WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
[Illustration: THE CONTRACT PUNCTILIOUSLY SIGNED BY ALL THE PARTIES,
AND WITNESSED BY JANET THE MAID ... THEY HAD OPENED A BOTTLE OF
CHAMPAGNE]
The bargain was struck, the agreement made, the contract punctiliously
signed by all the parties, and witnessed by Janet the maid. There were
two copies; Mr. Hazlewood had one, Ora the other; Babba possessed
himself of a memorandum. They had opened a bottle of champagne and drunk
success to the enterprise; prospective triumphs, thousands, fame,
bubbled out into the glasses. Babba was wildly hilarious, and vulgar
with a profusion of debased phrases beyond even his wont. Mr. Hazlewood
smoothed his brow provisionally; he knew that it must wrinkle again many
times ere the tour was done and the thousands pocketed. Ora talked very
fast, smoked two cigarettes, and darted to and fro about the room,
restless as quicksilver, utterly refusing to take her seat on the sofa.
The arrangements suspended during her days of indecision could now
swiftly be put in working order; men waited for the word at the end of
cables and telephones across the Atlantic. The announcements needed only
the final touches of Babba's practised pen; the berths on the boat would
be booked before to-morrow's sun rose. The thing was settled; beyond all
other agreements, this agreement was an agreement; beyond all other
undertakings, this undertaking bound them all. For they were launched on
a great venture and none could now draw back. It had ended in Ora's
consenting to go, as Ashley Mead had said it would.
Babba Flint and Sidney Hazlewood were gone; Janet, who also had drunk a
glass of champagne, had withdrawn below again; it was very quiet in the
drawing-room of the little house in Chelsea. Ora was in her seat now, by
the small table, the portrait, and the vase of fresh roses which from
day to day were never wanting. She lay back there, looking at the
ceiling with wide-opened eyes; she did not move except when her fingers
plucked fretfully at a trimming of lace on her gown; she was thinking
what she had done, what it came to, what it would end in. She remembered
her uncomfortable talk with Ashley the day before, after Irene had gone,
when he would not say "Sign," nor yet, "For God's sake, darling, don't
sign, don't go, don't leave me;" but would only smile and say, "You want
to go, don't you, Ora?" She had been able to say neither, "Yes, I want
to go," nor yet, "For all the world I wouldn't leave you;" but had been
perverse and peevish, and at last had sent him away with a petulant
dismissal. But all the time they both had known that she would sign and
that she would go, because things were setting irresistibly in that
direction and it was impossible to say No to fate. Fate does not take
denials; its invitations are courteously but persistently renewed. So
now she had signed and she was going.
Of course it meant much more than appeared on the surface; she had felt
that even at the moment, in spite of Babba's jokes and Hazlewood's
business-like attitude. When she was left alone, the feeling came on her
in tenfold strength; the drama of her action started to light, its
suppressed meaning became manifest, all its effects unrolled themselves
before her. Yet how shortly all could be put; she was going away from
Ashley Mead; the sweet companionship was to be broken. Did such things
come twice, could threads so dropped ever be picked up again? But all
this happened by her own act. She faced the charge with a denial that
there was more than the most superficial of truths in it. She had not
been able to help her action; it was hers in a sense, no doubt, but it
was the action of a self over which not she as she knew herself, but
this mysterious irresistible bent of things, held control. And the
control was very tyrannous. Ashley was bound too; for in all the
uncomfortable talk there had been never a suggestion that he should come
with her; for both of them that had become an impossibility not to be
taken into account. As things would have it, he could not go and she
could not stay. There assailed her such a storm of fear and horror as
had beset her once before, when her fine scheme of renunciation and
reformation was shattered by the little hard fact that the train drew
near to the station and in ten minutes Ashley would be gone and Jack
Fenning come. She caught Ashley's picture and kissed it passionately;
then she laid her head down on the cushions and began to sob. She knew
now what she had done; she had driven Ashley out of her life, and life
without him was not worth having. How had she been so mad as to sign, to
deliver herself bound hand and foot to these men who only wanted to make
money out of her, to think that any triumph could console her for the
loss of her love? Was it too late, would not a telegram undo all that
had been done? She sat up with a sudden abrupt movement; should she
write one? They might send her to prison, she supposed, or anyhow make
her pay a lot of money. They would think she used them very badly. Oh,
what was all that? They could get somebody else to play her part--
Why, so they could! Anybody would be glad to play that part; it might
bring new treasure of glory to the great--sweet strange fame to one yet
unknown. Ora's sobs were for a moment stayed; she sat looking straight
in front of her.
