"Of course I can't tell whether you expect him, Miss Pinsent. All I know is he won't come." Babba's eye-glass fell from his eye in its most conclusive manner.
"Oh, yes, he will," cried Ora triumphantly. "I know all about it; the boat, and the time, and everything else."
"You'll see, he won't be there," Babba persisted. "I wonder if you'll be awfully surprised!"
"Why should I say he's coming if he isn't?" asked Ora, but rather with amusement than indignation.
"Oh, for an advertisement, or just because it came into your head, or as the homage liberty pays to matrimony; any reason you like, you know."
Their debate filled Alice with wonder. It was strange that Ora should lend an ear to Babba's suggestions, thatshe should not at once silence him; yet she listened with apparent interest, although, of course, she repudiated the motives imputed to her and declared that in all sincerity she expected her husband. Babba fell back on blank assertion. "He won't come, you'll see," he repeated.
The extreme impertinence of the little man moved Alice to resentment; in whatever sense his remarks were taken, they must bear an offensive meaning. But Ora did not seem resentful; strangely enough she began to shew signs of disturbance, she brought forward serious arguments to prove that Jack Fenning would come, and appealed to Babba to alter his opinion with pathetic eyes. Babba was inexorable.
"Really you must allow Miss Pinsent to know," Alice expostulated.
"It's a matter of experience," Babba observed. "They're always going to turn up, but they never do."
"Why do you say he won't come?" asked Ora anxiously.
"I've told you the reason. They never do," repeated Babba obstinately. Bob Muddock burst into a laugh, Alice frowned severely, Ora's brows were knit in puzzled wrinkles. This suggestion of an impediment in the way of the renunciation and reformation was quite new to her; but she did not appear to be struck at all by what seemed to Alice the indecency of discussing it.
"Suppose he didn't!" Ora murmured audibly; a smile came slowly to her lips and her eyes seemed to grow full of half-imaged possibilities. Babba made no comment; his smile was enough for all who knew the facts of the present situation; for example, for all who knew in what company Miss Pinsent drove to the theatre. "If he didn't—" Ora began. Babba's mocking eye was onher. She began to laugh. "I know what you're thinking!" she cried with a menacing wave of her hand.
The scene had become distasteful, almost unendurable, to Alice Muddock. Here was the side of Ora that she detested; it raised all the old prejudices in her and argued that they were well justified. She also knew what Babba Flint's look meant, and wanted to turn him out of the room for it. Such punishment would be only proper; it would also have propitiated in some degree the jealousy which made her unwilling to admit that possibly Mr. Fenning might not come.
The young men went; she and Ora were alone together; Alice's feeling of hostility persisted and became manifest to Ora's quick perception. In an instant she implored pity and forgiveness by abandoning herself to condemnation.
"Now you see what I am! And you might have been my friend!" she murmured. "But you don't know how unhappy I am."
"I don't believe you're unhappy at all," said Alice with blunt barbarity.
"Not unhappy!" exclaimed Ora in dismay. If she were not unhappy, the whole structure tumbled.
"You will be, though," Alice pursued relentlessly. "You'll be very unhappy when Mr. Fenning comes, and I think you'd be unhappy if by any chance he didn't come." She paused and looked at her visitor. "I shouldn't like to be like you," she said thoughtfully.
Ora sat quiet; there was a scared look on her face; she turned her eyes up to Alice who sat on a higher chair.
"Why do you say that sort of thing to me?" she asked in a low voice.
"It's quite true. I shouldn't. And all the rest is true too." Her voice grew harder and harder in opposition to an inner pleading for mercy. This woman should not wheedle her into lies; she would tell the truth for once, although Ora did sit there—looking like a child condemned to rigorous punishment.
"It's not decent the way you talk about it, and let people talk about it," she broke out in a burst of indignation. "Have you no self-respect? Don't you know how people talk about you? Oh, I wouldn't be famous at the price of that!"
Ora did not cry; the hurt was beyond tears; she grew white, her eyes were wide and her lips parted; she watched Alice as a dog seems to watch for the next fall of the whip.
"You say you're unhappy. Lots of us are unhappy, but we don't tell all the world about it. And we don't hug our unhappiness either and make a play out of it." What Ashley had reluctantly and secretly thought came in stern and cutting plainness from Alice's lips; but Ashley would have died sooner than breathe a word of it to Ora.
"I suppose," said Alice, "you think I'm angry because—because of something that concerns myself. I'm not, I'm just telling you the truth." She was sure that it was the truth, however it might be inspired, however it was that she had come to utter it. "What does that man say about you when you aren't there? He says almost everything to your face! And you laugh! What does he say after dinner, what does he say at his club?"
"Please let me go home," said Ora. "Please let me go home." She seemed almost to stagger as she rose. "I must go home," she said, "Or—or I shan't have time for dinner."
"I suppose you like—" Alice began, but she stopped herself. She had said enough; the face before her seemed older, thinner, drawn into lines that impaired its beauty, as it were scarred with a new knowledge; the eyes that met hers were terrified. "It's all true," she said to herself again. "Quite true. Only nobody has ever told her the truth."
She rang the bell, but did not go with Ora to the door; neither of them thought of shaking hands; a quarter of an hour before Ora would have offered one of her ready kisses. Now she went quietly and silently to the door and opened it with timid noiselessness. As she went out, she looked back over her shoulder; a movement from Alice, the holding out of a hand, would have brought her back in a flood of tears and a burst of pitiful protests at once against herself and against the accusations laid to her charge. No sign came; Alice stood stern and immovable.
"I'm late as it is. Good-bye," whispered Ora.
She went out. Alice stood still where she was for a moment before she flung herself into a chair, exclaiming again, and this time aloud,
"It's true, it's true; every word of it's the truth!" She was very anxious to convince herself that every word of it was true.
The next few days were critical for the renunciation, and consequently for the reformation which was to accompany it. In the first place, Jack Fenning was now very near; secondly, Ashley Mead's behaviour was so perfect as to suggest almost irresistibly an alternative course; finally, thanks to Alice Muddock's outspokenness, Ora was inclined to call virtue thankless and to decide that one whom all the world held wicked might just as well for all the world be wicked. She had appealed from Alice to Irene Kilnorton, hinting at the cruelty to which she had been subjected. She found no comfort; there was an ominous tightening of Irene's lips. Ora flew home and threw herself—the metaphorical just avoids passing into the literal—on Ashley's bosom. There were tears and protests against universal injustice; she cried to him, "Take me away from all of them!" What answer did she expect or desire? He could not tell. Mr. Fenning was due on Sunday, and Ora's piece was running still. Yet at the moment it seemed as though she would fly into space with him and a hand-bag, leaving renunciations, reformations, virtues, careers, and livelihoods to look after themselves, surrendering herself to the rare sweetness of unhindered impulse. For himself, he was ready; he had come to that state of mind in regard to her.His ordinary outlook on life was blocked by her image, his plan of existence, with all its lines of reason, of hope, of ambition, blurred by the touch of her finger. Only very far behind, somewhere remote in the background, lay the haunting conviction that these last, and not his present madness, would prove in the end the abiding reality. What made him refuse, or rather evade, the embracing of her request was that same helplessness in her which had restrained his kisses in the inn parlour. If she turned on him later, crying, "You could do what you liked with me, why did you do this with me?" what would he have to answer? "We'll settle it to-morrow; you must start for the theatre now," he said. "So I must. Am I awfully late?" cried Ora.
