'Then, if you took them, the most you'd lose would be three thousand pounds, and you'd have a very good chance of losing less?'
'I don't know about a good chance. Some chance, shall we say?' He was more than tolerant; he was interested in Peggy's development of her idea.
Peggy leant her elbows on the writing-table between them.
'I want her to be rid of the whole thing—to think it never happened. I want you to take those shares from her: tell her that they've become of value, or that you made a mistake, or anything you like of that sort, and that you'll relieve her of them. If you did that, how much money should you want?'
'You wish this done out of kindness? To take a weight off Mrs. Trevalla's mind?'
'Yes, to take a weight off her mind. It's funny, but she frets more over having bungled her money affairs and having been made—having been silly, you know—than over anything else. She's very proud, you see.'
Fricker's smile broadened. 'I can quite believe she's proud,' he remarked.
'Of course she knows nothing about my being here. It's my own idea. You see what I want, don't you?'
'As a business transaction, I confess I don't quite see it. If you appeal to my good-nature, and ask me to make sacrifices for Mrs. Trevalla——'
'No. I don't expect you to lose by it.'
Fricker saw the look that she could not keep out of her eyes. He smiled fixedly at her.
'But I thought that, if you could satisfy them—or get off somehow—for—well, one thousand pounds or—or at most one thousand five hundred pounds' (Peggy was very agitated over her amounts), 'that—that I and some other friends could manage that, and then—why, we'd tell her it was all right!' A hint of triumph broke through her nervousness as she declared her scheme. 'I can't be absolutely sure of the money except my own, but I believe I could get it.' She worked up to a climax. 'I can give you five hundred pounds now—in notes, if you like,' she said, producing a little leather bag of a purse.
Fricker gave a short dry laugh; the whole episode amused him very much, and Peggy's appearance also gratified his taste. She unfastened the bag, and he heard her fingers crackle the notes, as she sat with her eyes fixed on his; appeal had been banished from Peggy's words, it spoke in her eyes in spite of herself.
'Mrs. Trevalla has perhaps told you something of her relations with me?' asked Fricker, clasping his long spare hands on the table.
'I don't defend her: but you don't fight with women, Mr. Fricker?'
'There are no women in business matters, Miss Ryle.'
'Or with people who are down?'
'Not fight, no. I keep my foot on them.'
He took up a half-smoked cigar and relit it.
'I'm not a Shylock,' he resumed with a smile. 'Shylock was a sentimentalist. I'd have taken that last offer—a high one, if I remember—and given up my pound of flesh. But you expect me to do it for much less than market value. I like my pound of flesh, and I want something above market value for it, Miss Ryle. I've taught Mrs. Trevalla her little lesson. Perhaps there's no need to rub it in any more. You want me to make her think that she can get out of Glowing Stars without further loss?'
'Yes.'
'And you want me to take the risk on myself? The loss may run to three thousand pounds, though, as you say, a lucky chance might enable me to reduce it.' His fertile mind had inklings of a scheme already, though in the vaguest outline.
'Yes,' said Peggy again, not trusting herself to say more.
'Very well; now we understand.' He leant right over towards her. 'I think you're foolish,' he told her, 'you and the other friends. The woman deserves all she's got; she didn't play fair with me. I haven't a spark of sympathy for her. If I followed my feelings, I should show you the door. But I don't follow my feelings when I see a fair profitin the other direction. If Mrs. Trevalla had acted on that rule she wouldn't be where she is.' He thrust his chair back suddenly and rose to his feet. 'I'll do what you wish, and back up the story you mean to tell her, if you'll come again and bring that pretty little bag with you, and take out of it and lay on this table——' He paused in wilful malice, tormenting Peggy and watching her parted lips and eager eyes. 'And lay on the table,' he ended slowly, 'four thousand pounds.'
'Four——!' gasped Peggy, and could get no further.
'Three to cover risk, one as a solatium for the wound Mrs. Trevalla has dealt to my pride.' His irony was unwontedly savage as he snarled out his gibe.
Peggy's face suddenly grew flushed and her eyes dim. She looked at him, and knew there was no mercy. He did not spare her his gaze, but when she conquered her dismay and sat fronting him with firm lips again he smiled a grim approval. He liked pluck, and when he had hit his hardest he liked best to see the blow taken well. He became his old self-controlled calm self again.
Peggy shut her bag with a click and rose in her turn. Her first words surprised Mr. Fricker.
'That's a bargain, is it?' she asked.
'A bargain, certainly,' he said.
'Then will you put it in writing, please?' She pointed at the table with a peremptory air.
Infinitely amused again, Fricker sat down and embodied his undertaking in a letter, ceremoniously addressed to Miss Ryle, expressed and signed in the name of his firm; he blotted the letter and gave it to her in an open envelope.
'It's better not to trust to memory, however great confidence we may have in one another, isn't it?' said he.
'Much,' agreed Peggy drily. 'I don't suppose I can get all that money, but I'm going to try,' she announced.
'I daresay there are people who would do a great deal for you,' he suggested in sly banter.
Peggy flushed again. 'I shouldn't ask anyone like that.I couldn't.' She broke off, indignant with herself; she had taken almost a confidential tone. 'It's not your concern where or how I get it.'
'You express the view I've always taken most exactly, Miss Ryle.'
He was openly deriding her, but she hardly hated him now. He was too strange to hate, she was coming to think. She smiled at him as she asked a question:—
'Does money always make people what you are?'
