A Servant of the Public

"Then do," smiled Miss Pinsent as she was borne away.

"I wonder who didn't come!" said Alice to herself, smiling; but the next moment criticism revived. "How curious she should tell me about it!" she reflected. "She doesn't know me a bit." Frown and smile stood on her face together.

The way was cleared. Alice accomplished another round at a fairly quick trot. Then she saw Miss Pinsent's victoria again. This time Miss Pinsent was not alone; the victoria stood by the path and Lord Bowdon's foot was on the step. He was talking to Ora; Ora leant back, looking past him with an expression of utter inattention. Was he the man who didn't come? Or was she inattentive because he was not? Alice gave up the riddle; she had a sudden consciousness that generalisations which had hitherto seemed tolerably trustworthy might prove most fallacious if applied to Ora Pinsent. But there was a distinct regret in her mind when she lost sight of the little victoria with the big man by its step. She had her invitation; but in retrospect her invitation seemed woefully vague.

Ashley dropped in to dinner that evening, pleasant and talkative as usual, but rather less alert and a trifle absent in manner. However he had good news; he was to be secretary to Lord Bowdon's Commission; it would last a long while, was probably meant to last as long as the Government did (the grounds for this impression would be tedious to relate, and open to controversy), and would enable him to pay bills.

"I suppose," he said to Alice, "you don't know what it is not to be able to pay a bill?"

"I hardly ever have one," she said; "they're just sent in to father."

"It must be rather slow never to be hard-up," he remarked; he hardly meant what he said, and was quite unaware how true his remark seemed to Alice Muddock. "Then you never write cheques?" he went on.

"For charity I do."

"Good heavens, what a base use of a cheque book!"

Lady Muddock happened to hear this observation. She had failed to accustom herself to remarks not meant for literal acceptance; the Middle Period treats language seriously.

"We all ought to give a certain proportion," she remarked. "Oughtn't we, James?" But Sir James had gone to sleep.

As Ashley sat and talked lightly about the secretaryship, his shifts to live comfortably beyond his means, and the welcome help Lord Bowdon had afforded, Alice felt a surprise at him growing in her. Had she been placed as he was, she might not have married for money, but she would inevitably have thought of such a step, probably have had a severe struggle about it, and certainly have enjoyed a sense of victory in putting it on one side. The money-taint had bitten so far into her; she could disregard wealth but could not forget it. She hardly understood Ashley; she felt curious to know what he would say if she stood before him and offered herself and her thousands freely, unconditionally, the money without the ribbons. Did he know that she was ready to do it? Did he want her? There was an only half-occupied look in his eyes. She never expected to see admiration gleam in the eyes of men, but she often, indeed generally, excited interest and chained attention. To-night there was hardly attention, certainly not whole-hearted engrossed interest. All at once, for the first time in her simple sincere life, there came over her a bitter regret that she was not pretty. It was a small thing to be; small in itself, very small in the little changes of shape and colour that made it. But how rich in consequences! Yes, she meditated, how unfairly rich!

Pressed by thought, she found herself lapsing into long silences. She started another line of talk, but the new topic sprang from the previous meditation.

"I met Miss Pinsent in the Park to-day," she said. "She was looking so beautiful. And what do you think, she asked me to go and see her! I was very flattered."

Ashley smiled as he observed:

"She's asked me to go and see her too."

"Shall you go?" asked Alice, with a grave interest.

She was puzzled at the heartiness of his laugh over her question.

"Great heavens, of course I shall go," he said, laughing still.

"What are you laughing at?"

"Why, my dear Alice, there isn't a man in London who wouldn't go."

"Oh, I see," she said in a disappointed, almost irritable tone. She had somehow expected a better explanation than lay in that, something that might apply to herself, to a girl. She was even sure that there ought to be something more about Miss Pinsent, that it was a man's fault if he saw only what all men must see. Her tone did not escape the quick wit of her companion.

"You must see that she's tremendously interesting?" he said. "Lady Kilnorton says that Ora Pinsent's the most interesting person in the world – except one."

"Except who?"

"Her husband," he answered, laughing again. "You look surprised. Oh, yes, he exists. His name's Fenning."

