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.