Ah, how hard things were! How they harassed, how they tortured, how they
tore one asunder! She lay back and sobbed again, now not so
passionately, but more gently, yet despairingly. So tragic a guise may
sometimes be assumed by such homely truths as that you cannot blow both
hot and cold, that you can't eat your cake and have it, and that you
must in the end decide whether you will go out by the door or by the
window.
She had told Ashley to come to her again that day to hear her decision.
It was the appointed hour, and she began to listen for his tread with
fear. For he would think that she did not love him, and she did love
him; he would say that she wanted to go, and she loathed going; he would
tell her all her going meant, and she knew all it meant. It would be
between them as it had been yesterday, and worse. Alas, that she should
have to fear the sound of Ashley's foot! Ah, that she could throw
herself into his arms, saying, "Ashley, I won't go!" Then the sweet
companionship and days in the country could come again, all could be
forgotten in joy, and the existence of to-morrow be blotted out.
And Mr. Hazlewood and Babba would get somebody else to play the
part--the great, great part.
There was the tread. She heard and knew it, and sat up to listen to it,
her lips parted and her eyes wide; marked it till it reached the very
door, but did not rise to meet it. She would sit there and listen to
all that he said to her.
He came in smiling; that seemed strange; he walked up to her and greeted
her cheerily; she glanced at him in frightened questioning.
"So you've arranged it?" he said, sitting down opposite to her.
"How do you know, Ashley?"
"Oh, I should know, anyhow," he answered, laughing; "but I met Babba
singing a song in Piccadilly--rather loud it sounded--and he stopped to
tell me."
"Oh," she murmured nervously. That he had come to know in this way
seemed an anti-climax, a note which jarred the tragic harmony; she would
have told him in a tempest of tears and self-reproach.
"You've done quite right," he went on. "It wasn't a chance to miss. I
should have been a selfish brute if I'd wanted you to give it up.
Besides--" He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Come, Ora," he went
on, "don't look so sorrowful about it."
He was not as he had been the day before; the touch of mockery which she
had seemed to see then was quite gone. He took her hand and caressed it
gently.
"Poor dear," he said, "making up your mind always upsets you so
terribly, doesn't it?"
"It's going away from you," she whispered, and her grasp fixed tightly
on his hand.
"For a few months," he said.
"Don't you think that long?" she cried, her eyes growing reproachful;
she had made up her mind that it was eternity.
"I don't mean to think it long, and you mustn't think it long," he said.
"The time'll go like lightning. Get an almanac and ink out the days, as
homesick boys do at school; it's quite consoling. And you'll have so
much to do, so much to fill your thoughts."
"And you?"
"Oh, I shall jog along till you come back. I shall be there to meet you
then. We'll come up to town together."
Was this really all? Was there no great, no final tragedy, after all? So
it might seem from his quiet cheerful manner. Ora was bewildered, in a
way disappointed, almost inclined to be resentful.
"It looks as if you didn't care so very much," she murmured; she tried
to draw her hand away from his, but he held it fast. He shut his lips
close for a moment, and then said, still very quietly,
"You mustn't think it means that, dear." On the last word his voice
quivered, but he went on again. "It means a very long night; the sun
won't rise again for ever so many months. But some day it will." She had
turned her head away, and, as he made this confident declaration, a
smile bent his lips for a moment, a smile not of amusement.
