THE LEGITIMATE CLAIMANT
Ashley Mead did not take the week's consideration which Sir James had
pressed on him. The same evening he wrote a letter decisively declining
to assume a place at the helm in Buckingham Palace Road. Sir James,
receiving the letter and handing it to Alice, was disappointed to meet
with no sympathy in his expressed views of its folly. He was nearly
angry with his daughter and frankly furious against Ashley. He was proud
of his daughter and proud of his business; the refusal left him very
sore for both. As soon as he reached his office he gave vent to his
feelings by summoning Bertie Jewett to his presence and offering him the
position to whose attractions Ashley had been so culpably blind.
Here there was no refusal. A slim, close-built, dapper little fellow,
with a small fair moustache and small keen blue eyes, full of
self-confidence, perfectly self-controlled, almost sublimely
industrious, patiently ambitious, Bertie turned away from no
responsibilities and let slip no opportunities. He knew himself Bob
Muddock's superior in brains; he had known of, and secretly chafed
against, the proposed intrusion of Ashley Mead. Now he was safe, and
fortune in his hands. But to Bertie the beauty of firm ground was not
that you can stand still on it and be comfortable, but that it affords a
good "take-off" when you want to clear an obstacle which lies between
you and a place even more desirable in your eyes. Sir James explained
the arrangements he proposed to make, his big share, Bob's moderate
share, Bertie's small share; the work, as is not unusual, was to be in
an inverse ratio to the share. Then the old man approached the future.
When he was gone there was a sum of money and a big annuity for Lady
Muddock; subject to that, Bob was to have two-fifths of his father's
share to add to his own; the rest was to be Alice's. In that future time
Alice's share would be nearly as big as Bob's; the addition of another
small share would give it preponderance. Bertie's blue eye was very keen
as he examined the nature of the ground he had reached and its
capacities in the way of "take-off." But on going forth from Sir James'
office, he could at first do little but marvel at the madness of Ashley
Mead; for he knew that Ashley might have taken what he had just
received, and he suspected that the great jump he had begun to meditate
would have been easy to Ashley. For incontestably Alice had shown favour
to Ashley--and had not shown favour to Bertie Jewett.
Bob and Bertie lunched together at Bob's club that day, the occasion
allowing a little feasting and relaxation from toil. The new project
touching Alice was not even distantly approached, but Bertie detected in
Bob a profound dissatisfaction with Ashley Mead. Ashley's refusal seemed
to Bob a slur on the business, and concerning the business he was very
sensitive. He remarked with mingled asperity and satisfaction that
Ashley had "dished himself all round." The "all round" indicated
something besides the big block in Buckingham Palace Road, and so was
significant and precious to Bertie Jewett.
"Naturally we aren't pleased," Bob said, assuming to express the
collective views of the family. "Fact is, Ashley's got a bit too much
side on, you know."
Bertie Jewett laughed cautiously.
"He doesn't like the shop, I suppose!" Bob pursued sarcastically.
"I'm sorry Sir James is so much annoyed about it," remarked Bertie with
apparent concern.
"He'll see what a fool he's made of himself some day," said Bob. Alice
was in his mind, but went unmentioned.
Bob's opinion was shared in its entirety by Irene Kilnorton, who came
over to express it to Alice as soon as the news reached her through
Bowdon. Bowdon had heard it from Ashley himself, they being together on
the business of the Commission. Irene was amazed to find Alice on
Ashley's side and would allow no merit to her point of view.
"Oh, no, it's all wrong," she declared. "It would have been good for him
in every way; it would have settled him."
"I don't want him settled," said Alice. "Oh, if you knew how tired I get
of the business sometimes! Besides it will make Mr. Jewett so happy. He
takes Ashley's place, you know, though father won't give him as big a
share as he'd have given Ashley."
"Well, I shall tell Mr. Mead what I think of him." She paused,
hesitating a moment as to whether she should say a disagreeable thing or
not. But she was annoyed by Alice's attitude and decided to say it. "Not
that he'll care what I say or what anybody says, except Ora Pinsent,"
she ended.
"Won't he?" asked Alice. She felt bound to interject something.
"What a creature she is!" cried Irene. "When I went to see her this
morning, I found her in tears. What about? Oh, I don't know. But I spoke
to her sensibly."
"Poor Miss Pinsent!"
