've been--well, of course I have--and I hated it."

With curiosity and pleasure Alice found herself on the threshold of the
subject of Mr. Fenning. But Ora turned aside without entering the hidden
precincts.

"And I'm sure I should hate it worse now. You wouldn't like it, would
you?"

"I should like it very much, if I cared for the man."

"Well," Ora conceded, "he might make it endurable, if he treated it
properly. Most men look so solemn over it. As soon as they've got you,
they set to work to make you think what a tremendous thing you've done.
As if that was the way to enjoy yourself!" She paused, seemed to think,
smiled out of the window, and then, turning to Alice, said with an
innocence evidently genuine, "Ashley Mead would make it rather pleasant,
I think."

The trial was sudden; Alice had no time to put on her armour; she felt
that her face flushed. Again their eyes met, as they had when it was
agreed that the business would not suit Ashley. The glance was longer
this time, and after Alice turned away Ora went on looking at her for
several moments. That was it, then; Irene Kilnorton had not spoken idly
or in ignorant gossip. What she had said fell short of truth, for she
had spoken of an alliance only, not of love. Now Ora knew why the girl
talked so much of Ashley; now she knew also why the girl shewed such
interest in herself. Yes, the rich Miss Muddock would be Ashley's wife
if she were wooed; besides being rich she was pleasant and clever, and
knew how to dress herself. (This last moral quality ranked high in Ora's
list.) Such an arrangement would be in all ways very beneficial to
Ashley. She wondered whether Ashley knew how entirely the game was in
his own hands. She felt a sudden and sore pity for Alice, who had been
so cordial and so pleasant and whose secret she had heedlessly
surprised. The cordiality seemed very generous; there was in it a
challenge to counter-generosity. In an instant the heroic idea of giving
him up to Alice flashed through her brain. This fine conception was
hardly born before she found herself asking wrathfully whether he would
consent to leave her.

Alice was herself again; she said that she thought Mr. Mead might make
an engagement very pleasant, but that such a relation to him would
perhaps not be very exciting to her, since she had known him all her
life. This suppression of emotion was not to Ora's taste; it burked a
scene to which her instinct had begun to look forward. But as generosity
would be at this point premature (even if it should ever become
tolerable) she was forced to acquiesce. A little later Alice took her
leave with increased friendliness and a pressing invitation to Ora to
come and see her at Kensington Palace Gardens when there was no party
and they could have another quiet talk together.

Surrender--or the inn parlour? Generosity or joy? As an incidental
accompaniment, correctness or incorrectness of conduct? These
alternatives presented themselves to Ora when she was left alone. The
_rôle_ of renunciation had not only obvious recommendations but also
secret attractions. How well she could play it! She did not exactly tell
herself that she could play it well--the temperament has its decent
reticences--but she pictured herself playing it well and wished for an
opportunity to play it. She would have played it beautifully for Irene
Kilnorton's benefit, had that lady asked her assistance instead of
taking the matter into her own resolute hands. She would have sent
Bowdon away with an exhortation to see his own good and to forget her,
with a fully adequate, nay, a more than ample, confession of the pain
the step was causing her, but yet with a determination which made the
parting final and Irene's happiness secure. All this vaguely rehearsed
itself in her brain as she lay on the sofa beside Ashley Mead's portrait
in its silver frame. And her subsequent relations both with Irene and
with Bowdon would have been touched with an underlying tenderness and
sweetened by the common recollection of her conduct; even when he had
become quite happy with Irene, even when he had learnt to thank herself,
he would not quite forget what might have been.

Having arrived at this point, Ora burst into a laugh at her own folly.
All that went very well, so very smoothly and effectively, grouped
itself so admirably, and made such a pretty picture. But she took up the
photograph in the silver frame and looked at it. It was not Bowdon's
likeness but Ashley Mead's; the question, the real question, was not
whether she should give up Bowdon; fate was not complaisant enough to
present her with a part at once so telling and so easy. It was not
Bowdon with whom she had spent a day in the country, not Bowdon who had
been with her in the inn parlour, not Bowdon who, Alice Muddock thought,
might make an engagement very pleasant. The grace of self-knowledge came
to her and told her the plain truth about her pretty picture.

"What a humbug I am!" she cried, as she set down the photograph.

For the actual opportunity was very different from the imagined, as rich
in effect perhaps, but by no means so attractive. She still liked her
part, but the rest of the cast was not to her taste; she could still
think of the final interview with a melancholy pleasure, but, with this
distribution of characters, how dull and sad and empty and intolerable
life would be when the final interview was done! The subsequent
relations lost all their subdued charm; underlying tenderness and common
recollections became flat and unprofitable.

"An awful humbug!" sighed Ora with a plaintive smile.

Why were good things so difficult? Because this thing would be very
good--for him, for poor Alice, for herself. A reaction from the joy of
Sunday came over her, bringing a sense of fear, almost of guilt. She
recollected with a flash of memory what she had said to Jack Fenning
when they parted in hot anger. "You needn't be afraid to leave me
alone," she had cried defiantly, and up to now she had justified the
boast. She had been weary and lonely, she had been courted and tempted,
but she had held fast to what she had said. Her anger and her
determination that Jack should not be in a position to triumph over her
had helped to keep her steps straight. Now these motives seemed less
strong, now the loneliness was greater. If she sent Ashley away the
loneliness would be terrible; but this meant that the danger in not
sending him away was terrible too, both for him and for her. As she sank
deeper and deeper in depression she told herself that she was born to
unhappiness, but that she might at least try not to make other people as
unhappy as she herself was doomed to be.

