The Aline-George elopement settled the point once and for all. Slingsby had carried George's bag to the train. Slingsby had been standing a few yards from the spot where Aline began her dash for the carriage door. Slingsby was able to exhibit the actual half sovereign with which George had tipped him only five minutes before the great event. To send such a public man back to the servants' hall was impossible. By unspoken consent the chauffeur dined that night in the steward's room, from which he was never dislodged.
Mr. Judson alone stood apart from the throng that clustered about the chauffeur. He was suffering the bitterness of the supplanted. A brief while before and he had been the central figure, with his story of the letter he had found in the Honorable Freddie's coat pocket. Now the importance of his story had been engulfed in that of this later and greater sensation, Mr. Judson was learning, for the first time, on what unstable foundations popularity stands.
Joan was nowhere to be seen. In none of the spots where she might have been expected to be at such a time was she to be found. Ashe had almost given up the search when, going to the back door and looking out as a last chance, he perceived her walking slowly on the gravel drive.
She greeted Ashe with a smile, but something was plainly troubling her. She did not speak for a moment and they walked side by side.
"What is it?" said Ashe at length. "What is the matter?"
She looked at him gravely.
"Gloom," she said. "Despondency, Mr. Marson--A sort of flat feeling. Don't you hate things happening?"
"I don't quite understand."
"Well, this affair of Aline, for instance. It's so big it makes one feel as though the whole world had altered. I should like nothing to happen ever, and life just to jog peacefully along. That's not the gospel I preached to you in Arundel Street, is it! I thought I was an advanced apostle of action; but I seem to have changed. I'm afraid I shall never be able to make clear what I do mean. I only know I feel as though I have suddenly grown old. These things are such milestones. Already I am beginning to look on the time before Aline behaved so sensationally as terribly remote. To-morrow it will be worse, and the day after that worse still. I can see that you don't in the least understand what I mean."
"Yes; I do--or I think I do. What it comes to, in a few words, is that somebody you were fond of has gone out of your life. Is that it?"
Joan nodded.
"Yes--at least, that is partly it. I didn't really know Aline particularly well, beyond having been at school with her, but you're right. It's not so much what has happened as what it represents that matters. This elopement has marked the end of a phase of my life. I think I have it now. My life has been such a series of jerks. I dash along--then something happens which stops that bit of my life with a jerk; and then I have to start over again--a new bit. I think I'm getting tired of jerks. I want something stodgy and continuous.
"I'm like one of the old bus horses that could go on forever if people got off without making them stop. It's the having to get the bus moving again that wears one out. This little section of my life since we came here is over, and it is finished for good. I've got to start the bus going again on a new road and with a new set of passengers. I wonder whether the old horses used to be sorry when they dropped one lot of passengers and took on a lot of strangers?"
A sudden dryness invaded Ashe's throat. He tried to speak, but found no words. Joan went on:
"Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It's like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it's about nothing--just a jumble."
"There is one thing," said Ashe, "that knits it together."
"What is that?"
"The love interest."
Their eyes met and suddenly there descended on Ashe confidence. He felt cool and alert, sure of himself, as in the old days he had felt when he ran races and, the nerve-racking hours of waiting past, he listened for the starter's gun. Subconsciously he was aware he had always been a little afraid of Joan, and that now he was no longer afraid.
"Joan, will you marry me?"
Her eyes wandered from his face. He waited.
"I wonder!" she said softly. "You think that is the solution?"
"Yes."
"How can you tell?" she broke out. "We scarcely know each other. I shan't always be in this mood. I may get restless again. I may find it is the jerks that I really like."
"You won't!"
"You're very confident."
"I am absolutely confident."
"'She travels fastest who travels alone,'" misquoted Joan.
"What is the good," said Ashe, "of traveling fast if you're going round in a circle? I know how you feel. I've felt the same myself. You are an individualist. You think there is something tremendous just round the corner and that you can get it if you try hard enough. There isn't--or if there is it isn't worth getting. Life is nothing but a mutual aid association. I am going to help old Peters--you are going to help me--I am going to help you."
"Help me to do what?"
"Make life coherent instead of a jumble."
"Mr. Marson---"
"Don't call me Mr. Marson."
"Ashe, you don't know what you are doing. You don't know me. I've been knocking about the world for five years and I'm hard--hard right through. I should make you wretched."
"You are not in the least hard--and you know it. Listen to me, Joan. Where's your sense of fairness? You crash into my life, turn it upside down, dig me out of my quiet groove, revolutionize my whole existence; and now you propose to drop me and pay no further attention to me. Is it fair?"
"But I don't. We shall always be the best of friends."
"We shall--but we will get married first."
"You are determined?"
"I am!"
Joan laughed happily.
"How perfectly splendid! I was terrified lest I might have made you change your mind. I had to say all I did to preserve my self-respect after proposing to you. Yes; I did. How strange it is that men never seem to understand a woman, however plainly she talks! You don't think I was really worrying because I had lost Aline, do you? I thought I was going to lose you, and it made me miserable. You couldn't expect me to say it in so many words; but I thought--I was hoping--you guessed. I practically said it. Ashe! What are you doing?"
Ashe paused for a moment to reply.
"I am kissing you," he said.
"But you mustn't! There's a scullery maid or somebody looking through the kitchen window. She will see us."
Ashe drew her to him.
"Scullery maids have few pleasures," he said. "Theirs is a dull life. Let her see us."
CHAPTER XII
The Earl of Emsworth sat by the sick bed and regarded the Honorable Freddie almost tenderly.
"I fear, Freddie, my dear boy, this has been a great shock to you."
"Eh? What? Yes--rather! Deuce of a shock, gov'nor."
"I have been thinking it over, my boy, and perhaps I have been a little hard on you. When your ankle is better I have decided to renew your allowance; and you may return to London, as you do not seem happy in the country. Though how any reasonable being can prefer--"
The Honorable Freddie started, pop-eyed, to a sitting posture.
"My word! Not really?"
His father nodded.
"I say, gov'nor, you really are a topper! You really are, you know! I know just how you feel about the country and the jolly old birds and trees and chasing the bally slugs off the young geraniums and all that sort of thing, but somehow it's never quite hit me the same way. It's the way I'm built, I suppose. I like asphalt streets and crowds and dodging taxis and meeting chappies at the club and popping in at the Empire for half an hour and so forth. And there's something about having an allowance--I don't kno
w... sort of makes you chuck your chest out and feel you're someone. I don't know how to thank you, gov'nor! You're--you're an absolute sportsman! This is the most priceless bit of work you've ever done. I feel like a two-year-old. I don't know when I've felt so braced. I--I--really, you know, gov'nor, I'm most awfully grateful."
"Exactly," said Lord Emsworth. "Ah--precisely. But, Freddie, my boy," he added, not without pathos, "there is just one thing more. Do you think that--with an effort--for my sake--you could endeavor this time not to make a--a damned fool of yourself?"
He eyed his offspring wistfully.
"Gov'nor," said the Honorable Freddie firmly, "I'll have a jolly good stab at it!"
The End
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