That evening he dined with Bob Muddock. Bertie Jewett and Babba Flint were his fellow-guests. All three seemed to regard him with interest—Bob's, admiring; Bertie's, scornful; Babba's, amused. Bob envied the achievement of such a conquest; Bertie despised the man who wasted time on it; Babba was sympathetic and hinted confidential surprise that anybody made any bones about it. But they none of them doubted it; and of the renunciation none knew or took account. A course of action which fails to suggest itself to anybody incurs the suspicion of being mad, or at least wrong-headed and quixotic. Ashley told himself that his conduct was all these things, and had no countervailing grace of virtue. It was no virtue to fear a reproach in Ora's eyes; it was the merest cowardice; yet that fear was all that held him back.
After dinner Bob drew him to a sofa apart from their companions and began to discuss the dramatic profession. Ashley suffered patiently, but his endurance changed to amusement when Bob passed to the neighbouringart of music, found in it a marked superiority, and observed that he had been talking over the subject with Minna Soames.
"I don't see how anybody can object to singing at concerts," said Bob, with a shake of the head for inconceivable narrow-mindedness, "not even the governor."
"Sits the wind in that quarter?" asked Ashley, laughing.
"I've got my eye on her, if that's what you mean," answered Bob. "She's ripping, isn't she?"
The vague and violent charms which the epithet seemed to imply were not Minna's. Ashley replied that she was undoubtedly pretty and charming. Bob eyed him with a questioning air; it was as though a man who had been on a merry-go-round were consulted by one who thought of venturing on the trip.
"People talk a great deal of rot," Bob reflected. "A girl isn't degraded, or unsexed, or anything of that sort, just because she sings for her living."
"Surely not," smiled Ashley.
The prejudices were crying out in pain as Bob's newborn idea crushed and mangled them.
"But the governor's so against all that sort of thing," Bob complained. Then he looked up at his friend. "That's mostly your fault," he added, with an awkward laugh.
"My dear Bob, the cases are not parallel."
"Well, Miss Soames hasn't got a husband, of course."
There was no use in being angry, or even in representing that the remark which had seemed so obvious to Bob was a considerable liberty.
"Imagine her with a thousand husbands, and still the cases couldn't be parallel."
"She's not on the stage."
"And if she were, the distinctions run by people, not by professions," said Ashley.
"Well, I'm thinking of it," Bob announced. And he added, with a ludicrous air of desiring the suspicion, while he repudiated the fact, of dishonourable intentions, "All on the square, of course."
"Good heavens, I should think so!" said Ashley. The imagination of man could attribute no crooked dealings or irregular positions to Miss Soames.
"Still, I don't know about the governor," Bob ended, with a relapse into gloom.
"She'd retire from her work, of course?" Ashley suggested, smiling.
"If she married me? Oh, of course," said Bob decisively. "She wouldn't want the money, would she?" Any other end of a profession had not occurred to him, and his opinion that active and public avocations were not "unsexing" to women was limited by the proviso that such employments must be necessary for bread-and-butter.
An eye for the variety of the human mind may make almost any society endurable. Here was Bob struggling with conscious daring against convention, as a prelude to paying his court to a lady who worshipped the god whom he persuaded himself to brave; here was Babba Flint drifting vulgarly, cheerfully, irresponsibly, through all his life and what money he happened from time to time to possess; here was Bertie Jewett, his feet set resolutely on the upward track, scorning diversion, crying "Excelsior" with exalted fervour as he pictured the gold he would gather and pocket on the summit of the hill; here, finally, was Ashley himself, who had once set out to climb another hill, and now eagerly turnedhis head to listen to a sweet voice that cried to him from the valley. Such differences may lie behind four precisely similar and equally spotless white shirt-fronts on the next sofa any evening that we drop into the club. Therefore it needs discrimination, and perhaps also some prepossessions, to assign degrees of merit to the different ideas of how time in this world had best be passed.
"The fact is," Babba was saying to Bertie Jewett, as he nodded a knowing head towards Ashley, "he was getting restive, so she made up this yarn about her husband." He yawned, as if the matter were plain to dulness.
"What an ass he is!" mused Bertie. "Don't you know the chance he had? He might have been where I am!"
Babba turned a rather supercilious look on his companion.
"The shop? Must be a damned grind, isn't it?"
Bertie was nettled; he revealed a little of what he had begun to learn that he ought to conceal.
"I bet you I earn a sovereign quicker than you earn a shilling," he remarked.
"Daresay you do," murmured Babba, regarding the end of his cigar. Babba was vulgar, but not with this sort of vulgarity.
"And more of 'em," pursued Bertie.
"But you have an infernally slow life of it," Babba assured him. Babba was ignorant of the engrossing charms that sparkle in the eyes of wealth, forbidding weariness in its courtship, making all else dull and void of allurement to its votaries. To each man his own hunger.
Back to his hunger went Ashley Mead, no less ravenous, yet seeing his craving in the new light of desiresrevealed to him, but still alien from him. All his world seemed now united in crying out to him to mind his steps, in pointing imploringly or mockingly to the abyss before his feet, in weeping, wondering, or laughing at him. That some of the protests were conscious, some unwitting, made no difference; the feeling of standing aloof from all the rest gave him a sense of doom, as though he were set apart for his work, and amidst condemnation, pity, and ridicule must go through with it. For to-morrow he thought that she would come with him, leaving Mr. Fenning desolate, Sidney Hazlewood groaning over agreements misunderstood as to their nature, friends heart-broken, and the world agape.
But the next day she would not come, or, rather, prayed not to be taken.
"You mustn't, you mustn't," she sobbed. "Alice Muddock had made me angry, oh, and hurt me so. I was ready to do anything. But don't, Ashley dear, don't! Do let me be good. That'll be the best way of answering her, won't it? I couldn't answer her then."
"Alice? What's Alice been saying?" he asked, for he had not been told the details of that particular case of cruelty.
"I can't tell you. Oh, it was horrible! Was it true? Say it wasn't true!"
"You haven't told me what it was," he objected.
"Oh dear me, neither I have!" cried Ora, drawing back from him; her eyes swam in tears, but her lips bent in smiles. "How awfully absurd of me!" she exclaimed, and broke into the low luxurious laughter that he loved. "Well, it was something bad of me; so it couldn't be true, could it?"
