COLLATERAL EFFECTS
On the whole Irene Bowdon felt that she ought to thank heaven, not
perhaps in any rapturous outpouring of tremulous joy, but in a sober
give-and-take spirit which set possible evil against actual good, struck
the balance, and made an entry of a reasonably large figure on the
credit side of the sheet. Surely it was in this spirit that sensible
people dealt with heaven? If once or twice in her life she had not been
sensible, to repeat such aberrations would little become an experienced
and twice-married woman. You could not have everything; and Lord
Bowdon's conduct had been extremely satisfactory. Only for two days of
one week had he relapsed into that apparent moodiness, that alternation
of absent-mindedness with uncomfortable apologies, which had immediately
succeeded the offer of his hand. On this occasion something in a letter
from Ashley Mead seemed to upset him. The letter had a cheque in it, and
Irene believed that the letter and cheque vexed her husband. She had too
much tact to ask questions, and contented herself, so far as outward
behaviour went, with Bowdon's remark that Ashley was a young fool. But
her instinct, sharpened by the old jealousy, had loudly cried, "Ora
Pinsent!" She was glad to read in the papers that Ora was to go to
America. Yes, on the whole she would thank heaven, and assure herself
that Lord Bowdon would have made her his wife anyhow; that is, in any
case, and without--She never finished the phrase which began with this
"without."
So Ora Pinsent was going to America. Surely madness stopped somewhere?
Surely Ashley Mead would not go with her? Irene had never given up hopes
of Ashley, and at this first glimmer of a chance she was prepared to do
battle for him. She had never quite reconciled herself to Bertie Jewett;
her old dislike of the ribbon-selling man and the ribbon-selling
atmosphere so far persisted that she had accepted, rather than welcomed,
the prospect of Bertie. She wrote and begged Alice Muddock to come
across to tea. She and Bowdon were in her house in Queen's Gate, his not
being yet prepared to receive her. She fancied that she saw her way to
putting everything right, to restoring the _status quo ante_, and to
obliterating altogether the effect of Ora Pinsent's incursion; she still
felt a responsibility for the incursion. Of course she was aware that
just now matrimonial projects must be in the background at Kensington
Palace Gardens; but the way might be felt and the country explored.
"Mr. Jewett, Mr. Jewett, Mr. Jewett;" this seemed the burden of Alice's
conversation. The name was not mentioned in a romantic way, nor in
connexion with romantic subjects; it cropped up when they talked of the
death, of the funeral, of the business, of money matters, future
arrangements, everything that goes to make up the ordinary round of
life. Alice was quite free from embarrassment and shewed no
self-consciousness about the name; but its ubiquity was in the highest
degree significant in Irene's eyes. She knew well that the man who has
made himself indispensable has gone more than half-way towards making
any other man superfluous, and she seemed to be faced with the
established fact of Bertie Jewett's indispensability. The time would
come when he would ask his reward; either he must receive it or he must
vanish, carrying off with him all the comfort his presence had given and
breaking the habit of looking to him and leaning on him which had become
so strong and constant. If Irene meant to enter the lists against
Bertie, she would be challenging an opponent who knew how to fight.
"Have you seen anything of Ashley Mead?" she asked, as she lifted the
teapot and poured out the tea.
"He came to the funeral, but of course we had no talk, and he's not been
since."
"You haven't been asking people, I suppose?"
"We haven't asked him," said Alice calmly. She took her tea and looked
at her hostess with perfect composure.
"He couldn't come just now without being invited, you know," Irene
suggested.
"Perhaps not," said Alice, rather doubtfully. "I don't think he wants to
come." She paused, and then added deliberately, "And I don't want him to
come." Now she flushed a very little, although her face remained steady
and calm. She did not seem to shrink from the discussion to which her
friend opened the way. "It would be nonsense to pretend that he's what
he used to be to us," she went on. "You know that as well as I do,
Irene."
"I don't know anything about it," declared Irene pettishly. "I think
you're hard on him; all men are foolish sometimes; it doesn't last
long." Had not Lord Bowdon soon returned to grace, soon and entirely?
"Oh, it's just that you see what they are," said Alice. She set down
her cup and gazed absently out of the window. Irene was irritated; her
view had been that momentary weaknesses in a man were to be combated,
and were not to be accepted as final indications of what the man was;
she had acted on that view in regard to her husband, and, as has been
stated, on the whole she thanked heaven. She thought that Alice also
might, if she chose, bring herself to a position in which she could
thank heaven moderately; but it was not to be done by slamming the door
in the face of a prodigal possibly repentant. She cast about for a
delicate method of remarking that Ora Pinsent was going to America.
