*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 47319 ***

THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._


A MAN OF MARK.
MR. WITT'S WIDOW.
FATHER STAFFORD.
A CHANGE OF AIR.
HALF A HERO.
THE PRISONER OF ZENDA.
THE GOD IN THE CAR.
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES.
COMEDIES OF COURTSHIP.
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO.
THE HEART OF PRINCESS OSRA.
PHROSO.
SIMON DALE.
RUPERT OF HENTZAU.
THE KING'S MIRROR.
QUISANTÉ.
TRISTRAM OF BLENT.




THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY

BY
ANTHONY HOPE

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1902

[All rights reserved]




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                      PAGE
     I. LIFE IS RECOMMENDED                     1

    II. COMING NEAR THE FIRE                   12

   III. IN DANES INN                           23

    IV. 'FROM THE MIDST OF THE WHIRL'          36

     V. THE WORLD RECALCITRANT                 48

    VI. CHILDREN OF SHADOW                     62

   VII. A DANGEROUS GAME                       75

  VIII. USURPERS ON THE THRONE                 89

    IX. BRUISES AND BALM                      103

     X. CONCERNING A CERTAIN CHINA VASE       116

    XI. THE MIXTURE AS BEFORE                 128

   XII. HOT HEADS AND COOL                    141

  XIII. JUSTIFICATION NUMBER FOUR             155

   XIV. A HOUSE OF REFUGE                     169

    XV. NOT EVERYBODY'S FOOTBALL              183

   XVI. MORAL LESSONS                         197

  XVII. THE PERJURER                          210

 XVIII. AN AUNT--AND A FRIEND                 225

  XIX. NO MORE THAN A GLIMMER                 240

   XX. PURELY BUSINESS                        256

  XXI. THE WHIP ON THE PEG                    271

 XXII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT                   286

XXIII. THE LAST KICK                          302

 XXIV. TO THE SOUL SHOP                       315

  XXV. RECONCILIATION                         331




THE INTRUSIONS OF PEGGY




CHAPTER I

LIFE IS RECOMMENDED


The changeful April morning that she watched from the window of her flat
looking over the river began a day of significance in the career of Trix
Trevalla--of feminine significance, almost milliner's perhaps, but of
significance all the same. She had put off her widow's weeds, and for
the first time these three years back was dressed in a soft shade of
blue; the harmony of her eyes and the gleams of her brown hair welcomed
the colour with the cordiality of an old friendship happily renewed.
Mrs. Trevalla's maid had been all in a flutter over the momentous
transformation; in her mistress it bred a quietly retrospective mood. As
she lay in an armchair watching the water and the clouds, she turned
back on the course of her life, remembering many things. The beginning
of a new era brought the old before her eyes in a protesting flash of
vividness. She abandoned herself to recollections--an insidious form of
dissipating the mind, which goes well with a relaxed ease of the body.

Not that Mrs. Trevalla's recollections were calculated to promote a
sense of luxury, unless indeed they were to act as a provocative
contrast.

There was childhood, spent in a whirling succession of lodging-houses.
They had little individuality and retained hardly any separate identity;
each had consisted of two rooms with folding doors between, and
somewhere, at the back or on the floor above, a cupboard for her to
sleep in. There was the first baby, her brother, who died when she was
six; he had been a helpless, clinging child, incapable of living without
far more sympathy and encouragement than he had ever got. Luckily she
had been of hardier stuff. There was her mother, a bridling, blushing,
weak-kneed woman (Trix's memory was candid); kind save when her nerves
were bad, and when they were, unkind in a weak and desultory fashion
that did not deserve the name of cruelty. Trix had always felt less
anger than contempt for her half-hysterical outbursts, and bore no
malice on their account. This pale visitor soon faded--as indeed Mrs.
Trevalla herself had--into non-existence, and a different picture took
its place. Here was the Reverend Algernon, her father, explaining that
he found himself unsuited to pastoral work and indisposed to adopt any
other active calling, that inadequate means were a misfortune, not a
fault, that a man must follow his temperament, and that he asked only to
be allowed to go his own way--he did not add to pay it--in peace and
quiet. His utterances came back with the old distinction of manner and
the distant politeness with which Mr. Trevalla bore himself towards all
disagreeable incidents of life--under which head there was much reason
to surmise that he ranked his daughter.

Was he unjust in that? Trix was puzzled. She recalled a sturdy,
stubborn, rather self-assertive child. The freshness of delicacy is
rubbed off, the appeal of shyness silenced, by a hand-to-mouth
existence, by a habit of regarding the leavings of the first-floor
lodger in the light of windfalls, by constant flittings unmarked by the
discharge of obligations incurred in the abandoned locality, by a
practical outlawry from the class to which we should in the ordinary
course belong. Trix decided that she must have been an unattractive
girl, rather hard, too much awake to the ways of the world, readily
retorting its chilliness towards her. All this was natural enough, since
neither death nor poverty nor lack of love was strange to her. Natural,
yes; pleasant, no, Trix concluded, and with that she extended a degree
of pardon to Mr. Trevalla. He had something to say for himself. With a
smile she recalled what he always did say for himself, if anyone seemed
to challenge the spotlessness of his character. On such painful
occasions he would mention that he was, and had been for twenty years, a
teetotaler. There were reasons in the Trevalla family history which made
the fact remarkable; in its owner's eyes the virtue was so striking and
enormous that it had exhausted the moral possibilities of his being,
condemned other excellencies to atrophy, and left him, in the
flower-show of graces, the self-complacent exhibitor of a single bloom.

Yet he had become a party to the great conspiracy; it was no less,
however much motives of love, and hopes ever sanguine, might excuse it
in one of the parties to it--not the Reverend Algernon. They had all
been involved in it--her father, old Lady Trevalla (her husband had been
a soldier and K.C.B.), Vesey Trevalla himself. Vesey loved Trix, Lady
Trevalla loved Vesey in a mother's conscienceless way; the mother
persuaded herself that the experiment would work, the son would not stop
to ask the question. The Reverend Algernon presumably persuaded himself
too--and money was very scarce. So Trix was bidden to notice--when those
days at Bournemouth came back to mind, her brows contracted into a frown
as though from a quick spasm of pain--how Vesey loved her, what a good
steady fellow he was, how safely she might trust herself to him. Why, he
was a teetotaler too! 'Yes, though his gay friends do laugh at him!'
exclaimed Lady Trevalla admiringly. They were actually staying at a
Temperance Hotel! The stress laid on these facts did not seem strange to
an ignorant girl of seventeen, accustomed to Mr. Trevalla's solitary but
eloquent virtue. Rather weary of the trait, she pouted a little over it,
and then forgot it as a matter of small moment one way or the other. So
the conspiracy throve, and ended in the good marriage with the
well-to-do cousin, in being Mrs. Trevalla of Trevalla Haven, married to
a big, handsome, ruddy fellow who loved her. The wedding-day stood out
in memory; clearest of all now was what had been no more than a faint
and elusive but ever-present sense that for some reason the guests,
Vesey's neighbours, looked on her with pity--the men who pressed her
hand and the women who kissed her cheek. And at the last old Lady
Trevalla had burst suddenly into unrestrained sobbing. Why? Vesey looked
very uncomfortable, and even the Reverend Algernon was rather upset.
However, consciences do no harm if they do not get the upper hand till
the work is done; Trix was already Vesey's wife.

He was something of a man, this Vesey Trevalla; he was large-built in
mind, equitable, kind, shrewd, of a clear vision. To the end he was a
good friend and a worthy companion in his hours of reason. Trix's
thoughts of him were free from bitterness. Her early life had given her
a tolerance that stood her in stead, a touch of callousness which
enabled her to endure. As a child she had shrugged thin shoulders under
her shabby frock; she shrugged her shoulders at the tragedy now; her
heart did not break, but hardened a little more. She made some
ineffectual efforts to reclaim him; their hopelessness was absurdly
plain; after a few months Vesey laughed at them, she almost laughed
herself. She settled down into the impossible life, reproaching nobody.
When her husband was sober, she never referred to what had happened when
he was drunk; if he threw a plate at her then, she dodged the plate: she
seemed in a sense to have been dodging plates and suchlike missiles all
her life. Sometimes he had suspicions of himself, and conjured up
recollections of what he had done. 'Oh, what does last night matter?'
she would ask in a friendly if rather contemptuous tone. Once she lifted
the veil for a moment. He found her standing by the body of her baby; it
had died while he was unfit to be told, or at any rate unable to
understand.

'So the poor little chap's gone,' he said softly, laying his hand on her
shoulder.

'Yes, Vesey, he's gone, thank God!' she said, looking him full in the
eyes.

He turned away without a word, and went out with a heavy tread. Trix
felt that she had been cruel, but she did not apologise, and Vesey
showed no grudge.

The odd thing about the four years her married life lasted was that they
now seemed so short. Even before old Lady Trevalla's death (which
happened a year after the wedding) Trix had accommodated herself to her
position. From that time all was monotony--the kind of monotony which
might well kill, but, failing that, left little to mark out one day from
another. She did not remember even that she had been acutely miserable
either for her husband or for herself; rather she had come to disbelieve
in acute feelings. She had grown deadened to sorrow as to joy, and to
love, the great parent of both; the hardening process of her youth had
been carried further. When Vesey caught a chill and crumpled up under it
as sodden men do, and died with a thankfulness he did not conceal, she
was unmoved. She was not grateful for the deliverance, nor yet grieved
for the loss of a friend. She shrugged her shoulders again, asking what
the world was going to do with her next.

Mr. Trevalla took a view more hopeful than his daughter's, concluding
that there was cause for feeling considerable satisfaction both on moral
and on worldly grounds. From the higher standpoint Trix (under his
guidance) had made a noble although unsuccessful effort, and had shown
the fortitude to be expected from his daughter; while Vesey, poor
fellow, had been well looked after to the end, and was now beyond the
reach of temptation. From the lower--Mr. Trevalla glanced for a moment
round the cosy apartment he now occupied at Brighton, where he was
beginning to get a nice little library round him--yes, from the lower,
while it was regrettable that the estate had passed to a distant cousin,
Trix was left with twenty thousand pounds (in free cash, for Vesey had
refused to make a settlement, since he did not know what money he would
want--that is, how long he would last) and an ascertained social
position. She was only twenty-two when left a widow, and better-looking
than she had ever been in her life. On the whole, were the four years
misspent? Had anybody very much to grumble at? Certainly nobody had any
reason to reproach himself. And he wondered why Trix had not sent for
him to console her in her affliction. He was glad she had not, but he
thought that the invitation would have been natural and becoming.

'But I never pretended to understand women,' he murmured, with his
gentle smile.

Women would have declared that they did not understand him either, using
the phrase with a bitter intention foreign to the Reverend Algernon's
lips and temper. His good points were so purely intellectual--lucidity
of thought, temperance of opinion, tolerance, humour, appreciation of
things which deserved it. These gifts would, with women, have pleaded
their rarity in vain against the more ordinary endowments of willingness
to work and a capacity for thinking, even occasionally, about other
people. Men liked him--so long as they had no business relations with
him. But women are moralists, from the best to the worst of them. If he
had lived, Trix would probably have scorned to avail herself of his
counsels. Yet they might well have been useful to her in after days; he
was a good taster of men. As it was, he died soon after Vesey, having
caught a chill and refused to drink hot grog. That was his doctor's
explanation. Mr. Trevalla's dying smile accused the man of cloaking his
own ignorance by such an excuse; he prized his virtue too much to charge
it with his death. He was sorry to leave his rooms at Brighton; other
very strong feeling about his departure he had none. Certainly his
daughter did not come between him and his preparations for hereafter,
nor the thought of her solitude distract his fleeting soul.

In the general result life seemed ended for Trix Trevalla at twenty-two,
and, pending release from it in the ordinary course, she contemplated an
impatient and provisional existence in Continental
_pensions_--establishments where a young and pretty woman could not be
suspected of wishing to reap any advantage from prettiness or youth.
Hundreds of estimable ladies guarantee this security, and thereby obtain
a genteel and sufficient company round their modest and inexpensive
tables. It was what Trix asked for, and for two years she got it. During
this period she sometimes regretted Vesey Trevalla, and sometimes asked
whether vacancy were not worse than misery, or on what grounds limbo was
to be preferred to hell. She could not make up her mind on this
question--nor is it proposed to settle it here. Probably most people
have tried both on their own account.

One evening she arrived at Paris rather late, and the isolation ward
(metaphors will not be denied sometimes) to which she had been
recommended was found to be full. Somewhat apprehensive, she was driven
to an hotel of respectability, and, rushing to catch the flying
coat-tails of _table d'hôte_, found herself seated beside a man who was
apparently not much above thirty. This unwonted propinquity set her
doing what she had not done for years in public, though she had never
altogether abandoned the practice as a private solace: as she drank her
cold soup, she laughed. Her neighbour, a shabby man with a rather shaggy
beard, turned benevolently inquiring eyes on her. A moment's glance made
him start a little and say, 'Surely it's Mrs. Trevalla?'

'That's my name,' answered Trix, wondering greatly, but thanking heaven
for a soul who knew her. In the _pensions_ they never knew who you were,
but were always trying to find out, and generally succeeded the day
after you went away.

'That's very curious,' he went on. 'I daresay you'll be surprised, but
your photograph stands on my bedroom mantel-piece. I knew you directly
from it. It was sent to me.'

'When was it sent you?' she asked.

'At the time of your marriage.' He grew grave as he spoke.

'You were his friend?'

'I called myself so.' Conversation was busy round them, yet he lowered
his voice to add, 'I don't know now whether I had any right.'

'Why not?'

'I gave up very soon.'

Trix's eyes shot a quick glance at him and she frowned a little.

'Well, I ought to have been more than a friend, and so did I,' she said.

'It would have been utterly useless, of course. Reason recognises that,
but then conscience isn't always reasonable.'

She agreed with a nod as she galloped through her fish, eager to
overtake the _menu_.

'Besides, I have----' He hesitated a moment, smiling apologetically and
playing nervously with a knife. 'I have a propensity myself, and that
makes me judge him more easily--and myself not so lightly.'

She looked at his pint of _ordinaire_ with eyebrows raised.

'Oh, no, quite another,' he assured her, smiling. 'But it's enough to
teach me what propensities are.'

'What is it? Tell me.' She caught eagerly at the strange luxury of
intimate talk.

'Never! But, as I say, I've learnt from it. Are you alone here, Mrs.
Trevalla?'

'Here and everywhere,' said Trix, with a sigh and a smile.

'Come for a stroll after dinner. I'm an old friend of Vesey's, you
know.' The last remark was evidently thrown in as a concession to rules
not held in much honour by the speaker. Trix said that she would come;
the outing seemed a treat to her after the _pensions_.

They drank beer together on the boulevards; he heard her story, and he
said many things to her, waving (as the evening wore on) a pipe to and
fro from his mouth to the length of his arm. It was entirely owing to
the things which he said that evening on the boulevards that she sat now
in the flat over the river, her mourning doffed, her guaranteed
_pensions_ forsaken, London before her, an unknown alluring sea.

'What you want,' he told her, with smiling vehemence, 'is a revenge.
Hitherto you've done nothing; you've only had things done to you. You've
made nothing; you've only been made into things yourself. Life has
played with you; go and play with it.'

Trix listened, sitting very still, with eager eyes. There was a life,
then--a life still open to her; the door was not shut, nor her story of
necessity ended.

'I daresay you'll scorch your fingers; for the fire burns. But it's
better to die of heat than of cold. And if trouble comes, call at 6A
Danes Inn.'

'Where in the world is Danes Inn?' she asked, laughing.

'Between New and Clement's, of course.' He looked at her in momentary
surprise, and then laughed. 'Oh, well, not above a mile from
civilisation--and a shilling cab from aristocracy. I happen to lodge
there.'

She looked at him curiously. He was shabby yet rather distinguished,
shaggy but clean. He advised life, and he lived in Danes Inn, where an
instinct told her that life would not be a very maddening or riotous
thing.

'Come, you must live again, Mrs. Trevalla,' he urged.

'Do you live, as you call it?' she asked, half in mockery, half in a
genuine curiosity.

A shade of doubt, perhaps of distress, spread over his face. He knocked
out his pipe deliberately before answering.

'Well, hardly, perhaps.' Then he added eagerly, 'I work, though.'

'Does that do instead?' To Trix's new-born mood the substitute seemed a
poor one.

'Yes--if you have a propensity.'

What was his tone? Sad or humorous, serious or mocking? It sounded all.

'Oh, work's your propensity, is it?' she cried gaily and scornfully, as
she rose to her feet. 'I don't think it's mine, you know.'

He made no reply, but turned away to pay for the beer. It was a
trifling circumstance, but she noticed that at first he put down three
_sous_ for the waiter, and then returned to the table in order to make
the tip six. He looked as if he had done his duty when he had made it
six.

They walked back to the hotel together and shook hands in the hall.

'6A Danes Inn?' she asked merrily.

'6A Danes Inn, Mrs. Trevalla. Is it possible that my advice is working?'

'It's working very hard indeed--as hard as you work. But Danes Inn is
only a refuge, isn't it?'

'It's not fit for much more, I fear.'

'I shall remember it. And now, as a formality--and perhaps as a
concession to the postman--who are you?'

'My name is Airey Newton.'

'I never heard Vesey mention you.'

'No, I expect not. But I knew him very well. I'm not an impostor, Mrs.
Trevalla.'

'Why didn't he mention you?' asked Trix. Vesey had been, on the whole, a
communicative man.

He hesitated a moment before he answered.

'Well, I wrote to him on the subject of his marriage,' he confessed at
last.

She needed no more.

'I see,' she said, with an understanding nod. 'Well, that was--honest of
you. Good night, Mr. Newton.'

This meeting--all their conversation--was fresh and speaking in her
brain as she sat looking over the river in her recovered gown of blue.
But for the meeting, but for the shabby man and what he had said, there
would have been no blue gown, she would not have been in London nor in
the flat. He had brought her there, to do something, to make something,
to play with life as life had played with her, to have a revenge, to
die, if die she must, of heat rather than of cold.

Well, she would follow his advice--would accept and fulfil it amply.
'At the worst there are the _pensions_ again--and there's Danes Inn!'

She laughed at that idea, but her laugh was rather hard, her mouth a
little grim, her eyes mischievous. These were the marks youth and the
four years had left. Besides, she cared for not a soul on earth.




CHAPTER II

COMING NEAR THE FIRE


At the age of forty (a point now passed by some half-dozen years) Mrs.
Bonfill had become motherly. The change was sudden, complete, and
eminently wise. It was accomplished during a summer's retirement; she
disappeared a queen regnant, she reappeared a dowager--all by her own
act, for none had yet ventured to call her _passée_. But she was a big
woman, and she recognised facts. She had her reward. She gained power
instead of losing it; she had always loved power, and had the shrewdness
to discern that there was more than one form of it. The obvious form she
had never, as a young and handsome woman, misused or over-used; she had
no temptations that way, or, as her friend Lady Blixworth preferred to
put it, 'In that respect dearest Sarah was always _bourgeoise_ to the
core.' The new form she now attained--influence--was more to her taste.
She liked to shape people's lives; if they were submissive and obedient
she would make their fortunes. She needed some natural capacities in her
_protégés_, of course; but, since she chose cleverly, these were seldom
lacking. Mrs. Bonfill did the rest. She could open doors that obeyed no
common key; she could smooth difficulties; she had in two or three cases
blotted out a past, and once had reformed a gambler. But she liked best
to make marriages and Ministers. Her own daughter, of course, she
married immediately--that was nothing. She had married Nellie Towler to
Sir James Quinby-Lee--the betting had been ten to one against it--and
Lady Mildred Haughton to Frank Cleveland--flat in the face of both the
families. As for Ministers, she stood well with Lord Farringham, was an
old friend of Lord Glentorly, and, to put it unkindly, had Constantine
Blair fairly in her pocket. It does not do to exaggerate drawing-room
influence, but when Beaufort Chance became a Whip, and young Lord Mervyn
was appointed Glentorly's Under-Secretary at the War Office, and
everybody knew that they were Mrs. Bonfill's last and prime
favourites--well, the coincidence was remarkable. And never a breath of
scandal with it all! It was no small achievement for a woman born in,
bred at, and married from an unpretentious villa at Streatham. _La
carrière ouverte_--but perhaps that is doing some injustice to Mr.
Bonfill. After all, he and the big house in Grosvenor Square had made
everything possible. Mrs. Bonfill loved her husband, and she never tried
to make him a Minister; it was a well-balanced mind, save for that
foible of power. He was very proud of her, though he rather wondered why
she took so much trouble about other people's affairs. He owned a
brewery, and was Chairman of a railway company.

Trix Trevalla had been no more than a month in London when she had the
great good fortune to be taken up by Mrs. Bonfill. It was not
everybody's luck. Mrs. Bonfill was particular; she refused hundreds,
some for her own reasons, some because of the things Viola Blixworth
might say. The Frickers, for example, failed in their assault on Mrs.
Bonfill--or had up to now. Yet Mrs. Bonfill herself would have been
good-natured to the Frickers.

'I can't expose myself to Viola by taking up the Frickers,' she
explained to her husband, who had been not indisposed, for business
reasons, to do Fricker a good turn. For Lady Blixworth, with no other
qualities very striking to a casual observer, and with an appearance
that the term 'elegant' did ample justice to, possessed a knack of
describing people whom she did not like in a way that they did not
like--a gift which made her respected and, on the whole, popular.

'The woman's like a bolster grown fat; the daughter's like a sausage
filled unevenly; and the man--well, I wouldn't have him to a political
party!'

Thus had Lady Blixworth dealt with the Frickers, and even Mrs. Bonfill
quailed.

It was very different with Trix Trevalla. Pretty, presentable, pleasant,
even witty in an unsubtle sort of fashion, she made an immediate
success. She was understood to be well-off too; the flat was not a cheap
one; she began to entertain a good deal in a quiet way; she drove a
remarkably neat brougham. These things are not done for nothing--nor
even on the interest of twenty thousand pounds. Yet Trix did them, and
nobody asked any questions except Mrs. Bonfill, and she was assured that
Trix was living well within her means. May not 'means' denote capital as
well as income? The distinction was in itself rather obscure to Trix,
and, Vesey Trevalla having made no settlement, there was nothing to
drive it home. Lastly, Trix was most prettily docile and submissive to
Mrs. Bonfill--grateful, attentive, and obedient. She earned a reward.
Any woman with half an eye could see what that reward should be.

But for once Mrs. Bonfill vacillated. After knowing Trix a fortnight she
destined her for Beaufort Chance, who had a fair income, ambition at
least equal to his talents, and a chance of the House of Lords some day.
Before she had known Trix a month--so engaging and docile was Trix--Mrs.
Bonfill began to wonder whether Beaufort Chance were good enough.
Certainly Trix was making a very great success. What then? Should it be
Mervyn, Mrs. Bonfill's prime card, her chosen disciple? A man destined,
as she believed, to go very high--starting pretty high anyhow, and
starts in the handicap are not to be disregarded. Mrs. Bonfill doubted
seriously whether, in that mental book she kept, she could not transfer
Trix to Mervyn. If Trix went on behaving well---- But the truth is that
Mrs. Bonfill herself was captured by Trix. Yet Trix feared Mrs.
Bonfill, even while she liked and to some extent managed her. After
favouring Chance, Mrs. Bonfill began to put forward Mervyn. Whether
Trix's management had anything to do with this result it is hard to say.

Practical statesmen are not generally blamed for such changes of
purpose. They may hold out hopes of, say, a reduction of taxation to one
class or interest, and ultimately award the boon to another. Nobody is
very severe on them. But it comes rather hard on the disappointed
interest, which, in revenge, may show what teeth it has.

Trix and Mervyn were waltzing together at Mrs. Bonfill's dance. Lady
Blixworth sat on a sofa with Beaufort Chance and looked on--at the dance
and at her companion.

'She's rather remarkable,' she was saying in her idle languid voice.
'She was meant to be vulgar, I'm sure, but she contrives to avoid it. I
rather admire her.'

'A dangerous shade of feeling to excite in you, it seems,' he remarked
sourly.

The lady imparted an artificial alarm to her countenance.

'I'm so sorry if I said anything wrong; but, oh, surely, there's no
truth in the report that you're----?' A motion of her fan towards Trix
ended the sentence.

'Not the least,' he answered gruffly.

Sympathy succeeded alarm. With people not too clever Lady Blixworth
allowed herself a liberal display of sympathy. It may have been all
right to make Beaufort a Whip (though that question arose afterwards in
an acute form), but he was no genius in a drawing-room.

'Dear Sarah talks so at random sometimes,' she drawled. 'Well-meant, I
know, Beaufort; but it does put people in awkward positions, doesn't
it?'

He was a conceited man, and a pink-and-white one. He flushed visibly and
angrily.

'What has Mrs. Bonfill been saying about me?'

'Oh, nothing much; it's just her way. And you mustn't resent it--you owe
so much to her.' Lady Blixworth was enjoying herself; she had a natural
delight in mischief, especially when she could direct it against her
beloved and dreaded Sarah with fair security.

'What did she say?'

'Say! Nothing, you foolish man! She diffused an impression.'

'That I----?'

'That you liked Mrs. Trevalla! She was wrong, I suppose. _Voilà tout_,
and, above all, don't look hot and furious; the room's stifling as it
is.'

Beaufort Chance was furious. We forgive much ill-treatment so it is
secret, we accept many benefits on the same understanding. To parade the
benefit and to let the injustice leak out are the things that make us
smart. Lady Blixworth had by dexterous implication accused Mrs. Bonfill
of both offences. Beaufort had not the self-control to seem less angry
than he was. 'Surely,' thought Lady Blixworth, watching him, 'he's too
stupid even for politics!'

'You may take it from me,' he said pompously, 'that I have, and have
had, no more than the most ordinary acquaintance with Mrs. Trevalla.'

She nodded her head in satisfied assent. 'No, he's just stupid enough,'
she concluded, smiling and yawning behind her fan. She had no
compunctions--she had told nearly half the truth. Mrs. Bonfill never
gossiped about her Ministers--it would have been fatal--but she was
sometimes rather expansive on the subject of her marriages; she was
tempted to collect opinions on them; she had, no doubt, (before she
began to vacillate) collected two or three opinions about Beaufort
Chance and Trix Trevalla.

Trix's brain was whirling far quicker than her body turned in the easy
swing of the waltz. It had been whirling this month back, ever since the
prospect began to open, the triumphs to dawn, ambition to grow, a sense
of her attraction and power to come home to her. The _pensions_ were
gone; she had plunged into life. She was delighted and dazzled. Herself,
her time, her feelings, and her money, she flung into the stream with a
lavish recklessness. Yet behind the gay intoxication of the transformed
woman she was conscious still of the old self, the wide-awake, rather
hard girl, that product of the lodging-houses and the four years with
Vesey Trevalla. Amid the excitement, the success, the folly, the old
voice spoke, cautioning, advising, never allowing her to forget that
there was a purpose and an end in it all, a career to make and to make
speedily. Her eyes might wander to every alluring object; they returned
to the main chance. Wherefore Mrs. Bonfill had no serious uneasiness
about dear Trix; when the time came she would be sensible; people fare,
she reflected, none the worse for being a bit hard at the core.

'I like sitting here,' said Trix to Mervyn after the dance, 'and seeing
everybody one's read about or seen pictures of. Of course I don't really
belong to it, but it makes me feel as if I did.'

'You'd like to?' he asked.

'Well, I suppose so,' she laughed as her eyes rambled over the room
again.

Lord Mervyn was conscious of his responsibilities. He had a future; he
was often told so in public and in private, though it is fair to add
that he would have believed it unsolicited. That future, together with
the man who was to have it, he took seriously. And, though of rank
unimpeachable, he was not quite rich enough for that future; it could be
done on what he had, but it could be done better with some more.
Evidently Mrs. Bonfill had been captured by Trix; as a rule she would
not have neglected the consideration that his future could be done
better with some more. He had not forgotten it; so he did not
immediately offer to make Trix really belong to the brilliant world she
saw. She was very attractive, and well-off, as he understood, but she
was not, from a material point of view, by any means what he had a right
to claim. Besides, she was a widow, and he would have preferred that not
to be the case.

'Prime Ministers and things walking about like flies!' sighed Trix,
venting satisfaction in a pardonable exaggeration. It was true,
however, that Lord Farringham had looked in for half an hour, talked to
Mrs. Bonfill for ten minutes, and made a tour round, displaying a lofty
cordiality which admirably concealed his desire to be elsewhere.

'You'll soon get used to it all,' Mervyn assured her with a rather
superior air. 'It's a bore, but it has to be done. The social side can't
be neglected, you see.'

'If I neglected anything, it would be the other, I think.'

He smiled tolerantly and quite believed her. Trix was most
butterfly-like to-night; there was no hardness in her laugh, not a hint
of grimness in her smile. 'You would never think,' Mrs. Bonfill used to
whisper, 'what the poor child has been through.'

Beaufort Chance passed by, casting a scowling glance at them.

'I haven't seen you dancing with Chance--or perhaps you sat out? He's
not much of a performer.'

'I gave him a dance, but I forgot.'

'Which dance, Mrs. Trevalla?' Her glance had prompted the question.

'Ours,' said Trix. 'You came so late--I had none left.'

'I very seldom dance, but you tempted me.' He was not underrating his
compliment. For a moment Trix was sorely inclined to snub him; but
policy forbade. When he left her, to seek Lady Blixworth, she felt
rather relieved.

Beaufort Chance had watched his opportunity, and came by again with an
accidental air. She called to him and was all graciousness and
apologies; she had every wish to keep the second string in working
order. Beaufort had not sat there ten minutes before he was in his haste
accusing Lady Blixworth of false insinuations--unless, indeed, Trix were
an innocent instrument in Mrs. Bonfill's hands. Trix was looking the
part very well.

'I wish you'd do me a great kindness,' he said presently. 'Come to
dinner some day.'

'Oh, that's a very tolerable form of benevolence. Of course I will.'

'Wait a bit. I mean--to meet the Frickers.'

'Oh!' Meeting the Frickers seemed hardly an inducement.

But Beaufort Chance explained. On the one side Fricker was a very useful
man to stand well with; he could put you into things--and take you out
at the right time. Trix nodded sagely, though she knew nothing about
such matters. On the other hand--Beaufort grew both diplomatic and
confidential in manner--Fricker had little ambition outside his
business, but Mrs. and Miss Fricker had enough and to spare--ambitions
social for themselves, and, subsidiary thereunto, political for Fricker.

'Viola Blixworth has frightened Mrs. Bonfill,' he complained. 'Lady
Glentorly talks about drawing the line, and all the rest of them are
just as bad. Now if you'd come----'

'Me? What good should I do? The Frickers won't care about me.'

'Oh, yes, they will!' He did not lack adroitness in baiting the hook for
her. 'They know you can do anything with Mrs. Bonfill; they know you're
going to be very much in it. You won't be afraid of Viola Blixworth in a
month or two! I shall please Fricker--you'll please the women. Now do
come.'

Trix's vanity was flattered. Was she already a woman of influence?
Beaufort Chance had the other lure ready too.

'And I daresay you don't mind hearing of a good thing if it comes in
your way?' he suggested carelessly. 'People with money to spare find
Fricker worth knowing, and he's absolutely square.'

'Do you mean he'd make money for me?' asked Trix, trying to keep any
note of eagerness out of her voice.

'He'd show you how to make it for yourself, anyhow.'

Trix sat in meditative silence for a few moments. Presently she turned
to him with a bright friendly smile.

'Oh, never mind all that! I'll come for your sake--to please you,' she
said.

Beaufort Chance was not quite sure that he believed her this time, but
he looked as if he did--which serves just as well in social relations.
He named a day, and Trix gaily accepted the appointment. There were few
adventures, not many new things, that she was not ready for just now.
The love of the world had laid hold of her.

And here at Mrs. Bonfill's she seemed to be in the world up to her eyes.
People had come on from big parties as the evening waned, and the last
hour dotted the ball-room with celebrities. Politicians in crowds,
leaders of fashion, an actress or two, an Indian prince, a great
explorer--they made groups which seemed to express the many-sidedness of
London, to be the thousand tributaries that swell the great stream of
its society. There was a little unusual stir to-night. A foreign
complication had arisen, or was supposed to have arisen. People were
asking what the Tsar was going to do; and, when one considers the
reputation for secrecy enjoyed by Russian diplomacy, quite a surprising
number of them seemed to know, and told one another with an authority
only matched by the discrepancy between their versions. When they saw a
man who possibly might know--Lord Glentorly--they crowded round him
eagerly, regardless of the implied aspersion on their own knowledge.
Glentorly had been sitting in a corner with Mrs. Bonfill, and she shared
in his glory, perhaps in his private knowledge. But both Glentorly and
Mrs. Bonfill professed to know no more than there was in the papers, and
insinuated that they did not believe that. Everybody at once declared
that they had never believed that, and had said so at dinner, and the
very wise added that it was evidently inspired by the Stock Exchange. A
remark to this effect had just fallen on Trix's ears when a second
observation from behind reached her.

'Not one of them knows a thing about it,' said a calm, cool, youthful
voice.

'I can't think why they want to,' came as an answer in rich pleasant
tones.

Trix glanced round and saw a smart, trim young man, and by his side a
girl with beautiful hair. She had only a glimpse of them, for in an
instant they disentangled themselves from the gossipers and joined the
few couples who were keeping it up to the last dance.

It will be seen that Beaufort Chance had not given up the game; Lady
Blixworth's pin-pricks had done the work which they were probably
intended to do: they had incited him to defy Mrs. Bonfill, to try to win
off his own bat. She might discard him in favour of Mervyn, but he would
fight for himself. The dinner to which he bade Trix would at once assert
and favour intimacy; if he could put her under an obligation it would be
all to the good; flattering her vanity was already a valuable expedient.
That stupidity of his, which struck Viola Blixworth with such a sense of
its density, lay not in misunderstanding or misvaluing the common
motives of humanity, but in considering that all humanity was common: he
did not allow for the shades, the variations, the degrees. Nor did he
appreciate in the least the mood that governed or the temper that swayed
Trix Trevalla. He thought that she preferred him as a man, Mervyn as a
match. Both of them were, in fact, at this time no more than figures in
the great _ballet_ at which she now looked on, in which she meant soon
to mix.

Mrs. Bonfill caught Trix as she went to her carriage--that smart
brougham was in waiting--and patted her cheek _more materno_.

'I saw you were enjoying yourself, child,' she said. 'What was all that
Beaufort had to say to you?'

'Oh, just nonsense,' answered Trix lightly.

Mrs. Bonfill smiled amiably.

'He's not considered to talk nonsense generally,' she said; 'but perhaps
there was someone you wanted to talk to more! You won't say anything, I
see, but--Mortimer stayed late! He's coming to luncheon to-morrow. Won't
you come too?'

'I shall be delighted,' said Trix. Her eyes were sparkling. She had
possessed wit enough to see the vacillation of Mrs. Bonfill. Did this
mean that it was ended? The invitation to lunch looked like it. Mrs.
Bonfill believed in lunch for such purposes. In view of the invitation
to lunch, Trix said nothing about the invitation to dinner.

As she was driven from Grosvenor Square to the flat by the river, she
was marvellously content--enjoying still, not thinking, wondering, not
feeling, making in her soul material and sport of others, herself
seeming not subject to design or accident. The change was great to her;
the ordinary mood of youth that has known only good fortune seemed to
her the most wonderful of transformations, almost incredible. She
exulted in it and gloated over the brightness of her days. What of
others? Well, what of the players in the pantomime? Do they not play for
us? What more do we ask of or about them? Trix was not in the least
inclined to be busy with more fortunes than her own. For this was the
thing--this was what she had desired.

How had she come to desire it so urgently and to take it with such
recklessness? The words of the shabby man on the boulevards came back to
her. 'Life has played with you; go and play with it. You may scorch your
fingers; for the fire burns. But it's better to die of heat than of
cold.'

'Yes, better of heat than of cold,' laughed Trix Trevalla triumphantly,
and she added, 'If there's anything wrong, why, he's responsible!' She
was amused both at the idea of anything being wrong and at the notion of
holding the quiet shabby man responsible. There could be no link between
his life and the world she had lived in that night. Yet, if he held
these views about the way to treat life, why did he not live? He had
said he hardly lived, he only worked. Trix was in an amused puzzle about
the shabby man as she got into bed; he actually put the party and its
great _ballet_ out of her head.




CHAPTER III

IN DANES INN


Some men maintained that it was not the quantity, nor the quality, nor
the colour of Peggy Ryle's hair that did the mischief, but simply and
solely the way it grew. Perhaps (for the opinion of men in such matters
is eminently and consciously fallible) it did not grow that way at all,
but was arranged. The result to the eye was the same, a peculiar harmony
between the waves of the hair, the turn of the neck, and the set of the
head. So notable and individual a thing was this agreement that Arthur
Kane and Miles Childwick, poet and critic, were substantially at one
about it. Kane described it as 'the artistry of accident,' Childwick
lauded its 'meditated spontaneity.' Neither gentleman was ill-pleased
with his phrase, and each professed a polite admiration of the other's
effort--these civilities are necessary in literary circles. Other young
men painted or drew the hair, and the neck, and the head, till Peggy
complained that her other features were neglected most disdainfully.
Other young men again, not endowed with the gift of expression by tongue
or by hand, contented themselves with swelling Peggy's court. She did
not mind how much they swelled it. She had a fine versatility, and could
be flirted with in rhyme, in polished periods, in modern slang, or in
the deaf-and-dumb alphabet; the heart is, of course, the thing in such a
matter, various forms of expression no more than its interpreters.
Meanwhile Peggy learnt men and their manners, caused a good deal of
picturesque misery--published and unpublished--and immensely increased
the amenity of life wherever she went. And she went everywhere, when
she could pay a cab fare and contrive a frock, or borrow one or both of
these commodities. (Elfreda Flood, for instance, often had a frock.) She
generally returned the cab fare, and you could usually regain the frock
by personal exertions; it was not considered the correct thing to ask
her directly for either. She had an income of forty pounds a year, and
professed to be about to learn to paint in real earnest. There was also
an uncle in Berlin who sent cheques at rare and irregular intervals.
When a cheque came, Peggy gave a dinner-party; when there had been no
cheque for a long while, Peggy accepted a dinner. That was all the
difference it made. And anyhow there was always bread-and-butter to be
had at Airey Newton's. Airey appeared not to dine, but there was tea and
there was bread-and-butter--a thing worth knowing now and then to Peggy
Ryle.

She had been acquainted with Airey Newton for two years--almost since
her first coming to London. Theirs was a real and intimate friendship,
and her figure was familiar to the dingy house whose soft-stone front
had crumbled into a premature old age. Airey was on the third floor,
front and back; two very large windows adorned his sitting-room--it was
necessary to give all encouragement and opportunity to any light that
found its way into the gloomy _cul-de-sac_. Many an afternoon Peggy sat
by one of these windows in a dilapidated wicker arm-chair, watching the
typewriting clerk visible through the corresponding big window opposite.
Sometimes Airey talked, oftener he went on with his work as though she
were not there; she liked this inattention as a change. But she was a
little puzzled over that work of his. He had told her that he was an
inventor. So far she was content, and when she saw him busy with models
or working out sums she concluded that he was at his trade. It did not
appear to be a good trade, for he was shabby, the room was shabbier, and
(as has been mentioned) he did not, so far as her observation went,
dine. But probably it kept him happy; she had always pictured inventors
as blissful although poverty-stricken persons. The work-table then, a
big deal one which blocked the other window, was intelligible enough.
The mystery lay in the small table on the right hand of the fireplace;
under it stood a Chubb's safe, and on it reposed a large book covered in
red leather and fastened with a padlock. She had never seen either book
or safe open, and when she had asked what was in them, Airey told her a
little story about a Spartan who was carrying something under his
cloak--a mode of retort which rather annoyed her. So she inquired no
more. But she was sure that the locks were unfastened when she was gone.
What was there? Was he writing a great book? Or did he own ancestral
plate? Or precious--and perhaps scandalous--documents? Something
precious there must be; the handsomeness of the book, the high polish by
which the metal of the safe shamed the surrounding dustiness, stood out
sure signs and proofs of that.

Peggy had just bought a new frock--and paid for it under some
pressure--and a cheque had not come for ever so long; so she ate
bread-and-butter steadily and happily, interrupting herself only to pour
out more tea. At last Airey pushed away his papers and models, saying,
'That's done, thank heaven!' and got up to light his pipe. Peggy poured
out a cup of tea for him, and he came across the room for it. He looked
much as when he had met Trix Trevalla in Paris, but his hair was shorter
and his beard trimmed close and cut to a point; these improvements were
due to Peggy's reiterated entreaties.

'Well?' he asked, standing before her, his eyes twinkling kindly.

'Times are hard, but the heart is light, Airey. I've been immortalised
in a sonnet----'

'Dissected in an essay too?' he suggested with ironical admiration.

'I don't recognise myself there. And I've had an offer----'

'Another?'

'Not that sort--an offer of a riding-horse. But I haven't got a habit.'

'Nor a stable perhaps?'

'No, nor a stable. I didn't think of that. And you, Airey?'

'Barring the horse, and the sonnet, and the essay, I'm much as you are,
Peggy.'

She threw her head back a little and looked at him; her tone, while
curious, was also slightly compassionate.

'I suppose you get some money for your things sometimes?' she asked. 'I
mean, when you invent a--a--well, say a corkscrew, they give you
something?'

'Of course. I make my living that way. He smiled faintly at the
involuntary glance from Peggy's eyes that played round the room.
'Yesterday's again!' he exclaimed suddenly, taking up the loaf. 'I told
Mrs. Stryver I wouldn't have a yesterday's!' His tone was indignant; he
seemed anxious to vindicate himself.

'It won't be to-morrow's, anyhow,' laughed Peggy, regarding the
remaining and much diminished fragment in his hand. 'It wasn't badly
stale.'

Airey took his pipe out of his mouth and spoke with the abruptness of a
man who has just made up his mind to speak.

'Do you know a Mrs. Trevalla?' he asked.

'Oh, yes; by sight very well.'

'How does she strike you?'

'Well--certainly pretty; probably clever; perhaps---- Is she a friend of
yours?'

'I've known about her a long while and met her once.'

'Once! Well, then, perhaps unscrupulous.'

'Why do you think she's unscrupulous?'

'Why do you ask me about her?' retorted Peggy.

'She's written to me, proposing to come and see me.'

'Have you asked her? I can't have you having a lot of visitors, you
know. I come here for quiet.'

Airey looked a little embarrassed. 'Well, I did give her a sort of
general invitation,' he murmured, fingering his beard. 'That is, I told
her to come if--if she was in any difficulty.' He turned an appealing
glance towards Peggy's amused face. 'Have you heard of her being in any
difficulty?'

'No; but I should think it's not at all unlikely.'

'Why?'

'Have you ever had two people in love with you at the same time?'

'Never, on my honour,' said Airey with obvious sincerity.

'If you had, and if you were as pleasant as you could be to both of
them, and kept them going by turns, and got all you could out of both of
them, and kept on like that for about two months----'

'Oh, that's how the land lies, is it?'

'Don't you think it possible you might be in a difficulty some day?'

'But, good heavens, that's not the sort of thing to bring to me!'

'Apparently Mrs. Trevalla thinks differently,' laughed Peggy. 'At least
I can't think of any other difficulty she's likely to be in.'

Airey was obviously disturbed and displeased.

'If what you say is true,' he observed, 'she can't be a good sort of
woman.'

'I suppose not.' Peggy's admission sounded rather reluctant.

'Who are the two men?'

'Lord Mervyn and Beaufort Chance.'

'M.P.'s, aren't they?'

'Among other things, Airey. Well, you can't tell her not to come, can
you? After that sort of general invitation, you know.' Peggy's tone was
satirical; she had rather strong views as to the way in which men made
fools of themselves over women--or sometimes said she had.

'I was an old friend of her husband's.'

'Oh, you've nothing to apologise for. When does she want to come?'

'To-morrow. I say, oughtn't I to offer to go and call on her?'

'She'd think that very dull in comparison,' Peggy assured him. 'Let her
come and sob out her trouble here.'

'You appear to be taking the matter in a flippant spirit, Peggy.'

'I don't think I'm going to be particularly sorry if Mrs. Trevalla is in
a bit of a scrape.'

'You young women are so moral.'

'I don't care,' said Peggy defiantly.

'Women have an extraordinary gift for disliking one another on sight,'
mused Airey in an injured voice.

'You seem to have liked Mrs. Trevalla a good deal on sight.'

'She looked so sad, so solitary, a mere girl in her widow's weeds.' His
tone grew compassionate, almost tender, as he recalled the forlorn
figure which had timidly stolen into the dining-room of the Paris hotel.

'You'll find her a little bit changed perhaps,' Peggy suggested with a
suppressed malice that found pleasure in anticipating his feelings.

'Oh, well, she must come anyhow, I suppose.'

'Yes, let her come, Airey. It does these people good to see how the poor
live.'

Airey laughed, but not very heartily. However, it was well understood
that everybody in their circle was very poor, and Peggy felt no qualms
about referring to the fact.

'I shall come the next day and hear all about the interview. Fancy these
interesting things happening to you! Because, you know, she's rather
famous. Mrs. Bonfill has taken her up, and the Glentorlys are devoted to
her, and Lady Blixworth has said some of her best things about her.
She'll bring you into touch with fashion.'

'Hang fashion!' said Airey. 'I wonder what her difficulty is.' He seemed
quite preoccupied with the idea of Mrs. Trevalla's difficulty.

'I see you're going to be very romantic indeed,' laughed Peggy Ryle.

His eyes dwelt on her for a moment, and a very friendly expression
filled them.

'Don't you get into any difficulties?' he said.

'There's never but one with me,' she laughed; 'and that doesn't hurt,
Airey.'

There was a loud and cheerful knock on the door.

'Visitors! When people come, how do you account for me?'

'I say nothing. I believe you're taken for my daughter.'

'Not since you trimmed your beard! Well, it doesn't matter, does it? Let
him in.'

The visitor proved to be nobody to whom Peggy needed to be accounted
for; he was Tommy Trent, the smart, trim young man who had danced with
her at Mrs. Bonfill's party.

'You here again!' he exclaimed in tones of grave censure, as he laid
down his hat on the top of the red-leather book on the little table. He
blew on the book first, to make sure it was not dusty.

Peggy smiled, and Airey relit his pipe. Tommy walked across and looked
at the _débris_ of the loaf. He shook his head when Peggy offered him
tea.

A sudden idea seemed to occur to him.

'I'm awfully glad to find you here,' he remarked to her. 'It saves me
going up to your place, as I meant. I've got some people dining
to-night, and one of them's failed. I wonder if you'd come? I know it's
a bore coming again so soon, but----'

'I haven't been since Saturday.'

'But it would get me out of a hole.' He spoke in humble entreaty.

'I'd come directly, but I'm engaged.'

Tommy looked at her sorrowfully, and, it must be added, sceptically.

'Engaged to dinner and supper,' averred Peggy with emphasis as she
pulled her hat straight and put on her gloves.

'You wouldn't even look in between the two and--and have an ice with
us?'

'I really can't eat three meals in one evening, Tommy.'

'Oh, chuck one of them. You might, for once!'

'Impossible! I'm dining with my oldest friend,' smiled Peggy. 'I simply
can't.' She turned to Airey, giving him her hand with a laugh. 'I like
you best, because you just let me----'

Both words and laughter died away; she stopped abruptly, looking from
one man to the other. There was something in their faces that arrested
her words and her merriment. She could not analyse what it was, but she
saw that she had made both of them uncomfortable. They had guessed what
she was going to say; it would have been painful to one of them, and the
other knew it. But whom had she wounded--Tommy by implying that his
hospitality was importunate and his kindness clumsy, or Airey by a
renewed reference to his poverty as shown in the absence of pressing
invitations from him? She could not tell; but a constraint had fallen on
them both. She cut her farewell short and went away, vaguely vexed and
penitent for an offence which she perceived but did not understand.

The two men stood listening a moment to her light footfall on the
stairs.

'It's all a lie, you know,' said Tommy. 'She isn't engaged to dinner or
to supper either. It's beastly, that's what it is.'

'Yours was all a lie too, I suppose?' Airey spoke in a dull hard voice.

'Of course it was, but I could have beaten somebody up in time, or said
they'd caught influenza, or been given a box at the opera, or
something.'

Airey sat down by the fireplace, his chin sunk on his necktie. He seemed
unhappy and rather ashamed. Tommy glanced at him with a puzzled look,
shook his head, and then broke into a smile--as though, in the end, the
only thing for it was to be amused. Then he drew a long envelope from
his pocket.

'I've brought the certificates along,' he said. 'Here they are. Two
thousand. Just look at them. It's a good thing; and if you sit on it for
a bit, it'll pay for keeping.' He laid the envelope on the small table
by Airey's side, took up his hat, put it on, and lit a cigarette as he
repeated, 'Just see they're all right, old chap.'

'They're sure to be right.' Airey shifted uncomfortably in his chair and
pulled at his empty pipe.

Tommy tilted his hat far back on his head, turned a chair back foremost,
and sat down on it, facing his friend.

'I'm your business man,' he remarked. 'I do your business and I hold my
tongue about it. Don't I?'

'Like the tomb,' Airey acknowledged.

'And---- Well, at any rate let me congratulate you on the
bread-and-butter. Only--only, I say, she'd have dined with you, if you'd
asked her, Airey.'

His usually composed and unemotional voice shook for an almost
imperceptible moment.

'I know,' said Airey Newton. He rose, unlocked the safe, and threw the
long envelope in. Then he unlocked the red-leather book, took a pen,
made a careful entry in it, re-locked it, and returned to his chair. He
said nothing more, but he glanced once at Tommy Trent in a timid way.
Tommy smiled back in recovered placidity. Then they began to talk of
inventions, patents, processes, companies, stocks, shares, and all
manner of things that produce or have to do with money.

'So far, so good,' ended Tommy. 'And if the oxygen process proves
commercially practicable--it's all right in theory, I know--I fancy you
may look for something big.' He threw away his cigarette and stood up,
as if to go. But he lingered a moment, and a touch of embarrassment
affected his manner. Airey had quite recovered his confidence and
happiness during the talk on money matters.

'She didn't tell you any news, I suppose?' Tommy asked.

'What, Peggy? No, I don't think so. Well, nothing about herself,
anyhow.'

'It's uncommonly wearing for me,' Tommy complained with a pathetic look
on his clear-cut healthy countenance. 'I know I must play a waiting
game; if I said anything to her now I shouldn't have a chance. So I have
to stand by and see the other fellows make the running. By Jove, I lie
awake at nights--some nights, anyhow--imagining infernally handsome
poets---- Old Arty Kane isn't handsome, though! I say, Airey, don't you
think she's got too much sense to marry a poet? You told me I must touch
her imagination. Do I look like touching anybody's imagination? I'm
about as likely to do it as--as you are.' His attitude towards the
suggested achievement wavered between envy and scorn.

Airey endured this outburst--and its concluding insinuation--with
unruffled patience. He was at his pipe again, and puffed out wisdom
securely vague.

'You can't tell with a girl. It takes them all at once sometimes. Up to
now I think it's all right.'

'Not Arty Kane?'

'Lord, no!'

'Nor Childwick? He's a clever chap, Childwick. Not got a _sou_, of
course; she'd starve just the same.'

'She'd have done it before if it had been going to be Miles Childwick.'

'She'll meet some devilish fascinating chap some day, I know she will.'

'He'll ill-use her perhaps,' Airey suggested hopefully.

'Then I shall nip in, you mean? Have you been treating yourself to Drury
Lane?'

Airey laughed openly, and presently Tommy himself joined in, though in a
rather rueful fashion.

'Why the deuce can't we just like 'em?' he asked.

'That would be all right on the pessimistic theory of the world.'

'Oh, hang the world! Well, good-bye, old chap. I'm glad you approve of
what I've done about the business.'

His reference to the business seemed to renew Airey Newton's discomfort.
He looked at his friend, and after a long pause said solemnly:

'Tommy Trent!'

'Yes, Airey Newton!'

'Would you mind telling me--man to man--how you contrive to be my
friend?'

'What?'

'You're the only man who knows--and you're my only real friend.'

'I regard it as just like drinking,' Tommy explained, after a minute's
thought. 'You're the deuce of a good fellow in every other way. I hope
you'll be cured some day too. I may live to see you bankrupt yet.'

'I work for it. I work hard and usefully.'

'And even brilliantly,' added Tommy.

'It's mine. I haven't robbed anybody. And nobody has any claim on me.'

'I didn't introduce this discussion.' Tommy was evidently pained. He
held out his hand to take leave.

'It's an extraordinary thing, but there it is,' mused Airey. He took
Tommy's hand and said, 'On my honour I'll ask her to dinner.'

'Where?' inquired Tommy, in a suspicious tone.

Airey hesitated.

'Magnifique?' said Tommy firmly and relentlessly.

'Yes, the--the Magnifique,' agreed Airey, after another pause.

'Delighted, old man!' He waited a moment longer, but Airey Newton did
not fix a date.

Airey was left sorrowful, for he loved Tommy Trent. Though Tommy knew
his secret, still he loved him--a fact that may go to the credit of both
men. Many a man in Airey's place would have hated Tommy, even while he
used and relied on him; for Tommy's knowledge put Airey to shame--a
shame he could not stifle any more than he could master the thing that
gave it birth.

Certainly Tommy deserved not to be hated, for he was very loyal. He
showed that only two days later, and at a cost to himself. He was dining
with Peggy Ryle--not she with him; for a cheque had arrived, and they
celebrated its coming. Tommy, in noble spirits (the coming of a cheque
was as great an event to him as to Peggy herself), told her how he had
elicited the offer of a dinner from Airey Newton; he chuckled in pride
over it.

How men misjudge things! Peggy sat up straight in her chair and flushed
up to the outward curve of her hair.

'How dare you?' she cried. 'As if he hadn't done enough for me already!
I must have eaten pounds of butter--of mere butter alone! You know he
can't afford to give dinners.'

Besides anger, there was a hint of pride in her emphasis on 'dinners.'

'I believe he can,' said Tommy, with the air of offering a hardy
conjecture.

'I know he can't, or of course he would. Do you intend to tell me that
Airey--Airey of all men--is mean?'

'Oh, no, I--I don't say----'

'It's you that's mean! I never knew you do such a thing before. You've
quite spoilt my pleasure this evening.' She looked at him sternly. 'I
don't like you at all to-night. I'm very grievously disappointed in
you.'

Temptation raged in Tommy Trent; he held it down manfully.

'Well, I don't suppose he'll give the dinner, anyhow,' he remarked
morosely.

'No, because he can't; but you'll have made him feel miserable about it.
What time is it? I think I shall go home.'

'Look here, Peggy; you aren't doing me justice.'

'Well, what have you got to say?'

Tommy, smoking for a moment or two, looked across at her and answered,
'Nothing.'

She rose and handed him her purse.

'Pay the bill, please, and mind you give the waiter half-a-crown. And
ask him to call me a cab, please.'

'It's only half a mile, and it's quite fine.'

'A rubber-tired hansom, please, with a good horse.'

Tommy put her into the cab and looked as if he would like to get in too.
The cabman, generalising from observed cases, held the reins out of the
way, that Tommy's tall hat might mount in safety.

'Tell him where to go, please. Good-night,' said Peggy.

Tommy was left on the pavement. He walked slowly along to his club, too
upset to think of having a cigar.

'Very well,' he remarked, as he reached his destination. 'I played fair,
but old Airey shall give that dinner--I'm hanged if he sha'n't!--and do
it as if he liked it too!'

A vicious chuckle surprised the hall-porter as Tommy passed within the
precincts.

Peggy drove home, determined to speak plainly to Airey himself; that was
the only way to put it right.

'He shall know that I do him justice, anyhow,' said she. Thanks to the
cheque, she was feeling as the rich feel, or should feel, towards those
who have helped them in early days of struggle; she experienced a
generous glow and meditated delicate benevolence. At least the
bread-and-butter must be recouped an hundredfold.

So great is the virtue of twenty pounds, if only they happen to be sent
to the right address. Most money, however, seems to go astray.




CHAPTER IV

'FROM THE MIDST OF THE WHIRL'


'Really I must congratulate you on your latest, Sarah,' remarked Lady
Blixworth, who was taking tea with Mrs. Bonfill. 'Trix Trevalla is
carrying everything before her. The Glentorlys have had her to meet Lord
Farringham, and he was delighted. The men adore her, and they do say
women like her. All done in six weeks! You're a genius!'

Mrs. Bonfill made a deprecatory gesture of a _Non nobis_ order. Her
friend insisted amiably:

'Oh, yes, you are. You choose so well. You never make a mistake. Now do
tell me what's going to happen. Does Mortimer Mervyn mean it? Of course
she wouldn't hesitate.'

Mrs. Bonfill looked at her volatile friend with a good-humoured
distrust.

'When you congratulate me, Viola,' she said, 'I generally expect to hear
that something has gone wrong.'

'Oh, you believe what you're told about me,' the accused lady murmured
plaintively.

'It's experience,' persisted Mrs. Bonfill. 'Have you anything that you
think I sha'n't like to tell me about Trix Trevalla?'

'I don't suppose you'll dislike it, but I should. Need she drive in the
park with Mrs. Fricker?' Her smile contradicted the regret of her tone,
as she spread her hands out in affected surprise and appeal.

'Mrs. Fricker's a very decent sort of woman, Viola. You have a prejudice
against her.'

'Yes, thank heaven! We all want money nowadays, but for my part I'd
starve sooner than get it from the Frickers.'

'Oh, that's what you want me to believe?'

'Dearest Sarah, no! That's what I'm afraid her enemies and yours will
say.'

'I see,' smiled Mrs. Bonfill indulgently. She always acknowledged that
Viola was neat--as a siege-gun might admit it of the field artillery.

'Couldn't you give her a hint? The gossip about Beaufort Chance doesn't
so much matter, but----' Lady Blixworth looked as if she expected to be
interrupted, even pausing an instant to allow the opportunity. Mrs.
Bonfill obliged her.

'There's gossip about Beaufort, is there?'

'Oh, there is, of course--that can't be denied; but it really doesn't
matter as long as Mortimer doesn't hear about it.'

'Was there never more than one aspirant at a time when you were young?'

'As long as you're content, I am,' Lady Blixworth declared in an injured
manner. 'It's not my business what Mrs. Trevalla does.'

'Don't be huffy,' was Mrs. Bonfill's maternal advice. 'As far as I can
see, everything is going splendidly.'

'It is to be Mortimer?'

'How can I tell, my dear? If Mortimer Mervyn should ask my advice, which
really isn't likely, what could I say except that Trix is a charming
woman, and that I know of nothing against it?'

'She must be very well off, by the way she does things.' There was an
inflection of question in her voice, but no direct interrogatory.

'Doubtless,' said Mrs. Bonfill. Often the craftiest suggestions failed
in face of her broad imperturbability.

Lady Blixworth smiled at her. Mrs. Bonfill shook her head in benign
rebuke. The two understood one another, and on the whole liked one
another very well.

'All right, Sarah,' said Lady Blixworth; 'but if you want my opinion,
it is that she's out-running the constable, unless----'

'Well, go on.'

'You give me leave? You won't order me out? Well, unless---- Well, as I
said, why drive Mrs. Fricker round the Park? Why take Connie Fricker to
the Quinby-Lees's dance?'

'Oh, everybody goes to the Quinby-Lees's. She's never offered to bring
them here or anywhere that matters.'

'You know the difference; perhaps the Frickers don't.'

'That's downright malicious, Viola. And of course they do; at least they
live to find it out. No, you can't put me out of conceit with Trix
Trevalla.'

'You're so loyal,' murmured Lady Blixworth in admiration. 'Really
Sarah's as blind as a bat sometimes,' she reflected as she got into her
carriage.

A world of people at once inquisitive and clear-sighted would render
necessary either moral perfection or reckless defiance; indifference and
obtuseness preserve a place for that mediocrity of conduct which
characterises the majority. Society at large had hitherto found small
fault with Trix Trevalla, and what it said, when passed through Lady
Blixworth's resourceful intellect, gained greatly both in volume and in
point. No doubt she had very many gowns, no doubt she spent money,
certainly she flirted, possibly she was, for so young and pretty a
woman, a trifle indiscreet. But she gave the impression of being able to
take care of herself, and her attractions, combined with Mrs. Bonfill's
unwavering patronage, would have sufficed to excuse more errors than she
had been found guilty of. It was actually true that, while men admired,
women liked her. There was hardly a discordant voice to break in harshly
on her triumph.

There is no place like the top--especially when it is narrow, and will
not hold many at a time. The natives of it have their peculiar joy,
those who have painfully climbed theirs. Trix Trevalla seemed, to
herself at least, very near the top; if she were not quite on it, she
could put her head up over the last ledge and see it, and feel that with
one more hoist she would be able to land herself there. It is
unnecessary to recite the houses she went to, and would be (save for the
utter lack of authority such a list would have) invidious; it would be
tiresome to retail compliments and conquests. But the smallest, choicest
gatherings began to know her, and houses which were not fashionable but
something much beyond--eternal pillars supporting London
society--welcomed her. This was no success of curiosity, of whim, of a
season; it was the establishment of a position for life. From the purely
social point of view, even a match with Mervyn could do little more. So
Trix was tempted to declare in her pride.

But the case had other aspects, of course. It was all something of a
struggle, however victorious; it may be supposed that generally it is.
Security is hard to believe in, and there is always a craving to make
the strong position impregnable. Life alone at twenty-six is--lonely.
These things were in her mind, as they might have been in the thoughts
of any woman so placed. There was another consideration, more special to
herself, which could not be excluded from view: she had begun to realise
what her manner of life cost. Behold her sitting before books and bills
that revealed the truth beyond possibility of error or of gloss! Lady
Blixworth's instinct had not been at fault. Trix's mouth grew rather
hard again, and her eyes coldly resolute, as she studied these
disagreeable documents.

From such studies she had arisen to go to dinner with Beaufort Chance
and to meet the Frickers. She sat next Fricker, and talked to him most
of the time, while Beaufort was very attentive to Mrs. Fricker, and the
young man who had been procured for Connie Fricker fulfilled his
appointed function. Fricker was not a bad-looking man, and was better
bred and less aggressive than his wife or daughter. Trix found him not
so disagreeable as she had expected; she encouraged him to talk on his
own subjects, and began to find him interesting; by the end of dinner
she had discovered that he, or at least his conversation, was
engrossing. The old theme of making money without working for it, by
gaming or betting, by chance or speculation, by black magic or white, is
ever attractive to the children of men. Fricker could talk very well
about it; he produced the impression that it was exceedingly easy to be
rich; it seemed to be anybody's own fault if he were poor. Only at the
end did he throw in any qualification of this broad position.

'Of course you must know the ropes, or find somebody who does.'

'There's the rub, Mr. Fricker. Don't people who know them generally keep
their knowledge to themselves?'

'They've a bit to spare for their friends sometimes.' His smile was
quietly reflective.

Beaufort Chance had hinted that some such benevolent sentiments might be
found to animate Mr. Fricker. He had even used the idea as a bait to
lure Trix to the dinner. Do what she would, she could not help giving
Fricker a glance, half-grateful, half-provocative. Vanity--new-born of
her great triumph--made her feel that her presence there was really a
thing to be repaid. Her study of those documents tempted her to listen
when the suggestion of repayment came. In the drawing-room Trix found
herself inviting Mrs. Fricker to call. Youthful experiences made Trix
socially tolerant in one direction if she were socially ambitious in
another. She had none of Lady Blixworth's shudders, and was ready to be
nice to Mrs. Fricker. Still her laugh was conscious, and she blushed a
little when Beaufort Chance thanked her for making herself so pleasant.

All through the month there were renewed and continual rumours of what
the Tsar meant to do. A speech by Lord Farringham might seem to dispose
of them, but there were people who did not trust Lord Farringham--who,
in fact, knew better. There were telegrams from abroad, there were
mysterious paragraphs claiming an authority too high to be disclosed to
the vulgar, there were leaders asking whether it were actually the fact
that nothing was going to be done; there was an agitation about the
Navy, another final exposure of the methods of the War Office, and
philosophic attacks on the system of party government. Churchmen began
to say that they were also patriots, and dons to remind the country that
they were citizens. And--in the end--what did the Tsar mean to do? That
Potentate gave no sign. What of that? Had not generals uttered speeches
and worked out professional problems? Lord Glentorly ordered extensive
manoeuvres, and bade the country rely on him. The country seemed a
little doubtful; or, anyhow, the Press told it that it was. 'The
atmosphere is electric,' declared Mr. Liffey in an article in 'The
Sentinel': thousands read it in railway carriages and looked grave; they
had not seen Mr. Liffey's smile.

Things were in this condition, and the broadsheets blazing in big
letters, when one afternoon a hansom whisked along Wych Street and set
down a lady in a very neat grey frock at the entrance of Danes Inn. Trix
trod the pavement of that secluded spot and ascended the stairs of 6A
with an amusement and excitement far different from Peggy Ryle's
matter-of-fact familiarity. She had known lodging-houses; they were as
dirty as this, but there the likeness ended. They had been new, flimsy,
confined; this looked old, was very solid and relatively spacious; they
had been noisy, it was very quiet; they had swarmed with children, here
were none; the whole place seemed to her quasi-monastic; she blushed for
herself as she passed through. Her knock on Airey Newton's door was
timid.

Airey's amazement at the sight of her was unmistakable. He drew back
saying:

'Mrs. Trevalla! Is it really you?'

The picture he had in his mind was so different. Where was the forlorn
girl in the widow's weeds? This brilliant creature surely was not the
same!

But Trix laughed and chattered, insisting that she was herself.

'I couldn't wear mourning all my life, could I?' she asked. 'You didn't
mean me to, when we had our talk in Paris?'

'I'm not blaming, only wondering.' For a moment she almost robbed him of
speech; he busied himself with the tea (there was a cake to-day) while
she flitted about the room, not omitting to include Airey himself in her
rapid scrutiny. She marked the shortness of his hair, the trimness of
his beard, and approved Peggy's work, little thinking it was Peggy's.

