WHAT IS TRUTH?
There was one aspect of the renunciation on which Ora had the tact not
to dwell in conversation with her faithful ally; it was, however, an
added source of comfort to herself, and proved very useful at moments
when her resolve needed reinforcement. As an incidental result of its
main object, as a kind of byproduct of beneficence, the renunciation was
to make Alice Muddock happy. Ora had always given a corner to this idea.
To use the metaphor which insisted on occurring to Ashley, Alice had a
part--not a big part, but a pretty part; in the last act her faithful
love was to be rewarded. She would not (and could not consistently with
the plan of the whole piece) look to receive a passionate attachment,
but a reasonable and sober affection, such as her modest wisdom must
incline her to accept, would in the end be hers; from it was to spring,
not rapturous joy, but a temperate happiness, and a permanent union with
Ashley Mead. Ashley was to be led to regard this as the best solution,
to fall in with it at first in a kind of resignation, and later on to
come to see that it had been the best thing under the circumstances of
the case. Ora could bring him to perceive this (though perhaps nobody
else could); to her Alice would owe the temperate happiness, and Ashley
a settlement in life from all points of view most advantageous. Ora
herself continued to have a good deal to do with this hypothetical
wedded life; she pictured herself making appearances in it from time to
time, assuaging difficulties, removing misunderstandings, perhaps
renewing to Ashley her proof of its desirability, and shewing him once
again that, sweet as her life with him and his with her must have
proved, yet the renunciation had been and remained true wisdom, as well
as the only right course. These postnuptial scenes with Ashley were very
attractive to Ora in her moods of gentle melancholy. The picture of the
married life in the considerable intervals during which she made no
appearance in it, but was somewhere with Mr. Fenning, was left vague and
undefined.
Ora caught at a visit from Lord Bowdon as the first fruit of the
renunciation and a promise of all that was to follow after. He had not
come near her since the day when she dismissed him with her "Don't;"
within a week from the announcement of Mr. Fenning's approaching return
he paid a call on her. The inference was easy, and to a large extent it
was correct. Ora could not resist drawing her visitor and Irene
Kilnorton into the play; quite small parts were theirs, but they
furnished the stage and heightened the general impression. Their married
life also was to be tinged and coloured by the past; they also were to
owe something to the renunciation; it had restored to them complete
tranquillity, removed from him a wayward impulse, from her a jealous
pang, and set them both on the straight path of unclouded happiness. She
could not say any of this to Bowdon, but she hinted it to Ashley, who
laughed, and when Bowdon came she hinted to him her hopes concerning
Alice Muddock. He laughed like Ashley, but with a very doubtful
expression in his eyes. By now the world was talking rather loudly about
Miss Pinsent and Mr. Ashley Mead. Bowdon was inclined to think that his
hostess was "humbugging" him in a somewhat transparent fashion. He did
not resent it; he found, with an appreciable recrudescence of alarm,
that he minded very little what she talked about so that she sat there
and talked to him. His inward "Thank God, the fellow's coming!" was a
triumphant vindication of part, at least, of Ora's faith in the
renunciation. He pulled his moustache thoughtfully as he observed,
"I suppose a match between Miss Muddock and Ashley was always an idea.
Irene says old Sir James has been set on it for years."
Sir James made a quiet and unobtrusive entry on the stage, bringing (by
a legitimate stretch of fancy) his sympathetic wife with him; even Ora
could not make anything of Bob for scenic purposes.
"But Ashley's not a fellow to be forced into what he doesn't care
about."
"Not forced, no," murmured Ora. The method was not so crude as that.
"And we've no right to take the lady's feelings for granted."
"Oh, no," said Ora earnestly.
"There are certainly no signs of anything of the sort at present."
"At present! No!" she cried almost indignantly. Then she detected a hint
of amusement in Bowdon's eye and began to laugh. In spite of all the
sorrow and pain involved in the renunciation, its spice of secrecy and
mystification sometimes extorted a smile from her; people were so
hopelessly puzzled about it, so very far from guessing the truth, and so
wide of the mark in their conjectures. Bowdon evidently shared the
general bewilderment and felt a difficulty in talking to her about
Ashley Mead. She presented him with another topic.
"The news about you and Irene made me so happy," she said. "Irene's such
a dear."