"It was quite inevitable that he should drift away from us," Alice
continued. "I see that now. I don't think we're any of us bitter about
it."
"He needn't go on drifting away unless you like."
"It isn't very likely that I should make any efforts to call him back,"
said Alice, with a faint smile.
"Why not?" asked Irene crossly.
"Well, do women do that sort of thing?"
"Why, of course they do, my dear."
Alice's smile expressed a very clear opinion of such conduct, supposing
it to exist. Irene grew red for an instant and pushed her chair back
from the table. Anger makes delicate methods of remarking on important
facts seem unnecessary.
"You know Ora Pinsent's off to America?" she asked.
"No, I know nothing of Miss Pinsent's movements," said Alice haughtily.
"I don't read theatrical gossip."
Irene looked at her, rose, and came near. She stood looking down at
Alice. Alice looked up with a smile; the irritation in both seemed to
vanish.
"Oh, my dear girl, why must you be so proud?" asked Irene, with a
nervous little laugh. "You cared for him, Alice."
"Yes; all the world knew that. I didn't realise, though, quite how well
they knew it."
"And now you don't?"
Alice's eyes did not leave her friend's face as she paused in
consideration.
"I don't suppose I shall ever be so happy as I used to think I should be
with Ashley Mead," she said at last. "But I couldn't now. I should
always be thinking of--of what's been happening lately. Irene, I loathe
that sort of thing, don't you?"
"Oh, with men it's just--" Irene began.
"With some sort of men, I suppose so," Alice interrupted. "I tried to
think it didn't matter, but--Could you care for a man if you knew he had
done what Ashley has?"
In ninety hours out of a hundred, in ninety moods out of a hundred,
Irene would have been ready with the "No" that Alice expected so
confidently from her; with that denial she would instinctively have
shielded herself from a breath of suspicion. But now, looking into the
grave eyes upturned to hers, she answered with a break in her voice,
"Yes, dear; we must take what we can get, you know." Then she turned
away and walked back to her tea-table; her own face was in shadow there,
and thence she watched Alice's, which seemed to rise very firm and very
white out of the high black collar of her mourning gown. She loved
Alice, but, as she watched, she knew why Ashley Mead had left her and
given himself over to Ora Pinsent; she had not often seen so nearly in
the way men saw. Then she thought of what Bertie Jewett was; he could
not love as this girl deserved to be loved. "And we don't always get
what we deserve," she added, forcing another nervous laugh. "Most women
have to put up with something like what you mean, only they're sensible
and don't think about it."
"I'm considered sensible," said Alice, smiling.
"Sensible people are only silly in different ways from silly people,"
Irene declared, with a touch of fresh irritation in her voice. "Well
then, it's no use?" she asked.
"It's no use trying to undo what's done." Alice got up and came and
kissed her friend. "It was like you to try, though," she said.
"And I suppose it's to be--?"
"It's not to be anybody," Alice interrupted. "Fancy talking about it
now!"
"Oh, that's conventional. You needn't mind that with me."
"Really I'm not thinking about it." But even as she spoke her face grew
thoughtful. "Our life's arranged for us, really," she said. "We haven't
much to do with it. Look how I was born to the business!"
"And you'll go on in the business?"
"Yes. I used to think I should like to get away from it. Perhaps I
should like still; but I never shall. There are terribly few things one
gets a choice about."
"Marriage is one," Irene persisted, almost imploringly.
"Do you think it is, as a rule?" asked Alice doubtfully.
Their talk had drawn them closer together and renewed the bonds of
sympathy, but herein lay its only comfort for Irene Bowdon. The
disposition that Alice shewed seemed clearly to presage Bertie Jewett's
success and to prove how far he had already progressed. She wondered to
find so much done and to see how Ashley had lost his place in the
girl's conception of what her life must be. "I should have fought more,"
Irene reflected, and went on to ask whether that were not because she
also felt more than her friend, or at least differently; did not the
temperament which occasioned defeat also soften it? Yet the girl was not
happy; she was rather making the best of an apparently necessary lack of
happiness; life was a niggard of joy, but by good management the small
supply might be so disposed as to make a good show and so spread out as
to cover a handsome space. Against the acceptance of such a view Irene's
soul protested. It was dressing the shop-window finely when there was no
stock inside.