"She – she's married?" Alice was leaning forward now; here was another problem.

"Incredible, but true. You may let Bob meet her without the least danger of spoiling that great match he's going to make."

"I'd no idea she was married."

Ashley was obviously amused at her wonder, perhaps at the importance she attached to the circumstance which he had brought to her knowledge.

"Lady Kilnorton will have it that he must be a remarkable man," he went on. "But it doesn't follow in the least, you know, rather the contrary. Some women have unimpeachable taste in everything except marriage; or perhaps we must all have our share of the ordinary, and they take theirs out in their husbands. Anyhow, he's at the other end of the world somewhere."

They talked a little while longer about Ora, Alice incidentally mentioning Bowdon's appearance by the step of the victoria. Then Ashley said good-night, and started to walk home to his rooms in one of the streets which run down from the Strand to the Thames Embankment. Here he dwelt humbly, commanding modest comforts and, if he craned his neck, a sidelong view of a bit of the river by Charing Cross bridge. As he walked, he was pleasantly and discursively thoughtful. His evening had disposed him to reflexion on the very various types of people who inhabited the world and flocked, one and all, to London. He knew many sorts; yet within the limits of his acquaintance the Muddocks were peculiar. And now, right at the other end of the scale, came this Miss Pinsent. He thought about Miss Pinsent for a little while, and then drifted idly into a trivial classification of women according to their external advantages. Perhaps he had dimly discerned and caught something of Alice Muddock's train of ideas. There were those beautiful to all, those pretty to some, those plain to most. Miss Pinsent, Lady Kilnorton, Alice Muddock, were the instances on which his generalities depended. Superficial as the dividing principle was, he gained a hint of what had come home to Alice while he talked to her, of the immense difference it made to the persons divided. (That it made an immense difference to him was in no way such a discovery as needed midnight meditation.) To them the difference would surely become more than a source of greater or less homage, attention, pleasure, or excitement. These immediate results must so influence and affect life as to make the woman in the end really a different being, a different inner as well as a different outer creature, from what she would have been had she occupied a place in another class than her own. It would be curious to take twin souls (he allowed himself the hypothesis of souls), put them into diverse kinds of bodies, leave them there ten years, from eighteen to twenty-eight, say, then take them out and record the observed variations. But that was hopeless; the experimental method, admirable for all sorts of dull subjects, broke down just where it would become of absorbing interest.

In Pall Mall he met Lord Bowdon coming out of the Reform Club. Bowdon's family had always been Whigs; people might argue that historical parties had changed their policies and their principles; Bowdon was not to be caught by any such specious reasoning. The Liberals were heirs to the Whigs; he was heir to his fathers; his conservative temperament preserved his Liberal principles. But he did not seem to be occupied by such matters to-night. He caught Ashley by the arm, turned him round the Athenæum corner, and began to stroll gently along towards the steps. Ashley thanked him again for procuring him the Secretaryship; Bowdon's only answer was to nod absently. What Alice Muddock had told him recurred to Ashley's mind.

"I hear you had an audience in the Park to-day," he said, laughing. "Her Majesty distinguished you?"

"I did a most curious thing," said Bowdon slowly. "I had an appointment to drive with her. I didn't go. Half-an-hour later I walked up to the Park and looked for her till I found her. Doesn't that strike you as a very silly proceeding?"

"Very," said Ashley with a laugh.

"In a man of forty-three?" pursued Bowdon with a whimsical gravity.

"Worse and worse. But where do you put the folly, in missing the appointment or – ?"

"Oh, in the combination! The combination makes it hopeless. You said you knew her, didn't you?"

"Yes. I shouldn't miss the appointment."

Ashley had long been aware of his companion's kindness for him, one of those partialities that arise without much apparent reason but are of unquestionable genuineness. But Bowdon was considered reserved, and this little outbreak of self-exposure was a surprise. It shewed that the man was at least playing with a new emotion; if the emotion grew strong the play might turn to earnest. Moreover Bowdon must know that his confidant was a frequent visitor at Lady Kilnorton's. Bowdon stopped suddenly, standing still on the pavement, and looking full in Ashley's face.