"You're very kind," he muttered. This topic was not much less awkward
than the other, and Ora's enthusiasm had imparted to her manner the
intense cordiality and sympathy which made Irene say that she conveyed
the idea of expecting to be kissed; he preferred that she should not
suggest that idea to him.
"It's such a lovely arrangement in every way," she pursued. "Isn't it?"
Her eyes were raised to his; she had meant to be quite serious, but her
look betrayed the sense of fun with which she offered her
congratulations. She could not behave quite as though nothing had ever
passed between them; she was willing to minimise but declined to
annihilate a certain memory common to them. "I'm going to come and see
you very often when you're married," she went on. Bowdon was willing
enough to meet her subtly hinted mockery.
"I hope you'll be very discreet," he said with a smile.
"Oh, I'll be discreet. There isn't much to be discreet about, is there?"
"That's not my fault," he allowed himself to remark as he rose to take
leave.
"Oh, you're not going yet?" she cried. "If you do I shall think it was
simply a duty call. And it's so long since I've seen you." Her innate
desire--it was almost an instinct--to have every man leave her with as
much difficulty as possible imparted a pathetic earnestness to her tone.
"Perhaps I shan't have many more chances of seeing you."
"Many--after I'm married," he reminded her, smiling.
"No, I'm serious now," she declared. "You--you know what's going to
happen, Lord Bowdon?"
"Yes, I know."
"Of course when Jack comes home I shan't be so free. Besides--!" She did
not end the sentence; the suppressed words would obviously have raised
the question of Jack Fenning's acceptability to her friends. For his
part Bowdon immediately became certain that Jack was a ruffian. He held
out his hand, ostensibly in farewell; Ora took it and pressed it hard,
her eyes the while demanding much sympathy. Bowdon found himself giving
her intense sympathy; he had not before realised what this thing meant
to her, he had been too much occupied with what it meant to him. He
could not openly condole with her on her husband's return, but he came
very near that point in his good-bye.
"Your friends will always want to see you, and--and be eager to do
anything in the world they can for you," he said. The pressure of her
hand thanked him, and then he departed. As he walked out of the
hall-door, he put his hat very firmly on his head and drew a long
breath. He was conscious of having escaped a danger; and he could not
deny, in spite of poor Ora's hard fortune, that the return of Mr.
Fenning was a good thing.
Good or bad, the coming was near now. The brief and business-like letter
had reached Bridgeport, Connecticut, and had elicited a reply by cable.
In eight days Mr. Fenning might be expected at Southampton. As the event
approached, it seemed to become less and less real to Ashley; he found
himself wondering whether a man who is to be hanged on Monday has more
than the barest intellectual belief in the fact, whether it really sinks
into his consciousness until the rope is absolutely round his neck.
Accidents by sea and land suggested themselves to an irresponsible and
non-indictable fancy; or Jack had merely meant to extort a gift of
money; or his unstable purpose would change. The world that held himself
and Ora seemed incapable of opening to receive Jack Fenning; something
would happen. Nothing did happen except that the last days went on
accomplishing themselves in their unmoved way, and when Ashley went to
bed each night Jack Fenning was twenty-four hours nearer. Ora's conduct
increased the sense of unreality. She wanted him always with her; she
dissipated his scruples with radiant raillery or drowned them in
threatened tears. On the other hand, she was full of Jack Fenning now;
often talking about him, oftener still about how she would receive him.
She sketched his career for Ashley's information; the son of a poor
clergyman, he had obtained a berth in a shipowner's office at Hamburg;
he had lost it and come home; he had made the acquaintance of a Jewish
gentleman and been his clerk on the Stock Exchange; he had written a
play and induced the Jewish gentleman to furnish money for its
production; disaster followed; Jack became an auctioneer's clerk; the
Jewish gentleman, with commendable forgivingness, had put him in the way
of a successful gold mine (that is, a successfully floated gold mine);
he had made two thousand pounds. "Then he married me," Ora interpolated
into her summary narrative. The money was soon spent. Then came darker
times, debts, queer expedients for avoiding, and queerer for contriving,
payment, and at last a conviction that the air of America would suit him
better for a time. The picture of a worthless, weak, idle, plausible
rascal emerged tolerably complete from these scattered touches. One
thing she added, new to her hearer and in a way unwelcome: Jack was--had
been, she put it, still treating him as belonging to the past--extremely
handsome. "Handsomer than you, much," she said, laughing, with her face
very near his over his shoulder as he sat moodily by the window. He did
not look round at her, until, by accident as it seemed and just possibly
was, a curl of her dark hair touched his cheek; then he forgave her the
handsomeness of Jack Fenning.