'It's delightful to be here,' she exclaimed as she sat down to tea.

'I took your coming as a bad omen,' said Airey, smiling; 'but I hope
there's nothing very wrong?'

'I'm an impostor. Everything is just splendidly right, and I came to
tell you.'

'It was very kind.' He had not quite recovered from his surprise yet.

'I thought you had a right to know. I owe it all to your advice, you
see. You told me to come back to life. Well, I've come.'

She was alive enough, certainly; she breathed animation and seemed to
diffuse vitality; she was positively eager in her living.

'You told me to have my revenge, to play with life. Don't you remember?
Fancy your forgetting, when I've remembered so well! To die of heat
rather than of cold--surely you remember, Mr. Newton?'

'Every word, now you say it,' he nodded. 'And you're acting on that?'

'For all I'm worth,' laughed Trix.

He sat down opposite her, looking at her with a grave but still rather
bewildered attention.

'And it works well?' he asked after a pause, and, as it seemed, a
conscientious examination of her.

'Superb!' She could not resist adding, 'Haven't you heard anything about
me?'

'In here?' asked Airey, waving his arm round the room, and smiling.

'No, I suppose you wouldn't,' she laughed; 'but I'm rather famous, you
know. That's why I felt bound to come and tell you--to let you see what
great things you've done. Yes, it's quite true, you gave me the
impulse.' She set down her cup and leant back in her chair, smiling
brightly at him. 'Are you afraid of the responsibility?'

'Everything seems so prosperous,' said Airey. 'I forgot, but I have
heard one person speak of you. Do you know Peggy Ryle?'

'I know her by sight. Is she a friend of yours?'

'Yes, and she told me of some of your triumphs.'

'Oh, not half so well as I shall tell you myself!' Trix was evidently
little interested in Peggy Ryle. To Airey himself Peggy's doubts and
criticism seemed now rather absurd; this bright vision threw them into
the shade of neglect.

Trix launched out. It was the first chance she had enjoyed of telling to
somebody who belonged to the old life the wonderful things about the
new. Indeed who else of the old life was left? Graves, material or
metaphorical, covered all that had belonged to it. Mrs. Bonfill was
always kind, but with her there was not the delicious sense of the
contrast that must rise before the eyes of the listener. Airey gave her
that; he had heard of the lodging-houses, he knew about the four years
with Vesey Trevalla; it was evident he had not forgotten the forlornness
and the widow's weeds of Paris. He then could appreciate the change, the
great change, that still amazed and dazzled Trix herself. It was not in
ostentation, but in the pure joy of victory, that she flung great names
at him, would have him know that the highest of them were familiar to
her, and that the woman who now sat talking to him, friend to friend,
amidst the dinginess of Danes Inn, was a sought-after, valued, honoured
guest in all these houses. Peggy Ryle went to some of the houses also,
but she had never considered that talk about them would interest Airey
Newton. She might be right or wrong--Trix Trevalla was certainly right
in guessing that talk about herself in the houses would.

'You seem to be going it, Mrs. Trevalla,' he said at last, unconsciously
reaching out for his pipe.

'I am,' said Trix. 'Yes, do smoke. So will I.' She produced her
cigarette-case. 'Well, I've arrears to make up, haven't I?' She glanced
round. 'And you live here?' she asked.

'Always. I know nothing of all you've been talking about.'

'You wouldn't care about it, anyhow, would you?' Her tones were gentle
and consolatory. She accepted the fact that it was all impossible to
him, that the door was shut, and comforted him in his exclusion.

'I don't suppose I should, and at all events----' He shrugged his
shoulders. If her impression had needed confirmation, here it was. 'And
what's to be the end of it with you?' he asked.

'End? Why should there be an end? It's only just begun,' cried Trix.

'Well, there are ends that are beginnings of other things,' he
suggested. What Peggy had told him recurred to his mind, though
certainly there was no sign of Mrs. Trevalla being in trouble on that or
any other score.

Yet his words brought a shadow to Trix's face, a touch of irritation
into her manner.

'Oh, some day, I daresay,' she said. 'Yes, I suppose so. I'm not
thinking about that either just now. I'm just thinking about myself.
That's what you meant me to do?'

'It seems to me that my responsibility is growing, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'Yes, that's it; it is!' Trix was delighted with the whimsicality of the
idea. 'You're responsible for it all, though you sit quietly here and
nobody knows anything about you. I shall come and report myself from
time to time. I'm obedient up to now?'

'Well, I'm not quite sure. Did I tell you to----?'

'Yes, yes, to take my revenge, you know. Oh, you remember, and you can't
shirk it now.' She began to laugh at the half-humorous gravity of
Airey's face, as she insisted on his responsibility. This talk with him,
the sort of relations that she was establishing with him, promised to
give a new zest to her life, a pleasant diversion for her thoughts. He
would make a splendid onlooker, and she would select all the pleasant
things for him to see. Of course there was nothing really unpleasant,
but there were a few things that it would not interest him to hear.
There were things that even Mrs. Bonfill did not hear, although she
would have been able to understand them much better than he.

Trix found her host again looking at her with an amused and admiring
scrutiny. She was well prepared for it; the most select of parties had
elicited no greater care in the choice of her dress than this visit to
Danes Inn. Was not the contrast to be made as wonderful and striking as
possible?

'Shall I do you credit?' she asked in gay mockery.

'You're really rather marvellous,' laughed Airey. 'And I suppose you'll
come out all right.'

A hint of doubt crept into his voice. Trix glanced at him quickly.

'If I don't, you'll have to look after me,' she warned him.

He was grave now, not solemn, but, as it seemed, meditative.

'What if I think only of myself too?' he asked.

Trix laughed at the idea. 'There'd be no sort of excuse for you,' she
reminded him.

'I suppose not,' he admitted, rather ruefully.

'But I'm going to come out most splendidly all right, so we won't worry
about that.' As she spoke she had been putting on her gloves, and now
she rose from her chair. 'I must go; got an early dinner and a theatre.'
She looked round the room, and then back to Airey; her lips parted in an
appealing confidential smile that drew an answer from him, and made him
feel what her power was. 'Do you know, I don't want--I positively don't
want--to go, Mr. Newton.'

'The attractions are so numerous, so unrivalled?'

'It's so quiet, so peaceful, so out of it all.'

'That a recommendation to you?' He raised his brows.

'Well, it's all a bit of a rush and a fight, and--and so on. I love it
all, but just now and then'--she came to him and laid her hand lightly
on his arm--'just now and then may I come again?' she implored. 'I shall
like to think that I've got it to come to.'

'It's always here, Mrs. Trevalla, and, except for me, generally empty.'

'Generally?' Her mocking tone hid a real curiosity; but Airey's manner
was matter-of-fact.

'Oh, Peggy Ryle comes, and one or two of her friends, now and then. But
I could send them away. Any time's the same to them.'

'Miss Ryle comes? She's beautiful, I think; don't you?'

'Now am I a judge? Well, yes, I think Peggy's attractive.'

'Oh, you're all hypocrites! Well, you must think me attractive too, or I
won't come.'

It was a long while since Airey Newton had been flirted with. He
recognised the process, however, and did not object to it; it also
appeared to him that Trix did it very well.

'If you come, I shall think you most attractive.'

Trix relapsed into sincerity and heartiness. 'I've enjoyed coming
awfully,' she said. Airey found the sincerity no less attractive. 'I
shall think about you.'

'From the midst of the whirl?'

'Yes, from the midst of the whirl! Good-bye.'

She left behind her a twofold and puzzling impression. There was the
woman of the world, with airs and graces a trifle elaborate, perhaps, in
their prettiness, the woman steeped in society, engrossed with its
triumphs, fired with its ambitions. But there had been visible from time
to time, or had seemed to peep out, another woman, the one who had come
to see her friend, had felt the need of talking it all over with him, of
sharing it and getting sympathy in it, and who had in the end dropped
her graces and declared with a frank heartiness that she had enjoyed
coming 'awfully.' Airey Newton pulled his beard and smoked a pipe over
these two women, as he sat alone. With some regret he came to the
conclusion that as a permanent factor, as an influence in guiding and
shaping Trix Trevalla's life, the second woman would not have much
chance against the first. Everything was adverse to the second woman in
the world in which Trix lived.

And he had sent her to that world? So she declared, partly in mockery
perhaps, enjoying the incongruity of the idea with his dull life, his
dingy room, his shabby coat. Yet he traced in the persistence with which
she had recurred to the notion something more than mere chaff. The idea
might be fanciful or whimsical, but there it was in her mind, dating
from their talk at Paris. Unquestionably it clung to her, and in some
vague way she based on it an obligation on his part, and thought it
raised a claim on hers, a claim that he should not judge her severely or
condemn the way she lived; perhaps, more vaguely still, a claim that he
should help her if ever she needed help.




CHAPTER V

THE WORLD RECALCITRANT


Beaufort Chance was no genius in a drawing-room--that may be accepted on
Lady Blixworth's authority. In concluding that he was a fool in the
general affairs of life she went beyond her premises and her knowledge.
Mrs. Bonfill, out of a larger experience, had considered that he would
do more than usually well; he was ingenious, hard-working, and
conciliatory, of affable address and sufficient tact; Mrs. Bonfill
seemed to have placed him with judgment, and Mr. Dickinson (who led the
House) was content with his performances. Yet perhaps after all he was,
in the finest sense of the term, a fool. He could not see how things
would look to other people, if other people came to know them; he hardly
perceived when he was sailing very near the wind; the probability of an
upset did not occur to him. He saw with his own eyes only; their view
was short, and perhaps awry.

Fricker was his friend; he had bestowed favours on Fricker, or at least
on Fricker's belongings, for whose debts Fricker assumed liability. If
Fricker were minded to repay the obligation, was there any particular
harm in that? Beaufort could not see it. If, again, the account being a
little more than squared, he in his turn equalised it, leaving Fricker's
kindness to set him at a debit again, and again await his balancing,
what harm? It seemed only the natural way of things when business and
friendship went hand in hand. The Frickers wanted one thing, he wanted
another. If each could help the other to the desired object, good was
done to both, hurt to nobody. Many things are private which are not
wrong; delicacy is different from shame, reticence from concealment.
These relations between himself and Fricker were not fit subjects for
gossip, but Beaufort saw no sin in them. Fricker, it need not be added,
was clearly, and even scornfully, of the same opinion.

But Fricker's business affairs were influenced, indeed most materially
affected, by what the Tsar meant to do, and by one or two kindred
problems then greatly exercising the world of politics, society, and
finance. Beaufort Chance was not only in the House, he was in the
Government. Humbly in, it is true, but actually. Still, what then? He
was not in the Cabinet. Did he know secrets? He knew none; of course he
would never have used secrets or divulged them. Things told to him, or
picked up by him, were _ex hypothesi_ not secrets, or he would never
have come to know them. Fricker had represented all this to him, and,
after some consideration and hesitation, Fricker's argument had seemed
very sound.

Must a man be tempted to argue thus or to accept such arguments?
Beaufort scorned the idea, but, lest he should have been in error on
this point, it may be said that there was much to tempt him. He was an
extravagant man; he sat for an expensive constituency; he knew (his
place taught him still better) the value of riches--of real wealth, not
of a beggarly competence. He wanted wealth and he wanted Trix Trevalla.
He seemed to see how he could work towards the satisfaction of both
desires at the same time and along the same lines. Mervyn was his rival
with Trix--every day made that plain. He had believed himself on the way
to win till Mervyn was brought on the scene--by Mrs. Bonfill, whom he
now began to hate. Mervyn had rank and many other advantages. To fight
Mervyn every reinforcement was needed. As wealth tempted himself, so he
knew it would and must tempt Trix; he was better informed as to her
affairs than Mrs. Bonfill, and shared Lady Blixworth's opinion about
them.

Having this opinion, and a lively wish to ingratiate himself with Trix,
he allowed her to share in some of the benefits which his own
information and Fricker's manipulation of the markets brought to their
partnership. Trix, conscious of money slipping away, very ready to put
it back, reckless and ignorant, was only too happy in the opportunity.
She seemed also very grateful, and Beaufort was encouraged to persevere.
For a little while his kindness to Trix escaped Fricker's notice, but
not for long. As soon as Fricker discovered it, his attitude was
perfectly clear and, to himself, no more than reasonable.

'You've every motive for standing well with Mrs. Trevalla, I know, my
dear fellow,' said he, licking his big cigar and placing his
well-groomed hat on Beaufort's table. 'But what motive have I? Everybody
we let in means one more to share the--the profit--perhaps, one might
add, to increase the risk. Now why should I let Mrs. Trevalla in? Any
more than, for instance, I should let--shall we say--Mrs. Bonfill in?'
Fricker did not like Mrs. Bonfill since she had quailed before Viola
Blixworth.

'Oh, if you take it like that!' muttered Beaufort crossly.

'I don't take it any way. I put the case. It would be different if Mrs.
Trevalla were a friend of mine or of my family.'

That was pretty plain for Fricker. As a rule Mrs. Fricker put the things
plainly to him, and he transmitted them considerably disguised and
carefully wrapped in his dry humour. On this occasion he allowed his
hint to be fairly obvious; he knew Beaufort intimately by now.

Beaufort looked at him, feeling rather uncomfortable.

'Friends do one another good turns; I don't go about doing them to
anybody I meet, just for fun,' continued Fricker.

Beaufort nodded a slow assent.

'Of course we don't bargain with a lady,' smiled Fricker, thoughtfully
flicking off his ash. 'But, on the other hand, ladies are very quick to
understand. Eh, Beaufort? I daresay you could convey----?' He stuck the
cigar back into his mouth.

This was the conversation that led to the little dinner-party
hereinbefore recorded; Fricker had gone to it not doubting that Trix
Trevalla understood; Mrs. Fricker did not doubt it either when Trix had
been so civil in the drawing-room. Trix herself had thought she ought to
be civil, as has been seen; it may, however, be doubted whether Beaufort
Chance had made her understand quite how much a matter of business the
whole thing was. She did not realise that she, now or about to be a
social power, was to do what Lady Blixworth would not and Mrs. Bonfill
dared not--was to push the Frickers, to make their cause hers, to open
doors for them, and in return was to be told when to put money in this
stock or that, and when to take it out again. She was told when to do
these things, and did them. The money rolled in, and she was wonderfully
pleased. If it would go on rolling in like this, its rolling out again
(as it did) was of no consequence; her one pressing difficulty seemed in
a fair way to be removed. Something she did for the Frickers; she got
them some minor invitations, and asked them to meet some minor folk, and
thought herself very kind. Now and then they seemed to hint at more,
just as now and then Beaufort Chance's attentions became inconveniently
urgent. On such occasions Trix laughed and joked and evaded, and for the
moment wriggled out of any pledge. As regards the seemliness of the
position, her state of mind was very much Beaufort's own; she saw no
harm in it, but she did not talk about it; some people were stupid,
others malicious. It was, after all, a private concern. So she said
nothing to anybody--not even to Mrs. Bonfill. There was little sign of
Airey Newton's 'second woman' in her treatment of this matter; the first
held undivided sway.

If what the Tsar meant to do and the kindred problems occupied Fricker
in one way, they made no less claim on Mervyn's time in another. He was
very busy in his office and in the House; he had to help Lord Glentorly
to persuade the nation to rely on him. Still he made some opportunities
for meeting Trix Trevalla; she was always very ready to meet him when
Beaufort Chance and Fricker were not to the fore. He was a man of
methodical mind, which he made up slowly. He took things in their order,
and gave them their proper proportion of time. He was making his career.
It could hardly be doubted that he was also paying attentions, and it
was probable that he meant to pay his addresses, to Trix Trevalla. But
his progress was leisurely; the disadvantages attaching to her perhaps
made him slower, even though in the end he would disregard them. In
Trix's eyes he was one or two things worse than leisurely. He was very
confident and rather condescending. On this point she did speak to Mrs.
Bonfill, expressing some impatience. Mrs. Bonfill was sympathetic as
always, but also, as always, wise.

'Well, and if he is, my dear?' Her smile appealed to Trix to admit that
everything which she had been objecting to and rebelling against was no
more than what any woman of the world would expect and allow for.

Trix's expression was still mutinous. Mrs. Bonfill proceeded with
judicial weightiness.

'Now look at Audrey Pollington--you know that big niece of Viola's? Do
you suppose that, if Mortimer paid her attentions, she'd complain of him
for being condescending? She'd just thank her stars, and take what she
could get.' (These very frank expressions are recorded with an apology.)

'I'm not Audrey Pollington,' muttered Trix, using a weak though common
argument.

There are moments when youth is the better for a judicious dose of
truth.

'My dear,' remarked Mrs. Bonfill, 'most people would say that what
Audrey Pollington didn't mind, you needn't.' Miss Pollington was
grand-daughter to a duke (female line), and had a pretty little fortune
of her own. Mrs. Bonfill could not be held wrong for seeking to temper
her young friend's arrogance.

'It's not my idea of making love, that's all,' said Trix obstinately.

'We live and learn.' Mrs. Bonfill implied that Trix had much to learn.
'Don't lose your head, child,' she added warningly. 'You've made plenty
of people envious. Don't give them any chance.' She paused before she
asked, 'Do you see much of Beaufort now?'

'A certain amount.' Trix did not wish to be drawn on this point.

'Well, Trix?'

'We keep friends,' smiled Trix.

'Yes, that's right. I wouldn't see too much of him, though.'

'Till my lord has made up his mind?'

'Silly!' That one word seemed to Mrs. Bonfill sufficient answer. She
had, however, more confidence in Trix than the one word implied. Young
women must be allowed their moods, but most of them acted sensibly in
the end; that was Mrs. Bonfill's experience.

Trix came and kissed her affectionately; she was fond of Mrs. Bonfill
and really grateful to her; it is possible, besides, that she had
twinges of conscience; her conversations with Mrs. Bonfill were marked
by a good deal of reserve. It was all very well to say that the matters
reserved did not concern Mrs. Bonfill, but even Trix in her most
independent mood could not feel quite convinced of this. She
knew--though she tried not to think of it--that she was playing a double
game; in one side of it Mrs. Bonfill was with her and she accepted that
lady's help; the other side was sedulously hidden. It was not playing
fair. Trix might set her teeth sometimes and declare she would do it,
unfair though it was; or more often she would banish thought altogether
by a plunge into amusement; but the thought and the consciousness were
there. Well, she was not treating anybody half as badly as most people
had treated her. She hardened her heart and went forward on her
dangerous path, confident that she could keep clear of pitfalls.
Only--yes, it was all rather a fight; once or twice she thought of
Danes Inn with a half-serious yearning for its quiet and repose.

Some of what Mrs. Bonfill did not see Lady Blixworth did--distantly, of
course, and mainly by putting an observed two together with some other
observed but superficially unrelated two--a task eminently congenial to
her mind. Natural inclination was quickened by family duty. 'I wish,'
Lady Blixworth said, 'that Sarah would have undertaken dear Audrey; but
since she won't, I must do the best I can for her myself.' It was
largely with a view to doing the best she could for Audrey that Lady
Blixworth kept her eye on Trix Trevalla--a thing of which Trix was quite
unconscious. Lady Blixworth's motives command respect, and it must be
admitted that Miss Pollington did not render her relative's dutiful
assistance superfluous. She was a tall, handsome girl, rather inert, not
very ready in conversation. Lady Blixworth, who was never absurd even in
praise, pitched on the epithet 'statuesque' as peculiarly suitable.
Society acquiesced. 'How statuesque Miss Pollington is!' became the
thing to say to one's neighbour or partner. Lady Blixworth herself said
it with a smile sometimes; most people, content as ever to accept what
is given to them, were grave enough.

Audrey herself was extremely pleased with the epithet, so delighted,
indeed, that her aunt thought it necessary to administer a caution.

'When people praise you or your appearance for a certain quality, Audrey
dear,' she observed sweetly, 'it generally means that you've got that
quality in a marked degree.'

'Yes, of course, Aunt Viola,' said Audrey, rather surprised, but quite
understanding.

'And so,' pursued Aunt Viola in yet more gentle tones, 'it isn't
necessary for you to cultivate it consciously.' She stroked Audrey's
hand with much affection. 'Because they tell you you're statuesque, for
instance, don't try to go about looking like the Venus of Milo in a pair
of stays.'

'I'm sure I don't, Auntie,' cried poor Audrey, blushing piteously. She
was conscious of having posed a little bit as Mr. Guise, the eminent
sculptor, passed by.

'On the contrary, it does no harm to remember that one has a tendency in
a certain direction; then one is careful to keep a watch on oneself and
not overdo it. I don't want you to skip about, my dear, but you know
what I mean.'

Audrey nodded rather ruefully. What is the good of being statuesque if
you may not live up to it?

'You aren't hurt with me, darling?' cooed Aunt Viola.

Audrey declared she was not hurt, but she felt rather bewildered.

With the coming of June, affairs of the heart and affairs of the purse
became lamentably and unpoetically confounded in Trix Trevalla's life
and thoughts. Mrs. Bonfill was hinting prodigiously about Audrey
Pollington; Lady Blixworth was working creditably hard, and danger
undoubtedly threatened from that quarter. Trix must exert herself if
Mervyn were not to slip through the meshes. On the other hand, the
problems were rather acute. Lord Farringham had been decidedly
pessimistic in a speech in the House of Lords, Fricker was hinting at a
great _coup_, Beaufort Chance was reminding her in a disagreeably
pressing fashion of how much he had done for her and of how much he
still could do. Trix had tried one or two little gambles on her own
account and met with serious disaster; current expenses rose rather than
fell. In the midst of all her gaiety Trix grew a little careworn and
irritable; a line or two showed on her face; critics said that Mrs.
Trevalla was doing too much, and must be more careful of her looks. Mrs.
Bonfill began to be vaguely uncomfortable about her favourite. But still
Trix held on her way, her courage commanding more admiration than any
other quality she manifested at this time. Indeed she had moments of
clear sight about herself, but her shibboleth of 'revenge' still
sufficed to stiffen, if not to comfort, her.

Some said that Lord Farringham's pessimistic speech was meant only for
home consumption, the objects being to induce the country to spend
money freely and also to feel that it was no moment for seeking to
change the Crown's responsible advisers. Others said that it was
intended solely for abroad, either as a warning or, more probably, as an
excuse to enable a foreign nation to retire with good grace from an
untenable position. A minority considered that the Prime Minister had
perhaps said what he thought. On the whole there was considerable
uneasiness.

'What does it all mean, Mr. Fricker?' asked Trix, when that gentleman
called on her, cool, alert, and apparently in very good spirits.

'It means that fools are making things smooth for wise men, as usual,'
he answered, and looked at her with a keen glance.

'If you will only make them plain to one fool!' she suggested with a
laugh.

'I presume you aren't interested in international politics as such?'

'Not a bit,' said Trix heartily.

'But if there's any little venture going----' He smiled as he tempted
her, knowing that she would yield.

'You've been very kind to me,' murmured Trix.

'It's a big thing this time--and a good thing. You've heard Beaufort
mention the Dramoffsky Concessions, I daresay?'

Trix nodded.

'He'd only mention them casually, of course,' Fricker continued with a
passing smile. 'Well, if there's trouble, or serious apprehension of it,
the Dramoffsky Concessions would be blown sky-high--because it's all
English capital and labour, and for a long time anyhow the whole thing
would be brought to a standstill, and the machinery all go to the deuce,
and so on.'

Again Trix nodded wisely.

'Whereas, if everything's all right, the Concessions are pretty well all
right too. Have you noticed that they've been falling a good deal
lately? No, I suppose not. Most papers don't quote them.'

'I haven't looked for them. I've had my eye on the Glowing Star.' Trix
was anxious to give an impression of being business-like in one matter
anyhow.

'Oh, that's good for a few hundreds, but don't you worry about it. I'll
look after that for you. As I say, if there's serious apprehension,
Dramoffskys go down. Well, there will be--more serious than there is
now. And after that----'

'War?' asked Trix in some excitement.

'We imagine not. I'd say we know, only one never really knows anything.
No, there will be a revival of confidence. And then Dramoffskys--well,
you see what follows. Now it's a little risky--not very--and it's a big
thing if it comes off, and what I'm telling you is worth a considerable
sum as a marketable commodity. Are you inclined to come in?'

To Trix there could be but one answer. Coming in with Mr. Fricker had
always meant coming out better for the process. She thanked him
enthusiastically.

'All right. Lodge five thousand at your bankers' as soon as you can, and
let me have it.'

'Five thousand!' Trix gasped a little. She had not done the thing on
such a scale as this before.

'It's always seemed to me waste of time to fish for herrings with a rod
and line,' observed Fricker; 'but just as you like, of course.'

'Does Beaufort think well of it?'

'Do you generally find us differing?' Fricker smiled ironically.

'I'll go in,' said Trix. 'I shall make a lot, sha'n't I?'

'I think so. Hold your tongue, and stay in till I tell you to come out.
You can rely on me.'

Nothing more passed between them then. Trix was left to consider the
plunge that she had made. Could it possibly go wrong? If it did--she
reckoned up her position. If it went wrong--if the five thousand or the
bulk of it were lost, what was left to her? After payment of all
liabilities, she would have about ten thousand pounds. That she had
determined to keep intact. On the interest of that--at last the
distinction was beginning to thrust itself on her mind with a new and
odious sharpness--she would have to live. To live--not to have that
flat, or those gowns, or that brougham, or this position; not to have
anything that she wanted and loved, but just to live. _Pensions_ again!
It would come to going back to _pensions_.

No, would it? There was another resource. Trix, rather anxious, a little
fretful and uneasy, was sanguine and resolute still. She wrote to
Beaufort Chance, telling him what she had done, thanking him, bidding
him thank Fricker, expressing the amplest gratitude to both gentlemen.
Then she sat down and invited Mervyn to come and see her; he had not
been for some days, and, busy as he was, Trix thought it was time to see
him, and to blot out, for a season at least, all idea of Audrey
Pollington. She reckoned that an interview with her, properly managed,
would put Audrey and her ally out of action for some little while to
come.

Mervyn obeyed her summons, but not in a very cheerful mood. Trix's
efforts to pump him about the problems and the complications were
signally unsuccessful. He snubbed her, giving her to understand that he
was amazed at being asked such questions. What, then, was Beaufort
Chance doing, she asked in her heart. She passed rapidly from the
dangerous ground, declaring with a pout that she thought he might have
told her some gossip, to equip her for her next dinner party. He
responded to her lighter mood with hardly more cordiality. Evidently
there was something wrong with him, something which prevented her spell
from working on him as it was wont. Trix was dismayed. Was her power
gone? It could not be that statuesque Miss Pollington had triumphed, or
was even imminently dangerous.

At last Mervyn broke out with what he had to say. He looked, she
thought, like a husband (not like Vesey Trevalla, but like the abstract
conception), and a rather imperious one, as he took his stand on her
hearthrug and frowned down at her.

'You might know--no, you do know--the best people in London,' he said,
'and yet I hear of your going about with the Frickers! I should think
Fricker's a rogue, and I know he's a cad. And the women!' Aristocratic
scorn embittered his tongue.

'Whom have you heard it from?'

'Lots of people. Among others, Viola Blixworth.'

'Oh, Lady Blixworth! Of course you'd hear it from her!

'It doesn't matter who tells me, if it's true.'

That was an annoying line to take. It was easy to show Lady Blixworth's
motive, but it was impossible to deny the accuracy of what she said. A
hundred safe witnesses would have confounded Trix had she denied.

'What in the world do you do it for?' he asked angrily and impatiently.
'What can Fricker do for you? Don't you see how you lower yourself?
They'll be saying he's bought you next!'

Trix did not start, but a spot of colour came on her cheeks; her eyes
were hard and wary as they watched Mervyn covertly. He came towards her,
and, with a sudden softening of manner, laid his hand on hers.

'Drop them,' he urged. 'Don't have anything more to do with such a lot.'

Trix looked up at him; there were doubt and distress in her eyes. He was
affectionate now, but also very firm.

'For my sake, drop them,' he said. 'You know people can't come where
they may meet the Frickers.'

Trix was never slow of understanding; she saw very well what Mervyn
meant. His words might be smooth, his manner might be kind, and, if she
wished it at the moment, ready to grow more than kind. With all this he
was asking, nay, he was demanding, that she should drop the Frickers.
How difficult the path had suddenly grown; how hard it was to work her
complicated plan!

'A good many people know them. There's Mr. Chance----' she began
timidly.

'Beaufort Chance! Yes, better if he didn't!' His lips, grimly closing
again, were a strong condemnation of his colleague.

'They're kind people, really.'

'They're entirely beneath you--and beneath your friends.'

There was no mistaking the position. Mervyn was delivering an ultimatum.
It was little use to say that he had no right because he had made her no
offer. He had the power, which, it is to be feared, is generally more
the question. And at what a moment the ultimatum came! Must Trix
relinquish that golden dream of the Dramoffsky Concessions, and give up
those hundreds--welcome if few--from the Glowing Star? Or was she to
defy Mervyn and cast in her lot with the Frickers--and with Beaufort
Chance?

'Promise me,' he said softly, with as near an approach to a lover's
entreaty as his grave and condescending manner allowed. 'I never thought
you'd make any difficulty. Do you really hesitate between doing what
pleases me and what pleases Chance or the Frickers?'

Trix would have dearly liked to cry 'Yes, yes, yes!' Such a reply would,
she considered, have been wholesome for Mortimer Mervyn, and it would
have been most gratifying to herself. She dared not give it; it would
mean far too much.

'I can't be actually rude,' she pleaded. 'I must do it gradually. But
since you ask me, I will break with them as much and as soon as I can.'

'That's all I ask of you,' said Mervyn. He bent and kissed her hand with
a reassuring air of homage and devotion. But evidently homage and
devotion must be paid for. They bore a resemblance to financial
assistance in that respect. Trix was becoming disagreeably conscious
that people expected to be paid, in one way or another, for most things
that they gave. Chance and Fricker wanted payment. Mervyn claimed it
too. And to pay both as they asked seemed now impossible.

Somehow life appeared to have an objection to being played with, the
world to be rather unmalleable as material, the revenge not to be the
simple and triumphant progress that it had looked.

Trix Trevalla, under pressure of circumstances, got thus far on the way
towards a judgment of herself and a knowledge of the world; the two
things are closely interdependent.




CHAPTER VI

CHILDREN OF SHADOW


'A Politician! I'd as soon be a policeman,' remarked Miles Childwick,
with delicate scorn. 'I don't dispute the necessity of either--I never
dispute the necessity of things--but it would not occur to me to become
either.'

'You're not tall enough for a policeman, anyhow,' said Elfreda Flood.

'Not if it became necessary to take you in charge, I admit' (Elfreda
used to be called 'queenly' and had played Hippolyta), 'but your remark
is impertinent in every sense of the term. Politicians and policemen are
essentially the same.'

Everybody looked at the clock. They were waiting for supper at the
Magnifique; it was Tommy Trent's party, and the early comers sat in a
group in the luxurious outer room.

'From what I know of policemen in the witness-box, I incline to agree,'
said Manson Smith.

'The salaries, however, are different,' yawned Tommy, without removing
his eyes from the clock.

'I'm most infernally hungry,' announced Arty Kane, a robust-looking
youth, somewhat famous as a tragic poet. 'Myra Lacrimans' was perhaps
his best-known work.

Mrs. John Maturin smiled; she was not great at repartee outside her
writings. 'It is late,' she observed.

'But while policemen,' pursued Miles Childwick, sublimely careless of
interruption, 'while policemen make things endurable by a decent neglect
of their duties (or how do we get home at night?), politicians are
constantly raising the income tax. I speak with no personal bitterness,
since to me it happens to be a small matter, but I observe a laceration
of the feelings of my wealthy friends.'

'He'd go on all night, whether we listened or not,' said Horace Harnack,
half in despair, half in admiration. 'I suppose it wouldn't do to have a
song, Tommy?'

His suggestion met with no attention, for at the moment Tommy sprang to
his feet, exclaiming, 'Here's Peggy at last!'

The big glass doors were swung open and Peggy came in. The five men
advanced to meet her; Mrs. John Maturin smiled in a rather pitying way
at Elfreda, but Elfreda took this rush quite as a matter of course and
looked at the clock again.

'Is Airey here?' asked Peggy.

'Not yet,' replied Tommy. 'I hope he's coming, though.'

'He said something about being afraid he might be kept,' said Peggy;
then she drew Tommy aside and whispered, 'Had to get his coat mended,
you know.'

Tommy nodded cautiously.

'And she hasn't come either?' Peggy went on.

'No; and whoever she is, I hate her,' remarked Arty Kane. 'But who is
she? We're all here.' He waved his arm round the assembly.

'Going to introduce you to society to-night, Arty,' his host promised.
'Mrs. Trevalla's coming.'

'Duchesses I know, and countesses I know,' said Childwick; 'but who----'

'Oh, nobody expected you to know,' interrupted Peggy. She came up to
Elfreda and made a rapid scrutiny. 'New frock?'

Elfreda nodded with an assumption of indifference.

'How lucky!' said Peggy, who was evidently rather excited. 'You're
always smart,' she assured Mrs. John Maturin.

Mrs. John smiled.

Timidly and with unfamiliar step Airey Newton entered the gorgeous
apartment. Relief was dominant on his face when he saw the group of
friends, and he made a hasty dart towards them, giving on the way a
nervous glance at his shoes, which showed two or three spots of mud--the
pavements were wet outside. He hastened to hide himself behind Elfreda
Flood, and, thus sheltered, surveyed the scene.

'I was just saying, Airey, that politicians----'

Arty Kane stopped further progress by the hasty suggestion of a glass of
sherry, and the two went off together to the side room, where supper was
laid, leaving the rest again regarding the clock--except Peggy, who had
put a half-crown in her glove, or her purse, or her pocket, and could
not find it, and declared that she could not get home unless she did;
she created no sympathy and (were such degrees possible) less surprise,
when at last she distinctly recollected having left it on the piano.

'Whose half-crown on whose piano?' asked Manson Smith with a forensic
frown.

When the sherry-bibbers returned with the surreptitious air usual in
such cases, the group had undergone a marked change; it was clustered
round a very brilliant person in a gown of resplendent blue, with a
flash of jewels about her, a hint of perfume, a generally dazzling
effect. Miles Childwick came up to Manson Smith.

'This,' said Childwick, 'we must presume to be Mrs. Trevalla. Let me be
introduced, Manson, before my eyes are blinded by the blaze.'

'Is she a new flame of Tommy's?' asked Manson in a whisper.

The question showed great ignorance; but Manson was comparatively an
outsider, and Miles Childwick let it pass with a scornful smile.

'What a pity we're not supping in the public room!' said Peggy.

'We might trot Mrs. Trevalla through first, in procession, you know,'
suggested Tommy. 'It's awfully good of you to come. I hardly dared ask
you,' he added to Trix.

'I was just as afraid, but Miss Ryle encouraged me. I met her two or
three nights ago at Mrs. Bonfill's.'

They went in to supper. Trix was placed between Tommy and Airey Newton,
Peggy was at the other end, supported by Childwick and Arty Kane. The
rest disposed themselves, if not according to taste, yet with apparent
harmony; there was, however, a momentary hesitation about sitting by
Mrs. John. 'Mrs. John means just one glass more champagne than is good
for one,' Childwick had once said, and the remark was felt to be just.

'No, politicians are essentially concerned with the things that perish,'
resumed Miles Childwick; he addressed Peggy--Mrs. John was on his other
side.

'Everything perishes,' observed Arty Kane, putting down his empty
soup-cup with a refreshed and cheerful air.

'Do learn the use of language. I said "essentially concerned." Now we
are essentially concerned with----'

Trix Trevalla heard the conversation in fragments. She did not observe
that Peggy took much part in it, but every now and then she laughed in a
rich gurgle, as though things and people in general were very amusing.
Whenever she did this, all the young men looked at her and smiled, or
themselves laughed too, and Peggy laughed more and, perhaps, blushed a
little. Trix turned to Tommy and whispered, 'I like her.'

'Rather!' said Tommy. 'Here, waiter, bring some ice.'

Most of the conversation was far less formidable than Miles Childwick's.
It was for the most part frank and very keen discussion of a number of
things and persons entirely, or almost entirely, unfamiliar to Trix
Trevalla. On the other hand, not one of the problems with which she, as
a citizen and as a woman, had been so occupied was mentioned, and the
people who filled her sky did not seem to have risen above the horizon
here. Somebody did mention Russia once, and Horace Harnack expressed a
desire to have 'a slap' at that great nation; but politics were
evidently an alien plant, and soon died out of the conversation. The
last play or the last novel, the most recent success on the stage, the
newest paradox of criticism, were the topics when gossip was ousted for
a few moments from its habitual and evidently welcome sway. People's
gossip, however, shows their tastes and habits better than anything
else, and in this case Trix was not too dull to learn from it; it
reproduced another atmosphere and told her that there was another world
than hers. She turned suddenly to Airey Newton.

'We talk of living in London, but it's a most inadequate description.
There must be ten Londons to live in!'

'Quite--without counting the slums.'

'We ought to say London A, or London B, or London C. Social districts,
like the postal ones; only far more of them. I suppose some people can
live in more than one?'

'Yes, a few; and a good many people pay visits.'

'Are you Bohemian?' she asked, indicating the company with a little
movement of her hand.

'Look at them!' he answered. 'They are smart and spotless. I'm the only
one who looks the part in the least. And, behold, I am frugal,
temperate, a hard worker, and a scientific man!'

'There are believed to be Bohemians still in Kensington and Chelsea,'
observed Tommy Trent. 'They will think anything you please, but they
won't dine out without their husbands.'

'If that's the criterion, we can manage it nearer than Chelsea,' said
Trix. 'This side of Park Lane, I think.'

'You've got to have the thinking too, though,' smiled Airey.

Miles Childwick had apparently been listening; he raised his voice a
little and remarked: 'The divorce between the theoretical bases of
immorality----'

'Falsely so called,' murmured Hanson Smith.

'And its practical development is one of the most----'

It was no use; Peggy gurgled helplessly, and hid her face in her
napkin. Childwick scowled for an instant, then leant back in his chair,
smiling pathetically.

'She is the living negation of serious thought,' he complained,
regarding her affectionately.

Peggy, emerging, darted him a glance as she returned to her chicken.

'When I published "Myra Lacrimans"----' began Arty Kane.

In an instant everybody was silent. They leant forward towards him with
a grave and eager attention, signing to one another to keep still. Tommy
whispered: 'Don't move for a moment, waiter!'

'Oh, confound you all!' exclaimed poor Arty Kane, as he joined in the
general outburst of laughter.

Trix found herself swelling it light-heartedly.

'We've found by experience that that's the only way to stop him,' Tommy
explained, as with a gesture he released the grinning waiter. 'He'll
talk about "Myra" through any conversation, but absolute silence makes
him shy. Peggy found it out. It's most valuable. Isn't it, Mrs. John?'

'Most valuable,' agreed Mrs. John. She had made no other contribution to
the conversation for some time.

'All the same,' Childwick resumed, in a more conversational tone, but
with unabated perseverance, 'what I was going to say is true. In nine
cases out of ten the people who are----' He paused a moment.

'Irregular,' suggested Manson Smith.

'Thank you, Manson. The people who are irregular think they ought to be
regular, and the people who are regular have established their right to
be irregular. There's a reason for it, of course----'

'It seems rather more interesting without one,' remarked Elfreda Flood.

'No reason, I think?' asked Horace Harnack, gathering the suffrages of
the table.

'Certainly not,' agreed the table as a whole.

'To give reasons is a slur on our intellects and a waste of our time,'
pronounced Manson Smith.

'It's such a terribly long while since I heard anybody talk nonsense on
purpose,' Trix said to Airey, with a sigh of enjoyment.

'They do it all the time; and, yes, it's rather refreshing.'

'Does Mr. Childwick mind?'

'Mind?' interposed Tommy. 'Gracious, no! He's playing the game too; he
knows all about it. He won't let on that he does, of course, but he does
all the same.'

'The reason is,' said Childwick, speaking with lightning speed, 'that
the intellect merely disestablishes morality, while the emotions
disregard it. Thank you for having heard me with such patience, ladies
and gentlemen.' He finished his champagne with a triumphant air.

'You beat us that time,' said Peggy, with a smile of congratulation.

Elfreda Flood addressed Harnack, apparently resuming an interrupted
conversation.

'If I wear green I look horrid, and if she wears blue she looks horrid,
and if we don't wear either green or blue, the scene looks horrid. I'm
sure I don't know what to do.'

'It'll end in your having to wear green,' prophesied Harnack.

'I suppose it will,' Elfreda moaned disconsolately. 'She always gets her
way.'

'I happen to know he reviewed it,' declared Arty Kane with some warmth,
'because he spelt "dreamed" with a "t." He always does. And he'd dined
with me only two nights before!'

'Where?' asked Manson Smith.

'At my own rooms.'

'Then he certainly wrote it. I've dined with you there myself.'

Trix had fallen into silence, and Airey Newton seemed content not to
disturb her. The snatches of varied talk fell on her ears, each with its
implication of a different interest and a different life, all foreign to
her. The very frivolity, the sort of schoolboy and chaffy friendliness
of everybody's tone, was new in her experience, when it was united, as
here it seemed to be, with a liveliness of wits and a nimble play of
thought. The effect, so far as she could sum it up, was of carelessness
combined with interest, independence without indifference, an alertness
of mind which laughter softened. These people, she thought, were all
poor (she did not include Tommy Trent, who was more of her own world),
they were none of them well known, they did not particularly care to be,
they aspired to no great position. No doubt they had to fight for
themselves sometimes--witness Elfreda and her battle of the colours--but
they fought as little as they could, and laughed while they fought, if
fight they must. But they all thought and felt; they had emotions and
brains. She knew, looking at Mrs. John's delicate fine face, that she
too had brains, though she did not talk.

'I don't say,' began Childwick once more, 'that when Mrs. John puts us
in a book, as she does once a year, she fails to do justice to our
conversation, but she lamentably neglects and misrepresents her own.'

Trix had been momentarily uneasy, but Mrs. John was smiling merrily.

'I miss her pregnant assents, her brief but weighty disagreements, the
rich background of silence which she imparts to the entertainment.'

Yes, Mrs. John had brains too, and evidently Miles Childwick and the
rest knew it.

'When Arty wrote a sonnet on Mrs. John,' remarked Manson Smith, 'he made
it only twelve lines long. The outside world jeered, declaring that such
a thing was unusual, if not ignorant. But we of the elect traced the
spiritual significance.'

'Are you enjoying yourself, Airey?' called Peggy Ryle.

He nodded to her cordially.

'What a comfort!' sighed Peggy. She looked round the table, laughed, and
cried 'Hurrah!' for no obvious reason.

Trix whispered to Airey, 'She nearly makes me cry when she does that.'

'You can feel it?' he asked in a quick low question, looking at her
curiously.

'Oh, yes, I don't know why,' she answered, glancing again at the girl
whose mirth and exultation stirred her to so strange a mood.

Her eyes turned back to Airey Newton, and found a strong attraction in
his face too. The strength and kindness of it, coming home to her with a
keener realisation, were refined by the ever-present shadow of sorrow or
self-discontent. This hint of melancholy persisted even while he took
his share in the gaiety of the evening; he was cheerful, but he had not
the exuberance of most of them; he was far from bubbling over in sheer
joyousness like Peggy; he could not achieve even the unruffled and
pain-proof placidity of Tommy Trent. Like herself then--in spite of a
superficial remoteness from her, and an obviously nearer kinship with
the company in life and circumstances--he was in spirit something of a
stranger there. In the end he, like herself, must look on at the fun
rather than share in it wholeheartedly. There was a background for her
and him, rather dark and sombre; for the rest there seemed to be none;
their joy blazed unshadowed. Whatever she had or had not attained in her
attack on the world, however well her critical and doubtful fortunes
might in the end turn out, she had not come near to reaching this;
indeed it had never yet been set before her eyes as a thing within human
reach. But how naturally it belonged to Peggy and her friends! There are
children of the sunlight and children of the shadow. Was it possible to
pass from one to the other, to change your origin and name? It seemed to
her that, if she had not been born in the shadow, it had fallen on her
full soon and heavily, and had stayed very long. Had her life now, her
new life with all its brilliance, quite driven it away? All the day it
had been dark and heavy on her; not even now was it wholly banished.

When the party broke up--it was not an early hour--Peggy came over to
Airey Newton. Trix did not understand the conversation.

'I got your letter, but I'm not coming,' she said. 'I told you I
wouldn't come, and I won't.' She was very reproachful, and seemed to
consider that she had been insulted somehow.

'Oh, I say now, Peggy!' urged Tommy Trent, looking very miserable.

'It's your fault, and you know it,' she told him severely.

'Well, everybody else is coming,' declared Tommy. Airey said nothing,
but nodded assent in a manner half-rueful, half-triumphant.

'It's shameful,' Peggy persisted.

There was a moment's pause. Trix, feeling like an eavesdropper, looked
the other way, but she could not avoid hearing.

'But I've had a windfall, Peggy,' said Airey Newton. 'On my honour, I
have.'

'Yes, on my honour, he has,' urged Tommy earnestly. 'A good thumping
one, isn't it, Airey?'

'One of my things has been a success, you know.'

'Oh, he hits 'em in the eye sometimes, Peggy.'

'Are you two men telling anything like the truth?'

'The absolute truth.'

'Bible truth!' declared Tommy Trent.

'Well, then, I'll come; but I don't think it makes what Tommy did any
better.'

'Who cares, if you'll come?' asked Tommy.

Suddenly Airey stepped forward to Trix Trevalla. His manner was full of
hesitation--he was, in fact, awkward; but then he was performing a most
unusual function. Peggy and Tommy Trent stood watching him, now and then
exchanging a word.

'He's going to ask her,' whispered Peggy.

'Hanged if he isn't!' Tommy whispered back.

'Then he must have had it!'

'I told you so,' replied Tommy in an extraordinarily triumphant,
imperfectly lowered voice.

Yes, Airey Newton was asking Trix to join his dinner-party.

'It's--it's not much in my line,' he was heard explaining, 'but Trent's
promised to look after everything for me. It's a small affair, of
course, and--and just a small dinner.'

'Is it?' whispered Tommy with a wink, but Peggy did not hear this time.

'If you'd come----'

'Of course I will,' said Trix. 'Write and tell me the day, and I shall
be delighted.' She did not see why he should hesitate quite so much, but
a glance at Peggy and Tommy showed her that something very unusual had
happened.

'It'll be the first dinner-party he's ever given,' whispered Peggy
excitedly, and she added to Tommy, 'Are you going to order it, Tommy?'

'I've asked him to,' interposed Airey, still with an odd mixture of
pride and apprehension.

Peggy looked at Tommy suspiciously.

'If you don't behave well about it, I shall get up and go away,' was her
final remark.

Trix's brougham was at the door--she found it necessary now to hire one
for night-work, her own horse and man finding enough to do in the
daytime--and after a moment's hesitation she offered to drive Airey
Newton home, declaring that she would enjoy so much of a digression from
her way. He had been looking on rather vaguely while the others were
dividing themselves into hansom-cab parties, and she received the
impression that he meant, when everybody was paired, to walk off quietly
by himself. Peggy overheard her invitation and said with a sort of
relief:--

'That'll do splendidly, Airey.'

Airey agreed, but it seemed with more embarrassment than pleasure.

But Trix was pleased to prolong, even by so little, the atmosphere and
associations of the evening, to be able to talk about it a little more,
to question him while she questioned herself also indirectly. She put
him through a catechism about the members of the party, delighted to
elicit anything that confirmed her notion of their independence, their
carelessness, and their comradeship. He answered what she asked, but in
a rather absent melancholy fashion; a pall seemed to have fallen on his
spirits again. She turned to him, attracted, not repelled, by his
relapse into sadness.

'We're not equal to it, you and I,' she said with a laugh. 'We don't
live there; we can only pay a visit, as you said.'

He nodded, leaning back against the well-padded cushions with an air of
finding unwonted ease. He looked tired and worn.

'Why? We work too hard, I suppose. Yes, I work too, in my way.'

'It's not work exactly,' he said. 'They work too, you know.'

'What is it then?' She bent forward to look at his face, pale in the
light of the small carriage lamp.

'It's the Devil,' he told her. Their eyes met in a long gaze. Trix
smiled appealingly. She had to go back to her difficult life--to Mervyn,
to the Chance and Fricker entanglement. She felt alone and afraid.

'The Devil, is it? Have I raised him?' she asked. 'Well, you taught me
how. If I--if I come to grief, you must help me.'

'You don't know in the least the sort of man you're talking to,' he
declared, almost roughly.

'I know you're a good friend.'

'I am not,' said Airey Newton.

Again their eyes met, their hearts were like to open and tell secrets
that daylight hours would hold safely hidden. But it is not far--save
in the judgment of fashion--from the Magnifique to Danes Inn, and the
horse moved at a good trot. They came to a stand before the gates.

'I don't take your word for that,' she declared, giving him her hand. 'I
sha'n't believe it without a test,' she went on in a lighter tone. 'And
at any rate I sha'n't fail at your dinner-party.'

'No, don't fail at my party--my only party.' His smile was very bitter,
as he relinquished her hand and opened the door of the brougham. But she
detained him a moment; she was still reluctant to lose him, to be left
alone, to be driven back to her flat and to her life.

'We're nice people! We have a splendid evening, and we end it up in the
depths of woe! At least--you're in them too, aren't you?' She glanced
past him up the gloomy passage, and gave a little shudder. 'How could
you be anything else, living here?' she cried in accents of pity.

'You don't live here, yet you don't seem much better,' he retorted. 'You
are beautiful and beautifully turned out--gorgeous! And your brougham is
most comfortable. Yet you don't seem much better.'

Trix was put on her defence; she awoke suddenly to the fact that she had
been very near to a mood dangerously confidential.

'I've a few worries,' she laughed, 'but I have my pleasures too.'

'And I've my pleasures,' said Airey. 'And I suppose we both find them in
the end the best. Good-night.'

Each had put out a hand towards the veil that was between them; to each
had come an impulse to pluck it away. But courage failed, and it hung
there still. Both went back to their pleasures. In the ears of both
Peggy Ryle's whole-hearted laughter, her soft merry 'Hurrah!' that no
obvious cause called forth, echoed with the mockery of an unattainable
delight. You need clear soul-space for a laugh like that.




CHAPTER VII

A DANGEROUS GAME


There were whispers about Beaufort Chance, and nods and winks such as a
man in his position had better have given no occasion for; men told one
another things in confidence at the club; they were quite sure of them,
but at the same time very anxious not to be vouched as authority. For
there seemed no proof. The list of shareholders of the Dramoffsky
Concessions did not display his name; it did display, as owners of
blocks of shares, now larger, now smaller, a number of names unknown to
fame, social or financial; even Fricker's interest was modest according
to the list, and Beaufort Chance's seemed absolutely nothing. Yet still
the whispers grew.

Beaufort knew it by the subtle sense that will tell men who depend on
what people say of them what people are saying. He divined it with a
politician's sensitiveness to opinion. He saw a touch of embarrassment
where he was accustomed to meet frankness, he discerned constraint in
quarters where everything had been cordiality. He perceived the
riskiness of the game he played. He urged Fricker to secrecy and to
speed; they must not be seen together so much, and the matter must be
put through quickly; these were his two requirements. He was in
something of a terror; his manner grew nervous and his face careworn. He
knew that he could look for little mercy if he were discovered; he had
outraged the code. But he held on his way. His own money was in the
venture; if it were lost he was crippled in the race on which he had
entered. Trix Trevalla's money was in it too; he wanted Trix Trevalla
and he wanted her rich. He was so hard-driven by anxiety that he no
longer scrupled to put these things plainly to himself. His available
capital had not sufficed for a big stroke; hers and his, if he could
consider them as united, and if the big stroke succeeded, meant a decent
fortune; it was a fine scheme to get her to make him rich while at the
same time he earned her gratitude. He depended on Fricker to manage
this; he was, by himself, rather a helpless man in such affairs. Mrs.
Bonfill had never expected that he would rise to the top, even while she
was helping him to rise as high as he could.

Fricker was not inclined to hurry himself, and he played with the plea
for secrecy in a way that showed a consciousness of power over his
associate. He had been in one or two scandals, and to be in another
would have interfered with his plans--or at least with Mrs. Fricker's.
Yet there is much difference between a man who does not want any more
scandals and him who, for the sake of a great prize risking one, would
be ruined if his venture miscarried. Fricker's shrewd equable face
displayed none of the trouble which made Chance's heavy and careworn.

But there was hurry in Fricker's family, though not in Fricker. The
season was half-gone, little progress had been made, effect from Trix
Trevalla's patronage or favour was conspicuously lacking. Mrs. Fricker
did not hesitate to impute double-dealing to Trix, to declare that she
meant to give nothing and to take all she could. Fricker had a soul
somewhat above these small matters, but he observed honour with his
wife--for his oath's sake and a quiet life's. Moreover, be the affair
what it would, suggest to him that he was being 'bested' in it, and he
became dangerous.

A word is necessary about the position of Dramoffskys. They had
collapsed badly on Lord Farringham's pessimistic speech. Presently they
began to revive on the strength of 'inside buying'; yet their rise was
slow and languid, the Stock Exchange was distrustful, the public would
not come in. There was a nice little profit ('Not a scoop at present,'
observed Fricker) for those who had bought at the lowest figure, but
more rumours would stop the rise and might send quotations tumbling
again. It was all-important to know, or to be informed by somebody who
did, just how long to hold on, just when to come out. Dramoffskys, in
fine, needed a great deal of watching; the operator in them required the
earliest, best, and most confidential information that he could get.
Fricker was the operator. Beaufort Chance had his sphere. Trix, it will
be noticed, was inclined to behave purely as a sleeping partner, which
was all very well as regarded Dramoffskys themselves, but very far from
well as it touched her relations towards her fellows in the game.

Trix was praying for speed and secrecy as urgently as Beaufort Chance
himself; for secrecy from Mrs. Bonfill, from Mervyn, from all her
eminent friends; for speed that the enterprise might be prosperously
accomplished, the money made, and she be free again. No more ventures
for her, if once she were free, she declared. If once she were--free!
There she would pause and insist with herself that she had given
Beaufort Chance no reason to expect more than the friendship which was
all that he had openly claimed, nor the Frickers any right to look for
greater countenance or aid than her own acquaintance and hospitality
ensured them. Had she ever promised to marry Chance, or to take the
Frickers to Mrs. Bonfill's or the Glentorly's? She defied them to prove
any such thing--and looked forward with terror to telling them so.

At this point Mr. Liffey made entry on the scene with an article in 'The
Sentinel.' Mr. Liffey had a terribly keen nose for misdeeds of all sorts
and for secrets most inconvenient if disclosed. He was entirely
merciless and inexhaustibly good-natured. He never abused anybody; he
dealt with facts, leaving each person to judge those facts by his own
moral standard. He had no moral standard of his own, or said so; but he
had every idea of making 'The Sentinel' a paying property. He came out
now with an article whose heading seemed to harm nobody--since people
with certain names must by now be hardened to having their patronymics
employed in a representative capacity. 'Who are Brown, Jones, and
Robinson?' was the title of the article in 'The Sentinel.' As the reader
proceeded--and there were many readers--he found no more about these
names, and gathered that Mr. Liffey employed them (with a touch of
contempt, maybe) to indicate those gentlemen who, themselves unknown to
fame, figured so largely in the share list of Dramoffskys. With a
persistence worthy of some better end than that of making
fellow-creatures uncomfortable, or of protecting a public that can
hardly be said to deserve it, Mr. Liffey tracked these unoffending
gentlemen to the honourable, though modest, suburban homes in which they
dwelt, had the want of delicacy to disclose their avocations and the
amount of their salaries, touched jestingly on the probable claims of
their large families (he had their children by name!), and ended by
observing, with an innocent surprise, that their holdings in Dramoffskys
showed them to possess either resources of which his staff had not been
able to inform him, or, on the other hand, a commercial enterprise which
deserved higher remuneration than they appeared to be enjoying. He then
suggested that present shareholders and intending investors in
Dramoffskys might find the facts stated in his article of some interest,
and avowed his intention of pursuing his researches into this apparent
mystery. He ended by remarking, 'Of course, should it turn out that
these gentlemen, against whom I have not a word to say, hold their
shares in a fiduciary capacity, I have no more to say--no more about
them, at least.' And he promised, with cheerful obligingness, to deal
further with this point in his next number.

Within an hour of the appearance of this article Beaufort Chance entered
Fricker's study in great perturbation. He found that gentleman calm and
composed.

'How much does Liffey know?' asked Chance, almost trembling.

Fricker shrugged his shoulders. 'It doesn't much matter.'

'If he knows that I'm in it, that I've----'

'He won't know you're in it, unless one of the fellows gives us away.
Clarkson knows about you, and Tyrrwhitt--none of the rest. I think I can
keep them quiet. And we'll get out now. It's not as good as I hoped, but
it's pretty good, and it's time to go.' He looked up at Chance and
licked his cigar. 'Now's the moment to settle matters with the widow,'
he went on. 'You go and tell her what I want and what you want. I don't
trust her, and I want to see; and, Beaufort, don't tell her about
Dramoffskys till you find out what she means. If she's playing square,
all right. If not'--he smiled pensively--'she may find out for herself
the best time for selling Dramoffskys--and Glowing Stars too.'

'Glowing Stars? She's not deep in them, is she? I know nothing about
them.'

'A little private flutter--just between her and me,' Fricker assured
him. 'Now there's no time to lose. Come back here and tell me what
happens. Make her understand--no nonsense! No more shuffling! Be quick.
I shall hold up the market a bit while our men got out, but I won't let
you in for anything more.' Fricker's morals may have been somewhat to
seek, but he was a fine study at critical moments.

'You don't think Liffey knows----?' stammered Chance again.

'About those little hints of yours? I hope not. But I know, Beaufort, my
boy. Do as well as you can for me with the widow.'

Beaufort Chance scowled as he poured himself out a whisky-and-soda. But
he was Fricker's man and he must obey. He went out, the spectre of Mr.
Liffey seeming to walk with him and to tap him on the shoulder in a
genial way.

At eleven o'clock Beaufort Chance arrived at Trix Trevalla's and sent
up his name. Mrs. Trevalla sent down to say that she would he glad to
see him at lunch. He returned word that his business was important, and
would not bear delay. In ten minutes he found himself in her presence.
She wore a loose morning-gown, her hair was carefully dressed, she
looked very pretty; there was an air of excitement about her; fear and
triumph seemed to struggle for ascendancy in her manner. She laid a
letter down on the table by her as he entered. While they talked she
kept putting her hand on it and withdrawing it again, pulling the letter
towards her and pushing it away, fingering it continually, while she
kept a watchful eye on her companion.

'What's the hurry about?' she asked, with a languor that was not very
plausible. 'Dramoffskys?'

'Dramoffskys are all right,' said he deliberately, as he sat down
opposite her. 'But I want a talk with you, Trix.'

'Did we settle that you were to call me Trix?'

'I think of you as that.'

'Well, but that's much less compromising--and just as complimentary.'

'Business! business!' he smiled, giving her appearance an approving
glance. 'Fricker and I have been having a talk. We're not satisfied with
you, partner.' He had for the time conquered his agitation, and was able
to take a tone which he hoped would persuade her, without any need of
threats or of disagreeable hints.

'Am I not most amiable to Mr. Fricker, and Mrs., and Miss?' Trix's face
had clouded at the first mention of Fricker.

'You women are generally hopeless in business, but I expected better
things from you. Now let's come to the point. What have you done for the
Frickers?'

Reluctantly brought to the point, Trix recounted with all possible
amplitude what she considered she had done. Her hand was often on the
letter as she spoke. At the end, with a quick glance at Beaufort, she
said:--

'And really that's all I can do. They're too impossible, you know.'

He rose and stood on the hearthrug.

'That's all you can do?' he asked in a level smooth voice.

'Yes. Oh, a few more big squashes, perhaps. But it's nonsense talking of
the Glentorlys or of any of Mrs. Bonfill's really nice evenings.'

'It's not nonsense. You could do it if you liked. You know Mrs. Bonfill,
anyhow, would do it to please you; and I believe the Glentorlys would
too.'

'Well, then, I don't like,' said Trix Trevalla.

He frowned heavily and seemed as if he were going to break out
violently. But he waited a moment, and then spoke calmly again. The
truth is that Fricker's interests were nothing to him. They might go,
provided he could show that he had done his best for them; but doing his
best must not involve sacrificing his own chances.

'So much for Fricker! I must say you've a cool way with you, Trix.'

'The way you speak annoys me very much sometimes,' remarked Trix
reflectively.

'Why do you suppose he interested himself in your affairs?'

'I've done what I could.' Her lips shut obstinately. 'If I try to do
more I sha'n't help the Frickers and I shall hurt myself.'

'That's candid, at all events.' He smiled a moment. 'Don't be in a hurry
to say it to Fricker, though.'

'It'll be best to let the truth dawn on him gradually,' smiled Trix. 'Is
that all you wanted to say? Because I'm not dressed, and I promised to
be at the Glentorlys' at half-past twelve.'

'No, it's not all I've got to say.'

'Oh, well, be quick then.'

Her indifference was overdone, and Beaufort saw it. A suspicion came
into his mind. 'So much for Fricker!' he had said. Did she dare to think
of meting out the same cavalier treatment to him?

'I wish you'd attend to me and let that letter alone,' he said in a
sudden spasm of irritation.

'As soon as you begin, I'll attend,' retorted Trix; 'but you're not
saying anything. You're only saying you're going to say something.' Her
manner was annoying; perhaps she would have welcomed the diversion of a
little quarrel.

But Beaufort was not to be turned aside; he was bent on business.
Fricker, it seemed, was disposed of. He remained. But before he could
formulate a beginning to this subject, Trix broke in:--

'I want to get out of these speculations as soon as I can,' she said. 'I
don't mind about not making any more money as long as I don't lose any.
I'm tired of--of the suspense, and--and so on. And, oh, I won't have
anything more to do with the Frickers!'

He looked at her in quick distrust.

'Your views have undergone a considerable change,' he remarked. 'You
don't want to speculate? You don't mind about not making any more
money?'

Trix looked down and would not meet his eyes.

'Going to live on what you've got?' he asked mockingly. 'Or is it a case
of cutting down expenses and retiring to the country?'

'I don't want to discuss my affairs. I've told you what I wish.'

He took a turn across the room and came back. His voice was still calm,
but the effort was obvious.

'What's happened?' he asked.

'Nothing,' said Trix.

'That's not true.'

'Nothing that concerns you, I mean.'

'Am I to be treated like Fricker? Do you want to have nothing more to do
with me?'

'Nonsense! I want us to be friends, of course.'

'You seem to think you can use men just as you please. As long as
they're useful you'll be pleasant--you'll promise anything----'

'I never promised anything.'

'Oh, women don't promise only in words. You'll promise anything, hold
out any hopes, let anything be understood! No promises, no! You don't
like actual lying, perhaps, but you'll lie all the while in your actions
and your looks.'

People not themselves impeccable sometimes enunciate moral truths and
let them lose little in the telling. Trix sat flushed, miserable, and
degraded as Beaufort Chance exhibited her ways to her.

'You hold them off, and draw them on, and twiddle them about your
finger, and get all you can out of them, and make fools of them.
Then--something happens! Something that doesn't concern them! And, for
all you care, they may go to the devil! They may ruin themselves for
you. What of that? I daresay I've ruined myself for you. What of that?'

Trix was certainly no more than partly responsible for any trouble in
which Mr. Chance's dealings might land him; but we cannot attend to our
own faults in the very hour of preaching to others. Chance seemed to
himself a most ill-used man; he had no doubt that but for Trix Trevalla
he would have followed an undeviatingly straight path in public and
private morality.

'Well, what have you got to say?' he demanded roughly, almost brutally.

'I've nothing to say while you speak like that.'

'Didn't you lead me to suppose you liked me?'

'I did like you.'

'Stuff! You know what I mean. When I helped you--when I introduced
Fricker to you--was that only friendship? You knew better. And at that
time I was good enough for you. I'm not good enough for you now. So I'm
kicked out with Fricker! It's a precious dangerous game you play, Trix.'

'Don't call me Trix!'

'I might call you worse than that, and not do you any wrong.'

Among the temporal punishments of sin and folly there is perhaps none
harder to bear than the necessity of accepting rebuke from unworthy
lips, of feeling ourselves made inferior by our own acts to those
towards whom we really (of this we are clear) stand in a position of
natural superiority. Their fortuitous advantage is the most unpleasant
result of our little slips. Trix realised the truth of these reflections
as she listened to Beaufort Chance. Once again the scheme of life with
which she had started in London seemed to have something very wrong with
it.

'I--I'm sorry if I made you----' she began in a stammering way.

'Don't lie. It was deliberate from beginning to end,' he interrupted.

A silence followed. Trix fingered her letter. He stood there, motionless
but threatening. She was in simple bodily fear; the order not to lie
seemed the precursor of a blow--just as it used to be in early days when
her mother's nerves were very bad; but then Mrs. Trevalla's blows had
not been severe, and habit goes for something. This recrudescence of the
tone of the old life--the oldest life of all--was horrible.

Of course Beaufort Chance struck no blow; it would have been
ungentlemanly in the first place; in the second it was unnecessary;
thirdly, useless. Among men of his class the distinction lies, not in
doing or not doing such things, but in wanting or not wanting to do
them. Beaufort Chance had the desire; his bearing conveyed it to Trix.
But he spoke quietly enough the next minute.

'You'll find you can't go on in this fashion,' he said. 'I don't know
what your plan is now, though perhaps I can guess. You mean to start
afresh, eh? Not always so easy.' His look and voice were full of a
candid contempt; he spoke to her as a criminal might to his confederate
who had 'rounded on' him in consideration of favours from the police.

