THE LICENCE OF VIRTUE
Irene Kilnorton was in a state of pardonable irritation; just now she
often inclined to irritation, but the immediate cause of this fit and
its sufficient excuse lay in Babba Flint's behaviour. If only he could
have believed it, he always annoyed her; but it was outrageous beyond
the common to come on her "At Home" day, and openly scout her most
interesting, most exciting, most comforting piece of news. He stuck his
glass in his eye, stared through it an instant, and dropped it with an
air of contemptuous incredulity.
"She told me herself," said Irene angrily. "I suppose that's pretty good
authority."
"The very worst," retorted Babba calmly. "She's just the person who has
an interest in spreading the idea. Mind you, I don't say he doesn't
exist; I reserve judgment as to that because I'm aware that he used to.
But I do say he won't turn up, and I'm willing to take any reasonable
bet on the subject. In fact the whole thing is as plain as a pikestaff."
"What whole thing?" She spoke low, she did not want the rest to hear.
Babba spread his hands in a deprecating toleration for his hostess'
density.
"She's everywhere with Mead," he said. "Drives to the theatre with him,
you know, walks with him, talks about him."
"That doesn't explain anything, even if it's true."
"Doesn't it? When you're being indiscreet, lay emphasis on your husband.
That's the standing rule, Lady Kilnorton. You'll see; when she gets
tired of Mead, we shall hear no more of Jack Fenning."
Irene looked at him resentfully; he was abominably confident. And after
all Ora was a strange being; in spite of their friendship, still outside
her comprehension and not reducible to her formulas.
"But she's full of his coming," she expostulated. "She's--well, not
exactly glad, I suppose--"
"I should suppose not," smiled Babba.
"But quite excited about it. And Mr. Mead knows he's coming too."
"No doubt Mead says he knows he's coming." Babba had once served his
articles to a solicitor, and reminiscences of the rules of evidence and
the value of testimony hung about him.
"Well, I believe he'll come," Irene declared with external firmness and
an internal faintness.
"He won't, you'll see," returned Babba placidly.
Desiring an end to this vexatious conversation, Irene cast her eyes
round her guests who were engaged in drinking tea and making talk to one
another. Her glance detached Bowdon from his attendance on Minna Soames
and brought him to her side; Babba, however, did not move away.
"The whole thing is very likely a despairing effort of Miss Pinsent's
conscience," he said. "How are you, Lord Bowdon?"
"Ah, Babba, you here? Gossipping as usual, I see."
"He says Ora's husband won't come."
"Well, he doesn't know anything about it."
"I'll take six to four," said Babba eagerly.
"I don't think I care to bet about it," said Bowdon.
"Ah, I expect not!" For Babba the only possible reason against making
any bet in the world was the fear of losing it.
"Do go and talk to Minna Soames," Irene implored him. "She'll be ready
enough to disbelieve anything creditable about poor Ora." Babba smiled
knowingly and began to edge away. Bowdon sat down by his _fiancée_. "I
do believe it, you know," she said, turning to him. Babba looked back
with a derisive smile.
"Why should she say it, if it's not true?" asked Irene, addressing
Bowdon and pointedly ignoring Babba.
"Oh, no doubt it's true," said Bowdon. "Why shouldn't it be true?"
Babba had put forward the constant companionship of Ora and Ashley Mead
at once as evidence that the report was not true and as the explanation
of its being circulated; Irene was inclined to attribute to it only the
first of these functions.
"She goes on very oddly, if it is," she murmured. "But then she is odd."
"It's true, depend upon it," said Bowdon.
His solid persistence both comforted and exasperated her. She desired to
think the report true, but she did not wish him to accept it merely in
the unquestioning loyalty to Ora Pinsent which his tone implied. A thing
was not true simply because Ora chose to say it; men lose all their
common-sense where a woman is concerned; so say women themselves; so
said Irene Kilnorton.
"What impresses me," she went on, "is that Ashley Mead told me."
"I suppose he got his information from her."
"Of course; but he can judge." She paused and added, "It's a very good
thing, if it is true."
"Is it?" asked Bowdon. The question was an almost naked dissent.
Irene looked at him severely.
"It seems to me," she observed, "that men ought to pretend to approve of
respectability. One doesn't ask them to be respectable."
"The man's a scamp, according to all accounts."
"He's her husband."
"He'll make her miserable, and take her money, and so on."
