UNDER THE NOSEGAY
When Alice Muddock reached Ora's little house in Chelsea and was shewn
into the drawing-room, she found herself enjoying an introduction to Mr.
Sidney Hazlewood and forced to shake hands with Babba Flint. Hazlewood
struck her favourably; there was a repressed resolution about him, a
suggestion of being able to get most of what he might happen to want; no
doubt, though, his desires would be limited and mainly professional.
Babba was, as usual, quite inexplicable to her and almost intolerable.
The pair had, it seemed, come on business, and, after an apology, Ora
went on talking business to them for fully a quarter of an hour. She was
in a businesslike, even a commercial money-grubbing mood; so were the
men; amid a number of technical terms which fell on Alice's ignorant
ears the question of what they would make was always coming uppermost.
There was indeed a touch of insincerity in Ora's graspingness; it did
not seem exactly affectation, but rather like a part for which she was
cast on this occasion and into which she threw herself with artistic
zeal. She had to play up to her companions. There was in her neither the
quiet absorption in the pecuniary aspect which marked Mr. Hazlewood, nor
the tremulous eagerness with which Babba counted imaginary thousands,
the fruit of presupposed successes. Hazlewood, a clean-shaven hard-lined
man of close on fifty, and Babba with his long moustache, his smooth
cheeks, his dandiness, and his youth, treated Ora exactly in the same
way--first as a possible partner, then as a possible property. They told
her what she would make if she became a partner and how much they could
afford to pay her as a property if she would hire herself out to them.
Ora had her alternative capacities clearly grasped and weighed their
relative advantages with a knowing hand. Alice thought it a strange
scene by which to make her first more intimate study of the irresistible
impossible Miss Pinsent, the Miss Pinsent of uncontrollable emotions and
unknowable whims. What images the world made of people! Yet somehow, in
the end, had not the world a way of being just right enough to save its
credit?
At last the conference appeared to be about to break up. Alice was
almost sorry; she could have gone on learning from it.
"Only remember," said Mr. Hazlewood, "that if we do make a deal, why, it
is a deal!"
Ora began to laugh; an agreement was an agreement, she remembered, and a
deal, by parity of reasoning, a deal. Hazlewood's wrinkle clamoured for
seriousness; hard money was at stake, and over that surely even genius
could look grave.
"Oh, she won't want to cry off this," said Babba with a sagacious nod.
Alice had never known how Babba lived (any more than she knew why). It
appeared now that he supported himself by speculations of this
description; she fancied that he asserted himself so much because the
other two seemed to consider him, in the end, rather superfluous; more
than once he had to remind them that he was indispensable; they yielded
the point good-naturedly. She was interrupted in her thoughts by
Hazlewood, who made a suave remark to her and held out his hand with a
low bow. Ora was chaffing Babba about a very large flower in his
buttonhole.
"Is Miss Pinsent a good woman of business?" Alice asked in an impulse of
curiosity.
Hazlewood glanced at Ora; she was entirely occupied with Babba.
"Miss Pinsent," said he, with his overworked but still expressive smile,
"is just exactly what you happen to find her. But if you call often
enough, there'll come a time when you'll find her with a good head on
her shoulders."
Alice felt vaguely sorry for Mr. Hazlewood; it must be wearing to deal
with such unstable quantities. She could imagine herself exchanging
sympathy with him on the vagaries of the artistic temperament; would she
grow a wrinkle, of brow or of heart, over Ashley Mead? Or had she grown
one?
"Well, you've had a lot of experience of her, haven't you?" she asked,
laughing, and wondering what he thought of Ora. His answer expressed no
great affection.
"Good Lord, yes," he sighed, furrowing his brow again.
Ora darted up to him, put an arm through his, and clasped her hands over
his sleeve.
"Abusing me?" she said, turning her face round to his. For a moment
Alice thought that she was going to kiss him and hoped vaguely she would
not; but she felt that she did not know the etiquette; it might be
usual.
"Telling the truth," said Mr. Hazlewood with stout courage; then with
pronounced gallantry he raised his arm with Ora's hands on it and
kissed one of the hands; his manner now was quite different from his
business manner of a few moments ago; his eyes were different too,
hardly affectionate, but very indulgent.
"He likes me really, you know, though I worry him dreadfully," said Ora
to Alice.
Babba came up; he had been arranging the big flower before a mirror.
"Seen Lady Kilnorton lately? She's brought it off with Bowdon, I hear,"
he said to Alice.
"She's engaged to Lord Bowdon," said Alice stiffly.