'Money?' Fricker stood with his hands in his pockets, seeming a little puzzled.
'I mean, always bothering with it and thinking a lot of it, you know.'
'Oh, no! If it did, all men of business would be good men of business, and luckily there are plenty of bad.'
'I see,' said Peggy. 'Well, I'll come back if I get the money, Mr. Fricker.'
'I'm glad Connie gave you some tea.'
'We had a very nice talk, thank you.'
'I won't ask you to remember me to Mrs. Trevalla.'
'She's not to know I've seen you. You've put that in the letter?'
'Bless my soul, I'd forgotten! How valuable that written record is! Yes, you'll find it there all right. The transaction is to be absolutely confidential so far as Mrs. Trevalla is concerned.'
He escorted her to the door. As they passed through the hall, Connie's voice came from upstairs:—
'Won't Miss Ryle take a glass of wine before she goes, papa?'
Fricker looked at Peggy with a smile.
'I don't drink wine,' said Peggy, rather severely.
'Of course not—between meals. Connie's so hospitable, though. Well, I hope to see you again.'
'I really don't believe you do,' said Peggy. 'You love money, but——'
'I love a moral lesson more? Possibly, Miss Ryle; butI at least keep my bargains. You can rely on my word if—if you come again, you know.'
Peggy's hansom was at the door, and he helped her in. She got into the corner of it, nodded to him, and then sank her face far into the fluffy recesses of a big white feather boa. All below her nose was hidden; her eyes gleamed out fixed and sad; her hands clutched the little bag very tightly. She had so hoped to bring it back empty; she had so hoped to have a possible though difficult task set her. Now she could hear and think of nothing but those terrible figures set out in Fricker's relentless tones—'Four thousand pounds!'
Fricker turned back into his house, smiling in ridicule touched with admiration. It was all very absurd, but she was a girl of grit. 'Straight too,' he decided approvingly.
Connie ran downstairs to meet him.
'Oh, what did she want? I've been sitting in the drawing-room just devoured by curiosity! Do tell me about it, papa!'
'Not a word. It's business,' he said curtly, but not unkindly. 'Inquisitiveness is an old failing of yours. Ah!'
His exclamation was called forth by an apparently slight cause. Connie wore a white frock; to the knees of it adhered a long strip of fawn-coloured wool.
'You were sitting in the drawing-room devoured by curiosity?' he asked reflectively.
'Just devoured, papa,' repeated Connie gaily.
Mr. Fricker took hold of her ear lightly and began to walk her towards his study.
'Odd!' he said gently. 'Because the drawing-room's upholstered in red, isn't it?'
'Well, of course.' Connie laughed rather uneasily.
'And, so far as I know, the only fawn-coloured wool mat in the house is just outside my study door.'
'What do you mean, papa?' Connie was startled, and tried to jump away; Mr. Fricker's firm hold on her ear made it plain that she would succeed only at an impossible sacrifice.
'And that's the precise colour of that piece of wool clinging to your frock. Look!' They were on the mat now; the study door was open, and there was ample light for Connie to make the suggested comparison. 'Look!' urged Fricker, smiling and pinching his daughter's ear with increasing force. 'Look, Connie, look!'
'Papa! Oh, you're hurting me!'
'Dear me, I'm sorry,' said Fricker. 'But the thought of people listening outside my door made me forget what I was doing.' It seemed to have the same effect again, for Connie writhed. 'How difficult it is to get straightforward dealing!' reflected Fricker sadly. 'My dear Connie, if you happen to have caught any of the conversation, you will know that Mrs. Trevalla has learnt the advantage of straightforward dealing.'
Connie had nothing to say; she began to cry rather noisily. Fricker involuntarily thought of a girl he had seen that day who would neither have listened nor cried.
'Run away,' he said, releasing her; his tone was kind, but a trifle contemptuous. 'You'd better keep my secrets if I'm to keep yours, you know.'
Connie went off, heaving sobs and rubbing her assaulted ear. She was glad to escape so cheaply, and the sobs stopped when she got round the first corner.
'Connie's a good girl,' said Fricker, addressing the study walls in a thoughtful soliloquy. 'Yes, she's a good girl. But there's a difference. Yes, there is a difference.' He shrugged his shoulders, lit a fresh cigar, and sat down at his writing-table. 'It doesn't matter whether Connie knows or not,' he reflected, 'but we must have moral lessons, you know. That's what pretty Miss Ryle had to understand—and Mrs. Trevalla, and now Connie. It'll do all of 'em good.'
Then he looked up the position of the Glowing Star, and thought that an amalgamation might possibly be worked and things put in a little better trim. But it would be troublesome, and—he preferred the moral lesson after all.
Peggy's appointment had not been a secret in the Fricker household, though its precise object was not known; it had been laughed and joked over in the presence of the family friend, Beaufort Chance. He had joined in the mirth, and made a mental note of the time appointed—just as he had of Trix Trevalla's address in Harriet Street. Hence it was that he caused himself to be driven to the address a little while after Peggy had started on her way to Fricker's. The woman who answered his ring said that Mrs. Trevalla was seeing nobody; her scruples were banished by his confident assurance that he was an old friend, and by five shillings which he slipped into her hand. He did not scrutinise his impulse to see Trix; it was rather blind, but it was overpowering. An idea had taken hold of him which he hid carefully in his heart, hid from the Frickers above all—and tried, perhaps, to hide from himself too; for it was dangerous.