"No doubt his arrival will be inconvenient in a good many ways," Irene
allowed herself to remark with significant emphasis. She had, she
declared, no patience with the way men looked at such things; the man
was the woman's husband after all. She found growing in her a strong
disposition to champion Mr. Fenning's cause through thick and thin. "We
don't know his version of the case," she reminded Bowdon after a pause.
"Oh, that's true, of course," he conceded with what she felt was an
empty show of fairness. In reality he had prejudged the case and
condemned the absent and unheard defendant. That was because he was a
man and Ora Pinsent good-looking; a habit regrettable in men generally
becomes exasperating, almost insulting, in one's own lover, especially
with circumstances of a peculiar nature existing in the past and still
very vivid in memory.
One way in which the news affected Bowdon he had allowed Irene to
perceive; he was not at his ease as to how Ora would fare, and there was
a touch of jealousy in his picture of Mr. Fenning's probable conduct.
But he was conscious also of thankfulness that he had escaped from the
sort of position in which he might have been placed had he yielded to
his impulse, and in which, so far as he saw, Ashley Mead was now
involved. His dignity would not have suffered him to enter into any
rivalry with Fenning, while to leave the field clear to Fenning would
have been a sacrifice hard to make. From this evil fortune the woman by
him had rescued him, or enabled him to rescue himself, and he was full
of gratitude to her; while she was still resenting the jealousy which he
had betrayed with regard to Ora Pinsent, he surprised her by some
whispered words of more tenderness than he commonly used and by a look
which sent new hope through her. Suddenly she grasped that this event
might do what she had not been able to do, might reconcile him to what
was, gradually wean him wholly from the thought of what might have been,
and in the end render him to her entirely her own in heart and soul. She
would be very grateful to Jack Fenning if he accomplished that for her;
he would have remade her life.
"You're quite gallant to-day," she whispered with a blush and a glad
sparkle in her eyes. "We were very nearly quarrelling just now, weren't
we?" she asked with a bright smile.
"We'll never be nearer, my dear," he answered; he had the most intense
desire to please her.
"And about this Fenning man! Imagine!" she whispered in scornful
amusement.
Bowdon went off to the House and the other guests took their leave. When
all had gone Alice Muddock arrived; the two ladies had arranged to dine
and spend a quiet hour together before they went to the parties for
which they were engaged. When they were left alone Alice, with a sigh,
told her friend that Queen's Gate seemed like a refuge.
"We've been so uncomfortable at home the last few days," she explained.
"At least I've found it very uncomfortable. You know about Ashley and
the business? Well, father's furious with him about it, so's Bob, so's
my stepmother, of course. And then--" She paused as though in
hesitation.
"Well, and then?" asked Irene Kilnorton.
"Bob's brought home a lot of gossip about him from the club. Has Mr.
Flint been here?" Lady Kilnorton nodded tragically. "He told Bob
something, and father's furious about that too. So he won't hear
Ashley's name mentioned, and takes his revenge by having Bertie Jewett
always in the house. And I don't think I much like Bertie Jewett, not
every day anyhow."
"I've only just made his acquaintance--through your brother."
"Oh, he's just what he would be; it's not his fault, you know." She
began to laugh. "He pays me marked attentions."
"The Industrious Apprentice!" said Irene with a nod. "Ashley's the idle
one."
"It's all very absurd and very tiresome." She had risen and walked
across the room. From the other end of it she asked abruptly, "What do
they say about him and Miss Pinsent?"
"Oh, my dear, what don't they say about everybody?"
"I don't believe it. I like her; and of course I like him."
"And I expect they like one another, so it's all harmonious," said
Irene; but she repented the next moment. "I don't believe anything bad.
But he's very silly about her. It'll all pass." After a moment, thanks
to the new hope in her, she added a courageous generalisation. "Such
nonsense never lasts long," she said. Then she looked at Alice, and it
struck her suddenly that Alice would have referred to the news about
Jack Fenning, had she known it; it seemed odd that everybody should not
have heard of a subject so rich in interest.
"You know about Mr. Fenning?" she asked.
"Mr--? Oh, yes! You mean Miss Pinsent's husband? I know she has a
husband, of course."
Then she did not know the new development.
"I've got a bit of news for you," said Irene luxuriously. "Guess."
"I won't guess even to please you. I hate guessing."
