THE MOST NATURAL THING
By reason of the Government's blunders or of the Opposition's
factiousness--the point awaits the decision of a candid historian in
case he should deem it worth his attention--Parliament had to assemble
in the autumn of this year; the Bowdons were back in town in November,
the Commission met to wind up its work, and Ashley Mead was in dutiful
attendance. Before this Irene had made up her mind that things were
going tolerably, would go better, and in the end would turn out as well
as could reasonably be expected. The recuperative effect of a vagrant
autumn had produced a healthier state of feeling in her. She had begun
to be less fretful about herself, less nervous and inquisitive about her
husband; she had resigned herself to the course of events in a hopeful
temper. Bowdon's bearing towards her was all that she could desire; it
was losing that touch of exaggerated chivalry which had smacked of
apology and remorse; it was assuming the air of a genuine and contented
comradeship. She was inclined to think that their troubles were over. If
one or two other things were over with the troubles, the principle of
compensation must be accepted manfully. After all, love's alternate joy
and woe is not the stuff to make a permanently happy home or the best
setting for a useful public career; on the other hand, these can
co-exist with a few memories of which one does not speak and a cupboard
or two kept carefully locked.
Having brought herself to this point, and feeling both praiseworthy and
sensible in attaining so much, she allowed herself some astonishment at
Ashley Mead, who seemed to have started in an even worse condition and
yet to have achieved so much more. He appeared to have passed a complete
Act of Oblivion for himself, and to have passed it with a rapidity which
(from one or other of the reasons above referred to) would have been
quite impossible to the Legislature. Surely in him, if in anybody, the
period of convalescence should have been long? Resolution is good, so is
resignation, so are common-sense and strength of will; but there is a
decency in things, and to recover too quickly from a folly confirms the
charge of levity and instability incurred by its original commission.
Ashley should not be behaving just for all the world as though nothing
had happened; such conduct was exasperating to persons who had reason to
know and to feel how much really had happened. To be cheerful, to be
gay, to be prospering greatly, to be dining out frequently, to have
suppressed entirely all hint of emotions lately so acute and even
overpowering, was not creditable to him, and cheated his friends of a
singularly interesting subject for observation and comment, as well as
of a sympathetic melancholy to which they had perhaps allowed themselves
to look forward. It was no defence that Irene herself aimed at what he
appeared to have achieved, as at a far-off ideal; she had not been, to
the knowledge of all London, desperately in love with Ora Pinsent; she
had not thrown up brilliant business prospects, lost an admirable match,
and seriously impaired her reputation in the eyes of all respectable
people. Neither had she bribed Jack Fenning to go away at the cost of a
thousand pounds.
"Surely all men aren't like that?" she cried with marked indignation.
She broke out on Ashley once when he came to tea and they chanced to be
alone; he met her in a way which increased her annoyance.
"Well, what has happened after all?" he asked, leaning back in his chair
and smiling at her. "I don't see that anything has. Ora has gone on a
visit to America; from what I hear, a very successful visit. Presently,
I suppose, she'll come back. A visit to America doesn't in these days
mean a final separation from all one holds dear in the old country. I
believe one almost always finds the man who lives next door in London
dining at the same table in New York; then one makes his acquaintance."
"Do you ever hear from her? I never do."
"I hear from her every now and then. Oh, I admit at once what your look
means; yes, not so often as at first." He laughed at the flush of
vexation on Lady Bowdon's face. "I write seldomer too; I can do anything
for a friend except carry on a correspondence."
"I expect every day to hear of Alice Muddock's engagement."
"Do you really think about it every day?" he asked, raising his brows.
"What an eye you keep on your acquaintances!"
Was he genuine? Or was he only perfectly, coolly, securely on his guard?
Irene felt baffled and puzzled; but it was bad enough that he should be
able even to pretend so well to her; pretending that nothing had
happened was not always easy.
"Do you think Ora will come back?" she asked. "If she's successful she
may stay."
"Oh, she'll come," he nodded. "We shall have her back in Chelsea before
six months are out."
"And when she does?"
Irene's curiosity had overcome her, but Ashley laughed again as he
answered, "Ascribe what emotions you like to me, Lady Bowdon; but I
haven't heard that Jack Fenning's health's failing."