Irene Kilnorton had been with her that day and had told her that, since
she chose to have the man back, she must treat him properly and look as
though she were glad to see him; that she must, in fact, give a fair
trial to the experiment which she had decided to allow. Being thoroughly
in harmony with the theory of renunciation, this advice made a great
impression on Ora. She professed her joy that Jack was to arrive on a
Sunday, because she would thus be free from the theatre and able to meet
him at Southampton. To meet him at Southampton was an admirable way of
treating him properly and of giving a fair trial to the experiment.
Ashley's raised brows hinted that this excess of welcome was hardly due
to the Prodigal. Ora insisted on it. He was past surprise by now, or he
would have wondered when she went on:
"But of course I can't go alone; I hate travelling alone; and I don't
know anything about how the boats come in or anything. You must come
with me, you know."
"Oh, I'm to go with you, am I?"
"Yes; and you'll go and find him and bring him to me. Somebody'll tell
you which is him."
"And then I'm to leave you with him and come back to town alone?"
Ora's smile suddenly vanished. "Don't, dear," she said, laying her hand
on his arm. That was her way always when he touched on the black side of
the situation. Her plans and pictures still stopped short with the
arrival of the boat. "It'll be our last time quite alone and
uninterrupted together," she reminded him, as though he could forget the
object of the expedition and be happy in the thought that it meant two
hours with her.
"I don't see why you shouldn't travel back with us," she added a moment
later. "Oh, of course you will!"
He chafed at her use of the word "us," for now it meant herself and
Jack, and had the true matrimonial ring, asserting for Mr. Fenning a
position which the law only, and not Ashley's habit of thought, accorded
him. But he would have to accustom himself to this "us" and all that it
conveyed. He forced himself to smile as he observed, "Perhaps Fenning'll
want to smoke!"
Ora laughed merrily and said that she hoped he would. Even to Ashley it
seemed odd that the notion appeared to her rather as a happy possibility
than as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of her attitude; she really thought it
conceivable that Jack might go and smoke, while she and Ashley had
another "last time quite alone together." But she had such an
extraordinary power of commending absurdities to serious consideration
that he caught himself rehearsing the best terms in which to make the
suggestion to Mr. Fenning.
In those days he had it always in mind to tell her a thing on which he
was resolutely determined, which even she could not make him falter
about. With the entry of Jack Fenning must come his own exit. He did
not deceive himself as to his grounds for this resolve, or deck in any
gorgeous colours of high principle what was at best no more than a
dictate of self-respect and more probably in the main an instinct of
pride. But from the hour of the arrival of the boat he meant to be no
more an intimate friend of hers. Had his business engagements allowed he
would have arranged to leave London. Absence from town was impossible to
him without a loss which he could not encounter, but London is a large
place, where people need not be met unless they are sought. He would
deliver her over to her husband and go his way. But he did not tell her;
she would either be very woeful, and that calamity he could not face, or
she would give a thoughtless assent and go on making her pictures just
the same. The resolution abode in his own heart as the one fixed point,
as the one definite end to all this strange period of provisional
indiscretion and unreal imaginings. When he thought of it, he rose to
the wish that Jack might be still handsome and might prove more
reputable and kinder than he had been in the old days. Ora herself was
beginning to have hopes of Jack, or hopes of what she might make of him
by her zealous care and dutiful fidelity; Ashley encouraged these hopes
and they throve under his watering. In the course of the last week there
was added to the great idea of a renunciation of Ashley the hardly less
seductive and fascinating project of a reformation of Jack Fenning. This
conception broadened and enriched the plot of the fanciful drama, added
a fine scene or two, and supplied a new motive for the heroine. In the
end Ora had great hopes of Jack in the future and a very much more
charitable opinion of him in the past.