"I said, 'My dear Ora, I suppose you've done something silly and now
you're sorry for yourself. For goodness' sake, though, don't ask me to
be sorry for you.'"
"Had she asked you?" said Alice with a smile. Lady Kilnorton took no
notice of the question.
"I suppose," she went on scornfully, "that she wanted to be petted. I
wasn't going to pet her."
"I think I should have petted her. She'd be nice to pet," Alice remarked
thoughtfully.
Irene seemed to lose patience.
"You don't mean to say that you and she are going to make friends?" she
exclaimed. "It would be too absurd."
"Why shouldn't we? I liked her rather; at least I think so."
"I wish to goodness that husband of hers would come back and look after
her. What's more, I said so to her; but she only went on crying more and
more."
"You don't seem to have been very pleasant," Alice observed.
"I suppose I wasn't," Irene admitted, half in remorse. "But that sort of
person does annoy me so. As I was saying to Frank, you never know where
to have them. Oh, but Ora doesn't mind it from me."
"Then why did she cry more and more?"
"I don't know--unless it was because I reminded her of Mr. Fenning's
existence. I think it's a good thing to do sometimes."
"Perhaps. I'm not sure, though, that I shouldn't leave it to Mr. Fenning
himself."
"My dear, respectability goes for something. The man's alive, after
all."
Alice knew that he was alive and in her heart knew that she was glad he
was alive; but she was sorry that Ora should be made to cry by being
invited to remember that he was alive. Irene was, presumably, happy with
the man she had chosen; it was a good work leaning towards
supererogation (if such were possible) when she took Ora's domestic
relations under her wing. She hinted something of this sort.
"Oh, that's what Ashley Mead says; we all know why he says it," was
Irene's mode of receiving the good advice.
A pause followed; Irene put her arm through Alice's and they began to
walk about the garden. Lady Muddock was working at her embroidery at the
open window; she was pronouncedly anti-Ashleyan, taking the colour of
her opinions from her husband and even more from Bob.
"Where's Lord Bowdon?"
"Oh, at his tiresome Commission. He's coming to tea afterwards. I asked
Mr. Mead, but he won't come."
"You'll be happier alone together."
Irene Kilnorton made no answer. She looked faintly doubtful and a trifle
distressed. Presently she made a general remark.
"It's an awful thing," she said, "to undertake--to back yourself, you
know--to live all your life with a man and never bore him."
"I'm sure you couldn't bore anybody."
"Frank's rather easily bored, I'm afraid."
"What nonsense! Why, you're making yourself unhappy just in the same way
that Miss Pinsent--"
"Oh, do stop talking about Ora Pinsent!" cried Irene fervently. Then she
gave a sudden apprehensive glance at her companion and blushed a little.
"I simply meant that men wanted such a lot of amusing," she ended.
In recording her interview with Ora, Irene had somewhat exaggerated her
brutality, just as in her reflexions about her friend she exaggerated
her own common-sense. Ora drove her into protective measures; she found
them in declaring herself as unlike to Ora as possible. In reality
common-sense held no disproportionate or disagreeable sway in her soul;
if it had, she would have been entirely content with the position which
now existed, and with her relations towards Bowdon. There was nothing
lacking which this vaunted common-sense could demand; it was stark
sentimentality, and by consequence such folly as Ora herself might
harbour and drop tears about, which whispered in her heart, saying that
all was nothing so long as she was not for her lover the first and only
woman in the world, so long as she still felt that she had seized him,
not won him, so long as the mention of Ora's name still brought a look
to his face and a check to his talk. It was against herself more than
against Ora that she had railed in the garden; Ora had exasperated her
because she knew in herself a temper as unreasonable as Ora's; she
harped on Ora's husband ill-naturedly--as she went home, she confessed
she had been ill-natured--because he who was to be her husband had
dreamt of being Ora's lover. Even now he dared not speak her name, he
dared not see her, he could not trust himself. The pledge his promised
bride had wrung from him was safe so long as he did not see or let
himself think of Ora. It was thus that Irene read his mind.
