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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!"