While she still lay on the sofa, in turns pitying, reproaching, and
exhorting herself, Janet came in.

"A letter, ma'am," said Janet. "Your dinner will be ready in ten
minutes, ma'am."

"Thanks, Janet," said Ora, and took the letter. The handwriting was not
known to her; the stamp and postmark were American; Bridgeport, Conn.,
the legend ran. "I don't know anybody in Bridgeport, or in
Conn.--Conn.?--Oh, yes, Connecticut," said Ora.

The silver frame stood crooked on the table. Ora set it straight, looked
at the face in it, smiled at some thought, sighed at the same or some
other thought, and lazily opened the letter from Bridgeport, Conn.; she
supposed it was a communication of a business kind, or perhaps a request
for a photograph or autograph.

"My dear Ora, I have had an accident to my hand, so get a friend to
write this for me. I am here in a merchant's office, but have had a bit
of luck on Wall Street and am in funds to a modest extent. So I am going
to take a holiday. I shall not come to England unless you give me leave;
but I should like to come and see you again and pay you a visit. How
long I stayed would depend on circumstances and on what we decided after
we had met. A letter will find me here for the next month. I hope you
will send one inviting me to come. I would write more if I could write
myself; as it is I will only add that I am very anxious to see you and
am sure I can set right any mistakes that there have been in the past.
Write as soon as you can. Yours affectionately, Jack."

She turned back to the envelope:--"Miss Ora Pinsent." The friend who
wrote Jack's letter probably did not know that he was writing to Jack's
wife. Janet knew Jack's writing, but not the writing of Jack's friend.
In secrecy and privacy Jack's letter had come. She laid it down beside
the portrait in the silver frame, and lay back again quietly with
wide-opened eyes. The clock ticked away ten minutes; dinner was ready;
she lay still.

Had people a right to rise from the dead like this? Were they justified,
having gone out of life, in coming back into it under cover of a
friend's handwriting and a postage stamp? They had parted for ever, Jack
and she, most irrevocably, most eagerly, most angrily. A few lines on a
sheet of note paper could not change all that. He had been dead and
gone; at least he had existed only as a memory and as--she hardly liked
to say an encumbrance--as a check, as a limiting fact, as a difficulty
which of necessity barred her from ordering her doings just as she might
have liked to order them. Now he proposed suddenly to become a fact, a
presence, a part of her again, and stole a hearing for this proposal in
the insidious disguise of a friend's handwriting. How he chose his time
too! In wild fancy she imputed to him a knowledge of the curious
appositeness of his letter's arrival. It came just when she was unhappy,
torn with doubts, feeling low, yes, and feeling guilty; just after the
revelation of Alice Muddock's feelings, just after the day in the
country, just while she was saying that, for weal or woe, she could not
send Ashley Mead away. At such a moment she would not have opened the
letter had she known it for his; but he had had an accident to his hand
and the unknown writing had gained him access.

Janet came in again.

"Your dinner is ready, ma'am," she said, and went on, "These have come
for you, ma'am," laying a nosegay of roses on the little table beside
the portrait in the silver frame, and the letter from Bridgeport, Conn.

Ora nodded; there was no need to ask whence the roses came; they were of
the colour she had declared her favourite by the river bank on Sunday.
"I'll come to dinner directly," she said, and seeing Janet's eye on the
letter, she forgot that it was in a friend's handwriting and pushed it
under the nosegay till the roses hid it. There was nothing to be seen on
the table now but the roses of the colour she loved, and the picture in
its silver frame.

To toy with material symbols of immaterial realities is pretty enough
work for the fancy or the pen. The symbols are docile and amenable; the
letter can be pushed under the roses till their blooms utterly conceal
it, and neither you nor anybody else can see that it is there. The
picture you do not care about can be locked away in the drawer, the one
you love placed on the little table by your elbow as you sit in your
favourite seat. Unhappily this artistic arrangement of the symbols makes
no difference at all to the obstinate realities. They go on existing;
they insist on remaining visible or even obtrusive; audible and even
clamorous. The whole thing is a profitless trick of the fancy or the
pen. Although the letter was pushed under the roses, Jack Fenning was
alive in Bridgeport, Conn., with a desire to see his wife in his heart,
and his passage money across the Atlantic in his pocket.

As Ora drove down to the theatre that night, she moaned, "How am I to
play with all this worrying me?" But she played very well indeed. And
she was sorry when the acting was over and she had to go back to her
little house in Chelsea, to the society of the letter and the roses. But
now there was another letter: "I am coming to-morrow at 3. Be at home.
A. M."

"What in the world am I to do?" she asked with woeful eyes and quivering
lip. It seemed to her that much was being laid on the shoulders of a
poor young woman who asked nothing but to be allowed to perfect her art
and to enjoy her life. It did not occur to her that the first of these
aims is accomplished by few people, that at any rate a considerable
minority fail in the second, and that the fingers of two hands may count
those who in any generation succeed in both. The apparent modesty of
what she asked of fortune entirely deceived her. She sat in her
dressing-gown and cried a little before she got into bed.