She read it rightly--to his own sorrow and remorse--rightly. He was
surprised too. About taking the decisive step he had hesitated; except
for circumstances rather accidentally provocative, perhaps he would not
have taken it. But its virtue and power, if and when taken, he had not
doubted. He had thought that by binding his actions with the chain of
honour he would bind his feelings with the chain of love, that when his
steps could not wander his fancy also would be tethered, that he could
escape longing by abstinence, and smother a craving for one by
committing himself to seem to crave for another. The maxims of that
common-sense alternately lauded and reviled by Irene had told him that
he would be successful in all this; he found himself successful in none
of it. Ora would not go; her lure still drew him; as he sat at his
Commission opposite to his secretary at the bottom of the table, he was
jealous of his secretary. Thus he was restless, uncomfortable,
contemptuous of himself. But he was resolute too. He was not a man who
broke faith or took back his plighted word. Irene was to be his wife,
was as good as his wife since his pledge was hers; he set himself to an
obstinate fulfilment of his bargain, resolved that she should see in him
nothing but a devoted lover, ignorant that she saw in him the thing
which above all he wished to hide. Such of Ora's tears as might be
apportioned to the unhappiness she caused to others were just now
tolerably well justified, whatever must be thought of those which she
shed on her own account. Here was Bowdon restless and contemptuous of
himself, Irene bitter and ashamed, Alice with no surer, no more honest,
comfort than the precarious existence of Mr. Fenning, Sir James Muddock
(Ora was no doubt partly responsible here also) grievously disappointed
and hurt; while the one person who might be considered to owe her
something, Mr. Bertie Jewett, was as unconscious of his debt as she of
his existence; both would have been surprised to learn that they had
anything in the world to do with one another. But after all most of
Ora's tears were for herself. Small wonder in face of that letter from
Bridgeport, Connecticut!
Bowdon wished to be married very soon; why wait, he asked; he was not as
young as he had been; it would be pleasant to go to the country in
August man and wife. In fine the chain of honour gave signs of being
strained, and he proposed to tie up the other leg with the fetters of
law; he wanted to make it more and more impossible that he should give
another thought to anybody except his affianced wife. In marriage
attachment becomes a habit, daily companionship strengthens it; surely
that was so? And in the country, or, better still, on a yacht in
mid-ocean, how could anything remind him of anybody else? But Irene
would not hasten the day; she gave many reasons to countervail his; the
one she did not give was a wild desire that he should be her lover
before he became her husband. So on their feigned issues they discussed
the matter.
"The end of July?" he suggested. It was now mid-June.
"Impossible, Frank!" she cried. "Perhaps November."
In September and October Ora would be away. Two months with Ora away,
absolutely away, perhaps forgotten! Irene built hopes high on these two
months.
"Not till November!" he groaned. The groan sounded well; but it meant
"Don't leave me free all that time. Tie me up before then!"
"Ashley Mead seems obstinate in his silly refusal of Sir James Muddock's
offer," she said, anxious to get rid of the conflict.
"Why should he take it?" asked Bowdon. "He can get along very well
without it; I don't fancy him at the counter."
"Oh, it's so evidently the sensible thing."
"I've heard you tell him yourself not to go and sell ribbons."
How exasperating are these reminders!
"I've grown wiser in ever so many ways lately," she retorted with a
smile.
There was an opening for a lover here. She gave it him with a forlorn
hope of its acceptance.
"Yes; but I'm not sure it's a good thing to grow so very wise," he said.
Then he came and sat by her.
"You mustn't be sentimental," she warned him. "Remember we're elderly
people."
He insisted on being rather sentimental; with a keen jealousy she
assessed his sincerity. Sometimes he almost persuaded her; she prayed so
hard to be convinced; but the wish begot no true conviction. Then she
was within an ace of throwing his pledge back in his face; but still she
clung to her triumph with all its alloy and all its incompleteness. She
had brought him to say he loved her; could she not bring him in very
truth to love? Why had Ora but to lift a finger while she put out all
her strength in vain? It would not have consoled her a whit had she been
reminded of Ora's tears. Like most of us, she would have chosen to win
and weep.
As Bowdon strolled slowly back through the Park, repeating how charming
Irene was and how wise and fortunate he himself was, he met Ashley Mead.
Ashley was swinging along at a good pace, his coat-tails flying in the
wind behind him. When Bowdon first saw him he was smiling and his lips
were moving, as though he were talking to himself in a pleasant vein. In
response to his friend's hail, he stopped, looked at his watch, and
announced that he had ten minutes to spare.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" asked Bowdon. Ashley looked
openly happy; he had an air of being content with life, of being sure
that he could make something satisfactory out of it, and of having
forgotten, for the time being at all events, any incidental drawbacks
which might attend on it. Bowdon was smitten with an affectionate envy,
and regarded the young man with a grim smile.