"I shouldn't mind what a man had thought," she said, "if I could make
him think as I wanted him to now."
"No, but you'd know him too well to imagine that you ever could," said
Alice.
A little inhuman, wasn't it? The old question rose again in Irene's
mind, even while she was feeling full of sympathy and of love. It was
all too cold, too clear-sighted, too ruthless; if you were very fond of
people, you did not let yourself know too well what you did not wish to
think about them; you ought to be able to forget, to select, to
idealise; else how could two people ever love one another? There must be
a partiality of view; love must pretend. She could fancy Ashley's
humorously alarmed look at the idea of living in company with perfect
clear-sightedness. As for Ora--but surely the objection here would come
even sooner and more clamorously from clear-sightedness itself?
"I daresay you're right, dear, but it doesn't sound very encouraging,"
she said. "I declare it's a good thing I'm married already, or I should
never have dared after this!"
"If it is like that, we may just as well admit it," said Alice, with a
smile and a sigh. "I must go back," she added. "Mr. Jewett's coming to
dinner to talk over some business with me."
Business and Mr. Jewett! That indeed seemed now the way of it. Irene
kissed her friend with rueful emphasis.
At this time Lady Muddock, while conceiving herself prostrate and
crushed under the blow which had fallen on her, was in reality very
placid and rather happy. As a dog loves his master she had loved her
husband; the dog whines at the master's loss, but after a time will
perceive that there is nobody to prevent him from having a hunt in the
coverts. A repressive force was removed, and Lady Muddock enjoyed the
novel feeling of being a free agent. And everything went very well
according to her ideas. Minna Soames, whose father had been a clergyman,
and who had sung only at concerts, would become her daughter-in-law, and
Bertie Jewett her son-in-law; Minna would cease to sing, and Bertie
would carry on the business; Bob would be perfectly happy, and Alice
would act with true wisdom and presently find her reward. She had a
sense of being at home in all things, of there being nothing that
puzzled or shocked or upset her. She disliked the unfamiliar; she had
therefore disliked Ora Pinsent, even while she was flattered by knowing
her; but it was just as flattering and at the same time more comfortable
to have known and voluntarily to have ceased to know her. As for Ashley
Mead, he had never let her feel quite at ease with him; and the society
which he had been the means of bringing to the house was not the sort
which suited her. She made preparations for taking a handsome villa at
Wimbledon; to that she would retire when Bob brought his bride to
Kensington Palace Gardens. In a word, the world seemed to be fitting
itself to her size most admirably.
Bowdon had been paying a visit of condolence to her while Alice was with
his wife--so Irene had contrived to distribute the quartette--and
discovered her state of mind with an amusement largely infected with
envy. His own life was of course laid on broader lines than hers; there
was a wider social side to it and a public side; but he also had come to
a time of life and a state of things when he must fit himself to his
world and his world to him, much in Lady Muddock's fashion--when things
became definite, vistas shortened, and the actual became the only
possible. The return of his thousand pounds typified this change to him;
it closed an incident which had once seemed likely to prevent or retard
the process of settling down to which he was now adapting and resigning
himself; he admitted with a sigh that he had put it off as long as most
men, and that, now it was come, it had more alleviations for him than
for most. Well, the ground had to be cleared for the next generation;
theirs would be the open playing-fields; it was time for him to go into
the house and sit down by the fire. What was there to quarrel with in
that? Did not _placens uxor_ sit on the other side of the hearth? And
though tempests were well enough in youth, in advanced years they were
neither pleasant nor becoming. But he wished that it was all as grateful
to him as it was to Lady Muddock.
Alice came in before he left and took him to walk with her in the
garden. The burden of her talk chimed in with his mood; again she dwelt
on the view that one's place was somewhere in the world, that by most
people at all events it had only to be found, not made, but that sorrow
and a fiasco waited on any mistake about it. She spoke only for herself,
but she seemed to speak for him also, expressing by her subdued
acquiescence in giving up what was not hers, and her resolute facing of
what was, the temper which he must breed in himself if he were to travel
the rest of the way contentedly.
"But it's a bit of a bore, isn't it?" he asked, suddenly standing still
and looking at her with a smile.