CHAPTER VIII

THE LEGITIMATE CLAIMANT


Ashley Mead did not take the week's consideration which Sir James had
pressed on him. The same evening he wrote a letter decisively declining
to assume a place at the helm in Buckingham Palace Road. Sir James,
receiving the letter and handing it to Alice, was disappointed to meet
with no sympathy in his expressed views of its folly. He was nearly
angry with his daughter and frankly furious against Ashley. He was proud
of his daughter and proud of his business; the refusal left him very
sore for both. As soon as he reached his office he gave vent to his
feelings by summoning Bertie Jewett to his presence and offering him the
position to whose attractions Ashley had been so culpably blind.

Here there was no refusal. A slim, close-built, dapper little fellow,
with a small fair moustache and small keen blue eyes, full of
self-confidence, perfectly self-controlled, almost sublimely
industrious, patiently ambitious, Bertie turned away from no
responsibilities and let slip no opportunities. He knew himself Bob
Muddock's superior in brains; he had known of, and secretly chafed
against, the proposed intrusion of Ashley Mead. Now he was safe, and
fortune in his hands. But to Bertie the beauty of firm ground was not
that you can stand still on it and be comfortable, but that it affords a
good "take-off" when you want to clear an obstacle which lies between
you and a place even more desirable in your eyes. Sir James explained
the arrangements he proposed to make, his big share, Bob's moderate
share, Bertie's small share; the work, as is not unusual, was to be in
an inverse ratio to the share. Then the old man approached the future.
When he was gone there was a sum of money and a big annuity for Lady
Muddock; subject to that, Bob was to have two-fifths of his father's
share to add to his own; the rest was to be Alice's. In that future time
Alice's share would be nearly as big as Bob's; the addition of another
small share would give it preponderance. Bertie's blue eye was very keen
as he examined the nature of the ground he had reached and its
capacities in the way of "take-off." But on going forth from Sir James'
office, he could at first do little but marvel at the madness of Ashley
Mead; for he knew that Ashley might have taken what he had just
received, and he suspected that the great jump he had begun to meditate
would have been easy to Ashley. For incontestably Alice had shown favour
to Ashley--and had not shown favour to Bertie Jewett.

Bob and Bertie lunched together at Bob's club that day, the occasion
allowing a little feasting and relaxation from toil. The new project
touching Alice was not even distantly approached, but Bertie detected in
Bob a profound dissatisfaction with Ashley Mead. Ashley's refusal seemed
to Bob a slur on the business, and concerning the business he was very
sensitive. He remarked with mingled asperity and satisfaction that
Ashley had "dished himself all round." The "all round" indicated
something besides the big block in Buckingham Palace Road, and so was
significant and precious to Bertie Jewett.

"Naturally we aren't pleased," Bob said, assuming to express the
collective views of the family. "Fact is, Ashley's got a bit too much
side on, you know."

Bertie Jewett laughed cautiously.

"He doesn't like the shop, I suppose!" Bob pursued sarcastically.

"I'm sorry Sir James is so much annoyed about it," remarked Bertie with
apparent concern.

"He'll see what a fool he's made of himself some day," said Bob. Alice
was in his mind, but went unmentioned.

Bob's opinion was shared in its entirety by Irene Kilnorton, who came
over to express it to Alice as soon as the news reached her through
Bowdon. Bowdon had heard it from Ashley himself, they being together on
the business of the Commission. Irene was amazed to find Alice on
Ashley's side and would allow no merit to her point of view.

"Oh, no, it's all wrong," she declared. "It would have been good for him
in every way; it would have settled him."

"I don't want him settled," said Alice. "Oh, if you knew how tired I get
of the business sometimes! Besides it will make Mr. Jewett so happy. He
takes Ashley's place, you know, though father won't give him as big a
share as he'd have given Ashley."

"Well, I shall tell Mr. Mead what I think of him." She paused,
hesitating a moment as to whether she should say a disagreeable thing or
not. But she was annoyed by Alice's attitude and decided to say it. "Not
that he'll care what I say or what anybody says, except Ora Pinsent,"
she ended.

"Won't he?" asked Alice. She felt bound to interject something.

"What a creature she is!" cried Irene. "When I went to see her this
morning, I found her in tears. What about? Oh, I don't know. But I spoke
to her sensibly."

"Poor Miss Pinsent!"

"I said, 'My dear Ora, I suppose you've done something silly and now
you're sorry for yourself. For goodness' sake, though, don't ask me to
be sorry for you.'"

"Had she asked you?" said Alice with a smile. Lady Kilnorton took no
notice of the question.

"I suppose," she went on scornfully, "that she wanted to be petted. I
wasn't going to pet her."

"I think I should have petted her. She'd be nice to pet," Alice remarked
thoughtfully.

Irene seemed to lose patience.

"You don't mean to say that you and she are going to make friends?" she
exclaimed. "It would be too absurd."

"Why shouldn't we? I liked her rather; at least I think so."

"I wish to goodness that husband of hers would come back and look after
her. What's more, I said so to her; but she only went on crying more and
more."

"You don't seem to have been very pleasant," Alice observed.

"I suppose I wasn't," Irene admitted, half in remorse. "But that sort of
person does annoy me so. As I was saying to Frank, you never know where
to have them. Oh, but Ora doesn't mind it from me."