"Well, Mr. Fenning's coming home. I'll tell you all about it."
Beyond the bare fact there was in reality very little to tell, but the
fact was capable of being clothed with so much meaning, of being
invested with so many attendant possibilities, of taking on such various
colours, that it seemed in itself a budget of news. Alice did justice to
its claims; she was undeniably interested; the two found themselves
talking it over in a vein which prevented them from pretending to one
another that they were not both excited about it. They felt like allies
who rejoiced together at the coming of a reinforcement. Irene's
satisfaction was open and declared; Alice was more reticent and inclined
to thoughtfulness. But even as an abstract existence on the other side
of the world Mr. Fenning had comforted her; his virtue as a balm was
endlessly multiplied by the prospect of his arrival in concrete form and
flesh.
"The men amuse me," said Irene loftily. "They're all pitying Ora; they
don't seem to give a thought to poor Mr. Fenning."
"Have you seen Ashley since--since the news came?"
"Yes, but only for a minute. He mentioned it as certain, but quite
indifferently. Of course he'd pretend to be indifferent."
"I suppose so," said Alice. "Perhaps he is really."
"How can he be?"
"Perhaps he means to take no notice of Mr. Fenning."
"My dearest Alice!" cried Irene. "You absolutely shock me. Besides it
isn't like that at all. Ora's most excited about his coming. I can't
make them out, though."
They fell to debating the constant companionship; the drive to the
theatre, improved by Babba Flint's tongue into an invariable habit, was
a puzzle, fitting very badly with an excited interest in Mr. Fenning's
return. From these unprofitable enquiries they agreed to retreat to the
solid basis of hope which the reappearance of the husband gave; on that
they congratulated one another.
Common danger breeds candour; common good fortune breeds candour;
finally, a _tête-à-tête_ dinner breeds candour. By the time they reached
the sweets Irene Kilnorton, in the course of a demonstration that Ashley
must and would get over his infatuation, that such nonsense never
lasted, and that Mr. Fenning's return would put a summary end to
anything of the sort, had confided to her friend that just for a little
while Lord Bowdon had shewn signs of an inclination to hover round the
same perilous flame. She was able to reveal the secret now, because she
was so full of hope that it was all a thing of the past; she found her
confidence itself strengthened by a bold assertion of it.
"Frank's got over it pretty quickly, anyhow," she ended with a secure
laugh.
Alice was not so expansive, she had not victory to justify her; she said
nothing in words, but when Irene accompanied her "It'll all come right,
dear, you'll see," with a squeeze of the hand, she blushed and smiled,
returned the squeeze, and kissed her friend on the first convenient
opportunity. For all practical purposes the confession was complete, and
the alliance sealed anew,--with the addition of a third, involuntary,
and unconscious member in the person of Mr. Jack Fenning of Bridgeport,
Connecticut.
At Alice's party Ashley Mead appeared. Lady Muddock made timid efforts
to avoid him and ludicrously timid attempts to snub him. He laughed at
both, and insisted on talking to her with great cordiality for ten
minutes before he carried Alice off to supper. Her he treated with even
more than his usual friendly intimacy; he surprised her by displaying
very high spirits. All went well with him, it seemed; he had been paid
fine compliments on his work as secretary to the Commission; his
acceptance of the post promised to help rather than hinder him at the
Bar; he had received a suggestion that he should try his hand at a
couple of articles a week for an important journal.
"It's all quite wrong, of course," he said, laughing. "After refusing
Buckingham Palace Road, I ought to be reduced to starvation and have to
crawl back like the Prodigal Son. But the course of events is terribly
unregenerate; it's always missing the moral. The world isn't very moral,
left to itself."
Alice loved him in this mood of gaiety; her own serious and sober
disposition found relief in it. But she liked it more as a flower of
talk than as a living rule of action.
"I'm so glad," she said, with full sincerity. "Of course I knew that
your getting on was only a matter of time."
"I really believe," he said, "that I've at last just got the knife
between the outside edges of the oyster shell. I hope it's a good oyster
inside, though!"
"It's sure to be a good one for you," was her answer. She could not help
giving him that sort of answer; if it betrayed her, she must bear the
betrayal. She gave him the answer even now, when he was under the ban of
heavy disapproval on account of Ora Pinsent. But she wondered to find
him so gay, in a state of such contentment with the world, and of such
interest in it. Bearing in mind what she now knew, she would not have
marvelled to find him in deepest depression or even in a hardly
controlled despair. He looked down in her face with a merry laugh and
some trifling joke which was only an excuse for it; his eyes dwelt on
her face, apparently in a frank enjoyment of what he found there. But
what could he, who looked daily on the face of Ora Pinsent, find there?