"Yes, I suppose it's a bit of a bore," said she. Then she went on rather
abruptly, "Have you seen Ashley since you came back?"
"Only once, for a moment at the club."
"Is he getting on well? Will he do well?"
"If he likes," said Bowdon, shrugging his shoulders. "But he's a queer
fellow."
"I don't think he quite agrees with us in what we've been saying."
"I don't know about that. At any rate I fancy he won't act on it."
"There's no use talking about it," she said with an impatience only half
suppressed. "He's so different from what he used to be."
"Not so very, a little perhaps. Then you're a little different from what
you used to be, aren't you?"
She looked at him with interest.
"Yes?" she said questioningly.
"Add the two little differences together and they make a big one."
"A big difference between us?"
"That's what I mean. I feel the same thing about him myself. He's not
for settling down, Miss Muddock."
"Oh, I suppose we both know why that is," she said. "We needn't mention
names, but--"
"Well, we know how it is even if we don't know why it is; but it isn't
all Miss Pinsent, or--" He paused an instant and ended with a question.
"Or why doesn't he settle down there?"
She seemed to consider his question, but shook her head as though she
found no answer. To adduce the obvious objection, the Fenning objection,
seemed inconsistent with the sincerity into which their talk had
drifted.
"I tell you what," said Bowdon, "I'm beginning to think that it doesn't
much matter what sort a man is, but he ought to be one sort or the
other. Don't you know what I mean?"
She walked by his side in silence again for a few minutes, then she
turned to him.
"Are we contemptuous, or are we envious, or what are we, we people of
one sort?" she asked.
"On my honour I don't know," answered Bowdon, shaking his head and
laughing a little.
"I think I'm contemptuous," she said, and looked in his face to find an
equal candour. But he did not give his decision; he would not admit that
he inclined still a little towards the mood of envy. "Anyhow it must be
strange to be like that," she said; she had thought the same thing
before when she sat in the theatre, watching Ora Pinsent act. Then she
had watched with an outside disinterested curiosity in the study of a
being from another world who could not, as it had seemed, make any
difference to her world or to her; but Ora had made differences for her,
or at least had brought differences to light. So the various lines of
life run in and out, now meeting and now parting, each following its own
curve, lead where it may.
"I must run away," said Bowdon, "or I shall keep my wife waiting for
dinner."
"And I must go and dress, or I shall keep Mr. Jewett waiting for
dinner."
They parted with no more exchange of confidence than lay in the hint of
a half-bitter smile. Lord Bowdon walked home to Queen's Gate, meditating
on the Developments and Manifestations of the Modern Spirit. He yielded
to fashion so far as to shape his phrase in this way and to affix mental
capital letters to the dignified words. But in truth he was conscious
that the affair was a very old one, that there had been always a Modern
Spirit. In the state of innocency Adam fell, and in the days of villainy
poor Jack Falstaff; the case would seem to be much the same with the
Modern Spirit. Still there is good in a label, to comfort the
consciences of sinners and to ornament the eloquence of saints.
The eloquence of saints was on the lips of his wife that evening when
they dined together, and Bowdon listened to it with complete
intellectual assent. He could not deny the force of her strictures on
Ashley Mead nor the justness of her analysis of Ora Pinsent. But he did
not love her in this mood; we do not always love people best when they
convince us most. Ashley was terribly foolish, Ora seemed utterly devoid
of the instinct of morality, intimated Irene.
"No," said Bowdon, with a sudden undeliberated decisiveness, "that's
just what she's got. She hasn't anything else, but she has that."
The flow of Irene's talk was stemmed; she looked across at him with a
vexed enquiring air.
"You've not seen anything like so much of her as I have," she objected.
"Really I don't see what you can know about it, Frank. Besides men
never understand women as women do."
"Sometimes better, and I'm quite right here," he persisted. "Why did she
send for her husband?"
"I don't think there was ever any real question of his coming." This
remark was not quite sincere.
"Oh, yes, there was," said Bowdon with a smile. The smile hinted
knowledge and thereby caused annoyance to his wife. How did he come to
know, or to think he knew, so much of Ora? But it was no great thing
that had inspired his protest; it was only the memory of how she once
said, "Don't."
"I'm going to see her," Irene announced in resolute tones. "I used to
have some influence over her, and I'm going to try and use it. I may do
some good."
"In what direction, dear?" There was a touch of scepticism in Bowdon's
voice.