"Deuced lucky woman," observed Babba, blind to the rebuke which lay in
Alice's formality of phrase.
"Take him away," Ora commanded Mr. Hazlewood. "We've done with him and
we don't want him any more. We aren't sure we like him."
"Oh, come now, I ain't a bad chap, Miss Pinsent," pleaded Babba
piteously.
"We're not at all sure we like him," said Ora inexorably. "Take him away
at once, please, Mr. Hazlewood." And Hazlewood led him out, protesting
bitterly.
For a moment or two Ora moved about, touching the furniture into the
places in which she wanted it, and fingering the flowers in the vases.
Then she came quickly to Alice, sat down by her side, and cried
expansively,
"It's really charming of you to come. And you're like--you're like
something--Oh, I don't know! I mean you're a lovely change from those
men and their business and their money."
"I like Mr. Hazlewood."
"Oh, so do I. But my life's so much Mr. Hazlewood. Why did you come?"
"You asked me," said Alice.
"Yes, I know, but I hardly thought you'd come." She darted back to the
previous conversation. "I'm going to make a lot of money, though, and
then I'm going to have a long holiday, and a villa somewhere in Italy."
"Oh, they won't let you rest long."
"It won't be very long really, because I shall spend all the money," Ora
explained with a smile. "Let's have some tea."
She rang, and tea was brought by a very respectable middle-aged woman.
Ora addressed her maid as Janet and gave her a series of orders; Janet
listened to them with a non-committal air, as though she would consider
whether they were reasonable or not, and act according to her
conclusion. Alice noticed that she called her mistress "Ma'am;" the
reference to Mr. Fenning was very indirect, but it was the first that
Alice had ever heard made in Ora's presence. It seemed to her also that
Janet laid some slight emphasis on the designation, as though it served,
or might be made to serve, some purpose besides that of indicating the
proper respect of a servant. She found herself wondering whether Janet
dated from the time when Mr. Fenning was still a present fact and formed
a member of the united Fenning household (which, by the way, was an odd
entity to contemplate). If that were the case, a conversation with Janet
might be very interesting; knowledge might be gained about the bulwark;
Alice had begun to look on Mr. Fenning as a bulwark--and to tell herself
that she did no such thing.
A large number of photographs stood on the mantel-piece and about the
room, most of them signed by their originals. Many were of men; one
might be of Mr. Fenning. A silver frame stood on a little table just by
the sofa. Alice's intuitive perception told her that here was Ora's
favourite place; her traditions caused her to conclude that the frame
(its back was towards her) held Mr. Fenning's portrait. She was not
undiplomatic, only less diplomatic than many other women; she took a
tour of inspection, saying how pretty the room was and declaring that
she must look closer at the photograph of an eminent tragedian on the
opposite wall. Her return movement shewed her the face of the portrait
which she had guessed to be Mr. Fenning's; it was that of her friend
Ashley Mead.
"Yes," said Ora, "he sent me that yesterday. I was so glad to have it."
"You gave him a return?" asked Alice with a careless laugh, the laugh
appropriate to the moment.
"He chose one and I wrote on it. Sugar, Miss Muddock?"
Alice took sugar.
"You've known him ever so long, haven't you?" asked Ora, handing the
cup.
"Ages, ever since we were children. He's very nice and very clever."
"I've only known him quite a little while." Ora paused and laughed.
"Some people would say that's why his picture's in the place of honour."
"You like change?" asked Alice. Ashley liked change also. But Ora made
her old defence.
"People change, so of course I change to them." The explanation did not
quite satisfy herself. "Oh, I don't know," she said impatiently. "Anyhow
I haven't left off liking Ashley yet. I may, you know."
Alice, conscious that she herself in her hostess' position would have
said "Mr. Mead," tried to make the obvious allowances; it was just like
that clasping of the hands round Hazlewood's arm, just like the air of
expecting to be kissed. Fully aware of insurgent prejudices, she beat
them down with a despotic judgment; she would not follow in the wake of
her stepmother nor adopt the formulas of Minna Soames. Curiously enough
Ora was in somewhat the same or a parallel state of mind, although she
did not realise it so clearly. She too was struggling to understand and
to appreciate. She was sure she would be friends with Miss Muddock, if
she could get within her guard; but why did people have guards, or why
not drop them when other people shewed themselves friendly? You might
have to keep the Babba Flints at their distance, no doubt, but even that
was better done by ridicule than by stiffness.
"We still see a good deal of him," said Alice, "although he has an
immense lot of engagements. He generally comes to lunch on Sunday."
Ora reflected that he had not followed his usual practice on one Sunday.