He did not strike her, but in the end, suddenly and with a coarse laugh,
he stooped down and wrenched the letter from her hand, not caring if he
hurt her. She gave a little cry, but sat there without a movement save
to chafe her wrenched fingers softly against the palm of the other hand.
Beaufort Chance read the letter; it was very short: 'I knew you would do
what I wish. Expect me to-morrow.--M.'

Trix wanted to feel horrified at his conduct--at its brutality, its
licence, its absolute ignoring of all the canons of decent conduct. Look
at him, as he stood there reading her letter, jeering at it in a
rancorous scorn and a derision charged with hatred! She could not
concentrate her indignation on her own wrong. Suddenly she saw his
too--his and Fricker's. She was outraged; but the outrage persisted in
having a flavour of deserved punishment. It was brutal; was it unjust?
On that question she stuck fast as she looked up and saw him reading her
letter. The next instant he tore it across and flung it into the grate
behind him.

'You'll do as he wishes!' he sneered. 'He knows you will! Yes, he knows
you're for sale, I suppose, just as I know it, and as Fricker knows it.
He can bid higher, eh? Well, I hope he'll get delivery of the goods he
buys. We haven't.'

He buttoned his frock-coat and looked round for his hat.

'Well, I've got a lot to do. I must go,' he said, with a curious
unconscious return to the ordinary tone and manner of society.
'Good-bye!'

'Good-bye, Mr. Chance,' said Trix, stretching out her hand towards the
bell.

'I'll let myself out,' he interposed hastily.

Trix rose slowly to her feet; she was rather pale and had some trouble
to keep her lips from twitching. Speak she could not; her brain would do
nothing but repeat his words; it would not denounce him for them, nor
impugn their truth; it would only repeat them. Whether they were just or
not was a question that seemed to fall into the background; it was
enough that anybody should be able to use them, and find her without a
reply.

Yet when he was gone her feeling was one of great relief. The thing had
been as bad as it could be, but it was done. It was over and finished.
The worst had come--was known, measured, and endured. At that price she
was free. She was degraded, bruised, beaten, but free. Chastened enough
to perceive the truths with which Beaufort Chance had assailed her so
unsparingly, she was not so changed in heart but that she still rejoiced
to think that the object towards which she worked, in whose interest she
had exposed herself to such a lashing, was still possible, really
unprejudiced, in fact hers if she would have it. The letter was gone;
but the promise of the letter lived.

Suddenly another thing occurred to her. What about Dramoffskys? What
about her precious money? There she was, in the hands of these men whom
she had flouted and enraged, so ignorant that she could do nothing for
herself, absolutely at their mercy. What would they do? Would they wash
their hands of her?

'Well, if they do--and I suppose they will--I must sell everything
directly, even if I lose by it,' she thought. 'That's the only thing,
and I sha'n't be quite ruined, I hope.'

Alas, how we misjudge our fellow-creatures! This trite reflection,
always useful as a corrective either to cynicism or to enthusiasm, was
to recur to Trix before the close of the day and to add one more to its
already long list of emotions. Wash their hands of her? Concern
themselves no more with her? That was not, it seemed, Mr. Fricker's
intention anyhow. The evening post brought her a letter from him; she
opened it with shrinking, fearing fresh denunciations, feeling herself
little able to bear any more flagellation. Yet she opened it on the
spot; she was unavoidably anxious about Dramoffskys.

Threats! Flagellation! Nothing of the sort. Fricker wrote in the
friendliest mood; he was almost playful:--


     'My dear Mrs. Trevalla,--I understand from our friend Beaufort
     Chance that he had an interview with you to-day. I have nothing to
     do with what concerns you and him only, and no desire to meddle.
     But as regards myself I fear that his friendly zeal may have given
     you rather a mistaken impression. I am grateful for your kindness,
     which is, I know, limited only by your ability to serve me, and I
     shall think it a privilege to look after your interests as long as
     you leave them in my charge. I gather from Chance that you are
     anxious to sell your Dramoffskys at the first favourable moment. I
     will bear this in mind. Let me, however, take the liberty of
     advising you to think twice before you part with your Glowing
     Stars. I hear good reports, and even a moderate rise would give you
     a very nice little profit on the small sum which you entrusted to
     me for investment in G. S.'s. Of course you must use your own
     judgment, and I can guarantee nothing; but you will not have found
     my advice often wrong. I may sell some of your Dramoffskys and put
     the proceeds in G. S.'s.

     'I am, dear Mrs. Trevalla,
     'With every good wish,
     'Very faithfully yours,
     SYDNEY FRICKER.'


There was nothing wherewith to meet this letter save a fit of remorse, a
very kindly note to Mr. Fricker, and a regret that it was really
impossible to do much for the Frickers. These emotions and actions duly
occurred; and Trix Trevalla went to bed in a more tolerable frame of
mind than had at one time seemed probable.

The gentleman unknown to fame sold Dramoffskys largely that day, and at
last, in spite of Mr. Fricker, the price fell and fell. Fricker,
however, professed himself sanguine. He bought a few more; then he sold
a few for Trix Trevalla; then he bought for her a few Glowing Stars,
knowing that his friendly note would gain him a free hand in his
dealings. But his smile had been rather mysterious as he booked his
purchases, and also while he wrote the note; and----

'It's all right, my dear,' he said to Mrs. Fricker, in reply to certain
observations which she made. 'Leave it to me, my dear, and wait a bit.'

He had not washed his hands of Trix Trevalla; and Beaufort Chance was
ready to let him work his will. As a pure matter of business Mr. Fricker
had found that it did not pay to be forgiving; naturally he had
discarded the practice.




CHAPTER VIII

USURPERS ON THE THRONE


Airey Newton was dressing for dinner, for that party of his which Tommy
Trent had brought about, and which was causing endless excitement in the
small circle. He arrayed himself slowly and ruefully, choosing with care
his least frayed shirt, glancing ever and again at a parcel of
five-pound notes which lay on the table in front of him. There were more
notes than the dinner would demand, however lavish in his orders Tommy
might have been; Airey had determined to run no risks. He was trying
hard to persuade himself that he was going to have a pleasant evening,
and to enjoy dispensing to his friends a sumptuous hospitality. The task
was a difficult one. He could not help thinking that those notes were
not made to perish; they were created in order that they might live and
breed; he hated to fritter them away. Yet he hated himself for hating
it.

To this pass he had come gradually. First the money, which began to roll
in as his work prospered and his reputation grew, had been precious as
an evidence of success and a testimony of power. He really wanted it for
nothing else; his tastes had always been simple, he had no expensive
recreations; nobody (as he told Tommy Trent) had any claim on him; he
was alone in the world (except for the rest of mankind, of course). He
saved his money, and in that seemed to be doing the right and reasonable
thing. When the change began or how it worked he could not now trace.
Gradually his living had become more simple, and passed from simple to
sparing; everything that threatened expense was nipped in the bud. It
began to be painful to spend money, sweet only to make it, to invest it,
and to watch its doings. By an effort of will he forced himself to
subscribe with decent liberality to a fair number of public
institutions--his bankers paid the subscriptions for him. Nor did he
fail if a direct appeal was made for an urgent case; then he would give,
though not cheerfully. He could not be called a miser, but he had let
money get altogether out of its proper place in life. It had become to
him an end, and was no longer a means; even while he worked he thought
of how much the work would bring. He thought more about money than about
anything else in the world; and he could not endure to waste it. By
wasting it he meant making his own and other people's lives pleasanter
by the use of it.

Nobody knew, save Tommy Trent. People who did business with him might
conjecture that Airey Newton must be doing pretty well; but such folk
were not of his life, and what they guessed signified nothing. Of his
few friends none suspected, least of all Peggy Ryle, who came and ate
his bread-and-butter, believing that she was demanding and receiving
from a poor comrade the utmost stretch of an unreserved hospitality. He
suffered to see her mistake, yet not without consolation. There was a
secret triumph; he felt and hated it. That had been his feeling when he
asked Tommy Trent how he could continue to be his friend. He began to
live in an alternation of delight and shame, of joy in having his money,
of fear lest somebody should discover that he had it. Yet he did not
hate Tommy Trent, who knew. He might well have hated Tommy in his heart.
This again was peculiar in his own eyes, and perhaps in fact. And his
friends loved him--not without cause either; he would have given them
anything except what to another would have been easiest to give; he
would give them even time, for that was only money still uncoined. Coin
was the great usurper.

The dinner was a splendid affair. Airey had left all the ordering to
Tommy Trent, and Tommy had been imperial. There were flowers without
stint on the table; there were bouquets and button-holes; there was a
gorgeously emblazoned bill of fare; there were blocks of ice specially
carved in fantastic forms; there were hand-painted cards with the names
of the guests curiously wrought thereon. Airey furtively fingered his
packet of bank-notes, but he could not help being rather pleased when
Tommy patted him on the back and said that it all looked splendid. It
did look splendid; Airey stroked his beard with a curious smile. He
actually felt now as though he might enjoy himself.

The guests began to arrive punctually. Efforts in raiment had evidently
been made. Mrs. John was in red, quite magnificent. Elfreda had a lace
frock, on the subject of which she could not be reduced to silence.
Miles Childwick wore a white waistcoat with pearl buttons, and tried to
give the impression that wearing it was an ordinary occurrence. They
were all doing their best to honour the occasion and the host. A pang
shot through Airey Newton; he might have done this for them so often!

Trix came in splendour. She was very radiant, feeling sure that her
troubles were at an end, and her sins forgiven in the popular and
practical sense that she would suffer no more inconvenience from them.
Had not Beaufort Chance raved his worst? and was not Fricker--well, at
heart a gentleman? asked she with a smile. There was more. Triumph was
impending; nay, it was won; it waited only to be declared. She smiled
again to think that she was going to dine with these dear people on the
eve of her greatness How little they knew! In this moment it is to be
feared that Trix was something of a snob. She made what amends she could
by feeling also that she was glad to have an evening with them before
her greatness settled on her.

Peggy was late; this was nothing unusual, but the delay seemed long to
Tommy Trent, who awaited with apprehension her attitude towards the
lavishness of the banquet. Would she walk out again? He glanced at
Airey. Airey appeared commendably easy in his mind, and was talking to
Trix Trevalla with reassuring animation.

'Here she comes!' cried Horace Harnack.

'She's got a new frock too,' murmured Elfreda, regarding her own
complacently, and threatening to renew the subject on the least
provocation.

Peggy had a new frock. And it was black--plain black, quite unrelieved.
Now she never wore black, not because it was unbecoming, but just for a
fad. A new black frock must surely portend something. Peggy's manner
enforced that impression. She did indeed give one scandalised cry of
'Airey!' when she saw the preparations, but evidently her mind was
seriously preoccupied; she said she had been detained by business.

'Frock hadn't come home, I suppose?' suggested Miles Childwick
witheringly.

'It hadn't,' Peggy admitted, 'but I had most important letters to write,
too.' She paused, and then added, 'I don't suppose I ought to be here at
all, but I had to come to Airey's party. My uncle in Berlin is dead.'

She said this just as they sat down. It produced almost complete
silence. Trix indeed, with the habits of society, murmured condolence,
while she thought that Peggy might either have stayed away or have said
nothing about the uncle. Nobody else spoke; they knew that Peggy had not
seen the uncle for years, and could not be supposed to be suffering
violent personal grief. But they knew also the significance of the
uncle; he had been a real, though distant, power to them; the cheques
had come from him. Now he had died.

Their glances suggested to one another that somebody might put a
question--somebody who had tact, and could wrap it up in a decorous
shape. Peggy herself offered no more information, but sat down by Tommy
and began on her soup.

Conversation, reviving after the shock that Peggy had administered,
presently broke out again. Under cover of it Peggy turned to Tommy and
asked in a carefully subdued whisper: 'How much is a mark?'

'A mark?' repeated Tommy, who was tasting the champagne critically.

'Yes. German money, you know.'

'Oh, about a shilling.'

'A shilling?' Peggy pondered. 'I thought it was a franc?'

'No, more than that. About a shilling.'

Peggy gave a sudden little laugh, and her eyes danced gleefully.

'You mustn't look like that. It's not allowed,' said Tommy firmly.

'Then twenty thousand marks----?' whispered Peggy.

'Would be twenty thousand shillings--or twenty-five thousand francs--or
in the depreciated condition of Italian silver some twenty-seven
thousand lire. It would also be five thousand dollars, more cowrie
shells than I can easily reckon, and, finally, it would amount to one
thousand pounds sterling of this realm, or thereabouts.'

Peggy laughed again.

'I'm sorry your uncle's dead,' pursued Tommy gravely.

'Oh, so am I! He was always disagreeable, but he was kind too. I'm
really sorry. Oh, but Tommy----'

The effort was thoroughly well-meant, but sorrow had not much of a
chance. Peggy's sincerity was altogether too strong and natural. She was
overwhelmed by the extraordinary effect of the uncle's death.

'He's left me twenty thousand marks,' she gasped out at last. 'Don't
tell anybody--not yet.'

'Well done him!' said Tommy Trent. 'I knew he was a good sort--from
those cheques, you know.'

'A thousand pounds!' mused Peggy Ryle. She looked down at her garment.
'So I got a frock for him, you see,' she explained. 'I wish this was my
dinner,' she added. Apparently the dinner might have served as a mark of
respect as well as the frock.

'Look here,' said Tommy. 'You've got to give me that money, you know.'

Peggy turned astonished and outraged eyes on him.

'I'll invest it for you, and get you forty or fifty pounds a year for
it--regular--quarterly.'

'I'm going to spend it,' Peggy announced decisively. 'There are a
thousand things I want to do with it. It is good of uncle!'

'No, no! You give it to me. You must learn to value money.'

'To value money! Why must I? None of us do.' She looked round the table.
'Certainly we've none of us got any.'

'It would be much better if they did value it,' said Tommy with a
politico-economical air.

'You say that when you've made poor Airey give us this dinner!' she
cried triumphantly.

With a wry smile Tommy Trent gave up the argument; he had no answer to
that. Yet he was a little vexed. He was a normal man about money; his
two greatest friends--Peggy and Airey Newton--were at the extreme in
different directions. What did that signify? Well, after all, something.
The attitude people hold towards money is, in one way and another, a
curiously far-reaching thing, both in its expression of them and in its
effect on others. Just as there was always an awkwardness between Tommy
and Airey Newton because Airey would not spend as much as he ought,
there was now a hint of tension, of disapproval on one side and of
defiance on the other, because Peggy meant to spend all that she had.
There is no safety even in having nothing; the problems you escape for
yourself you raise for your friends.

Peggy, having sworn Tommy to secrecy, turned her head round, saw Arty
Kane, could by no means resist the temptation, told him the news, and
swore him to secrecy. He gave his word, and remarked across the table to
Miles Childwick: 'Peggy's been left a thousand pounds.'

Then he turned to her, saying, 'I take it all on myself. It was really
the shortest way, you know.'

Indescribable commotion followed. Everybody had a plan for spending the
thousand pounds; each of them appropriated and spent it on the spot; all
agreed that Peggy was the wrong person to have it, and that they were
immensely glad that she had got it. Suggestions poured in on her. It may
be doubted whether the deceased uncle had ever created so much
excitement while he lived.

'I propose to do no work for weeks,' said Miles Childwick. 'I shall just
come and dine.'

'I think of an _édition de luxe_,' murmured Arty Kane.

'I shall take nothing but leading business,' said Horace Harnack.

'We shall really have to make a great effort to avoid being maintained,'
murmured Mrs. John, surprised into a remark that sounded almost as
though it came from her books.

Trix Trevalla had listened to all the chatter with a renewal of her
previous pleasure, enjoying it yet the more because, thanks to Fricker's
gentlemanly conduct, to the worst of Beaufort Chance being over, and to
her imminent triumph, her soul was at peace, and her attention not
preoccupied. She, too, found herself rejoicing very heartily for Peggy's
sake. She knew what pleasure Peggy would get, what a royal time lay
before her.

'She'll spend it all. How will she feel when it's finished?'

The question came from Airey Newton, her neighbour. There was no touch
of malice about it; it was put in a full-hearted sympathy.

'What a funny way to look at it!' exclaimed Trix, laughing.

'Funny! Why? You know she'll spend it. Oh, perhaps you don't; we do. And
when it's gone----'

He shrugged his shoulders; her last state would be worse than her first,
he meant to say.

Trix stopped laughing. She was touched; it was pathetic to see how the
man who worked for a pittance felt a sort of pain at the idea of
squandering--an unselfish pain for the girl who would choose a brief
ecstasy of extravagance when she might ensure a permanent increase of
comfort. She could not herself feel like that about such a trifle as a
thousand pounds (all in, she was wearing about a thousand pounds, and
that not in full fig), but she saw how the case must appear to Airey
Newton; the windfall that had tumbled into Peggy's lap meant years of
hard work and of self-respecting economy to him.

'Yes, you're right,' she said. 'But she's too young for the lesson. And
I--well, I'm afraid I'm incurable. You don't set us the best example
either.' She smiled again as she indicated the luxurious table.

'A very occasional extravagance,' he remarked, seeing her
misapprehension quite clearly, impelled to confirm it by his unresting
fear of discovery, fingering the packet of five-pound notes in his
pocket.

'I wish somebody could teach me to be prudent,' smiled Trix.

'Can one be taught to be different?' he asked, rather gloomily.

'Money doesn't really make one happy,' said Trix in the tone of a
disillusionised millionaire.

'I suppose not,' he agreed, but with all the scepticism of a hopeless
pauper.

They both acted their parts well; each successfully imposed on the
other. But pretence on this one point did not hinder a genuine sympathy
nor a reciprocal attraction between them. He seemed to her the haven
that she might have loved, yet had always scorned; she was to him the
type of that moving, many-coloured, gay life which his allegiance to his
jealous god forbade him to follow or to know. And they were united again
by a sense common to them, apart from the rest of the company--the sense
of dissatisfaction; it was a subtle bond ever felt between them, and
made them turn to one another with smiles half-scornful, half-envious,
when the merriment rose high.

'I'm glad to meet you to-night,' she said, 'because I think I can tell
you that your advice--your Paris advice--has been a success.'

'You seemed rather doubtful about that when we met last.'

'Yes, I was.' She laughed a little. 'Oh, I've had some troubles, but I
think I'm in smooth water now.' She hardly repressed the ring of triumph
in her voice.

'Ah, then you won't come again to Danes Inn!'

There was an unmistakable regret in his tone. Trix felt it echoed in her
heart. She met his glance for a moment; the contact might have lasted
longer, but he, less practised in such encounters, turned hastily away.
Enough had passed to tell her that if she did not come she would be
missed, enough to make her feel that in not going she would lose
something which she had come to think of as pleasant in life. Was there
always a price to be paid? Great or small, perhaps, but a price always?

'You should come sometimes where you can be seen,' she said lightly.

'A pretty figure I should cut!' was his good-humoured, rather despairing
comment.

Trix was surprised by a feeling stronger than she could have
anticipated; she desired to escape from it; it seemed as though Airey
Newton and his friends were laying too forcible a hold on her. They had
nothing to do with the life that was to be hers; they were utterly
outside that, though they might help her to laugh away an evening or
amuse her with their comments on human nature and its phases. To her his
friends and he were essentially a distraction; they and he must be kept
in the place appropriate to distractions.

At the other end of the table an elementary form of joke was achieving a
great success. It lay in crediting Peggy with unmeasured wealth, in
assigning her quarters in the most fashionable part of the town, in
marrying her to the highest bigwig whose title occurred to any one of
the company. She was passed from Park Lane to Grosvenor Square and
assigned every rank in the peerage. Schemes of benevolence were proposed
to her, having for their object the endowment of literature and art.

'You will not continue the exercise of your profession, I presume?'
asked Childwick, referring to Peggy's projected lessons in the art of
painting and a promise to buy her works which she had wrung from a
dealer notoriously devoted to her.

'She won't know us any more,' moaned Arty Kane.

'She'll glare at us from boxes--boxes paid for,' sighed Harnack.

'I shall never lose any more frocks,' said Elfreda with affected
ruefulness.

Trix smiled at all this--a trifle sadly. What was attributed in
burlesque to the newly enriched Peggy was really going to be almost true
of herself. Well, she had never belonged to them; she had been a visitor
always.

The most terrible suggestion came from Mrs. John--rather late, of
course, and as if Mrs. John had taken some pains with it.

'She'll have her hair done quite differently.'

The idea produced pandemonium.

'What of my essay?' demanded Childwick.

'What of my poem?' cried Arty Kane.

Everybody agreed that a stand must be made here. A formal pledge was
demanded from Peggy. When she gave it her health was drunk with
acclamation.

A lull came with the arrival of coffee. Perhaps they were exhausted. At
any rate when Miles Childwick began to talk they did not stop him at
once as their custom was, but let him go on for a little while. He was a
thin-faced man with a rather sharp nose, prematurely bald, and bowed
about the shoulders. Trix Trevalla watched him with some interest.

'If there were such a thing as being poor and unsuccessful,' he remarked
with something that was almost a wink in his eye (Trix took it to
deprecate interruption), 'it would probably be very unpleasant. Of
course, however, it does not exist. The impression to the contrary is an
instance of what I will call the Fallacy of Broad Views. We are always
taking broad views of our neighbours' lives; then we call them names.
Happily we very seldom need to take them of our own.' He paused, looked
round the silent table, and observed gravely, 'This is very unusual.'

Only a laugh from Peggy, who would have laughed at anything, broke the
stillness. He resumed:--

'You call a man poor, meaning thereby that he has little money by the
year. Ladies and gentlemen, we do not feel in years, we are not hungry
_per annum_. You call him unsuccessful because a number of years leave
him much where he was in most things. It may well be a triumph!' He
paused and asked, 'Shall I proceed?'

'If you have another and quite different idea,' said Arty Kane.

'Well, then, that Homogeneity of Fortune is undesirable among friends.'

'Trite and obvious,' said Manson Smith. 'It excludes the opportunity of
lending fivers.'

'I shall talk no more,' said Childwick. 'If we all spoke plain English
originality would become impossible.'

The end of the evening came earlier than usual. Peggy was going to a
party or two. She had her hansom waiting to convey her. It had, it
appeared, been waiting all through dinner. With her departure the rest
melted away. Trix Trevalla, again reluctant to go, at last found herself
alone with Airey Newton, Tommy having gone out to look for her carriage.
The waiter brought the bill and laid it down beside Airey.

'Is it good luck or bad luck for Peggy?' she asked reflectively.

'For Peggy it is good luck; she has instincts that save her. But she'll
be very poor again.' He came back to that idea persistently.

'She'll marry somebody and be rich.' A sudden thought came and made her
ask Airey, 'Would you marry for money?'

He thought long, taking no notice of the bill beside him. 'No,' he said
at last, 'I shouldn't care about money I hadn't made.'

'A funny reason for the orthodox conclusion!' she laughed. 'What does it
matter who made it as long as you have it?'

Airey shook his head in an obstinate way. Tommy Trent, just entering the
doorway, saw him lay down three or four notes; he did not look at the
bill. The waiter with a smile gave him back one, saying '_Pardon,
monsieur!_' and pointing to the amount of the account. Tommy stood where
he was, looking on still.

'Well, I must go,' said Trix, rising. 'You've given us a great deal of
pleasure; I hope you've enjoyed it yourself!'

The waiter brought back the bill and the change. Airey scooped up the
change carelessly, and gave back a sovereign. Tommy could not see the
coin, but he saw the waiter's low and cordial bow. He was smiling
broadly as he came up to Airey.

'Business done, old fellow? We must see Mrs. Trevalla into her
carriage.'

'Good-bye to you both,' said Trix. 'Such an evening!' Her eyes were
bright; she seemed rather moved. There was in Tommy's opinion nothing to
account for any emotion, but Airey Newton was watching her with a
puzzled air.

'And I shall remember that there's no such thing as being poor or
unsuccessful,' she laughed. 'We must thank Mr. Childwick for that.'

'There's nothing of that sort for you anyhow, Mrs. Trevalla,' said
Tommy. He offered his arm, but withdrew it again, smiling. 'I forgot the
host's privileges,' he said.

He followed them downstairs, and saw Airey put Trix in her carriage.

'Good-bye,' she called wistfully, as she was driven away.

'Shall we stroll?' asked Tommy. The night was fine this time.

They walked along in silence for some little way. Then Airey said:--

'Thank you, Tommy.'

'It was no trouble,' said Tommy generously, 'and you did it really
well.'

It was no use. Airey had struggled with the secret; he had determined
not to tell anybody--not to think of it or to take account of it even
within himself. But it would out.

'It's all right. I happened to get a little payment to-day--one that I'd
quite given up hope of ever seeing.'

'How lucky, old chap!' Tommy was content to say.

It was evident that progress would be gradual. Airey was comforting
himself with the idea that he had given his dinner without encroaching
on his hoard.

Yet something had been done--more than Tommy knew of, more than he could
fairly have taken credit for. When Airey reached Danes Inn he found it
solitary, and he found it mean. His safe and his red book were not able
to comfort him. No thought of change came to him; he was far from that.
He did not even challenge his mode of life or quarrel with the motive
that inspired it. The usurper was still on the throne in his heart, even
as Trix's usurper sat still enthroned in hers. Airey got no farther than
to be sorry that the motive and the mode of life necessitated certain
things and excluded others. He was not so deeply affected but that he
put these repinings from him with a strong hand. Yet they recurred
obstinately, and pictures, long foreign to him, rose before his eyes. He
had a vision of a great joy bought at an enormous price, purchased with
a pang that he at once declared would be unendurable. But the vision was
there, and seemed bright.

'What a comforting thing impossibility is sometimes!' His reflections
took that form as he smoked his last pipe. If all things were possible,
what struggles there would be! He could never be called upon to choose
between the vision and the pang. That would be spared him by the
blessing of impossibility.

Rare as the act was, it could hardly be the giving of a dinner which had
roused these new and strange thoughts in him. The vision borrowed form
and colour from the commonest mother of visions--a woman's face.

Two or three days later Peggy Ryle brought him seven hundred
pounds--because he had a safe. He said the money would be all right,
and, when she had gone, stowed it away in the appointed receptacle.

'I keep my own there,' he had explained with an ironical smile, and had
watched Peggy's carefully grave nod with an inward groan.




CHAPTER IX

BRUISES AND BALM


Gossip in clubs and whispers from more secret circles had a way of
reaching Mrs. Bonfill's ears. In the days that followed Mr. Liffey's
public inquiry as to who Brown, Jones, and Robinson might be, care sat
on her broad brow, and she received several important visitors. She was
much troubled; it was the first time that there had been any
unpleasantness with regard to one of her _protégés_. She felt it a slur
on herself, and at first there was a hostility in her manner when Lord
Glentorly spoke to her solemnly and Constantine Blair came to see her in
a great flutter. But she was open to reason, a woman who would listen;
she listened to them. Glentorly said that only his regard for her made
him anxious to manage things quietly; Blair insisted more on the
desirability of preventing anything like a scandal in the interests of
the Government. There were rumours of a question in the House; Mr.
Liffey's next article might even now be going to press. As to the fact
there was little doubt, though the details were rather obscure.

'We are willing to leave him a bridge to retreat by, but retreat he
must,' said Glentorly in a metaphor appropriate to his office.

'You're the only person who can approach both Liffey and Chance
himself,' Constantine Blair represented to her.

'Does it mean his seat as well as his place?' she asked.

'If it's all kept quite quiet, we think nothing need be said about his
seat,' Blair told her.

There had been a difference of opinion on that question, but the less
stringent moralists--or the more compassionate men--had carried their
point.

'But once there's a question, or an exposure by Liffey--piff!' Blair
blew Beaufort Chance to the relentless winds of heaven and the popular
press.

'How did he come to be so foolish?' asked Mrs. Bonfill in useless,
regretful wondering.

'You'll see Liffey? Nobody else can do anything with him, of course.'

Mrs. Bonfill was an old friend of Liffey's; before she became motherly,
when Liffey was a young man, and just establishing 'The Sentinel,' he
had been an admirer of hers, and, in that blameless fashion about which
Lady Blixworth was so flippant, she had reciprocated his liking; he was
a pleasant, witty man, and they had always stretched out friendly hands
across the gulf of political difference and social divergence. Liffey
might do for Mrs. Bonfill what he would not for all the Estates of the
Realm put together.

'I don't know how much you know or mean to say,' she began to Liffey,
after cordial greetings.

'I know most of what there is to know, and I intend to say it all,' was
his reply.

'How did you find out?'

'From Brown, a gentleman who lives at Clapham, and whose other name is
Clarkson. Fricker's weak spot is that he's a screw; he never lets the
subordinates stand in enough. So he gets given away. I pointed that out
to him over the Swallow Islands business, but he won't learn from me.'
Mr. Liffey spoke like an unappreciated philanthropist. The Swallow
Islands affair had been what Fricker called a 'scoop'--a very big thing;
but there had been some trouble afterwards.

'Say all you like about Fricker----'

'Oh, Fricker's really neither here nor there. The public are such asses
that I can't seriously injure Fricker, though I can make an article out
of him. But the other----'

'Don't mention any public men,' implored Mrs. Bonfill, as though she
had the fair fame of the country much at heart.

'Any public men?' There was the hint of a sneer in Liffey's voice.

'I suppose we needn't mention names. He's not a big fish, of course, but
still it would be unpleasant.'

'I'm not here to make things pleasant for Farringham and his friends.'

'I speak as one of your friends--and one of his.'

'This isn't quite fair, you know,' smiled Liffey. 'With the article in
type, too!'

'We've all been in such a fidget about it.'

'I know!' he nodded. 'Glentorly like a hen under a cart, and Constantine
fussing in and out like a cuckoo on a clock! Thank God, I'm not a
politician!'

'You're only a censor,' she smiled with amiable irony. 'I'm making a
personal matter of it,' she went on with the diplomatic candour that had
often proved one of her best weapons.

'And the public interest? The purity of politics? Cæsar's wife?' Liffey,
in his turn, allowed himself an ironical smile.

'He will resign his place--not his seat, but his place. Isn't that
enough? It's the end of his chosen career.'

'Have you spoken to him?'

'No. But of course I can make him. What choice has he? Is it true
there's to be a question? I heard that Alured Cummins meant to ask one.'

'Between ourselves, it's a point that I had hardly made up my mind on.'

'Ah, I knew you were behind it!'

'It would have been just simultaneous with my second article. Effective,
eh?'

'Have you anything quite definite--besides the speculation, I mean?'

'Yes. One clear case of--well, of Fricker's knowing something much too
soon. I've got a copy of a letter our gentleman wrote. Clarkson gave it
me. It's dated the 24th, and it's addressed to Fricker.'

'Good gracious! May I tell him that?'

'I proposed to tell him myself,' smiled Liffey, 'or to let Cummins break
the news.'

'If he knows that, he must consent to go.' She glanced at Liffey. 'My
credit's at stake too, you see.' It cost her something to say this.

'You went bail for him, did you?' Liffey was friendly, contemptuous, and
even compassionate.

'I thought well of him, and said so to George Glentorly. I ask it as a
friend.'

'As a friend you must have it. But make it clear. He resigns in three
days--or article, letter, and Alured Cummins!'

'I'll make it clear--and thank you,' said Mrs. Bonfill. 'I know it's a
sacrifice.'

'I'd have had no mercy on him,' laughed Liffey. 'As it is, I must vamp
up something dull and innocuous to get myself out of my promise to the
public.'

'I think he'll be punished enough.'

'Perhaps. But look how I suffer!'

'There are sinners left, enough and to spare.'

'So many of them have charming women for their friends.'

'Oh, you don't often yield!'

'No, not often, but--you were an early subscriber to "The Sentinel."'

It would be untrue to say that the sort of negotiation on which she was
now engaged was altogether unpleasant to Mrs. Bonfill. Let her not be
called a busybody; but she was a born intermediary. A gratifying sense
of power mingled with the natural pain. She wired to Constantine Blair,
'All well if X. is reasonable,' and sent a line asking Beaufort Chance
to call.

Chance had got out of Dramoffskys prosperously. His profit was good,
though not what it had been going to reach but for Liffey's article. Yet
he was content; the article and the whispers had frightened him, but he
hoped that he would now be safe. He meant to run no more risks, to walk
no more so near the line, certainly never to cross it. A sinner who has
reached this frame of mind generally persuades himself that he can and
ought to escape punishment; else where is the virtue--or where, anyhow,
the sweetness--that we find attributed to penitence? And surely he had
been ill-used enough--thanks to Trix Trevalla!

In this mood he was all unprepared for the blow that his friend Mrs.
Bonfill dealt him. He began defiantly. What Liffey threatened, what his
colleagues suspected, he met by angry assertions of innocence, by
insisting that a plain statement would put them all down, by indignation
that she should believe such things of him, and make herself the
mouthpiece of such accusations. In fine, he blustered, while she sat in
sad silence, waiting to produce her last card. When she said, 'Mr.
Fricker employed a man named Clarkson?' he came to a sudden stop in his
striding about the room; his face turned red, he looked at her with a
quick furtive air. 'Well, he's stolen a letter of yours.'

'What letter?' he burst out.

With pity Mrs. Bonfill saw how easily his cloak of unassailable
innocence fell away from him.

She knew nothing of the letter save what Liffey had told her.

'It's to Mr. Fricker, and it's dated the 24th,' said she.

Was that enough? She watched his knitted brows; he was recalling the
letter. He wasted no time in abusing the servant who had betrayed him;
he had no preoccupation except to recollect that letter. Mrs. Bonfill
drank her tea while he stood motionless in the middle of the room.

When he spoke again his voice sounded rather hollow and hoarse.

'Well, what do they want of me?' he asked.

Mrs. Bonfill knew that she saw before her a beaten man. All pleasure
had gone from her now; the scene was purely painful; she had liked and
helped the man. But she had her message to deliver, even as it had come
to her. He must resign in three days--or article, letter, and Alured
Cummins! That was the alternative she had to put before him.

'You've too many irons in the fire, Beaufort,' said she with a shake of
her head and a friendly smile. 'One thing clashes with another.'

He dropped into a chair, and sat looking before him moodily.

'There'll be plenty left. You'll have your seat still; and you'll be
free to give all your time to business and make a career there.'

Still he said nothing. She forced herself to go on.

'It should be done at once. We all think so. Then it'll have an entirely
voluntary look.'

Still he was mute.

'It must be done in three days, Beaufort,' she half-whispered, leaning
across towards him. 'In three days, or--or no arrangement can be made.'
She waited a moment, then added, 'Go and write it this afternoon. And
send a little paragraph round--about pressure of private business, or
something, you know. Then I should take a rest somewhere, if I were
you.'

He was to vanish--from official life for ever, from the haunts of men
till men had done talking about him. Mrs. Bonfill's delicacy of
expression was not guilty of obscuring her meaning in the least. She
knew that her terms were accepted when he took his hat and bade her
farewell with a dreary heavy awkwardness. On his departure she heaved a
sigh of complicated feelings: satisfaction that the thing was done,
sorrow that it had to be, wonder at him, surprise at her own mistake
about him. She had put him in his place; she had once thought him worthy
of her dearest Trix Trevalla. These latter reflections tempered her
pride in the achievements of her diplomacy, and moderated to a
self-depreciatory tone the reports which she proceeded to write to Mr.
Liffey and to Constantine Blair.

Hard is the case of a man fallen into misfortune who can find nobody but
himself to blame; small, it may be added, is his ingenuity. Beaufort
Chance, while he wrote his bitter note, while he walked the streets
suspicious of the glances and fearful of the whispers of those he met,
had no difficulty in fixing on the real culprit, on her to whom his fall
and all that had led to it were due. He lost sight of any fault of his
own in a contemplation of the enormity of Trix Trevalla's. To cast her
down would be sweet; it would still be an incentive to exalt himself if
thereby he could make her feel more unhappy. If he still could grow rich
and important although his chosen path was forbidden him, if she could
become poor and despised, then he might cry quits. Behind this simple
malevolence was a feeling hardly more estimable, though it derived its
origin from better things; it was to him that he wanted her to come on
her knees, begging his forgiveness, ready to be his slave and to take
the crumbs he threw her.

These thoughts, no less than an instinctive desire to go somewhere where
he would not be looked at askance, where he would still be a great man
and still be admired, took him to the Frickers' later in the afternoon.
A man scorned of his fellows is said to value the society of his dog; if
Fricker would not have accepted the parallel, it might in Chance's mind
be well applied to Fricker's daughter Connie. Lady Blixworth had once
described this young lady unkindly; but improvements had been
undertaken. She was much better dressed now, and her figure responded to
treatment, as the doctors say. Nature had given her a fine poll of dark
hair, and a pair of large black eyes, highly expressive, and never
allowed to grow rusty for want of use. To her Beaufort was a great man;
his manners smacked of the society which was her goal; the touch of
vulgarity, from which good birth and refined breeding do not always save
a man vulgar in soul, was either unperceived or, as is perhaps more
likely, considered the hall-mark of 'smartness'; others than Connie
Fricker might perhaps be excused for some confusion on this point. Yet
beneath her ways and her notions Connie had a brain.

Nobody except Miss Fricker was at home, Beaufort was told; but he said
he would wait for Mrs. Fricker, and went into the drawing-room. The
Frickers lived in a fine, solid, spacious house of respectable age. Its
walls remained; they had gutted the interior and had it refurnished and
re-bedecked; the effect was that of a modern daub in a handsome frame.
It is unkind, but hardly untrue, to say that Connie Fricker did not
dispel this idea when she joined Beaufort Chance and said that some
whisky-and-soda was coming; she led him into the smaller drawing-room
where smoking was allowed; she said that she was so glad that mamma was
out.

'I don't often get a chance of talking to you, Mr. Chance.'

Probably every man likes a reception conceived in this spirit; how
fastidious he may be as to the outward and visible form which clothes
the spirit depends partly on his nature, probably more on his mood;
nobody is always particular, just as nobody is always wise. The dog is
fond and uncritical--let us pat the faithful animal. Chance was much
more responsive in his manner to Connie than he had ever been before;
Connie mounted to heights of delight as she ministered whisky-and-soda.
He let her frisk about him and lick his hand, and he conceived, by
travelling through a series of contrasts, a high opinion of canine
fidelity and admiration. Something he had read somewhere about the
relative advantage of reigning in hell also came into his mind, and was
dismissed again with a smile as he puffed and sipped.

'Seen anything of Mrs. Trevalla lately?' asked Connie Fricker.

'Not for a week or two,' he answered carelessly.

'Neither have we.' She added, after a pause, and with a laugh that did
not sound very genuine, 'Mamma thinks she's dropping us.'

'Does Mrs. Trevalla count much one way or the other?' he asked.

But Connie had her wits about her, and saw no reason why she should
pretend to be a fool.

'I know more about it than you think, Mr. Chance,' she assured him with
a toss of her head, a glint of rather large white teeth, and a motion of
her full but (as improved) not ungraceful figure.

'You do, by Jove, do you?' asked Beaufort, half in mockery, half in an
admiration she suddenly wrung from him.

'Girls are supposed not to see anything, aren't they?'

'Oh, I dare say you see a thing or two, Miss Connie!'

His tone left nothing to be desired in her eyes; she did not know that
he had not courted Trix Trevalla like that, that even his brutality
towards her had lacked the easy contempt of his present manner. Why give
people other than what they want, better than they desire? The frank
approval of his look left Connie unreservedly pleased and not a little
triumphant. He had been stand-offish before; well, mamma had never given
her a 'show'--that was the word which her thoughts employed. When she
got one, it was not in Connie to waste it. She leant her elbow on the
mantel-piece, holding her cigarette in her hand, one foot on the fender.
The figure suffered nothing from this pose.

'I don't know whether you've heard that I'm going to cut politics?--at
least office, I mean. I shall stay in the House, for a bit anyhow.'

Connie did not hear the whispers of high circles; she received the news
in unfeigned surprise.

'There's no money in it,' Beaufort pursued, knowing how to make her
appreciate his decision. 'I want more time for business.'

'You'd better come in with papa,' she suggested half-jokingly.

'There are worse ideas than that,' he said approvingly.

'I don't know anything about money, except that I like to have a lot.'
Her strong, hearty laughter pealed out in the candid confession.

'I expect you do; lots of frocks, eh, and jewels, and so on?'

'You may as well do the thing as well as you can, mayn't you?'

Chance finished his tumbler, threw away his cigarette, got up, and stood
by her on the hearthrug. She did not shrink from his approach, but
maintained her ground with a jaunty impudence.

'And then you have plenty of fun?' he asked.

'Oh, of sorts,' admitted Connie Fricker. 'Mamma's a bit down on me; she
thinks I ought to be so awfully proper. I don't know why. I'm sure the
swells aren't.' Connie forgot that there are parallels to the case of
the Emperor being above grammar.

'Well, you needn't tell her everything, need you?'

'There's no harm done by telling her--I take care of that; it's when she
finds out!' laughed Connie.

'You can take care of that too, can't you?'

'Well, I try,' she declared, flashing her eyes full on him.

Beaufort Chance gave a laugh, bent swiftly, and kissed her.

'Take care you don't tell her that,' he said.

'Oh!' exclaimed Connie, darting away. She turned and looked squarely at
him, flushed but smiling. 'Well, you've got----' she began. But the
sentence never ended. She broke off with a wary, frightened 'Hush!' and
a jerk of her hand towards the door.

Mrs. Fricker came sailing in, ample and exceedingly cordial, full of
apologies, hoping that 'little Connie' had not bored the visitor.
Beaufort assured her to the contrary, little Connie telegraphing her
understanding of the humour of the situation over her mother's
shoulders, and laying a finger on her lips. Certainly Connie, whatever
she had been about to accuse him of, showed no resentment now; she was
quite ready to enter into a conspiracy of silence.

In a different way, but hardly less effectually, Mrs. Fricker soothed
Beaufort Chance's spirit. She too helped to restore him to a good
conceit of himself; she too took the lower place; it was all very
pleasant after the Bonfill interview and the hard terms that his
colleagues and Liffey offered him. He responded liberally, half in a
genuine if not exalted gratitude, half in the shrewd consciousness that
a man cannot stand too well with the women of the family.

'And how's Mrs. Trevalla?' Evidently Trix occupied no small place in the
thoughts of the household; evidently, also, Fricker had not thought it
well to divulge the whole truth about her treachery.

'I haven't seen her lately,' he said again.

'They talk a lot about her and Lord Mervyn,' said Mrs. Fricker, not
without a sharp glance at Beaufort.

He betrayed nothing. 'Gossip, I daresay, but who knows? Mrs. Trevalla's
an ambitious woman.'

'I see nothing in her,' said Connie scornfully.

'Happily all tastes don't agree, Miss Fricker.'

Connie smiled in mysterious triumph.

Presently he was told that Fricker awaited him in the study, and he went
down to join him. Fricker was not a hard man out of hours or towards his
friends; he listened to Beaufort's story with sympathy and with a good
deal of heartfelt abuse of what he called the 'damned hypocrisy' of
Beaufort's colleagues and of Mrs. Bonfill. He did not accuse Mr. Liffey
of this failing; he had enough breadth of mind to recognise that with
Mr. Liffey it was all a matter of business.

'Well, you sha'n't come to any harm through me,' he promised. 'I'll take
it on myself. My shoulders are broad. I've made ten thousand or so, and
every time I do that Liffey's welcome to an article. I don't like it,
you know, any more than I like the price of my champagne; but when I
want a thing I pay for it.'

'I've paid devilish high and got very little. Curse that woman,
Fricker!'

'Oh, we'll look after little Mrs. Trevalla. Will you leave her to me?
Look, I've written her this letter.' He handed Beaufort Chance a copy of
it, and explained how matters were to be managed. He laughed very much
over his scheme. Beaufort gave it no more explicit welcome than a grim
smile and an ugly look in his eyes; but they meant emphatic approval.

'That's particularly neat about Glowing Stars,' mused Fricker in great
self-complacency. 'She doesn't know anything about the trifling
liability! Oh, I gave her every means of knowing--sent her full details.
She never read 'em, and told me she had! She's a thorough woman. Well, I
shall let her get out of Dramoffskys rather badly, but not too
hopelessly badly. Then she'll feel virtuous--but not quite so virtuous
as to sell Glowing Stars. She'll think she can get even on them.'

'You really are the deuce, Fricker.'

'Business, my boy. Once let 'em think they can play with you, and it's
all up. Besides, it'll please my womankind, when they hear what she's
done, to see her taken down a peg.' He paused and grew serious. 'So
you're out of work, eh? But you're an M.P. still. That's got some value,
even nowadays.'

'I shouldn't mind a job--not this instant, though.'

'No, no! That would be a little indiscreet. But presently?'

They had some business talk and parted with the utmost cordiality.

'I'll let myself out,' said Beaufort. He took one of Fricker's excellent
cigars, lit it, put on his hat, and strolled out.

As he walked through the hall he heard a cough from half-way up the
stairs. Turning round, he saw Connie Fricker; her finger was on her
lips; she pointed warily upwards towards the drawing-room door, showed
her teeth in a knowing smile, and blew him a kiss. He took off his hat
with one hand, while the other did double duty in holding his cigar and
returning the salute. She ran off with a stifled laugh.

Beaufort was smiling to himself as he walked down the street. The visit
had made him feel better. Both sentimentally and from a material point
of view it had been consoling. Let his colleagues be self-righteous,
Liffey a scoundrel, Mrs. Bonfill a prudish woman who was growing old,
still he was not done with yet. There were people who valued him. There
were prospects which, if realised, might force others to revise their
opinions of him. Trix Trevalla, for instance--he fairly chuckled at the
thought of Glowing Stars. Then he remembered Mervyn, and his face grew
black again. It will be seen that misfortune had not chastened him into
an absolute righteousness.

As for the kiss that he had given Connie Fricker, he thought very little
about it. He knew just how it had happened, how with that sort of girl
that sort of thing did happen. The fine eyes, not shy, the challenging
look, the suggestion of the jaunty attitude--they were quite enough. Nor
did he suppose that Connie thought very much about the occurrence
either. She was evidently pleased, liked the compliment, appreciated
what she would call 'the lark,' and enjoyed not least the sense of
hoodwinking Mrs. Fricker. Certainly he had done no harm with Connie; nor
did he pretend that, so far as the thing went, he had not liked it well
enough.

He was right about all the feelings that he assigned to Connie Fricker.
But his analysis was not quite exhaustive. While all the lighter shades
of emotion which he attributed to her were in fact hers, there was in
her mind also an idea which showed the business blood in her. Connie was
of opinion that, to any girl of good sense, having been kissed was an
asset, and might be one of great value. This idea is not refined, but no
more are many on which laws, customs, and human intercourse are based.
It was then somewhat doubtful whether Connie would be content to let the
matter rest and to rank his tribute merely as a pastime or a compliment.




CHAPTER X

CONCERNING A CERTAIN CHINA VASE


At this point Trix Trevalla's fortunes impose on us a timid advance into
the highest regions, where she herself trod with an unaccustomed foot.
Her reception was on the whole gratifying. The Barmouths could not
indeed be entirely pleased when their only son proposed to make a match
so far from brilliant; but after all the Trevallas were gentlefolk, and
(a more important point) the Barmouths had such a reverence for Mervyn
that he might have imitated the rashness of King Cophetua without
encountering serious opposition. His parents felt that he ennobled what
he touched, and were willing to consider Trix as ennobled accordingly.
They were very exclusive people, excluding among other things, as it
sometimes seemed, a good deal of what chanced to be entertaining and
amusing. It does not, however, do to quarrel with anybody's ideal of
life; it is simpler not to share it.

Roguish nature had created Lord Barmouth very short, stout, and
remarkably unimposing; he made these disadvantages vanish by a manner of
high dignity not surpassed even by his tall and majestic wife. They had
a very big house in Kent, within easy reach of London, and gave
Saturday-to-Monday parties, where you might meet the people you had met
in London during the week. There was a large hall with marble pillars
round it, excellently adapted for lying in state, rather chilly perhaps
if it were considered as a family hearth; Lord Barmouth was fond of
walking his guests up and down this hall, and telling them what was
going to happen to the country--at least, what would, if it were not for
Mortimer.

'On the whole I'd sooner go to the dogs and not have Mortimer,' Lady
Blixworth had declared after one of these promenades.

The Glentorlys, Lady Blixworth and Audrey Pollington, three or four
men--Constantine Blair among them--Mrs. Bonfill, Trix herself, and
Mervyn, all came down in a bunch on Saturday evening--a few days after
Trix had promised to marry Mervyn, but before any formal announcement
had been made. The talk ran much on Beaufort Chance: he was pitied and
condemned; he was also congratulated on his resignation--that was the
proper thing to do. When this was said, glances turned to Mrs. Bonfill.
She was discreet, but did not discourage the tacit assumption that she
had been somehow concerned, and somehow deserved credit.

'It is vital--vital--to make an example in such cases,' said Barmouth at
dinner. He had a notion that the force of an idea was increased by
reiterating the words which expressed it.

'We naturally feel great relief,' said Mervyn. (By 'We' he meant the
Ministry.)

'It's straining a point to let him stay in the House,' declared
Glentorly.

'The seat's shaky,' murmured Constantine Blair. Mervyn's eye accused him
of saying the wrong thing.

Trix, from conscience or good-nature, began to feel sorry for Beaufort
Chance.

'Resist the beginnings--the beginnings,' said Lord Barmouth. 'The habit
of speculation is invading all classes.'

'Public men, at least, must make a stand,' Mervyn declared.

The corners of Lady Blixworth's mouth were drooping in despair. 'What I
go through for that girl Audrey!' she was thinking, for she had refused
a most pleasant little dinner- and theatre party in town. She was not in
a good temper with Trix Trevalla, but all the same she shot her a
glance of understanding and sympathy.

'Now persons like this Fricker are pests--pests,' pursued Barmouth.

'Oh, Mr. Fricker's really a very good-natured man,' protested Trix, who
was on her host's left hand.

'You know him, Mrs. Trevalla?' Lord Barmouth did not conceal his
surprise.

'Oh, yes!'

'Mrs. Trevalla knows him just slightly, father,' said Mervyn.

Lord Barmouth attained a frigid amiability as he said with a smile:
'Used to know him, perhaps you'll say now?'

'That's better, Trix, isn't it?' smiled Mrs. Bonfill.

Lady Blixworth's satirical smile met Trix across the table. Trix felt
mean when she did no more than laugh weakly in response to Barmouth's
imperious suggestion. She understood what Lady Blixworth meant.

'If we cut everybody who's disreputable,' observed that lady sweetly,
'we can all live in small houses and save up for the Death Duties.'

'You're joking, Viola!' Lady Barmouth complained; she was almost sure of
it.

'For my part, if Mr. Fricker will put me on to a good thing--isn't that
the phrase, Mortimer?--I shall be very grateful and ask him to
dinner--no, lunch; he can come to that without Mrs. Fricker. Why, you
used to stand up for them, Sarah!'

'Things are different now,' said Mrs. Bonfill, with a touch of severity.

'Mrs. Bonfill means that circumstances have changed--changed
completely,' Lord Barmouth explained.

'I thought she must mean that,' murmured Lady Blixworth, gratefully.

'You can't touch pitch without being defiled--defiled,' remarked Lord
Barmouth, with an unpleasantly direct look at Trix. Everybody nodded
with a convinced air.

'That's right, Barmouth,' said Sir Stapleton Stapleton-Staines, a
gentleman with a good estate in that part of the country. 'In my opinion
that's right.'

That being settled, Lady Barmouth rose.

Next morning, after church (everybody went except Lady Blixworth, who
had announced on going to bed that she would have a headache until
lunch), Mervyn took Trix for a walk round the place. It was then, for
the first time, her fright wearing off, that the truth of the position
flashed on her in all its brilliance. She was no mere Saturday-to-Monday
visitor; she had come to see what was to be her home; she was to be
mistress of it all some day. Mervyn's words, and his manner still more,
asserted this and reminded her of it every moment: the long stately
façade of the house, the elaborate gardens, the stretches of immemorial
turf, all the spacious luxury of the pleasure-grounds, every fountain,
every statue, he pointed out, if not exactly for her approval, yet as if
she had a right to an account of them, and was to be congratulated on
their excellence. 'I have a great deal to give--look at it all. I give
it all to you!' Some such words summarise roughly Mervyn's tone and
demeanour. Trix grew eager and excited as the fumes of greatness mounted
to her head; she hugged the anticipation of her splendour. What a
victory it was! Think of the lodging-houses, the four years with Vesey
Trevalla, the _pensions_, think even of the flat--the flat and the
debts--and then look round on this! Was not this the revenge indeed?

And the price? She had learnt enough of the world now to be getting into
the way of expecting a price. But it seemed very light here. She liked
Mervyn, and not much more than that degree of feeling seemed to be
expected of her. He was fond of kissing her hand in a rather formal
fashion; when he kissed her cheek there was a hint of something that she
decided to call avuncular. No display of passion was asked from her. All
she had to do was to be a particularly good girl; in view of the manner
of the whole family towards her, she could not resist that way of
putting it. So long as she was a good girl they would be very kind to
her. 'But we can't have pranks--pranks,' she seemed to hear her future
father-in-law declaring. Against pranks they would be very firm. Like
speculation, like the Frickers, pranks might invade every class of
society, but they would find no countenance from the house of Barmouth.

Well, pranks are a small part of life, after all. One may like to think
of a few as possible, but they are surely of no great moment. Trix
thoroughly understood the gently congratulatory manner which the company
assumed towards her. Audrey Pollington was wistfully and almost openly
envious; she sat between two fountains, looking at the house and
announcing that she would ask no more than to sit there always. Mrs.
Bonfill, who could never be in a big house without seeming to own it,
showed Trix all over this one, and kissed her twice during the process.
Lord Barmouth himself walked her round and round the hall after lunch,
and told her a family reminiscence for each several pillar that they
passed. Only in Lady Blixworth's eyes did Trix find an expression that
might be malice, or, on the other hand, conceivably might be pity. A
remark she made to Trix as they sat together in the garden favoured the
latter view, although, of course, the position of affairs tended to
support the former.

'I suppose you haven't had enough of it yet to feel anything of the
kind,' she said, 'but, for my part, sometimes I feel as if I should like
to get drunk, run out into the road in my petticoat, and scream!'

'I don't think Lord Barmouth would let you come back again,' laughed
Trix.

'I suppose Sarah's trained you too well. Look at Sarah! It wasn't forced
on her; she needn't have had it! She would have it, and she loves it.'

'There's a great deal to love in it,' said Trix, looking round her.

'Everything, my dear, except one single fandango! Now I love a
fandango. So I go about looking as if I'd never heard of one.' She
turned to Trix. 'I shouldn't wonder if you loved a fandango too?'

'I haven't had many,' said Trix, it must be owned with regret.

'No, and you won't now,' remarked Lady Blixworth.

There was no use in keeping up the fiction of a secret.

'I shall have to be very good indeed,' smiled Trix.

'Oh, it's just splendid for you, of course!' The natural woman and the
trained one were at issue in Lady Blixworth's heart. 'And I daresay one
might love Mortimer. Don't be hurt--I'm only speculating.'

'He's everything that's good, and distinguished, and kind.'

Lady Blixworth looked round cautiously, smiled at Trix, and remarked
with the utmost apparent irrelevance, 'Fol-de-rol!'

Then they both laughed.

'Hush! here comes Sarah! Don't look thoughtful, or she'll kiss you.
Kisses are a remedy for thought sometimes, but not Sarah's.'

Trix did not regard the absence of pranks and fandangoes as an
inseparable accident of high degree--there facts might have confuted
her--but it certainly seemed the most striking characteristic of the
particular exalted family to which she was to belong. The guests left on
Monday; Trix remained for the week, alone with her prospective
relations. Mervyn ran up to his office two or three times, but he was
not wanted in the House, and was most of the time at Barslett, as the
place was called. Everything was arranged; the engagement was to be
announced immediately; Trix was in the house on the footing of a
daughter. For some reason or another she was treated--she could not deny
it--rather like a prodigal daughter; even her lover evidently thought
that she had a good deal to learn and quite as much to forget. All the
three were industrious people, all wanted her to understand their work,
all performed it with an unconcealed sense of merit. Lord Barmouth was
a churchman and a farmer; Lady Barmouth was a politician and a
housekeeper; Mervyn, besides going to be Prime Minister, was meditating
a Life of Burke. 'One never need be idle in the country,' Barmouth used
to say. To Trix's mind he went far to rob the country of its main
attraction. She felt that she would have bartered a little splendour
against a little more liveliness. Was this to repent of her bargain? No,
in truth! She was always giving thanks that she had done so
magnificently, got out of all her troubles, sailed prosperously into a
haven so ample and so sure. Yet Lady Blixworth's untutored impulse
recurred to her now and then, and met with a welcoming smile of
sympathy. Airey Newton and Peggy Ryle came into her mind too, on
occasion; their images were dismissed with a passing sigh.

What annoyed her most was that she found her courage failing. The high
spirit that had defied Beaufort Chance, braved Fricker, and treated
almost on equal terms with Mrs. Bonfill, seemed cowed by the portentous
order, decorum, usefulness, industry, and piety that now encircled her
in a ring-fence of virtue. Day by day she became more afraid of this
august couple and their even more august son, her lover and chosen
husband. She had said that she must be a good girl in fun at first, as a
burlesque on their bearing towards her. Really truth threatened to
overtake the burlesque and make it rather fall short of than exaggerate
or caricature her feelings. She would never dare to rebel, to disregard,
or to question. She would be good--and she would be good because she
would be afraid to be anything else. Of course the world would know
nothing of that--it would see only the splendour--but she would know it
always. Under the fine robes there would be golden chains about her
feet. If her ideal of life had demanded freedom besides everything else,
it was like to share the fate of most ideals.

'Oh, if I had the courage to defy them! Perhaps I shall when I'm
married!'

No, she feared that she never would--not thoroughly, nor without a
quaking heart at least. Not because they were particularly wise or
clever, or even supernaturally good. Rather because they were so
established, so buttressed by habit, so entrenched by the tradition of
their state. Defiance would seem rebellion and sacrilege in one. Trix
had no difficulty in imagining any one of the three ordering her to bed;
and (oh, worst humiliation!) she knew that in such a case she would go,
and go in frightened tears. Such an absurd state of mind as this was
intolerably vexatious.

'When you were a boy, were you afraid of your father and mother?' she
asked Mervyn once.

'Afraid!' He laughed. 'I never remember having the least difference with
either of them.'

That was it; nobody ever would have any differences in that family.

'I'm rather afraid of them,' she confessed. When he smiled again she
added, 'And of you too.'

'How silly!' he said gently. It was, however, tolerably plain that he
was neither surprised nor displeased. He took the fear to which she
owned as a natural tribute to the superiority of the family, a playful
feminine way which she chose to express her admiration and respect. He
kissed her affectionately--as if she had been very good. No doubt, if
there were bed when necessary, there would, on suitable occasions, be
sugar-plums too. To Trix Trevalla, erstwhile rebel, gaoler, wanderer,
free-lance, the whole thing seemed curiously like a second childhood,
very different from her first, and destined to continue through her
life.

'It'll make a slave or a liar of me, I know,' she thought. But she
thought also that, if she spoke to Lady Blixworth in that vein, she
would be asked on what grounds she expected to escape the common lot. It
would probably make her both a liar and a slave, Lady Blixworth would
say with her languid smile; but then the compensations! Even Lady
Blixworth's wild impulse was admittedly only occasional, whereas she had
a standing reputation for refinement and elegance.

An example of what was going to happen all her life occurred on the
last day of her visit, the last day, too, before the world was to hail
her as the future Lady Mervyn. She was sitting by Mervyn, reading a book
while he wrote. The post came in, and there was a letter for her. While
he attacked his pile, she began on her one. It was from Fricker. A quick
glance assured her that Mervyn's attention was fully occupied.

Mr. Fricker's letter opened very cordially and ran to a considerable
length. It was concerned with Dramoffskys, and told her that he had sold
her holding, considering that step on the whole the wisest thing in her
interest. Owing, however, to a great variety of unforeseen events--more
rumours, new complications, further anxiety as to what the Tsar meant to
do--he regretted to inform her that he had for once miscalculated the
course of the market. Dramoffskys had fallen rather severely; he would
not take the responsibility of saying whether or when they would be
likely to rise to the price at which she had bought--much less go
higher. They would be worse before they were better--long before--was
the conclusion at which he arrived with regret. So that in fine, and
omitting many expressions of sorrow, it came to this: out of her five
thousand pounds he was in a position to hand back only a sum of 2,301l.
5s. 11d., which amount he had had the pleasure of paying to her account
at her bank. 'I will advise you subsequently as to Glowing Stars,' he
ended, but Trix had no thoughts to spare for Glowing Stars.

The blow was very severe. She had counted on a big profit, she was faced
with a heavy loss. She did not suspect Fricker's good faith, but was
aghast at her own bad luck.

'How horrible!' she exclaimed aloud, letting the letter fall in her lap.
Even for a moment more she forgot that she was sitting by Mervyn.

'What's the matter, dear?' he asked, turning round. 'No bad news in your
letter, I hope?'

'No, nothing serious, nothing serious,' she stammered, making a hasty
clutch at the two big type-written sheets of paper.

'Are you sure? Tell me about it. You must tell me all your troubles.'
He stretched out his hand and pressed hers. She crumpled up the letter.

'It's nothing, really nothing, Mortimer.'

'Do you cry out "How horrible!" about nothing?' His smile was playful;
such a course of conduct would be plainly unreasonable. 'Whom is it
from?' he asked.

'It's from my servant, to tell me she's broken a china vase I'm very
fond of,' said Trix in a smooth voice, quite fluently, her eyes fixed on
Mervyn in innocent grief and consternation.

Fortunately he was not an observant man. He had noticed neither the
typewriting nor Trix's initial confusion. He patted her hand, then drew
it to him and kissed it, saying with a laugh:--

'I'm glad it's no worse. You looked so frightened.' Then he turned back
to his letters.

Presently Trix escaped into the garden in a tempest of rage at herself.
She was thinking no more of the treacherous conduct of Dramoffskys, but
of herself.

'That's what I shall always do!' she exclaimed to the trim lawns and the
sparkling fountains, to the stately façade that was some day to salute
her as its mistress. 'How easily I did it, how naturally!' She came to a
pause. 'I'll go in and tell him.' She took a step or two towards the
house, but stopped again. 'No, I can't now.' She turned away, saying
aloud, 'I daren't!'

The thought flashed into her mind that he would be very easy to deceive.
It brought no comfort. And if he ever found out! She must end all
connection with Fricker, anyhow. She could not have such an inevitable
source of lies about her as that business meant.

'How easily I did it!' she reflected to herself again in a sort of
horror.

Mervyn told the story at dinner, rallying Trix on her exaggerated
consternation over the news. Lady Barmouth took up the cudgels for her,
maintaining a housewife's view of the importance and preciousness of
household possessions. Lord Barmouth suggested that perhaps the vase
was an heirloom, and asked Trix how she became possessed of it, what was
it like, what ware, what colour, what size, and so forth. Thence they
passed, under Lady Barmouth's guidance, to the character of the servant,
to her previous record in the matter of breakages, comparing her
incidentally in this and other respects with a succession of servants
who had been at Barslett. Steadily and unfalteringly, really with great
resource and dexterity, Trix equipped both servant and vase with
elaborate histories and descriptions, and agreed with the suggestion
that the vase might perhaps be mended, and that the servant must be at
least seriously warned as to what would happen in the event of such a
thing ever occurring again. The topic with its ramifications lasted
pretty well through the meal, Trix imagining all the time every sort of
unlikely catastrophe which might possibly result in her dressing-case
falling into the hands of the family and Mr. Fricker's letter being
discovered therein.

Well, there was nothing for it; she must be good. If she would not go on
lying, she must obey. There was some of the old hardness about her eyes
and her lips as she came to this conclusion. She was not, after all,
accustomed to having everything just as she liked. That had been only a
dream, inspired by Airey Newton's words at Paris; when put to the test
of experience, it had not borne the strain. She was to belong to the
Barmouths, to be admitted to that great family; she would pay her dues.

She was very sweet to Mervyn that evening; there was a new submission in
her manner, a strong flavour of the dutiful wife. From afar Lord
Barmouth marked it with complacency and called his wife's attention to
it.

'Yes, and I liked her for thinking so much about her vase, poor child,'
said Lady Barmouth.

'In my opinion she will be a success--a success,' said he. 'After all,
we might have been sure that Mortimer would make a suitable choice.'

'Yes, and Sarah Bonfill thoroughly approves.'

Lord Barmouth's expression implied that Mrs. Bonfill's approval might
be satisfactory, but could not be considered essential. In such matters
the family was a sufficient law unto itself.

The next day Trix went up to town. At the station Mervyn gave her a copy
of the 'Times' containing the announcement that a marriage had been
arranged between them. His manner left nothing to be desired--by any
reasonable person at least; and he promised to come and see her on his
way to the House next day. Trix steamed off with the 'Times' in her
hand, and the hum of congratulation already sounding in her expectant
ears.

She lay back in the railway carriage, feeling tired but content--too
tired, perhaps, to ask whence came her content. The hum of
congratulation, of course, had something to do with it. Had escaping
from Barslett something to do with it too? Lazily she gave up the
problem, threw the 'Times' aside, and went to sleep.

When the train was nearing London, she awoke with a start. She had been
having visions again; they had come while she slept--strange mixtures of
the gay restaurant and of dingy Danes Inn; a room where Airey Newton
smoked his pipe, where the only sound was of Peggy Ryle's heart-whole
laughter; a dream of irresponsibility and freedom. She laughed at
herself as she awoke, caught up the paper again, and re-read that
important announcement. There lay reality; have done with figments! And
what a magnificent reality it was! She stepped out on to the platform at
Charing Cross with conscious dignity.

At the flat it rained telegrams; from everybody they came--from the
Bonfills, the Glentorlys--yes, and the Farringhams; from crowds of
less-known people. There was one from Viola Blixworth, and there was one
from Peggy Ryle. She accorded this last the recognition of a little
sigh. Then she went to dress for a dinner party. Her entry into the
drawing-room that evening would be the first-fruits of her triumph. She
thought no more about the china vase.




