A Servant of the Public

by Anthony Hope

"And you? Will you come with me?"

"Why no," he said, smiling. "I must stay and roll my little stone here. Yours is a big stone and mine only a little one, but still I must roll my own."

"But I shall be away months."

"Yes, I know, long months. But I won't forget you."

"You won't really? I should die if you forgot me, Ashley. If I go I shall think of you every hour. Oh, but I'm afraid to go! I know you'll forget me."

He had but little doubt that the forgetfulness would come, and that it would not come first from him. She had no inkling of the idea that she could herself cease to feel for him all that she felt now. She extracted from him vows of constancy and revelled in the amplitude of his promises. Presently her mind overleapt the months of absence, saw in them nothing but a series of triumphs which would make him more proud of her, and a prospect of meeting him again growing ever nearer and nearer and sweetening her success with the approaching joy of sharing it all with him and telling him all about it. Anything became sweet, shared with him; witness the renunciation!

"If I hadn't you, I shouldn't care a bit about the rest of it," she said. "But somehow having you makes me want all the rest more. I wonder if all women are like that when they're as much in love as I am."

Ashley knew that all women were by no means like that, but he said that he suspected they were, and assured Ora that the state of feeling she described was entirely consistent with a great and permanent love. As, before, his one object had been to support her through the renunciation, to make it easy and possible for her, so now he found himself bending his energies and exerting his ingenuity to persuading her that there was no incompatibility between her love and her life, between her ambition and her passion, between him and the masterpiece for whose sake she was to leave him. He had seen her once in despair about herself and dared not encounter a second time the pain which that sight of her had given him; he himself might know the truth of what she was and the outcome of what she did; he determined that, so far as he could contrive and control the matter, she should not know it. She should go and win her triumph, she should go in the sure hope that he would not change, in the confidence that she would not, that their friendship would not, that nothing would. Then she would dry her tears, or weep only in natural sorrow and with no bitterness of self-accusation. It seemed worth while to him to embark again on oceans of pretence for her sake, just as it had seemed worth while to pretend to believe in the renunciation, and worth while to break his code by bribing Jack Fenning with a borrowed thousand pounds.

At this time a second stroke fell on old Sir James Muddock; worn out with work and money-making, he had no power to resist. The end came swiftly. It was announced to Ashley in a letter from Bertie Jewett. Lady Muddock was prostrate, Bob and Alice overwhelmed with duties. Bertie begged that his letter might be regarded as coming from the family; he shewed consideration in the way he put this request and assumed his position with delicacy. Ashley read with a wry smile, not blaming the writer but wondering scornfully at the turn of affairs. The old man had once been almost a father to him, the children near as brother and sister; now Bertie announced the old man's death and the children pleaded that they were too occupied to find time to write to him. He went to the funeral; through it all his sense of being outside, of having been put outside, persisted, sharing his mind with genuine grief. From whatever cause it comes that a man has been put outside, even although he may have much to say for himself and the expulsion be of very questionable justice, it is hard for him to avoid a sense of ignominy. Ashley felt humiliation even while he protested that all was done of his own choice. He spoke to the Muddocks no more than a few kind but ordinary words; he did not go to the house. Bertie invited him there and pressed the invitation with the subdued cordiality which was all that the occasion allowed; but he would not go on Bertie's invitation. The resentment which he could not altogether stifle settled on Bob. Bob was the true head of family and business now. Why did Bob abdicate? But he had himself been next in succession; Bob's abdication would have left the place open for him; he had refused and renounced; he could not, after all, be very hard on poor Bob.