"Then why did she cry more and more?"

"I don't know--unless it was because I reminded her of Mr. Fenning's
existence. I think it's a good thing to do sometimes."

"Perhaps. I'm not sure, though, that I shouldn't leave it to Mr. Fenning
himself."

"My dear, respectability goes for something. The man's alive, after
all."

Alice knew that he was alive and in her heart knew that she was glad he
was alive; but she was sorry that Ora should be made to cry by being
invited to remember that he was alive. Irene was, presumably, happy with
the man she had chosen; it was a good work leaning towards
supererogation (if such were possible) when she took Ora's domestic
relations under her wing. She hinted something of this sort.

"Oh, that's what Ashley Mead says; we all know why he says it," was
Irene's mode of receiving the good advice.

A pause followed; Irene put her arm through Alice's and they began to
walk about the garden. Lady Muddock was working at her embroidery at the
open window; she was pronouncedly anti-Ashleyan, taking the colour of
her opinions from her husband and even more from Bob.

"Where's Lord Bowdon?"

"Oh, at his tiresome Commission. He's coming to tea afterwards. I asked
Mr. Mead, but he won't come."

"You'll be happier alone together."

Irene Kilnorton made no answer. She looked faintly doubtful and a trifle
distressed. Presently she made a general remark.

"It's an awful thing," she said, "to undertake--to back yourself, you
know--to live all your life with a man and never bore him."

"I'm sure you couldn't bore anybody."

"Frank's rather easily bored, I'm afraid."

"What nonsense! Why, you're making yourself unhappy just in the same way
that Miss Pinsent--"

"Oh, do stop talking about Ora Pinsent!" cried Irene fervently. Then she
gave a sudden apprehensive glance at her companion and blushed a little.
"I simply meant that men wanted such a lot of amusing," she ended.

In recording her interview with Ora, Irene had somewhat exaggerated her
brutality, just as in her reflexions about her friend she exaggerated
her own common-sense. Ora drove her into protective measures; she found
them in declaring herself as unlike to Ora as possible. In reality
common-sense held no disproportionate or disagreeable sway in her soul;
if it had, she would have been entirely content with the position which
now existed, and with her relations towards Bowdon. There was nothing
lacking which this vaunted common-sense could demand; it was stark
sentimentality, and by consequence such folly as Ora herself might
harbour and drop tears about, which whispered in her heart, saying that
all was nothing so long as she was not for her lover the first and only
woman in the world, so long as she still felt that she had seized him,
not won him, so long as the mention of Ora's name still brought a look
to his face and a check to his talk. It was against herself more than
against Ora that she had railed in the garden; Ora had exasperated her
because she knew in herself a temper as unreasonable as Ora's; she
harped on Ora's husband ill-naturedly--as she went home, she confessed
she had been ill-natured--because he who was to be her husband had
dreamt of being Ora's lover. Even now he dared not speak her name, he
dared not see her, he could not trust himself. The pledge his promised
bride had wrung from him was safe so long as he did not see or let
himself think of Ora. It was thus that Irene read his mind.

She read it rightly--to his own sorrow and remorse--rightly. He was
surprised too. About taking the decisive step he had hesitated; except
for circumstances rather accidentally provocative, perhaps he would not
have taken it. But its virtue and power, if and when taken, he had not
doubted. He had thought that by binding his actions with the chain of
honour he would bind his feelings with the chain of love, that when his
steps could not wander his fancy also would be tethered, that he could
escape longing by abstinence, and smother a craving for one by
committing himself to seem to crave for another. The maxims of that
common-sense alternately lauded and reviled by Irene had told him that
he would be successful in all this; he found himself successful in none
of it. Ora would not go; her lure still drew him; as he sat at his
Commission opposite to his secretary at the bottom of the table, he was
jealous of his secretary. Thus he was restless, uncomfortable,
contemptuous of himself. But he was resolute too. He was not a man who
broke faith or took back his plighted word. Irene was to be his wife,
was as good as his wife since his pledge was hers; he set himself to an
obstinate fulfilment of his bargain, resolved that she should see in him
nothing but a devoted lover, ignorant that she saw in him the thing
which above all he wished to hide. Such of Ora's tears as might be
apportioned to the unhappiness she caused to others were just now
tolerably well justified, whatever must be thought of those which she
shed on her own account. Here was Bowdon restless and contemptuous of
himself, Irene bitter and ashamed, Alice with no surer, no more honest,
comfort than the precarious existence of Mr. Fenning, Sir James Muddock
(Ora was no doubt partly responsible here also) grievously disappointed
and hurt; while the one person who might be considered to owe her
something, Mr. Bertie Jewett, was as unconscious of his debt as she of
his existence; both would have been surprised to learn that they had
anything in the world to do with one another. But after all most of
Ora's tears were for herself. Small wonder in face of that letter from
Bridgeport, Connecticut!

Bowdon wished to be married very soon; why wait, he asked; he was not as
young as he had been; it would be pleasant to go to the country in
August man and wife. In fine the chain of honour gave signs of being
strained, and he proposed to tie up the other leg with the fetters of
law; he wanted to make it more and more impossible that he should give
another thought to anybody except his affianced wife. In marriage
attachment becomes a habit, daily companionship strengthens it; surely
that was so? And in the country, or, better still, on a yacht in
mid-ocean, how could anything remind him of anybody else? But Irene
would not hasten the day; she gave many reasons to countervail his; the
one she did not give was a wild desire that he should be her lover
before he became her husband. So on their feigned issues they discussed
the matter.