CHAPTER XI

THE MIXTURE AS BEFORE


For years a man may go on not perceiving nor understanding what he is
doing with his life, failing to see not merely whither it is tending
under his guidance, but even the various points at which from time to
time it arrives. Miles Childwick had recommended a frame of mind
affected with, or even devoted to, this blindness when he argued against
the Fallacy of Broad Views; perhaps, like some other things that do not
as a rule work well, it would work well enough if it could be maintained
with absolute consistency. But a breakdown is hard to avoid. Something
happens to the man, or, just as often, to another whom he knows and has
watched as he has not watched his own doings; in the light of it he
discerns hidden things about himself. He may find that he has given fame
the go-by, or power, or the attainment of great place; he may groan over
the discovery, or he may say _Vile damnum_ and go back to his
unobtrusive industry or his leisurely study. He may discover that he is
not useful, and be struck with remorse, or, on the other hand, inspired
to a sceptical defiance of the obligation; he may see that nobody is
likely ever to think much of him or to care much about him, and smile at
their rightness or their wrongness as his opinion leads him, and be
annoyed or resigned as his temperament dictates. Or he may awake to a
sense of some loss at once vaguer and larger than any of those hitherto
suggested, a loss not of any particular thing, however desirable, out of
life, but a loss of life itself; he has abdicated legitimate
pretensions, drawn back his boundaries, thrown away part of his
inheritance, denied to his being some of the development to which it was
inherently able to attain. A man who arrives at this conclusion must be
of a very unusual temper if he does not suffer disquietude and
discontent. It is easy to maintain that any given object of ambition, or
even that any chosen excellence, is not indispensable; it needs more
resolution to say that it is immaterial and no ground for regret that a
man has been less of a man, a narrower creature, than it lay in his
power to be; that he has stopped when he might have gone forward, and
fallen into the habit of saying 'no' when he ought to have cultivated
the practice of saying 'yes.' It is difficult for him to vindicate to
himself his refusal of the fulness of life according as the measure of
his ability would have realised it for him. It is nothing to say that he
has had as much as, or more than, A, B, or C. He agrees scornfully. Has
he taken as much as he himself could have claimed by the right of his
nature and faculties? That seems the primeval obligation, Nature's great
command, to be obeyed in ten thousand different ways, but always to be
obeyed.

'Do you live?' Trix Trevalla had once asked Airey Newton. He had
answered, 'Hardly.' Yet, when he said that, consciousness of the truth
had been very dim and faint in him, just nascent perhaps, but unable to
assert itself against things stronger in his soul. If it had grown from
that time onward, the growth had been unmarked and almost imperceptible.
He had his great delight, his preoccupation and propensity; that had
still seemed enough. His renewed meeting with Trix, especially that talk
of theirs after his dinner party, had forwarded matters another stage.
The news of her engagement to Mervyn seemed the cue on which voices long
silenced in him spoke aloud--not, indeed, in unreserved praise of Trix,
a line permissible neither to his conception of the case nor to truth
itself, but in an assertion that she was at least trying for what he had
let slip, was reaching out her hands to the limit of life, was trying
what the world could do for her. And, as he understood, she dated this
effort back to his advice. In the irony of that thought he found the
concrete instance needed to give unity, force, and clearness to the
vague murmurs of his spirit.

His mood bred no action; what stood between? First, a sense that he was
too late; the feeling that Trix had awakened centred on her; she was to
him part, an essential part, of the full life as it rose before his
eyes; and, in fact, she was nothing to him. He would have liked to be
content with that answer. But there was another; the red book and the
safe still stood in the corner of his room. A divination of the true
deity is but a small step towards robbing the old idol of his
time-consecrated power. Airey Newton was left crying 'Impossible!' in
answer to his own demand for the stir of life which Trix Trevalla
embodied for him. Trix herself had wistfully given the same answer when
Peggy Ryle made her long for the joy of it.

A week after the news which had such a peculiar significance for one man
as well as its obvious social importance to many people, Peggy Ryle
dropped in at Danes Inn and ate bread-and-butter in a complimentary sort
of way. She also wanted another fifty pounds from her hoard, but she
meant to lead up to this gently, as she had observed that Airey
disapproved of her extravagance, and handed out her money to her with
reluctance.

'Well, Airey, I suppose you haven't heard anything that's happening?'
she said.

'Probably not,' he agreed with a grim smile. 'You're in the thick of it
all?'

'For the present,' Peggy replied cautiously. 'I'm considered an heiress,
and they ask me everywhere. Mrs. Bonfill has offered to take me out! I'm
great, Airey. And I've gone to lots of places with Mrs. Trevalla.'

'She's great too?'

'Oh, yes, much greater. A new loaf to-day?'

'I thought you were about due. Want some more money?'

'How nice of you to suggest it!' cried Peggy in relieved gratitude.
'Just fifty, please--to pay for a frock, a supper, a box, and incidental
expenses.'

'I think you'd better fit yourself up with a rich match, like Mrs.
Trevalla. You'll be in the workhouse in three months.'

'I've been there before. Lots of friends always there, Airey!' Her nod
and smile included him in the number with an affectionate recognition.
'And I don't know that Mrs. Trevalla is to be envied so particularly. I
daresay it's very nice to be married in a cathedral, but it's not as
inviting to be married to one--and it's what Lord Mervyn reminds me of.'
She paused and then added, 'Trix isn't in love with him, of course.'

Undoubtedly Airey Newton was glad to hear that, though with no joy which
can rank above a dog-in-the-manger's. However, he made no comment on it.

'And who's in love with you?' he asked.

'Two or three men, Airey,' replied Peggy composedly--'besides Miles, I
mean.' Miles's affection was composed, but public. 'Miles renewed his
offer on hearing that I had come into money. He said that the
circumstance freed his action from any offensive appearance of
benevolence.'

'And you said no?'

'I never say no to Miles. I never can do anything but laugh. It would be
just perfect if he didn't mean it.' In spite of her sympathy Peggy
laughed again. 'I wish you were rich and were going to marry Trix
Trevalla,' she resumed. 'She's very fond of you, you know, Airey.'

'Stuff!' growled Airey unceremoniously.

'Well, of course!' sighed Peggy, glancing round the room.

A man may say 'Stuff!' and yet not be over-pleased to have it greeted
with 'Of course!' Airey grumbled something into his pipe; Peggy smiled
without hearing it.

'Well, I mean she'd never marry anybody who wasn't well-off,' she
explained. 'She couldn't, you see; she's very extravagant. I'm sure she
spends more than she's got. But that doesn't matter now.'

'And perhaps you needn't be very severe on it,' Airey suggested.

'You gave an enormous dinner,' Peggy retorted triumphantly.

Airey began to walk about the room, giving an occasional and impatient
tug at his beard.

'What's the matter?' asked Peggy, noting these signs of disturbance.

'Nothing,' said Airey, fretfully. 'You needn't talk as if I was a
pauper,' he broke out the next moment.

Here was something strange indeed. Never before had he resented any
implied reference to his poverty; nay, he had rather seemed to welcome
it; and in their little circle everybody took the thing as a matter of
course. But Airey stood there looking resentful or at least ashamed, and
greatly hurt anyhow. Peggy was terribly upset. She jumped up and ran to
him, holding out her hands.

'How could I?' she cried. 'I had no idea---- Dear Airey, do forgive me!
I never thought of hurting your feelings! How can you think that I or
any of us mind a scrap whether you're rich or poor?' There were tears in
her eyes, and she would not be refused a grasp of his hands. 'You
thought I took it all--all you give me--and then sneered at you!' gasped
Peggy.

'I'm comfortably off,' said Airey stiffly and obstinately.

'Yes, yes; of course you are. I'll never say anything of the sort again,
Airey.' She let go his hands with a reluctant slowness; she missed the
hearty forgiveness for which she had begged. He puzzled her now.

'I have money for everything I need. I don't pose as being poor.'

'Oh, you mustn't take it like that,' she groaned, feeling fit to cry in
real earnest, conceiving him to be terribly wounded, sure now that he
had squandered his resources on the dinner because among them they had
made him ashamed of being poor. She could not herself understand being
ashamed of poverty, but she had an idea that many people
were--especially men perhaps, to whom it properly belonged to labour,
and to labour successfully.

'I sha'n't go until you forgive me,' she insisted. 'It'll spoil
everything for me if you don't, Airey.'

'There's nothing to forgive,' he rejoined gloomily, as he dropped into a
chair by the little table and rested his elbow on the red-leather book.
'I don't want to sail under false pretences, that's all.' His tones were
measured and still hard. Peggy felt herself in disgrace; she drifted
back to the window and forlornly poured out another cup of tea.

The impulse had been on Airey to tell her everything, to abandon to her
his great secret, to let her know the truth as Tommy Trent knew it, to
make her understand, by bitter mockery of himself, what that truth had
done to him. But at the last he had not power to conquer the old habit
of secrecy, or to face the change that a disclosure must bring. He
unlocked his safe indeed, but it was only to take out five ten-pound
notes; her money was all in notes, she liked the crackle of them. That
done, he shut the door with a swing, clanking the heavy bolts home with
a vicious twist of the handle.

'It sounds as if it meant to keep whatever it gets, doesn't it?' asked
Peggy, with a laugh still rather nervous. She took the notes. 'Thanks,
Airey. I love money.' She crackled the notes against her cheek.

Airey's laugh, almost hearty, certainly scornful, showed that he was
recovering his temper. 'Your love displays itself in getting rid of the
beloved object as quickly as possible,' he remarked.

'That's what it's for,' smiled Peggy, happy at the re-establishment of
friendly relations.

Peggy paid two or three other visits that day. At Mrs. Bonfill's she
found Glentorly and Constantine Blair. She was admitted, but nobody took
much notice of her. They were deep in political talk: things were not
going very well; the country was not relying on Lord Glentorly in quite
the proper spirit. Clouds were on everybody's brow. Peggy departed, and
betook herself to Lady Blixworth's. The atmosphere here too was heavy
and lamentable. Audrey seemed resentful and forlorn, her aunt acid and
sharp; disappointment brooded over the premises.

'How people worry!' Peggy reflected, as she got back into her hansom and
told the man to drive to Trix Trevalla's; if not at Danes Inn, if not in
the houses of the great, there at least in Trix's flat she ought to find
gaiety and triumph. The fact that people worried was oppressing Peggy
to-day. Alas, Trix Trevalla was with Lord Mervyn! Gathering this fact
from a discreet servant, Peggy fled back into her hansom with the sense
of having escaped a great peril. She had met Lord Mervyn at Mrs.
Bonfill's.

Whither now? Why, to Tommy Trent's, of course. The hansom (which was
piling up a very good fare) whisked her off to Tommy's chambers at the
corner of a street looking over St. James's Square. She left the cab at
the door and went in. Here, anyhow, she was in great hopes of escaping
the atmosphere of worry.

Tommy was a prosperous man, enjoying a very good practice as a solicitor
in the City; his business was of a high class and yet decidedly
lucrative. Peggy liked his rooms with their quiet luxury and their hint
of artistic taste carefully unemphasised. She threw herself into a large
armchair and waited for Tommy to appear. There was a small room where he
sometimes worked an hour or so after he came home in the evenings, and
there she supposed him to be; it was shut off by an interior door from
the room where she sat, and opened on the passage by another which she
had passed on her way in. The servant had told her that Mr. Trent was
engaged for the moment, but would soon be free. Peggy hoped that it
would turn out that he was free for the evening too; a little dinner
would be restful, and she had no engagement that she considered it
necessary to keep.

There was a murmur of voices through the door. Peggy recognised
Tommy's; it sounded familiar and soothing as she read a paper to while
away the time; the other voice was strange to her. Presently there was
the noise of chairs being pushed back, as though the interview were
coming to a close. Tommy spoke again in a louder voice.

'Mr. Newton doesn't want his name mentioned.'

'We should have liked the support of Mr. Airey Newton's name.'

'He won't hear of that, but he believes in his process thoroughly----'

'I wonder if I ought to be hearing this!' thought Peggy, amused and
rather interested at stumbling on her friends, so to speak, in their
business hours and their business affairs.

Tommy Trent's voice went on:--

'And will take a fifth share in the syndicate--5,000l.'

'Is he prepared to put that down immediately?' The question sounded
sceptical.

'Oh, yes, twice as much; to-morrow, if necessary. But no mention of his
name, please. That's all settled then? Well, good-bye, Mr. Ferguson.
Glad the thing looks so good. Hope your wife's well. Good-bye.'

The passage door was opened and shut. Peggy heard Tommy come back from
it, whistling in a soft and contented manner. The passage door opened
again, and the servant's voice was audible.

'Miss Ryle there? I'll go in directly,' said Tommy.

The paper had fallen from Peggy's hands. Five thousand pounds! Twice as
much to-morrow, if necessary! Airey Newton! No other Newton, but Airey,
Airey! The stranger had actually said 'Airey!' Her thoughts flew back to
her talk with Airey--and, further back, to how Tommy Trent had made him
give a dinner. And on that account she had quarrelled with Tommy!
Everything fitted in now. The puzzle which had bewildered her in Danes
Inn that very afternoon was solved. Perceiving the solution with
merciless clearness, Peggy Ryle felt that she must cry. It was such
hypocrisy, such meanness, nay, such treachery. 'I don't want to sail
under false colours,' he had said, and used that seemingly honest speech
and others like it to make his wretched secret more secure. Now the safe
took its true place in the picture; a pretty bad place it was; she
doubted not that the red book was in the unholy business too. And the
bread-and-butter! Peggy must be pardoned her bitterness of spirit. To
think of the unstinted gratitude, the tender sentiment, which she had
lavished on that bread-and-butter! She had thought of it as of St.
Martin's cloak or any other classical case of self-sacrificing charity.
And--worse, if possible--she had eaten the dinner too, a dinner that
came from a grudging hand. She had fled to Tommy Trent's to escape
worry. Worse than worry was here. With rather more justification than
young folks always possess, she felt herself in the presence of a
tragedy; that there was any comedy about also was more likely to strike
a looker-on from outside.

'Sorry to have kept you waiting, Peggy,' said Tommy cheerfully, coming
in from the other room. 'I had a man on business, and Wilson didn't tell
me you were here.'

Peggy rose to her feet; a tear trickled down her cheek.

'Hullo! What's the matter? Are you in trouble?'

'I overheard you through the door.'

'What?'

'Just at the end you raised your voice.'

'And you listened?' Tommy was rather reproachful, but it did not yet
seem to strike him what had happened.

'I heard what you said about Airey Newton.'

Tommy gave a low whistle; a look of perplexity, not unmixed with
amusement, spread over his face.

'The deuce you did!' he remarked slowly.

'That's what's the matter: that's why I'm nearly crying.'

'I don't see it in that light, but I'm sorry you heard. It's a secret
that Airey----'

'A secret! Yes, I should think it was. Are you anything that I don't
know of? I mean a burglar, or a swindler, or anything of that kind?'

'You do know that I'm a solicitor?' Tommy wanted to relieve the strain
of the conversation.

'I meant to stay with you, and perhaps to take you out to dinner----'

'Well, why won't you? I haven't done anything--except forget that it's
not wise to talk too loudly about my clients' business.'

'I'm just going to Danes Inn to see Airey Newton.'

'Oh!' Tommy nodded gravely. 'You think of doing that?'

'It's what I'm going to do directly. I've a hansom at the door.'

'I'm sure you've a hansom at the door,' agreed Tommy. 'Sit down one
minute, please,' he added. 'I want you to do something for me.'

'Be quick, then,' commanded Peggy, sitting down, but obviously under
protest. 'And you have done something too,' she went on. 'You've
connived at it. You've backed him up. You've helped to deceive us all.
You've listened to me while I praised him. You've praised him yourself.'

'I told you he could afford to give the dinner.'

'Yes--as he told me to-day that he wasn't a pauper! He made me think I'd
hurt his feelings. I felt wretched. I begged him to forgive me. Oh, but
it's not that! Tommy, it's the wretched meanness of it all! He was just
one of the six or seven people in the world; and now----!'

Tommy was smoking, and had fallen into meditative silence.

He did not lack understanding of her feelings--anything she felt was
always vivid to him--and on his own account he was no stranger to the
thoughts that Airey Newton's propensity bred.

'How much money has he got?' she asked abruptly.

'I mustn't tell you.'

'More than what you said to that man?'

'Yes, more.'

'A lot more?'

Tommy spread out his hands and shrugged his shoulders. She knew all that
mattered; it was merely etiquette that forbade an exact statement of
figures; the essential harm was done.

'Well, you said you wanted something of me, Tommy.'

'I do. I want your word of honour that you'll never let Airey Newton
know that you've found out anything about this.' He put his cigarette
back into his mouth and smiled amicably at Peggy.

'I'm going straight to him to tell him I know it all. After that I
sha'n't go any more.'

'Peggy, he's very fond of you. He'll hate your knowing, more than
anybody else's in the world almost.'

'I shall tell him you're not to blame, of course.'

'I wasn't thinking of that. He's been very kind to you. There was always
bread-and-butter!'

This particular appeal miscarried; a subtlety of resentment centred on
the bread-and-butter.

'I hate to think of it,' said Peggy brusquely. 'Do you really mean I'm
to say nothing?'

'I mean much more. You're still to be his friend, still to go and see
him, still to eat bread-and-butter. And, Peggy, you're still to love
him--to love him as I do.'

Peggy looked across at him, and looked with new eyes. He had been the
dear friend of many sunny hours; but now he wore a look and spoke in
tones that the sunny hours had not called forth.

'I stand by him, whatever happens, and I want you to stand by him too.'

'If it came to the point, you'd stand by him and let me go?' she asked
with a sudden quick understanding of his meaning.

'Yes,' said Tommy simply. He did not tell her there would be any
sacrifice in what she suggested.

'I don't believe I can do it,' moaned Peggy.

'Yes, you can. Be just the same to him, only--only rather nicer, you
know. There's only one chance for him, you see.'

'Is there any chance?' she asked dolefully. Her eyes met his. 'Yes,
perhaps I know what you mean,' said she.

They were silent a moment. Then he came over to her and took her hand.
'Word of honour, Peggy,' he said, 'to let neither Airey himself nor any
of the rest know? You must connive, as I did.'

She turned her eyes up to his in their clouded brightness. 'I promise,
word of honour, Tommy,' said she.

He nodded in a friendly way and strolled off to the writing-table. She
wandered to the window and looked out on the spacious, solid old square.
The summer evening was bright and clear, but Peggy was sad that there
were things in the world hard to endure. Yet there were other things
too; down in her heart was a deep joy because to-day, although she had
lost a dear illusion, she had found a new treasure-house.

'I'm thinking some things about you, Tommy, you know,' she said without
turning round. There was a little catch in her voice.

'That's all right. Just let me write a letter, and we'll go and dine.'

She stood still till he rose and turned to see her head outlined against
the window. For a moment he regarded it in silence, thinking of the
grace she carried with her, how she seemed unable to live with meanness,
and how for love's sake she would face it now, and, if it might be, heal
it by being one of those who loved. He came softly behind her, but she
turned to meet him.

'I suppose we must all cry sometimes, Tommy. Do say it makes the joy
better!'

'They always tell you that!' He laughed gently.

'I came here to laugh with you, but now----'

'Laughter's the second course to-day,' said Tommy Trent.

It came then. He saw it suddenly born in her eyes and marked its
assault on the lines of her lips. She struggled conscientiously,
thinking, no doubt, that it was a shame to laugh. Tommy waited eagerly
for the victory of mirth, or even that it might, in a general rout, save
its guns and ammunition, and be ready to come into action another day.
He had his hope. Peggy's low rich laugh came, against her will, but not
to be denied.

'At any rate I show him the better way! I drew another fifty pounds
to-day. And he hates it--oh, he hates it, Tommy!'

He laughed too, saying, 'Let's go out and play.'

As they went downstairs she thrust her hand through his arm and kept
patting him gently. Then she looked up, and swiftly down again, and
laughed a little and patted him again.

'I've half a mind to sing,' said she.

The afternoon had been a bottle of the old mixture--laughter and tears.




CHAPTER XII

HOT HEADS AND COOL


There being in London (as Trix had once observed) many cities, if they
persecute you in one you can flee unto another, with the reasonable
certainty of finding an equally good dinner, company perhaps on the
whole not less entertaining, and a welcome warmer for the novelty of
seeing you. With these consolations a philosophic fugitive should be
content.

But Beaufort Chance had not learnt this lesson, and did not take to the
study of it cheerfully. He was indeed not cut by his old friends--things
had not been quite definite enough for that--but he was gradually left
out of a good many affairs to which he had been accustomed to be a
party, and he was conscious that, where he was still bidden, it was from
good-nature or the dislike of making a fuss, not from any great desire
for his company. He was indifferently consoled by the proffered embraces
of that other city which may be said to have had its centre in Mrs.
Fricker's spacious mansion. The Frickers had an insight into his
feelings, and the women at least made every effort to win his regard as
well as to secure his presence. Fricker let matters go their own way; he
was a man wise in observing the trend of events. He found it enough to
put Chance into one or two business ventures against which there was
nothing much to be said; he did not want to damage Chance's reputation
any more, since his value would be diminished thereby.

The man knew that he had sunk and was sinking still. The riches for
which he had risked and lost so much might still be his, probably more
easily than at any previous time. Nothing else was before him, if once
he allowed himself to become an associate of Fricker's in business, a
friend of the family at Fricker's house. Such a position as that would
stamp him. It was consistent with many good things; it might not prevent
some influence and a good deal of power, or plenty of deference of a
certain sort from certain people. But it defined his class. Men of the
world would know how to place him, and women would not be behind them in
perception. He saw all this, but he did not escape. Perhaps there was
nowhere to escape to. There was another reason. He had encountered a
very vigorous will, and that will was determined that he should stay.
His name was a little blown upon, no doubt, but it was a good name; he
was M.P. still; he might one day inherit a peerage--not of the
ultra-grand Barmouth order, of course, but a peerage all the same. The
will was associated with a clear and measured judgment, and in obedience
to the judgment the will meant to hold fast to Beaufort Chance.

He himself realised this side of the matter less clearly than he saw the
rest. He knew that the business association and the dinners bound him
more and more tightly; he had not understood yet that his flirtation
with Connie Fricker was likely to commit him in an even more irrevocable
and wholesale way. In this Miss Connie was clever; she let an air of
irresponsibility soften his attentions into a mere pastime, though she
was careful to let nothing more palpable confirm the impression. She
made no haste to enlist her mother's aid or to invoke a father primed
with decisive questions. She had attractions for Beaufort Chance, a man
over whom obvious attractions exercised their full force. She let them
have their way. She liked him, and she liked being flirted with. The
cool head was quite unseen, far in the background; but it was preparing
a very strong position whenever its owner liked to fall back there.

Beaufort Chance, misled by the air of irresponsibility, kissed and
laughed, as many men do under such circumstances; Connie was not
critical of the quality of kisses, and the laughter was to go on just
so long as she pleased. It was among the visions which inspire rather
than dissipate the energy of strong natures, when Connie Fricker saw
herself, now become Beaufort's wife and perhaps my lady, throwing a
supercilious bow to Mrs. Trevalla, as that lady trudged down Regent
Street, seeking bargains in the shops and laden with brown-paper parcels
containing the same. Such a turn of fortune as would realise this
piquant picture was still possible, notwithstanding Trix's present
triumph.

There were dangers. If Mrs. Fricker, with that strict sense of propriety
of hers and her theory of its necessity for social progress, came round
a corner at the wrong moment, there would be a bad half-hour, and (worse
still) the necessity for a premature divulging of plans. Those plans
Mrs. Fricker would manage to bungle and spoil; this was, at least, her
daughter's unwavering conviction. So Connie was cautious, and urged
Beaufort to caution. She smiled to see how readily he owned the
advisability of extreme caution. He did not want to be caught, any more
than she. She knew the reason of his wish as well as of her own. She
played her hand well and is entitled to applause--subject to the
accepted reservations.

Meanwhile _delenda erat_ Trix. That was well understood in the family,
and again between the family and Beaufort Chance. The ladies hinted at
it; Fricker's quiet smile was an endorsement; every echo of Trix's
grandeur and triumph--far more any distant glimpse obtained of them in
actual progress--strengthened the resolution, and enhanced the pleasure
of the prospect. Censure without sympathy is seldom right. At last Trix
had, under irresistible pressure, obeyed Mervyn to the full. She saw no
more of the Frickers; she wrote only on business to Mr. Fricker. The
Fricker attitude cannot be called surprising; the epithet is more
appropriate to Trix Trevalla's, even though it be remembered that she
regarded it as only temporary--just till she was well out of Glowing
Stars. She pleaded that her engagement kept her so busy. Other people
could be busy too.

Lady Blixworth's doors were still open to Beaufort Chance, and there,
one evening, he saw Trix in her splendour. Mervyn was in attendance on
her; the Barmouths were not far off, and were receiving congratulations
most amiably. In these days Trix's beauty had an animation and expressed
an excitement that gave her an added brilliance, though they might not
speak of perfect happiness. Lady Blixworth was enjoying a respite from
duty, and had sunk into a chair; Beaufort stood by her. He could not
keep his eyes from Trix.

'Now, I wonder,' said Lady Blixworth with her gentle deliberation, 'what
you're thinking about, Beaufort! Am I very penetrating, or very
ignorant, or just merely commonplace, in guessing that Trix Trevalla
would do well to avoid you if you had a pistol in your hand?'

'You aren't penetrating,' said he. She had stood by him, so he endured
her impertinence, but he endured it badly.

'You don't want to kill her?' she smiled. 'That would be too gentle? Oh,
I'm only joking, of course.' This excuse was a frequent accompaniment of
her most pointed suggestions.

'She'll have a pretty dull time with Mervyn,' he said with a laugh.

'I suppose that idea always does console the other men? In this case
quite properly, I agree. She will, Beaufort; you may depend on that.'
Her thoughts had gone back to that Sunday at Barslett.

Glentorly came up the stairs. She greeted him without rising; his bow to
Beaufort Chance was almost invisible; he went straight across to Trix
and Mervyn. Lady Blixworth cast an amused glance at her companion's
lowering face.

'Why don't you go and congratulate her?' she asked. 'I don't believe you
ever have!'

'I suppose I ought to,' he said, meeting her malicious look with a
deliberate smile.

A glint of aroused interest came into her eyes. Would he have the
courage?

'Well, you can hardly interrupt her while she's with Mortimer and George
Glentorly.'

'Can't I?' he asked with a laugh. 'Sit here and you shall see.'

'I'd no idea it could be amusing in my own house,' smiled Lady
Blixworth. 'Well, I'm sitting here!'

What he saw had roused Beaufort's fury again. Everything helped to
that--the sight of Trix, Mervyn's airs of ownership and lofty
appropriation of her, the pompous smiles of the Barmouths, most of all,
perhaps, that small matter of Lord Glentorly's invisible bow. And he
himself was there on the good-natured but contemptuous sufferance of his
old friend and malicious mocker, Lady Blixworth. But he had a whip; he
was minded at least to crack it over Trix Trevalla.

She was standing by the two men, but they had entered into conversation
with one another, and for the moment she was idle. Her eyes, travelling
round the room, fell on Beaufort Chance. She flushed, gave him a hurried
bow, and glanced in rapid apprehension at Mervyn. He and Glentorly were
busy agreeing that they were, jointly and severally, quite entitled to
be relied on by the country, and Mervyn saw nothing. Trix's bow gave
Beaufort Chance his excuse. Without more ado he walked straight and
boldly across the room to her. Still the other two men did not see him.
Trix edged a pace away from them and waited his coming; she was in as
sore fear as when he had snatched her letter from her in her
drawing-room. Her breath came fast; she held her head high.

'You must let an old friend congratulate you, Mrs. Trevalla,' said
Beaufort. He spoke low and smiled complacently as he held out his hand.

Trix hated to take it; she took it very graciously, with murmured
thanks. She shot an appealing glance past him towards where her hostess
sat. Lady Blixworth smiled back, but did not move an inch.

'Though your old friends have seen very little of you lately.'

'People in my position must have allowances made for them, Mr. Chance.'

'Oh, yes; I wasn't complaining, only regretting. Seen anything of our
friends the Frickers lately?'

The question was a danger-signal to Trix. He was prepared to pose as the
Frickers' friend if only he could tar her with the same brush; that
boded mischief.

Fricker's name caught Lord Glentorly's ear; he glanced round. Mervyn
still noticed nothing.

'I haven't seen them for a long while,' answered Trix in steady tones,
her eyes defying him.

He waited a moment, then he went on, raising his voice a little.

'You must have heard from Fricker anyhow, if not from the ladies? He
told me he'd written to you.'

Mervyn turned round sharply. Emerging from the enumeration of the strong
points of his Chief and himself, he had become conscious that a man was
talking to Trix and saying that some other man had written to her. He
looked questioningly at Glentorly; that statesman seemed somewhat at a
loss.

'Yes,' Chance went on, 'Fricker said he'd been in correspondence with
you about that little venture you're in together. I hope it'll turn up
trumps, though it's a bit of a risk in my opinion. But it's too bad to
remind you of business here.'

Mervyn stepped forward suddenly.

'If you've any business with Mrs. Trevalla, perhaps she'll avail herself
of my help,' he said; 'although hardly at the present moment or here.'

Beaufort Chance laughed. 'Dear me, no,' he answered. 'We've no business,
have we, Mrs. Trevalla? I was only joking about a little flutter Mrs.
Trevalla has on under the auspices of our common friend--Fricker, you
know.'

'I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Fricker,' said Mervyn coldly.

'He's at a disadvantage compared with us, isn't he, Mrs. Trevalla?'

Mervyn turned from him in a distaste that he took no pains to conceal,
and fixed his eyes on Trix's face. Was it possible--really
possible--that she could be charged with having 'a flutter' under the
auspices of Fricker, and stand dumb before the accusation?

Trix laughed nervously, and at last managed to speak.

'That's all very ancient history, Mr. Chance. You should have your
gossip more up to date.'

'Then you've sold your Glowing Stars?' he retorted quickly. He desired
the pleasure of making her lie and of knowing the degradation that she
felt.

There was just an instant's pause. Then Lord Glentorly struck in.

'I don't know whether all this is your business,' he said to Beaufort,
'but I do know it isn't mine. If Mrs. Trevalla allows, we'll drop the
subject.'

'It's very dull anyhow,' stammered Trix.

'I touched on it quite accidentally,' smiled Beaufort. 'Well, all good
wishes again, Mrs. Trevalla.'

With a bow of insolent familiarity he turned on his heel and began to
walk back towards Lady Blixworth. After a moment's hesitation Mervyn
followed him. Trix darted to Glentorly.

'Take me somewhere,' she whispered. 'Take me away somewhere for a
minute.'

'Away from that fellow, yes,' he agreed with a disgusted air.

Trix seemed to hear him imperfectly. 'Yes, yes, away from Mortimer,' she
whispered.

The swiftest glance betrayed Glentorly's surprise as he obeyed her; she
put her arm in his and he led her into the next room, where a sideboard
with refreshments stood.

'What does the fellow mean?' he asked scornfully.

'It's nothing. Give me a little champagne,' said Trix.

Beaufort Chance lounged up to Lady Blixworth.

'Well, you saw me making myself pleasant?' His manner was full of a
rude coarse exultation.

Lady Blixworth put up her long-handled _pince-nez_ and regarded him
through it.

'She hasn't quite cut me, you see,' he went on.

'I beg your pardon, Chance, may I have a word with you?' Mervyn came up
and joined them.

Lady Blixworth leant back and looked at the pair. She had never thought
Mervyn a genius, and she was very tolerant; yet she had at that moment
the fullest possible realisation of the difference between the two: it
was between barbarism and civilisation. Both might be stupid, both might
on occasion be cruel. But there was the profound difference of method.

'A word with me, Mervyn? Of course.'

'By ourselves, I mean.' His stiffness vigorously refused the approaches
of Beaufort's familiarity.

'Oh, all right, by ourselves,' agreed Beaufort with a contemptuous
laugh.

Lady Blixworth decided not to indulge her humour any longer; she was
distrustful of what might happen.

'You can have your talk any time,' she said, rising. She spoke
carelessly, but she knew how to assert her right to social command in
her own house. 'Just now I want Mortimer to take me to have something
cool. Good-night, Beaufort.' She gave him her hand. He took it, not
seeing what else to do. Mervyn had fallen back a step as his bow
acknowledged the hostess's command.

'Good-night, Beaufort,' said Lady Blixworth, smiling again.

She left him there, and walked off with Mervyn.

'If you must talk to him, wait,' she advised, laughing. 'Or write to
him--that's better. Or let it alone--that's best of all. But at any rate
I don't want what the papers call a _fracas_, and I call a shindy, in my
house. With your people here too!' The Barmouths' presence would make a
shindy seem like sacrilege.

'You're quite right,' he said gravely.

She glanced at him in pity and in ridicule. 'Heavens, how you take
things, Mortimer!' she murmured. 'You might have seen that he only
wanted to be nasty.'

'He shall have no more opportunities of obtruding himself on Trix.'

'Poor Trix!' sighed Lady Blixworth. It was not quite clear what especial
feature of Trix's position she was commiserating.

'I shall speak plainly to him.'

'That's just why I wouldn't let it occur in my house.'

'Why do you have him here?'

'I believe that in the end it's through a consciousness of my own
imperfections.' She felt for and with her companion, but she could not
help chaffing him again. 'He's had rather hard lines too, you know.'

'He's not had half what he's deserved. I want to see Trix.'

'Oh, put that off too!' She had sighted Trix and Glentorly, and a
dexterous pressure of her arm headed him in the opposite direction. 'You
must feed me first, anyhow,' she insisted.

Understanding that he had been in effect dismissed from the house,
knowing at least that with his hostess's countenance withdrawn from him
he would find little comfort there, Beaufort Chance took his departure.
His mood was savage: he had gratified revenge at the cost of lowering
himself farther; if he had done his best to ruin Trix, he had done
something more for himself in the same direction. Yet he had enjoyed the
doing of it. A savage triumph struggled with the soreness in him. He had
come back to Lady Blixworth to boast to her; Mervyn had spoilt that
scheme. He felt the need of recounting his exploit to somebody who would
see the glory of it. Connie Fricker had told him that they were going to
the opera, and that she supposed there would be some supper afterwards,
if he liked to drop in. Almost unconsciously his steps turned towards
the house.

Luck favoured him, or so he thought. Fricker and his wife had been
dropped at a party on the way home; Connie had no card for it, and was
now waiting for them alone--or, rather, was using her time in consuming
chicken and champagne. He joined in her meal, and did full justice to
one ingredient of it at least. With his glass in his hand he leant back
in his chair and began to tell her how he had served Trix Trevalla.
Whatever the reality might have been there was no doubt who came out
triumphant in the narrative.

Connie had finished her chicken. She leant her plump bare arms on the
table and fixed applauding eyes on him.

'Splendid!' she said with a glint of teeth. 'I should love to have seen
that.'

'I gave her a bit more than she reckoned on,' he said, lighting his
cigar and then tossing off the last of his glass of wine. 'I gave it her
straight.' He looked across at Connie. 'That's the only way with women,'
he told her.

Miss Connie mingled admiration and a playful defiance in her smile. 'You
ought to have married her, then you'd have had your chance,' she
suggested.

'Precious glad I didn't!' said Beaufort. 'Good for her, but poor fun for
me, Connie.'

Connie got up and came round the table. 'You're spilling all your ash on
the tablecloth.' She gave him an ash-tray from the mantel-piece. 'Use
that, silly,' said she, patting his shoulder, and she went on, 'Any
woman could manage you all right, you know. Oh, I don't mean a goose
like Trix Trevalla, but----'

'A clever girl like yourself, eh?'

'Well, that's the last thing I was thinking about. Still, as far as that
goes, I expect I could.'

He slewed his chair half round and looked up at her. Her rollicking
defiance, with its skilful hint of contempt, worked on his mood. He
forgot his daylight reluctance to commit himself.

'We'd see about that, Miss Connie,' he said.

'Oh, I shouldn't be afraid!' she laughed. She spoke the truth; she was
not the least afraid of Beaufort Chance, though she was more than a
little afraid of Mrs. Fricker. She was at the same time fully aware that
Chance would like to think that she was in her heart rather afraid; she
gauged him nicely, and the bravado of her declaration was allowed to be
hinted at by a fall and a turning-away of her eyes. With a confident
laugh he slipped his arm round her waist; she drew away; he held her
strongly.

'Be quiet,' he said imperiously.

She stood still, apparently embarrassed but yet obedient.

'Why did you try to get away?' he asked almost threateningly.

'Well, I'm quiet enough now,' she pleaded with a low laugh.

His self-complacency was restored; the buffets of the evening were
forgotten. He remembered how he had served Trix Trevalla; he forgot what
that pleasure had entailed on himself. Now he was showing this girl that
she was no match for him. He held her in his grasp while he smoked.

'This is rather dull for me,' suggested Connie after a while. 'I hope
you like it, Mr. Chance?'

'It'll last just as long as I do like it,' he told her.

A bell sounded; they heard the hall door opened and voices in the hall.

'Listen! Let me go! No, you must. It's papa and mamma.'

'Never mind. Stay where you are.'

'What do you mean? Nonsense! I must----!' In genuine alarm Connie
wrenched herself away, ran to the door, listened, gave Beaufort a wise
nod, and sat down opposite to him. He laughed at her across the table.

After a pause a footman came in.

'I was to tell you that Mrs. Fricker has gone straight upstairs, miss.
She'd like to see you for a minute in her room when you go up, miss.'

'All right. Say I'll be there in five minutes. Where's papa?'

'Mr. Fricker's gone into the study, miss.'

'We're in luck,' said Beaufort, when the door was closed.

'I must go in a minute or two. I expect mamma doesn't like me being here
with you. It's not my fault. I didn't know you were coming. I didn't let
you in.'

'Of course it's not your fault. We'll tell mamma so.'

'I think you'd better go,' suggested Connie; he treated Mrs. Fricker
with too much flippancy.

'Yes, I will. I'll join your father and have a whisky-and-soda. But say
good-night first, Connie.'

'Oh, well, be quick then,' said Connie.

Now, as it happened, through an oversight, there was no whisky-and-soda
in the study. Mr. Fricker discovered this disconcerting circumstance
when he had got into his smoking-jacket and slippers. He swore gently
and walked out, his slippers passing noiselessly over the rich carpets
of his passages. He opened the door of the dining-room and came in. To
his amazement his daughter whirled quickly across his path, almost
cannoning into him; and there, whence she came, Beaufort Chance stood,
looking foolish and awkward. Connie was flushed and her hair untidy.

'Good evening, Beaufort. I was looking for whisky-and-soda, Connie
dear.'

A few more remarks were interchanged, but the talk came chiefly from
Beaufort, and consisted of explanations why he had not gone before, and
how he was just going now. Then he did go, shaking hands with them both,
not looking either of them in the face.

'You can find your own way?' Fricker suggested, as he picked a chicken's
leg. 'Give me a little more soda, Connie.'

She obeyed him, and, when they were alone, came and stood on the
opposite side of the table. Fricker ate and drank in undisturbed
composure. At last he observed:--

'I thought your mother wanted you. Hadn't you better go up to her,
Connie?' He glanced round at the clock and smiled at his daughter in his
thoughtful way.

'Of course you can tell her; but you'll spoil it all, if you do,' Connie
burst out. She seemed ready to cry, being sadly put out by her father's
premature discovery, and undisguisedly alarmed as to what view might be
taken of the matter.

'Spoil it all?' repeated Fricker meditatively. 'All what? Your fun, my
dear?'

Connie had no alternative but to play her trumps.

'It's more than fun,' she said. 'Unless I'm interfered with,' she added
resentfully.

'Your mother's ideas are so strict,' smiled Fricker, wiping his mouth
and laying aside his napkin. 'If she'd come in when I did--eh, Connie?'
He shook his head and delicately picked his teeth.

'It's all right if--if you let me alone.' She came round to him. 'I can
take care of myself, and----' She sat on the arm of his chair. 'It
wouldn't be so bad, would it?' she asked.

'Hum. No, perhaps it wouldn't,' admitted Fricker. 'Do you like him,
Connie?'

'We should manage very well, I think,' she laughed, feeling easier in
her mind. 'But if you tell mamma now----'

'We upset the apple-cart, do we, Connie?' He fell into thought. 'Might
do worse, and perhaps shouldn't do much better, eh?'

'I daresay not. And'--an unusual timidity for the moment invaded Miss
Connie's bearing--'and I do rather like him, papa.'

Fricker had the family affections, and to him his daughter seemed
well-nigh all that a daughter could be expected to be. She had her
faults, of course--a thing not calculated to surprise Fricker--but she
was bright, lively, pretty, clever, dutiful, and very well behaved. So
long as she was also reasonable, he would stretch a point to please her;
he would at least make every consideration on her side of the case
weigh as heavily as possible. He thought again, reviewing Beaufort
Chance in the new light.

'Well, run it for yourself,' he said at last.

Connie bent down and kissed him. She was blushing and she looked happy.

'Now run off upstairs.'

'You won't tell mamma?'

'Not if you can go on managing it all right.'

Connie kissed him again. Then she, in her turn, looked at the clock.

'May I say that Mr. Chance has been gone ever so long, and that you made
me stay with you?'

'Yes,' said Fricker, rather amused.

'Good-night, you darling,' cried Connie, and danced out of the room.

'Rum creatures!' ejaculated Fricker. 'She's got a head on her shoulders,
though.'

On the whole he was well pleased. But he had the discernment to wonder
how Beaufort Chance would feel about the matter the next morning. He
chuckled at this idea at first, but presently his peculiar smile
regained its sway--the same smile that he wore when he considered the
case of Trix Trevalla and Glowing Stars.

'What Beaufort thinks of it,' he concluded as he went up to bed, 'won't
be quite the question.'

He found Mrs. Fricker not at all displeased with Connie.




CHAPTER XIII

JUSTIFICATION NUMBER FOUR


Trix Trevalla was at Barslett. To say that she was in prison there would
be perhaps a strong expression. To call her sojourn quarantine is
certainly a weak one; we are not preached at in quarantine. Mervyn came
down twice a week; the Barmouths themselves and Mrs. Bonfill completed
the party. No guests were invited. Trix was to stay a month. A tenant
had offered for the flat--it was let for the month. Trix was to stay at
Barslett with the Barmouths and Mrs. Bonfill--a Mrs. Bonfill no longer
indulgent or blinded by partiality--hopeful still, indeed, but with open
eyes, with a clear appreciation of dear Trix's failings, possessed by an
earnest desire to co-operate with the Barmouths in eradicating the same.

No ordinary pressure had brought Trix to this. It dated from Beaufort
Chance's attack: that had rendered her really defenceless. She
remembered how she drove away with the Barmouths and Mervyn, the ominous
heavy silence, the accusing peck of a kiss that her future mother-in-law
gave her when they parted. Next morning came the interview with Mervyn,
the inevitable interview. She had to confess to prevarication and
shuffling; nothing but his grave and distressed politeness saved her the
word 'lie.' Her dealings with Fricker were wrung from her by a
persistent questioning, a steady adherence to the point that neither
tears nor wiles (she tried both) could affect. She had no strength left
at the end. She wrote to Fricker to sell her Glowing Stars, to send the
money to the bank, to close the transaction finally. She did not know
where she would be left; she obeyed, and, broken in spirit, she
consented to be deported to Barslett as soon as her letter was posted.
Mrs. Bonfill was procured; the Barmouths made the sacrifice (the
expression was Lady Barmouth's own); Mervyn arranged to run down. Never
were more elaborate or imposing means taken to snatch a brand from the
burning.

Yet only at Barslett did the real discipline begin; from morning prayers
at nine to evening lemonade at ten-thirty, all day and every day, it
seemed to last. They did not indeed all belabour her every day; the
method was more scientific. If Lord Barmouth was affable, it meant a
lecture after lunch from his wife; when Mrs. Bonfill relaxed in the
daytime, it foreboded a serious affectionate talk with Mervyn in the
evening. One heavy castigation a day was certain--that, and lots of time
to think it over, and, as an aggravation, full knowledge of the
occurrence manifest in the rest of the company. Who shall say that
Beaufort Chance had not taken rich revenge?

Trix tried to fight sometimes, especially against Mrs. Bonfill. What
business was it of Mrs. Bonfill's? The struggle was useless. Mrs.
Bonfill established herself firmly _in loco parentis_. 'You have no
mother, my dear,' she would reply with a sad shake of her head. The
bereavement was small profit to poor Trix under the circumstances. Yet
she held on with the old tenacity that had carried her through the
lodging-houses, with the endurance which had kept her alive through her
four years with Vesey Trevalla. This state of things could not last.
With her marriage would come a change. At any rate the subject of her
sins must show exhaustion soon. Let her endure; let her do anything
rather than forfeit the prospects she had won, rather than step down
from the pedestal of grandeur on which she still sat before the world.
What does the world know or reck of thorns in exalted cushions? The
reflection, which ought to console only the world, seems to bring a
curious comfort to the dignified sufferers on the cushions also.

Another hope bore her up. Beneath the Barmouth stateliness was a
shrewdness that by no means made light of material things. When she was
being severely lectured she had cried once or twice, 'Anyhow I shall
make a lot of money!' Fresh reproofs had followed, but they had sounded
less convinced. Trix felt that she would be a little better able to
stand up for herself if she could produce thousands made under the hated
auspices of Fricker; she would at least be able to retire from her
nefarious pursuits without being told that she was a fool as well as all
the rest of it. She waited still on Fricker.

'I shall never do it again, of course,' she said to Mrs. Bonfill, 'but
if it all goes well I do think that no more need be said about it.'

Mrs. Bonfill made concessions to this point of view.

'Let us hope it will be so, my dear. I think myself that your faults
have been mainly of taste.'

'At any rate I'm not silly,' she protested to Mervyn. 'You mayn't like
the man, but he knows his business.'

'I certainly hope you won't have to add pecuniary loss to the other
disagreeable features of the affair,' said Mervyn; and a few minutes
later, apparently as an afterthought, he asked her carelessly how much
she would make on the best hypothesis. Trix named a moderate figure but
a substantial one.

'And I suppose the rogue'll make twice as much himself!' There was
reluctant envy in Mervyn's tone. It gave Trix courage. Could she
brandish winnings in their faces, she felt sure that the lecturers would
be less severe and she less helpless before them.

Meanwhile, with the impulse to make a friend among her gaolers, with her
woman's instinct for the likeliest, she was all dutifulness and
affection towards Barmouth. She made way with him. The success helped
her a little, but less than it would have because of his reverence for
his son.

'How such an affectionate well-mannered young woman could be led so far
astray is inexplicable to me--inexplicable,' he observed to Mrs.
Bonfill.

Mrs. Bonfill endorsed his bewilderment with a helpless wave of her hand.

'There is good in her,' he announced. 'She will respond to Mortimer's
influence.' And the good gentleman began to make things a little easier
for Trix within the narrow sphere of his ability. Nobody, of course, had
ever told him that the sphere was narrow, and he had not discovered it;
his small semi-surreptitious indulgences were bestowed with a princely
flourish.

Lady Barmouth was inexorable; she was Mervyn's outraged mother. She had,
moreover, the acuteness to discern one of the ideas that lay in Trix's
mind and stiffened it to endurance.

'Now is the time to mould her,' she said to Mrs. Bonfill. 'It would not
perhaps be so easy presently.'

Mrs. Bonfill knew what 'presently' meant, and thought that her friend
was probably right.

'But once we imbue her with our feeling about things, she will keep it.
At present she is receptive.'

'I think she is,' agreed Mrs. Bonfill, who had just an occasional pang
of pity for Trix's extreme receptivity and the ample advantage taken of
it.

Trix had received a brief note from Fricker, saying that he was doing
his best to carry out her instructions, and hoped to be able to arrange
matters satisfactorily, although he must obviously be hampered in some
degree by the peremptory nature of her request. Trix hardly saw why this
was obvious, but, if obvious, at any rate it was also quite inevitable.
She certainly did not realise what an excellent excuse she had equipped
Mr. Fricker with if he sold her shares at a loss. But apparently he had
not sold them, at least no news came to that effect; hope that he was
waiting to effect a great _coup_ still shot in one encouraging streak
across the deadly weariness of being imbued with the Barmouth feeling
about things. Not once a day, but once every hour at least, did she
recall that unregenerate impulse of Lady Blixworth's, confessed to at
this very Barslett, and accord it her heartiest sympathy.

'But I will stick to it,' she said to herself grimly. Her pluck was in
arms; her time would come; for the present all hung on Fricker.

It was a beautiful July evening when his letter came. Trix had just
escaped from a long talk with Mervyn. He had been rather more
affectionate, rather less didactic than usual; something analogous to
what the law calls a Statute of Limitations seemed gradually to be
coming into his mind as within the sphere of practical domestic
politics; not an amnesty, that was going too far, but the possibility of
saying no more about it some day. Trix was hopeful as she wandered into
the garden, and, sitting down by the fountain, let the gentle breeze
blow on her face. It comforted her still to look at the _façade_ and the
gardens; she got from the contemplation of them much the same quality of
pleasure as Airey Newton drew from the sight of his safe and his
red-leather book.

A footman brought her two letters. One was from Peggy Ryle, a rigmarole
of friendly gossip, ending with, 'We're all having a splendid time, and
we all hope you are too. Everybody sent their love to you last night at
supper.' With a wistful smile Trix laid this letter down. What different
meanings that word 'splendid' may bear, to be sure!

The other letter--it was from Fricker! Fricker at last! A hasty glance
round preceded the opening of it. It was rather long. She read and
re-read, passing her hand across her brow; indeed she could hardly
understand it, though Fricker was credited by his friends with an
unrivalled power of conveying his meaning with precision and nicety. He
had tried to obey her instructions. Unfortunately there had been no
market. Perforce he had waited. He had been puzzled, had Fricker, and
waited to make inquiries. Alas! the explanation had not been long in
coming. First, the lode had suddenly narrowed. On the top of this
calamity had come a fire in the mine, and much damage to the property.
The directors had considered whether it would not be wise to suspend
operations altogether, but had in the end resolved to go on. Mr. Fricker
doubted their wisdom, but there it was. The decision entailed a call of
five shillings per share--of course Mrs. Trevalla would remember that
the shares were only five shillings paid. The directors hoped that
further calls would not be necessary; here Fricker was sadly sceptical
again. Meanwhile, there was no chance of selling; to be plain, Glowing
Star shares would not just now be a welcome gift to anyone, let alone an
eligible purchase. So, since sale was impossible, payment of the call
was inevitable. Then came the end. 'Of course, mines are not Consols;
nobody knows that better than yourself. I regret the unlucky issue of
this venture. I cannot help thinking that things would have gone better
if we had been in closer touch, and I had enjoyed more ready access to
you. But I was forced to doubt my welcome, and so was, perhaps, led into
not keeping you as thoroughly _au fait_ with what was going on as I
should have liked. I cannot blame myself for this, however much I regret
it. I gather that you do not intend to undertake any further operations,
or I would console yourself and myself by saying "Better luck next
time!" As matters stand (I refer, of course, to your last letter to me),
I can only again express my regret that Glowing Stars have been subject
to such bad luck, and that I find myself, thanks to your own desire, not
in a position to help you to recoup your losses.' A postscript added,
'For your convenience I may remind you that your present holding is four
thousand shares.'

The last part of the letter was easier to understand than the first. It
needed no re-reading. 'You've chosen to drop me. Shift for yourself, and
pay your own shot.' That was what Mr. Fricker said when it was
translated into the terse brevity of a vulgar directness. The man's cold
relentlessness spoke in every word. Not only Beaufort Chance, not only
the Barmouths and Mrs. Bonfill, not only Mortimer Mervyn, had lessons to
teach and scourges wherewith to enforce them. Fricker had his lesson to
give and his scourge to brandish too.

Again Trix Trevalla looked round, this time in sheer panic. She crumpled
up Fricker's letter and thrust it into her pocket. She saw Peggy Ryle's
in her lap--Peggy who was having a splendid time! Trix got up and fairly
ran into the house, choking down her sobs.

Ten minutes later Mervyn strolled out, looking for her. He did not find
her, but he came upon an envelope lying on the ground near the
fountain--a long-shaped business envelope. It was addressed to Mrs.
Trevalla, and at the back it bore an oval impressed stamp 'S. F. & Co.'

'Ah, she's heard from Fricker! That's the end of the whole thing, I
hope!' He felt glad of that, so glad that he added in a gentle and
pitying tone, 'Poor little Trix, we must keep her out of mischief in
future!' He looked at his watch, pocketed the envelope (he was a very
orderly man), paced up and down for a few minutes, and then went in to
dress for dinner. As he dressed a pleasant little idea came into his
head; he would puzzle Trix by his cleverness; he meditated what, coming
from a less eminent young man, would have been called 'a score.'

At dinner Trix was bright and animated; Mervyn's manner was
affectionate; the other three exchanged gratified glances--Trix was
becoming imbued with the Barmouth feeling about things, even (as it
seemed) to the extent of sharing the Barmouth ideas as to a merry
evening.

'You're brilliant to-night, Trix--brilliant,' Lord Barmouth assured her.

'Oh, she can be!' declared Mrs. Bonfill, with a return to the 'fond
mother' style of early days.

Lady Barmouth looked slightly uneasy and changed the subject; after all,
brilliancy was hardly Barmouthian.

When the servants had gone and the port came (Mervyn did not drink it,
but his father did), Mervyn perceived his moment: the presence of the
others was no hindrance; had not Trix's punishment been as public as her
sin? If she were forgiven, the ceremony should certainly be in the face
of the congregation.

'So you heard from Mr. Fricker to-day?' he said to Trix.

He did not mean to trap her, only, as explained, to raise a cry of
admiration by telling how he came to know and producing the envelope.
But in an instant Trix suspected a trap and was on the alert; she had
the vigilance of the hunted; her brain worked at lightning speed. In a
flash of salvation the picture of herself crumpling up the letter rose
before her; the letter, yes, but the envelope? In the result Mervyn's
'score' succeeded to a marvel.

'Yes, but how did you know?' she cried, apparently in boundless innocent
astonishment.

'Ah!' said he archly. 'Now how did I know?' He produced the envelope and
held it up before her eyes. 'You'd never make a diplomatist, Trix!'

'I dropped it in the garden!'

'And, as I was naturally looking for you, I found it!'

He was not disappointed of his sensation. The thing was simple indeed,
but neat.

'I notice everything too--everything,' observed Lord Barmouth, with the
air of explaining an occurrence otherwise very astonishing.

'It's quite true, Robert does,' Lady Barmouth assured Mrs. Bonfill.

'Wonderful!' ejaculated that lady with friendly heartiness.

Lord Barmouth cleared his throat. 'So far as possible from that quarter,
good news, I hope?'

Trix had postponed making up her mind what to say; she did not mean to
mention Fricker's letter till the next morning, and hoped that she would
see her way a little clearer then. She was denied the respite. They all
waited for her answer.

'Oh, don't let's talk business at dinner! I'll tell you about it
afterwards,' she said.

Mervyn interposed with a suave but peremptory request.

'My dear, it must be on our minds. Just tell us in a word.'

Her brain, still working at express speed, seeming indeed as though it
could never again drop to humdrum pace, pictured the effect of the truth
and the Barmouth way of looking at the truth. She had no hope but that
the truth--well, most of the truth anyhow--must come some day; but she
must tell it to Mervyn alone, at her own time; she would not and could
not tell it to them all there and then.

'It's very good,' she said coolly. 'I don't understand quite how good,
but quite good.'

'And the whole thing's finished?' asked Mrs. Bonfill.

'Absolutely finished,' assented Trix.

Lord Barmouth sighed and looked round the table; his air was magnanimous
in the extreme.

'I think we must say, "All's well that ends well!"' Trix was next him;
he patted her hand as it lay on the table.

That was going just a little too far.

'It ends well--and it ends!' amended Mervyn with affectionate authority.
Lady Barmouth nodded approval to Mrs. Bonfill.

'Oh, yes, it ends,' said Trix Trevalla.

Her face felt burning hot; she wondered whether its colour tallied with
the sensation. Despair was in her heart; she had lied again, and lied
for no ultimate good. She rather startled Lady Barmouth by asking for a
glass of port. Lord Barmouth, in high good-humour, poured it out
gallantly, and then, with obvious tact, shifted the talk to a discussion
of his son's public services, pointing out incidentally how the
qualities that had rendered these possible had in his own case displayed
themselves in a sphere more private, but not, as he hoped, less useful.
Mervyn agreed that his father had been quite as useful as himself. Even
Mrs. Bonfill stifled a yawn.

The end of dinner came. Trix escaped into the garden, leaving the
ladies in the drawing-room, the men still at the table. Her brain was
painting scenes with broad rapid strokes of the brush. She saw herself
telling Mervyn, she saw his face, his voice, his horrified amazement.
Then came she herself waiting while he told the others. Next there was
the facing of the family. What would they do? Would they turn her out?
That would be a bitter short agony. Or would they not rather keep her in
prison and school her again? She would come to them practically a pauper
now. Besides all there had been against her before, she would now stand
confessed a pauper and a fool. One, too, who had lied about the thing to
the very end! In the dark of evening the great house loomed like a very
prison. The fountains were silent, the birds at rest; a heavy stillness
added to the dungeon-like effect. She walked quickly, furiously, along
one path after another, throwing uneasy glances over her shoulder,
listening for a footfall, as though she were in literal truth being
tracked and hunted from her lair. The heart was out of her: at last her
courage was broken. What early hardships, what Vesey Trevalla, what
Beaufort Chance himself could not do, that Fricker and the Barmouths had
done--Fricker's idea of what was necessary in business relations and the
Barmouth way of feeling about things. There was no fight left in Trix
Trevalla.

Unless it were for one desperate venture, the height of courage or of
cowardice--which she knew not, and it signified nothing. She had ceased
to think. She had little but a blind instinct urging her to hide
herself.

'This is very fortunate, Mortimer,' observed Barmouth over his port. He
did not take coffee; Mervyn did.

'The best possible thing under the circumstances. I don't think I need
say much more to her.'

'I think not. She understands now how we feel. Perhaps we could hardly
expect her to realise it until she had enjoyed the full opportunities
her stay here has given her.' Who now should call him narrow-minded?

'I have very little fear for the future,' said Mervyn.

'You have every reason to hope. I wonder--er--how much she has made?'
Mervyn frowned slightly. 'Well, well, it's better to win than lose,'
Barmouth added, with a propitiatory smile.

'Of course. But----'

'You don't like the subject? Of course not! No more do I. Shall we join
the ladies? A moment, Mortimer. Would you rather speak to her yourself?
Or should your mother----?'

'Oh, no. There's really nothing. Leave it to me.'

Lady Barmouth and Mrs. Bonfill were drinking tea from ancestral china.

'Mortimer is quiet, but he's very firm,' Lady Barmouth was saying. 'I
think we need fear no--no outbreaks in the future.'

'A firm hand will do no harm with Trix. But with proper management
she'll be a credit to him.'

'I really think we can hope so, Sarah. Where is she, by the way?'

'She's gone to her room. I don't think she'll come down again to-night
from what my maid said just now when I met her.' Mrs. Bonfill paused and
added, 'She must have been under a strain, you know.'

'She should have been prepared for that. However Mortimer doesn't go to
town till the afternoon to-morrow.' There would be plenty of time for
morals to be pointed.

Mervyn seemed hardly surprised at not finding Trix. He agreed that the
next day would serve, and took himself off to read papers and write
letters; by doing the work to-night he would save a post. Lord Barmouth
put on a woollen cap, wrapped a Shetland shawl round his shoulders, and
said that he would go for a stroll. This form of words was well
understood; it was no infrequent way of his to take a look round his
domains in the evening; there were sometimes people out at night who
ought to be indoors, and, on the other hand, the fireside now and then
beguiled a night-watchman from his duties. Such little irregularities,
so hard to avoid in large establishments, were kept in check by Lord
Barmouth's evening strolls--'prowls' they were called in other quarters
of the house than those occupied by the family itself. The clock struck
ten as the worthy nobleman set forth on his mission of law, order, and,
it may happily be added, personal enjoyment. He was armed with a spud
and a bull's-eye lantern.

The night-watchman was asleep by the fire in the engine-room.
Justification number one for the excursion. Her ladyship's own maid was
talking to Lord Mervyn's own man in a part of the premises rigorously
reserved for the men who lived over the stables. Justification,
cumulative justification, number two. Lord Barmouth turned into the
shrubbery, just to see whether the little gate leading on to the high
road was locked, according to the strict orders given. It was not
locked. Justification, triumphant and crowning justification, number
three!

'It's scandalous--scandalous,' murmured Lord Barmouth in something very
like gratification. Many people would miss their chief pleasure were
their neighbours and dependants void of blame.

He turned back at a brisk pace; he had no key to the gate himself, the
night-watchman had; the night-watchman did not seem to be in luck's way
to-night. Lord Barmouth's step was quick and decisive, his smile sour;
leaving that gate unlocked was a capital offence, and he was eager to
deal punishment. But suddenly he came to a pause on the narrow path.

Justification number four! A woman came towards him, hurrying along with
rapid frightened tread. She was making for the gate. The nefariousness
of the scheme thus revealed infuriated Barmouth. He stepped aside behind
a tree and waited till she came nearer. She wore a large hat and a thick
veil; she turned her head back several times, as though to listen behind
her. He flashed his lantern on her and saw a dark skirt with a light
silk petticoat showing an inch or two below. He conceived the gravest
suspicions of the woman--a thing that perhaps need not be considered
unreasonable. He stepped out on the path, and walked towards her, hiding
the light of the lantern again.

'Who are you, ma'am? What are you doing here? Where do you come from?'
His peremptory questions came like pistol-shots.

She turned her head towards him, starting violently. But after that she
stood still and silent.

'I am Lord Barmouth. I suppose you know me? What's your business here?'

She was silent still.

'Nonsense! You have no business here, and you know it. You must give me
an account of yourself, ma'am, or I shall find a way to make you.'

She gave an account of herself; with trembling ungloved hands she raised
her veil. He turned his lantern on her face and recoiled from her with a
clumsy spring.

'You?' he gasped. 'You? Trix? Are you mad? Where are you going?'

Her face was pale and hard-lined; her eyes were bright, and looked
scarcely sane in the concentrated glare of the lantern.

'Let me pass,' she said in a low shaken voice.

'Let you pass! Where to? Nonsense! You're----'

'Let me pass,' she commanded again.

'No,' he answered, barring her path with his broad squat form. Decision
rang in his tones.

'You must,' she said simply. She put out her arms and thrust at him. He
was heavy to move, but he was driven on one side; the nervous fury in
her arms sent him staggering back; he dropped his lantern and saved
himself with his spud.

'Trix!' he cried in helpless rage and astonishment.

'No, no, no!' she sobbed out as she darted past him, pulling her veil
down again and making for the gate. She ran now, sobbing convulsively,
and catching up her skirts high over her ankles. The manner of her
running scandalised Lord Barmouth hardly less than the fact of it.

'Trix! Trix!' he shouted imperiously, and started in pursuit of her. She
did not turn again, nor speak again. She rushed through the gate,
slamming it behind her. It swung to in his face as he came up. Snatching
it open, he held it with his hand; she was ten or fifteen yards down the
road, running with a woman's short, shuffling, flat-footed stride, but
making good headway all the same; still he heard her sobs, more
convulsive now for shortness of breath.

'Good God!' said Lord Barmouth, helplessly staring after her.

Justifications one, two, and three were driven clean out of his head.
Justification number four made matter enough for any brain to hold--and
the night-watchman was in luck's way after all.

He stood there till he could neither hear nor see her; then, leaving the
gate ajar, he wrapped his shawl closer round him, picked up his lantern,
and walked slowly home. An alarm or a pursuit did not occur to him. He
was face to face with something that he did not understand, but he
understood enough to see that at this moment nothing could be done.

The great _façade_ of the house was dark, save for two windows. Behind
one Mervyn worked steadily at his papers. Behind the other lights flared
in the room that had belonged to Trix--flared on the disorder of her
dinner-gown flung aside, her bag half-packed and thus abandoned,
Fricker's letter torn across and lying in the middle of the floor.

Barmouth must be pardoned his bewilderment. The whole affair was so
singularly out of harmony with the Barmouth feelings and the Barmouth
ways.




CHAPTER XIV

A HOUSE OF REFUGE


Peggy Ryle was alone in lodgings in Harriet Street, near Covent Garden.
Elfreda Flood had gone on tour, having obtained a part rich in
possibilities, at a salary sufficient for necessities. Under conditions
which lacked both these attractions Horace Harnack had joined the same
company; so that, according to Miles Childwick, the worst was expected.
Considering the paucity of amusement and the multitude of churches in
provincial cities, what else could be looked for from artistic and
impressionable minds? At this time Miles was affecting a tone about
marriage which gave Mrs. John Maturin valuable hints for her new
pessimistic novel.

The lodgings wavered between being downright honest lodgings and setting
up to be a flat--this latter on the strength of being shut off from the
rest of the mansion (the word found authority in the 'To let' notices
outside) by a red-baize door with a bolt that did not act. This frail
barrier passed, you came to Elfreda's room first, then, across the
passage, to the sitting-room, then to Peggy's on the right again. There
were cupboards where cooking was done and the charwoman abode by day,
and where you could throw away what you did not want or thought your
partner could not; mistakes sometimes occurred and had to be atoned for
by the surrender of articles vitally indispensable to the erring party.

