AT CLOSE QUARTERS
The next few days were critical for the renunciation, and consequently
for the reformation which was to accompany it. In the first place, Jack
Fenning was now very near; secondly, Ashley Mead's behaviour was so
perfect as to suggest almost irresistibly an alternative course;
finally, thanks to Alice Muddock's outspokenness, Ora was inclined to
call virtue thankless and to decide that one whom all the world held
wicked might just as well for all the world be wicked. She had appealed
from Alice to Irene Kilnorton, hinting at the cruelty to which she had
been subjected. She found no comfort; there was an ominous tightening of
Irene's lips. Ora flew home and threw herself--the metaphorical just
avoids passing into the literal--on Ashley's bosom. There were tears and
protests against universal injustice; she cried to him, "Take me away
from all of them!" What answer did she expect or desire? He could not
tell. Mr. Fenning was due on Sunday, and Ora's piece was running still.
Yet at the moment it seemed as though she would fly into space with him
and a hand-bag, leaving renunciations, reformations, virtues, careers,
and livelihoods to look after themselves, surrendering herself to the
rare sweetness of unhindered impulse. For himself, he was ready; he had
come to that state of mind in regard to her. His ordinary outlook on
life was blocked by her image, his plan of existence, with all its lines
of reason, of hope, of ambition, blurred by the touch of her finger.
Only very far behind, somewhere remote in the background, lay the
haunting conviction that these last, and not his present madness, would
prove in the end the abiding reality. What made him refuse, or rather
evade, the embracing of her request was that same helplessness in her
which had restrained his kisses in the inn parlour. If she turned on him
later, crying, "You could do what you liked with me, why did you do this
with me?" what would he have to answer? "We'll settle it to-morrow; you
must start for the theatre now," he said. "So I must. Am I awfully
late?" cried Ora.
That evening he dined with Bob Muddock. Bertie Jewett and Babba Flint
were his fellow-guests. All three seemed to regard him with
interest--Bob's, admiring; Bertie's, scornful; Babba's, amused. Bob
envied the achievement of such a conquest; Bertie despised the man who
wasted time on it; Babba was sympathetic and hinted confidential
surprise that anybody made any bones about it. But they none of them
doubted it; and of the renunciation none knew or took account. A course
of action which fails to suggest itself to anybody incurs the suspicion
of being mad, or at least wrong-headed and quixotic. Ashley told himself
that his conduct was all these things, and had no countervailing grace
of virtue. It was no virtue to fear a reproach in Ora's eyes; it was the
merest cowardice; yet that fear was all that held him back.
After dinner Bob drew him to a sofa apart from their companions and
began to discuss the dramatic profession. Ashley suffered patiently, but
his endurance changed to amusement when Bob passed to the neighbouring
art of music, found in it a marked superiority, and observed that he had
been talking over the subject with Minna Soames.
"I don't see how anybody can object to singing at concerts," said Bob,
with a shake of the head for inconceivable narrow-mindedness, "not even
the governor."
"Sits the wind in that quarter?" asked Ashley, laughing.
"I've got my eye on her, if that's what you mean," answered Bob. "She's
ripping, isn't she?"
The vague and violent charms which the epithet seemed to imply were not
Minna's. Ashley replied that she was undoubtedly pretty and charming.
Bob eyed him with a questioning air; it was as though a man who had been
on a merry-go-round were consulted by one who thought of venturing on
the trip.
"People talk a great deal of rot," Bob reflected. "A girl isn't
degraded, or unsexed, or anything of that sort, just because she sings
for her living."
"Surely not," smiled Ashley.
The prejudices were crying out in pain as Bob's newborn idea crushed and
mangled them.
"But the governor's so against all that sort of thing," Bob complained.
Then he looked up at his friend. "That's mostly your fault," he added,
with an awkward laugh.
"My dear Bob, the cases are not parallel."
"Well, Miss Soames hasn't got a husband, of course."
There was no use in being angry, or even in representing that the remark
which had seemed so obvious to Bob was a considerable liberty.
"Imagine her with a thousand husbands, and still the cases couldn't be
parallel."