"The end of July?" he suggested. It was now mid-June.

"Impossible, Frank!" she cried. "Perhaps November."

In September and October Ora would be away. Two months with Ora away,
absolutely away, perhaps forgotten! Irene built hopes high on these two
months.

"Not till November!" he groaned. The groan sounded well; but it meant
"Don't leave me free all that time. Tie me up before then!"

"Ashley Mead seems obstinate in his silly refusal of Sir James Muddock's
offer," she said, anxious to get rid of the conflict.

"Why should he take it?" asked Bowdon. "He can get along very well
without it; I don't fancy him at the counter."

"Oh, it's so evidently the sensible thing."

"I've heard you tell him yourself not to go and sell ribbons."

How exasperating are these reminders!

"I've grown wiser in ever so many ways lately," she retorted with a
smile.

There was an opening for a lover here. She gave it him with a forlorn
hope of its acceptance.

"Yes; but I'm not sure it's a good thing to grow so very wise," he said.
Then he came and sat by her.

"You mustn't be sentimental," she warned him. "Remember we're elderly
people."

He insisted on being rather sentimental; with a keen jealousy she
assessed his sincerity. Sometimes he almost persuaded her; she prayed so
hard to be convinced; but the wish begot no true conviction. Then she
was within an ace of throwing his pledge back in his face; but still she
clung to her triumph with all its alloy and all its incompleteness. She
had brought him to say he loved her; could she not bring him in very
truth to love? Why had Ora but to lift a finger while she put out all
her strength in vain? It would not have consoled her a whit had she been
reminded of Ora's tears. Like most of us, she would have chosen to win
and weep.

As Bowdon strolled slowly back through the Park, repeating how charming
Irene was and how wise and fortunate he himself was, he met Ashley Mead.
Ashley was swinging along at a good pace, his coat-tails flying in the
wind behind him. When Bowdon first saw him he was smiling and his lips
were moving, as though he were talking to himself in a pleasant vein. In
response to his friend's hail, he stopped, looked at his watch, and
announced that he had ten minutes to spare.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked Bowdon. Ashley looked
openly happy; he had an air of being content with life, of being sure
that he could make something satisfactory out of it, and of having
forgotten, for the time being at all events, any incidental drawbacks
which might attend on it. Bowdon was smitten with an affectionate envy,
and regarded the young man with a grim smile.

"Going to see a lady," said Ashley.

"You seem to be making a day of it," observed Bowdon. "In the morning
you refuse a fortune, in the afternoon--"

"Oh, you've heard about the fortune, have you? I've just been down to
Buckingham Palace Road, to congratulate young Jewett on being in--and
myself on being out. Now, as I mentioned, Lord Bowdon--"

"Now you're on your way to see Miss Pinsent?"

"Right; you've guessed it, my lord," laughed Ashley.

"You don't seem to be ashamed of yourself."

"No, I'm not."

"You know all about Mr. Fenning?"

"Well, as much as most of us know about him. But I don't see why I
shouldn't take tea with Miss Ora Pinsent."

Bowdon turned and began to walk slowly along beside Ashley; Ashley
looked at his watch again and resigned himself to another five minutes.
He owed something to Bowdon; he could spare him five of Ora's minutes;
to confess the truth, moreover, he was a little early, although he had
made up his mind not to be.

"Jewett's the ablest little cad, I know," said Ashley. "At least I think
he's a cad, though I can't exactly tell you why."

"Of course he's a cad," said Bowdon, who had dined with Bob Muddock to
meet him.

"There's no salient point you can lay hold of," mused Ashley; "it's
pervasive; you can tell it when you see him with women, you know; that
brings it out. But he's got a head on his shoulders."

"That's more than can be said for you at this moment, my friend."

"I'm enjoying myself very much, thank you," said Ashley with a radiant
smile.

"You won't be for long," retorted Bowdon, half in sorrow, half in the
involuntary malice so often aroused by the sight of gay happiness.

"Look here, you ought to be idiotic yourself just now," Ashley
remonstrated. Then out came his watch again. The sight of it relieved
Bowdon from the fear that he had betrayed himself; evidently he occupied
no place at all in his companion's thoughts.

"Be off," he said with rueful good-nature. "Only don't say I didn't tell
you."

Ashley laughed, nodded carelessly, and set off again at his round pace.
But presently the round pace became intolerably slow, and he hailed a
hansom. He was by way of being economical about hansoms, often pointing
out how fares mounted up; but he took a good many. He was soon landed at
the little house in Chelsea.

Ora was not in the room when Janet ushered him in. "I'll tell my
mistress, sir," said Janet gravely, taking up a smelling-bottle which
stood on Ora's little table and carrying it off with her. Blind to this
subtle indication that all was not well in the house, Ashley roamed
about the room. He noticed with much satisfaction his portrait in the
silver frame and his roses in a vase; then he looked at the photographs
on the mantel-piece; falling from these, his eyes rested for a moment in
idleness on a letter which bore the postmark "Bridgeport, Conn."

"Ah, here she is!" he cried, as a step sounded and the door-handle was
turned. Ora entered and closed the door; but she did not advance towards
him; the smelling-bottle was in her hand.

