'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 seemedcontent 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 soonand 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.
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. TrixTrevalla'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 comein. 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 'TheSentinel' 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. Herhand 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. Asuspicion 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. SoI'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 spoketo 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 hiswords; 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.'
'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.
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 expensewas 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 werebouquets 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 anédition 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 ofpain 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 thecompany. 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 inhis 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 hungryper 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 andthe 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.