"Will it?" she asked, leaning towards him again, praying him to repeat
his comforting words.
"Of course it will."
"And you won't forget me? Ashley, don't forget me!"
"Not likely, my dear," said he. "I think Miss Pinsent makes herself
remembered."
"Because I shan't forget you, not for a moment," she said, fixing her
eyes on his. "Oh, it's hard to leave you!"
She took up her handkerchief from the small table and dried her eyes.
"Your picture will go with me everywhere," she said, lightly touching
it. "But I shan't be able to have your roses, shall I? Would you like
some tea, Ashley?"
"Very much indeed," said he.
After all, why not tea? There is nothing in tea necessarily inconsistent
with tragedy; still her vague forecasts of this conversation had not
included the taking of tea.
"Now show me your agreement," he said. "I must see that they've not done
you."
As they had tea, they looked through the contract, clause by clause. On
the whole Ashley was very well satisfied, although he suggested that one
or two points might be modified in Ora's favour; she quite grasped what
he put forward and thought that she would be able to obtain the
concessions from her partners.
"I ought to make all I can, oughtn't I?" she asked. "I'm giving up so
much to go."
"You ought to be as greedy as you possibly can," he assured her with a
laugh. He wanted to prevent her from beginning to talk again of what she
was giving up; what she would gain was a better topic; just as she must
not think how long she would be away, but on the other hand how soon she
would be back. We cannot control facts, but there is a limited choice of
aspects in which we may regard them and present them for the
consideration of our friends. In this little free field optimism and
pessimism are allowed to play.
"You can always make me happy!" she sighed, leaning back.
"I know the way to do it, you see," he answered. He had decided that in
this case the best way to do it was to let her go and play her part.
"Even when you're gone, I shan't be as miserable as I was before. You've
made it all seem less--less big and less awful, you know. Every day
will really be bringing me nearer to you again; even the first day!
It'll begin directly, won't it? Oh, I shall cry, but now I shall be able
to think of that too."
He was not deceiving her in anything like the grave manner in which he
had deceived her concerning Jack Fenning, but he felt something of the
same qualms. He did not yield an inch to them externally; he had made up
his mind to cheat her into going happily; when once that was done, he
thought she would soon grow happy; and if it were to be done, it should
be done thoroughly. A few tears were inevitable, but they must be
alleviated with smiles of hope.
"Directly you go away, you'll begin coming back, won't you? Really I
almost wish you were gone already, Ora!"
She laughed at this whimsical idea, but agreed that the actual going
would be the one irremediably black spot. Then she grew grave suddenly,
as though an unwelcome thought had flashed into her mind.
"Ashley," she said, "suppose I--I meet Jack! He's over there, you know.
What shall I do?"
"Oh, he won't bother you, I expect," Ashley assured her.
"But if he does? I shan't have you to take care of me, you know."
"If he does, you go straight to Hazlewood. He's a good fellow and knows
his way about the world. He'll see you come to no harm and aren't
victimised."
"Will he keep Jack away from me?"
"Yes, I think so. Take him into your confidence." Ashley smiled for a
moment. "He'll know the sort of man Fenning is."
Ora seemed a good deal comforted.
"Yes, I like Sidney Hazlewood," she said. "He's awfully tiresome
sometimes, but you feel that you can rely on him. He gives you an idea
of strength, as if you could put yourself in his hands. Oh, but not so
much as you do, of course! But then you won't be there."
"He'll look after you just as well as I should."
"Perhaps he will, as far as the actual thing goes," she admitted. Then
she began to smile. "But--but I shan't like it so much from him."
"You never know that till you try," said Ashley, answering her smile
with a cheerful smile.
"Oh, that's absurd," said Ora. "But I do think he'll stand by me." She
leant forward and put her hand on his knee. "If I were in very, very
great trouble and sent for you, would you come?"
"Yes," said Ashley, "I'd come then."
"Whatever you had to do? Whatever time it took? However far off I was?"
"Yes," he answered. "Anyhow I'd come. But you won't--" He hesitated for
a moment. "You won't have any cause to send for me," he ended.