She paid her promised visit to Alice Muddock on the Wednesday, Jack
Fenning being due on the following Sunday. In these last days Ora
devoted herself entirely to people who were, in some way or other,
within the four corners of the scheme of renunciation. Alice was amazed
to find in her a feeling about her husband's arrival hardly
distinguishable from pleasure; at least she was sure that a cable
message that he was not coming would have inflicted a serious
disappointment on her visitor. But at the same time this strange
creature was obviously, openly--a few weeks ago Alice would not have
hesitated to say shamelessly--in love with Ashley Mead. The two men's
names alternated on her lips; it seemed moral polyandry or little
better. Alice's formulas were indeed at fault. And through it all ran
the implied assertion that Alice was interested in the affair for a
stronger reason than the friendship which she was so good as to offer to
Ora. Here again, according to Ora's method, Irene Kilnorton's share in
the scheme was hinted at, while Alice was left to infer her own. She did
so readily enough, having drawn the inference on her own account
beforehand, but her wonder at finding it in Ora's mind was not
diminished. To be passionately in love with a man and to give him up was
conceivable; any heights of self-sacrifice were within the purview of
Alice's mind. To find a luxury in giving him up was beyond her. To
return to a husband from a sense of duty would have been to Alice almost
a matter of course, however bad the man might be; to set to work to make
out that the man was not bad clashed directly with the honest
perspicacity of her intellect. And, to crown all, in the interval, as a
preparation for resuming the path of duty, to set all the town talking
scandal and greet the scandal with a defiance terribly near to
enjoyment! Alice, utterly at fault, grew impatient; her hard-won
toleration was hard tried.
"I'm sure you understand all I feel," said Ora, taking her friend's hand
between hers.
"Indeed I don't," replied Alice bluntly.
"Anyhow you're sorry for me?" Ora pleaded. Here Alice could give the
desired assurance. Ora was content; sympathy was what she wanted;
whether it came from brain or heart was of small moment.
By a coincidence, which at first sight looked perverse, Bob brought
Babba Flint into Alice's room at tea-time. Alice did not like Babba, and
feared that his coming would interrupt the revelation of herself which
Ora in innocent unconsciousness was employed in giving. The result
proved quite different. Babba had declared to Irene Kilnorton that the
coming of Mr. Fenning was a figment concocted from caprice or perhaps
with an indirect motive; he advanced the same view to Ora herself with
unabashed impudence, yet with a seriousness which forbade the opinion
that he merely jested.
"Of course I can't tell whether you expect him, Miss Pinsent. All I know
is he won't come." Babba's eye-glass fell from his eye in its most
conclusive manner.
"Oh, yes, he will," cried Ora triumphantly. "I know all about it; the
boat, and the time, and everything else."
"You'll see, he won't be there," Babba persisted. "I wonder if you'll be
awfully surprised!"
"Why should I say he's coming if he isn't?" asked Ora, but rather with
amusement than indignation.
"Oh, for an advertisement, or just because it came into your head, or as
the homage liberty pays to matrimony; any reason you like, you know."
Their debate filled Alice with wonder. It was strange that Ora should
lend an ear to Babba's suggestions, that she should not at once silence
him; yet she listened with apparent interest, although, of course, she
repudiated the motives imputed to her and declared that in all sincerity
she expected her husband. Babba fell back on blank assertion. "He won't
come, you'll see," he repeated.
The extreme impertinence of the little man moved Alice to resentment; in
whatever sense his remarks were taken, they must bear an offensive
meaning. But Ora did not seem resentful; strangely enough she began to
shew signs of disturbance, she brought forward serious arguments to
prove that Jack Fenning would come, and appealed to Babba to alter his
opinion with pathetic eyes. Babba was inexorable.
"Really you must allow Miss Pinsent to know," Alice expostulated.
"It's a matter of experience," Babba observed. "They're always going to
turn up, but they never do."
"Why do you say he won't come?" asked Ora anxiously.
"I've told you the reason. They never do," repeated Babba obstinately.
Bob Muddock burst into a laugh, Alice frowned severely, Ora's brows were
knit in puzzled wrinkles. This suggestion of an impediment in the way of
the renunciation and reformation was quite new to her; but she did not
appear to be struck at all by what seemed to Alice the indecency of
discussing it.
