THE PLAY AND THE PART
Babba Flint's dramatic masterpiece progressed and took shape rapidly.
"The beggar's got at it at last," Babba said, in one of his infrequent
references to the author. Mr. Hazlewood did not talk much, but was
plainly of opinion that there might be a great deal of money made. Ora
was enthusiastic. She had seen the scenario and had read the first draft
of the great scene in the third act. The author had declared his
conviction that no woman save Ora could play this scene; Ora was certain
that it would be intolerable to her that any other woman should. She did
not then and there make up her mind to play it, but it began to be
certain that she would play it and would accept such arrangements of her
life and her time as made her playing of it possible. In this way
things, when suggested or proposed, slid into actual facts with her;
they grew insensibly, as acquaintances grow; she found herself committed
to them without any conscious act of decision. "Let her alone, she'll do
it," said Hazlewood to Babba, and Babba did no more than throw out, on
the one side, conjectures as to the talent which certain ladies whom he
named might display in the _rôle_, and, on the other, forecasts of the
sure triumph which would await Ora herself. Finally he added that Ora
had better see the whole piece before she arrived at a conclusion.
Hazlewood approved and seconded these indirect but skilful tactics. With
every such discussion the play and the part made their footing more and
more secure in Ora's mind. She began to talk as though, in the absence
of unforeseen circumstances, she would be "opening" in New York with the
play and the part in October; when she spoke thus to Ashley Mead, the
old look of vague questioning was in her eyes; it seemed to him as
though the old look of apprehension or appeal were there also, as though
she were a little afraid that he would forbid her to go and prevent her
from playing the part. But in this look lay the only reference that she
made to her present position, and her only admission that it held any
difficulties. His answer to it was to talk to her about the play and the
part; this he could not do without the implied assumption that she would
act the part in the play, would act it with Sidney Hazlewood, and would
act it in America in October.
What these things that were gradually insinuating themselves into the
status of established facts meant to him he began to see. For the play
was nothing to him, he had no share in the venture, and certainly he
could not tour about the United States of America as a superfluous
appendage to Mr. Hazlewood's theatrical company. The result was that she
would go away from him, and that the interval before she went grew
short. Up to the present time there was no change in their relations; as
they had been before the coming and going of Jack Fenning, they were
still. But such relations must in the end go forward or backward; had he
chosen, he knew that they would have gone forward; more plainly than in
words she had left that to him; but he had left the decision to the
course of events, and that arbiter was deciding that the relations
should go backward. She loved him still, tenderly always, sometimes
passionately; but the phase of feeling in which her love had been the
only thing in the world for her was passing away, as the
counter-attraction of the play and the part increased in strength. The
rest of her life, which love's lullaby had put to sleep, was awaking
again. In him a resignation mingled with the misery brought by his
recognition of this; unless he could resort to the "nosings" which Babba
Flint suggested, he would lose her, she would drift away from him; he
felt deadened at the prospect but was not nerved to resist it. He was
paralysed by an underlying consciousness that this process was
inevitable; the look in her eyes confirmed the feeling in him; now she
seemed to look at him, even while she caressed him, from across a
distance which lay between them. His encounter with Bertie Jewett after
the wedding had been the incident which made him understand how he had
passed out of Alice Muddock's life, and she out of his, his place in
hers being filled by another, hers in his left empty. The fatalism of
his resignation accepted a like ending for himself and Ora Pinsent.
Presently she would be gone; there was no use in trying to weld into one
lives irrevocably disassociated by the tendency of things. This was the
conclusion which forced itself upon him, when he perceived that she
would certainly act in the play and certainly go to America in the
autumn.
The mists of love conceal life's landscape, wrapping all its features in
a glowing haze. Presently the soft clouds lift, and little by little the
scene comes back again; once more the old long roads stretch out, the
quiet valleys spread, the peaks raise their heads; the traveller
shoulders his knapsack and starts again on his path. He has lingered;
here now are the roads to traverse and the peaks to climb; here is
reality; where is that which was the sole reality? But at first the way
seems very long, the sack is very heavy, and the peaks--are they worth
the climbing?
"What's the matter, Ashley? You're glum," she said one day, after she
had been describing to him the finest situation in the finest part in
the finest play that had ever been written. It was a week before her
theatre was to close and before a decision as to plans for the future
must be wrung from her by the pressure of necessity.