"Don't think I'm going to make a fool of myself, my boy," he said with remarkable emphasis and energy. "Good-night;" and, hailing a cab, he was off in an instant.

Ashley properly considered his friend's last remark an indication that he was feeling rather inclined to, and just possibly might, make or try to make (for often failure is salvation) a fool of himself. The man of unshaken sobriety of purpose needs no such protests. Ashley strolled on to his rooms, decidedly amused, somehow also a little vexed. Nothing had happened except a further and needless proof that he had been right in putting Ora in the first division of his classification. The vexation, then, remained unaccounted for, and it was not until he had reached home, lit his pipe, mixed his whiskey and water, and settled in his arm-chair, that he discovered that he was a little annoyed just because Lord Bowdon was apparently afraid of making a fool of himself. It was a thing that Bowdon or any other man had a perfect right to do, so far as the rest of the world was concerned. This sounded like a platitude; Ashley was surprised to find in his own soul an indefinite but not weak opposition to it. The instinct of exclusive possession was stirring in him, that resentment of intrusion which is the forerunner of a claim to property. Well, he was not forty-three but just thirty. His theory of life did not forbid a certain amount of making a fool of himself; his practice had included a rather larger quantity. Perturbation had been the ruling factor in Bowdon, in Ashley a pleasurable anticipation was predominant. In his case there were no very obvious reasons why he should not make a fool of himself again, if he were so disposed; for, dealing dispassionately with the situation and with his own standards, he could not treat this Jack Fenning as a very obvious reason. He went to bed with a vague sense of satisfaction; the last few days had brought to birth a new element in life, or at least a new feature of this season. It was altogether too soon to set about measuring the dimensions of the fresh arrival or settling to what it might or might not grow.

His anticipation would have been much heightened and the development of his interest quickened had he been able to see what was at this time happening to the lady who had made so abrupt and resolute an entry into his thoughts as well as into Lord Bowdon's. Her distress would have been sun and water to the growth of his feelings. For Mr. Sidney Hazlewood, an accomplished comedian and Ora Pinsent's Manager, had urged that she should try, and indeed must force herself, to regard a certain business arrangement from a purely business point of view. To Ora, still charged with the emotions of her performance in addition to her own natural and large stock of emotions, this suggestion seemed mere brutality, oblivious of humanity, and dictated solely by a ruthless and unhallowed pursuit of gain. So she burst into tears, and a weary wrinkle knitted itself on Mr. Hazlewood's brow. Lady Kilnorton had been blaming herself for judging genius from the stand of common-sense; Mr. Hazlewood did not theorise about the matter; that eloquent wrinkle was his sole protest against the existence and the ways of genius. The wrinkle having failed of effect, he observed that an agreement was an agreement and spoke, as a man who contemplates regrettable necessities, of his solicitor. Ora defied Mr. Hazlewood, the law, and the world, and went home still in tears. She was not really happy again until she had got into her dressing-gown, when quite suddenly she chanced on the idea that Mr. Hazlewood had a good deal to say for himself. Then she began to laugh merrily at the scene which had passed between them.

"He's very stupid, but he likes me and he's a good old creature," she ended in a charitable way.

CHAPTER III

AN ARRANGEMENT FOR SUNDAY

"Elizabeth Aurora Pinsent; that's it. But Elizabeth was too solemn, and Betty was too familiar, and Aurora too absurd. So I'm just Ora."

Lord Bowdon nodded gravely.

"And I think," she went on, lying back on the sofa, "that the world's rather dull, and that you're rather like the world this afternoon."

He did not dispute the point. A man who wants to make love, but is withheld by the sense that he ought not, is at his dullest. Bowdon's state was this or even worse. Ora was a friend of Irene Kilnorton's; how much had she guessed, observed, or been told? Would she think loyalty a duty in herself and disloyalty in him a reproach? That would almost certainly be her mood unless she liked him very much; and she gave no sign of such a liking. On all grounds he was clear that he had better go away at once and not come back again. He thought first of Irene Kilnorton, then of his own peace and interest, lastly of Mr. Jack Fenning; but it must be stated to his credit that he did think quite perceptibly of Jack Fenning. Yet he did not go away immediately.