"Oh, but I should rather like one," she whispered, almost merrily.
He shook his head. "I shall come only if you're in very, very great
trouble; otherwise you must depend on Hazlewood. But you won't be in
trouble, and I don't think you'll have any bother about Fenning." For
would not Mr. Fenning have the best of reasons for avoiding observation
while Hazlewood was about? To Hazlewood he was Foster, and Miss
Macpherson, by the dictates of politeness, Mrs. Foster.
It was in entire accord with the line of conduct which Ashley had laid
down for himself that even now he said no more of Jack Fenning, and
nothing of what he had done about him or heard about him. He stood
aside; he had determined not to take her life into his hands; he could
not put his into hers; he would not, then, seek to shape events either
for her or for himself; he would give her no information and urge on her
no course. If she came across her husband, something would very likely
happen; or again it was quite probable that nothing would occur except
an unpleasant interview and the transference of some of Ora's earnings
to Jack's pocket. Miss Macpherson might appear or she might not. Ashley
had gone as far as he meant to go when he told Ora to look to Mr.
Hazlewood if she were in any trouble. And if she should chance to want,
or assent to, "nosings" being carried on, why, was not Babba Flint to be
of the party? He dismissed all this from his mind, so far as he could.
It was not part of Ora, but yet it hung about Ora; he hated it all
because it hung about her, and would intrude sometimes into his thoughts
of her. Why had such sordid things ever come near her? But they had, and
they, as well as the play and the part, were a fence between her and
him. The bitterness of this conclusion was nothing new; he had endured
it before; he endured it again as he talked to her and coaxed her into
going happily.
But amid all the complexities of reasons, of feelings, and of choices in
which men live, there are moments when simplicity reasserts itself, and
one thing swallows all others; joy or sorrow brings them. Then the
meeting is everything; or again, there is nothing save the parting, and
it matters nothing why we must part, or should part, or are parting. Not
to be together overwhelms all the causes which forbid us to be together;
the pain seems almost physical; people cannot sit still when it is on
them any more than when they have a toothache. Such a moment was not to
be altogether evaded by any clever cheating of Ora into going happily.
There were the inevitable tears from her; in him there was the fierce
impulse after all to hold her, not to let her go, to do all that he was
set not to do, by any and every means to keep her in hearing and sight
and touch. For when she was gone what were touch and hearing and sight
to do? They would all be useless and he, their owner, useless too. But
of this in him she must see only so much as would assure her of his love
and yet leave her to go happy. That she should go happy and still not
doubt his love was the object at which he had to aim; the cost was
present emptiness of his own life. But things have to be paid for,
whether we are furnishing our own needs or making presents to our
friends; the ultimate destination of the goods does not change a
farthing in the bill.
His last hour with her seemed to set itself, whether in indulgence or in
irony he could not decide, to focus and sum up all that she had been to
him, to shew all the moods he knew, the ways he loved, the changes that
he had traced with so many smiles. She wept, she laughed, she hummed a
tune; she took offence and offered it; she flirted and she prayed for
love; she held him at arm's length, only to fall an instant later into
his arms; she said she should never see him again, and then decided at
what restaurant they would dine together on the evening of reunion; she
waxed enthusiastic about the part, and then cried that all parts were
the same to her since he would not be in the theatre. To be never the
same was to be most herself. Yet out of all this variety, in spite of
her relapses into tragedy, the clear conclusion formed itself in his
mind that she was going happy, at least excited, interested, eager, and
not frightened nor utterly desolate. Yet at the last she hung about him
as though she could not go; and at the last--he had prayed that this
might be avoided--there came back into her eyes the puzzled, alarmed,
doubtful look, and with it the reproach which seemed to ask him what he
was doing with her, to say that after all it was his act, that he was
master, and that when she gave herself into his hands no profession of
abdication could free him from his responsibility. If it were so, the
burden must be borne; the delusion under which she went must not be
impaired.