"Suppose he didn't!" Ora murmured audibly; a smile came slowly to her
lips and her eyes seemed to grow full of half-imaged possibilities.
Babba made no comment; his smile was enough for all who knew the facts
of the present situation; for example, for all who knew in what company
Miss Pinsent drove to the theatre. "If he didn't--" Ora began. Babba's
mocking eye was on her. She began to laugh. "I know what you're
thinking!" she cried with a menacing wave of her hand.
The scene had become distasteful, almost unendurable, to Alice Muddock.
Here was the side of Ora that she detested; it raised all the old
prejudices in her and argued that they were well justified. She also
knew what Babba Flint's look meant, and wanted to turn him out of the
room for it. Such punishment would be only proper; it would also have
propitiated in some degree the jealousy which made her unwilling to
admit that possibly Mr. Fenning might not come.
The young men went; she and Ora were alone together; Alice's feeling of
hostility persisted and became manifest to Ora's quick perception. In an
instant she implored pity and forgiveness by abandoning herself to
condemnation.
"Now you see what I am! And you might have been my friend!" she
murmured. "But you don't know how unhappy I am."
"I don't believe you're unhappy at all," said Alice with blunt
barbarity.
"Not unhappy!" exclaimed Ora in dismay. If she were not unhappy, the
whole structure tumbled.
"You will be, though," Alice pursued relentlessly. "You'll be very
unhappy when Mr. Fenning comes, and I think you'd be unhappy if by any
chance he didn't come." She paused and looked at her visitor. "I
shouldn't like to be like you," she said thoughtfully.
Ora sat quiet; there was a scared look on her face; she turned her eyes
up to Alice who sat on a higher chair.
"Why do you say that sort of thing to me?" she asked in a low voice.
"It's quite true. I shouldn't. And all the rest is true too." Her voice
grew harder and harder in opposition to an inner pleading for mercy.
This woman should not wheedle her into lies; she would tell the truth
for once, although Ora did sit there--looking like a child condemned to
rigorous punishment.
"It's not decent the way you talk about it, and let people talk about
it," she broke out in a burst of indignation. "Have you no self-respect?
Don't you know how people talk about you? Oh, I wouldn't be famous at
the price of that!"
Ora did not cry; the hurt was beyond tears; she grew white, her eyes
were wide and her lips parted; she watched Alice as a dog seems to watch
for the next fall of the whip.
"You say you're unhappy. Lots of us are unhappy, but we don't tell all
the world about it. And we don't hug our unhappiness either and make a
play out of it." What Ashley had reluctantly and secretly thought came
in stern and cutting plainness from Alice's lips; but Ashley would have
died sooner than breathe a word of it to Ora.
"I suppose," said Alice, "you think I'm angry because--because of
something that concerns myself. I'm not, I'm just telling you the
truth." She was sure that it was the truth, however it might be
inspired, however it was that she had come to utter it. "What does that
man say about you when you aren't there? He says almost everything to
your face! And you laugh! What does he say after dinner, what does he
say at his club?"
"Please let me go home," said Ora. "Please let me go home." She seemed
almost to stagger as she rose. "I must go home," she said, "Or--or I
shan't have time for dinner."
"I suppose you like--" Alice began, but she stopped herself. She had
said enough; the face before her seemed older, thinner, drawn into lines
that impaired its beauty, as it were scarred with a new knowledge; the
eyes that met hers were terrified. "It's all true," she said to herself
again. "Quite true. Only nobody has ever told her the truth."
She rang the bell, but did not go with Ora to the door; neither of them
thought of shaking hands; a quarter of an hour before Ora would have
offered one of her ready kisses. Now she went quietly and silently to
the door and opened it with timid noiselessness. As she went out, she
looked back over her shoulder; a movement from Alice, the holding out of
a hand, would have brought her back in a flood of tears and a burst of
pitiful protests at once against herself and against the accusations
laid to her charge. No sign came; Alice stood stern and immovable.
"I'm late as it is. Good-bye," whispered Ora.
She went out. Alice stood still where she was for a moment before she
flung herself into a chair, exclaiming again, and this time aloud,
"It's true, it's true; every word of it's the truth!" She was very
anxious to convince herself that every word of it was true.