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 altogetherunfounded 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 longbrown 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 orthree 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, soclearly, 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. Itdoesn'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 cameback 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 oldconfident 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.
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 dwellon 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 happinessfrustrated 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. Hehad 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 thenoscitur a sociistestbeing 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 heldlevéesof 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 unwillingbelief 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. 'Ishall 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 notboy 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.
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 toher; 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 hourand 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.