Alice went on to give a brief description of Ashley's general relation
to the Muddock family, and referred to her father's wish that he should
enter the business.
"He came to talk to me about it to-day," she said, "but it wouldn't suit
him in the least, and I told him so."
"Oh, no, it wouldn't," cried Ora. "I'm so glad you told him right."
Their eyes met in a sudden glance. Did they both know so much of Ashley
Mead, of his tastes, his temper, and what would suit him? An
embarrassment arrested their talk. Alice was conscious that her hostess'
eyes rested on her with an inquisitive glance; it had just occurred to
Ora that in meeting this girl she had encountered a part of the life of
Ashley Mead hitherto unknown to her. "What part? How much?" her eyes
seemed to ask. She was not jealous of Alice Muddock, but she was
inclined to be jealous of all that life of Ashley's of which she knew
nothing, which her visitor had shared. With a sudden longing she yearned
for the inn parlour where he had no other life than a life with her; the
sudden force of the feeling took her unawares and set her heart beating.
She came again to Alice and sat down by her; silence had somehow become
significant and impossible.
"I like your frock," she said, gently fingering the stuff. "At least I
like it for you. I shouldn't like it for me."
The relativity of frocks, being, like that of morals, an extensive and
curious subject, detained them for a few moments and left them with a
rather better opinion of one another. Incidentally it revealed a common
scorn of Minna Soames, who dressed as though she were stately when she
was only pretty; this also knit them together. But they progressed
nearer to liking than to understanding one another. Small points of
agreement, such as the unsuitability of the business to Ashley and the
inappropriateness of her gowns to Minna Soames, made intercourse
pleasant but could not bridge the gulf between them; they were no more
than hands stretched out from distant banks.
Alice began to talk of Irene Kilnorton and Bowdon. While attributing to
them all proper happiness and the finality of attachment incidental to
their present position, she told Ora, with a laugh, that they had all
seen how much Bowdon had been struck with her.
"I think he did like me," said Ora with a ruminative smile. "He's safe
now, isn't he?" she added a moment later. The thought had been Alice's
own, but it needed an effort for her to look at it from Ora's point of
view. To be a danger and to know yourself to be a danger, to be aware of
your perilousness in a matter-of-fact way, without either exultation or
remorse, was a thing quite outside Alice's experience. On the whole to
expect men to fall in love with you and to be justified in this
anticipation by events would create a life so alien from hers that she
could not realise its incidents or the state of mind it would create.
"I like Lord Bowdon," said Ora. "But--" she paused and went on,
laughing, "He's rather too sensible for me. He'll just suit Irene
Kilnorton. But really I must write and tell him to come and see me. I
haven't seen him since the engagement."
"You'd much better not," was on the tip of Alice's tongue, but she
suspected that the impulse to say it was born of her still struggling
prejudices. "Ask them together," she suggested instead.
"Oh, no," said Ora pathetically. "He'd hate it."
Alice did not see exactly why he should hate it. Engaged people always
went about together; surely always?
"Were you ever engaged?" Ora went on.
"Never," said Alice with a laugh.
"I've been--well, of course I have--and I hated it."
With curiosity and pleasure Alice found herself on the threshold of the
subject of Mr. Fenning. But Ora turned aside without entering the hidden
precincts.
"And I'm sure I should hate it worse now. You wouldn't like it, would
you?"
"I should like it very much, if I cared for the man."
"Well," Ora conceded, "he might make it endurable, if he treated it
properly. Most men look so solemn over it. As soon as they've got you,
they set to work to make you think what a tremendous thing you've done.
As if that was the way to enjoy yourself!" She paused, seemed to think,
smiled out of the window, and then, turning to Alice, said with an
innocence evidently genuine, "Ashley Mead would make it rather pleasant,
I think."
The trial was sudden; Alice had no time to put on her armour; she felt
that her face flushed. Again their eyes met, as they had when it was
agreed that the business would not suit Ashley. The glance was longer
this time, and after Alice turned away Ora went on looking at her for
several moments. That was it, then; Irene Kilnorton had not spoken idly
or in ignorant gossip. What she had said fell short of truth, for she
had spoken of an alliance only, not of love. Now Ora knew why the girl
talked so much of Ashley; now she knew also why the girl shewed such
interest in herself. Yes, the rich Miss Muddock would be Ashley's wife
if she were wooed; besides being rich she was pleasant and clever, and
knew how to dress herself. (This last moral quality ranked high in Ora's
list.) Such an arrangement would be in all ways very beneficial to
Ashley. She wondered whether Ashley knew how entirely the game was in
his own hands. She felt a sudden and sore pity for Alice, who had been
so cordial and so pleasant and whose secret she had heedlessly
surprised. The cordiality seemed very generous; there was in it a
challenge to counter-generosity. In an instant the heroic idea of giving
him up to Alice flashed through her brain. This fine conception was
hardly born before she found herself asking wrathfully whether he would
consent to leave her.