The thought of how he stood had been so much with him that suddenly,
almost without intention, he gave voice to it. She charmed him that day
and he felt as though the inevitable must not and somehow could not
happen, as though some paradox in the realm of fact would rescue him, as
a witty saying redeems a conversation which has become to all appearance
dull beyond hope of revival.
"I'm losing you, Ora," he said slowly and deliberately, fixing his eyes
on her. "You'll take this play; you'll go to America; you're thinking
more about that than anything else now."
A great change came on her face; he rose quickly and went to her.
"My dear, my dear, I didn't mean to say anything of that sort to you,"
he whispered as he bent over her. "It's quite natural, it's all as it
should be. Good God, you don't think I'm reproaching you?" He bent lower
still, meaning to kiss her. She caught him by the arms and held him
there, so that he could come no nearer and yet could not draw back; she
searched his face, then dropped her hands and lay back, looking up at
him with quivering lips and eyes already full of tears. Blind to his
feelings as she had been, yet her quickness shewed them all to her at
his first hint, and she magnified his accusation till it grew into the
bitterest condemnation of her.
"You've given simply everything for me," she said, speaking slowly as he
had. "I don't know all you've done for me, but I know it's a great deal.
I told you what Alice Muddock said I was; you remember?" She sprang to
her feet suddenly and threw her arms round his neck; "I love you," she
whispered to him; it was apology, protest, consolation, all in one.
"Ashley, what do I care about the wretched play? Only I--I thought you
were interested in it too. How lovely it would be if we could act it
together!" Her smile dawned on her lips. "Only you'd be rather funny
acting, wouldn't you?" she ended with a joyous little laugh.
Ashley laughed too; he thought that he would certainly be funny acting;
yet he was sure that if he could have acted with her he need not have
lost her.
"But I think I liked you first because you were so different from all of
them at the theatre," she went on, knitting her brows in a puzzled
frown. He might have recollected that Alice Muddock had liked him
because he was so different from all of them in Buckingham Palace Road.
Well, Alice had turned again to Buckingham Palace Road, and Bertie
Jewett's star was in the ascendant. "I should hate to have you act," she
said, darting her hand out and clasping his.
They sat silent for some moments; Ora's fingers pressed his in a
friendly understanding fashion.
"There's nobody in the world like you," she said. He smiled at the
praise, since his reward was to be to lose her. Things would have their
way, and he would lose her. As Alice back to the business, as Bowdon
back to a suitable alliance, so she back to her theatre. As for himself,
he happened to have nothing to go back to; somewhat absurdly, he was
glad of it.
"All sorts of stupid people are quite happy," Ora reflected dolefully.
"Everything seems to be arranged so comfortably for them. It's not only
that I married Jack, you know."
She was right there, although she rather underrated the importance of
the action she mentioned. Even without Jack there would have been
difficulties. But her remark brought Jack, his associations and his
associates, back into Ashley Mead's mind. "Perhaps I shall run across
Jack in America," she added a moment later.
It was indeed not only Jack, but it was largely Jack. Jack, although he
was not all, seemed to embody and personify all. Ashley's love for her
was again faced and confronted with his distaste for everything about
her. Herself he could see only with his own eyes, but her surroundings
he saw clearly enough through the eyes of a world which did not truly
know her--the world of Irene Bowdon, almost the world of Alice Muddock.
Could he then take her from her surroundings? That could be done at a
price to him definite though high; but what would be the price to her?
The answer came in unhesitating tones; he would be taking from her the
only life that was hers to live. Then he must tell her that? He almost
laughed at the idea; he knew that he would not be able to endure for a
second the pain there would be in her eyes. To wrench himself away from
her would torture her too sorely; let her grow away from him and awake
some day to find herself content without him.
"And what a fool all my friends would think me!" he reflected. But the
reflexion did not weigh with him; he had protected her life from the
incursion of Jack Fenning, he would protect it from his own tyranny. He
leant forward towards her and spoke to her softly.
"Take the play, Ora," he said; "take the part, go to America, and become
still more famous. That's what you can do and what you ought to do."
"And you? Will you come with me?"
"Why no," he said, smiling. "I must stay and roll my little stone here.
Yours is a big stone and mine only a little one, but still I must roll
my own."
"But I shall be away months."
"Yes, I know, long months. But I won't forget you."
"You won't really? I should die if you forgot me, Ashley. If I go I
shall think of you every hour. Oh, but I'm afraid to go! I know you'll
forget me."