"I wrote you a note telling you not to come," she said.

"Thank heaven I didn't get it," he answered cheerfully. "I haven't been
home since the morning. You can't send me away now, can you?"

Ora walked slowly towards the sofa; he met her half-way and held out
both his hands; she gave him one of hers in a listless despairing
fashion.

"Oh, I know!" said he. "You've been making yourself unhappy?"

She waved him away gently, and sat down.

"What was in the note you wrote me?" he asked, standing opposite to her.

"That I could never see you again," she said.

"Oh, come!" Ashley expostulated with a laugh. "That's rather summary,
isn't it? What have I done?"

"Irene Kilnorton has been here."

"Ah! And was she disagreeable? She is sometimes--from a sense of duty or
what she takes for it."

"Yes, she was disagreeable."

"If that's all--" he began, taking a step forward.

"That's not all," Ora interrupted. "Are my eyes red?"

"You've not been crying?"

"Yes, I have," she retorted, almost angrily. "Oh, why did I go with you
on Sunday? Why did you make me go?"

She seemed to be conscience-stricken; he drew up a chair and sat down by
her. She did not send him away now but looked at him appealingly. She
had something of the air that she had worn in the inn parlour, but there
joy had been mingled with her appeal; there was no joy in her eyes now.

"We didn't do much harm on Sunday," he said.

"I believe I'm preventing you doing what you ought to do, what all your
friends wish for you, what would be best for you. It's just like me. I
can't help it."

"What are you preventing me from doing?"

"Oh, you know. Irene says you are quite getting to like her. And she's
so nice."

"But Lady Kilnorton's engaged already."

"You know I don't mean Lady Kilnorton. Don't make fun now, Ashley,
don't."

Ashley leant forward suddenly and kissed her cheek.

"Oh, that's not the least use," she moaned disconsolately. "If that was
all that's wanted, I know you'd do it." A mournful smile appeared on her
lips. "But it only makes it worse. I've made up my mind to something."

"So have I. I've made up my mind that you're the most charming woman in
the world, and that I don't care a hang about anything else."

"But you must, you know. We must be reasonable."

"Oh, I see Irene Kilnorton's been very disagreeable!"

"It's not Irene Kilnorton."

"Is it my true happiness, then?"

"No," said Ora, with another fugitive smile. "It's not exactly your true
happiness."

"Well, then, I don't know what it is."

Ora was silent for a moment, her dark eyes filled with woe.

"There's a letter on the mantel-piece," she said. "Will you give it to
me?"

He rose and took the letter. "This one from America?" he asked. "I say,
you're not going off there, starring, are you? Because I shall have to
come too, you know."

"No, I'm not going there." She took the letter out of its envelope.
"Read it," she said, and handed it to him.

Somehow, before he read a word of it, the truth flashed into his mind.
He looked at her and said one word: "Fenning?"

She nodded and then let her head fall back on the sofa. He read the
letter carefully and jealously; that it was written by a friend's hand
no doubt prevented Jack Fenning from saying more, as he himself hinted;
yet the colourlessness and restraint of what he wrote were a comfort to
Ashley.

He laid the letter down on the table and looked for a moment at his own
picture. Ora's eyes were on him; he leant forward, took her hand, and
raised it to his lips.

"Poor dear!" said he. Then he folded the letter, put it in its envelope,
laid the envelope on the mantel-piece, read Bridgeport, Conn., again on
the postmark, and, turning, stood looking down on her. He had not got
quite home to the heart of the situation. All that day long, as it
seemed to him, there had been ineffectual efforts to stop him, to turn
him from his path, and to rescue him from the impulses which were
carrying him along. The Buckingham Palace Road proposal, Irene
Kilnorton's hints, Alice Muddock's presence, had all been as it were
suggestions to him; he had not heeded the suggestions. Now came
something more categorical, something which must receive attention and
insisted on being heeded. Mr. Fenning had suddenly stepped out of
vagueness into definiteness, out of a sort of hypothetical into a very
real and pressing form of existence. He was now located in space at
Bridgeport, Connecticut; he was palpable in his written message; he
became urgent for consideration by virtue of his proposal. Ashley had,
in his heart, not taken Mr. Fenning very seriously; now Mr. Fenning
chose to upset his attitude in that respect in a most decisive fashion.
For whatever Ora decided to do, there must from now be a difference;
Ashley could not doubt that. She might accept her husband's proposal; in
that case her whole life was changed and his with it. She might refuse
to have anything to do with it; but then would not the discarded but
legitimate claimant on her affections and her society force her and him
out of the compromise under which they now sheltered themselves? Either
way, Jack Fenning must now be reckoned with; but which was to be the
way?

With a curious sense of surviving ignorance, with an uncomfortable
recognition that he was only at the beginning of the study and on the
outskirts of a knowledge of the woman whom he already loved and held
nearest to him of anybody in the world, Ashley discovered that he had no
idea in which way Ora would face the situation, what would be her
temper, or what her decision. For the first time in their acquaintance a
flash of discomfort, almost of apprehension, shot across his mind. Was
she as alien, as foreign, as diverse from him as that? But he would not
admit the feeling, would not have it or recognise it; it was absurd, he
told himself, to expect to foresee her choice, when he knew so little of
the factors which must decide it. Did he know Fenning, had he been privy
to their married life? Not in her but in the nature of the case lay the
puzzle. He dismissed his doubt and leant down towards the sad beautiful
face beside him.