Alice was herself again; she said that she thought Mr. Mead might make
an engagement very pleasant, but that such a relation to him would
perhaps not be very exciting to her, since she had known him all her
life. This suppression of emotion was not to Ora's taste; it burked a
scene to which her instinct had begun to look forward. But as generosity
would be at this point premature (even if it should ever become
tolerable) she was forced to acquiesce. A little later Alice took her
leave with increased friendliness and a pressing invitation to Ora to
come and see her at Kensington Palace Gardens when there was no party
and they could have another quiet talk together.
Surrender--or the inn parlour? Generosity or joy? As an incidental
accompaniment, correctness or incorrectness of conduct? These
alternatives presented themselves to Ora when she was left alone. The
_rôle_ of renunciation had not only obvious recommendations but also
secret attractions. How well she could play it! She did not exactly tell
herself that she could play it well--the temperament has its decent
reticences--but she pictured herself playing it well and wished for an
opportunity to play it. She would have played it beautifully for Irene
Kilnorton's benefit, had that lady asked her assistance instead of
taking the matter into her own resolute hands. She would have sent
Bowdon away with an exhortation to see his own good and to forget her,
with a fully adequate, nay, a more than ample, confession of the pain
the step was causing her, but yet with a determination which made the
parting final and Irene's happiness secure. All this vaguely rehearsed
itself in her brain as she lay on the sofa beside Ashley Mead's portrait
in its silver frame. And her subsequent relations both with Irene and
with Bowdon would have been touched with an underlying tenderness and
sweetened by the common recollection of her conduct; even when he had
become quite happy with Irene, even when he had learnt to thank herself,
he would not quite forget what might have been.
Having arrived at this point, Ora burst into a laugh at her own folly.
All that went very well, so very smoothly and effectively, grouped
itself so admirably, and made such a pretty picture. But she took up the
photograph in the silver frame and looked at it. It was not Bowdon's
likeness but Ashley Mead's; the question, the real question, was not
whether she should give up Bowdon; fate was not complaisant enough to
present her with a part at once so telling and so easy. It was not
Bowdon with whom she had spent a day in the country, not Bowdon who had
been with her in the inn parlour, not Bowdon who, Alice Muddock thought,
might make an engagement very pleasant. The grace of self-knowledge came
to her and told her the plain truth about her pretty picture.
"What a humbug I am!" she cried, as she set down the photograph.
For the actual opportunity was very different from the imagined, as rich
in effect perhaps, but by no means so attractive. She still liked her
part, but the rest of the cast was not to her taste; she could still
think of the final interview with a melancholy pleasure, but, with this
distribution of characters, how dull and sad and empty and intolerable
life would be when the final interview was done! The subsequent
relations lost all their subdued charm; underlying tenderness and common
recollections became flat and unprofitable.
"An awful humbug!" sighed Ora with a plaintive smile.
Why were good things so difficult? Because this thing would be very
good--for him, for poor Alice, for herself. A reaction from the joy of
Sunday came over her, bringing a sense of fear, almost of guilt. She
recollected with a flash of memory what she had said to Jack Fenning
when they parted in hot anger. "You needn't be afraid to leave me
alone," she had cried defiantly, and up to now she had justified the
boast. She had been weary and lonely, she had been courted and tempted,
but she had held fast to what she had said. Her anger and her
determination that Jack should not be in a position to triumph over her
had helped to keep her steps straight. Now these motives seemed less
strong, now the loneliness was greater. If she sent Ashley away the
loneliness would be terrible; but this meant that the danger in not
sending him away was terrible too, both for him and for her. As she sank
deeper and deeper in depression she told herself that she was born to
unhappiness, but that she might at least try not to make other people as
unhappy as she herself was doomed to be.
While she still lay on the sofa, in turns pitying, reproaching, and
exhorting herself, Janet came in.
"A letter, ma'am," said Janet. "Your dinner will be ready in ten
minutes, ma'am."
"Thanks, Janet," said Ora, and took the letter. The handwriting was not
known to her; the stamp and postmark were American; Bridgeport, Conn.,
the legend ran. "I don't know anybody in Bridgeport, or in
Conn.--Conn.?--Oh, yes, Connecticut," said Ora.