Trix's nerves had not recovered completely; they were not tuned to meet sudden encounters. She gave a startled cry as the door was opened hastily and as hastily closed, and he was left alone with her. She was pale and looked weary about the eyes, but she looked beautiful too, softened by her troubles and endowed with the attraction of a new timidity; he marked it in her as useful to his purposes.
'You? What have you come for?' she cried, not rising nor offering him her hand.
He set down his hat and pulled off his gloves deliberately. He knew they were alone in the lodgings; shewas at his mercy. That was the first thing he had aimed at, and it was his.
'Your friends naturally want to see how you are getting on,' he said, with a laugh. 'They've been hearing so much about you.'
Trix tried to compose herself to a quiet contempt, but the nerves were wrong and she was frightened.
'Well, things have turned out funnily, haven't they? Not quite what they looked like being when we met last, at Viola Blixworth's! You were hardly the stuff to fight Fricker, were you? Or me either—though you thought you could manage me comfortably.'
His words were brutal enough; his look surpassed them. Trix shrank back in her chair.
'I don't want to talk to you at all,' she protested helplessly.
'Ah, it's always had to be just what you wanted, hasn't it? Never mind anybody else! But haven't you learnt that that doesn't exactly work? I should have thought it would have dawned on you. Well, I don't want to be unpleasant. What's going to happen now? No Mervyn! No marquisate in the future! No money in the present, I'm afraid! You've made a hash of it, Trix.'
'I've nothing at all to say to you. If I've—if I've made mistakes, I——'
'You've suffered for them? Yes, I fancy so. And you made some pretty big ones. It was rather a mistake to send me to the right-about, wasn't it? You were warned. You chose to go on. Here you are! Don't you sometimes think you'd better have stuck to me?'
'No!' Trix threw the one word at him with a disgusted contempt which roused his anger even while he admired the effort of her courage.
'What, you're not tamed yet?' he sneered. 'Even this palace, and Glowing Stars, and being the laughing-stock of London haven't tamed you?'
He spoke slowly, never taking his eyes from her; herdefiance worked on the idea in his heart. He had run a fatal risk once before under her influence; he felt her influence again while he derided her. Enough of what he had been clung about him to make him feel how different she was from Connie Fricker. To conquer her and make her acknowledge the conquest was the desire that came upon him, tempting him to forget at what peril he would break with Connie.
'You only came here to laugh at me,' said Trix. 'Well, go on.'
'One can't help laughing a bit,' he remarked; 'but I don't want to be hard on you. If you'd done to some men what you did to me, they mightn't take it so quietly. But I'm ready to be friends.'
'Whatever I did, you've taken more than your revenge—far more. Yes, if you wanted to see me helpless and ruined, here I am! Isn't it enough? Can't you go now?'
'And how's old Mervyn? At any rate I've taken you away from him, the stuck-up fool!'
'I won't discuss Lord Mervyn.'
'He'd be surprised to see us together here, wouldn't he?' He laughed, enjoying the thought of Mervyn's discomfiture; he might make it still more complete if he yielded to his idea. He came round the table and leant against it, crossing his feet; he was within a yard of her chair, and looked down at her in insolent disdain and more insolent admiration. Now again he marked her fear and played on it.
'Yes, we got the whiphand of you, and I think you know it now. And that's what you want; that's the way to treat you. I should have known how to deal with you. What could a fool like Mervyn do with a woman like you? You're full of devil.'
Poor Trix, feeling at that moment by no means full of 'devil,' glanced at him with a new terror. She had set herself to endure his taunts, but the flavour that crept into them now was too much.
'I don't forget we were friends. You're pretty wellstranded now. Well, I'll look after you, if you like. But no more tricks! You must behave yourself.'
'Do you suppose I should ever willingly speak to you again?'
'Yes, I think so. When the last of the money's gone, perhaps? I don't fancy your friends here can help you much. It'll be worth while remembering me then.'
'I'd sooner starve,' said Trix decisively.
'Wait a bit, wait a bit,' he jeered.
'I ask you to go,' she said, pointing to the door. A trivial circumstance interfered with any attempt at more dramatic action; the wire of the bell was broken, as Trix well knew.
'Yes, but you can't always have what you want, can you?' His tone changed to one of bantering intimacy. 'Come, Trix, be a sensible girl. You're beat, and you know it. You'd better drop your airs. By Jove, I wouldn't offer so much to any other woman!'
'What do you want?' she asked curtly and desperately. 'I've got nothing to give you—no more money, no more power, no more influence. I've got nothing.' Her voice shook for a moment as she sketched her worldly position.
A pause followed. Beaufort Chance longed to make the plunge, and yet he feared it. If he told her that she still had what he wanted, he believed that he could bend her to his will; to try at least was the strong impulse in him. But how much would it mean? He was fast in the Fricker net. Yet the very passions which had led him into that entanglement urged him now to break loose, to follow his desire, and to risk everything for it. The tyrannous instinct that Connie had so cleverly played upon would find a far finer satisfaction if the woman he had once wooed when she was exalted, when she gave a favour by listening and could bestow distinction by her consent, should bend before him and come to him in humble submission, owning him her refuge, owing him everything, in abject obedience. That was the picture which wrought upon his mind and appealedto his nature. He saw nothing unlikely in its realisation, if once he resolved to aim at that. What other refuge had she? And had she not liked him once? She would have liked him more, he told himself, and been true to him, if he had taken a proper tone towards her and assumed a proper mastery—as he had with Connie Fricker; in a passing thought he thanked Connie for teaching him the lesson, and took comfort from the thought. Connie would not be really troublesome; he could manage her too.