He pressed her to tell him what it was and she told him, becoming again sorrowful and wounded as sherehearsed the story; the point of view surprised her so. To Ashley it was no surprise, nothing more than a sharp unsparing utterance of the doubts of his own mind. His quarrel with Alice was that she said it, not that she thought it; she was bound to think it when he in all his infatuation could not stifle the thought. Was he in love then with a bundle of emotions and ready to give away his life in exchange for a handful of poses? In self-defence he embraced the conclusion and twisted it to serve his purpose. What more is anybody, he asked—what more than the sheet on which slide after slide is momentarily shewn?
"But still she was wrong," said Ora. "Oh, I can forgive her. Of course I forgive her. It's only because she's fond of you. I know I'm not really like that. It's not the true me, Ashley."
The idea of the "true me" delighted Ora, and the "true me" required that Mr. Fenning should be met punctually on Sunday next. The renunciation raised its head again.
"The 'true me,' then, is really a very sober and correct person?" asked Ashley.
"Yes," she answered, enjoying the paradox she asserted. Her interest in herself was frank and almost might be called artistic. "Do you think me strange?" she asked. "I believe you're laughing at me half the time."
"And the other half?"
"We weep together, don't we? Poor Ashley!"
On the Saturday he came to see her again in order to make final arrangements for their expedition of the next day. There was also a point on which they had never touched, to which, as he believed, Ora had given no consideration. Was Mr. Fenning to settle down in thelittle house at Chelsea? At present the establishment was in all its appearance and fittings so exclusively feminine that it seemed an impossible residence for a man. Ora was not in the room when Janet ushered him in; that respectable servant lingered near the door and, after a moment's apparent hesitation, spoke to him.
"I beg pardon, sir," she said, "but could you tell me where I can get some good whiskey?"
"Whiskey?" Ashley exclaimed in surprise.
"Mr. Fenning, sir, used to be particular about his whiskey, and as he's—"
"Oh, yes, of course, Janet." He thought for a moment and mentioned the wine merchant with whom Lord Bowdon dealt. "I think you'll be safe there," he ended with a nod.
Janet thanked him and went out.
"This really brings it home," said Ashley, dropping into a chair and laughing weakly to himself. "Tomorrow night Jack Fenning'll sit here and drink that whiskey, while I—"
He rose abruptly and walked about the room. His portrait in the silver frame was still on the little table by Ora's favourite seat; not even a letter from Bridgeport, Connecticut, was there to hint of Mr. Fenning. The demand for a good whiskey seemed the sole forerunner of the wanderer's return.
"She doesn't know in the least what she's doing," Ashley muttered as he flung himself into his seat again.
That afternoon she was in the mood hardest for him to bear. She was sanguine about her husband; she recalled the short time they had contrived to be happy together, dwelt on the amiable points in his character, ascribed his weaknesses more to circumstances than tonature, and took on her own shoulders a generous share of blame for the household's shipwreck. All this is to say that the reformation for the instant took precedence of the renunciation, and a belief in the possibility, not perhaps of being happy with Jack, but at least of making Jack happy, was bedecked in the robes of a virtuous aspiration. "It would be no use having him back if I couldn't make him happy, would it?" she asked. She shewed sometimes this strange forgetfulness of her friend's feelings.
"I know I've got a photograph of him somewhere," she said with a troubled little frown. "I wonder where it is!" Then a lucky thought brought a smile. "I expect he'd like to see it on the mantel-piece, wouldn't he?" she cried, turning to Ashley.
"I should think he'd be very touched. He might even believe it had been there all the time."
"Don't be sarcastic," said Ora good-humouredly. "I'll ask Janet where I've put it."
Janet, being summoned and questioned, knew where Miss Pinsent had put the photograph, or anyhow where it was to be found. In a few minutes she produced it.
"It is handsome, you see," said Ora, handing it across to Ashley. She appeared anxious for a favourable opinion from him.
The face was certainly handsome. The features were straight, the eyes large, the brow well formed; there was no great appearance of intellect or resolution, but the smile was amiable. Ashley handed it back with a nod of assent, and Ora set it on the mantel-piece. Ashley's bitterness overflowed.
"Put it in the frame instead of mine," he said, stretching out his hand to take his own portrait.
In an instant Ora was across to the table and snatchedup the picture. She held it close to her with both hands and stood fronting him defiantly.
"No," she said, "no. You shan't touch it. Nobody shall touch it."
He leant back with a smile of despairing amusement. She put down the portrait and came close to him, looking at him intently; then she dropped on her knees beside him and took his hand between hers.
"Fancy you daring to think that!" she said. A look of terror came into her eyes. "You're not going to be like that?" she moaned. "I can't go on if you're going to be like that."
He meant far more than he had hinted in his bitter speech; this afternoon he had intended to tell her his resolution; this was his last visit to the little house; from to-morrow afternoon he would be an acquaintance to whom she bowed in the streets, whom she met now and then by chance. He might tell her that now—now while she held his hands between hers. And if he told her that and convinced her of it, she would not go to meet Jack Fenning. He sat silent as she looked up in his eyes. His struggle was short; it lacked the dramatic presentment of Ora's mental conflicts, it had no heroic poses; but there emerged again clearly from the fight the old feeling that to use her love and his power in this fashion would not be playing fair; he must let her have her chance with her husband.
"I was a brute, Ora," he said. "I'll do just what you like, dear."
With a bound she was back to merriment and her sanguine view of favourable possibilities in Mr. Fenning. She built more and more on these last, growing excited as she pictured how recent years might, nay must, have improved him, how the faults of youth might, indeedwould, have fallen away, and how the true man should be revealed. "And if he wants a friend, you'll always be one to him," she ended. Ashley, surrendering at discretion, promised to be a friend to Jack Fenning.
The next day found her in the same temper. She was eager and high-strung, merry and full of laughs, thoughtfully kind, and again thoughtlessly most cruel. When he called for her in the morning she was ready, waiting for him; from her air they might have been starting again for a day in the country by themselves, going to sit again in the meadow by the river, going to dine again in the inn parlour whose window opened on the sweet old garden. No such reminiscences, so sharp in pain for him, seemed to rise in her or to mar her triumph. For triumphant she was; her great purpose was being carried out; renunciation accomplished, reformation on the point of beginning. Prosperously the play had run up to its last great scene; soon must the wondering applause of friends fall on her ear; soon would Alice Muddock own that her virtue had been too cruel, and Babba Flint confess his worldly sagacity at fault. To herself now she was a heroine, and she rejoiced in her achievements with the innocent vanity of a child who displays her accomplishments to friendly eyes. How much she had suffered, how much forgone, how much resisted! Now she was to reap her reward.