"She's not on the stage."
"And if she were, the distinctions run by people, not by professions,"
said Ashley.
"Well, I'm thinking of it," Bob announced. And he added, with a
ludicrous air of desiring the suspicion, while he repudiated the fact,
of dishonourable intentions, "All on the square, of course."
"Good heavens, I should think so!" said Ashley. The imagination of man
could attribute no crooked dealings or irregular positions to Miss
Soames.
"Still, I don't know about the governor," Bob ended, with a relapse into
gloom.
"She'd retire from her work, of course?" Ashley suggested, smiling.
"If she married me? Oh, of course," said Bob decisively. "She wouldn't
want the money, would she?" Any other end of a profession had not
occurred to him, and his opinion that active and public avocations were
not "unsexing" to women was limited by the proviso that such employments
must be necessary for bread-and-butter.
An eye for the variety of the human mind may make almost any society
endurable. Here was Bob struggling with conscious daring against
convention, as a prelude to paying his court to a lady who worshipped
the god whom he persuaded himself to brave; here was Babba Flint
drifting vulgarly, cheerfully, irresponsibly, through all his life and
what money he happened from time to time to possess; here was Bertie
Jewett, his feet set resolutely on the upward track, scorning diversion,
crying "Excelsior" with exalted fervour as he pictured the gold he would
gather and pocket on the summit of the hill; here, finally, was Ashley
himself, who had once set out to climb another hill, and now eagerly
turned his head to listen to a sweet voice that cried to him from the
valley. Such differences may lie behind four precisely similar and
equally spotless white shirt-fronts on the next sofa any evening that we
drop into the club. Therefore it needs discrimination, and perhaps also
some prepossessions, to assign degrees of merit to the different ideas
of how time in this world had best be passed.
"The fact is," Babba was saying to Bertie Jewett, as he nodded a knowing
head towards Ashley, "he was getting restive, so she made up this yarn
about her husband." He yawned, as if the matter were plain to dulness.
"What an ass he is!" mused Bertie. "Don't you know the chance he had? He
might have been where I am!"
Babba turned a rather supercilious look on his companion.
"The shop? Must be a damned grind, isn't it?"
Bertie was nettled; he revealed a little of what he had begun to learn
that he ought to conceal.
"I bet you I earn a sovereign quicker than you earn a shilling," he
remarked.
"Daresay you do," murmured Babba, regarding the end of his cigar. Babba
was vulgar, but not with this sort of vulgarity.
"And more of 'em," pursued Bertie.
"But you have an infernally slow life of it," Babba assured him. Babba
was ignorant of the engrossing charms that sparkle in the eyes of
wealth, forbidding weariness in its courtship, making all else dull and
void of allurement to its votaries. To each man his own hunger.
Back to his hunger went Ashley Mead, no less ravenous, yet seeing his
craving in the new light of desires revealed to him, but still alien
from him. All his world seemed now united in crying out to him to mind
his steps, in pointing imploringly or mockingly to the abyss before his
feet, in weeping, wondering, or laughing at him. That some of the
protests were conscious, some unwitting, made no difference; the feeling
of standing aloof from all the rest gave him a sense of doom, as though
he were set apart for his work, and amidst condemnation, pity, and
ridicule must go through with it. For to-morrow he thought that she
would come with him, leaving Mr. Fenning desolate, Sidney Hazlewood
groaning over agreements misunderstood as to their nature, friends
heart-broken, and the world agape.
But the next day she would not come, or, rather, prayed not to be taken.
"You mustn't, you mustn't," she sobbed. "Alice Muddock had made me
angry, oh, and hurt me so. I was ready to do anything. But don't, Ashley
dear, don't! Do let me be good. That'll be the best way of answering
her, won't it? I couldn't answer her then."
"Alice? What's Alice been saying?" he asked, for he had not been told
the details of that particular case of cruelty.
"I can't tell you. Oh, it was horrible! Was it true? Say it wasn't
true!"
"You haven't told me what it was," he objected.