'No, you've got nothing,' he said at last; 'but supposing I say I don't mind that?'
Trix looked at him again, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically. The idea he hinted was horrible, but to her it was inexpressibly ludicrous too. She saw what he wanted, what he had the madness to suggest. She was terrified, but she laughed; she knew that her mirth would rouse his fury, but it was not to be resisted. She thought that she would go on laughing, even if he struck her on the face—an event which, for the second time in their acquaintance, did not seem to her unlikely.
'Are you—can you actually——?' she gasped.
'Don't be a fool! There's nothing to laugh at. Hold your tongue and think it over. Remember, I don't bind myself. I'll see how you behave. I'm not going to be fooled by you twice. You ought to know it doesn't pay you to do it too, by now.' He became more jocular. 'You'd have better fun with me than with Mervyn, and I daresay you'll manage to wheedle me into giving you a good deal of your own way after all.'
He was still more outrageous than Trix had thought him before. She was prepared for much, but hardly for this. He had degenerated even from what he had shown himself in their earlier intercourse. Outwardly, among men, in public life, she supposed that he was still presentable, was still reckoned a gentleman. Allowing for the fact that many men were gentlemen in dealing with other men, or appeared such, who failed to preserve even the appearancewith women, she remained amazed at the coarse vulgarity of his words and tone. It is possible that his attentions to Connie Fricker had resulted in a deterioration of his style of treating such matters; or the change may merely have been part of the general lowering the man had undergone.
'Well, I'll be off now,' he said, lifting himself from the table leisurely. 'You think about it. I'll come and see you again.' He held out his hand. 'You're looking deuced pretty to-day,' he told her. 'Pale and interesting, and all that, you know. I say, if we do it, old Mervyn'll look pretty blue, eh? The laugh'll be against him then, won't it?'
Trix had not given him her hand. She was afraid of the parting. Her fears were not groundless. He laughed as he stepped up to her chair. She drew back in horror, guessing his purpose. It would seem to him quite natural to kiss her—she divined that. She had no leisure to judge or to condemn his standard; she knew only that she loathed the idea passionately. She covered her face with her hands.
'Guessed it, did you?' he laughed, rather pleased, and, bending over, he took hold of her wrists and tore her hands from in front of her face.
At this moment, however—and the thing could hardly have been worse timed from one point of view, or better from another—Peggy Ryle opened the door. Peggy trod light, the baize door swung quietly, Beaufort's attention had been much preoccupied. His hands were still on Trix's wrists when he turned at the opening of the door. So far as the facts of the situation went, explanation was superfluous; the meaning of the facts was another matter.
Peggy had come in looking grave, wistful, distressed; the shadow of the Fricker interview was still over her. When she saw the position she stood on the threshold, saying nothing, smiling doubtfully. Trix dropped her hands in her lap with a sigh; pure and great relief was her feeling. Beaufort essayed unconsciousness; it was an elaborate and clumsy effort.
'Glad to have a glimpse of you before I go, Miss Ryle. I called to see how Mrs. Trevalla was, but I must run away now.'
'So sorry,' said Peggy. 'Let me show you the way.'
The doubtful smile gave way to a broader and more mirthful one. Trix's eyes had telegraphed past horror and present thanksgiving. Moreover, Beaufort looked a fool—and Peggy had just come from the Frickers'. This last circumstance she seemed to think would interest Beaufort; or did she merely aim at carrying off the situation by a tactful flow of talk?
'I've just been to call on your friends the Frickers,' she said brightly. 'What a nice girl Miss Fricker is! She says she's great friends with you.'
'I go there a lot on business,' he explained stiffly.
'On business?' Peggy laughed. 'I daresay you do, Mr. Chance! She's so friendly and cordial, isn't she? It must be nice riding with her! And what a beautiful bracelet you gave her!'
Beaufort shot a morose glance at her, and from her to Trix. Trix was smiling, though still agitated. Peggy was laughing in an open good-natured fashion.
'I envied it awfully,' she confessed. 'Diamonds and pearls, Trix—just beauties!'
Mr. Beaufort Chance said good-bye.
'I hope to see you again,' he added to Trix from the doorway.
'Do tell Miss Fricker how much I like her,' Peggy implored, following him to the baize door.
He went downstairs, silently, or not quite silently, cursing Peggy, yet on the whole not ill-pleased with his visit. He seemed to have made some progress in the task of subduing Trix Trevalla. She had been frightened—that was something. He walked off buttoning his frock-coat, looking like a prosperous, orderly, and most respectable gentleman. Fortunately emotions primitively barbarous are not indicated by external labels, or walks in the street would be fraught with strange discoveries.
It did not take long to put Peggy abreast of events; Trix's eyes could have done it almost without words.
'Men are astonishing,' opined Peggy, embracing Beaufort Chance and Fricker in a liberal generalisation.
'They say we're astonishing,' Trix reminded her.
'Oh, that's just because they're stupid.' She grew grave. 'Anyhow they're very annoying,' she concluded.
'He said he'd come again, Peggy. What a worm I am now! I'm horribly afraid.'