There was some pretence about the attitude so puzzling and exasperating
to Irene Bowdon, but more of reality. The passing of the months had
brought a sense of remoteness; it was intensified by a gradual cessation
of the interchange of letters. Ora had told him that she seemed to have
got into another world and was lonely; she was, without doubt, still in
another world; whether still lonely he could not tell. She was in all
senses a long way off; what he had chosen, or at least accepted as the
lesser evil, was happening; she and her life were diverging from him and
his life. He recognised all this very clearly as he ate his chop at the
club that evening. She had found him living one life; she had given him
another while she was with him; she left him a third different from
either of the other two. That evening, whether from some mood of his own
or because of what Irene had said, she seemed irrevocably departed and
separated from him. But even in that hour she was to come back to him so
as to be very near in feeling though still across the seas in fact.
As he turned into his street about ten o'clock and approached the door
of his house, he perceived a man walking slowly up and down, to and fro.
There was something familiar in the figure and the gait; an indecision,
a looseness, a plaintive weakness. Unconsciously Ashley quickened his
step; he had a conviction which seemed absurd and was against all
probability; a moment would prove or disprove its truth. The man came
under the gas lamp, stopped, and looked up at Ashley's windows. His face
was plain to see now. "By God, it is!" whispered Ashley Mead, with a
frown and a smile. A little more slinking, a little more slouching, a
little more altogether destitute of the air which should mark a
self-respecting man, but unchanged save for these intensifications of
his old characteristics, Jack Fenning stood and looked up at the house
whence he had once come out richer by a thousand pounds than when he
went in. He seemed to regard the dingy old walls with a maudlin
affection.
It was a pretty bit of irony that she should come back in this way; that
this aspect of her, this side of her life, should be thrust before
Ashley's eyes when all that he loved of her and longed for was so far
away. Ashley walked up to Jack Fenning with lips set firm in a stiff
smile.
"Well, Mr. Fenning, what brings you here?" he asked. "I've no more
thousands about me, you know."
"I--I thought you might give me a drink for old friendship," said Jack.
"They said you were out, and wouldn't let me sit in your room. So I said
I'd come back; but I've been waiting all the time."
"If you don't mind what the drink's for, I'll give it you. Come along."
He loathed the man, but because the man in a sense belonged to Ora he
would not turn him away; curiosity, too, urged him to find out the
meaning of an appearance so unexpected. With Ora in America, how could
it profit Jack to make a nuisance of himself in England? There was
nothing to be got by that.
When they were upstairs and Jack had been provided with the evidence of
friendship which he desired, Ashley lit his pipe, sat down by the fire,
and studied his companion in silence for a few moments. Jack grew a
little uncomfortable under the scrutiny; he was quite aware that he did
not and could not stand investigation. But Ashley was thinking less of
him than of what he represented. He had been just one of those stupid
wanton obstacles, in themselves so unimportant, which serve to wreck
fair schemes; he seemed to embody the perversity of things, and to make
mean and sordid the fate that he typified.
"What do you want?" Ashley asked suddenly and abruptly. "I've got no
more money for you, you know."
No doubt Jack was accustomed to this style of reception. It did not
prevent him from telling his story. He lugged out a cheap broken-backed
cigar from his breast-pocket and lit it; it increased the feeble
disreputableness of his appearance.
"I'll tell you all about it, Mr. Mead," he said. "It may be worth your
while to listen." But the sudden confidence of these last words died
away quickly. "I hope to God you'll do something for me!" he ended in a
whining voice.
This man was Ora Pinsent's husband.
"Go on," muttered Ashley, his teeth set hard on the stem of his pipe.
The story began, but proceeded very haltingly; Ashley had to draw it out
by questions. The chief point of obscurity was as regards Jack's own
intentions and motives. Why he had come to England remained in
vagueness; Ashley concluded that the memory of the thousand pounds had
drawn him with a subtle retrospective attraction, although reason must
have told him that no second thousand would come. But on the matter of
his grievances and the sad treatment he had suffered from others Jack
was more eloquent and more lucid. Everybody was against him, even his
wife Ora Pinsent, even his own familiar friend Miss Daisy Macpherson.
For Miss Macpherson had deserted him, had gone over to the enemy, had
turned him out, and for lucre's sake had given information to hostile
emissaries. And his wife ("My own wife, Mr. Mead," said Jack mournfully)
was trying to get rid of him for good and all.
Ashley suddenly sat up straight in his seat as the narrative reached
this point.
"To get rid of you? What do you mean?" he asked.
"There's a fellow named Flint--" said Jack between gulps at his liquor.
