"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.