'So he did,' Peggy reflected, and sat silent with a queer little smile on her lips.
Trix Trevalla fell into a new fit of despair, or a fresh outpouring of the bitterness that was always in her now.
'I might as well,' she said. 'I might just as well. What else is there left for me? I've made shipwreck of it all, and Beaufort Chance isn't far wrong about me. He's just about the sort of fate I deserve. Why do the things you deserve make you sick to think of them? He wouldn't actually beat me if I behaved properly and did as I was told, I suppose, and that's about as much as I can expect. Oh, I've been such a fool!'
'Having been a fool doesn't matter, if you're sensible now,' said Peggy.
'Sensible! Yes, he told me to be sensible too! I suppose the sensible thing would be to tell him to come again, to lie down before him, and thank him very much if he didn't stamp too hard on me.'
Peggy remembered how Mr. Fricker had hinted that Trix was very much in the position in which her own fancy was now depicting her. Could that be helped? It seemed not—without four thousand pounds anyhow.
Trix came and leant over the back of her chair. 'I laughed at him, Peggy—I laughed, but I might yield. He might frighten me into it. And I've nowhere else to turn. Supposing I went to him with my hundred a year? That's about what I've left myself, I suppose, after everything's paid.'
'Well, that's a lot of money,' said Peggy.
'You child!' cried Trix, half-laughing, half-crying. 'But you're a wonderful child. Can't you save me, Peggy?'
'What from?'
'Oh, I suppose, in the end, from myself. I'm reckless. I'm drifting. Will he come again, Peggy?'
Peggy had no radical remedy, but her immediate prescription was not lacking in wisdom as a temporary expedient. She sent Trix to bed, and was obeyed with a docility which would have satisfied any of those who had set themselves to teach Trix moral lessons. Then Peggy herself sat down and engaged in the task of thinking. It had not been at all a prosperous day. Fricker was a source of despair, Chance of a new apprehension; Trix herself was a perplexity most baffling of all. The ruin of self-respect, bringing in its train an abandonment of hope for self, was a strange and bewildering spectacle; she did not see how to effect its repair. Trix's horror of yielding to the man, combined with her fear that she might yield, was a state of mind beyond Peggy's power of diagnosis; she knew only that it clamoured for instant and strong treatment.
Beaufort Chance would come again! Suddenly Peggy determined that he should—on a day she would fix! She would charge herself with that. She smiled again as a hope came into her mind. She had been considerably impressed with Connie Fricker.
The greater puzzle remained behind, the wider, more forlorn hope on which everything turned. 'How much do men love women?' asked Peggy Ryle.
Then the thought of her pledged word flashed across her mind. She might not tell Airey that Trix was ruined; she might not tell Airey that she herself knew his secret. She had hoped to get something from Airey without those disclosures; it was hopeless without them to ask for four thousand pounds—or three thousand five hundred either.
Having been sent to bed, Trix seemed inclined to staythere. She lay there all next day, very quiet, but open-eyed, not resting but fretting and fearing, unequal to her evil fortune, prostrated by the vision of her own folly, bereft of power to resist or will to recover from the blow. Peggy watched her for hours, and then, late in the afternoon, slipped out. Her eyes were resolute under the low brow with its encroaching waves of sunny hair.
Airey Newton let her in. The door of the safe was ajar; he pushed it to with his foot. The red-leather book lay open on the table, displaying its neatly ruled, neatly inscribed pages. He saw her glance at it, and she noticed an odd little shrug of his shoulders as he walked across the room and put the tea into the pot. She had her small bag with her, and laid it down by the bread-and-butter plate. Airey knew it by sight; he had seen her stow away in it the money which he delivered to her from the custody of the safe.
'I can't fill that again for you,' he said warningly, as he gave her tea.
'It's not empty. The money's all there.'
'And you want me to take care of it again?' His tone spoke approval.
'I don't know. I may want it, and I mayn't.'
'You're sure to want it,' he declared in smiling despair.
'I mean, I don't know whether I want it now—all in a lump—or not.'
Her bright carelessness of spirit had evidently deserted her to-day; she was full of something. Airey gulped down a cup of tea, lit his pipe, and waited. He had been engrossed in calculations when she arrived—calculations he loved—and had been forced to conceal some impatience at the interruption. He forgot that now.
'There's something on your mind, Peggy,' he said at last. 'Come, out with it!'
'She's broken—broken, Airey. She can't bear to think of it all. She can't bear to think of herself. She seems to have no life left, no will.'
'You mean Mrs. Trevalla?'
'Yes. They've broken her spirit between them. They've made her feel a child, a fool.'
'Who have? Do you mean Mervyn? Do you mean——?'
'I mean Mr. Beaufort Chance—and, above all, Mr. Fricker. She hasn't told you about them?'
'No. I've heard something about Chance. I know nothing about Fricker.'
'She didn't treat them fairly—she knows that. Knows it—I should think so! Poor Trix! And in return——' Peggy stopped. One of the secrets trembled on her lips.
'In return, what?' asked Airey Newton. He had stopped smoking, and was standing opposite to her now.
'They've tricked her and made a fool of her, and——' There was no turning back now—'and stripped her of nearly all she had.'
An almost imperceptible start ran through Airey; his forehead wrinkled in deep lines.
'They bought shares for her, and told her they would be valuable. They've turned out worth nothing, and somehow—you'll understand—she's liable to pay a lot of money on them.'