"Going to see a lady," said Ashley.
"You seem to be making a day of it," observed Bowdon. "In the morning
you refuse a fortune, in the afternoon--"
"Oh, you've heard about the fortune, have you? I've just been down to
Buckingham Palace Road, to congratulate young Jewett on being in--and
myself on being out. Now, as I mentioned, Lord Bowdon--"
"Now you're on your way to see Miss Pinsent?"
"Right; you've guessed it, my lord," laughed Ashley.
"You don't seem to be ashamed of yourself."
"No, I'm not."
"You know all about Mr. Fenning?"
"Well, as much as most of us know about him. But I don't see why I
shouldn't take tea with Miss Ora Pinsent."
Bowdon turned and began to walk slowly along beside Ashley; Ashley
looked at his watch again and resigned himself to another five minutes.
He owed something to Bowdon; he could spare him five of Ora's minutes;
to confess the truth, moreover, he was a little early, although he had
made up his mind not to be.
"Jewett's the ablest little cad, I know," said Ashley. "At least I think
he's a cad, though I can't exactly tell you why."
"Of course he's a cad," said Bowdon, who had dined with Bob Muddock to
meet him.
"There's no salient point you can lay hold of," mused Ashley; "it's
pervasive; you can tell it when you see him with women, you know; that
brings it out. But he's got a head on his shoulders."
"That's more than can be said for you at this moment, my friend."
"I'm enjoying myself very much, thank you," said Ashley with a radiant
smile.
"You won't be for long," retorted Bowdon, half in sorrow, half in the
involuntary malice so often aroused by the sight of gay happiness.
"Look here, you ought to be idiotic yourself just now," Ashley
remonstrated. Then out came his watch again. The sight of it relieved
Bowdon from the fear that he had betrayed himself; evidently he occupied
no place at all in his companion's thoughts.
"Be off," he said with rueful good-nature. "Only don't say I didn't tell
you."
Ashley laughed, nodded carelessly, and set off again at his round pace.
But presently the round pace became intolerably slow, and he hailed a
hansom. He was by way of being economical about hansoms, often pointing
out how fares mounted up; but he took a good many. He was soon landed at
the little house in Chelsea.
Ora was not in the room when Janet ushered him in. "I'll tell my
mistress, sir," said Janet gravely, taking up a smelling-bottle which
stood on Ora's little table and carrying it off with her. Blind to this
subtle indication that all was not well in the house, Ashley roamed
about the room. He noticed with much satisfaction his portrait in the
silver frame and his roses in a vase; then he looked at the photographs
on the mantel-piece; falling from these, his eyes rested for a moment in
idleness on a letter which bore the postmark "Bridgeport, Conn."
"Ah, here she is!" he cried, as a step sounded and the door-handle was
turned. Ora entered and closed the door; but she did not advance towards
him; the smelling-bottle was in her hand.
"I wrote you a note telling you not to come," she said.
"Thank heaven I didn't get it," he answered cheerfully. "I haven't been
home since the morning. You can't send me away now, can you?"
Ora walked slowly towards the sofa; he met her half-way and held out
both his hands; she gave him one of hers in a listless despairing
fashion.
"Oh, I know!" said he. "You've been making yourself unhappy?"
She waved him away gently, and sat down.
"What was in the note you wrote me?" he asked, standing opposite to her.
"That I could never see you again," she said.
"Oh, come!" Ashley expostulated with a laugh. "That's rather summary,
isn't it? What have I done?"
"Irene Kilnorton has been here."
"Ah! And was she disagreeable? She is sometimes--from a sense of duty or
what she takes for it."
"Yes, she was disagreeable."
"If that's all--" he began, taking a step forward.
"That's not all," Ora interrupted. "Are my eyes red?"
"You've not been crying?"
"Yes, I have," she retorted, almost angrily. "Oh, why did I go with you
on Sunday? Why did you make me go?"
She seemed to be conscience-stricken; he drew up a chair and sat down by
her. She did not send him away now but looked at him appealingly. She
had something of the air that she had worn in the inn parlour, but there
joy had been mingled with her appeal; there was no joy in her eyes now.