"Well, dear?" he asked, very gently.

"I'm going to tell him to come," said she.




CHAPTER IX

RENUNCIATION: A DRAMA


The words in which Ora declared her intention of recalling Jack Fenning
to her side and of taking up again the burden of married life sounded
like the statement of a firm, unalterable, and independent resolution;
after them it seemed as though Ashley had only to bow his head and go
his ways; his task would be, if not easy, yet plain and simple. But with
the brave sound came the appealing glance; the words were uttered more
like a prayer than a decree. She had thrown herself on his mercy in the
inn parlour on the Sunday; she appeared to throw herself on his mercy
again now, and in reality to await his determination rather than
announce her own. But she was eager to win from him the verdict that she
suggested; she was not hoping for a refusal while she satisfied
appearances by asking. The appeal was full of fear and doubt, but it was
genuine and sincere. Her eyes followed him as he walked to the window
and as he came back and stood again before her; she watched the struggle
in him with anxiety. Once she smiled faintly as though to show her
understanding and her sympathy with what was passing in his mind. "I
feel all that too," she seemed to say.

"Have you quite made up your mind?" he asked her at last. "You've
realised what it means? I don't know him, of course, and you do. Well,
can you do it?"

"I must do it. I ought to do it," she said pathetically. "You know I
ought to do it."

He shrugged his shoulders; probably she was right there, unless Jack
Fenning were a much worse calamity than he had any good reason for
supposing; certainly everybody would hold her right, everybody who had
not queer theories, at least.

"You must help me," she said. He was silent. She rose and came to stand
by him, speaking to him in a low whisper. "Yes, you must help me, you
must make me able to do it. I can do it if you help me, Ashley. It is
right, you know."

A hint of amusement shewed itself in his face.

"Perhaps, but I shouldn't have thought I could help you much," he said.
"Unless you mean by going away and staying away?"

"Oh, no, no," she cried in terror. "You mustn't go away, you mustn't
leave me alone, I should die if you did that now. It's a thing for both
of us to do; we must help one another. We shall make one another
stronger. Don't you see what I mean? You won't go?"

He had not fathomed her mood yet, but only one answer to her prayer was
possible.

"I won't go as long as you want me," he said.

"You promise? You promise me that?" she insisted.

"Yes, I promise," he assured her with another smile.

"And you'll make it easy for me?" She, in her turn, smiled a moment. "I
mean you won't make it too difficult? I must be good, you must let me be
good. Some people say you're happy when you're good. I wonder! I shall
be very miserable, I know."

The tears were standing in her eyes; she looked indeed very miserable;
he kissed her.

"Yes," she murmured, as though he had told her in words that he pitied
her very much; she preserved that childlike sort of attitude towards
caresses; to Ashley it seemed to make kissing her almost meritorious.
She saw no inconsistency between accepting his kisses and holding to her
heroic resolution; it seemed almost as though she must be kissed to
enable her to hold to her resolution; it was the sympathy, or even the
commendation, without which her virtue could not stand.

"I can do it," she said plaintively. Then she drew herself up a little.
"Yes, I can," she repeated proudly, "I'm sure I can. We can do what we
ought, if we try. Oh, but how I shall hate it! If only it had come a
little sooner--before--before our Sunday! It wouldn't have been so bad,
then."

"No, it wouldn't," he said.

"Poor Ashley!" she said, pressing his hand. "Will it be very hard for
you?"

He answered with the shamefaced brevity and reserve with which men,
trained as he had been, confess to emotion.

"I shan't like it, naturally."

"But you must be strong too," she urged. "We must make each other
strong." She returned with evident comfort to this idea of their helping
one another; they were to fight as allies, in a joint battle, not each
to support a solitary unaided struggle. To most people it would have
seemed that they would make one another weak. Ora was sure of the
contrary; they would make one another strong, support one another
against temptation, and applaud one another's successes. She could be
good, could be even heroic, could perform miracles of duty and
resignation, if she had the help of Ashley's sympathy and the comfort of
his presence. And he would feel the same, she thought; she could soften
the trial to which she was obliged to subject him; she could console
him; her tender grief and her love, ardent while renouncing, would
inspire him to the task of duty. She grew eager as this idea took shape
in her mind; she pressed it on him, anxious to make him see it in the
aspect in which she saw it, to understand the truth and to appreciate
the beauty that lay in it. She was sure it was true. It surprised her to
find this beauty also in it. But if they separated now, cut themselves
adrift from one another, and went off their different ways, all that
drew her in the picture would be destroyed, and she would be left
without the balm of its melancholy sweetness. She tried by every means
in her power to enlist him on her side and make him look at the question
as she looked at it.