'Hum! Not fully paid, I suppose?'
'That's it. And she's in debt besides. But it's the shares that are killing her. That's where the bitterness is, Airey.'
'Does she know you're telling me this?'
'I gave her my word that I'd never tell.'
Airey moved restlessly about the room. 'Well?' he said from the other end of it.
'She could get over everything but that. So I went to Mr. Fricker——'
'You went to Fricker?' He came to a stand in amazement.
'Yes, I went to Mr. Fricker to see if he would consent to tell her that she wasn't liable, that the shares had turned out better, and that she needn't pay. I wanted him to take theshares from her, and let her think that he did it as a matter of business.'
Airey Newton pointed to the little bag. Peggy nodded her head in assent.
'But it's not nearly enough. She'd have to pay three thousand anyhow; he won't do what I wish for less than four. He doesn't want to do it at all; he wants to have her on her knees, to go on knowing she's suffering. And she will go on suffering unless we make her believe what I want her to. He thought I couldn't get anything like the money he asked, so he consented to take it if I did. He told me to come back when I had got it, Airey.'
'Has she got the money?'
'Yes—and perhaps enough more to pay her debts, and just to live. But it's not so much the money; it's the humiliation and the shame. Oh, don't you understand? Mr. Fricker will spare her that if—if he's bribed with a thousand pounds.'
He looked at her eager eyes and flushed cheeks; she pushed back her hair from her brow.
'He asks four thousand pounds,' she said, and added, pointing to the little bag, 'There's five hundred there.'
As she spoke she turned her eyes away from him towards the window. It did not seem to her fair to look at him; and her gaze would tell too much perhaps. She had given him the facts now; what would he make of them? She had broken her word to Trix Trevalla. Her pledge to Tommy Trent was still inviolate. Tommy had trusted her implicitly when she had surprised from him his friend's secret that his carelessness let slip. He had taken her word as he would have accepted the promise of an honourable man, a man honourable in business, or a friend of years. Her knowledge had counted as ignorance for him because she had engaged to be silent. The engagement was not broken yet. She waited fearfully. Airey could save her still. What would he do?
The seconds wore on, seeming very long. They told herof his struggle. She understood it with a rare sympathy, the sympathy we have for the single scar or stain on the heart of one we love; towards such a thing she could not be bitter. But she hoped passionately that he himself would conquer, would spare both himself and her. If he did, it would be the finest thing in the world, she thought.
She heard him move across to the safe and lock it. She heard him shut the red-leather book with a bang. Would he never speak? She would not look till he did, but she could have cried to him for a single word.
'And that was what you wanted your five hundred for?' he asked at last.
'My five hundred's no good alone.'
'It's all you've got in the world—well, except your pittance.'
She did not resent the word; he spoke it in compassion. She turned to him now and found his eyes on her.
'Oh, it's nothing to me. I never pay any attention to money, you know.' She managed a smile, trying to plead with him to think any such sacrifice a small matter, whether in another or in himself.
'Well, I see your plan, and it's very kind. A little Quixotic perhaps, Peggy——'
'Quixotic! If it saves her pain?' Peggy flashed out in real indignation.
'Anyhow what's the use of talking about it? Five hundred isn't four thousand, and Fricker won't come down, you know.'
It was pathetic to her to listen to the studied carelessness of his voice, to hear the easy reasonable words come from the twitching lips, to see the forced smile under the troubled brow. His agony was revealed to her; he was asked to throw all his dearest overboard. She stretched out her hands towards him.
'I might get help from friends, Airey.'
'Three thousand five hundred pounds?'
With sad bitterness she heard him. He was almost lying now; his manner and tone were a very lie.
'Friends who—who love her, Airey.'
He was silent for long again, moodily looking at her.
'Who would think anything well done, anything well spent, if they could save her pain!'
With an abrupt movement he turned away from her and threw himself into a chair. He could no longer bear the appeal of her eyes. At last it seemed strange as well as moving to him. But he could have no suspicion; he trusted Tommy Trent and conceived his secret to be all his own. His old great shame that Peggy should know joined forces with the hidden passion which was its parent; both fought to keep him silent, both enticed him to delude her still. Yet when she spoke of friends who loved Trix Trevalla, whom could she touch, whom could she move, as she touched and moved him? The appeal went to his heart, trying to storm it against the enemies entrenched there.
Suddenly Peggy hid her face in her hands, and gave one short sob. He looked up startled, clutching the arm of his chair with a fierce grip. He sat like that, his eyes set on her. But when he spoke, it was lamely and almost coldly.
'Of course we should all like to save her pain; we would all do what we could. But think of the money wanted! It's out of the question.'
She sprang to her feet and faced him. For the moment she forgot her tenderness for him; her understanding of his struggle was swept away in indignation.
'You love her!' she cried in defiant challenge. 'You of all people should help her. You of all people should throw all you have at her feet. You love her!'
He made no denial; he rose slowly from his chair and faced her.
'Oh, what is love if it's not that?' she demanded. 'Why, even friendship ought to be that. And love——!' Again her hands were outstretched to him in a last appeal. For still there was time—time to save his honour and her own, time to spare him and her the last shame. 'It wouldbe riches to you, riches for ever,' she said. 'Yes, just because it's so hard, Airey!'