"Oh dear me, neither I have!" cried Ora, drawing back from him; her eyes
swam in tears, but her lips bent in smiles. "How awfully absurd of me!"
she exclaimed, and broke into the low luxurious laughter that he loved.
"Well, it was something bad of me; so it couldn't be true, could it?"
He pressed her to tell him what it was and she told him, becoming again
sorrowful and wounded as she rehearsed the story; the point of view
surprised her so. To Ashley it was no surprise, nothing more than a
sharp unsparing utterance of the doubts of his own mind. His quarrel
with Alice was that she said it, not that she thought it; she was bound
to think it when he in all his infatuation could not stifle the thought.
Was he in love then with a bundle of emotions and ready to give away his
life in exchange for a handful of poses? In self-defence he embraced the
conclusion and twisted it to serve his purpose. What more is anybody, he
asked--what more than the sheet on which slide after slide is
momentarily shewn?
"But still she was wrong," said Ora. "Oh, I can forgive her. Of course I
forgive her. It's only because she's fond of you. I know I'm not really
like that. It's not the true me, Ashley."
The idea of the "true me" delighted Ora, and the "true me" required that
Mr. Fenning should be met punctually on Sunday next. The renunciation
raised its head again.
"The 'true me,' then, is really a very sober and correct person?" asked
Ashley.
"Yes," she answered, enjoying the paradox she asserted. Her interest in
herself was frank and almost might be called artistic. "Do you think me
strange?" she asked. "I believe you're laughing at me half the time."
"And the other half?"
"We weep together, don't we? Poor Ashley!"
On the Saturday he came to see her again in order to make final
arrangements for their expedition of the next day. There was also a
point on which they had never touched, to which, as he believed, Ora had
given no consideration. Was Mr. Fenning to settle down in the little
house at Chelsea? At present the establishment was in all its appearance
and fittings so exclusively feminine that it seemed an impossible
residence for a man. Ora was not in the room when Janet ushered him in;
that respectable servant lingered near the door and, after a moment's
apparent hesitation, spoke to him.
"I beg pardon, sir," she said, "but could you tell me where I can get
some good whiskey?"
"Whiskey?" Ashley exclaimed in surprise.
"Mr. Fenning, sir, used to be particular about his whiskey, and as
he's--"
"Oh, yes, of course, Janet." He thought for a moment and mentioned the
wine merchant with whom Lord Bowdon dealt. "I think you'll be safe
there," he ended with a nod.
Janet thanked him and went out.
"This really brings it home," said Ashley, dropping into a chair and
laughing weakly to himself. "Tomorrow night Jack Fenning'll sit here and
drink that whiskey, while I--"
He rose abruptly and walked about the room. His portrait in the silver
frame was still on the little table by Ora's favourite seat; not even a
letter from Bridgeport, Connecticut, was there to hint of Mr. Fenning.
The demand for a good whiskey seemed the sole forerunner of the
wanderer's return.
"She doesn't know in the least what she's doing," Ashley muttered as he
flung himself into his seat again.
That afternoon she was in the mood hardest for him to bear. She was
sanguine about her husband; she recalled the short time they had
contrived to be happy together, dwelt on the amiable points in his
character, ascribed his weaknesses more to circumstances than to
nature, and took on her own shoulders a generous share of blame for the
household's shipwreck. All this is to say that the reformation for the
instant took precedence of the renunciation, and a belief in the
possibility, not perhaps of being happy with Jack, but at least of
making Jack happy, was bedecked in the robes of a virtuous aspiration.
"It would be no use having him back if I couldn't make him happy, would
it?" she asked. She shewed sometimes this strange forgetfulness of her
friend's feelings.
"I know I've got a photograph of him somewhere," she said with a
troubled little frown. "I wonder where it is!" Then a lucky thought
brought a smile. "I expect he'd like to see it on the mantel-piece,
wouldn't he?" she cried, turning to Ashley.
"I should think he'd be very touched. He might even believe it had been
there all the time."
"Don't be sarcastic," said Ora good-humouredly. "I'll ask Janet where
I've put it."
Janet, being summoned and questioned, knew where Miss Pinsent had put
the photograph, or anyhow where it was to be found. In a few minutes she
produced it.