He had but little doubt that the forgetfulness would come, and that it
would not come first from him. She had no inkling of the idea that she
could herself cease to feel for him all that she felt now. She extracted
from him vows of constancy and revelled in the amplitude of his
promises. Presently her mind overleapt the months of absence, saw in
them nothing but a series of triumphs which would make him more proud of
her, and a prospect of meeting him again growing ever nearer and nearer
and sweetening her success with the approaching joy of sharing it all
with him and telling him all about it. Anything became sweet, shared
with him; witness the renunciation!
"If I hadn't you, I shouldn't care a bit about the rest of it," she
said. "But somehow having you makes me want all the rest more. I wonder
if all women are like that when they're as much in love as I am."
Ashley knew that all women were by no means like that, but he said that
he suspected they were, and assured Ora that the state of feeling she
described was entirely consistent with a great and permanent love. As,
before, his one object had been to support her through the renunciation,
to make it easy and possible for her, so now he found himself bending
his energies and exerting his ingenuity to persuading her that there was
no incompatibility between her love and her life, between her ambition
and her passion, between him and the masterpiece for whose sake she was
to leave him. He had seen her once in despair about herself and dared
not encounter a second time the pain which that sight of her had given
him; he himself might know the truth of what she was and the outcome of
what she did; he determined that, so far as he could contrive and
control the matter, she should not know it. She should go and win her
triumph, she should go in the sure hope that he would not change, in the
confidence that she would not, that their friendship would not, that
nothing would. Then she would dry her tears, or weep only in natural
sorrow and with no bitterness of self-accusation. It seemed worth while
to him to embark again on oceans of pretence for her sake, just as it
had seemed worth while to pretend to believe in the renunciation, and
worth while to break his code by bribing Jack Fenning with a borrowed
thousand pounds.
At this time a second stroke fell on old Sir James Muddock; worn out
with work and money-making, he had no power to resist. The end came
swiftly. It was announced to Ashley in a letter from Bertie Jewett. Lady
Muddock was prostrate, Bob and Alice overwhelmed with duties. Bertie
begged that his letter might be regarded as coming from the family; he
shewed consideration in the way he put this request and assumed his
position with delicacy. Ashley read with a wry smile, not blaming the
writer but wondering scornfully at the turn of affairs. The old man had
once been almost a father to him, the children near as brother and
sister; now Bertie announced the old man's death and the children
pleaded that they were too occupied to find time to write to him. He
went to the funeral; through it all his sense of being outside, of
having been put outside, persisted, sharing his mind with genuine grief.
From whatever cause it comes that a man has been put outside, even
although he may have much to say for himself and the expulsion be of
very questionable justice, it is hard for him to avoid a sense of
ignominy. Ashley felt humiliation even while he protested that all was
done of his own choice. He spoke to the Muddocks no more than a few kind
but ordinary words; he did not go to the house. Bertie invited him there
and pressed the invitation with the subdued cordiality which was all
that the occasion allowed; but he would not go on Bertie's invitation.
The resentment which he could not altogether stifle settled on Bob. Bob
was the true head of family and business now. Why did Bob abdicate? But
he had himself been next in succession; Bob's abdication would have left
the place open for him; he had refused and renounced; he could not,
after all, be very hard on poor Bob.
Again a few days later came a letter from Bertie Jewett. This time he
made no apology for writing; he wrote in his official capacity as one of
Sir James's executors. By a will executed a month before death Sir James
left to Ashley Mead, son of his late partner, the sum of one thousand
pounds to be paid free of legacy duty. Ashley had no anger against the
old man and accepted this acknowledgment of his father's position
without contempt; it was not left to him but to his father's son; before
the will was made he had been put outside.
"He might have left you more than that," said Ora.
"You see, I wouldn't go into the business," Ashley explained.
"No, and you wouldn't do anything he wanted," she added with a smile.
"It's really very good of him to leave me anything."
"I don't call a thousand pounds anything."
"That's all very well for you, with your wonderful play up your sleeve,"
said Ashley, smiling. "But, as it happens, a thousand pounds is
particularly convenient to me, and I'm very much obliged to poor old Sir
James."
For armed with Bertie Jewett's letter he had no difficulty in obtaining
an overdraft at his bank and that same evening he wrote a cheque for a
thousand pounds to the order of Lord Bowdon. In allotting old Sir
James's money to this particular purpose he found a curious pleasure.