Their train was late; if the boat had made a good passage it would be in before them; the passengers who had friends to meet them would be in waiting. They might find Jack Fenning on the platform as their engine steamed into the station. They had talked over this half way through the journey, and Ora seemed rather pleased at the prospect; Ashley took advantage of her happy mood to point out that it would be better for himto leave her alone with Jack; he would get a plate of cold meat somewhere, and go back to town by himself later on. She acquiesced reluctantly but without much resistance. "We can tell you about our journey afterwards," she said. Then had come more rosy pictures of the future. At last they were finished. There was a few minutes' silence. Ashley looked out of the window and then at his watch.
"We ought to be there in ten minutes," he said.
Her eyes grew wide; her hands dropped in her lap; she looked at him.
"In ten minutes, Ashley?" she said in a low voice. It had come at last, the thing, not pictures, not imaginings of the thing. "Ten minutes?" she whispered.
He could hardly speak to her. As her unnatural excitement, so his unnatural calm fell away; he lost composure and was not master of his voice. He took her hands and said, "Good-bye, my dear, good-bye. I'm going to lose you now, Ora."
"Ashley, Ashley!" she cried.
"I'm not going to be unkind, but there must be a difference."
"Yes," she said in a wondering tone. "There must, I suppose. But you'll come often?"
He meant never to come.
"Now and then, dear," he said. Then he kissed her; that he had not meant to do; and she kissed him.
"Ashley," she whispered, "perhaps he won't be kind to me; perhaps—oh, I never thought of that! Perhaps he'll be cruel, or—or not what I've fancied him. Ashley, my love, my love, don't leave me altogether! I can't bear it, indeed I can't. I shall die if you leave me."
She was terrified now at the thought of the unknownman waiting for her and the loss of the man whom she knew so well. Her dramatic scenes helped her no more; her tears and terror now were unrehearsed; she clung to his hand as though it held life for her.
"Oh, how did I ever think I could do it?" she moaned. "Are we going slower? Is the train stopping? Oh, are we there, are we there?"
"We've not begun to go slower yet," he said. In five minutes they must arrive.
"Stay with me till I see him; you must stay; you must stay till I've seen what—what he's going to be to me. I shall kill myself if you leave me."
"I'll stay till you've found him," Ashley answered in a hard restrained voice. "Then I must go away."
The train rumbled on; they were among the houses now; the ships in the harbour could be seen; the people in the next carriage were moving about, chattering loudly and merrily. The woman he loved sat with despairing eyes, clinging to his hand. "It's slower," she whispered, with lips just parted. "It's slower now, isn't it?" The train went slower; he nodded assent. The girl next door laughed gaily; perhaps she went to meet her lover. Suddenly the brake creaked, they stopped, there was something in the way. "How tiresome!" came loudly and impatiently from next door. Ora's grasp fixed itself tighter on his hand; she welcomed the brief reprieve. Her eyes drew him to her; the last embrace seemed to leave her half animate; she sank back in her seat with closed eyes. With a groan and a grumble the wheels began to move again. Ora gave a little shiver but made no other sign. Ashley let down the window with a jerk, and turned his face to the cool air that rushed in. He could not look more at Ora; he had a thing to do now, the last thing, and itwas not good for the doing of it that he should look at her. She might cry again to him, "Take me away!" and now he might forget that to obey was not fair play. Besides, here came the platform, and on the platform he would find Jack Fenning. There may be passions but there must not be scenes; he could not tell Jack that he had decided to take Ora back to town on his own account. He and she between them had spun a web of the irrevocable; they had followed virtue, here was the reward. But where were the trappings which had so gorgeously ornamented it? Ora's eyes were closed and she saw them no more.
Slowly they crept into the station; the platform was full of people and of luggage; it seemed as though the boat were already in. At last the train came to a stand; he laid his hand lightly on Ora's.
"Here we are," he said. "Will you wait by the carriage till I find out where he is?"
She opened her eyes and slowly rose to her feet.
"Yes; I'll do what you tell me," she said.
He opened the door and helped her to get out. She shivered and drew her cloak closer round her. There was a bench near. He led her to it and told her to sit there. "I shall know him and I'll bring him to you. Promise not to move," he said.
Just as he turned to leave her she put out her hand and laid it on his arm.
"Ashley!" he heard her whisper. He bent down to catch what she said, but it was a moment before she went on. It seemed as though words came hard to her and she would like to tell him all with her eyes. She raised her other hand and pointed to the arm that rested on his.
"What is it, dear?" he asked.
"Did I ever tell you? I forget what I've told you and what I haven't."
"What is it? What do you want to tell me?"
"He struck me once; on the arm, just there, with his fist." She touched her arm above the elbow, near the shoulder.
She had never told him that; nothing less than this moment's agony, wherein sympathy must be had at every cost, could have brought it to her lips. Ashley pressed her hand and turned away to look for Jack Fenning.
The fast train, by which they ought to travel, left for London in a quarter of an hour; a slow train would follow twenty minutes later. Ashley procured this information before undertaking his search; since the platform was still crowded it seemed possible that Mr. Fenning would not be found in time for the fast train. He proved hard to find; yet he might have been expected to be on the look-out. Ashley sought him conscientiously and diligently, but before long a vague hope began to rise in him that the man had not come after all. What then? He did not answer the question. It was enough to picture Ora freed from her fears, restored to the thoughtless joyousness of their early days together. If by wild chance he had found the man dead or heard that he was dead, he would have been glad with a natural heathen exultation. People die on voyages across the Atlantic sometimes; there is an average of deaths in mid-ocean; averages must be maintained; how maintain one with more beneficial incidental results than by killing Mr. Fenning? Ashley smiled grimly; his temper did not allow the humour of any situation to escape him; he felt it even in the midst of the strongest feelings. His search for Jack Fenning, while Jack Fenning's wife sat in terror, while he loved Jack Fenning's wife, had its comic side; he wonderedhow matters would strike Jack, supposing him to be alive, and to have come; or, again, if he were dead and fluttering invisible but open-eyed over the platform.
He saw the girl who had been in the next carriage, hanging on a young man's arm, radiant and half in tears; but the young man was not like Jack's photograph. There were many young men, but none of them Jack Fenning. He scoured the platform in vain. A whistle sounded loud, and there were cries of "Take your seats!" Ashley looked at his watch; that was the express starting; they would be doomed to crawl to town. Where the plague was Jack Fenning? This suspense would be terrible for Ora. How soon could he be safe in going back and telling her that Jack had not come? What a light would leap to her face! How she would murmur, "Ashley!" in her low rich voice! She seemed able to say anything and everything in the world to him with that one word, "Ashley!" to help the eloquence of her eyes.
A rush of people scurrying out of the refreshment-room and running to catch the express encountered and buffeted him. Here was a place he had not ransacked; perhaps Jack Fenning was in the refreshment-room; a remembrance of Janet's anxiety about a good whiskey gave colour to the idea. Ashley waited till the exodus was done and then strolled in; the place was almost empty; the barmaids were reaching their arms over the counter to gather up the used glasses or wipe the marble surface with cloths. But at the far end of the room there was a man standing at the bar, with a tumbler before him; he was smoking and in conversation with the girl who served him. Ashley stood still on the threshold for a moment or two, watching this man. "This is my man," he said to himself; he seemedto have an intuitive knowledge of the fact and not to rely on any pose or air which he had noticed in the photograph; he knew that he was looking at Ora's husband, and stood and looked at him. The man had come; he was not dead; he was here, drinking at the bar. "How much would he take to go away again?" That was Ashley's thought. Then he shook his head and walked towards the man, who had just set his glass down empty.