The silver frame stood crooked on the table. Ora set it straight, looked
at the face in it, smiled at some thought, sighed at the same or some
other thought, and lazily opened the letter from Bridgeport, Conn.; she
supposed it was a communication of a business kind, or perhaps a request
for a photograph or autograph.
"My dear Ora, I have had an accident to my hand, so get a friend to
write this for me. I am here in a merchant's office, but have had a bit
of luck on Wall Street and am in funds to a modest extent. So I am going
to take a holiday. I shall not come to England unless you give me leave;
but I should like to come and see you again and pay you a visit. How
long I stayed would depend on circumstances and on what we decided after
we had met. A letter will find me here for the next month. I hope you
will send one inviting me to come. I would write more if I could write
myself; as it is I will only add that I am very anxious to see you and
am sure I can set right any mistakes that there have been in the past.
Write as soon as you can. Yours affectionately, Jack."
She turned back to the envelope:--"Miss Ora Pinsent." The friend who
wrote Jack's letter probably did not know that he was writing to Jack's
wife. Janet knew Jack's writing, but not the writing of Jack's friend.
In secrecy and privacy Jack's letter had come. She laid it down beside
the portrait in the silver frame, and lay back again quietly with
wide-opened eyes. The clock ticked away ten minutes; dinner was ready;
she lay still.
Had people a right to rise from the dead like this? Were they justified,
having gone out of life, in coming back into it under cover of a
friend's handwriting and a postage stamp? They had parted for ever, Jack
and she, most irrevocably, most eagerly, most angrily. A few lines on a
sheet of note paper could not change all that. He had been dead and
gone; at least he had existed only as a memory and as--she hardly liked
to say an encumbrance--as a check, as a limiting fact, as a difficulty
which of necessity barred her from ordering her doings just as she might
have liked to order them. Now he proposed suddenly to become a fact, a
presence, a part of her again, and stole a hearing for this proposal in
the insidious disguise of a friend's handwriting. How he chose his time
too! In wild fancy she imputed to him a knowledge of the curious
appositeness of his letter's arrival. It came just when she was unhappy,
torn with doubts, feeling low, yes, and feeling guilty; just after the
revelation of Alice Muddock's feelings, just after the day in the
country, just while she was saying that, for weal or woe, she could not
send Ashley Mead away. At such a moment she would not have opened the
letter had she known it for his; but he had had an accident to his hand
and the unknown writing had gained him access.
Janet came in again.
"Your dinner is ready, ma'am," she said, and went on, "These have come
for you, ma'am," laying a nosegay of roses on the little table beside
the portrait in the silver frame, and the letter from Bridgeport, Conn.
Ora nodded; there was no need to ask whence the roses came; they were of
the colour she had declared her favourite by the river bank on Sunday.
"I'll come to dinner directly," she said, and seeing Janet's eye on the
letter, she forgot that it was in a friend's handwriting and pushed it
under the nosegay till the roses hid it. There was nothing to be seen on
the table now but the roses of the colour she loved, and the picture in
its silver frame.
To toy with material symbols of immaterial realities is pretty enough
work for the fancy or the pen. The symbols are docile and amenable; the
letter can be pushed under the roses till their blooms utterly conceal
it, and neither you nor anybody else can see that it is there. The
picture you do not care about can be locked away in the drawer, the one
you love placed on the little table by your elbow as you sit in your
favourite seat. Unhappily this artistic arrangement of the symbols makes
no difference at all to the obstinate realities. They go on existing;
they insist on remaining visible or even obtrusive; audible and even
clamorous. The whole thing is a profitless trick of the fancy or the
pen. Although the letter was pushed under the roses, Jack Fenning was
alive in Bridgeport, Conn., with a desire to see his wife in his heart,
and his passage money across the Atlantic in his pocket.
As Ora drove down to the theatre that night, she moaned, "How am I to
play with all this worrying me?" But she played very well indeed. And
she was sorry when the acting was over and she had to go back to her
little house in Chelsea, to the society of the letter and the roses. But
now there was another letter: "I am coming to-morrow at 3. Be at home.
A. M."
"What in the world am I to do?" she asked with woeful eyes and quivering
lip. It seemed to her that much was being laid on the shoulders of a
poor young woman who asked nothing but to be allowed to perfect her art
and to enjoy her life. It did not occur to her that the first of these
aims is accomplished by few people, that at any rate a considerable
minority fail in the second, and that the fingers of two hands may count
those who in any generation succeed in both. The apparent modesty of
what she asked of fortune entirely deceived her. She sat in her
dressing-gown and cried a little before she got into bed.