Needless to say, the lodgings were just now the scene of boundless
hospitality; it would have been sumptuous also but for the charwoman's
immutable and not altogether unfounded belief that Peggy was ruining
herself. The charwoman always forgot the luxuries; as the guests never
believed in them, no harm was done. Peggy flitted in and out to change
her frock, seldom settling down in her home till twelve or one o'clock
at night. She was in a state of rare contentment, an accretion to the
gaiety that was hers by nature. Somehow perplexities had disappeared;
they used to be rather rife, for she had a vivid imagination, apt to
pick out the attractions of any prospect or any individual, capable of
presenting its owner as enjoying exceeding happiness with any person and
in any station of life, and thus of producing impulses which had
occasionally resulted in the perplexities which were now--somehow--a
matter of the past. The change of mood dated from the day when Peggy had
made her discovery about Airey Newton and given her word of honour to
Tommy Trent; it was nursed in the deepest secrecy, its sole overt effect
being to enable Peggy to receive any amount of attention with frank and
entirely unperturbed gratitude. If she were misunderstood---- But there
must really be an end of the idea that we are bound to regulate our
conduct by the brains of the stupidest man in the room. 'And they have
the fun of it,' Peggy used to reflect, in much charity with herself and
all men.

That night, in Lady Blixworth's conservatory, she had refused the hand
of Mr. Stapleton-Staines (son of that Sir Stapleton who had an estate
bordering on Barslett, and had agreed with Lord Barmouth that you could
not touch pitch without being defiled), and she drove home with hardly a
regret at having thrown away the prospect of being a county gentlewoman.
She was no more than wondering gently if there were any attractions at
all about the life. She had also the feeling of a good evening's work,
not disturbed in the least degree by the expression of Lady Blixworth's
face when she and Mr. Staines parted at the door of the conservatory,
and Mr. Staines took scowling leave of his hostess. She lay back in her
cab, smiling at the world.

On her doorstep sat two gentlemen in opera hats and long brown coats.
They were yawning enormously, and had long ceased any effort at
conversation. They had the street to themselves save for a
draggled-looking woman who wandered aimlessly about on the other side of
the road, a policeman who seemed to have his eye on the woman and on
them alternately, and a wagon laden with vegetables that ground its way
along to the market. Peggy's hansom drove up. The two men jumped
joyfully to their feet and assumed expressions of intense disgust; the
policeman found something new to watch; the draggled woman turned her
head towards the house and stood looking on.

'Punctual as usual!' said Miles Childwick encouragingly. 'Eleven to the
moment!'

The clock of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, struck 12.30.

'Here's the key,' said Peggy helpfully. 'Have you half a crown, Tommy?'

'I have a florin, and it's three-quarters of a mile.'

Peggy looked defiant for a minute; then she gave a funny little laugh.
'All right,' said she.

They went in. The policeman yawned and resumed his stroll; the woman,
after a moment's hesitation, walked slowly round the corner and down
towards the Strand.

Arrived upstairs, Peggy darted at the table; a telegram lay there. She
tore it open.

'They've done it!' she cried exultantly.

'What church?' asked Childwick resignedly.

'I mean they're engaged.'

'When?' inquired Tommy, who was busy with soda-water.

'6.45,' answered Peggy, consulting the stamp on the telegram.

'They might have waited till the hour struck,' remarked Childwick in a
disgusted tone.

'Isn't it splendid?' insisted Peggy.

'You say something proper, Tommy, old boy,' Childwick was ostentatiously
overcome.

'Is it a--an enthusiastic telegram?' asked Tommy, after a drink.

'No. She only says they're the happiest people in the world.'

'If it's no worse than that, we can sit down to supper.' Mr. Childwick
proceeded to do so immediately.

'I ordered lobsters,' said Peggy, as she threw her cloak away and
appeared resplendent in her best white frock.

'The mutton's here all right,' Childwick assured her. 'And there's a
good bit left.'

'What that pair propose to live on----' began Tommy, as he cut the loaf.

'The diet is entirely within the discretion of the Relieving Officer,'
interrupted Childwick.

'I'm so glad she's done it while I've got some money left. Shall I give
her a bracelet or a necklace, or--could I give her a tiara, Tommy?'

'A tiara or two, I should say,' smiled Tommy.

'It's awfully hot!' Peggy rose, pulled up the blind, and flung the
window open. 'Let's drink their health. Hurrah!'

Their shouts made the policeman smile, and caused the woman, who, having
gone down round the west corner, had come up again and turned into the
street from the east, to look up to the lights in the window; then she
leant against the railings opposite and watched the lights. The
policeman, after a moment's consideration, began to walk towards her
very slowly, obviously desiring it to be understood that he was not
thereby committed to any definite action; he would approach a crowd on
the pavement, having some invisible centre of disturbance or interest,
with the same strictly provisional air.

'And how was our friend Lady Blixworth?' asked Tommy.

'She looked tired, and said she'd been taking Audrey Pollington about.
She's the most treacherous accomplice I know.'

'She's like Miles here. Nothing's sacred if a good gibe's possible.'

'Nothing ought to be sacred at which a good gibe--a good one--is
possible,' Childwick maintained.

'Oh, I only meant something smart,' explained Tommy contemptuously.

'Then don't deviate into careless compliment. It causes unnecessary
conversation, and the mutton is far from bad, though not far from being
finished.'

'If only the lobsters----' began Peggy plaintively.

'I do not believe in the lobsters,' said Childwick firmly.

'Then she asked me after Trix Trevalla---- Why, there's a knock!'

It was true. The policeman had at last approached the woman with a step
that spoke of a formed decision. To his surprise she suddenly exclaimed
in an impatient voice, 'Oh, well, if they're going to stay all night, I
can't wait,' and crossed the road. He followed her to the doorstep.

'This isn't where you live,' he said, as though kindness suggested the
information.

'No, it isn't,' she agreed.

'Come now, where do you live?'

'I don't know,' she answered, seeming puzzled and tired. 'My flat's let,
you see.'

'Oh, is it?' Sarcasm became predominant in the policeman's voice. 'Taken
it for the Maharajeer of Kopang, have they?' A prince bearing that title
was a visitor to London at this time, and was creating considerable
interest.

'Nonsense!' said she with asperity, and she knocked, adding, 'I know the
lady who lives up there.'

'There's a woman on the doorstep--and a policeman!' cried Peggy to her
companions; she had run to the window and put her head out.

'Now, Tommy, which has come for you and which for me?' asked Childwick.

'Stay where you are,' said Peggy. 'I'll go down and see.'

In spite of Tommy's protests--Childwick made none--she insisted on going
alone. The fact is that she had two or three friends who were
habitually in very low water; it was just possible that this might be
one who was stranded altogether.

The men waited; they heard voices below, they heard the hall-door shut,
there were steps on the stairs, the red-baize door swung on its hinges.

'She's brought her up,' said Childwick. 'Where are our hats, Tommy?'

'Wait a bit, we may be wanted,' suggested Tommy.

'That's why I proposed to go,' murmured Childwick.

'Rot, old fellow,' was Tommy's reception of this affected discretion. He
went to the window and craned his neck out. 'The policeman's gone,' he
announced with some relief. 'That's all right anyhow!'

'All right? Our only protection gone! Mark you, Tommy, we're in luck if
we don't have our pictures in a philanthropic publication over this.'

'Where have they gone? Into one of the bedrooms, I suppose.'

The door opened and Peggy ran in. Her eyes were wide with astonishment;
excitement was evident in her manner; there was a stain of mud on the
skirt of her best white frock.

'The whisky!' she gasped, clutched it, and fled out again.

'Now we know the worst,' said Miles, turning his empty glass upside
down.

'Don't be a fool, Miles,' suggested Tommy, a little impatiently.

'I'll stop as soon as there's anything else to do,' retorted Miles
tranquilly.

Peggy reappeared with the whisky. She set it down on the table and spoke
to them.

'I want you both to go now and to say nothing.'

They glanced at one another and turned to their coats. In unbroken
silence they put them on, took their hats, and held out their hands to
Peggy. She began to laugh; there were tears in her eyes.

'You may say good-night,' she told them.

'Good-night, Peggy.'

'Good-night, Peggy.'

'Good-night--and I should like to kiss you both,' said Peggy Ryle.
'You're not to say anybody came, you know.'

They nodded, and went into the passage.

'I shall come and see you soon,' Peggy told Tommy Trent, as she shut the
baize door behind them. Then she turned into Elfreda's room. 'Come and
have some supper now,' she said.

Trix Trevalla caught her by the hands and kissed her. 'You look so
pretty and so happy, dear,' she sighed; 'and I'm such a guy!'

The term hardly described her pale strained face, feverishly bright
eyes, and the tangle of brown hair which hung in disorderly masses round
her brow. She had thrown off her wet jacket and skirt, and put on a
tea-gown of Elfreda Flood's; her feet were in the same lady's
second-best slippers. Peggy led her into the sitting-room and made her
eat.

'I didn't tell them who you were. And anyhow they wouldn't say
anything,' she assured the wanderer.

'Well, who am I?' asked Trix. 'I hardly know. I know who I was before
dinner, but who am I now?'

'Tell me about it.'

'I can't. I ran away. I think I knocked Lord Barmouth down. Then I ran
to the station--I knew there was a train. Just by chance I put on the
skirt that had my purse in it, or---- No, I'd never have gone back. And
I got to London. I went to my flat. At the door I remembered it was let.
Then--then, Peggy, I went to Danes Inn.' She looked up at Peggy with a
puzzled glance, as though asking why she had gone to Danes Inn. 'But he
was out--at least there was no answer--and the porter had followed me
and was waiting at the foot of the stairs. So I came down. I told him I
was Airey Newton's sister, but he didn't believe me.' She broke into a
weak laugh. 'So I came here, and waited till you came. But those men
were here, so I waited till--till I couldn't wait any longer.' She lay
back exhausted in her chair. 'May I stay to-night?' she asked.

'It's so lucky Elfreda's away. There's a whole room for you!' said
Peggy. She got a low chair and sat down by Trix. But Trix sprang
suddenly to her feet in a new spasm of nervous excitement that made her
weariness forgotten. Peggy watched her, a little afraid, half-sorry that
she had not bidden Tommy Trent to wait outside the baize door.

'Oh, that time at Barslett!' cried Trix Trevalla, flinging out her
hands. 'The torture of it! And I told them all lies, nothing but lies!
They were turning me into one great lie. I told lies to the man I was
going to marry--this very night I told him a lie. And I didn't dare to
confess. So I ran away. I ran for my life--literally for my life, I
think.'

This sort of thing was quite new to Peggy, as new to her as to the
Barmouths, though in a different way.

'Weren't they kind to you?' she asked wonderingly. It was strange that
this was the woman who had made the great triumph, whom all the other
women were envying.

Trix took no notice of her simple question.

'I'm beaten,' she said. 'It's all too hard for me. I thought I could do
it--I can't!' She turned on Peggy almost fiercely. 'I've myself to thank
for it. There's hardly anybody I haven't treated badly; there's been
nobody I really cared about. Beaufort Chance, Mrs. Bonfill, the
Frickers--yes, Mortimer too--they were all to do something for me. Look
what they've done! Look where I am now!'

She threw herself into a chair, and sat there silent for a minute. Peggy
rose quietly, shut the window, and drew the curtains.

'They all believed in me in their way,' Trix went on, more quietly, more
drearily. 'They thought I should do my part of the bargain, that I
should play fair. The bargains weren't a good sort, and I didn't even
play fair. So here I am!'

Her desolation struck Peggy to the heart, but it seemed too vast for
any demonstration of affection or efforts at consolation; Trix would not
want to be kissed while she was dissecting her own soul.

'That's what Fricker meant by the letter he wrote me. He's a swindler.
So was I. He didn't swindle me till I swindled him. I lied to him just
as I lied to Mortimer--just in the same way.'

'Do go to bed, dear. You'll be able to tell me better to-morrow.'

'I know now,' Trix went on, holding her head between her hands, 'I know
now why I went to Danes Inn. I remember now. It came into my head in the
train--as I stared at an old man who thought I was mad. It was because
he made me think I could do all that, and treat people and the world
like that.'

'Airey did?'

'Perhaps he didn't mean to, but it sounded like that to me. I had had
such a life of it; nobody had ever given me a chance. He seemed to tell
me to have my chance, to take my turn. So I did. I didn't care about any
of them. I was having my turn, that's all. It's very horrible, very
horrible. And after it all here I am! But that's why I went to Danes
Inn.' She broke off and burst into a feeble laugh. 'You should have seen
Lord Barmouth, with his shawl and his lantern and his spud! I believe I
knocked him down.' She sprang up again and listened to the clock that
struck two. 'I wonder what Mortimer is doing!' She stood stock-still, a
terror on her face. 'Will they come after me?'

'They won't think of coming here,' Peggy assured her soothingly.

'It's all over now, you know, absolutely,' said Trix. 'But I daren't
face them. I daren't see any of them. I should like never to see
anything of them again. They're things to forget. Oh, my life seems to
have been nothing but things to forget! And to-night I remember them
all, so clearly, every bit of them. I wanted something different, and
it's turned out just the same.' She came quickly up to Peggy and
implored her, 'Will you hide me here for a little while?'

'As long as you like. Nobody will come here.' The contrast between the
gay, confident, high-couraged Trix Trevalla she had known and this
broken creature seemed terrible to Peggy.

'I came here because----' A sort of puzzle fell upon her again.

'Of course you did. We're friends,' said Peggy, and now she kissed her.
All that Trix was saying might be dark and strange, but her coming was
natural enough in Peggy's eyes.

'Yes, that's why I came,' cried Trix, eagerly snatching at the word.
'Because we're friends! You're friends, you and all of you. You're not
trying to get anything, you'd give anything--you, and Mr. Trent, and
Airey Newton.'

Airey's name gave Peggy a little pang. She said nothing, but her smile
was sad.

'And at Barslett I thought of you all--most of you yourself. Somehow you
seemed to me the only pleasant thing there was in the world; and I was
so far--so far away from you.' She lowered her voice suddenly to a
cautious whisper. 'I must tell you something, but promise me to repeat
it to nobody. Promise me!'

'Of course I promise,' said Peggy readily.

'I think I'm ruined,' whispered Trix. 'I think Fricker has ruined me.
That's what I didn't dare tell Mortimer. I had a letter from Fricker,
but I've lost it, I think, or left it somewhere. Or did I tear it up? As
far as I could understand it, it looked as if he'd ruined me. When I've
paid all I have to pay I think I shall have hardly any money at all,
Peggy. You promise not to tell?'

Peggy was more in her element now; her smile grew much brighter.

'Yes, I promise, and you needn't bother about that. It doesn't matter a
bit. And, besides, I've got lots of money. Airey's got a heap of money
of mine.'

'Airey Newton?' She stood silent a moment, frowning, as though she were
thinking of him or of what his name brought into her mind. But in the
end she only said again, 'Yes, I think I must be ruined too.'

It was evident that Peggy could comfort her on that score hardly more
than with regard to the troubles that were strange and mysterious.
Indeed Peggy was almost at her limit of endurance.

'If you're miserable any longer, and don't go quietly to bed, I think I
shall begin to cry and never stop,' she declared in serious warning.

'Have I said a great deal?' asked Trix wearily. 'I'm sorry; I had to say
it to someone. It was burning me up inside, you know.'

'You will come to bed?' Peggy entreated.

'Yes, I'll come to bed. I've got nothing, you know. I must have left
everything there.'

This problem again was familiar; Peggy assured her that there would be
no trouble. A rather hysterical smile came on Trix's lips.

'They'll find all my things in the morning,' she said. 'And Lord
Barmouth will tell them how I knocked him down! And Mrs. Bonfill! And
Lady Barmouth!'

'It would be rather fun to be there,' suggested Peggy, readily advancing
to the brink of mirth.

'And Mortimer!'

Peggy looked at her curiously and risked the question:--

'Did you care at all for him?'

'I can't care for anybody--anybody,' moaned Trix despairingly. She
stretched out her arms. 'Can you teach me, Peggy?'

'You poor old dear, come to bed,' said Peggy.

Peggy herself was not much for bed that night. After she had seen Trix
between the sheets, and dropping off to sleep in exhaustion, she put on
a dressing-gown and came back to her favourite chair. Here she sat
herself Turk-wise, and abandoned the remaining hour of darkness to
reflection and cigarettes. She was to become, it seemed, a spectator of
odd things, a repository of secrets; she was to behold strange scenes in
the world's comedy. It was by no seeking of hers; she had but gone about
enjoying herself, and all this came to her; she did but give of her
abundance of happiness, and they brought to her trouble in exchange. Was
that too the way of the world? Peggy did not complain. No consciousness
marred her beneficence; she never supposed that she was doing or could
do good. And it was all interesting. She pictured Barslett in its
consternation, and a delighted triumph rose in her; she would fight
Barslett, if need be, for Trix Trevalla. For the present it was enough
to laugh at abandoned Barslett, and she paid it that tribute heartily.

Yes, there were her secrets, both guarded by pledges of honour! Trix was
ruined, and Airey Newton was--what he must be declared to be. The
thought of the two made connection in her mind. Trix had given her the
link that held them together; if what Trix had told were true, Airey
Newton had much to say to this night's episode, to all that had happened
at Barslett and before, to the ruin and despair.

'All that sounds rather absurd,' murmured Peggy critically, 'but I'm
beginning to think that that's no reason against things being true.'

Because things all round were rather absurd--Elfreda and Horace Harnack
there at Norwich, Airey Newton hugging gold, Barslett aghast, Mortimer
Mervyn forsaken, brilliant Trix beaten, battered, ruined, a fugitive
seeking a house of refuge--and seeking it with her. Was there no thread
to this labyrinth? Peggy might have the clue in her heart; she had it
not in her head.

Dawn peeped through the curtains, and she tore the hanging folds away
that she might greet its coming and welcome the beauty of it. As she
stood looking, her old confident faith that joy cometh in the morning
rose in her. Presently she turned away with a merry laugh, and,
shrugging her shoulders at Nature's grandmotherly ways, at last drove
herself to bed at hard on five o'clock. There was no sound from Trix
Trevalla's room when she listened on the way.

Her night was short; eight o'clock found her in the market, buying
flowers, flowers, flowers; the room was to be a garden for Trix to-day,
and money flew thousand-winged from Peggy's purse. She had just dealt
forth her last half-sovereign when she turned to find Tommy Trent at her
elbow; he too was laden with roses.

'Oh!' exclaimed Peggy, rather startled, and blushing a little, looking
down, too, at her unceremonious morning attire.

'Ah!' said Tommy, pointing at her flowers and shaking his head.

'Well, you've got some too.'

'I was going to leave them for you--just in acknowledgment of the
lobsters. What have you bought those for?'

'They're for her,' said Peggy. 'I shall like to have yours for myself.'

'Nobody ever needed them less, but I'll bring them round,' said he.

They walked together to her door. Then Tommy said:--

'Well, you can tell me?'

'I can tell you part of it--not all,' said Peggy.

'Who is she, then?'

'Nobody else is to know.' She whispered to him: 'Trix Trevalla!'

Tommy considered a moment. Then he remarked:--

'You'll probably find that you've got to send for me.'

Peggy raised her brows and looked at him derisively. He returned her
gaze placidly, with a pleasant smile. Peggy laughed gently.

'If Mrs. Trevalla is so foolish, I don't mind,' she said.

Tommy strolled off very happy. 'The thing moves, I think,' he mused as
he went his way. For the more love she had for others, the more and the
better might she some day give to him. It is a treasure that grows by
spending: such was his reflection, and it seems but fair to record it,
since so many instances of a different trend of thought have been
exhibited.




CHAPTER XV

NOT EVERYBODY'S FOOTBALL


Lord Barmouth was incapable of speaking of it--incapable. He said so,
and honestly believed himself. Indeed it is possible that under less
practised hands he would have revealed nothing. Lady Blixworth,
cordially agreeing that the less said the better, extracted a tolerably
full account of the whole affair.

'She did, she actually did,' he assured her, as though trying to
overcome an inevitable incredulity. 'I was standing in the middle of the
path, and she'--he paused, seeking a word--something to convey the
monstrous fact.

'Shoved you off it?' suggested Lady Blixworth, in no difficulty for the
necessary word.

'She pushed me violently aside. I all but fell!'

'Then she scuttled off?'

This time he accepted the description. 'Exactly what she did--exactly. I
can describe it in no other way. She must have been mad!'

'What can have driven her mad at Barslett?' asked his friend innocently.

'Nothing. We were kindness itself. Her troubles were not due to her
visit to us. We made her absolutely one of the family.'

'You tried, you mean,' she suggested.

'Precisely. We tried--with what success you see. It is
heart-breaking--heart----'

'And what did Mortimer say?'

'I didn't tell him till the next morning. I can't dwell on the scene.
He ran to her room himself; I followed. It was in gross disorder.'

'No!'

'I assure you, yes. There was no letter, no word for him. Presently his
mother prevailed on him to withdraw.'

'It must have been a shock.'

'I prefer to leave it undescribed. Nobody could attempt to comfort him
but our good Sarah Bonfill.'

'Ah, dearest Sarah has a wonderful way!'

'As the day wore on, she induced him to discuss the Trans-Euphratic
Railway scheme, in which he is greatly interested. He will be a long
while recovering.'

Repressing her inclination to seize an obvious opening for a flippant
question, Lady Blixworth gazed sympathetically at the afflicted father.

'And your poor wife?' she asked in gentle tones.

'A collapse--nothing less than a collapse, Viola. The deception that
Mrs. Trevalla practised--well, I won't say a word. I had come to like
her, and it is too painful--too painful. But there is no doubt that she
wilfully deceived us on at least two occasions. The first we forgave
freely and frankly; we treated it as if it had never been. The second
time was on that evening itself; she misrepresented the result of
certain business matters in which she had engaged----'

'And ran away to avoid being found out?' guessed Lady Blixworth.

'I think--I may say, I hope--that she was for the time not responsible
for her actions.'

'Where is she now?'

'I have no information. We don't desire to know. We have done with her.'

'Does Mortimer feel like that too?'

'Don't do him the injustice--the injustice, Viola--of supposing anything
else. He knows what is due to himself. Fortunately the acute position of
public affairs is a distraction.'

'Do tell him to come here. We shall be so glad to see him, Audrey and
I. She admires him so much, you know; and I--well, I've known him since
he was a boy. Does Sarah know nothing more about Trix's reasons for
behaving in such a fashion?'

'In Sarah's opinion Mrs. Trevalla has ruined herself by speculation.'

Lady Blixworth was startled from artifice by the rapture of finding her
suspicions justified.

'Fricker!' she exclaimed triumphantly.

'There is every reason to believe so--every reason.' There was at least
one very good one--namely, that Mrs. Bonfill had pieced together Mr.
Fricker's letter, read it, and communicated the contents to Lady
Barmouth. Lord Barmouth saw no need to be explicit on this point; he had
refused to read the letter himself, or to let Mrs. Bonfill speak to him
about it. It is, however, difficult for a man not to listen to his wife.

'Well, you never were enthusiastic about the match, were you?'

'She wasn't quite one of us, but I had come to like her.' He paused, and
then, after a struggle, broke out candidly, 'I feel sorry for her,
Viola.'

'It does you credit,' said Lady Blixworth, and she really thought it
did.

'In a sense she is to be pitied. It is inevitable that a man like
Mortimer should require much from the woman who is to be his wife. It is
inevitable. She couldn't reach his standard.'

'Nor yours.'

'Our standard for him is very high, very high.' He sighed. 'But I'm
sorry for her.'

'What does Sarah say?'

Lord Barmouth looked a little puzzled. He leant forward and observed
confidentially, 'It seems to me, Viola, that women of high principle
occasionally develop a certain severity of judgment--I call it a
severity.'

'So do I,' nodded Lady Blixworth heartily.

Barmouth passed rapidly from the dangers of such criticism.

'It is probably essential in the interests of society,' he added, with a
return of dignity.

'Oh, probably,' she conceded, with a carelessness appropriate to the
subject. 'Do you think there's another man?'

'I beg your pardon, Viola?' He was obviously astonished, and inclined to
be offended.

'Any man she liked or had liked, you know?'

'She was engaged to my son.'

That certainly sounded final, but Lady Blixworth was not abashed.

'An engagement is just what brings the idea of the other man back
sometimes,' she observed.

'We have no reason to suspect it in this case. I will not suspect it
without definite grounds. In spite of everything let us be just.'

Lady Blixworth agreed to be just, with a rather weary air. 'Do give my
best love to dear Lady Barmouth, and do send Mortimer to see me,' she
implored her distressed visitor, when he took his leave.

The coast was clear. If she knew anything of the heart of man--as she
conceived she did--the juncture of affairs was not unfavourable;
ill-used lovers may sometimes be induced to seek softer distractions
than Trans-Euphratic or other railways. She telegraphed to Audrey
Pollington to cut short a visit which she was paying in the country. At
any rate Audrey would not have ruined herself nor run away. In a spirit
not over-complimentary either to Audrey or to Barslett, Lady Blixworth
decided that they would just suit one another.

'The marriage arranged, &c., will not take place.' When a lady
disappears by night, and sends no communication save a telegram, giving
no address and asking that her luggage may be consigned to Charing Cross
station, 'to be called for,' it is surely justifiable to insert that
curt intimation of happiness frustrated or ruin escaped; the doubt in
which light to look at it must be excused, since it represents
faithfully the state of Mervyn's mind. He still remembered Trix as he
had thought her, still had visions of her as what he had meant her to
become; with the actual Trix of fact he was naturally in a fury of
outraged self-esteem.

'I would have forgiven her,' he told Mrs. Bonfill, not realising at all
that this ceremony, or process, was the very thing which Trix had been
unable to face. 'In a little while we might have forgotten it, if she
had shown proper feeling.'

'She's the greatest disappointment I ever had in my life,' declared Mrs.
Bonfill. 'Not excepting even Beaufort Chance! I needn't say that I wash
my hands of her, Mortimer.' Mrs. Bonfill was very sore; people would
take advantage of Trix's escapade to question the social infallibility
of her sponsor.

'We have no alternative,' he agreed gloomily.

'You mustn't think any more about her; you have your career.'

'I hate the gossip,' he broke out fretfully.

'If you say nothing, it will die away. For the moment it is
unavoidable--you are so conspicuous.'

'I shall fulfil all my engagements as if nothing had happened.'

'Much the best way,' she agreed, recognising a stolid courage in him
which commanded some admiration. He was facing what he hated most in the
world--ridicule; he was forced to realise one of the things that a man
least likes to realise--that he has failed to manage a woman whom he has
undertaken to manage. No eccentricities of sin or folly in her, no
repeated failures to find anything amiss in himself, can take away the
sting.

'I can't blame myself,' he said more than once to Mrs. Bonfill; but the
conviction of his blamelessness yielded no comfort.

She understood his feeling, and argued against it; but it remained with
him still, in spite of all she could say. He had always been satisfied
with himself; he was very ill-satisfied now. Some malicious spirit in
himself seemed to join in the chorus of ill-natured laughter from
outside which his pride and sensitiveness conjured to his ears. Beaufort
Chance had walked the streets once in fear of the whispers of passers-by
saying that he had been proved a rogue. Mervyn walked them, and sat in
his place in the House, imagining that the whispers said that he had
been made a fool. But he faced all. Barslett bred courage, if not
brilliancy; he faced even Beaufort Chance, who sat below the gangway,
and screwed round on him a vicious smile the first time he appeared
after the announcement.

On the whole he behaved well, but he had not even that glimmer of pity
for Trix which had shone through his father's horrified pompousness. The
movements of her mind remained an utter blank to him; why she had lied,
an unsolved mystery. Amidst all his humiliation and his anger, he
thanked heaven that such a woman would never now be mistress of
Barslett; the affair constituted a terrible warning against experiments
in marriage. If the question arose again--and in view of Barslett it
must--he would follow the beaten track. In the bottom of his
heart--though he confessed it to nobody, no, not to his parents nor to
Mrs. Bonfill--he had something of the feeling of an ordinarily sober and
strait-laced young man who has been beguiled into 'making a night of it'
with rowdy companions, and in the morning hours undergoes the
consequences of his unwonted outbreak: his head aches, he is exposed to
irreverent comment, he is heartily determined to forswear such courses.
Mervyn did not dream of seeking Trix, or of offering an amnesty. To his
mind there was no alternative; he washed his hands of her, like Mrs.
Bonfill.

Society took its cue from these authoritative examples, and was rather
in a hurry to declare its attitude. It shows in such cases something of
the timidity and prudery of people who are themselves not entirely proof
against criticism, and are consequently much afraid of the _noscitur a
sociis_ test being applied to them. Even in moral matters it displays
this readiness to take alarm, this anxiety to vindicate itself; much
more so, of course, in the case of conduct which it terms, with vague
but unmeasured reprobation, 'impossible.' Trix's behaviour had been
'impossible' in the highest degree, and there could be but one sentence.
Yet, though society was eager to dissociate itself from such
proceedings, it was not eager to stop talking about them; its curiosity
and its desire to learn the whole truth were insatiable. Trix was
banned; her particular friends became very popular. Lady Blixworth held
_levées_ of women who wanted to know. Peggy Ryle's appearances were
greeted with enthusiasm. Where was Mrs. Trevalla? How was Mrs. Trevalla?
Who (this was an after-thought, coming very late in the day, but
demanded by the facts of the case) was Mrs. Trevalla after all? And, of
course, the truth had yet to be told? Society held the cheerful
conviction that it by no means knew the worst.

Any knowledge Lady Blixworth had, she professed to be at the disposal of
her callers; she chose to give it in a form most calculated to puzzle
and least likely to satisfy. 'There was a difference, but not amounting
to a quarrel.' 'So far as we know, she has not left London.' 'She was
certainly alone when she started from Barslett.' Utterances like these
wasted the time of the inquirers and beguiled Lady Blixworth's. 'I'm
going to stay with them soon,' she would add, 'but probably anything I
may hear will be in confidence.' Such a remark as that was actively
annoying. 'Oh, Audrey goes with me, yes,' might be a starting-point for
conjecture as to the future, but threw no light on the elusive past.
More than one lady was heard to declare that she considered Lady
Blixworth an exasperating woman.

Peggy's serene silence served as well as these ingenious speeches. With
an audacious truthfulness, which only her popularity with men made it
safe to employ, she told the affronted world that she knew everything,
but could say nothing. An assertion usually considered to be but a
transparent and impudent mask of ignorance compelled unwilling belief
when it came from her lips; but surely she could not persist in such an
attitude? It cut at the roots of social intercourse. Peggy was
incessantly abused and incessantly invited. She had frocks now to
respond to every call, and at every call she came. She went even to
houses which she had shown no anxiety to frequent before, and which
seemed to offer the reward neither of pleasure nor of prestige for
going.

'That child is up to something,' opined Lady Blixworth, after a week or
two of this; and one day, at her own house, she kept Peggy back and took
her firmly by the shoulders.

'What is it you want?' she asked squarely. 'Why have you been going to
the Moresby-Jenkinses' and the Eli-Simpkinsons', and places of that
sort?'

Peggy looked at her with a shrewd kindness, weighing the advantages of
still more candour.

'I want to meet Mr. Fricker,' she confessed at last.

'That means you're in communication with Trix?' An inspiration came upon
her. 'Heavens, I believe she's living with you!'

'Yes, she is. She said I might tell you if I liked, though she doesn't
want it generally known. But can you help me to meet Mr. Fricker?'

'Are you Trix's ambassador?'

'No, no. She knows nothing about it. She'd be furious.'

Lady Blixworth released her manual hold of her prisoner and sat down,
but she kept a detaining eye on her.

'Are you going to throw yourself at Fricker's feet, and ask him to give
Trix's money back?'

'Do you know about----?'

'Yes, Lord Barmouth told me; and very much I've enjoyed keeping it to
myself. I can feel for Trix; but if you want a lesson, my dear, it's
this--the world isn't everybody's football. You won't do any good by
clasping Fricker's knees, however pretty you may look.'

'Haven't the least intention of it,' said Peggy coolly. 'I shall go
purely on a business footing.' She paused a minute. 'Trix sent you her
love, and would like to see you in a little while.'

'I'll write to her from Barslett.' Lady Blixworth smiled reflectively.

'And about Mr. Fricker?'

'It's a business matter--ask him for an appointment.'

'I never thought of that,' said Peggy, ignoring the irony. 'That's the
simplest thing, isn't it?'

'Really I believe, the way you'll do it, it'll be the best. And you
might try the knees, perhaps, after all. He's got a heart, I suppose,
and an ugly wife, I know. So he must be accessible.'

'You're quite wrong in that idea,' persisted Peggy.

'Of course you could get a card for something where he'd be easily
enough, but----'

'The appointment for me! Thanks so much, Lady Blixworth. Without your
advice I should have been afraid.'

'Give Trix my love, and tell her I think she deserves it all.'

'You don't know what a state she's in,' urged Peggy reproachfully.

'A thoroughly unscrupulous woman--and, bad as times are, I'd have given
a hundred pounds to see her shove Lord Barmouth out of the way and
skedaddle down that road.'

'You'd be nice to her, but everybody else is horrid.'

'She deserves it all,' was Lady Blixworth's inexorable verdict.

Peggy looked at her with meditative eyes.

'Her obvious duty was to marry him, and please herself afterwards,' Lady
Blixworth explained. 'We must have our rules kept, Peggy, else where
should we be? And because we were all furious with him for marrying her,
we're all the more furious with her now for throwing him over. Nothing
is more offensive than to see other people despise what you'd give your
eyes to have.'

'She didn't despise it. She's very unhappy at not having it.'

'At not having it for nothing, I suppose? I've no patience with her.'

'Yes, you have--and lots of understanding. And you're rather fond of her
too. Well, I shall go and see Mr. Fricker.'

Peggy's doubts as to how far Lady Blixworth revealed her own views about
Trix Trevalla may be shared, but it cannot be questioned that she
expressed those of the world, which does not like being made a football
of unless by the very great or (perhaps) the very rich. The verdict came
in the same tones from all quarters. Lord Glentorly gave it to Mrs.
Bonfill when he said, 'She was a pirate craft; it's a good thing she's
at the bottom of the sea.' Sir Stapleton Stapleton-Staines ventured to
suggest it to Lord Barmouth himself by quoting, with delicate reticence,
half of that proverb of which he had before approved. Fricker did not
put it into words, but he listened smiling while his wife and daughter
put it into a great many--which were very forcible and did not lack the
directness of popular speech. All the people whom Trix had sought, in
one way or another, to use for her own purposes pointed to her fall as a
proof, first, of her wickedness, and, secondly, of their own superiority
to any such menial function. In face of such an obvious moral it seems
enough to remain approvingly silent; to elaborate it is but to weaken
the force of its simple majesty.

And the sinner herself? She sat in Airey Newton's room in Danes Inn and
owned that the world was right. She was no more the draggled hysterical
woman who had sought refuge with Peggy Ryle. Her boxes had been called
for at Charing Cross; her nerves were better under control. She was
chaffing Airey Newton, telling him what a failure her sally into society
had proved, declaring that on the strength of his advice at Paris she
held him responsible for it all.

'You gave me a most selfish gospel,' she laughed. 'I acted on it, and
here I am, back on your hands, Mr. Newton.'

He was puzzled by her, for he could not help guessing that her fall had
been severe. Perfect as her self-control now was, the struggle had left
its mark on her face; her gay manner did not hide the serious truth
which lay behind.

'Oh, it's no use beating about the bush,' she declared, laughing. 'I've
played my game, and I've lost it. What are you going to do with me?'

'Well, I suppose life isn't altogether at an end?' he suggested.

'We'll hope not,' smiled Trix; but her voice was not hopeful.

'You were engaged, and you're not. It seems to amount to that.'

'That's putting it very baldly. A little bit more, perhaps.'

How much more she did not tell him. She said nothing of Fricker, nothing
of ruin; and no rumours had reached Danes Inn. He saw that her vanity
was wounded, he guessed that perhaps her affections might be; but he
treated her still as the well-off fashionable woman who for a whim came
to visit his poor lodgings, just as she still treated him as the
poverty-stricken man who might advise others well or ill, but anyhow
made little enough out of the world for himself.

'Well, you seem quite happy without these vanities,' she said. 'Why
shouldn't I be?' She leant back and seemed to look at him with a
grateful sense of peace and quiet. 'And you don't abuse me! You must
know I've been very bad, but you greet me like a friend.'

'Your badness is nothing to me, if you have been bad.'

'Is that indifference--or fidelity?' she asked, lightly still, but with
a rather anxious expression in her eyes.

For a moment he was silent, staring out of his big window into the big
window opposite. In the end he did not answer her question, but put one
in his turn:--

'So you hold me responsible?'

There must have been something more than raillery in her original
charge, for when he put his question gravely she answered it in a like
way.

'You touched some impulse in me that hadn't been touched before. Of
course you didn't mean to do it. You didn't know the sort of person you
were talking to. But I thought over what you said, and it chimed in with
something in me. So I went and--and had my fling.'

'Ah!' he murmured vaguely, but he turned now and looked at her.

She had meant to give him no confidence, but he drew it from her.

'I've been very unhappy,' she confessed. 'I was very unhappy a good deal
of the time, even when I was prosperous. And I've--I've told a lot of
lies.'

The blunt statement wrung a passing smile from him.

'And if I'd gone on I must have told many more.'

'My responsibility is evidently heavy.' He paused, and then added,
'There are a good many things that make one lie.'

'Not in Danes Inn?' She laughed a little.

'Yes, even in Danes Inn,' said he, frowning.

'I don't think so, and I'm glad to be here,' she said. 'And some day,
when I've more courage, I'll make a full confession and ask you to be
friends still. I often thought about you and Peggy and the rest.'

He had begun to smoke, and did not look at her again till the long
silence that followed her last words caught his attention. When he
turned, she sat looking straight in front of her; he saw that her eyes
were full of tears. He put down his pipe and came slowly over to her.

'It's been a bit worse than you've told me, Mrs. Trevalla?' he
suggested.

'Yes, a little bit,' she owned. 'And--and I'm not cured yet. I still
want to go back. There, I tell you that! I haven't told even Peggy. I've
told her all my sins, but I've not told her that I'm impenitent. I
should like to try again. What else is there for me to try for? You have
your work; what have I? I can't get my thoughts away from it all.'

She regarded him with a piteous appeal as she confessed that she was not
yet chastened.

'You can go back and have another shot,' he said slowly.

Trix would not tell him why that was impossible.

'I'm afraid the door's shut in my face,' was as definite as she could
bring herself to be.

'Well, we shall have the benefit, perhaps.'

'If I told you all about it, I don't think you'd want me here.'

'If we all knew all about one another, should we ever pay visits?'

'Never, I suppose. Or face it out and live together always! But,
seriously, I should be afraid to tell you.'

'Don't idealise me.'

The words were curt, the tone hard; there was no appearance of joking
about him. There was a dreary disheartened sadness on his face, as of a
man who struggled always and struggled in vain, who was suffering some
defeat that shamed him. He had come near to her; she reached out her
hand and touched his.

'Don't look like that,' she begged. 'I don't know why it is, and you
make me more unhappy.'

He turned a sudden glance on her; their eyes met full for an instant;
then both turned away. But the look that passed between them had held
something new; it made a difference to them; it seemed in some sort to
change the feeling of the dingy room. Their eyes had spoken of a
possibility which had suddenly come into the minds of both and had
surprised the chance of expression before they could hinder it.
Henceforward it must at least be common ground with them that the
unhappiness of each was a matter of deep concern to the other. But both
crushed down the impulse and the longing to which that knowledge seemed
naturally to give birth. Trix was not penitent; Airey's battle still
ended in defeat. Their pretence was against them. She was of the rich.
How could he bear to change his life for hers? She looked round the
dingy room. Was this the existence to which she must come, a woman
ruined, and content with these four walls? They were not boy and girl,
that the mere thought of love could in a moment sweep all obstacles
away. Each felt chains whereof the other knew nothing. It was not hope
that filled them, but rather the forlorn sense of loss--that for them,
as they were, such a thing could not be; and they were ashamed to own
that the idea of it had been interchanged between them.

Trix ended the constrained silence that had followed on the speech of
eyes.

'Well, we must take the world as we find it,' she said with a little
sigh. 'At least I've tried to make it what I wanted, and, as you see,
without success.' She rose to go, but rose reluctantly.

'Is it ourselves or the world?' he asked.

'We're the world, I suppose, like other people, aren't we? I don't feel
too good to belong to it!'

'If we're a bit of it, we ought to have more to say to it,' he
suggested, smiling again.

Trix shook her head.

'It's too big,' she objected sorrowfully. 'Big and hard, and, I believe,
most horribly just.'

Airey stroked his beard in meditation over this.

'I'm inclined to think it is rather just. But I'll be hanged if there's
an iota of generosity about it!' said he.

She held out her hand in farewell, and could not help meeting his eyes
once again; those deep-set, tired, kindly eyes had a new attraction for
her since her wanderings and adventures; they had the strong appeal of
offering and of asking help all in the same look. She could not prevent
herself from saying:--

'May I come again?'

'You must come,' said Airey Newton in a low voice.

He was left resolved that she of all the world should never know his
secret. She went back saying that of all the world he at least should
never learn how sore a fool she had been. Because of that glance between
them these purposes were immutable in their minds.




CHAPTER XVI

MORAL LESSONS


Mrs. Bonfill sore at the damage to her infallibility; Barmouth still
feeling that rude and sacrilegious thrust at ennobled ribs; Lady
Barmouth unable to look her neighbours in the face; Mervyn fearing the
whispers and the titters; Lady Blixworth again wearily donning her
armour, betaking herself to Barslett, goading Audrey Pollington into
making herself attractive; the Glentorlys and a score more of exalted
families feeling that they had been sadly 'let in,' treacherously
beguiled into petting and patronising an impossible person; Airey Newton
oppressed with scorn of himself, yet bound in his chains; Peggy
persuaded that something must be done, and shaken out of her usual
happiness by the difficulty of doing it--all these people, and no doubt
more besides, proved that if the world is not a football for every
wanton toe, neither is it an immovable unimpressionable mass, on which
individual effort and the vagaries of this man or that make absolutely
no impression. Trix's raid had met with defeat, but it had left its
effect on many lives, its marks in many quarters. A sense of this joined
with the recognition of her own present wretched state to create in Trix
the feelings with which she regarded her past proceedings and their
outcome. So many people must have grudges against her; if she was not
penitent she was frightened; her instinct was to hide, however much she
might still hanker after the glories of conspicuous station. Of Airey's
disturbance and of Peggy's fretting, indeed, she had only a vague
inkling; the world she had left was the vivid thing to her; it seemed
to ring with her iniquities as her guilty ears listened from the
seclusion of Harriet Street, Covent Garden. She knew it called her
impossible; she could not have resented Lord Glentorly's 'pirate craft.'

Not even on Mervyn himself had she been so great an influence as on
Beaufort Chance, and, great as the influence was, Beaufort greatly,
though not unnaturally, exaggerated it. He set down to her account all
the guilt of those practices for which he had suffered and of which
Fricker was in reality the chief inspirer; at any rate, if she had not
counselled them, she had impelled him to them and had then turned round
and refused him the reward for whose sake he had sinned. If he ranked
now rather with Fricker than with Mervyn or Constantine Blair, or the
men of that sort who had been his colleagues and his equals, the
heaviest of the blame rested on Trix. If the meshes of the Fricker net
enveloped him more closely day by day, hers was the fault. Countenanced
by an element of truth, carried the whole way by resentment, by
jealousy, and by the impulse to acquit himself at another's expense, he
would have rejoiced to make Trix his scapegoat and to lay on her the
burden of his sins. Though she could not bear his punishment, he
welcomed her as his partner in misfortune. He longed to see her in her
humiliation, and sought a way. When he asked himself what he meant to
say to her he could not answer; his impulse was to see her in the dust.

The Frickers often talked of Trix--Fricker with the quiet smile of a man
who has done what he had to do and done it well; Mrs. Fricker with heavy
self-complacent malevolence; Connie with a lighter yet still malicious
raillery. An instinct in Chance made him take small part in these
discussions and display some indifference towards them; but soon he
gleaned what he wanted from them. Fricker had found out where Trix was;
he had received a brief note from her, asking to be informed of the full
extent of her speculative liabilities. He described with amusement the
lucid explanation which he had sent.

'When she's paid that, and her other debts--which must be pretty
heavy--there won't be much left, I fancy,' he reflected.

'Where is she?' asked Connie, in passing curiosity.

'I forget. Oh, here's the letter. Thirty-four Harriet Street, Covent
Garden. Hardly sounds princely, does it, Connie?'

They all laughed, and Beaufort Chance with them. But he hoarded up the
address in his memory. The next moment, by an impulse to conceal his
thoughts, he stole an affectionate glance at Connie and received her sly
return of it. He knew that, whatever feeling took him to Trix
Trevalla's, his visit would not win approval from Connie Fricker.

On the following morning Mr. Fricker saw that address at the top of
another note, whose author introduced herself as a great friend of Mrs.
Trevalla. Smiling with increased amusement, he gave her what she
asked--an appointment for the following afternoon. It would be Saturday,
and Fricker bade her come to his house, not to his office. He had heard
Connie speak of her with some envy, and saw no reason why the two girls
should not become acquainted. The object of the visit was, he supposed,
to make an appeal on Trix Trevalla's behalf. Experience taught him that
women attached an extraordinary efficacy to a personal
interview--extraordinary, that is, where the other party to the
interview was not a fool. His anticipation of the meeting did not differ
much from Lady Blixworth's satirical suggestion of its course.

When Peggy came at the appointed hour (she was so far human, Mr.
Fricker's suspicions so far justified, that she had taken much pains
with her toilet) she was ushered into the drawing-room, not the study,
and was met by Connie with profuse apologies. A gentleman had called on
papa most unexpectedly; papa had to see the gentleman because the
gentleman was leaving for Constantinople the next day. It was something
about the Trans-Euphratic Railway, or something tiresome. Would Miss
Ryle mind waiting half an hour and having a cup of tea? Mamma would be
so sorry to miss her, but it was Lady Rattledowney's day, and Lady
Rattledowney was lost without mamma. Did Miss Ryle know the
Rattledowneys? Such dear people the Rattledowneys were! They were also,
it may be observed, extremely impecunious.

Thus vivaciously inaugurated, the conversation prospered. Peggy, sorely
afraid of giggling, studied her companion with an amusement sternly
repressed, and an interest the greater for being coupled with
unhesitating condemnation. Connie ranged over the upper half of the
Fricker acquaintance; she had been warned to avoid mention of Trix
Trevalla, but she made haste to discover any other common friends: there
were the Eli-Simpkinsons and the Moresby-Jenkinses, of course; a few
more also whom Peggy knew. Mrs. Bonfill figured on Connie's list, though
not, she admitted, of their intimate circle. ('She has so much to do,
poor Mrs. Bonfill, one can never find her!' regretted Connie.) Over Lady
Blixworth, whose name Peggy introduced, she rather shied.

'Mamma doesn't think her very good form,' she said primly.

Rushing for any remark to avert the threatened laugh, Peggy made boldly
for Beaufort Chance.

'Oh, yes, he's a very particular friend of ours. We think him
delightful. So clever too! He's always in and out of the house, Miss
Ryle.' She blushed a little, and met Peggy's look with a conscious
smile.

Peggy smiled too, and followed the next direction taken by Miss Connie's
handsome eyes.

'I see you've got his photograph on the table.'

'Yes. Mamma lets me have that for my particular table.'

Evidently Peggy was to understand that her companion had a property in
Beaufort Chance; whether the intimation was for Peggy's own benefit or
for transmission to another was not clear. It was possibly no more than
an ebullition of vanity--but Peggy did not believe that.

'We ride together in the morning sometimes, and that always makes
people such friends. No stiffness, you know.'

Peggy, wondering when and where any stiffness would intrude into
Connie's friendship, agreed that riding was an admirable path to
intimacy.

'And then he's so much connected in business with papa; that naturally
brings him here a lot.'

'I don't suppose he minds,' suggested Peggy, playing the game.

'He says he doesn't,' laughed Connie, poking out her foot and regarding
it with coy intensity, as she had seen ladies do on the stage when the
topic of their affections happened to be touched upon.

Understanding the accepted significance, if not the inherent propriety,
of the attitude, Peggy ventured on a nod which intimated her
appreciation of the position.

'Oh, it's all nonsense anyhow, isn't it, Miss Ryle? What I say is, it's
just a bit of fun.' In this declaration Connie did less than justice to
herself. It was that, but it was something much more.

Peggy was vastly amused, and saw no reason to be more delicate or
reticent than the lady principally concerned.

'May we congratulate you yet?'

'Gracious, no, Miss Ryle! How you do get on!'

At this Peggy saw fair excuse for laughter, and made up her arrears
heartily. Connie was not at all displeased. Peggy 'got on' further,
chaffing Connie on her conquest and professing all proper admiration for
the victim.

'Mind you don't say anything to mamma,' Connie cautioned her. 'It's all
a dead secret.'

'I'm very good at secrets,' Peggy assured her.

'He gave me this,' murmured Connie, displaying a bangle.

'How perfectly sweet!' cried Peggy.

'It is rather nice, isn't it? I love diamonds and pearls. Don't you,
Miss Ryle? Lady Rattledowney admired it very much.'

'Did you tell her where it came from?'

'No--and mamma thinks I bought it!'

Peggy had arrived at the conclusion that this guilelessness was
overdone; she adopted, without serious doubt, the theory of
transmission. Nothing was to be repeated to mamma, but as much as she
chose might find its way to Trix Trevalla. The information was meant to
add a drop of bitterness to that sinner's cup. Peggy was willing to take
it on this understanding--and to deal with it as might chance to be
convenient.

'I hope you haven't found me very dull, Miss Ryle?'

'No!' cried Peggy, with obvious sincerity. Connie had been several
things which Peggy subsequently detailed, but she had not been tiresome.

The interview with Mr. Fricker was in a different key, the only likeness
being that the transmission theory still seemed applicable, and indeed
inevitable here and there. The giggles and the coyness were gone, and
with them the calculated guilelessness; the vulgarity was almost gone.
Fricker was not a gentleman, but, thanks to his quietness and freedom
from affectation, it was often possible to forget the fact. He had a dry
humour, she soon found, and it was stirred by the contrast between his
visitor's utter ignorance of business and her resolutely business-like
manner. It was evident that she did not intend to clasp his knees.

'I see you've taken my measure, Miss Ryle,' he remarked. 'Mrs. Trevalla
has shown you my letter, you tell me, and you have come to make me a
proposition?'

'It seems from the letter that they can go on making her pay money?'

'Precisely--at stated intervals and of definite amounts. Three several
amounts of one thousand pounds at intervals of not less than two
months--the first being due immediately, and the others sure to come
later.'

'Yes, I think I understand that.'

'I endeavour to express myself clearly, Miss Ryle.'

Peggy ignored a profane gleam of amusement in his eye.

'I suppose it's no good talking about how she came to buy such curious
shares,' began Peggy.

'I think you'll have gathered from Mrs. Trevalla that such a discussion
would not be fruitful,' interposed Fricker.

'Have you got to pay too?'

'That question is, pardon me, worse than fruitless; it's irrelevant.'

'She can't pay that money and what she owes besides unless she has time
given her. And, even if she has, she'll worry herself to death, waiting
and watching for the--for the----'

'Calls,' he suggested. 'That's the legal term.'

'Oh, yes. The calls.'

'I am not the company; I am not her creditors. I can't give Mrs.
Trevalla time.'

'You wouldn't if you could!' Peggy blazed out.

'Irrelevant again,' he murmured, gently shaking his head.

'I didn't come here to beg,' Peggy explained. 'But I've a sort of idea
that, if you had the shares instead of Trix, you could get out of it
cheaper somehow. I mean, you could make some arrangement with the
company, or get rid of the shares, or something. Anyhow I believe you
could manage to pay less than she'll have to.'

'It's possible you're flattering me there.'

'You'd try?'

'You may, I think, give me the credit of supposing I should try,' said
Fricker, smiling again.

'She'll have to pay, or--or try to pay----'

'She'll be liable to pay----'

'Yes, liable to pay three thousand pounds altogether?' He nodded. 'What
are the shares worth?'

'Three thousand pounds less than nothing, Miss Ryle.'

His terrible coolness appalled Peggy. She could not resist a glance of
horror, but she held herself in hand.

'Then, if you took them, the most you'd lose would be three thousand
pounds, and you'd have a very good chance of losing less?'

'I don't know about a good chance. Some chance, shall we say?' He was
more than tolerant; he was interested in Peggy's development of her
idea.

Peggy leant her elbows on the writing-table between them.

'I want her to be rid of the whole thing--to think it never happened. I
want you to take those shares from her: tell her that they've become of
value, or that you made a mistake, or anything you like of that sort,
and that you'll relieve her of them. If you did that, how much money
should you want?'

'You wish this done out of kindness? To take a weight off Mrs.
Trevalla's mind?'

'Yes, to take a weight off her mind. It's funny, but she frets more over
having bungled her money affairs and having been made--having been
silly, you know--than over anything else. She's very proud, you see.'

Fricker's smile broadened. 'I can quite believe she's proud,' he
remarked.

'Of course she knows nothing about my being here. It's my own idea. You
see what I want, don't you?'

'As a business transaction, I confess I don't quite see it. If you
appeal to my good-nature, and ask me to make sacrifices for Mrs.
Trevalla----'

'No. I don't expect you to lose by it.'

Fricker saw the look that she could not keep out of her eyes. He smiled
fixedly at her.

'But I thought that, if you could satisfy them--or get off
somehow--for--well, one thousand pounds or--or at most one thousand five
hundred pounds' (Peggy was very agitated over her amounts), 'that--that
I and some other friends could manage that, and then--why, we'd tell her
it was all right!' A hint of triumph broke through her nervousness as
she declared her scheme. 'I can't be absolutely sure of the money except
my own, but I believe I could get it.' She worked up to a climax. 'I can
give you five hundred pounds now--in notes, if you like,' she said,
producing a little leather bag of a purse.

Fricker gave a short dry laugh; the whole episode amused him very much,
and Peggy's appearance also gratified his taste. She unfastened the bag,
and he heard her fingers crackle the notes, as she sat with her eyes
fixed on his; appeal had been banished from Peggy's words, it spoke in
her eyes in spite of herself.

'Mrs. Trevalla has perhaps told you something of her relations with me?'
asked Fricker, clasping his long spare hands on the table.

'I don't defend her: but you don't fight with women, Mr. Fricker?'

'There are no women in business matters, Miss Ryle.'

'Or with people who are down?'

'Not fight, no. I keep my foot on them.'

He took up a half-smoked cigar and relit it.

'I'm not a Shylock,' he resumed with a smile. 'Shylock was a
sentimentalist. I'd have taken that last offer--a high one, if I
remember--and given up my pound of flesh. But you expect me to do it for
much less than market value. I like my pound of flesh, and I want
something above market value for it, Miss Ryle. I've taught Mrs.
Trevalla her little lesson. Perhaps there's no need to rub it in any
more. You want me to make her think that she can get out of Glowing
Stars without further loss?'

'Yes.'

'And you want me to take the risk on myself? The loss may run to three
thousand pounds, though, as you say, a lucky chance might enable me to
reduce it.' His fertile mind had inklings of a scheme already, though in
the vaguest outline.

'Yes,' said Peggy again, not trusting herself to say more.

'Very well; now we understand.' He leant right over towards her. 'I
think you're foolish,' he told her, 'you and the other friends. The
woman deserves all she's got; she didn't play fair with me. I haven't a
spark of sympathy for her. If I followed my feelings, I should show you
the door. But I don't follow my feelings when I see a fair profit in
the other direction. If Mrs. Trevalla had acted on that rule she
wouldn't be where she is.' He thrust his chair back suddenly and rose to
his feet. 'I'll do what you wish, and back up the story you mean to tell
her, if you'll come again and bring that pretty little bag with you, and
take out of it and lay on this table----' He paused in wilful malice,
tormenting Peggy and watching her parted lips and eager eyes. 'And lay
on the table,' he ended slowly, 'four thousand pounds.'

'Four----!' gasped Peggy, and could get no further.

'Three to cover risk, one as a solatium for the wound Mrs. Trevalla has
dealt to my pride.' His irony was unwontedly savage as he snarled out
his gibe.

Peggy's face suddenly grew flushed and her eyes dim. She looked at him,
and knew there was no mercy. He did not spare her his gaze, but when she
conquered her dismay and sat fronting him with firm lips again he smiled
a grim approval. He liked pluck, and when he had hit his hardest he
liked best to see the blow taken well. He became his old self-controlled
calm self again.

Peggy shut her bag with a click and rose in her turn. Her first words
surprised Mr. Fricker.

'That's a bargain, is it?' she asked.

'A bargain, certainly,' he said.

'Then will you put it in writing, please?' She pointed at the table with
a peremptory air.

Infinitely amused again, Fricker sat down and embodied his undertaking
in a letter, ceremoniously addressed to Miss Ryle, expressed and signed
in the name of his firm; he blotted the letter and gave it to her in an
open envelope.

'It's better not to trust to memory, however great confidence we may
have in one another, isn't it?' said he.

'Much,' agreed Peggy drily. 'I don't suppose I can get all that money,
but I'm going to try,' she announced.

'I daresay there are people who would do a great deal for you,' he
suggested in sly banter.

Peggy flushed again. 'I shouldn't ask anyone like that. I couldn't.'
She broke off, indignant with herself; she had taken almost a
confidential tone. 'It's not your concern where or how I get it.'

'You express the view I've always taken most exactly, Miss Ryle.'

He was openly deriding her, but she hardly hated him now. He was too
strange to hate, she was coming to think. She smiled at him as she asked
a question:--

'Does money always make people what you are?'

'Money?' Fricker stood with his hands in his pockets, seeming a little
puzzled.

'I mean, always bothering with it and thinking a lot of it, you know.'

'Oh, no! If it did, all men of business would be good men of business,
and luckily there are plenty of bad.'

'I see,' said Peggy. 'Well, I'll come back if I get the money, Mr.
Fricker.'

'I'm glad Connie gave you some tea.'

'We had a very nice talk, thank you.'

'I won't ask you to remember me to Mrs. Trevalla.'

'She's not to know I've seen you. You've put that in the letter?'

'Bless my soul, I'd forgotten! How valuable that written record is! Yes,
you'll find it there all right. The transaction is to be absolutely
confidential so far as Mrs. Trevalla is concerned.'

He escorted her to the door. As they passed through the hall, Connie's
voice came from upstairs:--

'Won't Miss Ryle take a glass of wine before she goes, papa?'

Fricker looked at Peggy with a smile.

'I don't drink wine,' said Peggy, rather severely.

'Of course not--between meals. Connie's so hospitable, though. Well, I
hope to see you again.'

'I really don't believe you do,' said Peggy. 'You love money, but----'

'I love a moral lesson more? Possibly, Miss Ryle; but I at least keep
my bargains. You can rely on my word if--if you come again, you know.'

Peggy's hansom was at the door, and he helped her in. She got into the
corner of it, nodded to him, and then sank her face far into the fluffy
recesses of a big white feather boa. All below her nose was hidden; her
eyes gleamed out fixed and sad; her hands clutched the little bag very
tightly. She had so hoped to bring it back empty; she had so hoped to
have a possible though difficult task set her. Now she could hear and
think of nothing but those terrible figures set out in Fricker's
relentless tones--'Four thousand pounds!'

Fricker turned back into his house, smiling in ridicule touched with
admiration. It was all very absurd, but she was a girl of grit.
'Straight too,' he decided approvingly.

Connie ran downstairs to meet him.

'Oh, what did she want? I've been sitting in the drawing-room just
devoured by curiosity! Do tell me about it, papa!'

'Not a word. It's business,' he said curtly, but not unkindly.
'Inquisitiveness is an old failing of yours. Ah!'

His exclamation was called forth by an apparently slight cause. Connie
wore a white frock; to the knees of it adhered a long strip of
fawn-coloured wool.

'You were sitting in the drawing-room devoured by curiosity?' he asked
reflectively.

'Just devoured, papa,' repeated Connie gaily.

Mr. Fricker took hold of her ear lightly and began to walk her towards
his study.

'Odd!' he said gently. 'Because the drawing-room's upholstered in red,
isn't it?'

'Well, of course.' Connie laughed rather uneasily.

'And, so far as I know, the only fawn-coloured wool mat in the house is
just outside my study door.'

'What do you mean, papa?' Connie was startled, and tried to jump away;
Mr. Fricker's firm hold on her ear made it plain that she would succeed
only at an impossible sacrifice.

'And that's the precise colour of that piece of wool clinging to your
frock. Look!' They were on the mat now; the study door was open, and
there was ample light for Connie to make the suggested comparison.
'Look!' urged Fricker, smiling and pinching his daughter's ear with
increasing force. 'Look, Connie, look!'

'Papa! Oh, you're hurting me!'

'Dear me, I'm sorry,' said Fricker. 'But the thought of people listening
outside my door made me forget what I was doing.' It seemed to have the
same effect again, for Connie writhed. 'How difficult it is to get
straightforward dealing!' reflected Fricker sadly. 'My dear Connie, if
you happen to have caught any of the conversation, you will know that
Mrs. Trevalla has learnt the advantage of straightforward dealing.'

Connie had nothing to say; she began to cry rather noisily. Fricker
involuntarily thought of a girl he had seen that day who would neither
have listened nor cried.

'Run away,' he said, releasing her; his tone was kind, but a trifle
contemptuous. 'You'd better keep my secrets if I'm to keep yours, you
know.'

Connie went off, heaving sobs and rubbing her assaulted ear. She was
glad to escape so cheaply, and the sobs stopped when she got round the
first corner.

'Connie's a good girl,' said Fricker, addressing the study walls in a
thoughtful soliloquy. 'Yes, she's a good girl. But there's a difference.
Yes, there is a difference.' He shrugged his shoulders, lit a fresh
cigar, and sat down at his writing-table. 'It doesn't matter whether
Connie knows or not,' he reflected, 'but we must have moral lessons, you
know. That's what pretty Miss Ryle had to understand--and Mrs. Trevalla,
and now Connie. It'll do all of 'em good.'

Then he looked up the position of the Glowing Star, and thought that an
amalgamation might possibly be worked and things put in a little better
trim. But it would be troublesome, and--he preferred the moral lesson
after all.




CHAPTER XVII

THE PERJURER


Peggy's appointment had not been a secret in the Fricker household,
though its precise object was not known; it had been laughed and joked
over in the presence of the family friend, Beaufort Chance. He had
joined in the mirth, and made a mental note of the time appointed--just
as he had of Trix Trevalla's address in Harriet Street. Hence it was
that he caused himself to be driven to the address a little while after
Peggy had started on her way to Fricker's. The woman who answered his
ring said that Mrs. Trevalla was seeing nobody; her scruples were
banished by his confident assurance that he was an old friend, and by
five shillings which he slipped into her hand. He did not scrutinise his
impulse to see Trix; it was rather blind, but it was overpowering. An
idea had taken hold of him which he hid carefully in his heart, hid from
the Frickers above all--and tried, perhaps, to hide from himself too;
for it was dangerous.

Trix's nerves had not recovered completely; they were not tuned to meet
sudden encounters. She gave a startled cry as the door was opened
hastily and as hastily closed, and he was left alone with her. She was
pale and looked weary about the eyes, but she looked beautiful too,
softened by her troubles and endowed with the attraction of a new
timidity; he marked it in her as useful to his purposes.

'You? What have you come for?' she cried, not rising nor offering him
her hand.

He set down his hat and pulled off his gloves deliberately. He knew they
were alone in the lodgings; she was at his mercy. That was the first
thing he had aimed at, and it was his.

'Your friends naturally want to see how you are getting on,' he said,
with a laugh. 'They've been hearing so much about you.'

Trix tried to compose herself to a quiet contempt, but the nerves were
wrong and she was frightened.

'Well, things have turned out funnily, haven't they? Not quite what they
looked like being when we met last, at Viola Blixworth's! You were
hardly the stuff to fight Fricker, were you? Or me either--though you
thought you could manage me comfortably.'

His words were brutal enough; his look surpassed them. Trix shrank back
in her chair.

'I don't want to talk to you at all,' she protested helplessly.

'Ah, it's always had to be just what you wanted, hasn't it? Never mind
anybody else! But haven't you learnt that that doesn't exactly work? I
should have thought it would have dawned on you. Well, I don't want to
be unpleasant. What's going to happen now? No Mervyn! No marquisate in
the future! No money in the present, I'm afraid! You've made a hash of
it, Trix.'

'I've nothing at all to say to you. If I've--if I've made mistakes,
I----'

'You've suffered for them? Yes, I fancy so. And you made some pretty big
ones. It was rather a mistake to send me to the right-about, wasn't it?
You were warned. You chose to go on. Here you are! Don't you sometimes
think you'd better have stuck to me?'

'No!' Trix threw the one word at him with a disgusted contempt which
roused his anger even while he admired the effort of her courage.

'What, you're not tamed yet?' he sneered. 'Even this palace, and Glowing
Stars, and being the laughing-stock of London haven't tamed you?'

He spoke slowly, never taking his eyes from her; her defiance worked on
the idea in his heart. He had run a fatal risk once before under her
influence; he felt her influence again while he derided her. Enough of
what he had been clung about him to make him feel how different she was
from Connie Fricker. To conquer her and make her acknowledge the
conquest was the desire that came upon him, tempting him to forget at
what peril he would break with Connie.

'You only came here to laugh at me,' said Trix. 'Well, go on.'

'One can't help laughing a bit,' he remarked; 'but I don't want to be
hard on you. If you'd done to some men what you did to me, they mightn't
take it so quietly. But I'm ready to be friends.'

'Whatever I did, you've taken more than your revenge--far more. Yes, if
you wanted to see me helpless and ruined, here I am! Isn't it enough?
Can't you go now?'

'And how's old Mervyn? At any rate I've taken you away from him, the
stuck-up fool!'

'I won't discuss Lord Mervyn.'

'He'd be surprised to see us together here, wouldn't he?' He laughed,
enjoying the thought of Mervyn's discomfiture; he might make it still
more complete if he yielded to his idea. He came round the table and
leant against it, crossing his feet; he was within a yard of her chair,
and looked down at her in insolent disdain and more insolent admiration.
Now again he marked her fear and played on it.

'Yes, we got the whiphand of you, and I think you know it now. And
that's what you want; that's the way to treat you. I should have known
how to deal with you. What could a fool like Mervyn do with a woman like
you? You're full of devil.'