"About Ashley Mead. I do believe everything could be made happy again.
Frank, I'm not reconciled to Bertie Jewett yet."
Bowdon shook his head; he was reconciled to Bertie Jewett and to the
tendency of events which involved the success of Bertie Jewett.
"And she ought to go back to her husband," Irene pursued.
The Modern Spirit had not, it must be presumed, left Lord Bowdon
entirely untouched, else he could not have dissented from this dictum;
or was it only that a very vivid remembrance of Mr. Fenning rose in his
mind?
"I'm hanged if she ought," he said emphatically. "And if you only knew
what the fellow's like--" He came to a sharp stop; his wife's surprised
eyes were set on his face.
"You don't know what he's like, you've never seen him; you told me so,
long ago, when I first got to know her." Lord Bowdon appeared
embarrassed. "Wasn't it true?" asked Irene severely.
"Yes, it was true," he answered, and truly, for, at the time he said it,
it had been true.
"Then how do you know what he's like?" she persisted. The servants had
left them to their coffee. Irene came round and sat down close to her
husband. "You know something, something you didn't mean me to know. What
is it, Frank?"
Bowdon looked at her steadily. He had meant to tell nothing; but he had
already told too much. A sudden gleam of understanding came into her
eyes; her quick intuition discerned a connection between this thing and
the other incident which had puzzled her.
"I believe it's something to do with that cheque Ashley Mead sent you,"
she said. She would not move her eyes from his face.
"I'm not at liberty to tell you anything about it. Of course I'm not
going to deny that there's a secret. But I can't tell you about it,
Irene."
"You would be quite safe in telling me." She rose and stood looking down
on him. "You ought to tell me," she said. "You ought to tell me anything
that concerns both you and Ora Pinsent."
She was amazed to say this, and he to hear it. The one point of silence,
of careful silence, the one thing which neither had dared to speak of to
the other, the one hidden spring which had moved the conduct of both,
suddenly became a matter of speech on her lips to him. Suddenly she
faced the question and demanded that he also should face it. She
admitted and she claimed that what touched him and Ora Pinsent must
touch her also. And he did not contest the claim.
"I must know, if--if we're to go on, Frank," she said.
"There's much less than you think," said he. "But I'll tell you. I tell
you in confidence, you know. Fenning came. That's all."
Irene made no comment. That was not all; the cheque from Ashley Mead was
not explained. Bowdon proceeded with his story. He told what he had to
tell in short sharp sentences. "The fellow was impossible." "It was
impossible to let her see him." "He was a rascal." "He drank." Pauses of
silence were interspersed. "It would have killed her." "He only wanted
money of her." "The idea of his going near her was intolerable." "She
had forgotten what he was, or he had gone down-hill terribly."
"And the money?" asked Irene, in a low whisper. She had seated herself
again, and was looking before her into the fireplace.
"He came for money; he had to have it if he was to go. Ashley asked me
for it. I gave it him."
"As a loan? He sent it back."
"I didn't mean it as a loan. But, as you say, he's sent it back."
"Why?"
"Because he didn't want her to be indebted to me for it." His bitterness
cropped out in his tone; he had desired a share in the work which Ashley
would not give him. He must have forgotten his wife for the moment, or
he would have kept that bitterness out of his voice; indeed for the
moment he seemed to have forgotten her, as he leant his head on his hand
and stared gloomily at the floor.
"So we gave him the money, and he went away again." She was silent. "You
wouldn't wonder so much if you'd seen him."
"I don't wonder," she said. "I haven't seen him, but I don't wonder. And
you never told her?"
"No, I never told her."
"Nor Ashley Mead?"
"No, he's never told her, either. And you mustn't." For an instant his
tone was rigidly imperative.
In spite of the tone she seemed to pay no heed to the last words.
"You kept it all from her?" she asked again.
"Yes," he said. "Does that seem very wrong to you?"
"Oh, I don't know," she groaned.
"Or very strange?" he asked, turning his head and looking towards her.
She rose to her feet suddenly, walked to the mantel-piece, and stood
there with her back towards him.
"No," she said, "not very strange. It's only what I knew before. It's
not strange." She turned round and faced him; she was rather pale, but
she smiled a little.
"I knew all the time that you were in love with her too," she said. "Of
course you wouldn't let the man go near her!"
Bowdon raised his eyes to his wife's face. She turned away again.
"I knew it when I made you propose to me," she said.