The last scene came on a misty morning at Waterloo Station; it had been
decided that he should part from her there, should hand her over to the
men who wanted to make money out of her, and so go his ways. The place
was full of people; Babba chattered volubly in the intervals of rushing
hither and thither after luggage, porters, friends, provisions,
playing-cards, remembering all the things he had forgotten, finding that
he had forgotten all that he meant to remember. Hazlewood, a seasoned
traveller, smoked a cigar and read the morning paper, waiting patiently
till his man should put him in the reserved corner of his reserved
carriage; certainly he looked a calm man to whom one might trust in a
crisis. Ora and Ashley got a few minutes together in the booking-office,
while her maid looked to her trunks and Babba flew to buy her flowers.
Nobody came near them. Then it was that it seemed as though the success
of his pretence failed in some degree, as though she also felt something
of the sense which pressed so remorselessly on him, the sense of an end,
that thus they were now together, alone, all in all to one another, and
that thus they would never be again. The tears ran down Ora's cheeks;
she held both his wrists in her hands with the old grip that said, "You
mustn't go." She could not speak to him, he found nothing to say to her;
but her tears cried to him, "Are you right?" Their reproach was bitter
indeed, their appeal might seem irresistible. What now beside them were
parts and plays, lives and their lines, Hazlewoods, Babba Flints, aye,
or Jack Fennings either? They pleaded for the parlour in the little inn,
reminding him how there first she had thrown herself on his mercy,
asking him whether now for the first time he meant in very truth to turn
cruel and abuse the trust.
But days had passed, and months, since then; with love had come
knowledge, and the knowledge had to be reckoned with, although it had
not destroyed the love. Was that ungentle? The knowledge was of himself
as well as of her; he dealt no blow that he did not suffer. The
knowledge was, above all, of the way things were and must be. Therefore
in all the stress of parting he could not, desire it as he might, doubt
that he was right.
Hazlewood raised his voice and called from the platform, "Off in five
minutes, Mead! Hadn't you better take Miss Pinsent to her carriage?"
"Come, Ora," he said, "you must get in now."
For a moment longer she held his arms.
"I don't believe I shall ever see you again," she said. Then she dried
her eyes and walked with him on to the platform. Here stood Babba, here
Hazlewood, here all the retinue. Ashley led her up to Hazlewood. "Here
she is," he said; he seemed to be handing her over, resigning charge of
her. The three turned and walked together to the train.
"You'd rather go down just with your maid, I daresay," said Hazlewood.
"It's time to get in, you know." He held out his hand to Ashley and then
walked away.
"Now, dear," said Ashley Mead.
She gave him her hand. For long he remembered that last grasp and the
clinging reluctance with which it left him.
"Good-bye, Ashley," she said.
"You're beginning to come back from this minute," he reminded her,
forcing a smile. "As soon as ever the train moves you're on your way
home!"
"Yes," she smiled. "Yes, Ashley." But the charm of that conceit was
gone; the tone was doubtful, sad, with only a forced recognition of how
he meant to cheer her. Her eyes were more eloquent and more sincere,
more outspoken too in their reproach. "You're sending me away," they
said.
So she went away, looking back out of the window so long as she could
see him; not crying now, but with a curious, wistful, regretful,
bewildered face, as though she did not yet know what he had done to her,
what had happened, what change had befallen her. This was the last
impression that he had of her as she went to encounter the world again
without the aid to which he had let her grow so used, without the arm on
which he had let her learn to lean.
But he seemed to know the meaning she sought for, to grasp the answer to
the riddle that puzzled her. As he walked back through the empty town,
back to the work that must be done and the day that must be lived
through, it was all very clear to him, and seemed as inevitable as it
was clear.
It was an end, that was what it was--an utter end.
For if it were anything but an end, he had done wrong. And he had no
hope that he had done wrong. The chilling sense that he knew only too
well the truth and the right of it was on him; and because he had known
them, he was now alone. Would not blindness then have been better?
"No, no; it's best to see," said he.