"You'll have missed the express," said the girl behind the counter.
"I was bound to have a drink," protested the customer in a rather injured tone.
He turned away, stooped, lifted a hand-bag, and came down the room. Ashley noticed that his right hand was bandaged; he thought he noticed also a slight uncertainty in his walk; he did not lurch or stagger, but he swayed a little. "Just sixpenn'orth too much," was Ashley's summary. Then he walked up to the stranger and asked if he had the honour of addressing Mr. Fenning.
There remained always in Ashley Mead's mind a memory of Jack Fenning as he was that day, of his soft blurred voice, his abashed eyes, his slight swayings, and the exaggerated apologetic firmness (or even aggression) of gait that followed them, of his uneasy deference towards the man who met him, of his obvious and unfeigned nervousness on being told that Miss Pinsent was waiting for him. Had child married child? The question leapt to Ashley's thoughts. Here was no burly ruffian, full of drink and violence. He had been drinking, but surely as a boy who takes his second glass of birthday port, not knowing the snake which lurks among that pleasant, green grass? He had struck Ora;the ugly fact was there; yet now Ashley found himself asking whether children had not their tempers, whether they are to be judged as men are judged, as gentlemen claim to be judged. Jack Fenning came neither in a truculent resentment against his wife, nor in a masterful assertion of his rights, nor (which would have been worst of all) in a passion for her. He did not question Ashley's position, he did not ask how he came to be there; nor did he demand to be taken to his wife, nor did he fly to seek her.
"She's here, is she?" he said with an unmistakable accent of alarm.
"Yes, she's here. Come along. I'll take you to her," said Ashley curtly. He was angry to find his resentment oozing away. "Didn't you know she was coming to meet you?"
"She said she might," murmured Jack. "But I didn't think she would."
"I thought there'd be a crowd and so on, so I ran down with her," Ashley explained, despising himself for explaining at all.
"Awfully kind of you," said Mr. Fenning. "Where—where did you leave her?"
"Oh, on a seat on the platform. Where's your luggage?"
"Here." He held up the hand-bag.
"That all?"
"Yes, that's all," said Jack with a propitiatory smile. "I didn't see the good of bringing much." He paused and then added, "I haven't got much, you know." Another pause followed. "I hope that—that Miss Pinsent's all right?" he ended.
"Yes, she's all right. Come along." Then he asked abruptly, "Hurt your hand?"
Jack raised his hand and looked at it. "I got it burnt," he said. "We were making a night of it, and some fool made the poker hot—we had an open fire—and I didn't see it was hot and laid hold of it." He looked at his companion's face, which wore a grim smile. "Of course I shouldn't have done it if I hadn't had a drop too much," he added, smiling.
"Good God!" groaned Ashley to himself as he led the way. Wouldn't anything, the burly ruffian, the crafty schemer, or even the coarse lover, have been better than this? Any of them might have ranked as a man, any of them might have laid a grasp on Ora and ruled her life to some pattern. But what could or should this poor creature do? Why, he had come at her bidding, and now was afraid to meet her!
"Has she talked about me?" Jack asked timidly.
"Yes, a lot," said Ashley. He looked over his shoulder and sent a very direct glance into his companion's eyes. "She's told me all about it, or nearly all," he added. Jack looked ashamed and acutely distressed. Ashley felt sorry for him and cursed himself for the feeling. "You'll get along better now, I hope," he said, looking away. Then he smiled; it had occurred to him to wonder what all the folk who were so interested in the coming of Mr. Fenning would make of this Mr. Fenning who had come. For an embodiment of respectability, of regularity of life, and of the stability of the conjugal relation, this creature was so—there seemed but one word—so flabby.
"Is Janet still with Miss Pinsent?" asked Jack. It was evident that he hesitated as to what he ought to call his wife. There was a little pause before he pronounced her name.
"Yes," said Ashley. "Janet's there. She's orderedsome whiskey you'll like." Jack, unobservant of sarcasm, smiled gratefully; he reminded Ashley of a child rather afraid of its parents and finding comfort in the presence of a kind familiar nurse. "It was about here I left Miss Pinsent," Ashley went on, glancing round.
There was the seat on which Ora had sat; but Ora was not on the seat. Ashley looked about, scanning the platform, seeking the graceful figure and gait that he knew so well. Jack put his bag down on the seat and stared at the roof of the station.
"I don't see her," said Ashley. "She must have moved." He glanced at Jack and added with a sudden burst of laughter, "Now you must stay here while I look for her!"
"You're very kind," said Jack Fenning, sinking down on the seat.
"I might be the father of twins," said Ashley, as he walked off. Jack, left alone, furtively unclasped the bag, sought a small bottle, and took a small mouthful from it; he wanted all his nerve to meet his wife.
Again Ashley Mead searched the station and ransacked the waiting-rooms; again in whimsical despair he explored the refreshment saloon; all were empty. What had become of Ora? He returned to the seat where Jack Fenning was. A tall burly guard stood by Jack, regarding him with a rather contemptuous smile. When Ashley approached he turned round.
"Perhaps you're the gentleman, sir?" he said. "Mr. Mead, sir?"
"I'm Mr. Mead," said Ashley.
"The lady who went by the express left this note for you, sir. I thought it was for this gentleman but he says it isn't."
"Thanks, I expect it's for me," said Ashley, exchanginga shilling for a scrap of twisted paper addressed to him in Ora's familiar scrawl. The guard looked at the pair with a faint curiosity, spun his shilling in the air, and turned away. They were, after all, a very unimportant episode in the life of the guard.
"I have gone. As you love me, don't let him follow me. I am heart-broken:—Ora."
Thus ran the note which Ashley read. At the last moment, then, the great drama had broken down, renunciation and reformation had refused to run in couples, the fine scenes would not be played and—the heroine had fled from the theatre! An agreement was an agreement, as Mr. Hazlewood insisted; but Ora had broken hers. Here was Ashley Mead with a stray husband on his hands! He laughed again as he re-read the note. Where had she gone, poor dear, she and her broken heart? She was crying somewhere with the picturesqueness that she could impart even to the violent forms of grief. His laugh made friends with a groan as he looked down on the flabby figure of Jack Fenning. That such a creature should make such a coil! The world is oddly ordered.
"What the devil are we to do now?" he exclaimed aloud, glancing from the note to Jack, and back from Jack to the note. The note gave no help; Jack's bewildered questioning eyes were equally useless. "She's gone," Ashley explained with a short laugh.