His pleasure was absurd, she told herself, but it won upon her; at least
she was not boring him; for the moment anyhow he was not wishing himself
somewhere else. Here was a transient triumph over the lady with whom the
gossips linked his name; to Alice's modesty it was much to make
forgotten in absence one in whose presence she herself must have been at
once forgotten.
He began to flirt with her; he had done the same thing before, now and
then, by way of a change she supposed, perhaps lest their friendship
should sink too far into the brotherly-sisterly state. She desired this
state less than he, but his deviations from it brought her pleasure
alloyed with pain. Indeed she could not, as she admitted, quite
understand flirtation; had it been all pretence she could have judged
and would have condemned, but a thing so largely made up of pretence,
and yet redeemed from mere pretence by a genuineness of the moment's
mood, puzzled her. Fretfully aware of a serious bent in herself, of a
temper perilously near to a dull literalness, she always tried to answer
in kind when he, or indeed anybody else, offered to engage in the game
with her. When it was Ashley she used to abandon herself, so far as her
nature allowed her, to the present pleasure, but never got rid of the
twofold feeling that he did not mean what he said and that he ought to
mean more than he said. That he should flirt with her now was especially
strange. She did not do him the injustice of supposing that he was
employing her merely in order to throw the critics of his relations with
Ora off the scent. She came nearer to the truth in concluding that the
flirtation, like the rest of his bearing, was merely an outcome of
general good-humour. The puzzle was postponed only one stage; how could
he be in good-humour, how did he contrive to rejoice in his life and
exult in it? He was in love with Ora Pinsent; such a love was hopeless
if not disastrous, disastrous if not hopeless; in any aspect that she
could perceive it was irremediably tragic. But Ashley Mead was radiant.
The idea which Irene Kilnorton said absolutely shocked her recurred as a
possible explanation; did he mean to take no notice of Mr. Fenning? An
alarmed horror filled her; her love and her moral code joined in an
urgent protest. Such a thing would mean degradation for him, it might
mean ruin or something like it for his career; besides that, it must
mean an end of him so far as she was concerned; it would set an
impenetrable insurmountable barrier between them. But how did men
approach a determination like that? Surely through sorrow, gloom, and
despair? Ah, but there was sometimes a mad desperate gaiety that went
with and covered such a resolve. She looked at him with a sudden
distress that showed itself in her eyes and parted lips. The change in
her caught his notice, but she was too engrossed with her fear to feel
embarrassment or false shame. He broke off what he was saying to ask,
"Why, what's the matter, Alice? Have you seen a ghost drinking
champagne?"
"They say you're being very foolish," she answered in a low steady
voice, not moving her eyes from his face. "Oh, Ashley, you're not going
to--to do anything mad?"
A pause followed; presently he looked at her and said, with seeming
surprise,
"Have you been thinking of that all the time?"
"No, only just now."
"Why? I mean, what made you think of it?"
"I've heard things. And you were so--I can't say what I mean! When
people are very gay and in great spirits, and so on, don't the Scotch
say they're fey, and that something will happen to them?"
"Most nations have said so," he answered lightly; but a slight frown
came on his brow, as he added, "So I'm fey, am I?" His laugh was a
little bitter.
"I've no right to speak to you."
"Every right." Whatever was in his face, there was neither offence nor
resentment. "Only it's not worth your while to bother," he went on.
"You know I think it is," she answered with simple directness.
He looked at her wistfully; for a moment there came to him such a mood
as had arrested Bowdon's steps and availed to turn his feet into a new
path. But Ashley's temper was not the same. He did not say that because
this path was the best it should be his, be the other ever so
attractive; he admitted with a sigh that the other was more attractive,
nay, was irresistible, and held on his way straight to it.
"You're one of the best people in the world, Alice," he said. And he
added, smiling, "Don't believe all you hear. Everybody is behaving very
properly."
"That's not the Kensington Palace Gardens' opinion."
"I'm afraid I'm damned for ever in Sir James' eyes. Bertie Jewett reigns
in my stead."
"Yes, that's it exactly," she agreed.