Poor Trix, feeling at that moment by no means full of 'devil,' glanced
at him with a new terror. She had set herself to endure his taunts, but
the flavour that crept into them now was too much.

'I don't forget we were friends. You're pretty well stranded now. Well,
I'll look after you, if you like. But no more tricks! You must behave
yourself.'

'Do you suppose I should ever willingly speak to you again?'

'Yes, I think so. When the last of the money's gone, perhaps? I don't
fancy your friends here can help you much. It'll be worth while
remembering me then.'

'I'd sooner starve,' said Trix decisively.

'Wait a bit, wait a bit,' he jeered.

'I ask you to go,' she said, pointing to the door. A trivial
circumstance interfered with any attempt at more dramatic action; the
wire of the bell was broken, as Trix well knew.

'Yes, but you can't always have what you want, can you?' His tone
changed to one of bantering intimacy. 'Come, Trix, be a sensible girl.
You're beat, and you know it. You'd better drop your airs. By Jove, I
wouldn't offer so much to any other woman!'

'What do you want?' she asked curtly and desperately. 'I've got nothing
to give you--no more money, no more power, no more influence. I've got
nothing.' Her voice shook for a moment as she sketched her worldly
position.

A pause followed. Beaufort Chance longed to make the plunge, and yet he
feared it. If he told her that she still had what he wanted, he believed
that he could bend her to his will; to try at least was the strong
impulse in him. But how much would it mean? He was fast in the Fricker
net. Yet the very passions which had led him into that entanglement
urged him now to break loose, to follow his desire, and to risk
everything for it. The tyrannous instinct that Connie had so cleverly
played upon would find a far finer satisfaction if the woman he had once
wooed when she was exalted, when she gave a favour by listening and
could bestow distinction by her consent, should bend before him and come
to him in humble submission, owning him her refuge, owing him
everything, in abject obedience. That was the picture which wrought upon
his mind and appealed to his nature. He saw nothing unlikely in its
realisation, if once he resolved to aim at that. What other refuge had
she? And had she not liked him once? She would have liked him more, he
told himself, and been true to him, if he had taken a proper tone
towards her and assumed a proper mastery--as he had with Connie Fricker;
in a passing thought he thanked Connie for teaching him the lesson, and
took comfort from the thought. Connie would not be really troublesome;
he could manage her too.

'No, you've got nothing,' he said at last; 'but supposing I say I don't
mind that?'

Trix looked at him again, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically. The
idea he hinted was horrible, but to her it was inexpressibly ludicrous
too. She saw what he wanted, what he had the madness to suggest. She was
terrified, but she laughed; she knew that her mirth would rouse his
fury, but it was not to be resisted. She thought that she would go on
laughing, even if he struck her on the face--an event which, for the
second time in their acquaintance, did not seem to her unlikely.

'Are you--can you actually----?' she gasped.

'Don't be a fool! There's nothing to laugh at. Hold your tongue and
think it over. Remember, I don't bind myself. I'll see how you behave.
I'm not going to be fooled by you twice. You ought to know it doesn't
pay you to do it too, by now.' He became more jocular. 'You'd have
better fun with me than with Mervyn, and I daresay you'll manage to
wheedle me into giving you a good deal of your own way after all.'

He was still more outrageous than Trix had thought him before. She was
prepared for much, but hardly for this. He had degenerated even from
what he had shown himself in their earlier intercourse. Outwardly, among
men, in public life, she supposed that he was still presentable, was
still reckoned a gentleman. Allowing for the fact that many men were
gentlemen in dealing with other men, or appeared such, who failed to
preserve even the appearance with women, she remained amazed at the
coarse vulgarity of his words and tone. It is possible that his
attentions to Connie Fricker had resulted in a deterioration of his
style of treating such matters; or the change may merely have been part
of the general lowering the man had undergone.

'Well, I'll be off now,' he said, lifting himself from the table
leisurely. 'You think about it. I'll come and see you again.' He held
out his hand. 'You're looking deuced pretty to-day,' he told her. 'Pale
and interesting, and all that, you know. I say, if we do it, old
Mervyn'll look pretty blue, eh? The laugh'll be against him then, won't
it?'

Trix had not given him her hand. She was afraid of the parting. Her
fears were not groundless. He laughed as he stepped up to her chair. She
drew back in horror, guessing his purpose. It would seem to him quite
natural to kiss her--she divined that. She had no leisure to judge or to
condemn his standard; she knew only that she loathed the idea
passionately. She covered her face with her hands.

'Guessed it, did you?' he laughed, rather pleased, and, bending over, he
took hold of her wrists and tore her hands from in front of her face.

At this moment, however--and the thing could hardly have been worse
timed from one point of view, or better from another--Peggy Ryle opened
the door. Peggy trod light, the baize door swung quietly, Beaufort's
attention had been much preoccupied. His hands were still on Trix's
wrists when he turned at the opening of the door. So far as the facts of
the situation went, explanation was superfluous; the meaning of the
facts was another matter.

Peggy had come in looking grave, wistful, distressed; the shadow of the
Fricker interview was still over her. When she saw the position she
stood on the threshold, saying nothing, smiling doubtfully. Trix dropped
her hands in her lap with a sigh; pure and great relief was her feeling.
Beaufort essayed unconsciousness; it was an elaborate and clumsy effort.

'Glad to have a glimpse of you before I go, Miss Ryle. I called to see
how Mrs. Trevalla was, but I must run away now.'

'So sorry,' said Peggy. 'Let me show you the way.'

The doubtful smile gave way to a broader and more mirthful one. Trix's
eyes had telegraphed past horror and present thanksgiving. Moreover,
Beaufort looked a fool--and Peggy had just come from the Frickers'. This
last circumstance she seemed to think would interest Beaufort; or did
she merely aim at carrying off the situation by a tactful flow of talk?

'I've just been to call on your friends the Frickers,' she said
brightly. 'What a nice girl Miss Fricker is! She says she's great
friends with you.'

'I go there a lot on business,' he explained stiffly.

'On business?' Peggy laughed. 'I daresay you do, Mr. Chance! She's so
friendly and cordial, isn't she? It must be nice riding with her! And
what a beautiful bracelet you gave her!'

Beaufort shot a morose glance at her, and from her to Trix. Trix was
smiling, though still agitated. Peggy was laughing in an open
good-natured fashion.

'I envied it awfully,' she confessed. 'Diamonds and pearls, Trix--just
beauties!'

Mr. Beaufort Chance said good-bye.

'I hope to see you again,' he added to Trix from the doorway.

'Do tell Miss Fricker how much I like her,' Peggy implored, following
him to the baize door.

He went downstairs, silently, or not quite silently, cursing Peggy, yet
on the whole not ill-pleased with his visit. He seemed to have made some
progress in the task of subduing Trix Trevalla. She had been
frightened--that was something. He walked off buttoning his frock-coat,
looking like a prosperous, orderly, and most respectable gentleman.
Fortunately emotions primitively barbarous are not indicated by external
labels, or walks in the street would be fraught with strange
discoveries.

It did not take long to put Peggy abreast of events; Trix's eyes could
have done it almost without words.

'Men are astonishing,' opined Peggy, embracing Beaufort Chance and
Fricker in a liberal generalisation.

'They say we're astonishing,' Trix reminded her.

'Oh, that's just because they're stupid.' She grew grave. 'Anyhow
they're very annoying,' she concluded.

'He said he'd come again, Peggy. What a worm I am now! I'm horribly
afraid.'

'So he did,' Peggy reflected, and sat silent with a queer little smile
on her lips.

Trix Trevalla fell into a new fit of despair, or a fresh outpouring of
the bitterness that was always in her now.

'I might as well,' she said. 'I might just as well. What else is there
left for me? I've made shipwreck of it all, and Beaufort Chance isn't
far wrong about me. He's just about the sort of fate I deserve. Why do
the things you deserve make you sick to think of them? He wouldn't
actually beat me if I behaved properly and did as I was told, I suppose,
and that's about as much as I can expect. Oh, I've been such a fool!'

'Having been a fool doesn't matter, if you're sensible now,' said Peggy.

'Sensible! Yes, he told me to be sensible too! I suppose the sensible
thing would be to tell him to come again, to lie down before him, and
thank him very much if he didn't stamp too hard on me.'

Peggy remembered how Mr. Fricker had hinted that Trix was very much in
the position in which her own fancy was now depicting her. Could that be
helped? It seemed not--without four thousand pounds anyhow.

Trix came and leant over the back of her chair. 'I laughed at him,
Peggy--I laughed, but I might yield. He might frighten me into it. And
I've nowhere else to turn. Supposing I went to him with my hundred a
year? That's about what I've left myself, I suppose, after everything's
paid.'

'Well, that's a lot of money,' said Peggy.

'You child!' cried Trix, half-laughing, half-crying. 'But you're a
wonderful child. Can't you save me, Peggy?'

'What from?'

'Oh, I suppose, in the end, from myself. I'm reckless. I'm drifting.
Will he come again, Peggy?'

Peggy had no radical remedy, but her immediate prescription was not
lacking in wisdom as a temporary expedient. She sent Trix to bed, and
was obeyed with a docility which would have satisfied any of those who
had set themselves to teach Trix moral lessons. Then Peggy herself sat
down and engaged in the task of thinking. It had not been at all a
prosperous day. Fricker was a source of despair, Chance of a new
apprehension; Trix herself was a perplexity most baffling of all. The
ruin of self-respect, bringing in its train an abandonment of hope for
self, was a strange and bewildering spectacle; she did not see how to
effect its repair. Trix's horror of yielding to the man, combined with
her fear that she might yield, was a state of mind beyond Peggy's power
of diagnosis; she knew only that it clamoured for instant and strong
treatment.

Beaufort Chance would come again! Suddenly Peggy determined that he
should--on a day she would fix! She would charge herself with that. She
smiled again as a hope came into her mind. She had been considerably
impressed with Connie Fricker.

The greater puzzle remained behind, the wider, more forlorn hope on
which everything turned. 'How much do men love women?' asked Peggy Ryle.

Then the thought of her pledged word flashed across her mind. She might
not tell Airey that Trix was ruined; she might not tell Airey that she
herself knew his secret. She had hoped to get something from Airey
without those disclosures; it was hopeless without them to ask for four
thousand pounds--or three thousand five hundred either.

Having been sent to bed, Trix seemed inclined to stay there. She lay
there all next day, very quiet, but open-eyed, not resting but fretting
and fearing, unequal to her evil fortune, prostrated by the vision of
her own folly, bereft of power to resist or will to recover from the
blow. Peggy watched her for hours, and then, late in the afternoon,
slipped out. Her eyes were resolute under the low brow with its
encroaching waves of sunny hair.

Airey Newton let her in. The door of the safe was ajar; he pushed it to
with his foot. The red-leather book lay open on the table, displaying
its neatly ruled, neatly inscribed pages. He saw her glance at it, and
she noticed an odd little shrug of his shoulders as he walked across the
room and put the tea into the pot. She had her small bag with her, and
laid it down by the bread-and-butter plate. Airey knew it by sight; he
had seen her stow away in it the money which he delivered to her from
the custody of the safe.

'I can't fill that again for you,' he said warningly, as he gave her
tea.

'It's not empty. The money's all there.'

'And you want me to take care of it again?' His tone spoke approval.

'I don't know. I may want it, and I mayn't.'

'You're sure to want it,' he declared in smiling despair.

'I mean, I don't know whether I want it now--all in a lump--or not.'

Her bright carelessness of spirit had evidently deserted her to-day; she
was full of something. Airey gulped down a cup of tea, lit his pipe, and
waited. He had been engrossed in calculations when she
arrived--calculations he loved--and had been forced to conceal some
impatience at the interruption. He forgot that now.

'There's something on your mind, Peggy,' he said at last. 'Come, out
with it!'

'She's broken--broken, Airey. She can't bear to think of it all. She
can't bear to think of herself. She seems to have no life left, no
will.'

'You mean Mrs. Trevalla?'

'Yes. They've broken her spirit between them. They've made her feel a
child, a fool.'

'Who have? Do you mean Mervyn? Do you mean----?'

'I mean Mr. Beaufort Chance--and, above all, Mr. Fricker. She hasn't
told you about them?'

'No. I've heard something about Chance. I know nothing about Fricker.'

'She didn't treat them fairly--she knows that. Knows it--I should think
so! Poor Trix! And in return----' Peggy stopped. One of the secrets
trembled on her lips.

'In return, what?' asked Airey Newton. He had stopped smoking, and was
standing opposite to her now.

'They've tricked her and made a fool of her, and----' There was no
turning back now--'and stripped her of nearly all she had.'

An almost imperceptible start ran through Airey; his forehead wrinkled
in deep lines.

'They bought shares for her, and told her they would be valuable.
They've turned out worth nothing, and somehow--you'll understand--she's
liable to pay a lot of money on them.'

'Hum! Not fully paid, I suppose?'

'That's it. And she's in debt besides. But it's the shares that are
killing her. That's where the bitterness is, Airey.'

'Does she know you're telling me this?'

'I gave her my word that I'd never tell.'

Airey moved restlessly about the room. 'Well?' he said from the other
end of it.

'She could get over everything but that. So I went to Mr. Fricker----'

'You went to Fricker?' He came to a stand in amazement.

'Yes, I went to Mr. Fricker to see if he would consent to tell her that
she wasn't liable, that the shares had turned out better, and that she
needn't pay. I wanted him to take the shares from her, and let her
think that he did it as a matter of business.'

Airey Newton pointed to the little bag. Peggy nodded her head in assent.

'But it's not nearly enough. She'd have to pay three thousand anyhow; he
won't do what I wish for less than four. He doesn't want to do it at
all; he wants to have her on her knees, to go on knowing she's
suffering. And she will go on suffering unless we make her believe what
I want her to. He thought I couldn't get anything like the money he
asked, so he consented to take it if I did. He told me to come back when
I had got it, Airey.'

'Has she got the money?'

'Yes--and perhaps enough more to pay her debts, and just to live. But
it's not so much the money; it's the humiliation and the shame. Oh,
don't you understand? Mr. Fricker will spare her that if--if he's bribed
with a thousand pounds.'

He looked at her eager eyes and flushed cheeks; she pushed back her hair
from her brow.

'He asks four thousand pounds,' she said, and added, pointing to the
little bag, 'There's five hundred there.'

As she spoke she turned her eyes away from him towards the window. It
did not seem to her fair to look at him; and her gaze would tell too
much perhaps. She had given him the facts now; what would he make of
them? She had broken her word to Trix Trevalla. Her pledge to Tommy
Trent was still inviolate. Tommy had trusted her implicitly when she had
surprised from him his friend's secret that his carelessness let slip.
He had taken her word as he would have accepted the promise of an
honourable man, a man honourable in business, or a friend of years. Her
knowledge had counted as ignorance for him because she had engaged to be
silent. The engagement was not broken yet. She waited fearfully. Airey
could save her still. What would he do?

The seconds wore on, seeming very long. They told her of his struggle.
She understood it with a rare sympathy, the sympathy we have for the
single scar or stain on the heart of one we love; towards such a thing
she could not be bitter. But she hoped passionately that he himself
would conquer, would spare both himself and her. If he did, it would be
the finest thing in the world, she thought.

She heard him move across to the safe and lock it. She heard him shut
the red-leather book with a bang. Would he never speak? She would not
look till he did, but she could have cried to him for a single word.

'And that was what you wanted your five hundred for?' he asked at last.

'My five hundred's no good alone.'

'It's all you've got in the world--well, except your pittance.'

She did not resent the word; he spoke it in compassion. She turned to
him now and found his eyes on her.

'Oh, it's nothing to me. I never pay any attention to money, you know.'
She managed a smile, trying to plead with him to think any such
sacrifice a small matter, whether in another or in himself.

'Well, I see your plan, and it's very kind. A little Quixotic perhaps,
Peggy----'

'Quixotic! If it saves her pain?' Peggy flashed out in real indignation.

'Anyhow what's the use of talking about it? Five hundred isn't four
thousand, and Fricker won't come down, you know.'

It was pathetic to her to listen to the studied carelessness of his
voice, to hear the easy reasonable words come from the twitching lips,
to see the forced smile under the troubled brow. His agony was revealed
to her; he was asked to throw all his dearest overboard. She stretched
out her hands towards him.

'I might get help from friends, Airey.'

'Three thousand five hundred pounds?'

With sad bitterness she heard him. He was almost lying now; his manner
and tone were a very lie.

'Friends who--who love her, Airey.'

He was silent for long again, moodily looking at her.

'Who would think anything well done, anything well spent, if they could
save her pain!'

With an abrupt movement he turned away from her and threw himself into a
chair. He could no longer bear the appeal of her eyes. At last it seemed
strange as well as moving to him. But he could have no suspicion; he
trusted Tommy Trent and conceived his secret to be all his own. His old
great shame that Peggy should know joined forces with the hidden passion
which was its parent; both fought to keep him silent, both enticed him
to delude her still. Yet when she spoke of friends who loved Trix
Trevalla, whom could she touch, whom could she move, as she touched and
moved him? The appeal went to his heart, trying to storm it against the
enemies entrenched there.

Suddenly Peggy hid her face in her hands, and gave one short sob. He
looked up startled, clutching the arm of his chair with a fierce grip.
He sat like that, his eyes set on her. But when he spoke, it was lamely
and almost coldly.

'Of course we should all like to save her pain; we would all do what we
could. But think of the money wanted! It's out of the question.'

She sprang to her feet and faced him. For the moment she forgot her
tenderness for him; her understanding of his struggle was swept away in
indignation.

'You love her!' she cried in defiant challenge. 'You of all people
should help her. You of all people should throw all you have at her
feet. You love her!'

He made no denial; he rose slowly from his chair and faced her.

'Oh, what is love if it's not that?' she demanded. 'Why, even friendship
ought to be that. And love----!' Again her hands were outstretched to
him in a last appeal. For still there was time--time to save his honour
and her own, time to spare him and her the last shame. 'It would be
riches to you, riches for ever,' she said. 'Yes, just because it's so
hard, Airey!'

'What?' The word shot from his lips full of startled fear. Why did she
call it hard? The word was strange. She should have said 'impossible.'
Had he not put it before her as impossible? But she said 'hard,' and
looked in his eyes as she spoke the word.

'Love can't make money where it isn't,' he went on in a dull, dogged,
obstinate voice.

'No, but it can give it where it is!' She was carried away. 'And it's
here!' she cried in accusing tones.

'Here?' He seemed almost to spring at her with the word.

'Yes, here, in this room--in that safe--everywhere!'

They stood facing one another for a moment.

'You love her--and she's ruined!'

She challenged denial. Airey Newton had no word to say. She raised her
hand in the air and seemed to denounce him.

'You love her, she's ruined, and--you're rich! Oh, the shame of
it--you're rich, you're rich!'

He sank back into his chair and hid his face from her.

She stood for a moment, looking at him, breathing fast and hard. Then
she moved quickly to him, bent on her knee, and kissed his hand
passionately. He made no movement, and she slipped quietly and swiftly
from the room.




CHAPTER XVIII

AN AUNT--AND A FRIEND


     Barslett: July 11.

     MY DEAR SARAH,--How I wish you were here! You would enjoy yourself,
     and I should like to see you doing it--indeed I should be amused. I
     never dare tell you face to face that you amuse me--you'd swell
     visibly, like the person in Pickwick--but I can write it quite
     safely. We are a family party--or at any rate we look forward to
     being one some day, and even now escape none of the characteristics
     of such gatherings. We all think that the Proper Thing will happen
     some day, and we tell one another so. Not for a long while, of
     course! First--and officially--because Mortimer feels things so
     deeply (this is a reference to the Improper Thing which so nearly
     happened--are you wincing, Sarah?); secondly--and entirely
     unofficially--because of a bad chaperon and a heavy pupil. You are
     a genius; you ought to have had seventeen daughters, all twins and
     all out together, and five eldest sons all immensely eligible!
     Nature is so limited. But me! I'm always there when I'm not wanted,
     and I do hate leaving a comfortable chair. But I try. Do I give you
     any clear idea when I say that a certain young person wants a deal
     of hoisting--and is very ponderous to hoist? And I'm not her
     mother, or I really wouldn't complain. But sometimes I could shake
     her, as they say. No, I couldn't shake her, but I should like to
     get some hydraulic machinery that could. However--it moves all the
     same! What's-his-name detected that in the world, which is
     certainly slow enough, and we all detect it in this interesting
     case--or say we do. And I've great faith in repeating things. It
     spreads confidence, whence comes, dear Sarah, action.

     Mortimer is here a lot, but is somewhat fretful. The
     Trans-Euphratic, it seems, is fractious, or teething, or something,
     and Beaufort Chance has been nasty in the House--notably nasty and
     rather able. (Do you trace any private history?) However, I daresay
     you hear enough about the Trans-Euphratic at home. It buzzes about
     here, mingling soothingly with the approaching flower show and a
     calamity that has happened to a pedigree cow. Never mind details of
     any of them! Sir Stapleton was indiscreet to me, but it stops
     there, if you please. How sweet the country is in a real English
     home!

     But sometimes we talk of the Past--and the P is large. There is a
     thank-heavenly atmosphere of pronounced density about Lady
     B.--quite sincere, I believe; she has realised that flightiness
     almost effected an entry into the family! Mortimer says
     little--deep feelings again. In my opinion it has done him some
     little good--which we and Audrey hope speedily to destroy. (Oh,
     that child! The perfection of English girlhood, Sarah; no less,
     believe me!) My lord is more communicative--to me. I believe he
     likes to talk about it. In fact Trix made some impression there;
     possibly there is a regret hidden somewhere in his circumference.
     He took me round the place yesterday, and showed me the scene of
     the flight. I should think going to Waterloo must give one
     something of the same feeling--if one could be conducted by a
     wounded hero of the fight. This was the conversation that
     passed--or something like it:--

     _Lord B._: She looked almost like a ghost.

     _Myself_: Heavens, Lord B.!

     _Lord B._ (_inserting spud in ground_): This was the very spot--the
     SPOT!

     _Myself_: You surprise me!

     _Lord B._: I felt certain that something unusual was occurring.

     _Myself_: Did that strike you at once?

     _Lord B._: Almost, Viola--I say, almost--at once. She came up. I
     remonstrated. My words do not remain in my memory.

     _Myself_: Moments of excitement----

     _Lord B._: But I remonstrated, Viola.

     _Myself_: And she pushed you away?

     _Lord B._: She did--and ran along the path here--following this
     path to that gate----

     _Myself_ (_incredulously, however one's supposed to show that_):
     That very gate, Lord B.?

     _Lord B._: It's been painted since, but that is the gate, Viola.

     _Myself_: Fancy! (There isn't any other gate, you know; so, unless
     Trix had taken the fence in a flying leap, one doesn't see what she
     could have done.)

     _Lord B._: Yes, that gate. She ran through it and along that
     road----

     _Myself_ (_distrustfully_): That road, Lord B.?

     _Lord B._ (_firmly_): That road, Viola. She twisted her veil about
     her face, caught up her skirts----

     _Myself_: ! ! ! ! !

     _Lord B._: And ran away (_impressively_) towards the station,
     Viola!

     _Myself_: Did you watch her?

     _Lord B._: Till she was out of sight--of sight, Viola!

     _Myself_: I never realised it so clearly before, Lord B.

     _Lord B._: It is an experience I shall never forget.

     _Myself_: I should think not, Lord B.

     Then the excellent old dear said that he trusted he had no
     unchristian feelings towards Trix; he had been inclined to like
     her, and so on. But he failed to perceive how they could have
     treated her differently in any single particular. 'You could not
     depend on her word, Viola.' I remembered, Sarah, that in early
     youth, and under circumstances needless to specify exactly, you
     could not depend on mine--unless the evidence against me was
     hopelessly clear. I suppose that was Trix's mistake. She fibbed
     when she was bound to be found out, and saw it herself a minute
     later. Have you any personal objection to my dropping a tear?

     I don't pretend to say I should go on writing if there was anything
     else to do, but it will open your mind to give you one more scrap.

     _Myself_: What, Audrey dear, come in already? (_It is 9.30 p.m.--
     evening fine--moon full._)

     _Audrey_: Yes, it was rather chilly, Auntie, and there's a heavy
     dew.

     _Myself_ (_sweetly_): I thought it such a charming evening for a
     stroll.

     _Audrey_: I was afraid of my new frock, Auntie.

     _Myself_ (_very sweetly_): You're so thoughtful, dear. Has Mortimer
     come in too?

     _Audrey_: I knew he was busy, so I told him he mustn't leave his
     work for me. He went in directly then, Auntie.

     _Myself_ (_most sweetly_): _How_ thoughtful of you, _darling_!

     _Audrey_: He did suggest I should stay a little while, but the
     dew----

     _Myself_ (_breaking down_): Good gracious, Audrey, what in the
     world &c., &c., &c.

     _Audrey_ (_pathetically_): I'm so sorry, Auntie dear!

     Now what would you do in such a case, Herr Professor Sarah?

     No doubt things will turn out for the best in the end, and I
     suppose I shall be grateful to poor Trix. But for the moment I wish
     to goodness she'd never run away! Anyhow she has achieved
     immortality. Barmouths of future ages will hush their sons and
     daughters into good marriages by threatening them with Trix
     Trevalla. She stands for ever the Monument of Lawlessness--with
     locks bedraggled, and skirts high above the ankle! She has made
     this aristocratic family safe for a hundred years. She has not
     lived in vain. And tell me any news of her. Have you had the
     Frickers to dinner since my eye was off you? There, I must have my
     little joke. Forgive me, Sarah!

     Affectionately,

     V. B.


'Tut!' said Mrs. Bonfill, laying down the letter, extracts from which
she had been reading to her friend Lord Glentorly.

'She's about right as to Chance, anyhow,' he remarked. 'I was in the
House, and you couldn't mistake his venom.'

'He doesn't count any longer.' Mrs. Bonfill pronounced the sentence
ruthlessly.

'No, not politically. And in every other way he's no more than a tool of
Fricker's. Fricker must have him in the hollow of his hand. He knows how
he stands; that's the meaning of his bitterness. But he can make poor
Mortimer feel, all the same. Still, as you say, there's an end of him!'

'And of her too! She was an extraordinary young woman, George.'

'Uncommonly attractive--no ballast,' summed up Glentorly. 'You never see
her now, I suppose?'

'Nobody does,' said Mrs. Bonfill, using 'nobody' in its accepted sense.
She sighed gently. 'You can't help people who won't be helped.'

'So Viola Blixworth implies,' he reminded her with a laugh.

'Oh, Viola's hopelessly flippant; but she'll manage it in the end, I
expect.' She sighed again and went on, 'I don't know that, after all,
one does much good by meddling with other people's affairs.'

'Come, come, this is only a moment of despondency, Sarah.'

'I suppose so,' she agreed, with returning hope. To consider that her
present mood represented a right and ultimate conclusion would have been
to pronounce a ban on all her activities. 'I've half a mind to propose
myself for a visit to Barslett.'

'You couldn't do better,' Lord Glentorly cordially agreed. 'Everything
will soon be over here, you see.'

She looked at him a little suspiciously. Did he suggest that she should
retreat for a while and let the talk of her failures blow over? He was
an old friend, and it was conceivable that he should seek to convey
such a hint delicately.

'I had one letter from Trix,' she continued. 'A confused
rigmarole--explanations, and defence, and apologies, and all the rest of
it.'

'What did you write to her?'

'I didn't write at all. I put it in the fire.'

Glentorly glanced at his friend as she made this decisive reply. Her
handsome, rather massive features were set in a calm repose; no scruples
or doubts as to the rectitude of her action assailed her. Trix had
chosen to jump over the pale; outside the pale she must abide. But that
night, when a lady at dinner argued that she ought to have a vote, he
exclaimed with an unmistakable shudder, 'By Jove, you'd be wanting to be
judges next!' What turned his thoughts to that direful possibility?

But of course he did not let Mrs. Bonfill perceive any dissent from her
judgment or her sentence. He contented himself with saying, 'Well, she's
made a pretty mess of it!'

'There's nothing left for her--absolutely nothing,' Mrs. Bonfill
concluded. Her tone would have excused, if not justified, Trix's making
an end of herself in the river.

Lady Glentorly was equally emphatic on another aspect of the case.

'It's a lesson to all of us,' she told her husband. 'I don't acquit
myself, much less can I acquit Sarah Bonfill. This taking up of people
merely because they're good-looking and agreeable has gone far enough.
You men are mainly responsible for it.'

'My dear!' murmured Glentorly weakly.

'It's well enough to send them a card now and then, but anything more
than that--we must put our foot down. The Barmouths of all people! I
declare it serves them right!'

'The affair seems to have resulted in serving everybody right,' he
reflected. 'So I suppose it's all for the best.'

'Marriage is the point on which we must make a stand. After a short
pause she added an inevitable qualification: 'Unless there are
overwhelming reasons the other way. And this woman was never even
supposed to be more than decently off.'

'The Barmouths are very much the old style. It was bad luck that she
should happen on them.'

'Bad luck, George? It was Sarah Bonfill!'

'Bad luck for Mrs. Trevalla, I mean.'

'You take extraordinary views sometimes, George. Now I call it a
Providence.'

In face of a difference so irreconcilable Glentorly abandoned the
argument. There were a few like him who harboured a shame-faced sympathy
for Trix. They were awed into silence, and the sentence of condemnation
passed unopposed.

Yet there were regrets and longings in Mervyn's heart. Veiled under his
dignified manner, censured by his cool judgment, hustled into the
background by his resolute devotion to the Trans-Euphratic railway and
other affairs of state, made to seem shameful by his determination to
find a new ideal in a girl of Audrey Pollington's irreproachable stamp,
they maintained an obstinate vitality, and, by a perverse turn of
feeling, drew their strength from the very features in Trix and in
Trix's behaviour which had incurred his severest censure while she was
still his and with him.

Remembering her recklessness and her gaiety, recalling her
hardly-suppressed rebellion against the life he asked her to lead and
the air he gave her to breathe, rehearsing even the offences which had,
directly or indirectly, driven her to flight and entailed exile on her,
he found in her the embodiment of something that he condemned and yet
desired, of something that could not be contained in his life, and
thereby seemed in some sort to accuse that life of narrowness. She had
shown him a country which he could not and would not enter; at moments
the thought of her derisively beckoned him whither he could not go. At
last, under the influence of these ideas, which grew and grew as the
first shock of amazed resentment wore off, he came to put questions to
himself as to the part that he had played, to realise a little how it
had all seemed to her. This was not to blame himself or his part; he and
it were still to him right and inevitable. But it was a step towards
perceiving something deeper than the casual perversity or dishonesty of
one woman. He had inklings of an ultimate incompatibility of lives, of
ways, of training, of thought, of outlook on the world. Both she and he
had disregarded the existence of such a thing. The immediate causes of
her flight--her dishonesty and her fear of discovery--became, in this
view, merely the occasion of it. In the end he asked whether she had not
shown a kind of desperate courage, perhaps even a wild inspiration of
wisdom, in what she had done. Gradually his anger against her died away,
and there came in its place a sorrow, not that the thing she fled from
was not to be, but that it never could have been in any true or adequate
sense. Perhaps she herself had seen that--seen it in some flashing
vision of despair which drove her headlong from the house by night.
Feelings that Trix could not analyse for herself he thought out for her
with his slow, narrow, but patient and thorough-going mind. The task was
hard, for wounded pride still cried out in loud protest against it; but
he made way with it. If he could traverse the path of it to the end,
there stood comprehension, yes, and acquiescence; then it would appear
that Trix Trevalla had refused to pile error on error; in her blind way
she would have done right.

That things we have desired did not come to pass may be sad; that they
never could have is sadder, by so much as the law we understand seems a
more cruel force than the chance that hits us once, we know not whence,
and may never strike again. The chance seems only a perverse accident
falling on us from outside; the law abides, a limitation of ourselves.
Towards such a consciousness as this Mervyn struggled.

At last he hinted something of what was in his mind to Viola Blixworth.
He talked in abstract terms, with an air of studying human nature, not
of discussing any concrete case; he was still a little pompous over it,
and still entirely engrossed in his own feelings. His preoccupation was
to prove that he deserved no ridicule, since fate, and not merely folly,
had made him its unwilling plaything. She heard him with unusual
seriousness, in an instant divining the direction of his thoughts; and
she fastened on the mood, turning it to what she wanted.

'That should make you tolerant towards Mrs. Trevalla,' she suggested, as
they walked together by the fountains.

'I suppose so, yes. It leaves us both slaves of something too strong for
us.'

She passed by the affected humility that defaced his smile; she never
expected too much, and was finding in him more than she had hoped.

'If you've any allowance for her, any gentleness towards her----'

'I feel very little anger now.'

'Then tell her so, Mortimer. Oh, I don't mean go to her. On all accounts
you'd better not do that.' (Her smile was not altogether for Mervyn
here; she spared some of it for her duties and position as an aunt.)
'But write to her.'

'What should I say?' The idea was plainly new to him. 'Do you mean that
I'm to forgive her?'

'I wouldn't put it quite like that, Mortimer. That would be all right if
you were proposing to--renew the arrangement. But I suppose you're not?'

He shook his head decisively. As a woman Lady Blixworth was rather sorry
to see so much decision; it was her duty as an aunt to rejoice.

'Couldn't you manage to convey that it was nobody's fault in particular?
Or something like that?'

He weighed the suggestion. 'I couldn't go quite so far,' he concluded,
with a judicial air.

'Well, then, that the mistake was in trying it at all? Or in being in a
hurry? Or--or that perhaps your manner----?'

'No, I don't think there was anything wrong with my manner.'

'Could you say you understood her feelings--or, at any rate, allowed for
them?'

'Perhaps I might say that.'

'At any rate you could say something comforting.' She put her arm
through his. 'She's miserable about you, I know. You can say something?'

'I'll try to say something.'

'I know you'll say it nicely. You're a gentleman, Mortimer.'

She could not have used a better appeal, simple as it sounded. All
through the affair--all through his life, it might be said--he had been
a gentleman; he had never been consciously unkind, although he had often
been to Trix unconsciously unbearable. Viola Blixworth put him on his
honour by the name he reverenced.

'You'll feel better after you've done it--and more like settling down
again,' said she. Friendship and auntship mingled. It would comfort Trix
to hear that he had no bitterness; it would certainly assist Audrey if
he could cease from studying his precise feelings, of any nature
whatsoever, about another woman. Lady Blixworth was so accustomed to
finding her motives mixed that a moderate degree of adulteration in them
had ceased to impair her satisfaction with a useful deed. Besides, is
not auntship also praiseworthy? Society said yes, and she never differed
from it when its verdicts were convenient.

The letter was written; it was a hard morning's work, for he penned it
as carefully as though it were to go into some archives of state. He
would say no more than the truth as he had at last reached it; he said
no less with equal conscientiousness. The result was stiff with all his
stiffness, but there was kindness in it too. It was not forgiveness; it
was acquiescence and a measure of understanding. And he convinced
himself more and more as he wrote; in the end he did come very near to
saying that there had been mistakes on both sides; he even set it down
as a possible hypothesis that the initial error had been his. He had a
born respect for written documents, and of written documents not the
least of his respect was for his own. He had never felt so sure that
there was an end of Trix Trevalla, so far as he was concerned, as when
he had put the fact on record over his own signature.

With a sigh he rose and came out into the garden. Audrey sat there
reading a novel, which she laid face downwards in her lap at his
approach. He took a chair by her, and looked round on the domain that
was to be his. Then he glanced at statuesque Audrey. Lady Blixworth
viewed them from afar; an instinct told her that the letter had been
written. The aunt hoped while the friend rejoiced.

'He must have proved that he needs quite a different wife from Trix, and
where could he find one more different?' she mused.

'It's beautiful here in summer, isn't it?' he asked Audrey.

'It must be splendid always,' said she.

'I wish public life allowed me to enjoy more of it.' It is what public
men generally say.

'Your work is so important, you see.'

He stretched out his legs and took off his hat.

'But you must rest sometimes,' she urged, with an imploring glance.

'So my mother's always telling me. Well, anyhow, since you like
Barslett, I hope you'll stay a long time, Miss Pollington.'

It was not much, but Audrey carried it to Lady Blixworth--or, to put the
matter with more propriety, she repeated his remark quite casually. It
was not poor Audrey's fault if, in self-defence, she had to make the
most of such remarks. Lady Blixworth kissed her niece thoughtfully.

'Another year of my life,' she remarked to the looking-glass that
evening, in the course of a study of time's ravages--'another year or
thereabouts will probably see a successful termination to the affair.'

She smiled a little bitterly. Her life, as she understood the term, had
few more years to run, and to give up one was a sacrifice. It was,
however, no use trying to alter the Barmouth pace. She had done what she
could--a good turn to Trix Trevalla, another little lift for Audrey.

'I'm becoming a regular Sarah Bonfill,' she concluded, as she went down
to dinner.

The next Saturday Mrs. Bonfill herself came.

'How is Mortimer?' she whispered at the first opportunity.

'My dear Sarah, I doubt if you could have interfered with more
tactfulness yourself.'

'And where's dear Audrey?'

'I hope and believe that she's sticking pins into a map to show where
the Trans-Euphratic is to run. Kindly pat me on the back, Sarah.'

Mrs. Bonfill's smile was friendly pat enough, but it was all for Audrey;
she asked nothing about Trix Trevalla.

Wide apart as the two were, Trix read the letter with something of the
feeling under which Mervyn had written it. He was a good man, but not
good for her--that seemed to sum up the matter. Perhaps her first smile
of genuine mirth since her fall and flight was summoned to her lips by
the familiar stiffness, the old careful balance of his sentences, the
pain by which he held himself back from lecturing. A smile of another
kind recognised his straightforwardness and his chivalry; he wrote like
a gentleman, as Viola Blixworth knew he would. She was more in sympathy
with him when he deplored the gulf between them than when he had told
her it was but a ford which duty called on her to pass. 'How much have I
escaped, and how much have I lost?' she asked; but the question came in
sadness, not in doubt. It was not hers to taste the good; it would have
been hers to drink the evil to the dregs. Reading his letter, she
praised him and reviled herself; but she rejoiced that she had left him
while yet there was time; she rejoiced honestly to see that she would
remain in his memory as a thing that was unaccountable, that should not
have been, that had come and gone, had given some pain but had done no
permanent harm.

'I've got off cheaply,' she thought; her own sufferings were not in her
mind, but his; she was glad that her burden of guilt was no heavier. For
Mervyn was not as Beaufort Chance; he had done nothing to make her feel
that they were quits and her wrong-doing obliterated by the revenge
taken for it. She could blame herself less, since even Mervyn seemed to
see that, if to begin had been criminal, to go on would have been worse.
But bitterness was still in her; her folly seemed still so black, her
ruin so humiliating, that she must cry, 'Unfit for him! No, it's for any
man that I'm unfit!' Mervyn could but comfort her a little as to what
concerned himself; her sin against herself remained unpardoned. And now
in her mind that sin had taken on a darker colour; since she had looked
in Airey Newton's eyes she could not believe herself the woman who had
done such things. The man who, having found the pearl, went and sold all
that he had and bought the field where it lay, doubtless did well and
was well-pleased. What did the vendor feel who bartered his right for a
small price because he had overlooked the pearl?

Mervyn showed her reply to Lady Blixworth--another proof that Aunt Viola
was advancing in his confidence, and repressing natural emotions with a
laudable devotion to duty. Upon this Lady Blixworth wrote to Peggy
Ryle:--

'This letter is not,' she said, 'to praise myself, Peggy, nor to point
out my many virtues, but to ask a question. I have indeed done much
good. Mortimer is convinced that immutable laws were in fault--and I
agree, since the dulness of Barslett and the family preachiness are
absolutely immutable. Trix is convinced too--and again I agree, since
Trix is naturally both headlong and sincere, an awful combination if
one were married to Mortimer. So I praise myself for having made both of
them resigned, and presently to be cheerful! Needless to say, I praise
myself on another score, and am backing myself to mother young women
against Sarah Bonfill herself (who, by the way, is here, and resettles
the Cabinet twice a day--mere bravado, I believe, after her shocking
blunders, but Sarah bravadoes with a noble solidity that makes the thing
almost a British quality!). I wander! What I really ask--and I want to
ask it in italics--is, _Whom is she in love with?_ Trix, I mean, of
course. I am not in telegraphic, telephonic, or telepathic communication
with her, but she says in her letter to Mortimer, "I was not fit for
you. Am I fit for any man?" My dear, believe your elders when you can,
and listen in silence when you can't! In all my experience I never knew
a woman ask that question unless she was in love. Heavens, do we want to
be fit for or to please the Abstract Man? Not a bit of it, Peggy! The
idea is even revolting, as a thousand good ladies would prove to you.
"Am I fit for any man?" Who's "any man," Peggy? Let's have his name and
the street where he resides. For my part, I believed there was a man at
the back of it all the time--which was no great sagacity--and I said so
to Lord Barmouth--which I felt to be audacity. Peggy, tell me his name.
"Am I fit for any man?" Poor Trix is still rather upset and
melodramatic! But we know what it means. And what are you doing? Do you
want a husband? Here am I, started in trade as an honest broker! Come
along!'

This letter, Peggy felt, was in a way consoling; she hoped that Trix was
in love. But so far as it seemed to be intended to be amusing, Peggy
really didn't see it. The fact is, Peggy was in a mood to perceive wit
only of the clearest and most commanding quality. Things were very dark
indeed, just these days, with Peggy. However, she replied to Lady
Blixworth, said she had no notion what she meant, but told her that she
was a good friend and a good aunt.

'The latter statements,' observed Lady Blixworth complacently, 'are at
the present moment true. As for the former--oh, Peggy, Peggy!'

She was, in fact, rather hurt. A refusal to betray one friend is usually
considered a reflection on the discretion of another.




CHAPTER XIX

'NO MORE THAN A GLIMMER'


Forty-eight hours had passed since Peggy Ryle fled from Danes Inn. How
they had gone Airey Newton could scarcely tell; as he looked back, they
seemed to hold little except the ever-reiterated cry, 'The shame of
it--you're rich!' But still the contents of the safe were intact, and no
entries had been cancelled in the red-leather book. A dozen times he had
taken the book, looked through it, and thrown it from him again. A clash
of passions filled him; the old life he had chosen, with its strange,
strong, secret delight and its sense of hidden power, fought against the
new suggestion. It was no longer of much moment to him that Peggy knew
or that it was Peggy's voice which had cried out the bitter reproach.
These things now seemed accidental. Peggy or another--it mattered
little.

Yet he had sent for Tommy Trent, and reproached him; he was eager to
reproach anybody besides himself.

'I told nobody,' protested Tommy, in indignant surprise. Then the
thought flashed on him. 'Was it Peggy?' he asked incredulously. Airey's
nod started all the story. His view was what Peggy had foreseen; he
found no arguments to weigh against that breaking of her word which had
made him seem a traitor in the eyes of his friend.

'A woman setting the world right is the most unscrupulous thing in the
world,' he declared angrily. 'You believe I never meant to break faith,
old fellow? I shall have it out with her, you may be sure.' He paused
and then added, 'I can't believe she'll let it go any further, you
know.'

To that also Airey seemed more than half-indifferent now; the old
furtive solicitude for his secret, the old shame lest it should escape,
seemed to be leaving him, or at least to be losing half their force, in
face of some greater thing in his mind. He had himself to deal with
now--what he was, not what was said or thought of him. But he did not
intercede with Tommy's sternness against Peggy; he let it pass.

'I don't blame you. It's done now. You'd better leave me alone,' he
said.

Tommy went and sought Peggy with wrath in his heart; but for all these
two days she was obstinately invisible. She was not to be found in
Harriet Street, and none of her circle had seen her. It may be surmised
that she wandered desolately through fashionable gatherings and haunts
of amusement, slinking home late at night. It is certain that she did
not wish to meet Tommy Trent, that she would not for the world have
encountered Airey Newton. There seemed to be gunpowder in the air of all
familiar places; in the reaction of fear after her desperate venture
Peggy withdrew herself to the safety of the unknown.

Airey sat waiting, his eyes constantly looking to the clock. Trix was
coming to see him; she had written that she needed advice, and that he
was the only friend she had to turn to in such a matter. 'Peggy is no
use to me in the particular way I want help, and I have something to
tell which I could tell to nobody but her or you.' He knew what she had
to tell; the fact that she came to tell it to him was proof positive
that she had heard nothing from Peggy. He had not forbidden her coming.
Though it might be agony to him, yet he willed that she should come;
beyond that point his will was paralysed.

In dainty and costly garb she came, still the vision of riches which had
first struck his eyes when he saw her at the beginning of her campaign
in London; yet though this was her outward seeming, her air and manner
raised in him a remoter memory, bringing back to mind the pathetic
figure at the Paris hotel. It was easy to see that she held no secret
of his, and that he had no reproach to fear. Her burden lay in her own
secret that she must tell, in the self-reproach against which she had no
defence. Of neither part of Peggy's double treachery had she any
suspicion.

'Long ago I told you I should come if I got into trouble. Here I am!'
Her effort at gaiety was tremulous and ill-sustained.

'Yes, I know you've been in trouble.'

'Oh, I don't mean that. That's all over. It's something else. Will you
listen? It's not easy to say.'

He gave her a chair and stood by the mantelpiece himself, leaning his
elbow on it and his chin on his hand. For a minute or two he did not
attend to her; his mind flew back to his own life, to his past work and
its success, to those fruits of success which had come to usurp the
place not merely of success but of the worthy work itself. She had been
stammering out the first part of her story for some while before he
turned to her and listened, with sombre eyes set on her nervous face. At
that instant she seemed to him an enemy. She had come to rob him. Why
should he be robbed because this woman had been a fool? So put, the
argument sounded strong and sensible; it made short work of
sentimentality. If he sent her away empty, what harm was done? Tommy
Trent would think as he had always thought--no less, no worse. For the
rest, it was only to take just offence with the girl who had put him to
shame, and to see her no more. The old life, the old delight, held out
alluring arms to him.

Trix Trevalla stumbled on, all unconscious of the great battle that she
fought for another, anxious only to tell her story truthfully, and yet
not so as to seem a creature too abject.

'That's the end of it,' she said at last with a woeful smile. 'After
Glowing Stars and the other debts, I may have forty shillings a week or
thereabouts. But I want to show you my investments, and I want you to
tell me what I ought to sell and what few I might best try to keep.
Every pound makes a difference, you know.' The intense conviction of a
convert spoke in the concluding words.

'Why do you think I know about such things?'

'Oh, I daresay Mr. Trent would know better, but I couldn't make up my
mind to tell him. And I've no right to bother him. I seem to have a
right to bother you, somehow.' She smiled again for an instant, and
raised her eyes to his. 'Because of what you said at Paris! You
remember?'

'You hold me responsible still, I see.'

'Oh, that's our old joke,' she said, fearing to seem too serious in her
fanciful claim. 'But still it does always seem to me that we've been in
it together; all through it your words have kept coming back, and I've
thought of you here. I think you were always in my mind. Well, that's
foolish. Anyhow you'll tell me what you think?'

'At least I didn't tell you to trust Fricker.'

'Please don't,' she implored. 'That's the worst of all. That's the thing
I can't bear to think of. I thought myself a match for him. And
now----!' Her outspread hands accepted any scornful description.

She came to him and put into his hand a paper on which she had drawn up
some sort of a statement of her ventures, of her debts, and of her
position as she understood it. He took it and glanced through it.

'Heavens, how you spent money!' he exclaimed, in involuntary horror.

She blushed painfully: could she point out how little that had mattered
when she was going to be Lady Mervyn?

'And the losses in speculation! You seem never to have been in anything
sound!'

'They deceived me,' she faltered. 'Oh, I know all that! Must you say
that again? Tell me--what will there be left? Will there be enough
to--to exist upon? Or must I'--she broke into a smile of ridicule--'or
must I try to work?'

There was a pathetic absurdity about the suggestion. Airey's gruff
laugh relieved the sternness of his indignation.

'Yes, I've shown such fine practical talents, haven't I?' she asked
forlornly.

'You were very extravagant, but you'd have been in a tolerable position
but for Fricker. Dramoffskys and Glowing Stars between them have done
the mischief.'

'Yes. If I hadn't cheated him, and he hadn't cheated me in return, I
should have been in a tolerable position. But I knew that before I came
here, Mr. Newton.'

'Well, it's the truth,' he persisted, looking at her grimly over the top
of the paper.

'You needn't repeat it,' she flashed out indignantly. Then her tone
changed suddenly. 'Forgive me; it's so hard to hear the truth sometimes,
to know it's true, to have nothing to answer.'

'Yes, it is hard sometimes,' Airey agreed.

'Oh, you don't know. You've not cheated and been cheated; you've had
nothing to conceal, nothing to lie about, nothing that you dreaded being
found out in.' She wrung her hands despairingly.

'I've warned you before now not to idealise me.'

'I can't help it. I believe even your Paris advice was all right, if I'd
understood it rightly. You didn't mean that I was to think only of
myself and nothing of anybody else, to do nothing for anyone, to share
nothing with anyone. You meant I was to make other people happy too,
didn't you?'

'I don't know what I meant,' he growled, as he laid her paper on the
mantelpiece.

Trix wandered to the window and sat down in the chair generally
appropriated to Peggy Ryle.

'I'm sick of myself,' she said.

'A self's not such an easy thing to get rid of, though.'

She glanced at him with some constraint. 'I'm afraid I'm bothering you?
I really have no right to make you doleful over my follies. You've kept
out of it all yourself; I needn't drag you into it.' She rose as if she
would go. Airey Newton stood motionless. It seemed as though he would
let her leave him without a word.

She had not in her heart believed that he would. She in her turn stood
still for a moment. When he made no sign, she raised her head in proud
resentment; her voice was cold and offended. 'I'm sorry I troubled you,
Mr. Newton.' She began to walk towards the door, passing him on the way.
Suddenly he sprang forward and caught her by the hands.

'Don't go!' he said in a peremptory yet half-stifled whisper.

Trix's eyes filled with tears. 'I thought you couldn't really mean to do
that,' she murmured. 'Oh, think of what it is, think of it! What's left
for me?'

He had loosed her hands as quickly as he had caught them, and she
clasped them in entreaty.

'I'm neither bad enough nor good enough. I tried to marry for position
and money. I was bad enough to do that. I wasn't bad enough to go on
telling the lies. Oh, I began! Now I'm not good enough or brave enough
to face what I've brought myself to. And yet it would kill me to be bad
enough and degraded enough to take the only way out.'

'What way do you mean?'

'I can't tell you about that,' she said. 'I should be too ashamed. But
some day you may hear I've done it. How am I to resist? Is it worth
resisting? Am I worth saving at all?'

She had never seemed to him so much worth saving. And he knew that he
could save her, if he would pay the price. He guessed, too, what she
hinted at; there was only one thing that a woman like her could speak of
as at once a refuge and a degradation, as a thing that killed her and
yet a thing that she might come to do. Peggy Ryle had told him that he
loved her, and he had not denied it then. Still less could he deny it
now, with the woman herself before him in living presence.

She saw that he had guessed what was in her mind.

'Men can't understand women doing that sort of thing, I know,' she went
on. 'I suppose it strikes them with horror. They don't understand what
it is to be helpless.' Her voice shook. 'I've had a great deal of
hardship, and I can't bear it any more. I'm a coward in the end, I
suppose. My gleam of good days has made me a coward at the thought of
bad ones again.' She added, after a pause, 'You'll look at the statement
and let me know what you think, won't you? It might just make all the
difference.' Again she paused. 'It seems funny to stand here and tell
you that, if necessary, I shall probably sell myself; that's what it
comes to. But you know so much about me already, and--and I know you'd
like me if--if it was humanly possible to do anything except despise me.
Wouldn't you? So do look carefully at the paper and go into the figures,
please. Because I--even I--don't want to sell myself for money.'

What else was he doing with himself? The words hit home. If the body
were sold, did not the soul pass too? If the soul were bartered, what
value was it to keep the body? Peggy had begged him to save this woman
pain; unconsciously she herself asked a greater rescue than that. And
she offered him, still all unconsciously, a great salvation. Was it
strange that she should talk of selling herself for money? Then was it
not strange too that he had been doing that very thing for years, and
had done it of deliberate choice, under the stress of no fear and of no
necessity? The picture of himself that had been dim, that Tommy Trent
had always refused to make clearer, that even Peggy Ryle's passionate
reproach had left still but half-revealed, suddenly stood out before his
eyes plain and sharp in every outline. He felt that it was a thing to be
loathed.

She saw his face stern and contracted with the pain of his thoughts.

'Yes, I've told you all the truth about myself, and that's how you
look!' she said.

He smiled bitterly at her mistake, and fixed his eyes on her as he
asked:--

'Could you change a man, if you gave yourself to him? Could you drive
out his devil, and make a new man of him? Could you give him a new life,
a new heart, a new character?'

'I should have no such hopes. My eyes would be quite open.' Her thoughts
were on Beaufort Chance.

'No, but couldn't you?' he urged, with a wistful persistence. 'If you
knew the worst of him and would still look for something good--something
you could love and could use to make the rest better? Couldn't you make
him cease being what he hated being? Couldn't you have a power greater
than the power of the enemy in him? If you loved him, I mean.'

'How could I love him?' she asked wonderingly.

'If he loved you?'

'What does such a man mean by love?' she murmured scornfully.

'I wonder if you could do anything like that,' he went on. 'Women have,
I suppose. Could you?'

'Oh, don't talk about the thing. I hope I may have courage to throw it
aside.'

He started a little. 'Ah, you mean---- No, I was thinking of something
else.'

'And how could such a woman as I am make any man better?' She smiled in
a faint ridicule of the idea; but she ceased to think of leaving him,
and sat down by the table. For the moment he seemed to pay little
attention to where she was or what she did; he spoke to her indeed, but
his air was absent and his eyes aloof.

'Because, if the woman couldn't, if it turned out that she couldn't, the
last state would be worse than the first. Murder added to _felo de se_!
There's that to consider.' Now he returned to her in an active
consciousness of her presence. 'Suppose you loved a man who had one
great--well, one great devil in him? Could you love a man with a devil
in him?'

There was a touch of humour hardly won in his voice. Trix responded to
it.

'With a thousand, if he was a man after all!'

'Ah, yes, I daresay. But with one--one immense fellow--a fellow who had
sat on him and flattened him for years? Could you fight the fellow and
beat him?'

Trix thought. 'I think I might have perhaps, before--before I got a
devil too, you know.'

'Say he was a swindler--could you keep him straight? Say he was
cruel--could you make him kind?' He paused an instant. 'Suppose he was a
churl--could you open his heart?'

'All that would be very, very hard, even for a good woman,' said Trix
Trevalla. 'And you know that in a case something like those I failed
before.'

'Because, if you couldn't, it would be hell to you, and worse hell to
him.'

'Yes,' murmured Trix. 'That would be it exactly.'

'But if you could----' He walked to the window and looked out. 'It would
be something like pulling down the other side of the Inn and giving the
sun fair play,' said he.

'But could the man do anything for her?' asked Trix. 'Something I said
started you on this. The man I thought of would do nothing but make the
bad worse. If she were mean first, he'd make her meaner; if she lied
before, she'd have to lie more; and he'd--he'd break down the last of
her woman's pride.'

'I don't mean a man like that.'

'No, and you're not thinking of a woman like me.'

'She'd have to take the place of the thing that had mastered him; he'd
have to find more delight in her than in it; she'd have to take its
place as the centre of his life.' He was thinking out his problem before
her.

At last Trix was stirred to curiosity. Did any man argue another's case
like this? Was any man roused in this fashion by an abstract discussion?
Or if he were dissuading her from the step she had hinted at, was not
his method perversely roundabout? She looked at him with inquiring eyes.
In answer he came across the room to her.

'Yet, if there were a man and a woman such as we've been speaking of,
and there was half the shadow of a chance, oughtn't they to clutch at
it? Oughtn't they to play the bold game? Ought they to give it up?'

His excitement was unmistakable now. Again he looked in her eyes as he
had once before. She could do nothing but look up at him, expecting what
he would say next. But he drew back from her, seeming to repent of what
he had said, or to retreat from its natural meaning. He wandered back to
the hearthrug, and fingered the statement of her position that lay on
the mantelpiece. He was frowning and smiling too; he looked very
puzzled, very kindly, almost amused.

'Wouldn't they be fools not to have a shot?' he asked presently. 'Only
she ought to know the truth first, and he'd find it deuced hard to tell
her.'

'She would have found it very hard to tell him.'

'But she would have?'

'Yes--if she loved him,' said Trix, smiling. 'Confession and humiliation
comfort women when they're in love. When they're not----' She shuddered.
Presumably Barslett came into her mind.

'If he never told her at all, would that be fair?'

'She couldn't forgive that, if she found it out.'

'No?'

'Well, it would be very difficult.'

'But if she never found it out?'

'That would be the grandest triumph of all for her, perhaps,' said Trix
very softly. For now, vague, undefined, ignorant still, but yet sure at
its mark, had come the idea that somehow, for some reason, Airey Newton
spoke not of Beaufort Chance, nor of another, not of some abstraction
or some hypothetical man, but of his very self. 'My prayer to him would
be not to tell me, and that I might never know on earth. If I knew ever,
anywhere, then I should know too what God had let me do.'

'But if he never told you, and some day you found out?'

Trix looked across at him--at his dreary smile and his knitted brow. She
amended the judgment she had given a minute before: 'We could cry
together, or laugh together, or something, couldn't we?' she asked.

He came near her again and seemed to take a survey of her from the
feather in her hat to the toe of her polished boot.

'It's a confounded incongruous thing that you should be ruined,' he
grumbled; his tone was a sheer grumble, and it made Trix smile again.

'A fool and her money----' she suggested as a time-honoured explanation.
'But ruin doesn't suit me, there's no doubt of that. Perhaps, after all,
I was right to try to be rich, though I tried in such questionable
ways.'

'You wouldn't be content to be poor?'

Trix was candid with him and with herself. 'Possibly--if everything else
was very perfect.'

He pressed her hard. 'Could everything else seem perfect?'

She laughed uncomfortably. 'You understand wonderfully well,
considering----!' A little wave of her arm indicated the room in Danes
Inn.

'Yes, I understand,' he agreed gravely.

Again she rose. 'Well, I'm a little comforted,' she declared. 'You and
Peggy and the rest of you always do me good. You always seemed the
alternative in the background. You're the only thing now--or I'll try to
make you. That doesn't sound overwhelmingly cordial, but it's
well-meant, Mr. Newton.'

She held out her hand to him, but added as an afterthought, 'And you
will tell me what to do about the investments, won't you?'

'And what will you do about the other man?'

Her answer was to give him both hands, saying, 'Help me!'

He looked long at her and at last answered, 'Yes, if you'll let me.'

'Thanks,' she murmured, pressing his hands and then letting them go with
a sigh of relief. He smiled at her, but not very brightly; there was an
effort about it. She understood that the subject was painful to him,
because it suggested degradation for her; she had a hope that it was
distasteful for another reason; to her these were explanations enough
for the forced aspect of his smile.

He took up the paper again, and appeared to read it over.

'Not a bad list,' he said. 'You ought to be able to realise pretty well,
as prices go now; they're not ruling high, you know.'

'What a lot you learn from your eyrie here!'

'All that comes in in business,' he assured her. 'No, they're not so
bad, except the speculations, of course.'

'Except Glowing Stars! But, after all, most of them are Glowing Stars.'

He appeared to consider again; then he said slowly, and as though every
word cost him a thought, 'I shouldn't altogether despair even of Glowing
Stars. No, don't be in a hurry to despair of Glowing Stars.'

'What?' Incredulity cried out in her tone, mingled with the fancied hope
of impossible good fortune. 'You can't conceivably mean that Mr. Fricker
is wrong about them? Oh, if that were true!'

'Does it make all that difference?'

'Yes, yes, yes! Not the money only, but the sense of folly--of childish
miserable silliness.' She was eager to show him how much that fancied
distant hope could mean.

'I promise nothing--but Fricker deceived you before. He lied when he
told you they were all right; he may be lying when he tells you they're
all wrong.'

'But what good could that do him?'

'If you threw them on the market the price would fall. Suppose he wanted
to buy!'

Luckily Trix did not wait to analyse the suggestion; she flew to the
next difficulty.

'But the liability?'

'I'll look into it, and let you know. Don't cherish any hope.'

'No, but you must have meant that there was a glimmer of hope?' She
insisted urgently, turning a strained, agitated face up to his.

'If you'll swear to think it no more than a glimmer--a glimmer let it
be.'

'You always tell me the truth. I'll remember--a glimmer.'

'No more,' he insisted, with a marked pertinacity.

'No more, on my honour,' said Trix Trevalla.

She had gone towards the door; he followed till he was by the little
table. He stood there and picked up the red book in his hand.

'No more than a glimmer,' he repeated, 'because things may go all wrong
in the end still.'

'Not if they depend on you!' she cried, with a gaiety inspired by the
hope which he did not altogether forbid, and by the trust that she had
in him.

'Even though they depended altogether on me.' He flung the book down and
came close to her. 'If they go right, I shall thank heaven for sending
you here to-day. And now--I have a thing that I must do.'

'Yes, I've taken a terrible lot of your time. Good-bye.' She yielded to
her impulse towards intimacy, towards knowing what he did, how he spent
his time. 'Are you going to work? Are you going to try and invent
things?'

'No, I'm going to study that book.' He pointed to it with a shrug.

'What's inside?'

'I don't know what I shall find inside,' he told her.

'Good news or bad? The old story or a new one? I can't tell.'

'You don't mean to tell me--that's clear anyhow,' laughed Trix.
'Impertinent questions politely evaded! I take the hint. Good-bye. And,
Mr. Newton--a glimmer of hope!'

'Yes, a glimmer,' he said, passing his hand over his brow rather
wearily.

'Well, I must leave you to the secrets of the red book,' she ended.

He came to the top of the stairs with her. Half-way down she turned and
kissed her hand to him. Her step was a thousand times more buoyant; her
smiles came as though native-born again and no longer timid strangers.
Such was the work that a glimmer of hope could do.

To subtract instead of adding, to divide instead of multiplying, to
lessen after increase, to draw out instead of paying in--these
operations, whether with regard to a man's fame, or his power, or his
substance, or even the scope of his tastes and the joy of his
recreations, are precisely those which philosophy assumes to teach us to
perform gracefully and with no exaggerated pangs. The man himself
remains, says popular philosophy; and the pulpit sometimes seconds the
remark, adding thereunto illustrative texts. Consolations conceived in
this vein are probably useful, even though they may conceal a fallacy or
succeed by some pious fraud on the truth. It is a narrow view of a man
which excludes what he holds, what he has done and made. If he must lose
his grasp on that, part of his true self goes with it. The better
teachers inculcate not throwing away but exchange, renunciation here for
the sake of acquisition there, a narrowing of borders on one side that
there may be strength to conquer fairer fields on the other. Could Airey
Newton, who had so often turned in impatience or deafness from the first
gospel, perceive the truth of the second? He was left to fight for
that--left between the red book and the memory of Trix Trevalla.

But Trix went home on feet lighter than had borne her for many a day.
To her nature hope was ever fact, or even better--richer, wider, more
brightly coloured. Airey had given her hope. She swung back the baize
door of Peggy's flat with a cheerful vigour, and called aloud:--

'Peggy, where are you? I've something to tell you, Peggy.'

For once Peggy was there. 'I'm changing my frock,' she cried from her
room in a voice that sounded needlessly prohibitory.

'I want to tell you something,' called Trix. 'I've been to Airey
Newton's----'

Peggy's door flew open; she appeared gownless; her brush was in her
hand, and her hair streamed down her back.

'Oh, your hair!' exclaimed Trix--as she always did when she saw it thus
displayed.

Peggy's scared face showed no appreciation of the impulsive compliment.

'You've been to Airey's, and you've something to tell me?' she said,
scanning Trix with unconcealed anxiety.

But Trix did not appear to be in an accusing mood; she had no charge of
broken faith to launch, or of confidence betrayed.

'I told him how I stood--that I was pretty well ruined,' she explained,
'and he was so kind about it. And what do you think?' She paused for
effect. Peggy had recourse to diplomacy; she flung her masses of hair to
and fro, passing the brush over them in quick dexterous strokes as they
went.

'Well?' she asked, with more indifference than was even polite, much
less plausible.

But Trix noticed nothing; she was too full of the news.

'He told me there was a glimmer of hope for Glowing Stars!'

'He said that?'

Peggy's voice now did full justice to the importance of the tidings.

'Yes, hope for Glowing Stars. Peggy, if it should come out right!'

'If it should!' gasped Peggy. 'What did you say he said?'

'That there was hope for Glowing Stars--that I oughtn't to----'

'No, you told me another word; you said he used another word.'

'Oh, yes, he was very particular about it,' smiled Trix. 'And, of
course, I mustn't exaggerate. He said there was a glimmer of hope.'

'Ah!' said Peggy. 'I'll come into the other room directly, dear.'

She went back to the looking-glass and proceeded with the task of
brushing her hair. Her face underwent changes which that operation
(however artistically performed and consistently successful in its
effect) hardly warranted. She frowned, she smiled, she grew pensive, she
became gloomy, she nodded, she shook her head. Once she shivered as
though in apprehension. Once she danced a step, and then stopped herself
with an emphatic and angry stamp.

'A glimmer of hope!' she murmured at last. 'And poor dear old Airey's
left there in Danes Inn, fighting it out alone!' She joined her hands
behind her head, burying them in the thickness of her hair. 'Oh, Airey
dear, be good,' she whispered; 'do be good!'

She was so wrapped up in this invocation or entreaty that she quite lost
sight of the fact that she herself was relieved of one part of her
burden. Trix could not charge her with treachery now. But then it had
never been Trix's accusation that she feared the most.




CHAPTER XX

PURELY BUSINESS


They did not know what they had been summoned for, and they were rather
discontented.

'Just in the middle of a business man's business day!' ejaculated Arty
Kane.

'Just as I'm generally sat down comfortably to lunch!' Miles Childwick
grumbled.

'Just when I'm settling down to work after breakfast!' moaned Arty.