"It is handsome, you see," said Ora, handing it across to Ashley. She
appeared anxious for a favourable opinion from him.
The face was certainly handsome. The features were straight, the eyes
large, the brow well formed; there was no great appearance of intellect
or resolution, but the smile was amiable. Ashley handed it back with a
nod of assent, and Ora set it on the mantel-piece. Ashley's bitterness
overflowed.
"Put it in the frame instead of mine," he said, stretching out his hand
to take his own portrait.
In an instant Ora was across to the table and snatched up the picture.
She held it close to her with both hands and stood fronting him
defiantly.
"No," she said, "no. You shan't touch it. Nobody shall touch it."
He leant back with a smile of despairing amusement. She put down the
portrait and came close to him, looking at him intently; then she
dropped on her knees beside him and took his hand between hers.
"Fancy you daring to think that!" she said. A look of terror came into
her eyes. "You're not going to be like that?" she moaned. "I can't go on
if you're going to be like that."
He meant far more than he had hinted in his bitter speech; this
afternoon he had intended to tell her his resolution; this was his last
visit to the little house; from to-morrow afternoon he would be an
acquaintance to whom she bowed in the streets, whom she met now and then
by chance. He might tell her that now--now while she held his hands
between hers. And if he told her that and convinced her of it, she would
not go to meet Jack Fenning. He sat silent as she looked up in his eyes.
His struggle was short; it lacked the dramatic presentment of Ora's
mental conflicts, it had no heroic poses; but there emerged again
clearly from the fight the old feeling that to use her love and his
power in this fashion would not be playing fair; he must let her have
her chance with her husband.
"I was a brute, Ora," he said. "I'll do just what you like, dear."
With a bound she was back to merriment and her sanguine view of
favourable possibilities in Mr. Fenning. She built more and more on
these last, growing excited as she pictured how recent years might, nay
must, have improved him, how the faults of youth might, indeed would,
have fallen away, and how the true man should be revealed. "And if he
wants a friend, you'll always be one to him," she ended. Ashley,
surrendering at discretion, promised to be a friend to Jack Fenning.
The next day found her in the same temper. She was eager and
high-strung, merry and full of laughs, thoughtfully kind, and again
thoughtlessly most cruel. When he called for her in the morning she was
ready, waiting for him; from her air they might have been starting again
for a day in the country by themselves, going to sit again in the meadow
by the river, going to dine again in the inn parlour whose window opened
on the sweet old garden. No such reminiscences, so sharp in pain for
him, seemed to rise in her or to mar her triumph. For triumphant she
was; her great purpose was being carried out; renunciation accomplished,
reformation on the point of beginning. Prosperously the play had run up
to its last great scene; soon must the wondering applause of friends
fall on her ear; soon would Alice Muddock own that her virtue had been
too cruel, and Babba Flint confess his worldly sagacity at fault. To
herself now she was a heroine, and she rejoiced in her achievements with
the innocent vanity of a child who displays her accomplishments to
friendly eyes. How much she had suffered, how much forgone, how much
resisted! Now she was to reap her reward.
Their train was late; if the boat had made a good passage it would be in
before them; the passengers who had friends to meet them would be in
waiting. They might find Jack Fenning on the platform as their engine
steamed into the station. They had talked over this half way through the
journey, and Ora seemed rather pleased at the prospect; Ashley took
advantage of her happy mood to point out that it would be better for
him to leave her alone with Jack; he would get a plate of cold meat
somewhere, and go back to town by himself later on. She acquiesced
reluctantly but without much resistance. "We can tell you about our
journey afterwards," she said. Then had come more rosy pictures of the
future. At last they were finished. There was a few minutes' silence.
Ashley looked out of the window and then at his watch.
"We ought to be there in ten minutes," he said.
Her eyes grew wide; her hands dropped in her lap; she looked at him.
"In ten minutes, Ashley?" she said in a low voice. It had come at last,
the thing, not pictures, not imaginings of the thing. "Ten minutes?" she
whispered.