'What?' The word shot from his lips full of startled fear. Why did she call it hard? The word was strange. She should have said 'impossible.' Had he not put it before her as impossible? But she said 'hard,' and looked in his eyes as she spoke the word.
'Love can't make money where it isn't,' he went on in a dull, dogged, obstinate voice.
'No, but it can give it where it is!' She was carried away. 'And it's here!' she cried in accusing tones.
'Here?' He seemed almost to spring at her with the word.
'Yes, here, in this room—in that safe—everywhere!'
They stood facing one another for a moment.
'You love her—and she's ruined!'
She challenged denial. Airey Newton had no word to say. She raised her hand in the air and seemed to denounce him.
'You love her, she's ruined, and—you're rich! Oh, the shame of it—you're rich, you're rich!'
He sank back into his chair and hid his face from her.
She stood for a moment, looking at him, breathing fast and hard. Then she moved quickly to him, bent on her knee, and kissed his hand passionately. He made no movement, and she slipped quietly and swiftly from the room.
Barslett: July 11.My dear Sarah,—How I wish you were here! You would enjoy yourself, and I should like to see you doing it—indeed I should be amused. I never dare tell you face to face that you amuse me—you'd swell visibly, like the person in Pickwick—but I can write it quite safely. We are a family party—or at any rate we look forward to being one some day, and even now escape none of the characteristics of such gatherings. We all think that the Proper Thing will happen some day, and we tell one another so. Not for a long while, of course! First—and officially—because Mortimer feels things so deeply (this is a reference to the Improper Thing which so nearly happened—are you wincing, Sarah?); secondly—and entirely unofficially—because of a bad chaperon and a heavy pupil. You are a genius; you ought to have had seventeen daughters, all twins and all out together, and five eldest sons all immensely eligible! Nature is so limited. But me! I'm always there when I'm not wanted, and I do hate leaving a comfortable chair. But I try. Do I give you any clear idea when I say that a certain young person wants a deal of hoisting—and is very ponderous to hoist? And I'm not her mother, or I really wouldn't complain. But sometimes I could shake her, as they say. No, I couldn't shake her, but I should like to get some hydraulic machinery that could. However—it moves all the same! What's-his-name detected that in the world, which is certainly slow enough, and we all detect it in this interestingcase—or say we do. And I've great faith in repeating things. It spreads confidence, whence comes, dear Sarah, action.Mortimer is here a lot, but is somewhat fretful. The Trans-Euphratic, it seems, is fractious, or teething, or something, and Beaufort Chance has been nasty in the House—notably nasty and rather able. (Do you trace any private history?) However, I daresay you hear enough about the Trans-Euphratic at home. It buzzes about here, mingling soothingly with the approaching flower show and a calamity that has happened to a pedigree cow. Never mind details of any of them! Sir Stapleton was indiscreet to me, but it stops there, if you please. How sweet the country is in a real English home!But sometimes we talk of the Past—and the P is large. There is a thank-heavenly atmosphere of pronounced density about Lady B.—quite sincere, I believe; she has realised that flightiness almost effected an entry into the family! Mortimer says little—deep feelings again. In my opinion it has done him some little good—which we and Audrey hope speedily to destroy. (Oh, that child! The perfection of English girlhood, Sarah; no less, believe me!) My lord is more communicative—to me. I believe he likes to talk about it. In fact Trix made some impression there; possibly there is a regret hidden somewhere in his circumference. He took me round the place yesterday, and showed me the scene of the flight. I should think going to Waterloo must give one something of the same feeling—if one could be conducted by a wounded hero of the fight. This was the conversation that passed—or something like it:—Lord B.: She looked almost like a ghost.Myself: Heavens, Lord B.!Lord B.(inserting spud in ground): This was the very spot—the SPOT!Myself: You surprise me!Lord B.: I felt certain that something unusual was occurring.Myself: Did that strike you at once?Lord B.: Almost, Viola—I say, almost—at once. She came up. I remonstrated. My words do not remain in my memory.Myself: Moments of excitement——Lord B.: But I remonstrated, Viola.Myself: And she pushed you away?Lord B.: She did—and ran along the path here—following this path to that gate——Myself(incredulously, however one's supposed to show that): That very gate, Lord B.?Lord B.: It's been painted since, but that is the gate, Viola.Myself: Fancy! (There isn't any other gate, you know; so, unless Trix had taken the fence in a flying leap, one doesn't see what she could have done.)Lord B.: Yes, that gate. She ran through it and along that road——Myself(distrustfully): That road, Lord B.?Lord B.(firmly): That road, Viola. She twisted her veil about her face, caught up her skirts——Myself: ! ! ! ! !Lord B.: And ran away (impressively) towards the station, Viola!Myself: Did you watch her?Lord B.: Till she was out of sight—of sight, Viola!Myself: I never realised it so clearly before, Lord B.Lord B.: It is an experience I shall never forget.Myself: I should think not, Lord B.Then the excellent old dear said that he trusted he had no unchristian feelings towards Trix; he had been inclined to like her, and so on. But he failed to perceive how they could have treated her differently in any single particular. 'You could not depend on her word, Viola.' I remembered, Sarah, that in early youth, and under circumstances needless to specify exactly, you could not depend on mine—unless the evidence against me was hopelessly clear. I suppose that was Trix's mistake. She fibbed when she was bound to befound out, and saw it herself a minute later. Have you any personal objection to my dropping a tear?I don't pretend to say I should go on writing if there was anything else to do, but it will open your mind to give you one more scrap.Myself: What, Audrey dear, come in already? (It is 9.30 p.m.—evening fine—moon full.)Audrey: Yes, it was rather chilly, Auntie, and there's a heavy dew.Myself(sweetly): I thought it such a charming evening for a stroll.Audrey: I was afraid of my new frock, Auntie.Myself(very sweetly): You're so thoughtful, dear. Has Mortimer come in too?Audrey: I knew he was busy, so I told him he mustn't leave his work for me. He went in directly then, Auntie.Myself(most sweetly):Howthoughtful of you,darling!Audrey: He did suggest I should stay a little while, but the dew——Myself(breaking down): Good gracious, Audrey, what in the world &c., &c., &c.Audrey(pathetically): I'm so sorry, Auntie dear!Now what would you do in such a case, Herr Professor Sarah?No doubt things will turn out for the best in the end, and I suppose I shall be grateful to poor Trix. But for the moment I wish to goodness she'd never run away! Anyhow she has achieved immortality. Barmouths of future ages will hush their sons and daughters into good marriages by threatening them with Trix Trevalla. She stands for ever the Monument of Lawlessness—with locks bedraggled, and skirts high above the ankle! She has made this aristocratic family safe for a hundred years. She has not lived in vain. And tell me any news of her. Have you had the Frickers to dinner since my eye was off you? There, I must have my little joke. Forgive me, Sarah!Affectionately,V. B.