Always obedient to her pleading orders, never able openly to reject what
she prayed him to accept, Ashley feigned to fall in with an idea which
his clearsightedness shewed very much in its real colours and traced to
its true origin. It had begun in the instinctive desire not to lose him
yet, to put off the day of sacrifice, to reconcile, so far as might be
possible, two inconsistent courses, to pay duty its lawful tribute and
yet keep a secret dole for the rebel emotion which she loved. Up to this
point she was on ground common enough, and did only what many men and
women seek and strive to do. Her individual nature shewed itself in the
next step, when the idea that she had made began to attract her, to grow
beautiful, to shape itself into a picture of renunciatory passion,
moving and appealing in her eyes. But there must be other eyes; he too
must see; by interchange of glances they must share and heighten their
appreciation of what they were engaged on. Her morality, her effort to
be, as she put it, good, must not only be liberally touched by emotion;
it must be supported and stimulated by sympathetic applause. Reluctantly
and almost with a sense of ungenerousness, as though he were
criticising her ill-naturedly, he found himself applying to her the
terms of her own art, beginning to see her in effective scenes, to
detect an element of the theatrical in her mood. This notion came to him
without bringing with it any repugnance and without making him impute to
her any insincerity. She was sincere enough, indeed absolutely engrossed
in her emotion and in the picture her emotion made. But the sincerity
was more of emotion than of purpose, and the emotion demanded applause
for the splendid feat of self-abnegation which it was to enable her and
him to achieve. He was quite incapable of casting this glamour round his
own share in the matter, but he strove to feel and perceive it in hers
as she pleaded softly with him that he should not leave her to struggle
in grim solitude. And he was glad of any excuse for not leaving her.

"I can't think yet of what it will be like when he's come," she said. "I
mustn't think of that, or--or I couldn't go on. I must just do it now;
that's what we've got to do, isn't it? We must get it done, Ashley, and
leave all the rest. We must just do what's right without looking beyond
it."

"There's no particular good in looking forward," he admitted ruefully.
"You're quite clear about it?"

"Oh, yes, aren't you? I'm sure you are." She looked at him
apprehensively. "You mustn't turn against me. I can be strong with you
to help me; I couldn't be strong against you." Her voice fell even
lower. "Not for an hour," she ended in a whisper.

Again she threw herself on his mercy; again he could not fail her or be
deaf to her prayer.

"If you think it right, I can say nothing against it," he said.

"No. You wouldn't be happy if you did; I mean if you did persuade me to
anything else. I know there aren't many men like you, capable of doing
what you're going to do for me. But you can do it."

He perceived the glamour encircling him now as well as her; quarrelling
with his own words, still he said to himself that his part also was to
be an effective one; she was liberal to him and shewed no desire to
occupy all the stage; her eyes would be as much for him as for herself.

"And because you're strong, I can be strong," she went on. "We shall
both be glad afterwards, shan't we?"

"Let's rest in the consciousness of virtue, and never mind the
gladness," he suggested.

Ora discarded the gladness almost eagerly.

"Yes," she said. "Because we shall both be terribly unhappy. We've got
to face that. We aren't doing it blindly. We know what it means."

He doubted greatly whether she knew what it meant; she could not realise
its meaning so long as she refused to look forward or to consider the
actual state of things when Jack Fenning had arrived, so long as she
preferred to concentrate all her gaze on the drama of renunciation which
was to precede and bring about his coming. But in all this there was
only an added pathos to him, a stronger appeal to his compassion, and an
insuperable difficulty in the way of even trying to make her understand;
such an attempt seemed brutal in his eyes. He could comfort her now; he
could not tell her that when the moving scene ended with the entrance of
Jack Fenning he would be able to comfort her no more.

The same mood which prevented her from looking forward made her
reluctant to talk of her husband as he actually was. Under pressure of
Ashley's questions she told him that she had begun by loving Jack and
had gone on liking him for some little while; but that he bore poverty
badly and yet was indolent; that he often neglected her and sometimes
had been unkind; that he was very extravagant, got into terrible money
difficulties, and had been known to turn to the bottle for relief from
his self-created troubles. But she became very distressed with the
subject and obviously preferred to leave Jack Fenning vague, to keep him
to the part of a husband in the abstract. This was all the drama
needed--a husband accepted in duty but no longer loved or desired; the
personal characteristics or peculiarities of the particular husband were
unessential and unimportant. Ashley was surprised to find how little he
had learnt about Mr. Fenning. But he was learning more about Mr.
Fenning's wife.

"It's not what he is," urged Ora, "it's what we've got to do."

By now Ashley felt irrevocably coupled with her in a common task; and to
him at least the precise character of the husband was not important.
They were to act on the high plane of duty; Jack's past misdeeds or
present defects were to be of no moment except in so far as they might
intensify the struggle and enhance the beauty of renunciation. Ashley
was so far infected with her spirit that he was glad to be left with a
number of impressions of Jack Fenning all vaguely unfavourable.

"Nothing will ever alter or spoil the memory of our Sunday," she said.
"It'll be there always, the one sweet and perfect thing in life. I think
we shall find it even more perfect because of what we're going to do. I
shall think about it every day as long as I live. I think it helps to
have been happy just once, don't you? It'll never be as if we hadn't
known we loved one another."

With the dismissal of the topic of Jack Fenning's character and the
acceptance of the position that they were not to look forward beyond the
act of renunciation, Ora had grown composed, cheerful, and at moments
almost gay. Already she seemed to have triumphed in her struggle, or
their struggle as she always called it; already she was minded to
exchange congratulations with her ally. Her mere presence was such a
charm to him as to win him to happiness, even while they were agreeing
that happiness was impossible; the sense of loss, of deprivation, and of
emptiness was postponed and could not assert itself while sh

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