"We didn't do much harm on Sunday," he said.
"I believe I'm preventing you doing what you ought to do, what all your
friends wish for you, what would be best for you. It's just like me. I
can't help it."
"What are you preventing me from doing?"
"Oh, you know. Irene says you are quite getting to like her. And she's
so nice."
"But Lady Kilnorton's engaged already."
"You know I don't mean Lady Kilnorton. Don't make fun now, Ashley,
don't."
Ashley leant forward suddenly and kissed her cheek.
"Oh, that's not the least use," she moaned disconsolately. "If that was
all that's wanted, I know you'd do it." A mournful smile appeared on her
lips. "But it only makes it worse. I've made up my mind to something."
"So have I. I've made up my mind that you're the most charming woman in
the world, and that I don't care a hang about anything else."
"But you must, you know. We must be reasonable."
"Oh, I see Irene Kilnorton's been very disagreeable!"
"It's not Irene Kilnorton."
"Is it my true happiness, then?"
"No," said Ora, with another fugitive smile. "It's not exactly your true
happiness."
"Well, then, I don't know what it is."
Ora was silent for a moment, her dark eyes filled with woe.
"There's a letter on the mantel-piece," she said. "Will you give it to
me?"
He rose and took the letter. "This one from America?" he asked. "I say,
you're not going off there, starring, are you? Because I shall have to
come too, you know."
"No, I'm not going there." She took the letter out of its envelope.
"Read it," she said, and handed it to him.
Somehow, before he read a word of it, the truth flashed into his mind.
He looked at her and said one word: "Fenning?"
She nodded and then let her head fall back on the sofa. He read the
letter carefully and jealously; that it was written by a friend's hand
no doubt prevented Jack Fenning from saying more, as he himself hinted;
yet the colourlessness and restraint of what he wrote were a comfort to
Ashley.
He laid the letter down on the table and looked for a moment at his own
picture. Ora's eyes were on him; he leant forward, took her hand, and
raised it to his lips.
"Poor dear!" said he. Then he folded the letter, put it in its envelope,
laid the envelope on the mantel-piece, read Bridgeport, Conn., again on
the postmark, and, turning, stood looking down on her. He had not got
quite home to the heart of the situation. All that day long, as it
seemed to him, there had been ineffectual efforts to stop him, to turn
him from his path, and to rescue him from the impulses which were
carrying him along. The Buckingham Palace Road proposal, Irene
Kilnorton's hints, Alice Muddock's presence, had all been as it were
suggestions to him; he had not heeded the suggestions. Now came
something more categorical, something which must receive attention and
insisted on being heeded. Mr. Fenning had suddenly stepped out of
vagueness into definiteness, out of a sort of hypothetical into a very
real and pressing form of existence. He was now located in space at
Bridgeport, Connecticut; he was palpable in his written message; he
became urgent for consideration by virtue of his proposal. Ashley had,
in his heart, not taken Mr. Fenning very seriously; now Mr. Fenning
chose to upset his attitude in that respect in a most decisive fashion.
For whatever Ora decided to do, there must from now be a difference;
Ashley could not doubt that. She might accept her husband's proposal; in
that case her whole life was changed and his with it. She might refuse
to have anything to do with it; but then would not the discarded but
legitimate claimant on her affections and her society force her and him
out of the compromise under which they now sheltered themselves? Either
way, Jack Fenning must now be reckoned with; but which was to be the
way?
With a curious sense of surviving ignorance, with an uncomfortable
recognition that he was only at the beginning of the study and on the
outskirts of a knowledge of the woman whom he already loved and held
nearest to him of anybody in the world, Ashley discovered that he had no
idea in which way Ora would face the situation, what would be her
temper, or what her decision. For the first time in their acquaintance a
flash of discomfort, almost of apprehension, shot across his mind. Was
she as alien, as foreign, as diverse from him as that? But he would not
admit the feeling, would not have it or recognise it; it was absurd, he
told himself, to expect to foresee her choice, when he knew so little of
the factors which must decide it. Did he know Fenning, had he been privy
to their married life? Not in her but in the nature of the case lay the
puzzle. He dismissed his doubt and leant down towards the sad beautiful
face beside him.
"Well, dear?" he asked, very gently.
"I'm going to tell him to come," said she.