Of course there was! A fellow who did not despise nosings! That bygone
talk with Babba leapt lifelike to Ashley's mind.
The fellow named Flint, aided by the basest treachery on the part of
Miss Macpherson--why had she not denied all compromising facts?--had
landed Mr. Fenning in his present predicament.
"What in the world is it you mean?" groaned Ashley.
"They've begun divorce proceedings," said Jack, with a desperate pull at
the broken-backed leaky cigar. "My own wife, Mr. Mead."
"Upon my soul, you're a much-wronged man," said Ashley.
In the next few moments he came near to repenting his sarcastic words.
Repentance would indeed have been absurd; but if every one were kicking
the creature it was hard and needless to add another kick. He found some
sorrow and disapprobation for the conduct of Miss Daisy Macpherson; it
was ungrateful in her who had liked to be known as Mrs. Foster in
private life.
"Babba Flint got round your friend, did he?" he asked. "Well, I suppose
you've no defence?"
"I've got no money, Mr. Mead."
"That's the same thing, you know," said Ashley. "Well, what's the
matter? How does it hurt you to be divorced?"
"I never tried to divorce her," moaned Jack.
"Never mind your conduct to your wife; we can leave that out."
"I was very fond of Miss Pinsent; but she was hard to me."
"I've nothing to do with all that. What do you want to resist the
divorce for?" His tone was savage; how dare this creature tell him that
he had been very fond of Ora Pinsent? Must her memory be still more
defiled? Should he always have to think of this man when he thought of
her? Jack shrank lower and lower in his chair under the flash of
severity; his words died away into confused mutterings; he stretched out
his hand towards the whiskey bottle.
"You're half drunk already," said Ashley. Jack looked at him for an
instant with hazy eyes, and then poured out some liquor; Ashley shrugged
his shoulders; his suggested reason had, he perceived, no validity. Jack
drank his draught and leant forward towards his entertainer with a fresh
flicker of boldness.
"I know what their game is, Mr. Mead," he said. "Daisy let it all out
when we had our row."
"Whose game?"
"Why, Ora's, and that damned Flint's, and Hazlewood's."
"Will you oblige me in one point? If you will, you may have some more
whiskey. Tell the story without mentioning Miss Pinsent."
Jack smiled in wavering bewilderment. Why shouldn't he mention Ora? He
took refuge in an indeterminate "They," which might or might not include
his wife.
"They mean to get rid of me, then their way's clear," he said with a
nod.
"Their way to what?"
"To marrying her to Hazlewood," said Jack with a cunning smile. He
waited an instant; his smile grew a little broader; he took another
gulp. "What do you say to that, Mr. Mead?" he asked.
Several moments passed, Jack still wearing his cunning foolish smile,
Ashley smoking steadily. What did he say to that? Babba had offered him
the service of nosings; would he not, in an equally liberal spirit, put
them at the disposal of Mr. Hazlewood? Hazlewood was a good fellow, but
he would not be squeamish about the nosings. So far there was no
improbability. But Ora? Was she party to the scheme? Well, she would
gladly--great heavens, how gladly!--be rid of this creature; and the
other thing would be held in reserve; it would not be pressed on her too
soon. The same mixture of truth and pretence which had marked his talk
with Irene Bowdon displayed itself in his answer to Jack Fenning.
"The most natural thing in the world," he said, with a shrug of his
shoulders.
Jack's face fell, disappointment and dismay were painted on it. His next
remark threw some light on the hopes which had brought him to England.
"I thought you'd be obliged to me for the tip," he said mournfully.
Tips and nosings--nosings and tips!
"Good God, have you any notion at all of the sort of creature you are?"
asked Ashley.
Jack giggled uncomfortably. "We're none of us perfect," he said. "I
don't see that I'm worse than other people." He paused, and added again,
"I thought you'd be obliged to me, Mr. Mead."
Ashley had fallen to thinking; now he asked one question.
"Does Miss Pinsent know you came here before?"
"Daisy gave away the whole thing," murmured Jack forlornly. "All about
my being here and what you did; and Hazlewood saw me here, you know." He
paused again, and resumed, "It's all pretty rough on me; I don't want to
be troublesome, but they ought to do something for me."
"And they wouldn't, so you came to me?"
Jack wriggled about and finished his glass.
"Well, I won't, either," said Ashley.
"I've only got thirty shillings. There's a cousin of mine in Newcastle
who might do something for me if I had a bit of money, but--"
"What have you done with the thousand?"