"Gone? Where to?" Helplessness still, not indignation, not even surprise, marked the tone.
"I don't know. You're not to follow her, she says."
Jack seemed to sink into a smaller size as he muttered forlornly,
"She told me to come, you know." His uninjuredhand moved longingly but indecisively towards his bag. "Will you have a dram?" he asked.
"No, I won't," said Ashley. "Well, we can't stay here all night. What are you going to do?"
"I don't understand what you mean by saying she's gone," moaned Jack.
"It's all she says—and that you're not to follow. What are you going to do?"
His look now was severe and almost cruel; Jack seemed to cringe under it.
"I don't know," he muttered. "You see I—I've got no money."
"No money?"
"No. I had a little, but I had infernally bad luck at poker, coming over. You wouldn't believe how the luck ran against me."
Ashley put his hands in his pockets and regarded his companion.
"So you've no money?"
"About five shillings."
"And now you've no wife!"
Jack twisted in his seat. "I wish I hadn't come," he said fretfully.
"So do I," said Ashley. "But here you are!" He took a turn along the platform. The burly guard saw him and touched his hat.
"Train for London in five minutes, sir. The last to-night, sir. Going on?"
"Damn it, yes, we'll go on," said Ashley Mead. At least there was nothing to be gained by staying there. "Your ticket takes you through to London, I suppose?" he asked Jack.
"Yes, it does; but what am I to do there?" asked Jack forlornly.
Something restrained Ashley from the obvious retort, "What the devil do I care?" If he abandoned Jack, Jack must seek out Ora; he must track her by public and miscellaneous inquiries; he must storm the small house at Chelsea, braving Ora for the sake of Janet and the whiskey. Or if he did not do that, he would spend his five shillings as he had best not, and—visions of police-court proceedings and consequential newspaper broad-sheets rose before Ashley's eyes.
He took Jack to London with him. The return journey alone with Mr. Fenning was an unconsidered case, an unrehearsed effect. Mr. and Mrs. Fenning were to have gone together; in one mad pleasant dream he and Ora were to have gone together, with Jack smoking elsewhere. Reality may fail in everything except surprises. Ora was heaven knew where, heart-broken in Chelsea or elsewhere, and Ashley was in charge of Mr. Fenning.
"Good God, how everybody would laugh!" thought Ashley, himself hovering between mirth and ruefulness. The pencil of Babba Flint would draw a fine caricature of this journey; the circumstances might wring wonder even from Mr. Hazlewood's intimate and fatigued acquaintance with the ways of genius; as for Kensington Palace Gardens—Ashley suddenly laughed aloud.
"What's the matter?" asked Jack.
"It's all so damned absurd," said Ashley, laughing still. An absurd tragedy—and after all that Jack should come as he did, be what he was, and go on existing, was in essentials pure tragedy—seemed set on foot. "What am I to do with the fellow?" asked Ashley of himself. "I can't let him go to Chelsea." Nor, on reflection, could he let him go either to the workhouse or to the police-court. In fact, by an impulsiveextension of the very habit which had appealed so strongly to his chivalry, Ora had thrown not herself only but her husband also on his hands!
London drew near, even for the slow train, and with London came the problem. Ashley solved it in a flash, with a resolve that preserved the mixture of despair and humour which had become his attitude towards the situation of affairs. Above him in his house by Charing Cross there lived a clerk; the clerk had gone for a month's holiday, and had given liberty to the housekeeper to let his bed-sitting-room (so the compound was termed) to any solvent applicant. Jack Fenning should occupy the room for this night at least; he would be safe from danger, from observation, from causing trouble at Chelsea or wherever his wife might be. Thus to provide for him seemed mere humanity; he had but five shillings and a weakness for strong drink; and although he had struck Ora (the violence grew more and more inconceivable), yet in a sense he belonged to her. "And something must happen to clear it all up soon," Ashley reflected in an obstinate conviction that things in the end went reasonably.
A short interview with the housekeeper was enough to arrange for Jack Fenning's immediate comfort; then Ashley took him into his own room and gave him an improvised supper, and some whiskey and water mixed very weak; Jack regarded it disconsolately but made no protest; he lugged out a pipe and began to smoke, staring the while into the empty grate. "I wonder where she's gone!" he said once, but Ashley was putting on his slippers and took no notice of the question. There lay on the table a note and a telegram; Jack's eyes wandered to them. "Perhaps the wire's from her," he suggested timidly.
"Perhaps," said Ashley, taking it up. But the message was from Alice Muddock and ran, "Father had a paralytic stroke to-day. Afraid serious. Will you come to-morrow?"
"It's not from Miss Pinsent," said Ashley, as he turned to the note. This was from Bowdon, sent by hand: "I'm glad to say that I've persuaded Irene to be married in a month from now. As you're such a friend of hers as well as of mine, I hope you'll be my best man on the occasion."
"And the note's not from her either," said Ashley, walking up to the mantel-piece and filling his pipe.
Jack leant back in his chair and gulped down his weak mixture; he looked up in Ashley's face and smiled feebly. Ashley's brows were knit, but his lips curved in a smile. The mixed colours held the field; here was poor old Sir James come to the end of his work, to the end of new blocks and the making of sovereigns; here was Bowdon triumphantly setting the last brick on the high wall behind which he had entrenched himself against the assault of wayward inclinations. Was Irene then at peace? Would Bob hold his own or would Bertie Jewett grasp the reins? Was Bowdon resigned or only fearful? What a break-up in Kensington Palace Gardens! What the deuce should he do with this man? And where in heaven's name was Ora Pinsent? Ashley's eyes fell on a couple of briefs which had been sent after him from the Temple; it seemed as though the ordinary work of life were in danger of neglect.
"We can't do anything to-night, you know," he said to Jack in an irritated tone. "You don't want to knock her up to-night, I suppose, even if she's at her house?"
"No," said Jack meekly.
"Are you ready for bed then?"
Jack cast one longing glance at the whiskey bottle, and said that he was. Ashley led him upstairs, turned on the gas, and shewed him the room he was to occupy. Desiring to appear friendly, he lingered a few moments in desultory and forced conversation, and, seeing that Jack's wounded hand crippled him a little, began to help him to take his things out of the bag and lay them in handy places. Jack accepted his services with regard to the bag, and set about emptying his own pockets on the mantel-piece. Presently Ashley, his task done, turned round to see his companion standing with back turned, under the gas jet; he seemed to be regarding something which he held in his hand.
"I think you'll be all right now," said Ashley, preparing to make his escape.
Jack faced round with a slight start and an embarrassed air. He still held in his hand the object which he had been regarding; Ashley now perceived it to be a photograph. Was it Ora's—Ora's, treasured through years of separation, of quarrel, of desertion and apparent neglect? Had the man then grace in him so to love Ora Pinsent? A flash of kindliness lit up Ashley's feelings towards him; a pang of sympathy went near to making him sorry that Ora had fled from welcoming the home-comer. His eyes rested on Jack with a friendly look; Jack responded with a doubtful wavering smile; he seemed to ask whether he could in truth rely on the new benevolence which he saw in his host's eyes. Ashley smiled, half at his own queer thoughts, half to encourage the poor man. The smile nourished Jack's growing confidence; with a roguish air whichhad not been visible before he held out the picture to Ashley, saying,
"Pretty girl, isn't she?"