They were waiting in the sitting-room at Harriet Street. It was 2.15 in
the afternoon. A hansom stood in the street; they had chartered it,
according to orders received.

'What does she want us for?' asked Arty.

'A wanton display of dominion, in all likelihood,' suggested Miles
gloomily.

'I'm not under her dominion,' objected Arty, who was for the moment
devoted to a girl in the country.

'I've always maintained that you were no true poet,' said Miles
disagreeably.

Peggy burst in on them--a Peggy raised, as it seemed, to some huge power
of even the normal Peggy. She carried a lean little leather bag.

'Is the cab there?' she cried.

'All things in their order. We are here,' Miles reminded her with
dignity.

'We've no time to lose,' Peggy announced. 'We've two places to go to,
and we've got to be back here by a certain time--and I hope we shall
bring somebody with us.'

'In the hansom?' asked Arty resignedly.

'In two hansoms--at least you know what I mean,' said Peggy.

'Isn't she a picture, Arty? Dear me, I beg your pardon, Miss Ryle. I
didn't observe your presence. What happens to have painted you red
to-day?'

'I'm in a terrible fright about--about something, all the same. Now come
along. One of you is to get on one side of me and the other on the
other; and you're to guard me. Do you see?'

'Orders, Arty!'

They ranged themselves as they were commanded, and escorted Peggy
downstairs.

'Doesn't the hansom present a difficulty?' asked Arty.

'No. I sit in the middle, leaning back; you sit on each side, leaning
forward.'

'Reversing the proper order of things, Miles----'

'In order to intercept the dagger of the assassin, Arty. And where to,
General?'

'The London and County Bank, Trafalgar Square,' said Peggy, with an
irrepressible gurgle.

'By the memory of my mother, I swear it was no forgery! 'Twas but an
unaccustomed pen,' murmured Miles.

'I am equal to giving the order,' declared Arty proudly; he gave it with
a flourish.

'How soon are we to have a look-in, Peggy?'

'Hush! She's killed another uncle!'

When the world smiled Peggy Ryle laughed aloud. It smiled to-day.

'See me as far as the door of the bank and wait outside,' she commanded,
when she recovered articulate gravity.

Their external gloom deepened; they were enjoying themselves, immensely.
Peggy's orders were precisely executed.

'Present it with a firm countenance,' Miles advised, as she left them at
the entrance. 'Confidence, but no bravado!'

'It is no longer a capital offence,' said Arty encouragingly. 'You
won't be hanged in silk knee-breeches, like Mr. Fauntleroy.'

Peggy marched into the bank. She opened the lean little bag, and took
forth a slip of paper. This she handed to a remarkably tall and prim
young man behind the counter. He spoilt his own effect by wearing
spectacles, but accuracy is essential in a bank.

He looked at the amount on the cheque; then he looked at Peggy. The
combined effect seemed staggering. He took off his spectacles, wiped
them, and replaced them with an air of meaning to see clearly this time.
He turned the cheque over. 'Margaret Ryle' met him in bold and decided
characters. Tradition came to his rescue.

'How will you take it?' he asked.

Peggy burst out joyously: 'It's really all right, then?'

The prim clerk almost jumped. 'I--I presume so,' he stammered, and fled
precipitately from the first counter to the third.

Peggy waited in some anxiety; old prepossessions were strong on her.
After all, to write a cheque is one thing, to have it honoured depends
on a variety of circumstances.

'Quite correct,' said the clerk, returning. He was puzzled; he hazarded
a suggestion: 'Do you--er--wish to open----?'

'Notes, please,' said Peggy.

He opened a drawer with many compartments.

'Hundreds!' cried Peggy suddenly. She explained afterwards that she had
wanted as much 'crackle' as the little bag would hold.

The clerk licked his forefinger. 'One--two--three--four----'

'Why should he ever stop?' thought Peggy, looking on with the sensation
a millionaire might have if he could keep his freshness.

'Thank you very much,' she beamed, with a gratitude almost obtrusive, as
she put the notes in the bag. She was aware that it is not correct to
look surprised when your friends' cheques are honoured, but she was not
quite able to hold the feeling in repression.

Her bodyguard flung away half-consumed cigarettes and resigned
themselves to their duties. A glance at the little bag showed that it
had grown quite fat.

'Be very, very careful of me now,' ordered Peggy, as she stepped warily
towards the hansom.

'There are seventy thousand thieves known to the police,' said Arty.

'Which gives one an idea of the mass of undiscovered crime in London,'
added Miles. 'Now where to, _mon Général_?'

'346 Cadogan Square,' Peggy told them. 'Oh, how I wish I could have a
cigarette!'

Both sympathetically offered to have one for her.

'The smoke will embarrass the assassin's aim,' Miles opined sagely.

Arty broke out in a sudden discovery.

'You're going to Fricker's!' he cried.

'I have an appointment with Mr. Fricker,' said Peggy, with pretended
carelessness.

'At last, Arty, I shall see the mansions of the gilt.'

'No, you'll wait outside,' Peggy informed him, with a cruelty spoilt by
bubbling mirth.

'Is that where we're to pick up the other passenger?' asked Arty.

'You talk as if everything was so very easy!' said Peggy rather
indignantly.

'Being anywhere near a bank always has that effect on me,' he
apologised.

'Now, one on each side--and be careful,' Peggy implored as the cab
stopped in Cadogan Square. 'If anything happened now----!' Her tongue
and her imagination failed.

'If you've got any money, you'll leave it there,' Miles prophesied,
pointing at the Fricker door.

'Shall I?' cried Peggy in joyous defiance, as she sprang from the cab.

'Mayn't we even sit in the hall?' wailed Arty.

'Wait outside,' she commanded, with friendly curtness.

The door closed on her, the butler and footman showing her in with an
air of satisfied expectancy.

'Who's to pay the cab?' exclaimed Arty, smitten with a sudden
apprehension.

'Don't you remember being reviewed under the heading of "The Young
Ravens"?' asked Miles, a little unkindly, but with a tranquil trust in
the future.

That answer might not have satisfied the cabman. It closed the question
for Arty Kane. They linked arms and walked up and down the square,
discussing Shakespeare's habit of indulging in soliloquy. 'Which is bad
art, but good business,' Miles pronounced. Of course Arty differed.

'The study, if you please, miss,' said the butler to Peggy Ryle. She
followed him across the fawn-coloured mat which had once proved itself
to possess such detective qualities.

Rooms change their aspects as much as faces; he who looks brings to each
his own interpretation, and sees himself as much as that on which he
gazes. The study was very different now to Peggy from what it had seemed
on her previous entry. Very possibly Daniel experienced much the same
variety of estimate touching the Lions' Den before he went in and after
he came out.

Fricker appeared. He had lunched abstemiously, as was his wont, but
daintily, as was Mrs. Fricker's business. He expected amusement; neither
his heart nor his digestion was likely to be disturbed. An appeal for
pity from Peggy Ryle's lips seemed to promise the maximum of enjoyment
combined with the minimum of disturbance to business.

'So you've come back, Miss Ryle?' He gave her his lean, dry, strong
hand.

'I told you I might,' she nodded, as she sat down in her old seat,
opposite to his arm-chair.

'You've got the money?' His tone was one of easy pleasant mockery.

'It's no use trying to--to beat you down, I suppose?' asked Peggy, with
an expression of exaggerated woe.

But he was too sharp for her. He did not fall into her artless trap. He
was lighting his cigar, but he broke off the operation (it was not often
that he had been known to do that), and leant across the table towards
her.

'My God, child, have you got the money?' he asked her in a sort of
excitement.

'Yes, yes, yes!' she broke out. Had not that fact been bottled up in her
for hours? His question cut the wire. A metaphor derived from champagne
is in no sort inappropriate.

'You've got it? Where have you got it from?'

'Your principle is not to ask that, Mr. Fricker.'

'He must be very fond of you.'

'You're utterly wrong--and rather vulgar,' said Peggy Ryle.

'On the table with it!' laughed Fricker.

She threw the little bag across the table. 'Oh, and have you a
cigarette, Mr. Fricker?' she implored.

Fricker gave a short laugh, and pushed a silver box across to her. She
leant back in an extraordinary perfection of pleasure.

'There are a lot of these notes,' he said. 'Are cheques out of fashion,
Miss Ryle?'

'You're so suspicious,' she retorted. Apart from difficulties about a
banking account, she would not have missed handling the notes for
worlds.

He counted them carefully. 'Correct!' he pronounced.

'And here's your letter!' she cried, producing it from her pocket; the
action was a veritable _coup de théâtre_.

'Oh, I remember my letter,' he said with a smile--and a brow knit in
vexation. Then he looked across the table at her. 'I'd have betted ten
to one against it,' he remarked.

'You underrate the odds,' Peggy told him in a triumph that really
invited Nemesis. 'I'd have betted a thousand to one when I left your
house.'

'You're a wonderful girl,' said Fricker. 'How the devil did you do it?'

She grew sober for a moment. 'I'm ashamed of how I did it.' Then she
burst out again victoriously: 'But I'd do it again, Mr. Fricker!'

'You have all the elements of greatness,' said he, with a gravity that
was affected and yet did not seem entirely pretence. 'You've got three
thousand five hundred pounds out of somebody----'

'I've got four thousand,' interrupted Peggy.

'But five hundred was----'

'That's not there! That's kept for me. That's the most splendid part of
it all!' In that indeed seemed to her to lie the finest proof of
victory. The rest might have been shame; that her five hundred lay
intact meant change of heart. She had not pressed her five hundred on
Airey Newton. There are times when everything should be taken, as there
are when all should be given; her instinct had told her that.

Fricker smiled again; his deft fingers parted the notes into two uneven
heaps. The fingers seemed to work of their own accord and to have eyes
of their own, for his eyes did not leave Peggy Ryle's face.

'Is the man in love with you?' He could not help returning to that
explanation.

'Not a farthing, if he had been!' cried Peggy.

'Then he's an old man, or a fool.'

'Why can't I be angry with you?' she cried in an amused despair.
'Are--are greed and--nonsense the only things you know?'

'Are you finding new words for love?' he asked with a sneer.

Peggy laughed. 'That's really not bad,' she admitted candidly. Under the
circumstances she did not grudge Fricker a verbal victory. The poor man
was badly beaten; let him have his gibe!

He had made his two heaps of notes--a larger and a smaller; his hand
wavered undecidedly over them.

'I can trust you to do what you said you would?' she asked suddenly.

'No less--and no more. That's an essential part of my policy,' he
assured her.

'And Mrs. Trevalla is free of Glowing Stars? And you'll tell her what
you promised?'

'I'll take them over, with the liability. Yes, and I'll tell her.'

He spoke rather absently; his mind seemed to be on something else. When
he spoke again, there was an odd--perhaps an
unprecedented--embarrassment in his manner.

'I see my way to doing something with Glowing Stars. Money must go into
it--the calls must be paid--but I think some of the money might come out
again.' He looked at Peggy; he saw her gloriously triumphant eyes, her
cheeks flushed with the intoxication of achievement. The impulse was on
him to exalt her more. 'I should have done very well if I'd bargained
with you for three thousand.'

'It would have seemed almost as impossible. And you wouldn't! You wanted
more than market value for your pound of flesh!'

He pushed the smaller of the two heaps that he had made across to her
with a swift motion of his hand; the hand trembled a little, but his
voice was hard and dry.

'Take back the extra thousand and call it square, Miss Ryle,' said he.

Peggy laid down her cigarette and stared at the heap of notes he pushed
across to her.

'What?' she exclaimed in the despair of blank astonishment; she could
not grasp the idea.

'Take those back. I shall do very well with these.'

He took up his cigar again, and this time he lit it. To Peggy the room
seemed to go round.

'Why do you do that?' she demanded.

'On my word, I don't know. Your infernal pluck, I think,' he said in a
puzzled tone.

'I won't have it. It was a bargain.'

'It's not your money, you may remember.'

Peggy had forgotten that.

'It might be a pleasant surprise to--to your friend,' he went on. 'And,
if you'll let me do it, it will, Miss Ryle, be rather a pleasant change
to me.'

'Why do you do it?' she asked again.

He made her an odd answer--very odd, to come from him. 'Because of the
look in your eyes, my dear.'

His tone was free from all offence now; he spoke as a father might. If
his words surprised her to wonder, he had no better understanding of
hers.

'You too, you too!' she whispered, and the eyes which had moved him grew
misty.

'Come, don't refuse me,' he said. 'Take it back to your friend. He'll
find a use for it.'

He seemed to touch a spring in her, to give her a cue.

'Yes, yes!' she assented eagerly. 'Perhaps there would be a use for it.
Do you give it me? Freely, freely?'

'Freely,' answered Fricker. 'And all you want shall be said to Mrs.
Trevalla.'

Peggy opened her bag and began to put the notes in; but she looked still
at Fricker.

'Did you ever think of anything like this?' she asked in a new burst of
confidence.

'No, I didn't,' he answered, with a brusque laugh.

'You like doing it?'

'Well, was there any compulsion, Miss Ryle?'

'I shall take it,' she said, 'and I thank you very much.'

'I should have been distressed if you hadn't taken it,' said he.

Peggy knew that he spoke truth, strange as the truth might be. She had
an impulse to laugh, an impulse to cry. Fricker's quiet face quelled
both in her.

'And that finishes our business, I suppose?' he asked.

'It's understood that you don't worry Trix any more?'

'Henceforward Mrs. Trevalla ceases to exist for me.' He was really quite
in the same tale with Mrs. Bonfill and society at large.

His declaration seemed to amuse Peggy. 'Oh, well, that's putting it
rather strongly, perhaps,' she murmured.

'Not a bit!' retorted Fricker, with his confident contemptuousness.

'You can never tell how you may run up against people,' remarked Peggy
with a mature sagacity.

He leant back, looking at her. 'I've learnt to think that your
observations have a meaning, Miss Ryle.'

'Yes,' Peggy confessed. 'But I don't exactly know----' She frowned a
moment, and then smiled with the brightness of a new idea. 'Where's your
daughter, Mr. Fricker?'

'Connie's in her room.' He did not add that, by way of keeping vivid the
memory of moral lessons, he had sent her there on Peggy's arrival.

'Do you think she'd give me a cup of tea?'

It was rather early for tea. 'Well, I daresay she would,' smiled
Fricker. 'I shall hear what's up afterwards?'

'Yes, I'm sure you will,' promised Peggy.

He sent her under escort to the drawing-room, and directed that Connie
should be told to join her. Then he returned to his study and began the
letter which he had to write to Trix Trevalla. He fulfilled his
obligation loyally, although he had no pity for Trix, and was sorely
tempted to give her a dig or two. He resisted this temptation when he
remembered that to do what he said he would was an essential part of his
policy, and that, if he failed in it, Peggy Ryle would come again and
want to know the meaning of it; at which thought he raised his brows and
smiled in an amused puzzle. So he told Trix that Glowing Stars gave
promise of a new development, and, though he could not offer her any
price for her shares, he would take them off her hands for a nominal
consideration, and hold her free from the liability. 'Thus,' he ended,
'closing all accounts between us.'

'She was a fool, and my wife was a fool, and I suppose I was a fool
too,' he mused. A broader view came to his comfort. 'A man's got to be a
bit of a fool in some things if he wants to live comfortably at home,'
he reflected. He could not expect the weaker sex (such undoubtedly would
have been his description) to rise to the pure heights where he dwelt,
where success in business was its own reward and the victorious play of
brains triumph enough. 'But anyhow we backed the wrong horse in Trix
Trevalla,' he had to acknowledge finally.

Before he had sealed the letter, Connie burst into the room. Fricker
prepared to say something severe--these unlicensed intrusions were a
sore offence. But the sight of his daughter stopped him. She was dressed
in the height of smartness; she had her hat on and was buttoning her
gloves; her cheeks were red, and excitement shone in her eyes. On the
whole it looked as though she were clearing the decks for action.

'I'm going back to tea with Miss Ryle,' she announced.

He rose, and stood with his back to the fireplace.

'Well, she's a very nice friend for you to have, Connie.' There was a
flavour of mockery in his tone.

'You know as well as I do that there's no question of that. But Mrs.
Trevalla's living with her now.'

'I thought your mother and you had agreed to drop Mrs. Trevalla?'

Connie was not in the mood to notice or to trouble about his subtly
malicious sarcasms.

'I asked Beaufort Chance to come here to-day,' she went on, 'and he told
me he had to be in the City all the afternoon.'

'Aren't these things in your mother's department, Connie?'

'No, in yours. I want you to back me up. He's going to tea at four
o'clock at Miss Ryle's--to meet Mrs. Trevalla.'

'Miss Ryle told you that? And she wants you to go with her?'

'Yes. You see what it means?'

'Why, Connie, you're looking quite dangerous.'

'I'm going with her,' Connie announced, finishing off the last
glove-button viciously. 'At least I am if you'll back me up.'

'How?' he asked. He was amused at her in this mood, and rather admired
her too.

'Well, first, you must see me through with mamma, if--if anything comes
out about what's been happening. You know Beaufort wouldn't stick at
giving me away if he wanted to get even with me.'

'You're probably right as to that,' agreed Fricker, licking his cigar.

'So you must tell mamma that it had your approval, and not let her be
nasty to me. You can manage that, if you like, you know.'

'I daresay, I daresay. Is there any other diversion for your idle old
father?'

'Yes. You must back me up with Beaufort. I believe he's dangling after
Mrs. Trevalla again.' Connie's eyes flashed with threatenings of wrath.

'On the quiet?'

Connie nodded emphatically.

'Hardly the square thing,' said Fricker, smiling in an abused patience.

'Are you going to stand it? He's made fierce love to me.'

'Yes, I know something about that, Connie. And you're fond of him, eh?'

'Yes, I am,' she declared defiantly. 'And I won't let that woman take
him away from me.'

'What makes you think she'd have him?'

'Oh, she'd have him! But I don't mean her to get the chance.'

Fricker liked spirit of all sorts; if he had approved of Peggy's, he
approved of his daughter's too. Moreover his great principle was at
stake once more, and must be vindicated again; he must insist on fair
play. If what Connie attributed to Beaufort Chance were true, it was by
no means fair play. His mind briefly reviewed how he stood towards
Beaufort; the answer was that Beaufort hung on him, and could not stand
alone. He had the gift of seeing just how people were situated; he saw
it better than they did themselves, thanks to his rapid intuition and
comprehensive grasp of business affairs. He had set Beaufort Chance on
horseback--financial horseback; if he willed, he could pull him down
again; at the least he could make his seat most uncomfortable and
precarious.

'We should be able to manage him between us, should we, after the event
as well as before?'

'You help me to manage him before--I'll manage him myself afterwards,'
said Connie.

'Good girl! Say what you like. I'll back you up. Bring him to me, if
need be.'

Connie darted at him and kissed him. 'Don't say anything before Miss
Ryle,' she whispered. 'It's just that I'm going out to tea.'

When they reached the hall, where Peggy was waiting in triumphant
composure, Connie Fricker lived up to the spirit of this caution by
discarding entirely her aggressive plainness of speech and her combative
air. She minced with excessive gentility as she told Miss Ryle that she
was ready to go with her; then she flew off to get a gold-headed
parasol. Peggy sat and smiled at Mr. Fricker.

'She's going to have tea with you?' asked Fricker.

'Isn't it kind of her?' beamed Peggy.

Fricker respected diplomacy. 'The kindness is on your side,' he replied
politely; but his smile told Peggy all the truth. She gave a laugh of
amusement mingled with impatient anticipation.

Connie came running back. 'You'll tell mamma where I've gone, won't
you?' she asked, her eyes reminding her father of one-half of his duty.
'Oh, and possibly Mr. Chance will be here at dinner.' She managed to
recall the other half.

Fricker nodded; Peggy rose with an admirable unconsciousness.

'Hold your bag tight, Miss Ryle,' Fricker advised, with a gleam in his
eye as he shook hands.

'That's all right. I'm well looked after,' said Peggy, as the servant
opened the door.

Two hansoms were waiting; in each sat a young man smoking a cigarette.
At the sight of Peggy they leapt out; at the sight of the gorgeous young
woman who accompanied Peggy they exchanged one swift glance and threw
away the cigarettes. Introductions were made, Fricker standing and
looking on, the butler peering over Fricker's shoulder.

'What time is it?' inquired Peggy.

'Quarter to four,' said Arty Kane.

'Oh, we must be quick, or--or tea'll be cold!' She turned to Miles
Childwick. 'Will you go with Miss Fricker, Miles? Arty, take me. Come
along. Good-bye, Mr. Fricker.'

She kissed her hand to Fricker and jumped in; Arty followed. Miles, with
a queer look of fright on his face, lifted his hat and indicated the
remaining hansom.

'It's rather unconventional, isn't it?' giggled Connie, gathering her
skirts carefully away from the wheel.

'Allow me,' begged Miles in a sepulchrally grave tone.

He saw her in without damage, raised his hat again to Fricker, got in,
and sat down well on the other side of the cab. He was of opinion that
Peggy had let him in shamefully.

'I hope it's a quiet horse, or I shall scream,' said Connie.

'I hope it is,' agreed Miles most heartily. What his part would be if
she screamed he dared not think; he said afterwards that the colours of
her garments did quite enough screaming on their own account.

Fricker watched them drive off and then returned to his study
thoughtfully. But he was not engrossed in problems of finance, in the
possibilities of Glowing Stars and of minimising the claims they would
make. He was not even thinking of the odd way things had turned out in
regard to Trix Trevalla, nor of how he had pledged himself to deal with
Beaufort Chance. The only overt outcome of his meditations was the
remark, addressed once again to his study walls:--

'I'm not sure that Connie isn't a bit too lively in her dress.'

The various influences which produced this illuminating doubt it would
be tedious to consider. And the doubt had no practical result. He did
not venture so much as to mention it to Connie or to Mrs. Fricker.




CHAPTER XXI

THE WHIP ON THE PEG


Of that drive with Connie Fricker Miles Childwick had, in the
after-time, many tales to tell. Truth might claim the inspiration, an
artistic intellect perfected them. 'She said things to which no
gentleman should listen in a hansom cab, but the things she said were
nothing to the things she looked as if she was going to say. In a
hansom! No screen between you and a scrutinising public, Mrs. John!'
That was the first stage. In the second he had invented for poor Connie
all the sayings which he declared her expression to suggest. Whatever
the exact facts, while he forgave Peggy Ryle everything else, he did not
cease to harbour malice on account of that ride. Connie thought him
nice, but rather slow. His must be the blame, since it is agreed that in
such cases the man should adapt himself.

The work of the bodyguard was done; it was disbanded with a gracious
invitation to supper. Peggy flew up the stairs ahead of her guest. There
was a great question to be solved.

'The gentleman has come, miss,' said the charwoman.

'And Mrs. Trevalla?'

'I told him Mrs. Trevalla would be in directly.'

'And where is she?'

'She's still in her room, I think, miss.'

Peggy turned triumphant eyes on her companion. 'Now then, Miss Fricker!'
said she. 'That's the door! I shall go and keep Trix quiet. That's the
door!' She pointed encouragingly, if rather imperiously, to the
sitting-room.

'I'm not afraid,' laughed Connie, putting her hat straight and giving a
rattle to her bangles. But there was a ring of agitation in her voice,
and in her heart she half-regretted the dismissal of the bodyguard.
Still, she had pluck.

She swept in with the sustaining consciousness of a highly dramatic
entrance. To come in well is often half the battle.

'You here! The devil!' exclaimed Beaufort Chance.

'Mr. Chance! Well, I declare!' said Connie. 'And alone too!' She looked
round suspiciously, as though Trix might perhaps be under the table.
'Well, I suppose Miss Ryle won't be long taking off her things.'

Beaufort already suspected a plot, but, his first surprise over, he
would not plead guilty to being an object that invited one.

'I got away earlier than I expected,' he told her, 'and looked in here
on my way to Cadogan Square. There was no chance of finding you at home
so early.'

'And there was a chance of finding Mrs. Trevalla?' She sat down opposite
him, showing her teeth in a mocking smile. His confusion and the
weakness of his plea set her courage firmly on its feet.

'I don't know whether there was or not. She's not here, you see.'

'Oh, I'll amuse you till she comes!'

'I sha'n't wait for her long.'

'I sha'n't stay long either. You can drive me back home, can't you?'

He was pitifully caught, and had not the adroitness to hide his sense of
it. Perhaps he had been cruelly used. When he had written to Trix,
saying he meant to come again and asking for a date, it was hardly fair
of Peggy, performing the office of amanuensis for Trix, to say that Mrs.
Trevalla saw few visitors, but that this particular day (on which Peggy
was to visit Fricker) would be the best chance of seeing her. Such
language might be non-committal; it was undoubtedly misleading. He had
found in it a sign that Trix was yielding, coming to a sensible frame
of mind, recognising what seemed to him so obvious--the power he had
over her and her attraction towards him. In his heart he believed that
he held both these women, Trix and Connie, in his hand, and could do as
he liked with them; thus he would cajole and conciliate Connie (he
thought kisses would not lose their efficacy, nor that despotic air
either) while he made Trix his own--for towards her lay his stronger
inclination. To secure her would be his victory over all the sneerers,
over Mervyn, and--the greatest came last--over herself. But, however
clever we are, there is a point at which things may fall out too
perversely. If Connie came by chance, this acme of bad luck was reached;
if by design, then he had miscalculated somewhere.

'You're not greeting me very enthusiastically,' remarked Connie. 'You
don't sit stock-still and say you won't stay long when I come to you in
the drawing-room at home!'

'Nonsense! That girl may be in here any minute.'

'Well, and mamma might come in any minute at home--which would be much
worse. After all, what would she matter? You're not ashamed of me, I
suppose?'

Assumption is a valuable device in argument; Connie was using it
skilfully. She assumed that she was first in his thoughts, and did not
charge him with preferring another; let him explain that--if he dared.

'Nonsense!' he repeated fretfully. 'But I can't play the fool now. I've
come to see Mrs. Trevalla on business. 'Isn't there another room?'

'No; and I thought papa did all the business there was with Mrs.
Trevalla.'

He had sat down near the table; she came and perched herself on it.
Intimidation must probably be the main weapon, but she was alive to the
importance of reinforcing it.

'He thinks he does,' she went on significantly.

'Oh, it's a small matter. It won't do him any harm. And I'm a free
agent, I suppose?'

'You're free enough anyhow, pretty often,' Connie admitted.

'You've never objected,' he snarled, his temper getting out of hand.

'Well, no. I knew I had to do with a gentleman.'

Kisses might be out of place, even dangerous in view of a possible
interruption; but there was the despotic air. Now seemed the minute for
it.

'Don't you talk nonsense, child,' he said. 'If I've treated you kindly,
it doesn't entitle you to take that tone. And get off that table.'

'I'm very comfortable here,' remarked Connie.

'It doesn't look respectable.'

'What, not with you and me? There's nobody here, is there?'

'Stop playing the fool,' he commanded brusquely. 'What's the matter with
you to-day?'

'I'm in ripping spirits to-day, Beaufort. Can't you guess why?'

'I don't believe you came here to see Peggy Ryle at all,' he broke out.

'Never mind why I came here.'

'Have you got an idea that you've done something clever?'

'Never mind. I've awfully good news, Beaufort.'

'They may be listening at the door.' His uneasiness was pitiful.

'It wouldn't matter. Everybody'll know soon,' said Connie consolingly.

'What the deuce are you talking about?' he growled.

She bent forward towards him with a striking, if rather overdone, air of
joyous confusion.

'I've spoken to papa, Beaufort,' she whispered.

Startled out of pretence, he sprang to his feet with an oath. His look
was very ugly, he glared threateningly. Connie braced her courage and
did not quail.

'I know I ought to have asked you,' she admitted with a smile that
belied her professed penitence, 'but I caught him in such a beautiful
humour that I had to take advantage of it. So I told him everything. I
just confessed everything, Beaufort! Of course he scolded me--it hasn't
been quite right, has it?--but he was very kind. He said that, since we
were engaged, he'd forgive me and make mamma forgive me too.' She paused
before her climax. 'I think that he's really simply awfully pleased.'

'You've told your father that you're engaged to me? You know it's a
damned lie.'

Connie's eyes gleamed dangerously, but she kept admirably cool.

'Well, I told him that you'd said you loved me, and that you always
kissed me when we were alone, and called me your little Connie, and so
on, you know. And papa said that he presumed from all that that we were
engaged.'

'Well?' he muttered savagely.

'And I said that of course I presumed so too.'

It was spoken with the innocence of the dove, but it put Beaufort Chance
in a very awkward position; the reference is not to his sensibilities
but to his tactics. Connie's dexterity forced him to a broad
alternative--submission or open war. She deprived him of any half-way
house, any compromise by which cajolery and kisses would serve in place
of a promise and an obligation. She did not leave the matter there; she
jumped down from the table and put her arm on his shoulder--indeed,
half-way round his neck. 'You must have meant me to; and it made me so
happy to--to feel that I was yours, Beaufort.'

To this pass his shifty dealings had brought him, even as in public
affairs they had forbidden him a career, and in business had condemned
him to a sort of outlawry, although an outlawry tempered by riches. He
was in an extremity; his chance of Trix was at stake, his dominion over
Connie herself was challenged. He saw the broad alternative, and he
chose open war.

'It's all a very pretty trick of yours, my dear,' he sneered throwing
her arm off him none too gently; 'but a man doesn't marry every girl he
kisses, especially not when she's so ready to be kissed as some people
we know. You can explain it to your father any way you like, but you're
not going to bluff me.'

'I see why you came here now,' said Connie coolly. 'You came to make
love to Trix Trevalla. Well, you can't, that's all.'

'That's for Mrs. Trevalla to say, not for you.'

'I don't expect Mrs. Trevalla'll show up at all,' remarked Connie,
leaning against the table again.

'That's the little plan, is it?' He gave a jerk of his head. 'By Jove, I
see! That hussy of a Ryle girl's in it!'

'I don't know who's in it; you seem rather out of it,' smiled Connie.

'I am, am I? We'll see. So Mrs. Trevalla won't show, won't she? That's
hardly final, is it? She's on the premises, I rather fancy.'

'Going to force your way into her bedroom? Oh, Beaufort!'

'You'd be mightily shocked, wouldn't you?' He moved towards the door;
his purpose was only half-formed, but he wished her to think it was
absolute.

'I don't mind; but I'm sure papa and mamma would. I don't think they'd
like you for a son-in-law after that.'

'Then we should all be pleased.'

'Or perhaps for a partner either.'

He turned round sharply, and came back a step or two towards her.

'What do you mean by that?' he asked slowly.

'I don't suppose papa would care to have anything to do with a man who
trifled with his daughter's affections.' Connie stuck loyally to the old
phrases.

He was full in front of her now and looking hard at her.

'You little devil! I believe you've squared him,' said he.

Connie, well on the table again, put her arms akimbo, stuck her legs
out in front of her straight from the knee, and laughed in his face.

'If you're going into Mrs. Trevalla's room, you might ask her if, from
her experience, she thinks it wise to quarrel with papa.'

'I'm not a woman and a fool.'

'Oh, you know your own business best, Beaufort!'

It was sorely against the grain, but he shirked his open war; he tried
coaxing.

'Come, be reasonable, Connie. You're a sensible girl. I mean all that's
square, but----'

'I mean that if you wait here after I've gone, or go now and see Trix
Trevalla, I'll never speak to you again. And papa---- Well, as I say,
you know your own business best about that.'

Her cool certainty, her concentration on one purpose, gave her all the
advantage over him with his divided counsels, his inconsistent desires,
his efforts to hedge. Again she pinned him to a choice.

'What do you want?' he asked curtly.

'I want you to take me home to Cadogan Square.' That was hard and
business-like, and bore for him all the significance that she meant to
put into it. Then her voice grew lower and her large eyes turned on him
with a different expression. 'We can have a really friendly talk about
it there.' She meant to beat him, but she was highly content to soften
the submission by all means in her power. She would not hesitate about
begging his forgiveness, provided the spoils of victory were hers--in
the fashion of some turbulent vassal after defying his feeble overlord.

Beaufort read it all well enough. He saw that she liked him and was
ready to be pleasant: his dream of mastery vanished from before his
eyes. He might have broken Trix Trevalla's proud but sensitive spirit;
Miss Connie's pliant pride and unpliant purposes were quite different
things to deal with. He knew that in effect, whatever the forms were, he
submitted if he took her to Cadogan Square. Henceforward his lot was
with the Frickers--and not as their master either.

The truth came home to him with cutting bitterness. He had been able to
say to himself that he might use Fricker, but that he was very different
from Fricker; that he flirted with Connie, but that his wife would have
to be very different from her. He had to give up, too, all thought of
Trix Trevalla. Or he must face the alternative and be at war with
Fricker. Had he the courage? Had he the strength? He stood looking
gloomily at Connie.

'You're a fool, Beaufort,' she told him plainly, with a glittering
smile. 'I'm sure you seemed fond enough of me. Why shouldn't we be very
jolly? You think I'm nasty now, but I'm not generally, am I?' She coaxed
him with the look that she would have said was her most 'fetching.' To
do her justice, a more expressive word for the particular variety of
glance is hard to find.

At this moment Peggy Ryle came out of Trix's room (where she had
beguiled the time in idle conversation), shut the door carefully behind
her, crossed the passage, and entered the sitting-room. The time Connie
had estimated as sufficient for the interview had elapsed.

'Oh, Mr. Chance, I'm sorry! Trix has such a headache that she can't come
in. She has tried, but standing up or moving----' Peggy threw out her
hands in an expressive gesture. 'That's what kept me,' she added
apologetically to Connie. 'I hope you've amused one another all this
time?'

The plot was plain now; the bulk of Beaufort's resentment turned on
Peggy. What was the use of that? Peggy had no fear of him. She was
radiantly invulnerable.

'I'm sorry she's so seedy.' He hesitated; he longed to see Trix, even if
it were no more than to see her and to give her a parting blow. 'Perhaps
you'll let me send a note in, to say what my business is? It's pressing,
and she might make an effort to see me for----'

'I'm afraid I must go,' Connie interrupted. 'I promised to be home.'

'Must you really? I suppose the cab's waiting.'

'You mustn't bother poor Mrs. Trevalla with business now, must he, Miss
Ryle? It must wait for another day. You were coming to Cadogan Square,
weren't you? I'll take you with me.'

He looked from one to the other. Never was man in a more hopeless
corner. Nothing would have pleased him so much as to knock their heads
together. Connie was imitating Peggy's external unconsciousness of
anything remarkable in the situation as well as she could.

'We mustn't stay. Mrs. Trevalla must want you,' pursued Connie.

'Oh, I can leave her for just a few minutes,' Peggy assured her, with an
anxious look at the clock.

'Good-bye, Miss Ryle,' said Connie, giving Peggy's hand a hearty
squeeze. She passed on towards the door and opened it. Holding it ajar,
she looked round and waited for Beaufort Chance. For an instant he stood
where he was. The idea of rebellion was still in him. But his spirit
failed. He came up to Peggy and sullenly bade her farewell.

'Good-bye,' said Peggy in a low voice. Its tone struck him as odd; when
he looked in her eyes he saw a touch of compassion. It flashed across
him that she understood what he was feeling, that she saw how his acts
had brought him lower than his nature need have been brought--or at
least that she was sorry that this fate, and nothing less than this,
must be held to be justice.

'Good-bye, Miss Ryle. My regrets to Mrs. Trevalla. I hope for another
opportunity. Now I'm ready, Miss Fricker, and most delighted to have the
chance.'

At all times let the proprieties be sacred!

That is, let them be observed in the presence of third
parties--especially if those parties have brought us to humiliation.
They are not so exacting in a vehicle that holds only two.

'Your turn to-day; mine some other day, Connie,' said Beaufort Chance,
as he sullenly settled himself in the cab.

'Oh, don't talk bosh, and don't sulk. You've found out that I'm not a
fool. Is there any harm in that?' She turned to him briskly. 'There are
just two ways of taking this,' she told him. 'One is to be bullied into
it by papa. The other is to do it pleasantly. Since there's no way not
to do it, which of those two do you think best?'

'Did you mean it all the time?' he asked, sullen still, but curious.

'As soon as I began to be really gone on you,' she answered him. The
phrase is not classical, but she used it, and used it with a very clear
purpose. 'You don't suppose I like being--being disagreeable, and
seeming to have--to have to force you to what you'd always let me
understand you wanted? A girl has some self-respect, Beaufort.'

'Some girls have got a deuced good set of brains, anyhow,' he said,
feeling for her some of the admiration that her father's clear purposes
and resolute pursuit of them always claimed for him.

'Do you suppose' (Connie's face looked out of the other side of the cab)
'that if I hadn't been awfully fond of you----?'

He believed her, which was not strange; what she said was near enough to
the truth to be rather strange. Yet it was not incongruous in her. And
she seized a good moment for confessing it. If he would choose the
pleasant way of accepting the inevitable, it should be made very
pleasant to him. Nor was she indifferent as to which way he chose. She
had her father in reserve, and would invoke his help if need be; but she
hated to think of his smile while he gave it. Suddenly, under the board
of the cab, she put her hand into Beaufort Chance's and gave his a
squeeze.

He surrendered; but he kept up a little bit of pretence to the last.
Connie let him keep it up, and humoured him in it.

'All right. But I'll tell you what I think of your little game when
we're alone together!'

'Oh, I say, you frighten me!' cried Connie tactfully. 'You won't be
cruel, will you, Beaufort dear?'

She would have made an excellent Mayor of the Palace to a blustering but
easily managed king.

He had chosen the pleasant way, and verily all things were made pleasant
to him. Mrs. Fricker was archly maternal. A mother's greeting for him,
an indulgent mother's forgiveness for Connie's secrecy. No more than a
ponderously playful 'Naughty child!' redeemed in an instant by 'But we
could always trust her!' Not thus always Mrs. Fricker towards Connie and
her diversions, as Connie's anxiety in the past well testified. But
there, an engagement in the end does make a difference--if it is a
desirable one. It would seem dangerous to divorce morality and prudence,
since the apostles of each have ever been supremely anxious to prove
that it coincided with, if it did not even include, the other; let us
hope that they seek rather to excuse their opponents than to fortify
themselves.

Fricker too was benevolent; he hinted at millions; he gave Beaufort to
understand that while a partner or associate was one thing, a member of
the family would be quite another; crumbs from the rich man's table
compared with 'All that I have is thine' was about the difference. It is
true that Fricker smiled here and there, and just at first had seemed to
telegraph something to his daughter's wide-awake eyes, and to receive a
reply that increased his cordiality. What of that? Who cares for a whip
if it be left hanging on the peg? It is at worst a hint which any wise
and well-bred slave will notice, but ignore. Not a reminder of it came
from Fricker, unless in a certain far-away reflectiveness of smile. He
had spent an hour that day in the task of finding out how entirely he
held Beaufort in the hollow of his hand. The time was not
wasted--besides, it was a recreation. But he did not wish to have to
shut his fist and squeeze; he preferred at all times that things should
go pleasantly, and his favourite moral lessons be inculcated by the
mild uses of persuasion. 'Now you're one of us,' he told Beaufort,
grasping his hand. Well, possibly he glanced at the whip out of the
corner of his eye when he was saying that.

And Connie herself? She was the finest diplomatist of the three, for her
heart was in the work. So much falsehood comes from no cause as from
labelling human folk with a single ticket; a bundle of them might have
been adequate to Connie. The time came which Beaufort had
threatened--when they were alone as an affianced pair. The thing was
done; she had spared no roughness in doing it. Now she set herself to
make him content; nor did she force him to retract his threats. Her own
mind was divided as to their relations When it came to the point of a
clash of wills (to use a phrase consecrated by criticism), she found
always that she wished her's to prevail; in lighter questions she was
primitive enough to cherish the ideal of herself as a willing slave. If
Beaufort had not been able to raise that illusion in her from time to
time, she would not have liked him so much, nor gone to such lengths to
prove her own ultimate mastery. Almost persuading herself, she almost
persuaded him; and in this effort she became pleasant to him again. Thus
she compromised between her woman's temperament and her masculine will.
If he would accept the compromise as a permanent basis, their union
promised to go very smoothly.

'If you'd been like this,' he told her, 'there wouldn't have been any
trouble this afternoon.'

She endorsed the monstrous falsehood readily.

'No, it was all my fault. But I was--so terrified of losing you.'

'You tried to threaten me into it!'

He could not be so deluded as to doubt what she had done. But he wanted
the forlorn comfort of a brave face over a beaten heart.

'You threatened me too,' whispered Connie.

She broke away from him and took up her old jaunty attitude--arm on the
mantel-piece, foot on the fender--again: there was challenge in the eyes
that met his boldly.

'You did want some persuading,' she reminded him.

He laughed. 'Well, Trix Trevalla's a devilish pretty woman--and a bit
easier to hold than you.'

'I'm easy enough, if your hand's light. As for her, she'd have worried
you to death. She'd have hated you, Beaufort.'

He did not like that, and showed it.

'And I--don't!' Connie went on with a dazzling smile. 'Well, you're
staring at me. How do I look?'

So she played her fish, with just enough hint of her power, with just
enough submission to the legitimate sway she invited him to exercise. It
was all very dexterous; there was probably no other road to her end. If
it seems in some ways not attractive--well, we must use the weapons we
have or be content to go to the wall. When she bade him
good-night--still Mrs. Fricker was strong on reputable hours, and Connie
herself assumed a new touch of scrupulousness (she was a free lance no
more)--his embrace did not lack ardour. She disengaged herself from his
arms with a victorious laugh.

Her mother waited for her, vigilant but approving--just a little anxious
too.

'Well, Connie, is he very happy?'

'It's all right, mamma.' Her assurance was jovially impudent. 'I can do
just what I like with him!'

'You'll have a job sometimes,' opined Mrs. Fricker.

'That's half the fun.' She thought a moment, and then spoke with a
startling candour--with an unceremoniousness which Mrs. Fricker would
have reproved twenty-four hours earlier. 'I'm very fond of him,' she
said, 'but Beaufort's a funk in the end, you know.' She swung herself
off to bed, singing a song. Her title to triumph is not to be denied.
Peggy Ryle had furnished the opportunity, but the use of it had been all
her own. A natural exultation may excuse the exclamation with which she
jumped into bed:

'I knew Mrs. Trevalla wouldn't be in it if I got a fair show!'

Beaufort Chance stayed a while alone in the drawing-room before he went
down to join Fricker over a cigar. He had enjoyed Connie's company that
night; the truth stood out undeniable. She had made him forget what her
company meant and would cost--nay, more, what it would bring him in
worldly gain. She had made him forget, or cease to wish for, Trix
Trevalla. She had banished the thought of what he had been and once had
hoped to be. If she could do that for him, would he be unhappy? For a
moment he almost prayed to be always unhappy in the thing which he was
now set to do. For after an hour of blindness there came, as often, an
hour of illumination almost unnatural. In the light of it he saw one of
the worst things that a man can see. Enough of his old self and of his
old traditions remained to make his eyes capable of the vision. He knew
that the worst in him had been pleased; he saw that to please the worst
in him threatened now to become enough. His record was not very good,
but had he deserved this? It is useless to impugn the way of things. The
knowledge came to him that, as he had more and more sought the low and
not the high, so more and more the low had become sufficient to him. The
knowledge was very bitter; but with a startled horror he anticipated the
time when he would lose it. He had lost so much--public honour, private
scruples, delicacy of taste. He had set out with at least a respect for
these things and with that share in them which the manner of his life
and the standard of his associates imparted to him. They were all gone.
He was degraded. He knew that now, and he feared that even the
consciousness of it would soon die.

There was no help for it. In such cases there is none, unless a man will
forsake all and go naked into the wilderness. To such a violent remedy
he was unequal. It did not need Fricker's smooth assumption that all was
settled to tell him that all was settled indeed. It did not need
Fricker's welcome to the bosom of the family to tell him that of that
family he would now be. Fricker's eulogy of his daughter was
unnecessary, since soon to Beaufort too she would seem a meet subject
for unstinted praise.

Yet Fricker did not lack some insight into his thoughts.

'I daresay, old fellow,' he remarked, warming his back before the
fire--which he liked at nights, whatever the season of the year--'that
this isn't quite what you expected when you began life, but, depend upon
it, it's very good business. After all, we very few of us get what we
think we shall when we set up in the thing. Here am I--and, by Jove, I
started life secretary to a Diocesan Benevolent Fund, and wanting to
marry the Archdeacon's daughter! Here are you--well, we know all about
you, Beaufort, my boy! Old Mervyn hasn't quite done the course he set
out to do. Where's our friend Mrs. Trevalla? What's going to happen to
pretty Peggy Ryle?' He dropped his coat-tails and shrugged his
shoulders. 'Between you and me, and not for the ladies, we take what we
can get and try to be thankful. It's a queer business, but you haven't
drawn such a bad ticket after all.'

Beaufort Chance took a long pull of whisky-and-soda. The last idea of
violent rebellion was gone. Under the easy tones, the comfortably
pessimistic doctrine (there is much and peculiar comfort in doctrine of
that colour), proceeding from the suave and well-warmed preacher on the
hearthrug, there lay a polite intimation of the inevitable. If Fate and
the Frickers seemed to mingle and become indistinct in conception, why,
so they did in fact. Whose was the whip on the peg--Fate's or Fricker's?
And who gives either Fate or Frickers power? Whatever the answer to
these questions, Beaufort Chance had no mind that the whip should be
taken down.

'I've nothing to complain of,' said he, and drank again.

Fricker watched the gulps with a fatherly smile.




CHAPTER XXII

THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT


'And I think that's an end of any worry about Beaufort Chance!'

It was a heartlessly external way of regarding a fellow-creature's fate,
but in relating how Connie Fricker had carried off her prisoner, and how
subsequent despatches had confirmed his unconditional submission, Peggy
had dealt with the narrative in a comedy vein throughout. Though she
showed no gratitude to Beaufort, she owed him some as a conversational
resource if in no other capacity; he enabled her to carry off the
opening of her interview with Airey in that spirit of sturdy
unemotionality which she desired--and was rather doubtful of
maintaining. Coinciding in her wish and appreciating the device, Airey
had listened with an applauding smile.

Peggy now made cautious approaches to more difficult ground.

'So he's off Trix's mind,' she concluded, sighing with relief. 'And the
other thing's off her mind too. She's heard from Mr. Fricker.'

'Ah!' Airey, who had been walking about, turned short round on her and
waited.

'Yes, she believes it all. He did it very well. As far as I'm concerned
he's behaved most honourably.' Peggy had the air of giving a handsome
testimonial. 'She asked me no questions; she never thought I had
anything to do with it; she just flew at me with the letter. You can't
think what a difference it makes! She holds up her head again.'

'Is it quite fair?' he asked doubtfully.

'Yes, yes, for the present,' Peggy insisted. 'Perhaps she might be told
some day.' She looked at him significantly.

'Some day? How do you mean?'

'When she can bear it.' Peggy grew embarrassed as the ground became more
difficult. 'If ever other things made her feel that what had happened
didn't matter, that now at all events people valued her, or--or that
she'd rather owe it to somebody else than to herself or her own luck.'

He did not mistake her meaning, but his face was still clouded;
hesitation and struggle hung about him still. Neither by word nor in
writing had Peggy ever thanked him for what he had done; since she had
kissed his hand and left him, nothing had passed between them till
to-day. She guessed his mind; he had done what she asked, but he was
still miserable. His misery perhaps made the act more splendid, but it
left the future still in shade. How could the shade be taken away?

She gathered her courage and faced the perilous advance.

'You'll have observed,' she said, with a nervous laugh, 'that I didn't
exactly press my--my contribution on you. I--I rather want it, Airey.'

'I suppose you do. But that's not your reason--and it wasn't mine,' he
answered.

'Is it there still?' She pointed to the safe. He nodded. 'Take it out
and give it to me. No, give me just--just twenty-five.'

'You're in a saving mood,' remarked Airey grimly, as he obeyed her.

'Don't shut the safe yet,' she commanded hastily. 'Leave it like
that--yes, just half-way. What ogreish old bolts it's got!'

'Why not shut it?' he objected in apparent annoyance. Did the sight of
its partial depletion vex him? For before Peggy could go to Fricker's,
some of its hoard had gone to Tommy Trent.

'There's something to put in it,' she answered in an eager timid voice.
She set her little bag on the table and opened it. 'You gave me too
much. Here's some back again.' She held out a bundle of notes. 'A
thousand pounds.'

He came slowly across to the table.

'How did you manage that?'

'I don't know. I never thought of it. He just gave them back to me. Here
they are. Take them and put them in.'

He looked at them and at her. The old demon stirred in him; he reached
out his hand towards them with his old eagerness. He had run over
figures in his mind; they made up a round sum--and round sums he had
loved. Peggy did not glance at him; her arms were on the table and her
eyes studied the cloth. He walked away to the hearthrug and stood silent
for a long while. There was no reason why he should not take back his
money; no reproach lay in that, it was the obvious and the sensible
thing to do. All these considerations the demon duly adduced; the demon
had always been a plausible arguer. Airey Newton listened, but his ears
were not as amenable as they had been wont to be. He saw through the
demon's specious case. Here was the gate by which the demon tried to
slip back to the citadel of his heart!

Peggy had expected nothing else than that he would take them at once. In
a way it would have given her pleasure to see him thus consoled; she
would have understood and condoned the comfort he got, and thought no
less of his sacrifice. His hesitation planted in her the hope of a
pleasure infinitely finer. The demon's plausible suggestions carried no
force at all for her. She saw the inner truth. She had resolved not to
look at Airey; under irresistible temptation she raised her eyes to his.

'That's not mine,' he said at last. 'You say Fricker gave it back to
you. It's yours, then.'

'Oh, no, that's nonsense! It's yours, of course, Airey.'

'I won't touch it.' He walked across to the safe, banged it to, and
locked it with savage decision; the key he flung down on the table. Then
he came back to the hearthrug. 'I won't touch it. It's not mine, I say.'

'I won't touch it; it's not mine either,' insisted Peggy.

The despised notes lay on the table between them. Peggy rose and slowly
came to him. She took his hands.

'Oh, Airey, Airey!' she said in whispered rapture.

'Bosh! Be business-like. Put them in your bag again.'

'Never!' she laughed softly.

'Then there they lie.' He broke into a laugh. 'And there they would,
even if you left me alone with them!'

'Airey, you'll see her soon?'

'What the deuce has that got to do with it?'

'Nothing, nothing!' Her gaiety rose and would not be denied. 'A little
mistake of mine! But what are we to do with them?'

'The poor?' he suggested. Peggy felt that prosaic, and shook her head.
'The fire? Only there isn't one. Spills? The butterman?'

'They do crackle so seductively,' sighed Peggy.

'Hush!' said Airey with great severity.

Her heart was very light in her. If he could jest about the trouble,
surely the trouble was well-nigh past? Could it be abolished altogether?
A sudden inspiration filled her mind; her eyes grew bright in eagerness,
and her laugh came full though low.

'How stupid we are! Why, we'll spend them, Airey!'

'What?' That suggestion did startle him.

'This very day.'

'All of them?'

'Every farthing. It'll be glorious!'

'What are we to spend them on?' He looked at them apprehensively.

'Oh, that won't be difficult,' she declared. 'You must just do as I tell
you, and I can manage it.'

'Well, I don't know that I could have a better guide.'

'Go and put on your best clothes. You're going out with me.'

'I've got them on,' smiled Airey Newton.

'Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Peggy in momentary distress. His face
reassured her; they both fell to laughing.

'Well, anyhow,' she suggested, as a last resort, 'suppose you brush
them?'

Airey had no objection to that, and departed to his room.

Peggy moved about in restless excitement, fired by her idea. 'First for
her, and then----' She shook her head at her own audacity. Yet
confidence would not die in her. Had she really struck on the way? Had
not the demon summoned up all his most seductive arguments just because
he was sore afraid? It was madness? 'Yes, madness to cure madness!'
cried Peggy in her heart. A gift to the poor would not do that; the fire
would consume and offer nothing in return. She would try.

Airey seemed to surrender himself into her hands; he climbed into the
cab docilely. She had run down first and given the man a direction.
Airey did not ask where they were going. She opened the little bag, took
out its contents, and thrust them into his hands; he pocketed them
without a word. They drove westward. She glanced at him covertly once or
twice; his face was puzzled, but not pained. He wore an air of sedate
meditation; it was so out of keeping with the character of the
expedition that Peggy smiled again.

She darted another quick look at him as they drew up at their first
destination. He raised his brows a little, but followed her in silence.
Peggy gave a gasp of relief as they passed within the doors.

The shopman was not tall and prim, like the bank clerk; he was short,
stout, and inclined to roguishness; his eyes twinkled over Peggy, but he
was fairly at his wits' end for an explanation. They could not be an
engaged pair; Airey's manner gave no hint of it--and the shopman was an
experienced judge. Was it an intrigue? Really, in the shopman's opinion,
Airey's coat forbade the supposition. He inclined to the theory of a
doting uncle or a prodigal godfather. He tumbled out his wares in the
profusion such a chance demanded.

At first Airey was very indifferent, but presently he warmed up. He
became critical as to the setting of a ring, as to the stones in a
bracelet. He even suggested once or twice that the colour of the stones
was not suitable, and Peggy was eager to agree. The shopman groped in
deeper darkness, since he had taken Peggy's complexion as his guiding
star. However the bargains were made--that was the thing; three or four
little boxes lay on the counter neatly packed.

'I will bring them round myself, madame, if you will favour me with the
address.'

'We'll take them with us, please,' said Peggy.

There was a moment's pause; a polite but embarrassed smile appeared on
the shopman's face; an altogether different explanation had for the
moment suggested itself.

'We'll pay now and take them with us,' said Peggy.

'Oh, certainly, if you prefer, madame,' murmured the shopman gratefully.
He engaged upon figures. Peggy jumped down from her chair and ranged
about the shop, inspecting tiaras at impossible prices. She did not come
back for three or four minutes. Airey was waiting for her, the small
boxes in his hand.

She darted out of the shop and gave the cabman another direction. Airey
followed her with a slowness that seemed deliberate. She said nothing
till they stopped again; then she observed, just as she got out of the
cab, 'This is the best place for pearls.'

Airey was a connoisseur of pearls, or so it seemed. He awoke to an
extraordinary interest in them; Peggy and he actually quarrelled over
the relative merits of a couple of strings. The shopman arbitrated in
favour of the more highly priced; it had been Airey's choice, and he was
ungracefully exultant.

'I don't like shopping with you,' declared Peggy pettishly.

'Anything for a quiet life!' sighed Airey. 'We'll have them both.'

A quick suspicion shot into her eyes.

'No, no, no,' she whispered imperatively.

'Why not?'

'It would just spoil it all. Don't spoil it, Airey!'

He yielded. Here again the shopman had several theories, but no
conviction as to the situation.

'Now we might lunch,' Peggy suggested. 'It's very tiring work, isn't
it?'

At lunch Airey was positively cantankerous. Nothing in the _table
d'hôte_ meal satisfied him; the place had to be ransacked for recondite
dainties. As for wine, he tried three brands before he would drink, and
then did not pretend to be satisfied. The cigar he lit afterwards was an
ostentatious gold-wrapped monster. 'We procure them especially for the
Baron von Plutopluter,' the waiter informed him significantly.

'I'll put half a dozen in my pocket,' said Airey.

Peggy eyed the cigar apprehensively.

'Will that take very long?' she asked. 'We've lots more to do, you
know.'

'What more is there to do?' he inquired amiably.

'Well, there's a good deal left still, you know,' she murmured in a
rather embarrassed way.

'By Jove, so there is,' he agreed. 'But I don't quite see----'

Certainly Peggy was a little troubled; her confidence seemed to fail her
rather; she appeared to contemplate a new and difficult enterprise.

'There isn't a bit too much if--if we do the proper thing,' she said.
She looked at him--it might be said she looked over him--with a
significant gaze. He glanced down at his coat:

'Oh, nonsense! There's no fun in that,' he objected.

'It's quite half the whole thing,' she insisted.

There were signs of rebellion about him; he fussed and fidgeted, hardly
doing justice to the Baron von Plutopluter's taste in cigars.

'I shall look such an ass,' he grumbled at last.

'You shall be quite moderate,' she pleaded speciously, but insincerely.
She was relieved at the form of his objection; she had feared worse. His
brow, too, cleared a little.

'Is there really any philosophy in it, Peggy?' he asked in a humorous
puzzle.

'You liked it. You know you enjoyed it this morning.'

'That was for--well, I hope for somebody else.'

'Do try it--just this once,' she implored.

He abandoned himself to her persuasion; had not that been his bargain
for the day? The hansom was called into service again. First to
Panting's--where Airey's coat gave a shock such as the establishment had
not experienced for many a day--then to other high-class shops. Into
some of these Peggy did not accompany him. She would point to a note and
say, 'Not more than half the change out of that,' or 'No change at all
out of that.' When Airey came out she watched eagerly to see how
profound would be the shopman's bow, how urgent his entreaty that he
might be honoured by further favours. It is said that the rumour of a
new millionaire ran through the London of trade that day.

'Are you liking it, Airey?' She was nearly at an end of her invention
when she put the question.

He would give her no answer. 'Have you anywhere else you want to go?'

She thought hard. He turned to her smiling:

'Positively I will not become the owner of a grand piano.'

A brilliant idea flashed on her--obvious as soon as discovered, like all
brilliant ideas:

'Why, you'll have nothing decent to carry them in when you go visiting!'

A sudden sense of ludicrousness overcame Airey; he lay back in the cab
and laughed. Was the idea of visiting so ludicrous? Or was it the whole
thing? And Peggy's anxious seriousness alternating with fits of
triumphant vivacity? All through the visit to the trunk-maker's Airey
laughed.

'I can't think of anything else--though there's a note left,' she said
with an air of vexed perplexity.

'You're absolutely gravelled, are you?' he asked. 'No, no, not the
piano!'

'I'm finished,' she acknowledged sorrowfully. She turned to him with an
outburst of gleefulness. 'Hasn't it been a wonderful day? Haven't we
squandered, Airey?'

'We've certainly done ourselves very well,' said he.

The cabman begged directions through the roof.

'I don't know,' murmured Peggy in smiling despair. 'Yes, yes,' she
called, 'back to Danes Inn! Tea and bread-and-butter, Airey!'

He took the key of his chambers from his pocket. 'You go and make tea.
I'll be after you directly.'

'Have you thought of anything else?' she cried with a merry smile.

'I want to walk home and think about it,' said Airey. 'I sha'n't be
long. Good-bye.' He recollected a trifle. 'Here's some money for the
cab.'

'All that?' asked Peggy.

'He's sure we're mad already. Don't let's disturb his convictions,'
Airey argued.

She gave no order to the man for a moment; she sat and watched Airey
stroll off down Regent Street, his hands in his pockets (he never would
carry a stick) and his head bent a little forward, as his custom was.
'What is he thinking?' she asked herself. What would he think when he
realised the freak into which she had led him? He might turn very
bitter--not with her, but with himself. The enjoyment into which he had
been betrayed might now, in a reaction of feeling, seem the merest
folly. How should she argue that it had not been? What would any sober
judgment on it say? Peggy drove back to Danes Inn in an anxious and
depressed state. Yet ever and again the humours of the expedition broke
in on her memory, and she smiled again. She chinked the two sovereigns
he had given her in her hand. What was the upshot of the day? When she
paid the cabman she exchanged smiles with him; that gave her some little
comfort.

Danes Inn was comforting too. She hastened to make tea; everything was
to be as in old days; to add to the illusion, she herself, having been
too excited to eat lunch, was now genuinely hungry. She began to cut
bread-and-butter. The loaf was stale! Why, that was like old days too;
she used to grumble at that, and Airey always seemed distressed; he used
to pledge himself to have new loaves, but they did not always come. Now
she saw why. She cut the bread with a liberal and energetic hand; but as
she cut--nothing could be more absurd or incongruous--tears came into
her eyes. 'He never grudged me enough, anyhow,' she murmured, buttering
busily.

Surely, surely, what she had done should turn to good? Must it stand
only as a fit of madness, to be looked back on with shame or spoken of
with bitter ridicule? It was open enough to all this. Her heart still
declared that it was open to something else too. The sun shot a ray in
at the big dingy window, and lit up her face and hair. Her task was
finished; she threw herself into her usual chair and waited. When he
came she would know. He would have thought it over. His step was on the
stair; she had left the door unlatched for him; she sat and waited,
shutting her eyes before the brightness of that intruding ray.

An apprehension seized her--the fear of a task which she delayed. The
step might not be Airey's; it might be Tommy Trent's. She might never be
ready with her apology to Tommy, but at any rate she was not ready yet.
No, surely it could not be Tommy! Why should he happen to come now? It
was much more likely to be Airey.

The expected happened; after all, it sometimes does. Airey it was; the
idea that it was Tommy had served only to increase Peggy's sense of the
generally critical character of the situation. She had taken such risks
with everybody--perhaps she must say such liberties.

'Tea's ready,' she called to Airey the moment he appeared.

He took no sort of notice of that. His face, grave, as a rule, and
strong, heretofore careworn too, had put on a strange boyish gaiety. He
came up behind her chair. She tried to rise. He pressed her down, his
hands on her shoulders.

'Sit still,' he commanded. 'Lean your head forward. You've got a plaguey
lot of hair, Peggy!'

'What are you doing?' she demanded fiercely.

'You've ordered me about all day. Sit still.'

She felt his fingers on her neck; then she felt too, the touch of things
smooth and cold. A little clasp clicked home. Airey Newton sprang back.
Peggy was on her feet in a moment.

'You've done that, after all?' she cried indignantly.

'You were at the end of your ideas. That's mine--and it balanced the
thing out to the last farthing!'

'I told you it would spoil it all!' Her reproach was bitter, as she
touched the string of pearls.

'No, Peggy,' he said. 'It only spoils it if it was a prank, an
experiment, a test of your ingenuity, young woman. But it doesn't spoil
it if it was something else.'

'What else?' she asked softly, sinking back again into her chair and
fingering his present with a touch so gentle as to seem almost reverent.
'What else, Airey dear?'

'It came on me as I walked away from the shop--not while I was going
there. I was rather unhappy till I got there. But as I walked home--with
that thing--it seemed to come on me.' He was standing before her with
the happy look of a man to whom happiness is something strange and new.
'"That's it," I thought to myself, "though how the deuce that chit found
it out----!" It would be bad, Peggy, if a man who had worshipped an idol
kicked it every day after he was converted. It would be vicious and
unbecoming. But he should kick it once in token of emancipation. If a
man had loved an unworthy woman (supposing there are any), he should be
most courteous to her always, shouldn't he?'

'As a rule,' smiled Peggy.

'As a rule, yes,' he caught up eagerly. 'But shouldn't she have the
truth once? She'd have been a superstition too, and for once the truth
should be told. Well, all that came to me. And that's the philosophy of
it. Though how you found it out----! Well, no matter. So it's not a mere
freak. Was it a mere test of your ingenuity, young friend?'

'I just had to try it,' said Peggy Ryle, bewildered, delighted,
bordering on tears.

'So will you wear the pearls?' He paused, then laughed. 'Yes, and eat
your bread-and-butter.' He came up to her, holding out his hands. 'The
chains are loose, Peggy; the chains are loose.' He seized his pipe and
began to fill it, motioning her again towards the tea-table. To humour
him she went to it and took up a slice of bread-and-butter.

'A stale loaf, Airey!' she whispered--and seemed to choke before she
tasted it in an anticipated struggle with its obstinate substance.

He smiled in understanding. 'How men go wrong--and women! Look at me,
look at Fricker, yes, look at--her! We none of us knew the way. Fricker
won't learn. She has--perhaps! I have, I think.' He moved towards her.
'And you've done it, Peggy.'

'No, no,' she cried. 'Oh, how can you be so wrong as that?'

'What?' He stood still in surprise. 'Didn't you suggest it all? Didn't
you take me? Wasn't it for you that I did it?'

'Oh, you're so blind!' she cried scornfully. 'Perhaps I suggested it,
perhaps I went with you! What does that matter?'

'Well, Peggy?' he said in his old indulgent, pleasant way.

'Oh, I'm glad only one thing's changed in you!' she burst out.

'Well, Peggy?' he persisted.

'Were you thinking of me?' she demanded contemptuously. 'Were you
kicking your idol for me? Were you buying for me? What made it harder to
buy after lunch than before? Was that the difference between buying for
yourself and for me?' Her scorn grew with every question. 'What have I
done that you should give me this?' She plucked fretfully at the
offending string of pearls.

'Never mind that. It was only to use up the change--if you like. What do
you mean by the rest of it?'

'What do I mean?' cried Peggy. 'I mean that if you've done her a
service, she's done you more. If you've given her back her self-respect,
what hasn't she done for you? Are you going to her as her saviour? Oh, I
know you won't talk about it! But is that in your mind? Go to her as
yours too! Be honest, Airey! Whose face was in your mind through the
drive to-day? If you ever thought of telling it all, whom were you going
to tell it to? If you wanted to be free, for whom did you want your
freedom? I! What had I to do with it? If I could seem to speak with her
voice, it was all I could do. And you've been thinking that she's done
nothing for you. Oh, the injustice of it!' She put up her hand and laid
it on his, which now rested on the back of her chair. 'Don't you see,
Airey; don't you see?'

He smoked his pipe steadily, but as yet he gave her no assent.

'It's cost me nothing--or not much,' Peggy went on. 'I broke two
promises----'

'Two?' he interrupted quickly.

'Yes, one you know--to Tommy.' He nodded. 'The other to her--I promised
to tell no one she was ruined. But that's not much. It seems to me as if
all that she's gone through, all she's lost, all she's suffered--yes,
if you like, all the wrong things she's done--had somehow all been for
you. She was the only woman who could have made the change in you.
Nobody else could have driven out the idol, Airey. You talk of me.
You've known me for years. Did I ever drive it out? No, she had to do
it. And before she could, she had to be ruined, she had to be in the
dust--perhaps she had to be cruel or unjust to others. I can't work out
the philosophy of it, but that's how it's happened.' She paused, only to
break out vehemently again: 'You spoil it with your talk of me; you
spoil it with the necklace!' With a sudden movement she raised her
hands, unclasped the pearls from about her neck, and threw them on the
table. 'Everything for her, Airey,' she begged, 'everything for her!'