"Daisy clawed the lot," moaned Mr. Fenning.
It was surely a delusion which made Ashley feel any responsibility for
the man; he had no doubt prevented Jack from rejoining his wife, but no
good could have come of the reunion. Nevertheless, on the off-chance of
there being a moral debt due, he went to the drawer of his writing-table
and took out two bank-notes. It occurred to him that the proceeding was
unfair to the cousin in Newcastle, but in this world somebody must
suffer. He held out the notes to Jack. "Go," he said. Jack's eyes
glistened as he darted out his hand. "Never come back. By heaven, I'll
throw you downstairs if you ever come back."
Jack laughed weakly as he looked at the notes and thrust them into his
pocket. He rose; he could still stand pretty steadily. "You understand?
Never come back or--the stairs!" said Ashley, standing opposite to him
and smiling at him.
"I won't trouble you again, Mr. Mead," Jack assured him.
"It's a case where the trouble would be a pleasure, but don't come all
the same. You'd be a poor sort of man to be hanged for, you know."
Jack laughed more comfortably; he thought that he was establishing
pleasant relations; but he was suddenly relegated to fright and dismay,
for Ashley caught him by the shoulder and marched him quickly to the
door, saying, "Now, get out." Jack glanced round in his face. "All
right, I'm going, I'm going, Mr. Mead," he muttered. "Don't be angry,
I'm going." He darted hastily through the door and stood for one instant
at the top of the stairs, looking back over his shoulder with a scared
expression. Ashley burst into a laugh and slammed the door; the next
moment he heard Jack's shuffling steps going down.
"I must have looked quite melodramatic," he said as he flung himself
down on his sofa. His heart was beating quick and the sweat stood on his
brow. "Good God, what an ass I am!" he thought. "But I only just kept my
hands off the fellow. How infernally absurd!" He got up again, relit his
pipe, and mixed himself some whiskey-and-water. His self-respect
demanded an immediate and resolute return to the plane of civilised
life; an instinct to throw Jack Fenning downstairs, combined with a
lively hope that his neck would be broken, was not civilised.
And was it grateful? His stiff smile came again as he declared that he
ought to consider himself obliged to Jack and that the bank-notes were
no more than a proper acknowledgment of services rendered. Jack's
reappearance and Jack's news gave the fitting and necessary cap to the
situation; they supplied its demands and filled up its deficiencies,
they forbade any foolish attempt to idealise it, or to shut eyes to it,
or to kick against the pricks. He had elected to have nothing to do with
nosings; then he could not look to enjoy the fruits of nosing. The truth
went deeper than that; he had been right in his calm bitter declaration
that the thing of which Jack came to warn him was the most natural thing
in the world. Ora, being in another world and being lonely, turned to
the companionship her new world gave; like sought like. The thing, while
remaining a little difficult to imagine--because alien memories crossed
the mirror and blurred the image--became more and more easy to explain
on the lines of logic, and to justify out of his knowledge of the world,
of women and of men. It was natural, indeed he caught the word
"inevitable" on the tip of his tongue. The whole affair, the entire
course of events since Ora Pinsent had come on the scene, was of a
piece; the same laws ruled, the same tendencies asserted themselves;
against their sway and their force mere inclinations, fancies, emotions,
passions--call them what you would--seemed very weak and transient,
stealing their moment of noisy play, but soon shrinking away beaten
before the steady permanent strength of these opponents. The problem
worked out to its answer, the pieces fitted into the puzzle, until the
whole scheme became plain. As Bowdon to his suitable wife, as Alice
Muddock to her obvious husband, so now Ora Pinsent to the man who was so
much in her life, so much with her, whose lines ran beside her lines,
converging steadily to a certain point of meeting. Yes, so Ora Pinsent
to Sidney Hazlewood. It would be so; memories of days in the country, of
inn parlours, of sweet companionship, could not hinder the end; the laws
and tendencies would have their way. The sheep had tried to make a rush,
to escape to pleasant new browsing-grounds, the dog was on them in an
instant and barked them back to their proper pens again.
"Only I don't seem to have a pen," said Ashley Mead.
When a thing certainly is, it is perhaps waste of time to think whether
it is for the best, and what there may be to be said for and against it.