The Muddock family had been hard on Ora and hard on him because of Ora;
it seemed turning the tables on them a little to take a small fraction
of their great hoard and by its means to make them benefactors to Ora,
to make them _ex post facto_ responsible for Jack Fenning's departure,
and to connect them in this way with Ora's life. His action seemed to
forge another link in the chain which bound together the destinies of
the group among which he had moved. Sir James would have given the
thousand for no such purpose; he had not laboured with any idea of
benefiting Ora Pinsent. Bowdon would not like taking the thousand
pounds; he had desired to lay his own gift at Ora's feet. But Sir James
being dead should give, and Lord Bowdon being his lady's husband should
take. So Ashley determined and wrote his cheque with a smile on his
lips. Things turned out so very oddly.
"What have you done with your legacy?" asked Ora. When money came in to
her, she always "did something" with at least a large proportion of it;
in other words she got rid of it in some remarkable, salient,
imagination-striking manner, obtaining by this means a sense of wealth
and good fortune which a mere balance at the bank, whether large or
small, could never give.
Ashley looked up at her as she stood before him.
"I've paid an old debt with it," he said. "I was very glad to be able
to. I'm quite free now."
"Were you in debt? Oh, why didn't you tell me? I've got a lot of money.
How unkind of you, Ashley!"
"I couldn't take your money," said Ashley. "And I wasn't pressed. My
creditor wouldn't have minded waiting for ever."
"What an angel!" said Ora. She was a little surprised that under the
circumstances Ashley had felt called upon to pay.
"Exactly," he laughed. "It was Bowdon."
"He's got lots of money. I wonder he takes it."
"I shall make him take it. I borrowed it to get something I wanted, and
I don't feel the thing's mine till I've paid him off."
"Oh, I understand that," said Ora.
"Don't tell him I told you."
"All right, I won't. I don't suppose I shall get a chance of telling
Lord Bowdon anything. Irene was like ice to me at the wedding." In
reality Irene had not failed to meet with a decent cordiality the
outpouring of Ora's enthusiasm.
"Confound you, I didn't want it," was Lord Bowdon's form of receipt for
the cheque; he scribbled it on half a sheet of note paper and signed it
"B." This was just what Ashley had expected, and he found new pleasure
in the constraint which he had placed on his friend's inclination. He
shewed the document to Ora when he next went to see her.
"You were quite right," he said. "Bowdon didn't want the money. Look
here."
Ora read the scrawl and sat turning it over and over in her fingers.
"But he had to take it," said Ashley with a laugh of triumph, almost of
defiance.
"I should think he'd be a very good friend," said Ora. "If Irene would
let him, I mean," she added with a smile. "Do you think he'd lend me a
thousand pounds and not want it paid back?" she asked.
"From my knowledge of him," said Ashley, "I'm quite sure he would."
"People do an awful lot of things for me," said Ora with a reflective
smile. She paused, and added, "But then other people are often very
horrid to me. I suppose it works out, doesn't it?"
Ashley was engaged in a strenuous attempt to make it work out, but he
had little idea in what way the balance of profit and loss, good and
evil, pleasure and pain, was to be arrived at.
"You'd do simply anything for me, wouldn't you?" she went on.
Although he had certainly done much for her, yet he felt himself an
impostor when she looked in his face and asked him that question. There
seemed to him nothing that he would not suffer for her, no advantages,
no prospects, and no friendships that he would not forgo and sacrifice
for her. But he would not "do simply anything for her." There was much
that he would not, as it appeared to him could not, do for her. Else
what easier than to say, "We know so-and-so about your husband, and we
can find out so-and-so by using the appropriate methods"? What easier
than to say, "I'll go in your train to America, and while you win the
triumphs I'll do the nosing"? For if he said that to her, if he opened
to her the prospect of being rid, once and for all, of Jack Fenning, of
levelling the only fence between him and her of which she was conscious,
of enabling her to keep her masterpiece and her triumphs and yet not
lose her lover, her joy would know no bounds and the world be
transfigured for her into a vision of delight. But yet he could not. All
was hers short of negativing himself, of ceasing to be what he was, of
gulfing his life, his standards, his mind in hers. She judged by what
she saw, and set no bounds to a devotion that seemed boundless. But to
him her praise was accusation, and he charged himself with giving
nothing because he could not give all.
Ora understood very little why he suddenly caught her in his arms and
kissed her. But she thought it a charming way of answering her question.
"Poor Ashley!" she sighed, as she escaped from his embrace. She had
occasional glimpses of the imperfection of his happiness, just as she
had occasional pathetic intuitions of what her own nature was.