He could hardly speak to her. As her unnatural excitement, so his
unnatural calm fell away; he lost composure and was not master of his
voice. He took her hands and said, "Good-bye, my dear, good-bye. I'm
going to lose you now, Ora."
"Ashley, Ashley!" she cried.
"I'm not going to be unkind, but there must be a difference."
"Yes," she said in a wondering tone. "There must, I suppose. But you'll
come often?"
He meant never to come.
"Now and then, dear," he said. Then he kissed her; that he had not meant
to do; and she kissed him.
"Ashley," she whispered, "perhaps he won't be kind to me; perhaps--oh, I
never thought of that! Perhaps he'll be cruel, or--or not what I've
fancied him. Ashley, my love, my love, don't leave me altogether! I
can't bear it, indeed I can't. I shall die if you leave me."
She was terrified now at the thought of the unknown man waiting for her
and the loss of the man whom she knew so well. Her dramatic scenes
helped her no more; her tears and terror now were unrehearsed; she clung
to his hand as though it held life for her.
"Oh, how did I ever think I could do it?" she moaned. "Are we going
slower? Is the train stopping? Oh, are we there, are we there?"
"We've not begun to go slower yet," he said. In five minutes they must
arrive.
"Stay with me till I see him; you must stay; you must stay till I've
seen what--what he's going to be to me. I shall kill myself if you leave
me."
"I'll stay till you've found him," Ashley answered in a hard restrained
voice. "Then I must go away."
The train rumbled on; they were among the houses now; the ships in the
harbour could be seen; the people in the next carriage were moving
about, chattering loudly and merrily. The woman he loved sat with
despairing eyes, clinging to his hand. "It's slower," she whispered,
with lips just parted. "It's slower now, isn't it?" The train went
slower; he nodded assent. The girl next door laughed gaily; perhaps she
went to meet her lover. Suddenly the brake creaked, they stopped, there
was something in the way. "How tiresome!" came loudly and impatiently
from next door. Ora's grasp fixed itself tighter on his hand; she
welcomed the brief reprieve. Her eyes drew him to her; the last embrace
seemed to leave her half animate; she sank back in her seat with closed
eyes. With a groan and a grumble the wheels began to move again. Ora
gave a little shiver but made no other sign. Ashley let down the window
with a jerk, and turned his face to the cool air that rushed in. He
could not look more at Ora; he had a thing to do now, the last thing,
and it was not good for the doing of it that he should look at her. She
might cry again to him, "Take me away!" and now he might forget that to
obey was not fair play. Besides, here came the platform, and on the
platform he would find Jack Fenning. There may be passions but there
must not be scenes; he could not tell Jack that he had decided to take
Ora back to town on his own account. He and she between them had spun a
web of the irrevocable; they had followed virtue, here was the reward.
But where were the trappings which had so gorgeously ornamented it?
Ora's eyes were closed and she saw them no more.
Slowly they crept into the station; the platform was full of people and
of luggage; it seemed as though the boat were already in. At last the
train came to a stand; he laid his hand lightly on Ora's.
"Here we are," he said. "Will you wait by the carriage till I find out
where he is?"
She opened her eyes and slowly rose to her feet.
"Yes; I'll do what you tell me," she said.
He opened the door and helped her to get out. She shivered and drew her
cloak closer round her. There was a bench near. He led her to it and
told her to sit there. "I shall know him and I'll bring him to you.
Promise not to move," he said.
Just as he turned to leave her she put out her hand and laid it on his
arm.
"Ashley!" he heard her whisper. He bent down to catch what she said, but
it was a moment before she went on. It seemed as though words came hard
to her and she would like to tell him all with her eyes. She raised her
other hand and pointed to the arm that rested on his.
"What is it, dear?" he asked.
"Did I ever tell you? I forget what I've told you and what I haven't."
"What is it? What do you want to tell me?"
"He struck me once; on the arm, just there, with his fist." She touched
her arm above the elbow, near the shoulder.
She had never told him that; nothing less than this moment's agony,
wherein sympathy must be had at every cost, could have brought it to her
lips. Ashley pressed her hand and turned away to look for Jack Fenning.