But the human mind is obstinately plagued with a desire to understand
and appreciate things; it likes to feel justified in taking up an
amiable and acquiescent attitude towards the world in which it finds
itself, it does not love to live in rebellion nor even in a sullen
obedience. Therefore Ashley tried to vindicate the ways of fate and to
declare that the scheme which was working itself out was very good. Even
for himself probably a pen would be indicated presently, and he would
walk into it. On a broader view the pen-system seemed to answer very
well and to produce the sort of moderate happiness for which moderately
sensible beings might reasonably look. That was the proper point of view
from which to regard the matter; anything else led to an uncivilised
desire to throw Jack Fenning downstairs.
Thus Jack Fenning vanished, but in the next day or two there came the
letter from Ora, the letter which was bound to come in view of the new
things she had learnt. Ora was not exactly angry, but she was evidently
puzzled. She gave him thanks for keeping Jack away from her, out of her
sight and her knowledge. "But," she wrote, "I don't understand about
afterwards; because you found out from Mr. Hazlewood things that might
have made, oh, all the difference, if you'd told them to me and if you'd
wanted them to. I don't understand why you didn't tell me; we could have
done what's being done now and I should have got free. Didn't you want
me free? I can't and won't think that you didn't really love me, that
you wouldn't really have liked to have me for your own. But I don't know
what else I can think. It does look like it. I wish I could see you,
Ashley, because I think I might perhaps understand then why you acted as
you did; I'm sure you had a reason, but I can't see what it was. When we
were together, I used to know how you thought and felt about things, and
so perhaps, if we were together now, you could make me understand why
you treated me like this. But we're such a long way off from one
another. Do you remember saying that I should begin to come back as soon
as ever I went away, and that every day would bring me nearer to you
again? It isn't like that; you get farther away. It's not only that I'm
not with you now, but somehow it comes to seem as if I'd never been with
you--not as we really were, so much together. And so I don't know any
more how you feel, and I can't understand how you did nothing after what
you found out from Mr. Hazlewood. Because it really would have made all
the difference. I don't want to reproach you, but I just don't
understand. I shall be travelling about a lot in the next few weeks and
shan't have time to write many letters. Good-bye."
It was what she must think, less by far than she might seem to have
excuse for saying. He had no answer to it, no answer that he could send
to her, no answer that he could carry to her, without adding a sense of
hurt to the bewilderment that she felt. Of course too she forgot how
large a share the play and the part, with all they stood for, had had in
the separation and distance between them which she deplored as so sore a
barrier to understanding. She saw only that there had been means by
which Jack Fenning might have been cleared out of the way, means by
which he was in fact now being cleared out of the way, and that Ashley
had chosen to conceal them from her and not to use them himself. Hence
her puzzled pain, and her feeling that she had lost her hold on him and
her knowledge of his mind. Reading the letter, he could not stifle some
wonder that her failure to understand was so complete. He would not be
disloyal to her; anything that was against her was wrung from him
reluctantly. But had she no shrinking from what was being done, no
repugnance at it, no sense that she was soiled and a sordid tinge given
to her life? No, she had none of these things; she wanted to be free; he
could have freed her and would not; now Sidney Hazlewood and Babba Flint
were setting her at liberty. He was far off, they were near; he was
puzzling, their conduct was intelligible. She felt herself growing more
and more separated from him; was she not growing nearer and nearer to
them? The law ruled and the tendency worked through such incidents as
these; in them they sprang to light and were fully revealed, their
underlying strength became momentarily open and manifest. They would go
on ruling and working, using the puzzle, the wound, the resentment, the
separation, the ever-growing distance, the impossibility of
understanding. These things blotted out memories, so that his very face
would grow blurred for her, the tones of his voice dim and strange, the
touch of his lips alien and forgotten. She would be travelling a lot in
the next few weeks and would not have time to write many letters. He
knew, as he read, that she would write no more letters at all, that this
was the last to come from her to him, the last that would recall the
intimate and sweet companionship whose ending it deplored with poor
pathetic bewilderment. She did not see how they came to be so far apart
and to be drifting farther and farther apart; she saw only the fact. Was
it any easier for him to bear because he seemed to see the reason and
the necessity?
So, "Good-bye," she ended; and it was the end.
He put the letter away in the drawer whence he had taken the bank-notes
for Jack Fenning, drew a chair up to the table and, sitting down, untied
the red tape round a brief which lay there. He began to read but broke
off when he had read a few lines and sat for a moment or two, looking
straight in front of him.
"Yes," he said, "there's an end of that." And he went on with the brief.
It was indeed the most natural thing in the world.