With a stare Ashley took the portrait. It could not be Ora's, if he spoke of it like that; so it seemed to the lover who translated another's feelings into his own. In an instant he retracted; that was how Jack Fenning would speak of Ora; short-lived kindliness died away; the man was frankly intolerable. But the sight of the picture sent his mind off in another direction. The picture was not Ora's, unless in previous days Ora had been of large figure, of bold feature, of self-assertive aspect, given to hats outrageous, and to signing herself, "Yours ever, Daisy." For such were the salient characteristics of the picture which Mr. Jack Fenning had brought home with him. A perverse freak of malicious memory carried Ashley back to the room in the little house at Chelsea, where his own portrait stood in its silver frame on the small table by Ora's favourite seat.Mutato nomine, de te!But, lord, what a difference the name makes!
"Very pretty," he remarked, handing back the image which had occasioned his thought. "Some one you know on the other side?"
"Yes," said Jack, standing the picture up against the wall.
Ashley was absurdly desirous of questioning him, of learning more about Daisy, of discovering whether Mr. Fenning had his romance or merely meditated in tranquillity on a pleasant friendship. But he held himself back; he would not be more mixed up with the man than fate and Ora Pinsent had commanded. There was something squalid about the man, so that he seemed to infect what he touched with his own flabby meanness.How in the world had Ora come to make him her husband? No doubt five years of whiskey, in society of which Daisy was probably too favourable a specimen to be typical, would account for much. He need not have been repulsive always; he might even have had a fawning attractiveness; it hung oddly about him still. But how could he ever have commanded love? Love asks more, some material out of which to fashion an ideal, some nobility actual or potential. At this point his reflections were very much in harmony with the views of Alice Muddock. He hated to think what Ora had been to this man; now he thanked God that she had run away. He would have liked himself to run away somewhere, never to see Jack Fenning, to forget that he had ever seen him, to rid Ora of every association with him. It was odious that the thought of her must bring the thought of Fenning; how soon would he be able to think of her again without this man shouldering his way into recollection by her side? Until he could achieve that, she herself, suffering an indignity, almost seemed to suffer a taint.
"Good-night," said he. "We'll have a talk in the morning about what's to be done."
"Good-night, Mr. Mead. I'm—I'm awfully obliged to you for everything."
"Not at all," said Ashley. He moved towards the door. As he passed the table his eye fell on Jack's flask, which lay there. For an instant he thought of cautioning Jack against an excessive use of it; but where was the good and why was it his business? Without more he left his unwelcome guest to himself.
And Jack, being thus left alone, had some more whiskey, another look at his picture, and another smoke of his pipe. After that he began to consider how veryhardly his wife had used him. Or, rather, he tried to take up and maintain this position, but he failed. He was so genuinely relieved that Ora had not been there; he did not want to meet Ora; he knew that he would be terribly uncomfortable. Why had he come? He wandered up to the mantel-piece again and looked with pathetic reproach at the picture and the signature below it.
"I wish she hadn't made me!" he groaned as he turned away and began to undress himself.
Ora had allowed him to come, but it could hardly be said that she had made him. Moreover his protest seemed to be addressed to the picture on the mantel-piece.
Irene Kilnorton looked, as she had been bidden, out of the window in Queen's Gate and perceived a four-wheeled cab laden with three large boxes; from that sight she turned her eyes again to Ora Pinsent, who sat in a straight-backed chair with an expression of unusual resolution on her face. It was eleven o'clock on Monday morning.
"I lay awake all night, trembling," said Ora. "Imagine if he'd come to the house!"
"But, good gracious, you told him to come, Ora! You must see him now."
"I won't. I thought you'd be kind and come with me; but I'm going anyhow."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know. I suppose Ashley has done something with him; only I wonder I haven't had a letter."
"Ashley!" Lady Kilnorton's tone fully explained her brief remark, but Ora only nodded her head and repeated, "Yes, Ashley."
"And where do you propose to go?"
"Devonshire."
"And what about your theatre?"
"Oh, I've sent a wire. The understudy must do it. I couldn't possibly."
"And are you going alone to Devonshire?"
"Yes. At least I suppose Ashley couldn't go with me, could he?"
"He would if you asked him, I should think," said Irene most impatiently.
"He can run down and see me, though," observed Ora in a slightly more cheerful tone. "I shall wire my address and ask him to let me know what—what happened. Only—only I'm rather afraid to know. I should like just to leave it all to Ashley."
"I think you're quite mad."
"I was nearly, at the thought of meeting him. I wonder what Ashley did with him." A faint and timid smile appeared on her lips as she looked at her friend. "Their meeting must have been rather funny," she added, with obvious fear, but yet unable to resist confiding her amusement.
"Did anybody ever beat you, Ora?" demanded Lady Kilnorton.
"Yes, dear," confessed Ora plaintively.
"Then they didn't do it enough, that's all."
Ora sat silent for a moment still, smiling a little.
"It's no good being unkind to me," she remarked then. "I don't see how I could have done anything else. I did my very best to—to let him come; but I couldn't."
"It's not very likely you could, when you'd been spending every hour of the day with Ashley Mead! Actually took him to meet your husband!"
"I suppose it was that, partly; but I couldn't have got even as far as I did without Ashley. Why won't you come to Devonshire?"
"Among other things, I'm going to be married."
"Oh! Soon?"
"In a month."
"Really? How splendid! I should think Lord Bowdon's a lovely lover. I'm sure he would be." Ora was now smiling very happily.
Irene seemed to consider something seriously for a moment or two; then she gave it utterance.
"I'm afraid you're disreputable, after all," she said.
"No, I'm not," protested Ora. "Oh, but, my dear, how I should like to be! It would simplify everything so. But then Ashley—" She broke off and frowned pensively.
"Oh, I don't mean exactly what you've done, but what you are." She came suddenly across the room, bent down, and kissed Ora's cheek. Then, as she straightened herself again, she said, "I don't think we can be friends."
At first Ora laughed, but, seeing Irene very grave, she looked at her with scared eyes. Irene met her gaze fully and directly.
"You didn't tell me all Alice Muddock said to you," said Irene.
"No, not quite," Ora murmured; "it was horrid."
"She's told me since. Well, she only said what you've made us all think of you."
"You?" asked Ora, her eyes still set on her friend.
"Yes," said Irene Kilnorton, and, turning away, she sat down by the window. A silence followed, broken only by a stamp of the hoof from the cab-horse at the door. Then Irene spoke again. "Don't you see that you can't go on as you've been going on, that it's impossible, that it ruins everybody's life who has anything to do with you? Don't you see how you're treating your husband? Don't you see what you're doing to Ashley Mead?"