His eyes followed the pearls, and he smiled. 'But what about all the
things for me?'

'Aren't they for her too? Aren't you for her? Wouldn't you go to her as
fine as you could?'

'What a woman--what a very woman you are!' he chuckled softly.

'No, that's all right,' she insisted eagerly. 'Would she be happy if you
lavished things on her and were still wretched if you had anything for
yourself?' She was full of her subject; she sprang up and faced him.
'Not this time to the poor, because they can't repay! Not this time to
the fire, because it would give you no profit! You must love this--it's
a great investment!'

He sat down in the chair she had left empty and played with the pearls
that lay on the table.

'Yes, you're right,' he said at last. 'She was the beginning of it. It
was she who--but shall I tell that to her?'

'Yes, tell it to her, to her only,' urged Peggy Ryle.

'Give me your hands, Peggy. I want to tell something to you.'

'No, no, there's nothing to tell me--nothing!'

'If the philosophy is great and true, is there to be no credit for the
teacher?'

'Did I?' murmured Peggy, 'did I?' She went on in a hurried whisper: 'If
that's at all true, perhaps Tommy Trent will forgive me for breaking my
word.'

'If Fricker fell, and I have fallen, who is Tommy Trent?'

She moved away with a laugh, hunted for a cigarette--the box was hidden
by papers--found it, and lit it. She saw Airey take up the pearls, go to
the safe, open it, and lock them in.

'Never!' she cried in gay but determined protest.

'Yes, some day,' said he quietly, as he went back to his seat.

They sat together in silence till Peggy had finished her cigarette and
thrown it away.

'If all goes well,' he said softly, more as though he spoke to himself
than to her, 'I shall have something to work for now. I can fancy work
will be very pleasant now, if things go well, Peggy.'

She rose and crossed over to him.

'I must run away,' she said softly. She leant down towards him. 'Is it a
great change?' she asked.

'Tremendous--as tremendous as its philosophy.' He was serious under the
banter. She was encouraged to her last venture, which he might have
laughed back into retreat.

'It isn't really any change to me,' she told him in a voice that
trembled a little. 'You've always been all right to me. This has always
been a refuge and a hospitable home to me. If it had all failed, I
should have loved you still, Airey, my friend.'

Airey was silent again for an instant.

'Thank God, I think I can believe you in that,' he said at last.

She waited a moment longer, caressing his hand gently.

'And you'll go soon?' she whispered. 'You'll go to her soon?'

'This very night, my dear,' said Airey Newton.

Peggy stood upright. Again the sun's rays caught her eyes and hair, and
flashed on her hands as she stretched them out in an ample luxury of
joy.

'Oh, what a world it is, if you treat it properly, Airey!' she cried.

But she also had made her discovery. It was with plain amusement and a
little laugh, still half-incredulous, that she added: 'And after all
there may be some good in saving money too!'




CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAST KICK


It was no wonder that Trix Trevalla was holding up her head again. Her
neck was freed from a triple load. Mervyn was gone, and gone, she had
warrant for believing, if not in contentment, yet in some degree of
charity. Beaufort Chance, that terror of hers, whose coarse rebukes made
justice seem base cruelty, was gone too--and Trix was still unregenerate
enough not to care a jot with what feelings. His fate seemed so
exquisitely appropriate to him as to exclude penitence in her. Lastly,
Fricker was gone, and with him the damning sense of folly, of being a
silly dupe, which had weighed more sorely than anything else on a spirit
full of pride. Never a doubt had she about Fricker's letter. He had
indeed been honourable in his dealing with Peggy Ryle; he had left Trix
to think that in surrendering the shares to him she fell in with a
business proposal which he was interested in making, and that she gave
at least as good as she received. It needed very little more to make her
believe that she was conferring a favour on him, and thereby cancelling
the last item of the score that he once had against her. Surely, then,
Peggy was both wise and merciful in arguing that she should not know the
truth, but should still think that she was in debt to no man for her
emancipation.

Let not Peggy's mercy be disputed, nor her wisdom either; for these
points are immaterial. The fault that young lady did commit lay in a
little oversight. It is well to decide that a secret shall be kept; but
it is prudent, as a preliminary thereto, to consider how many people
already know it or are in a position where they may find it out. Since,
though the best thing of all may be that it should never be told, the
second best is often to tell it oneself--and the worst of all to leave
the telling in the hands of an enemy. It is just possible that Peggy had
grown a little too confident with all her successful generalship. At any
rate this oversight of hers made not a little trouble.


     'Dear Mr. Trent,--Come to me immediately, please. I have heard a
     most extraordinary story. I can hardly believe it, but I must see
     you at once. I shall be at home from six to seven and later.

     'Yours truly,

     'TRIX TREVALLA.'


'Now what's the meaning of that?' asked Tommy, smoothing his hat and
setting out again without so much as sitting down for a pipe after he
got back from the City. 'Has Peggy been up to mischief again?' He
frowned; he had not forgiven Peggy. It is not safe to discourage a
standard which puts the keeping of promises very high and counts any
argument which tends the other way in a particular case as dangerous
casuistry. Tommy's temperament was dead against casuistry; perhaps, to
be candid, his especial gifts of intellect constituted no temptation to
the art.

Trix received him with chilling haughtiness. Evidently something was
wrong. And the wrong thing was to be visited on the first
chance-comer--just like a woman, thought Tommy, hasty in his inference
and doubtless unjust in his psychology. In a few moments he found that
he was considered by no means a chance-comer in this affair; nor had he
been sent for merely as an adviser. Before Trix really opened the case
at all, he had discovered that in some inexplicable way he was a
culprit; the tones in which she bade him sit down were enough to show
any intelligent man as much.

Trix might be high and mighty, but the assumption of this manner hid a
very sore heart. If what she was now told were true, the last and
greatest burden had not been taken away, and still she was shamed. But
this inner mind could not be guessed from her demeanour.

'We've been good friends, Mr. Trent,' she began, 'and I have to thank
you for much kindness----'

'Not at all. That's all right, really, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'But I'm forced to ask you,' she continued with overriding
imperturbability, 'by what right you concern yourself in my affairs?'

Tommy had a temper, and rather a quick one. He had been a good deal
vexed lately too. In his heart he thought that rather too much fuss had
been occasioned by and about Mrs. Trevalla; this was, perhaps, one of
the limitations of sympathy to which lovers are somewhat subject.

'I don't,' he answered rather curtly.

'Oh, I suppose you're in the plot to deceive me!' she flashed out.

If he were, it was very indirectly, and purely as a business man. He had
been asked whether the law could reach Fricker, and had been obliged to
answer that it could not. He had been told subsequently to raise money
on certain securities. That was his whole connection with the matter.

'But don't you think you were taking a liberty--an enormous liberty?
You'll say it was kindness. Well, I don't dispute your motive, but it
was presumption too.' Trix's disappointment was lashing her into a
revenging fury. 'What right had you to turn me into a beggar, to make me
take your money, to think I'd live on your charity?' She flung the
question at him with a splendid scorn.

Tommy wrinkled his brow in hopeless perplexity.

'On my honour, I don't know what you're talking about,' he declared. 'My
charity? I've never offered you charity, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'You brazen it out?' she cried.

'I don't know about brazening,' said Tommy with a wry smile. 'I say it's
all nonsense, if that's what you mean. Somebody's been----' He pulled
himself up on the edge of an expression not befitting the seriousness of
the occasion. 'Somebody's been telling you a cock-and-bull story.'

'What other explanation is there?'

'I might possibly discover one if you'd begin at the beginning,'
suggested Tommy with hostile blandness.

'I will begin at the beginning, as you call it,' said Trix, with a
contempt for his terminology that seemed hardly warranted. She took a
letter from her pocket. 'This is from Mr. Beaufort Chance.'

'That fellow!' ejaculated Tommy.

'Yes, that fellow, Mr. Trent. Mr. Fricker's friend, his partner. Listen
to this.' She sought a passage a little way down the first page. 'Not so
clever as you think!' she read. 'Glowing Stars were as pure a fraud as
ever you thought them. But any story's good enough for you, and you
believed Fricker took them back. So he did--for a matter of three
thousand pounds. And he could have had four if he liked. That's what
your cleverness is worth.' Trix's voice faltered. She got it under
control and went on with flushed cheeks, the letter shaking in her hand.
'Who paid the money? Ask Peggy Ryle. Has Peggy Ryle got thousands to
throw about? Which of your charming new friends has? Ask Miss Peggy
who'd give four thousand for her smiles! If she doesn't know, I should
think you might inquire of Tommy Trent.' Trix stopped. 'There's some
more about--about me, but it doesn't matter,' she ended.

Tommy Trent pulled his moustache. Here was a very awkward situation.
'Beaufort Chance's last kick was a nasty one. Why couldn't Fricker have
held his tongue, instead of indulging his partner with such entertaining
confidences?

'Well, what have you to say to that?' His puzzled face and obvious
confusion seemed to give her the answer. With something like a sob she
cried, 'Ah, you daren't deny it!'

It was difficult for Tommy. It seemed simple indeed to deny that he had
given Peggy any money; he might strain his conscience and declare that
he knew nothing of any money being given. What would happen? Of a
certainty Peggy Ryle could not dispose of thousands. He foresaw how Trix
would track out the truth by her persistent and indignant questions. The
truth would implicate his friend Airey Newton, and he himself would
stand guilty of just such a crime as that for which he held Peggy so
much to blame. His thoughts of Beaufort Chance were deep and dark.

'I can't explain it,' he stammered at length. 'All I know is----'

'I want the truth! Can I never have the truth?' cried Trix. 'Even a
letter like that I'm glad of, if it tells me the truth. And I
thought----' The bitterness of being deluded was heavy on her again. She
attacked Tommy fiercely. 'On your honour do you know nothing about it?
On your honour did Peggy pay Mr. Fricker money? On your honour did you
give it her?'

The single word 'Woman!' would have summed up Tommy's most intimate
feelings. It was, however, too brief for diplomacy, or for a man who
wished to keep possession of the floor and exclude further attacks from
an opponent in an overpowering superiority.

'What I've always noticed,' he began in a deliberate tone, 'about women
is that if they write you the sort of note that looks as if you were the
only friend they had on earth, or the only fellow whose advice would
save 'em from ruin, and you come on that understanding--well, as soon as
they get you there, they proceed to drop on you like a thousand of
bricks.'

The simile was superficially inappropriate to Trix's trim tense figure;
it had a deeper truth, though.

'If you'd answer my questions----' she began in an ominous and deceptive
calm.

'Which of them?' cried Tommy in mad exasperation.

'Take them in any order you please,' she conceded graciously.

Tommy's back was against the wall; he fought desperately for his own
honour, desperately for his friends' secrets. One of the friends had
betrayed his. She was a girl. _Cadit quæstio._

'If I had supposed that this was going to be a business interview----'

'And about your business, it seems, though I thought it was mine! Am I
living on your charity?'

'No!' he thundered out, greeting the simple question and the possible
denial. 'I've never paid a shilling for you.' His tone implied that he
was content, moreover, to leave that state of affairs as it was.

'Then on whose?' asked Trix. Her voice became pathetic; her attitude was
imploring now. She blamed herself for this, thinking it lost her all
command. How profoundly wrong she was Tommy's increased distress
witnessed very plainly.

'I say, now, let's discuss it calmly. Now just suppose--just take the
hypothesis----'

Trix turned from him with a quick jerk of her head. The baize door
outside had swung to and fro. Tommy heard it too; his eye brightened;
there was no intruder whom he would not have welcomed, from the
tax-collector to the bull of Bashan; he would have preferred the latter
as being presumably the more violent.

'There, somebody's coming! I told you it was no place to discuss things
of this kind, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'Of all cowardly creatures, men are----' began Trix.

A low, gently crooned song reached them from the passage. The words were
not very distinct--Peggy sang to please herself, not to inform the
world--but the air was soothing and the tones tender. Yet neither of
them seemed moved to artistic enjoyment.

'Peggy, by Jove!' whispered Tommy in a fearful voice.

'Now we can have the truth,' said Trix. She spoke almost like a virago;
but when she sat at the table, her chin between her hands, she turned on
Tommy such a pitiful, harassed face that he could have cried with her.

In came Peggy; she had been to one or two places since Danes Inn, but
the glory and gaiety of her visit there hung about her still. She
entered gallantly. Then she saw Tommy--and Tommy only at first.

'Oh!' she exclaimed. 'Are you waiting for me?'

Her joy fled; that was strange, since it was Tommy. But there he sat,
and sat frowning. It was the day of reckoning!

'I've--I've been meaning to come and see you,' Peggy went on hastily,
'and--and explain.'

'I must ask you to explain to me first, Peggy.'

This from a most forbidding, majestic Trix, hitherto unperceived. She
had summoned her forces again; the pleading pitifulness was gone from
her face. Tommy reproached himself for a sneak and a coward, but for the
life of him he could not help thinking, 'Now they can fight it out
together!'

At first Peggy was relieved; a _tête-à-tête_ was avoided. She did not
dream that her secret was found out. Who would have thought of Fricker's
taste for a good story or of that last kick of malice in Beaufort
Chance?

'Oh, there you are too, Trix! So glad to find you. I've only run in for
just a minute to change my frock before I go out to dinner with the----'

'It's only a quarter to seven. I want to ask you a question first.'

Trix's chilliness was again most pronounced and unmistakable. Peggy
glanced at Tommy; a sullen and wilfully uninforming shrug of the
shoulders was all that she got. Peggy had enjoyed the day very much; she
was young enough to expect the evening to be like it; she protested
vigorously against this sort of atmosphere.

'What's the matter with you both?' she cried.

Trix came straight to the point this time. She would have doubted
Beaufort if he had brought gifts in his hand; she did not doubt him when
he came with a knife.

'Whose money did you give Mr. Fricker to buy me off?' she asked. She
held out her letter to Peggy.

Without a word, beyond a word, Peggy took it and read. Yes, there it
was. No honour among thieves! None between her and Fricker! Stay, he had
said he would not tell Trix; he had never said or written that he would
not tell his partner Beaufort Chance. The letter of the bond! And he had
professed to disapprove of Shylock! All that she had ever said about his
honourable dealing, all that handsome testimonial of hers, Peggy took
back on the spot. Thus did the whole of the beautiful scheme go awry!

'Trix dearest----' she began.

'My question, please,' said Trix Trevalla. But she had not the control
to stop there. 'All of you, all of you!' she broke out passionately.
'Even you, Peggy! Have I no friend left--nobody who'll treat me openly,
not play with me as if I were a child, and a silly child? What can I
believe? Oh, it's too hard for me!' Again her face sank between her
hands; again was the awakening very bitter to her.

They sat silent. Both were loyal; both felt as though they were found
out in iniquity.

'You did it?' asked Trix in a dull voice, looking across at Peggy.

There was no way out of that. But where was the exultation of the
achievement, where the glory?

'Forgive me, dear; forgive me,' Peggy murmured, almost with a sob.

'Your own money?'

'Mine!' echoed Peggy, between a sob and a laugh now.

'Whose?' Trix asked. There was no answer. She turned on Tommy. 'Whose?'
she demanded again.

They would not answer. It was _peine forte et dure_; they were crushed,
but they made no answer. Trix rose from her chair. Her manner was
tragic, and no pretence went to give that impression.

'I--I'm not equal to it,' she declared. 'It drives me mad. But I have
one friend still. I'll go to him. He'll find out the truth for me and
tell it me. He'll make you take back your money and give me back my
shares.'

Irresistibly the man of business found voice in Tommy Trent. An appeal
to instinct beats everything.

'Do you really suppose,' he asked, 'that old Fricker will disgorge three
thousand pounds?'

'That's it!' cried Trix. 'Look what that makes of me! And I thought----'

'The money's past praying for now, anyhow,' said Tommy, in a sort of
gloomy satisfaction. There is, as often observed, a comfort in knowing
the worst.

'I'll go to him,' said Trix. 'I can trust him. He wouldn't betray me
behind my back. He'll tell me the truth as--as I told it to him. Yes,
I'll go to Mr. Newton.'

It was odd, but neither of them had anticipated the name. It struck on
them with all the unexpectedness of farce. On a moment's reflection it
had the proper inevitability of tragedy. Tommy was blankly aghast; he
could make nothing of it. In all its mingled effect, the poignancy of
its emotion, the ludicrousness of its coincidences, the situation was
more than Peggy Ryle could bear. She fell to laughing feebly--laughing
though miserable at heart.

'Yes, I'll go to Airey Newton. He won't laugh at me, and he'll let me
have the truth.' She turned on them again. 'I've treated some people
badly; I've never treated you badly,' she cried. 'Why should you play
tricks on me? Why should you laugh? And I was ready to turn from all the
world to you! But now--yes, I'll go to Airey Newton.'

Fortune had not done yet; she had another effect in store. Yet she used
no far-fetched materials--only a man's desire to see the woman whom he
had come to love. There was nothing extraordinary about this. The wonder
would have been had he taken an hour longer in coming.

Peggy heard the step on the stairs; the others heard it a second later.
Again Tommy brightened up in the hope of a respite--ah, let it be a
stranger, someone outside all secrets, whose presence would drive them
underground! Trix's denunciations were stayed. Did she know the step?
Peggy knew it. 'You'll go to her soon?' 'This very night, my dear.' The
snatch of talk came back to her in blazing vividness.

The baize door swung to and fro. 'All right, Mrs. Welling; I'll knock,'
came in well-known tones.

'Why, it is Mr. Newton!' cried Trix, turning a glance of satisfied anger
on her pair of miserable culprits.

Tommy was paralysed. Peggy rose and retreated into a corner of the room.
A chair was in her way; she caught hold of it and held it in front of
her, seeming to make it a barricade. She was very upset still, but
traitorous laughter played about the corners of her mouth--it
reconnoitred, seeking to make its position good. Aggressive satisfaction
breathed from Trix Trevalla as she waited for the opening of the door.

Airey put his head inside.

'Mrs. Welling told me I should find you,' he began; for Trix's was the
first figure that he saw.

'You find us all, old fellow,' interrupted Tommy Trent, with malicious
and bitter jocularity.

At this information Airey's face did not glow with pleasure. Friends are
friends, but sometimes their appropriate place is elsewhere. He carried
it off well though, exclaiming:

'What, you? And Peggy too?'

Trix had no idea of allowing wandering or diversions.

'I was just coming round to Danes Inn, Mr. Newton,' she said, in a voice
resolute but trembling.

'To Danes Inn?' The listeners detected a thrill of pleasure in his
voice.

'Yes, to see you. I want your help. I want you to tell me something.
Peggy here----' she pointed a scornful finger at Peggy entrenched in the
corner behind her chair, and looking as though she thought that personal
violence was not out of the possible range of events--'Peggy here has
been kind--what she calls kind, I suppose--to me. She's been to Mr.
Fricker and paid him a lot of money to get me out of Glowing Stars--to
persuade him to let me out of them. You told me there was some hope of
them. You were wrong. There was none. But Peggy went and bought me out.
Mr. Chance has written and told me so.'

Airey had never got further than the threshold. He stood there
listening.

Trix went on, in a level hard voice: 'He thinks Mr. Trent found the
money. It was three thousand pounds--it might have been four. I don't
know why Mr. Fricker only took three when he might have had four.'

For an instant Airey glanced at Peggy's face.

'But whether it was three or four, it couldn't have been Peggy's own
money. I've asked Peggy whose it was. I've asked Mr. Trent whether it
was his. I can't get any answer out of either of them. They both seem to
think there's no need to answer me. They both seem to think that I've
been such a--such a---- Oh, what shall I do?' She dropped suddenly into
a chair and hid her face in her hands.

At last Airey Newton advanced slowly towards her.

'Come, come, Mrs. Trevalla,' he began.

Trix raised her face to his. 'So, as I had no other friend--no other
friend I could trust--and they wouldn't help me, I was coming to you.
You won't forsake me? You'll tell me the truth?' Her voice rose strong
again for a minute. 'This is terribly hard to bear,' she said, 'because
I'd come to think it was all right, and that I hadn't been a wretched
dupe. And now I have! And my own dear friends have done it too! First my
enemies, then my friends!'

Tommy Trent cleared his throat, and looked shamefully indifferent; but
for no apparent reason he stood up. Peggy sallied suddenly from her
entrenchments, ran to Trix, and fell on her knees beside her.

'Trix, dear Trix!' she murmured.

'Yes, I daresay you loved me, but it's too hard, Peggy.' Trix's voice
was hard and unforgiving still.

Was the position desperate? So far as Fortune's caprice went, so it
seemed. Among the three the secret was gone beyond recall. Not falsehood
the most thorough nor pretence the most artistic could save it. The
fine scheme of keeping Trix in the dark now and telling her at some
future moment--some future moment of idyllic peace--was hopelessly gone.
Now in the stress of the thing, in the face of the turmoil of her
spirit, she must be told. It was from this that Tommy Trent had
shrunk--from this no less than from the injury to his plighted word. At
the idea of this Peggy had cowered even more than from any superstitious
awe of the same obligation binding her.

But Airey Newton did not appear frightened nor at a loss. His air was
gentle but quite decided, his manner quiet but confident. A calm
happiness seemed to be about him. There was subtle amusement in his
glance at his two friends; the same thing was not absent from his eyes
when they turned to Trix, although it was dominated by something
tenderer. Above all, he seemed to know what to do.

Tommy watched him with surprised admiration. The gladdest of smiles
broke out suddenly on Peggy's face. She darted from Trix to him and
stood by him, saying just 'Airey!'

He took her hand for a moment and patted it. 'It's all right,' said he.

Trix's drooping head was raised again; her eyes too were on him now.

'All right?' she echoed in wondering tones.

'Yes, we can put all this straight directly. But----'

There was the first hint of embarrassment in his manner.

'But what?' asked Trix.

He had no chance to answer her. 'Yes, yes!' burst from Peggy in
triumphant understanding. She ran across to Tommy and caught him by the
arm. 'There's only my room, but that must do for once,' she cried.

'What? What do you mean?' he inquired.

'Peggy's right,' said Airey, smiling. There was no doubt that he felt
equal to the situation. He seemed a new man to Peggy, and her heart grew
warm; even Tommy looked at him with altered eyes.

'The fact is, Tommy,' said Airey easily, 'I think I can explain this
better to Mrs. Trevalla if you leave us alone.'

Trix's head was raised; her eyes leapt to meet his. She did not yet
understand--her idea of him was too deep-rooted. It was trust that her
eyes spoke, not understanding.

'Leave us alone,' said Airey Newton.

Peggy beckoned to Tommy, and herself made towards the door. As she
passed Airey, he smiled at her. 'All right!' he whispered again.

Then Peggy knew. She ran into the passage and thence to her room. Tommy
followed, amazed and rather rueful.

'We must wait here. You may smoke,' said she kindly; but she added
eagerly, 'and so will I.'

'But, I say, Peggy----'

'Wasn't it just splendid that he should come then?'

'Capital for us! But he did it, you know!' Tommy's tone was awestruck.

'Why, of course he did it, Tommy.'

'Then, in my opinion, he's in for a precious nasty quarter of an hour.'

Peggy plumped down on the bed, and her laugh rang out in mellow
gentleness again.

'Doesn't it strike you that she might forgive him what she wouldn't
forgive us?' she asked.

'By Jove! Because she's in love with him?'

'Oh, I suppose that's not a reason for forgiveness with everybody,'
murmured Peggy, smoking hard.




CHAPTER XXIV

TO THE SOUL SHOP


With the departure of the other two, Trix's tempestuousness finally left
her; it had worn itself out--and her. She sat very quiet, watching Airey
Newton with a look that was saved from forlorn despair only by a sort of
appeal; it witnessed to a hope which smouldered still, and might burn
again if he would fan it. A sense of great physical fatigue was on her;
she lay back in a collapse of energy, her head resting against the
chair, her hands relaxed and idle on the arms of it.

'What a pity we can't leave it just where it is!' said Airey with a
compassionate smile. 'Because we can't really put it all straight
to-night; that'll take ever so much longer.' He sighed, and smiled at
her. He came and laid his hand on one of hers. 'If I've got a life worth
living, it's through you,' he told her. 'You were very angry with Tommy
Trent, who had nothing to do with it. You were very, very angry with
poor Peggy. Well, she was partly responsible; I don't forget that. But
in the end it's a thing between you and me. We haven't seen so very much
of one another--not if you count by time at least; but ever since that
night at Paris there seems to have been something uniting us. Things
that happened to you affected me, and--well, anyhow, you used to feel
you had to come and tell me about them.'

He caressed her hand gently, and then walked away to the window.

'Yes, I used to feel that,' said Trix softly. 'I came and told you
even--even bad things.'

'You chose your man well,' he went on. 'Better than you knew. If you
had known, it wouldn't have been fair to choose a confessor so much
worse than yourself. But you didn't know. I believe you thought quite
highly of me!' There was no bitterness about him, rather a tone of
exultation, almost of amusement. He took hold of a chair, brought it
nearer to her, and rested his knee on it. 'There was a man who loved a
woman and knew that she was ruined. There was no doubt about it. A
friend told him; the woman herself told him. The friend said: "You can
help." The woman he loved said, "Nobody can help." He could help, but
even still he wouldn't. The friend said, "You can give her back life and
her care about living." She said, "I have no joy now in living"--her
eyes said that to him. Come, guess what his answer was! Can you guess?
No, by heaven, nobody in the world could guess! He answered, "Yes,
perhaps, but it would cost too much."'

For an instant she glanced at his face; she found him smiling still.

'That's what he said,' Airey pursued, in a tone of cheerful sarcasm.
'The fellow said it would cost too much. Prudent man, wasn't he? Careful
and circumspect, setting a capital example to the thriftless folk we see
all about us. It was suggested to him--oh, very delicately!--that it was
hardly the occasion to count pennies. Then he got as far as asking that
the thing should be reduced to figures. The figures appalled him!' A dry
chuckle made her look again; she smiled faintly, in sympathy, not in
understanding.

'Remarkable fellow, wasn't he? And the best of it was that the woman he
loved was so cut up about being ruined and not having made a success of
it altogether that she thought it very condescending and noble of him to
show any concern about her or to trouble to give her advice. Now this
man was always most ready to give advice; all his friends relied on him
for that. As far as advice went, he was one of the most generous men in
England. Well, there she lay--in the dust, as somebody put it to him.
But, as I say, when it came to figures, the cost of raising her was
enormous. Are you feeling an admiration for this hero? Don't you think
that the worst, the foolishest woman on earth would have been a bit too
good for him? This little trouble of his about figures he had once
described as a propensity.'

She leant forward suddenly and looked hard at him. He saw her breath
come more quickly.

Airey pulled his beard and continued, smiling still: 'That was the
position. Then a girl came to him, a very dangerous girl in my opinion,
one who goes about sowing love all over the place in an indiscriminate
and hazardous fashion--she carries it about her everywhere, from her
shoes to the waves of her hair. She came to him and said, "Well, you're
a pretty fellow, aren't you? I've got twopence that I'm going to give.
We want tenpence. Out with eightpence, please," said she. "Why so?" he
asked, with his hand tight on the eightpence. "She's got ruined just on
purpose to give you the chance," said she. That was rather a new point
of view to him--but she said it no less.'

'Tell it me plainly,' Trix implored.

'I'm telling it quite plainly,' Airey insisted. 'At last he forked out
the tenpence--and sat down and groaned and cried. Lord, how he cried
over that tenpence! Till one day the girl came back again and----'

'I thought she only asked for eightpence?' put in Trix, with a swift
glance.

'Did I say that? Oh, well, that's not material. She came back, and laid
twopence on the table, and said eightpence had been enough. He was just
going to grab the twopence and put it back in his pocket again, when she
said, "Wouldn't it be nice to spend it?" "Spend it? What on?" he cried.
"A new soul," said she, in that wholesale reckless way of hers. "If you
get a new soul, she may like you. You can't suppose she'd like you with
the one you've got?" She could be candid at times, that girl--oh, all in
a very delicate way! So they went out together in a hansom cab, and
drove to the soul shop and bought one. There's a ready-made soul shop,
if you know where to find it. It's dearer than the others, but they
don't keep you waiting, and you can leave the worn-out article behind
you.'

'Well?'

'He liked the feel of the new soul, and began to thank the girl for it.
And she said, "Don't thank me. I didn't do it." So he thanked her just a
little--but the rest of his thanks he kept.'

There was a long silence. Trix gazed before her with wide-open eyes.
Airey tilted his chair gently to and fro.

'You paid the money for me?' she asked at last in a dull voice.

'I gave it and Peggy took it. We did it between us.'

'Was it all yours or any of hers?'

'It was all mine. In the end I had that decency about me.' He went on
with a touch of eagerness: 'But it wasn't giving the money; any churl
must have done that. It's that now--to-day--I rejoice in it. I thank God
the money's gone. And when some came back I wouldn't have it. Ah, there
was the last tug--it was so easy to take it back! But no, we went out
and--wasted it!' He gave a low, delighted laugh. 'By Jove, how we wasted
it!' he repeated with a relish.

'Of all people in the world I never thought of you.'

'What I called my life was half-spent in making it impossible that you
should.'

'Where did you get the money from?'

The last touch of his old shame, the last remnant of his old secret
triumph, showed in his face.

'I had five or six times as much--there in the safe at Danes Inn. It lay
there accumulating, accumulating, accumulating. That was my delight.'

'You were rich?'

'I had made a good income for five or six years. You know what I spent.
Will you give a name to what was my propensity?' For an instant he was
bitter. The mood passed; he laughed again.

'You must have been very miserable?' she concluded.

'Worse than that. I was rather happy. Happy, but afraid. A week ago I
should have fled to the ends of the earth sooner than tell you. I
couldn't have borne to be found out.'

'I know, I know,' she cried, in quick understanding. 'I felt that
at----' She stopped in embarrassment. Airey's nod saved her the rest.

'But now I can talk of it. I don't mind now. I'm free.' He broke into
open laughter. 'I've spent a thousand pounds to-day. It sounds too
deliciously impossible.'

She gave a passing smile; she had not seen the thing done, and hardly
appreciated it. Her mind flew back to herself again.

'And you bought Mr. Fricker off? You ransomed me?'

'You were angry with Tommy, you were angry with Peggy'--he turned his
chair round suddenly and rested his hands on the back of it--'are you
angry with me?'

She made a gesture of petulant protest. 'It leaves me a helpless fool
again,' she murmured.

'It was the price of my liberty more than of yours. I had a right--a
right--to pay it. Won't you come to the soul shop too? I've been there
now; I can show you the way. There was my life--and yours. What was I to
do?'

'You meant to deceive me?'

'Yes.' He paused an instant. 'Unless there ever came a time when you
would like to be undeceived--when it might seem better to have been
helped than not to have needed help. Well, Beaufort Chance upset that
scheme. Here we are, face to face with the truth. We've not been that
before. How we made pretence with one another!' He shook his head in
half-humorous reprobation. She saw with wonder how little unhappy he was
about it all, how it all seemed to him a bygone thing, a strange dream
which might retain its meaning and its interest, but ceased to have
living importance the moment dawning day put it to flight.

'You told me you weren't cured,' he went on. 'That you still wanted the
old life, the old ambition--that my advice still appealed to you. That
fatal advice of mine! It did half the mischief. Don't you see my right
to pay the money in that again? Still, I tell you, I didn't pay it for
you; I paid it for myself.'

'I can give you no return for it.'

'I ask none. The return I have got I've told you. I am free.' He loved
the thought; again it brought a smile to his lips. 'There's no question
of a return from you to me.'

'Yes, but I shall owe you everything,' she cried. 'The very means of
living decently!' Her pride was in arms again as the truth came back to
her.

'Then sell all you have and repay me the money,' he suggested. 'Say I'm
Fricker. There'll be nobody to buy me off, as Peggy and I bought Fricker
off.'

'What?' she exclaimed, startled into betraying her surprise.

'Pay it back,' he cried gaily. 'Pay it all back. I'll take it. I'm not
afraid of money now. It might come rolling into Danes Inn--in barrels!
Like beer-casks! And a couple of draymen hard on the rope! I shouldn't
so much as turn round. I shouldn't count the barrels--I should go on
counting the sparrows on the roof. I've not the least objection to be
repaid.'

She fell into silence. Airey began strolling about the room again; he
smoked a cigarette while she sat without speaking, with her brows knit
and her hands now clenching the arms of her chair. Suddenly she broke
out in a new protest.

'Oh, that's not it, that's not it! Paying the money back wouldn't cure
it. As far as that goes, I could have paid Fricker myself. It's the
failure. It's the failure and the shame. Nothing can cure that.'

'Think of my failure, think of my shame! Worse than yours! You only set
about living a little bit in the wrong way. I never set about living at
all! I shut out at least a half of life. I refused it. Isn't that the
great refusal?'

'You had your work. You worked well?'

'Yes, I did do that. Well, shall we give that half? I had half a life
then.'

'And what had I?'

'At least that. More, I think, in spite of everything.'

'And you can forget the failure and the shame?'

'I can almost laugh at them.'

She held out her hands to him, crying again for help:

'How? How?'

A low sound of singing came through the door. Peggy beguiled the vigil
with a song. Airey held up his hand for silence. Trix listened; the
tears gathered in her eyes.

'Does that say nothing to you?' he asked as the song died away. 'Does
that give you no hint of our mistake? No clue to where the rest of life
lies? Life isn't taking in only, it's giving out too. And it's not
giving out only work, or deeds, or things we've made. It's giving
ourselves out too--freely, freely!'

'Giving ourselves out?'

'Yes, to other people. Giving ourselves in comradeship, in
understanding, in joy, in love. Oh, good Lord, fancy not having found
that out before! What a roundabout road to find it! Hedges and briars
and bleeding shins!' He laughed gently. 'But she knows it,' he said,
pointing to the door. 'She goes on the royal road to it--straight on the
King's highway. She goes blindfold too, which is a funny thing. She
couldn't even tell you where she was going.'

Another snatch of song came. It was sentimental in character, but it
ended abruptly in uncontrolled gurgles of a mirth free from all such
weakness.

'Yes, she gets there, dainty, trim, serene!'

He shook his head, smiling with an infinite affection. Trix Trevalla
leant her head on her hand and regarded him with searching eyes.

'Yes, that's true of her,' she said, 'that's true. You've found out the
meaning of it.'

'Everything's so plain to find out to-day.'

'Then surely you must be in love with her?' Her eyes were grave and
curious still. 'How can you help it? She mayn't love you, but that makes
no difference. How can you help loving her?'

'Does it make no difference? I don't know.' He came across to Trix.
'We've travelled the bad road together, you and I,' he said softly. 'I
may have seen her far off--against the sky--and steered a course by
hers. The course isn't everything. But for your arm I should have fallen
by the way. And--should you never have fallen if you'd been quite alone?
Or did you fall and need to be picked up again?'

He took both her hands and she let them lie in his; but she still looked
at him in fear and doubt, unable to rise to his serenity, unable to put
the past behind her as he did. The spectres rose and seemed to bar the
path, crying to her that she had no right to tread it.

'I've grown so hard, I've been so hard. Can I forget what I've been and
what I've done? Sha'n't I always hear them accusing me? Can I trust
myself not to want to go back again? It seems to me that I've lost the
power of doing what you say.'

'Never,' said Airey confidently. 'Never!' His smile broke out again.
'Well, certainly not your side of thirty,' he amended, trying to make
her laugh.

'Oh, ask Mrs. Bonfill, or Lord Mervyn, or Beaufort Chance of me!'

'They'd all tell me the truth of what they know, I don't doubt it.'

'And you know it too!' she cried, in a sort of shrinking wonder.

'To be sure I know it,' he agreed cheerfully. 'Wasn't I walking beside
you all the way?'

'Tell me,' she said. 'If you'd really been a very poor man, as we all
believed you were, would you ever have thought it wise or possible to
marry a woman like me?'

She had an eye for a searching question. Airey perceived that.

'Most pertinent, if I were poor! But now you see I'm not. I'm well
off--and I'm a prodigal.'

'Ah, you know the truth, you never would!'

'I can't know the truth. I shall find it out only if you marry me now.'

'Suppose I said yes? I said yes to Mortimer Mervyn!'

'And you ran away because----'

'Because I told him----'

'Let me put it in my way, please,' interrupted Airey, suavely but
decisively. 'Because you weren't a perfect individual, and he was a
difficult person to explain that to. Isn't that about it?'

Trix made a woeful gesture; that was rather less than it, she thought.

'And what did he do? Did he come after you? Did he say, "The woman I
love is in trouble; she's ruined; she's so ashamed that she couldn't
tell the truth even to me. Even from me she has fled, because she has
become unbearable to herself and is terrified of me"? Did he say that?
And did he put his traps in a bag, and take a special train, and come
after you?'

Trix's lips curved in an irrepressible smile at this picture of a line
of conduct imputed, even hypothetically, to the Under-Secretary for War.
'He didn't do exactly that,' she murmured.

'Not he! He said, "She's come a cropper--that's her look-out. But people
who come croppers won't do for me. No croppers in the Barmouth family!
We don't like them; we aren't accustomed to them in the Barmouth family.
I've my career," he said. "That's more to me than she is."' Airey paused
a moment and held up an emphatic finger. 'In point of fact, that
miserable man, Mervyn, behaved exactly as I should have done a fortnight
ago. Substitute his prejudices and his career for my safe and my money,
and he and I would be exactly the same--I mean, a fortnight ago. If ever
a man lost a woman by his own act, Mervyn is the man!'

'So if I say yes to you, and run away----?'

'The earth isn't big enough to hide you, nor the railway fares big
enough to stop me.'

'And Beaufort Chance?' she murmured, trying him again.

'Men who buy love get the sort of love that's for sale,' he answered in
brief contempt.

She smiled as, leaning forward, she put her last question.

'And Mr. Fricker?' said she.

Airey gave a tug at his beard and a puzzled whimsical glance at her.

'Do you press me as to that?'

'Yes, of course I do. What about Mr. Fricker?'

'Well, from all I can learn, it does appear to me that you behaved in a
damned shabby way to Fricker. I've not a word to say for you there, not
one.'

The answer was so unexpected, so true, so honest, that Trix's laughter
rang out in genuine merriment for the first time for many days.

'And when old Fricker saw his chance, I don't wonder that he gave you a
nasty dig. It was pure business with Fricker--and you went back on him
all along the line!'

She looked at him with eyes still newly mirthful. He had dismissed
Beaufort Chance and Mervyn contemptuously enough; one had sought to
barter where no barter should be; the other had lost his prize because
he did not know how to value it. But when Airey spoke of Fricker's
wrongs, there was real and convinced indignation in his voice; in
Fricker's interest he did not spare the woman he loved.

'How funny!' she said. 'I've never felt very guilty about Mr. Fricker.'

'You ought to. That was worst of all, in my opinion,' he insisted.

'Well, I was afraid you'd quite acquitted me! Should you be always
throwing Mr. Fricker in my face?'

'On occasions probably. I can't resist a good argumentative point.
You've got the safe and the red book, you know.'

'I'd sooner die than remind you of them.'

'Nonsense! I sha'n't care in the least,' said Airey.

'Then what will be the good of them to me?' He laughed. But she grew
serious, saying, 'I shall care about Mr. Fricker, though.'

'Then don't ask me what I think again.'

He laughed, took a turn the length of the room, and came quickly and
suddenly back to her.

'Well, is the unforgivable forgiven?' he asked, standing opposite to
her.

'The unforgivable? What do you mean?' she said, with a little start of
surprise. He had struck sharply across her current of thought.

'What you couldn't have forgiven Tommy, or Peggy, or anybody? What you
couldn't possibly forgive me? You know.' His smile mocked her. 'My
having sent the money to Fricker.'

'Oh, I'd forgotten all about it!'

'Things forgotten are things forgiven--and the other way round too.
Forgiving, but not forgetting--don't you recognise the twang of
hard-hearted righteousness?' He came up to her. 'It was very
unforgivable--and you forgot it! Haven't you stumbled on the right
principle, Trix?'

She did not rise to any philosophic or general principle. She followed
her feeling and gave it expression--or a hint of expression, her eyes
being left to fill in the context.

'Somehow it's not so bad, coming from you,' she said.

In an instant he was sitting by her. 'Now I'll tell you what we did this
afternoon.'

'You and Peggy Ryle? I'm jealous of Peggy Ryle!'

'A sound instinct, in this case misapplied,' commented Airey. 'Now just
you listen.'

The sound of song had ceased. Were all sounds equally able to penetrate
doors and cross passages, quite another would have struck on Trix's
ears. Peggy was yawning vigorously--while Tommy was trying to find
patience in a cigar.

'Where had you been going to dine?' asked Peggy, referring to the meal
as a bright but bygone possibility.

'I had been going to have a chop at the club,' murmured Tommy sadly.

'That doesn't help me much,' observed Peggy. 'And I suppose you're going
to begin about that wretched promise again? I'm tired to death, but I'll
sing again if you do.'

'I've expressed my sentiments. I don't want to rub it in.'

'If Airey hadn't come, you'd have done just the same yourself.'

'No, I shouldn't, Peggy.'

'What would you have done, then?'

'I should have bolted--and dined. And I rather wish I had. I tell you
what; if I were you, I'd have one comfortable chair in this room.' He
was perched on a straight-backed affair with spindly legs--a base
imitation of what (from the sitter's point of view) was always an
unfortunate ideal.

'I'd bolt with you--for the sake of dinner,' moaned Peggy. 'What are
they doing all this time, Tommy?'

Tommy shrugged his shoulders in undisguised contempt. 'Couldn't we go
and dine?' he suggested, with a gleam of hope.

'I want to dine very, very much,' avowed Peggy; 'but I'm too excited.'
She looked straight at him, pointed towards the door, and declared, 'I'm
going in.'

'You'd better knock something over first.'

'No, I'm going straight in. If it's all right, it won't matter, and we
can all go out to dinner together. If they're being silly, I shall stop
them. I'm going in, Tommy!'

Tommy rose from the spindle-shanked counterfeit with a determined air.

'You'll do nothing of the kind. It isn't fair play,' he said.

'It's not you that's going in, is it?' asked Peggy, as though that
disposed of his claim to interfere. 'And you needn't tell me I'm
dishonourable any more. It's dull. I'm going.'

In fact she had got to the handle of the door. She had grasped it when
Tommy came and took hold of her arm.

'No, you don't!' he said.

For an instant Peggy thought that she would take offense. Tommy's
rigidity of moral principle, within the limits of his vision, proved,
however, too much for her. She still held the handle, but she leant
against the door, laughing as she looked up in his face.

'Let go, Tommy! In short, unhand me!'

'Will you go, if I do?'

'That's what I want you to do it for,' Peggy explained, with a rapid and
pronounced gravity.

Her eyes sparkled at him, her lips were mischievous, the waves of her
hair seemed dowered with new grace. Perhaps there was something, too, in
the general atmosphere of the flat that night. Anyhow the thought of
vindicating moral principles and the code of honour lost the first place
in Tommy's thoughts. Yet he did not let go of his prisoner.

With the change in his thoughts--did it betray itself on his face?--came
a change in Peggy also. She was still gaily defiant, but she looked
rather on the defensive too. A touch of timidity mingled with the
challenge which her eyes still directed at him.

'It's not the least good lecturing you,' he declared.

'I don't know how you ever came to think you knew how to do it.'

'Peggy, am I never to get any forwarder?'

'Not much, I hope,' answered Peggy, with a stifled laugh.

He looked at her steadily for a minute.

'You like me,' he said. 'If you hadn't liked me, I should have been
kicked out by now.'

'I call that taking a very unfair advantage,' murmured Peggy.

'Because you're not the sort of girl to let a man----'

'Then why don't you let go of my arm?'

This was glaringly illogical. It seized Tommy's premise and twisted it
to an absolutely opposite conclusion. But Tommy was bewildered by the
mental gymnastics--or by something else that dazzled him. He released
her arm and stepped back almost ceremoniously. Peggy lifted her arm and
seemed to study it for a second.

'That's nice of you,' she said. 'But'--her laugh rang out--'I'm going
all the same!'

In an instant she had darted through the door. Tommy made as though he
would follow, but paused on the threshold and pulled the door close
again. Perhaps she could carry it off; he could not. He walked slowly
back to the spindle-shanked chair and sat down again. Tommy's head was
rather in a whirl, but his heart beat gaily. 'By Jove--yes!' he thought
to himself. 'Give her time, and it's yes!'

Peggy, unrepentant, strode across the passage and stopped outside the
sitting-room. Human nature would not stand it. She must listen or go in.
She did not hesitate: in she went.

Airey was standing by the window; she saw but hardly noticed him. In the
middle of the room was Trix Trevalla. But what a Trix! Peggy stood
motionless a minute at the sight of her. Her quick eye took in the ring
on Trix's finger, the sparkle of the diamonds on her wrist, the softer
lustre of the pearls about her neck. The plain gown she wore showed them
off bravely, and she seemed as though she were hung with jewels. Peggy
recognised the jewels; the small boxes she knew also, and marked where
they lay on the table. All that was the work of an instant. Her eyes
returned to Trix and rose above the pearls to Trix's face. The hardness
and the haggardness, the weariness and shame, all suspicion and all
reserve, were gone from it. The face was younger, softer; it seemed
rounder and more girlish. The eyes glowed with a veiled brightness.

Peggy stood there on the threshold, looking.

At last Airey spoke to her; for Trix, though she met her eyes, said
nothing and did not move from her place.

'Peggy,' he said, 'she's been with me. She's been where we went this
afternoon. You know the way; you showed it to me.'

Now Trix Trevalla came towards her, a little blindly and unsteadily as
it seemed. She held out both hands, and Peggy went forward a step to
meet them.

'Yes, I've been. I think I've been to--to the soul shop, Peggy.' She
threw herself in the girl's arms.

'Is it--is it all right?' gasped Peggy.

'It's going to be,' said Airey Newton.

She put Trix at arm's length and gazed at her. 'They look beautiful, and
you look beautiful. I wonder if you've ever looked like that before!'

'It's all gone,' said Trix, passing her hand across her eyes. 'All gone,
I think, Peggy.'

'Oh, I can't stay here!' cried Peggy in dismay. For her eyes too grew
dim; and now she could no more have sung than yawned. She caught Trix to
her, kissed her, and ran from the room.

'I beg your pardon; you were quite right, sir,' she said to Tommy. 'I
never ought to have gone in.'

'But, I say, what's happened, Peggy?' Of another's sin it seems no such
great crime to take advantage.

'Everything,' said Peggy, with a comprehensive wave of her arms.
'Everything, Tommy!'

'They've fixed it up?' he asked eagerly.

'If you don't feel disgraced by putting it like that--they have,' said
Peggy, breaking into glad laughter again.

He rose and came near to her.

'And what are we going to do?' he inquired.

Peggy regarded him with eyes professedly judicial, though mischief and
mockery lurked in them.

'As I don't think it's the least use waiting for them, I suggest that
we go and have some dinner,' she said.

'That's not a bad idea,' agreed Tommy.

He turned quietly, took up his hat and stick, and went out into the
passage; Peggy stayed a minute to put on a hat and jacket. She came out
to join him then, treading softly and with her linger on her lips. Tommy
nodded understanding, took hold of the handle of the baize door, and
made way for her to pass. His air was decorous and friendly. Peggy
looked at him, immeasurable amusement nestling in her eyes. As she
passed, she flung one arm lightly about his neck and kissed him.

'Just to celebrate the event!' she whispered.

Tommy followed her downstairs with heart aglow.




CHAPTER XXV

RECONCILIATION


     Barslett: Sept. 13.

     MY DEAREST SARAH,--I know how much you value my letters. I know
     more--how valuable my letters are to you. Only by letter (as I've
     mentioned before) can I come near telling you the truth. In your
     presence, no! For aren't you, your dear old stately self, in the
     end, a--(so glad there are hundreds of miles between us!)--a
     splendid semi-mendacity?

     I have just answered Trix's brief note. Here I wrote just as I
     should have spoken: 'I'm sure you'll be so happy, dear,' above my
     breath; 'why, in Heaven's name, does she do it?' under the same.
     Trix was curt. She marries 'Airey Newton, the well-known inventor'!
     Little Peggy was rather more communicative; but Peggy is an
     enthusiast, and (politics apart) I see no use for the quality. 'The
     well-known inventor'! I never heard of the man. _Ça n'empêche pas_,
     by all means. Shall we say 'Like to like'? Trix was rather a
     well-known inventor in her day and season--which is the one from
     which we are all precariously recovering. (How's the marital
     liver?) I wonder if we've got to say 'Like to like' in any other
     way, Sarah? You are no philosopher. You abound in general rules,
     but haven't a shred of principle. I will instruct you in my old
     way. But first I must tell you that Audrey is positively improving.
     She coquetted the other night! The floor creaked, as it seemed to
     me, but it bore well; and she did it. The Trans-Euphratic is, as
     you are aware, active even in the dead season. I fancy the
     Trans-Euphratic helps Audrey. There are similarities, most
     especially in a certain slowness in getting under way. The
     Trans-Euphratic is going to get there. An American engineer who
     came down to Barslett the other day, and said he had always dreamed
     of such a place (he was sallow and thin), told me so. Audrey's
     going to get there too. Now isn't she? Don't say it's labour
     wasted!

     I digress. Listen, then:--

     _Lord B._: Do you--er--know a Mr. Airey Newton--Newton, Viola?

     _Myself_: Very slightly. Oh, you're thinking of----?

     _Lord B._: I saw it in the daily paper. (He means the 'Times'--he
     doesn't know of any others.)

     _Myself_ (_hedging_): Curious, isn't it?

     _Lord B._: It will possibly prove very suitable--possibly. As we
     grow old we learn to accept things, Viola.

     _Myself_ (_looking young_): I suppose we do, Lord B.

     _Lord B._: For my own part, I hope she will be happy.

     _Myself_ (_murmuring_): You're always so generous!

     _Lord B._ (_clearing his throat_): I am happy to think that
     Mortimer has recovered his balance--balance, Viola.

     _Myself_: He'd be nothing without it, would he, Lord B.? (This
     needed careful delivery, but it went all right.)

     _Lord B._ (_appreciative_): You're perfectly correct, Viola.
     (_Pause._) Should you be writing to Mrs. Trevalla, express my
     sincere wishes for her happiness.

     Now, considering that Trix knocked him down, isn't he an old dear
     of a gentleman?

     But Mortimer? A gentleman too, my dear--except that a man shouldn't
     be too thankful at being rid of a woman! He showed signs once of
     having been shaken up. They have vanished! This is partly the
     prospect of the Cabinet, partly the family, a little bit Audrey,
     and mainly--_Me_! I have deliberately fostered his worst
     respectabilities and ministered to his profoundest conceits. As a
     woman? I scorn the imputation. As a friend? I wouldn't take the
     trouble. As an aunt? I plead guilty. I had my purposes to serve.
     Incidentally I have obliterated Trix Trevalla. If he talks of her
     at all, it is as a converted statesman does of the time when he
     belonged to the opposite party (as most of them have). He
     vindicates himself, but is bound to admit that he needs
     vindication. He says he couldn't have done otherwise, but tells you
     with a shrug that you're not to take that too seriously.

     _Mortimer_: We were fundamentally unsuited.

     _Myself_ (_tactfully_): She was. (What did I mean? Sheer, base
     flattery, Sarah!)

     _Mortimer_: She had not our (_waving arm_)--our instincts.

     _Myself_: I think I always told you so. [!!!]

     _Mortimer_: I daresay. I would listen to nothing. I was very
     impetuous. (Bless him, Sarah!)

     _Myself_: Well, it's hardly the time---- (Do wise people ever finish
     sentences, Sarah?)

     _Mortimer_: It is a curious chapter. Closed, closed! By the way, do
     you know anything of this Airey Newton?

     _Myself_: A distinguished inventor, I believe, Mortimer.

     _Mortimer_: So the papers say. (He 'glances at' them all.) What
     sort of man is he?

     _Myself_: Oh, I suppose she likes him. Bohemian, you know.

     _Mortimer_: Ah, yes, Bohemian! (_A reverie._) Bo-hem-i-an! Exactly!

     _Myself_: Is that Audrey in her habit?

     _Mortimer_: Yes, yes, of course. Bohemian, is he? Yes! Well, I
     mustn't keep her waiting.

     That is how I behave. 'O limèd soul that, struggling to be
     free'--gets other people more and more engaged! Tennyson, Sarah.
     And when they're quite engaged, whether it's in or out of the
     season, I'm going to Monte Carlo--for the same reason that the
     gentleman in the story travelled third, you know.

     Oh, I must tell you one more thing. Running up to town the other
     day to get my hair---- I beg your pardon, Sarah! Running up to town
     the other day on business connected with the family estates (a
     mortgage on my life-interest in the settled funds--no matter), who
     should shake me by the hand but Miss Connie Fricker! Where had I
     met Miss Connie Fricker? Once--once only. And where, Sarah?
     Everywhere, unless I had withstood you to the face! And I don't
     know why I did, because she's rather amusing. In fact, at your
     house, dearest. Long ago, I admit. She has come on much in
     appearance, and she's going to marry Beaufort Chance. I know she
     is, because she says it--a weak reason in the case of most girls,
     but not in hers. _Quod vult, valde vult._ (A motto in one branch of
     our family, meaning 'She won't be happy till she gets it.') I am
     vaguely sorry for our Beaufort of days gone by. These occurrences,
     Sarah, prejudice one in favour of morality. She has gleaming teeth
     and dazzling eyes (reverse the adjectives, if you like), and she
     has also--may I say it?--she has also--a bust! She says darling
     Beaufort is positively silly about her. My impression is that
     darling Beaufort is handling a large contract. (Metaphor, Sarah,
     not slang. Same thing though, generally.) That man wanted a slave;
     he has got--well, I shall call on them after marriage. I spoke to
     her of Trix Trevalla. 'I thought she'd quite gone under,' says
     Connie. 'Under _where_?' would have been my retort; but I'm weakly,
     and I thought perhaps she'd slap me. It's as pure a case of buying
     and selling as was ever done, I suppose; and if the Frickers gave
     hard cash I think they've got the worst of the bargain.

     What's the moral, Sarah? Not that it's any good asking you. One
     might as well philosophise to an Established Church (of which,
     somehow, you always remind me very much). 'Open your mouth and shut
     your eyes'--that's out of date. Our eyes are open, but we open our
     mouths all the wider. That's superficial! In the end, each to his
     own, Sarah. I don't mean that as you'd mean it, O Priestess of
     Precedence. But through perilous ways--and through the Barslett
     shrubberies by night, knocking down his lordship and half a dozen
     things besides--perhaps she has reached a fine, a fine----
     Perhaps! I hope so, for she had a wit and a soul, Sarah; and--and
     I'll call on them after marriage. And if that little compound of
     love and mischief named Peggy Ryle doesn't find twenty men to
     worship her and one who won't mind it, men are not what they were
     and women have lost their prerogative. Which God forbid! But, as my
     lord here would say, 'The change appears to me--humbly appears to
     me--to be looming--looming, Viola.'

     Fol-de-rol, Sarah! Scotland as misty and slaughterous as ever? You
     might be a little bit nice to Mrs. Airey Newton. You liked her, and
     she liked you. Yes, I know you! Pretences are vain! Sarah, you have
     a heart! _J'accuse!_

     Yours,

     V. B.


As on a previous occasion, Mrs. Bonfill ejaculated 'Tut!' But she added,
'I'm sure I wish no harm to poor Trix Trevalla.'

It is satisfactory to be able to add that society at large shared this
point of view. It is exceedingly charitable towards people who are
definitely and finally out of the running. Those in the race run all;
they become much more popular when it is understood that they do not
compete for a prize. There was a revulsion of feeling in Trix's favour
when the word went round that she was irredeemably ruined and was going
to throw herself away on a certain Airey Newton.

'Who is he?' asked Lady Glentorly, bewildered but ready to be
benevolent.

'Excuse me, my dear, I'm really busy with the paper.'

If Trix's object had been to rehabilitate herself socially, she could
have taken no more politic step than that of contracting an utterly
insignificant marriage. 'Well, we needn't see anything of _him_,' said
quite a number of people. It is always a comfort to be able to write off
the obligations that other folks' marriages may seem to entail.

Mr. Fricker had one word to say.

'Avoid her virtues and imitate her faults, and you'll get on very well
with your husband, Connie.'

'Oh, I don't want to hear anything more about her,' cried Connie
defiantly.

His pensive smile came to Fricker's lips.

'These little fits of restiveness--I don't mean in you--are nothing,
Connie? You said you could manage him.'

'So I can--if you won't say things when he's there.'

'I'm to blame,' said Fricker gravely. 'But I'm fond of you, Connie.'

She broke out violently, 'Yes, but you wish I'd been rather different!'

'Live and let live, Connie. When's the wedding-day?'

She came to him and kissed him. Her vexation did not endure. Her next
confidence amused him.

'After all, I've only got to say "Trix," and he's as quiet as a lamb,'
she whispered, with her glittering laugh.

It is hopelessly symptomatic of social obscurity to be dining in London
in September--and that as a matter of course, and not by way of a snatch
of food between two railway stations. Yet at the date borne at the top
of Lady Blixworth's notepaper something more than a dinner, almost a
banquet, celebrated in town an event which had taken place some hundreds
of miles away. Lady Blixworth had blessed the interval between herself
and her dearest Sarah, opining that it made for candour, not to say for
philosophy. Something of the same notion seemed to move in Miles
Childwick's brain.

'In electing to be married in the wilds of Wales,' he remarked as he lit
his cigarette, 'our friends the Newtons have shown a consideration not
only for our wardrobes--a point with which, I admit, I was
preoccupied--but also for our feelings. Yet we, by subscribing a
shilling each towards a wire, deliberately threw away the main advantage
of the telegraphic system. We could have expressed our aspirations for
sixpence; as it is, we were led into something perilously like
discussion. Finally, at Mrs. John's urgent request, and in order not to
have sixpence left on our hands, we committed ourselves to the audacious
statement that we had foreseen it from the first.'

'So I did--since Airey's dinner,' declared Mrs. John stoutly.

'A delusion of your trade, Mrs. John. For my part I hope I have
something better to do than go about foreseeing people's marriages.'

'Something different, old fellow,' Arty suggested, with an air of being
anxious to guard the niceties of the language.

'I wonder if I could write a story about her,' mused Mrs. John,
unusually talkative.

'I have so often told Mrs. John in print--anonymously, of course,
because of our friendship--that she can't write a story about anything,
that I sha'n't discuss the particular case. As a general principle, I
object to books about failures. Manson, do you take an interest in
humble tragedies?'

'Only in a brief marked two and one,' said Manson Smith.

'Exactly! Or in a par at seven-and-six.'

'Or perhaps in a little set of verses--thrown off,' murmured Arty Kane.

'Who's talking about tragedies?' called Peggy from the other end.
'Elfreda and Horace are splendidly happy. So will Trix and Airey be.'

'And--I am sorry to mention it,' smiled Tommy Trent, 'but the latter
couple will also be uncommonly well off.'

'The only touch of poetry the thing ever had, gone out of it!' grumbled
Arty resentfully.

'Listen to the voice of the Philistine!' advised Miles, pointing at
Tommy. 'For the humiliating reason that he's generally right.'

'No!' ejaculated Mrs. John firmly.

'That is, we shall all come to think him right. Time will corrupt us. We
shall sink into marriage, merit, middle age, and, conceivably, money. In
a few years we sha'n't be able to make out for the lives of us what the
dickens the young fools do want.'

'Is this a _séance_?' demanded Arty Kane indignantly. 'If the veil of
the future is going to be lifted, I'm off home.'

'Fancy bothering about what we shall be in ten years!' cried Peggy
scornfully, 'when such a lot of fine things are sure to happen in
between! Besides, I don't believe that anything of the sort need happen
at all.'

The idea rather scandalised Mrs. John. It seemed to cut at the root of a
scientific view of life--a thing that she flattered herself might with
due diligence be discovered in her published, and was certainly to be
developed in her projected, works.

'Experience, dear Peggy----' she began, with a gently authoritative air.

Miles laid a firm hand on her wrist and poured her out some more
champagne; this action might be construed as an apology for his
interruption. At any rate he offered no other: after all, Mrs. John was
accustomed to that.

'Experience, dear Peggy--to adopt the form of expression used by my
honourable friend, which commends itself to all sections of the
House--(you mustn't laugh when you're complimented, Peggy!) experience,
dear Peggy, enjoys two significations--first, the things that happen;
secondly, what you or I may be pleased to think they mean. I have no
remedy ready on the spot for the first; the cure for the second is very
simple, as many great men have pointed out.'

'What is it?' asked Mrs. John rebelliously.

'Don't think so, Mrs. John.'

'What, reconstruct all your theories----?'

'Now did I say anything of the kind?' he demanded despairingly.

Peggy leant forward with eager eyes.

'Stop!' interposed Arty Kane imperiously. 'I will not be told any more
that the world is full of happiness. It's nothing to me one way or the
other if it is, and there's an end of it.'

Peggy leant back again, smiling at Tommy Trent.

'Any other point of view would be ungracious to our friends to-night,'
said Tommy with a laugh. It appeared rather as though it would be
unsuited to his own mood also.

'One thing at least we may be sure of,' said Miles, summing up the
discussion with a friendly smile. 'We shall none of us do, or be, or
feel, at all approximately what we think we shall. You may say what you
like, but there's plenty of excitement in it. Unless you're dull
yourself, there's no dulness in it.'

'No, there's no dulness in it,' said Peggy Ryle. 'That is the one thing
to be said.'

Would Lady Blixworth have echoed that from Barslett? She would have
denied it vigorously in words; but could anything be dull so long as one
had brains to see the dulness--and a Sarah Bonfill to describe it to?

Peggy walked off home with Tommy. Nobody questioned, or seemed inclined
to question, that arrangement now. Even Miles Childwick looked on with a
smile, faintly regretful perhaps, yet considerably amused. He linked his
arm in Arty Kane's and the two walked along the Strand, discussing the
permutations of human feeling. There seems no need to follow their
disquisition on such a well-worn subject. It is enough to catch a
fragment from Miles. 'The essence being reciprocity----' was all a
news-vendor got for his offer of the late edition.

'It's far too fine to drive,' Peggy declared, picking her way round a
small puddle or two, left by a goodly summer shower. 'Have you plenty of
time?'

'Time enough to walk with you.'

She put her arm in his. 'So that's all over!' she said regretfully. 'At
least, I don't see how Trix is going to do anything else that's at all
sensational.'

'I should think she doesn't want to,' said Tommy soberly.

'No, but----' She turned her laughing face to him. 'When is something
else going to begin, Tommy? I'm all ready for adventures. I've spent all
my money----'

'You've spent----?'

'Now don't pretend to be surprised--it's all gone in frocks, and
presents, and things. But---- Why, you never asked me where I got my
necklace!'

'If you wore the Koh-i-Noor should I ask you where you got it?'

'Airey sent it to me to-day. I refused it from him before, but to-day
I'm going to keep it. Because of what it means to him, you know.' She
pushed her cloak a little aside and fingered the pearls. 'Yes, the
money's all gone,' she went on, rather pleased apparently; 'and there's
no more from poor dear uncle, and--and Airey Newton won't live in Danes
Inn any longer!'

Tommy was silent; he was not silent altogether without an effort, but
silent he was. She pressed his arm for a moment.

'Will you be promoted to Airey Newton's place?' she asked.

'But why only tea?' said Tommy.

She waited a little before she answered.

'What should you say,' she asked at last, 'if I ever changed?' She did
not tell him from what: in words she had never told him, and in words he
had never asked.

'I should wait for you to change back again,' said he. Was he the man
that in Lady Blixworth's opinion the situation needed?

Peggy was eager in her explanation, but she seemed a little puzzled too.

'I know how much it is to ask,' she said, 'and there's no bond, no
promise from you. But somehow it seems to me that I must see some more.
Oh, there it all is, Tommy--waiting, waiting! Trix has made me feel that
more and more. Was she all wrong? I don't know. Airey was there in the
end, you see. And now there are all sorts of things behind her,
making--making a background to it. I don't want all she's had; but,
Tommy, I want some more.'

He heard her with a sober smile; if there were a touch of sadness in it,
there was understanding too. They had come to her door in Harriet
Street, and she stopped on the threshold.

'I sha'n't starve. You'll be there at tea-time,' said she with an
appealing smile.

His man's feeling was against her. It was, perhaps, too much to ask of
him that he should sympathise fully with her idea; he saw its meaning,
but its meaning could not be his ideal. He would have taken her now at
once, when, as his thoughts put it, the bloom was fresh and she had
rubbed so little against the world. The instinct in her and the longings
which bore her the other way were strange to him.

She knew it; the timidity of her beseeching eyes told that she asked a
great thing--a thing that must be taken on faith, and must try his
faith. Yet she could not but ask. The life of to-day was not yet done.
Coming now, the life of to-morrow would come too soon. Very anxiously
she watched his struggle, perhaps with an undefined yet not uncertain
apprehension that its issue would answer the question whether he were in
truth the man to whom she must come back, whether they two would in the
end make terms and live as one. What her heart asked was, Could freedom
and love be reconciled? Else, which must go to the wall? She feared that
she might be forced to answer that question. Or would he spare it her?

Another moment wore away. His brows were knit into a frown; he did not
look at her. Her eyes were on his, full of contending feelings--of trust
and love for him, of hope for herself, it may be of a little shame that
she must put him to such a trial. At last he turned to her and met her
gaze with a friendly cheerful smile.

'Go out into the world and have your fling, Peggy. Take your heart and
mine with you; but try to bring them both back to me.'

She caught his hand in hers, delighted that she could go, enraptured
that his face told her that he trusted her to go.

'Yes,' she whispered, 'I shall come back with both, because, Tommy, you
have such great, great faith in me. I shall come back. But'--her voice
rose again in untrammelled gaiety--'But go I must for a little while.
There's so much to see!'


THE END


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