A Servant of the Public. Anthony Hope

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СКАЧАТЬ looked down into the street. "You talk rather like Jack used to. You reminded me of him for an instant," she remarked. "Though you're not like him really, of course."

      "Your husband?" His tone had surprise in it; she had never mentioned Jack before; both the moment and the manner of her present reference to him seemed strange.

      "Yes. You never met him, did you? He used to be about London five or six years ago."

      "No, I never saw him. Where is he now?"

      A shrug of her shoulders and a slight smile gave her answer.

      "Why did he go away?"

      "Oh, a thousand reasons! It doesn't matter. I liked him, though, once."

      "Do you like him now?"

      A moment more of gravity was followed by a sudden smile; her eyes sparkled again and she laughed, as she answered,

      "No, not just now, thank you, Lord Bowdon. What queer questions you ask, don't you?"

      "The answers interest me."

      "I don't see why they should."

      "Don't you?"

      "I mean I don't see how they ought."

      "Quite so."

      "You're really getting a little bit more amusing," said Ora with a grateful look.

      He felt an impulse to be brutal with her, to do, in another sphere of action, very much what Mr. Hazlewood had done when he insisted that a business arrangement must be regarded in a business-like way. Suppose he told her that questions of morals, with their cognate problems, ought to be regarded in a moral way? He would perhaps be a strange preacher, but surely she would forget that in amazement at the novelty of his doctrine!

      "How old are you?" he asked her, aghast this time at his question but quite unable to resist it.

      She glanced at him for a moment, smiled, and answered simply,

      "Twenty-seven last December."

      He was remorseful at having extracted an answer, but he bowed to her as he said,

      "You've paid me a high compliment. You're right, though; it wasn't impertinence."

      "Oh, no, you're all right in that way," she murmured with a careless cordiality. "But why did you want to know?"

      "I want to know all about you," he said in a low voice.

      Again she looked at him for a moment, growing grave as she looked. Then she laid her hand on his arm again and looked up in his face with a pleading coaxing smile.

      "Don't," she said.

      There was silence for a moment. Then Lord Bowdon took her hand, kissed it, smiled at her, and asked a prosaic question.

      "Where's my hat?" said he.

      But that prosaic question made it impossible to sail off under cover of an inclination to flirt; it was not at all in that manner; it lacked the colour, the flourish and the show. As he walked away, Bowdon was conscious that whatever happened to the affair, good or evil, whether it went on or stopped, it must be stamped with a certain genuineness. It could not pass at once from his thoughts; he could not suppose that it would be dismissed immediately from hers.

      That he occupied her attention for a little while after he went away happened to be the case, although it was by no means the certain result he imagined. A mind for the moment vacant of new impressions allowed her to wonder, rather idly, why she had said "Don't" so soon; he had done nothing to elicit so direct a prohibition; it had put a stop to a conversation only just becoming interesting, still far from threatening inconvenience. Perhaps she was surprised to find her injunction so effective. She had said the word, she supposed, because she was not much taken with him; or rather because she liked him very definitely in one way, and very definitely not in another, and so had been impelled to deal fairly with him. Besides he had for a moment reminded her of Jack Fenning; that also might have something to do with it. The remembrance of her husband's love-making was not pleasant to her. It recalled the greatest of all the blunders into which her trick of sudden likings had led her, the one apparently irrevocable blunder. It brought back also the memory of old delusions which had made the blunder seem something so very different at the time it was committed. She walked about the room for a few minutes with a doleful look, her lips dragged down and her eyes woeful. It was only five; she did not dine till six. She was supposed to rest this hour; if resting meant thinking of Jack Fenning and Lord Bowdon and of the general harshness of the world, she would have none of it. It occurred to her, almost as an insult, that here was an hour in which she was at leisure and yet nobody seemed to desire her society; such treatment was strange and uncomplimentary.

      A ring at the bell scattered her gloom.

      "That must be somebody amusing!" she cried, clasping her hands in the joyful confidence that fate had taken a turn. "I wonder who it is!"

      The visitor thus favoured by a prejudice of approbation proved to be Ashley Mead. He had come once before, a week ago; three days back Ora had in her own mind accused him of neglect and then charitably congratulated him on indifference. Now she ran to him as though he were the one person in the world she wished to see.

      "How charming of you!" she cried. "I was bored to death. I do like people who come at the right time!"

      Ashley held her hand for a moment in sheer pleasure at the feel of it; they sat down, she again on her sofa, he in a low chair close by.

      "Tea?" she said.

      "Goodness, no. Don't move from where you are, Miss Pinsent. I met Lord Bowdon walking away."

      "I sent him away."

      "What delightful presentiments you have!"

      "Indeed I'd no idea that you'd come. I don't think he wanted to stay, though." She smiled meditatively. Lord Bowdon's prompt acceptance of her "Don't" seemed now to take on a humorous air; his hesitation contrasted so sharply with the confident readiness of her new visitor.

      "I've come on business," said Ashley.

      "Business?" she echoed, with an unpleasant reminiscence of Mr. Sidney Hazlewood and his views as to the nature of an agreement.

      "I want you to help me to organise something."

      "Oh, I couldn't. I hate all that sort of thing. It's not a bazaar, is it?"

      "No. Perhaps we might call it a fête. It's a day in the country, Miss Pinsent."

      "Oh, I know! Children! You mean those children?"

      He leant back in his chair and looked at her before he replied. She seemed a little hurt and regretful, as though his visit were not proving so pleasant as she had expected; a visit should be paid, as virtue should be practised, for its own sake.

      "No," he said. "Not those children. These children."

      She took an instant to grasp the proposal; then her eyes signified her understanding of it; СКАЧАТЬ