Ora had turned rather white, as she had when AliceMuddock told her that not for the sake of fame would she pay Ora's price. They were both against her.
"How hard people are!" she cried, rising and walking about the room. "Women, I mean," she added a moment later.
"Oh, I know you make men think what you like," said Irene scornfully. "We women see what's true. I'm sure I don't want to distress you, Ora."
Ora was looking at her in despair tempered by curiosity. Bitterly as she had felt Alice's onslaught, she had ended in explaining it to herself by saying that Alice was an exceptionally cold and severe person, and also rather jealous concerning Ashley Mead. Irene Kilnorton was neither cold nor severe, and Ora had no reason to think her jealous. The agreement of the two seemed a token and an expression of a hostile world in arms against her, finding all sins in her, hopelessly blind to her excuses and deaf to the cries of her heart which to her own ears were so convincing. Irene thought that she ought to have been beaten more; if she told of Mr. Fenning's isolated act of violence, Irene would probably disapprove of nothing in it except its isolation.
"I thought you'd sympathise with me," she said at last.
"Then you must have thought me a goose," retorted Irene crossly. Her real feelings would have led her to substitute "very wicked" for "a goose," but she had an idea that an ultra-moral attitude wasbourgeois. "Goose" gave her all she wanted and preserved the intellectual point of view.
But to Ora the moral and the intellectual were the Scylla and Charybdis between which her frail bark of emotions steered a perilous, bumping, grazing way,lucky if it escaped entire destruction on one or the other, or (pacethe metaphor) on both at once. She felt that the world was harsh and most ill-adapted to any reasonable being; for Ora also seemed to herself very reasonable; reason follows the habit of the chameleon and takes colour from the tree of emotions on which it lies. From her meditations there emerged a sudden terrible dread that swallowed up every other feeling, every other anxiety. All the world (must not the world be judged by these two ladies?) was against her. Her action was to it beyond understanding, her temperament beyond excuse. Would Ashley feel the same? "Have I tired him out?" she cried to herself. All else she could surrender, though the surrender were with tears; but not his love, his sympathy, her hold over him. He must see, he must understand, he must approve. She could not have him also rebelling against her in weariness or puzzled disgust. Then indeed there would be nothing to live for; even the refuge in Devonshire must become an arid tormenting desert. For the times when he could run down and see her had gone near to obliterating all the other times in her imaginary picture of the refuge in Devonshire: just as her occasional appearances had filled the whole of that picture of Ashley's married life drawn in the days of the renunciation.
She rose and bade Irene good-bye with marked abruptness; it passed as the sign of natural offence, and kindness mingled with reproach in Irene's parting kiss. But Irene asked no more questions and invited no more confidences. Ora ran downstairs and jumped into her cab. A new fear and a new excitement possessed her; she thought no more of Irene's censure; she asked no more what had become of Jack Fenning.
"What station, miss?" asked the driver, taking a look at her. He had seen her from the gallery and was haunted by a recollection.
"Oh, I'm not going to the station!" exclaimed Ora impatiently; why did people draw unwarranted inferences from the mere presence of three boxes on the roof of a cab? She gave him Ashley's address with the coolest and most matter-of-fact air she could muster. But for the terror she was in, it would have been pleasant to her to be going for the first time to those rooms of his to which she had sent so many letters, so many telegrams, so many boy-messengers, so many commissionaires, but which in actual palpable reality she had never seen yet. Reflecting that she had never seen them yet, she declared that the reproaches levelled at her were absurdly wide of the mark and horribly uncharitable. They didn't give her credit for her real self-control. But what was Ashley feeling? Again she cried, "Have I tired him out?" Now she pictured no longer from her own but from his standpoint the scene at the station, and saw how she had left him to do the thing which it had been hers to do. For the first time that day a dim half-recollected vision of the renunciation and reformation took shape in her brain; she dubbed it at once an impossible and grotesque fantasy. Ashley must have known it for that all the time; who but Ashley would have been so generous and so tactful as never to let her see his opinion of it? Who but Ashley would have respected the shelter that she made for herself out of its tattered folds? And now had she lost Ashley, even Ashley? By this time Jack Fenning, his doings, and his whereabouts, had vanished from her mind. Ashley was everything.
The laden cab reached the door; Ora was out in amoment. "Wait," she cried, as she darted in; the driver shifted the three boxes, so as to make room for additional luggage; he understood the situation now; his fare had come to pick up somebody; they would go to the station next.
Mr. A. Mead dwelt on the first floor; on the second floor lived Mr. J. Metcalfe Brown. Having gleaned this knowledge from names in white letters on a black board, Ora mounted the stairs. The servant-girl caught a glimpse of her and admired without criticising; charity reigned here; a lady's gown was scrutinised, not her motives. Ora reached the first floor; here again the door was labelled with Ashley's name. The sight of it brought a rebound to hopefulness; the spirit of the adventure caught on her, her self-confidence revived, her fears seemed exaggerated. At any rate she would atone now by facing the problem of her husband in a business-like way; she would talk the matter over reasonably and come to some practical conclusion. She pulled her hat straight, laughed timidly, and knocked at the door. How surprised he'd be! And if he were disposed to be unkind—well, would he be unkind long? He had never been unkind long. Why, he didn't answer! Again she knocked, and again. He must be out. This check in the plan of campaign almost brought tears to Ora's eyes.
She must enquire. She was about to go downstairs again and ring the bell when she heard a door opened on the landing above, and a man's step. She paused; this man might give her news of Ashley; that he might be surprised to see her did not occur to her. A moment later a voice she knew well exclaimed in soliloquy, "Good heavens, what a creature!" and round the bend of the stairs came Ashley himself, in a flannel jacket, smoking a pipe, with his hair much disordered.
Ora wore a plain travelling frock suitable for a dusty journey to Devonshire; her jacket was fawn colour, her hat was black; yet even by these sober hues the landing seemed illuminated to Ashley Mead. "Well!" he cried, taking his pipe from his mouth and standing still.
"Open this door," Ora commanded, in a little tumult of gladness; in an instant his eyes told her that she had not tired him out. "And who's a creature?"
"A creature?" he asked, coming down.
"Yes. You said somebody was. Oh, I know! The man above? Mr. J. Metcalfe Brown?"
"Exactly," said Ashley. "Metcalfe Brown." He took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and held it open for her. He was laughing.
"So this is your den!" she cried. "What are those papers?" The desk was strewn with white sheets.
"Our Commission. I've been having a morning at it."
"Between it and Metcalfe Brown?"
"Well, yes, he does need some of my attention."
"What a noise he makes!" said Ora, for a dragging tread sounded on the ceiling of the room. "He must be rather a bore?"
"Yes, he is," said Ashley, with a short laugh and a quick amused glance at her.