He shrugged his shoulders petulantly. "So be it," said he, with
contemptuous resignation. "Oh, I don't mean that I think you look at it
like that," he added an instant later.
She wanted to speak to him about what Irene Kilnorton had told her; her
desire was to hear from his own lips that he did not mean to take no
notice of Mr. Fenning. The subject was difficult of approach,
embarrassed by conventionalities and forbidden by her consciousness of a
personal interest. Before she could find any way of attacking it
indirectly, Ashley began to talk again fluently and merrily, and this
mood lasted until she parted from him; she had no further chance of
getting inside his guard, and went home, wondering still at his high
spirits. On the whole she had drawn comfort from the evening. She
decided to reject that far-fetched idea which called him fey because he
was merry, and to repose on two solid facts: the first being that Ashley
did not seem heart-broken, the second that Mr. Fenning was coming back
to his wife. Among any people whom she could measure or understand,
these two facts would have been of high importance, enough in themselves
to determine the issue. But she felt about Ashley something of the same
ignorance which paralysed all her efforts to understand Ora Pinsent or
to forecast the actions of that gifted but bewildering lady. Certainly
she would have been no more in her intellectual depth had she understood
that the doings which were setting Babba Flint's tongue and all the
other tongues a-wagging were simply a natural outcome and almost an
integral part of a great scheme of renunciation.
She could not be blamed. Ashley Mead himself was hardly less at a loss
on the occasions when he allowed himself to take thought concerning the
matter. But they were few; he could despair of the situation, and this
he did often when he was alone; he could accept it, as he came to do
when with Ora; he could abandon himself to the gaiety of the moment, as
in the mood in which Alice had found him. But he could not think out the
course of events. He had now only one clear purpose, to make things as
easy as he could to Ora, to obey her commands, to fall in with her idea,
to say nothing which would disturb the artificial tranquillity which she
seemed to have achieved. The letter had started on its way to Jack
Fenning, the renunciation was set on foot. The few days, the week or
two, that still remained to them seemed to make little difference. To
scandal he had become indifferent, the arrival was to confute it; of
pain he had become reckless since it was everywhere and in every course;
the opinions of his friends he gathered merely as a source of bitter
amusement; the good fortune on which he had allowed himself to descant
to Alice Muddock had a very ironical flavour about it, since it chose
to come at the time when it could afford him no real gratification, when
he was engrossed with another interest, when he had room only for one
sorrow and only for one triumph.
At supper at one of his clubs that night he chanced to find Mr. Sidney
Hazlewood, who was a member. Ashley sat down beside him at the table,
exchanging a careless nod. Mr. Hazlewood ate his supper with steady
silent persistence; Ashley made rather poor work of a kidney; he had not
really wanted supper, but preferred it to going home to bed.
"You're not conversational," he observed at last to Hazlewood.
"Afraid of interrupting your reverie," Hazlewood explained with a grim
smile.
"I shouldn't have sat down by you unless I'd wanted to talk. How's the
piece going?"
"First-rate. Thought you'd have known; you're about pretty often."
"Yes, but I generally omit to enquire at the box office," said Ashley
with an air of apology.
Mr. Hazlewood pushed back his chair and threw down his napkin. Then he
lit a cigar with great care and took several whiffs. At last he spoke.
"Mind you, Mead," said he with a cautious air, "I don't say it's wrong
of a man at your time of life to be a fool, and I don't say I haven't
been just as great a fool myself, and I don't say that you haven't a
better excuse for it than I ever had, and I don't say that half the men
in town wouldn't be just as great fools as you if they had the chance."
"I'm glad you're not going to say any of those absurd things," remarked
Ashley with gravity.
"But all I say is that you are a fool."
"Is that quite all?" asked Ashley.
Hazlewood's smile broadened a little.
"Not quite," said he. "I left out one word. An epithet."
Ashley surveyed him with a kindly and good-tempered smile.
"Well, old chap, I don't see how you could say anything else," he
observed.
It was merely one, no doubt a typical one, of the opinions that had for
the present to be disregarded. In due time the renunciation would
confound them all. Of this Mr. Hazlewood and his like foresaw nothing;
had it been shewn to them in a vision they would not have believed; if,
_per impossibile_, they believed--Ashley's lips set tight and stern as
imagination's ears listened to their cackling laughter. From of old
virtue in man is by men praised with a sneer.