Barslett: July 11.
My dear Sarah,—How I wish you were here! You would enjoy yourself, and I should like to see you doing it—indeed I should be amused. I never dare tell you face to face that you amuse me—you'd swell visibly, like the person in Pickwick—but I can write it quite safely. We are a family party—or at any rate we look forward to being one some day, and even now escape none of the characteristics of such gatherings. We all think that the Proper Thing will happen some day, and we tell one another so. Not for a long while, of course! First—and officially—because Mortimer feels things so deeply (this is a reference to the Improper Thing which so nearly happened—are you wincing, Sarah?); secondly—and entirely unofficially—because of a bad chaperon and a heavy pupil. You are a genius; you ought to have had seventeen daughters, all twins and all out together, and five eldest sons all immensely eligible! Nature is so limited. But me! I'm always there when I'm not wanted, and I do hate leaving a comfortable chair. But I try. Do I give you any clear idea when I say that a certain young person wants a deal of hoisting—and is very ponderous to hoist? And I'm not her mother, or I really wouldn't complain. But sometimes I could shake her, as they say. No, I couldn't shake her, but I should like to get some hydraulic machinery that could. However—it moves all the same! What's-his-name detected that in the world, which is certainly slow enough, and we all detect it in this interestingcase—or say we do. And I've great faith in repeating things. It spreads confidence, whence comes, dear Sarah, action.
Mortimer is here a lot, but is somewhat fretful. The Trans-Euphratic, it seems, is fractious, or teething, or something, and Beaufort Chance has been nasty in the House—notably nasty and rather able. (Do you trace any private history?) However, I daresay you hear enough about the Trans-Euphratic at home. It buzzes about here, mingling soothingly with the approaching flower show and a calamity that has happened to a pedigree cow. Never mind details of any of them! Sir Stapleton was indiscreet to me, but it stops there, if you please. How sweet the country is in a real English home!
But sometimes we talk of the Past—and the P is large. There is a thank-heavenly atmosphere of pronounced density about Lady B.—quite sincere, I believe; she has realised that flightiness almost effected an entry into the family! Mortimer says little—deep feelings again. In my opinion it has done him some little good—which we and Audrey hope speedily to destroy. (Oh, that child! The perfection of English girlhood, Sarah; no less, believe me!) My lord is more communicative—to me. I believe he likes to talk about it. In fact Trix made some impression there; possibly there is a regret hidden somewhere in his circumference. He took me round the place yesterday, and showed me the scene of the flight. I should think going to Waterloo must give one something of the same feeling—if one could be conducted by a wounded hero of the fight. This was the conversation that passed—or something like it:—
Lord B.: She looked almost like a ghost.
Myself: Heavens, Lord B.!
Lord B.(inserting spud in ground): This was the very spot—the SPOT!
Myself: You surprise me!
Lord B.: I felt certain that something unusual was occurring.
Myself: Did that strike you at once?
Lord B.: Almost, Viola—I say, almost—at once. She came up. I remonstrated. My words do not remain in my memory.
Myself: Moments of excitement——
Lord B.: But I remonstrated, Viola.
Myself: And she pushed you away?
Lord B.: She did—and ran along the path here—following this path to that gate——
Myself(incredulously, however one's supposed to show that): That very gate, Lord B.?
Lord B.: It's been painted since, but that is the gate, Viola.
Myself: Fancy! (There isn't any other gate, you know; so, unless Trix had taken the fence in a flying leap, one doesn't see what she could have done.)
Lord B.: Yes, that gate. She ran through it and along that road——
Myself(distrustfully): That road, Lord B.?
Lord B.(firmly): That road, Viola. She twisted her veil about her face, caught up her skirts——
Myself: ! ! ! ! !
Lord B.: And ran away (impressively) towards the station, Viola!
Myself: Did you watch her?
Lord B.: Till she was out of sight—of sight, Viola!
Myself: I never realised it so clearly before, Lord B.
Lord B.: It is an experience I shall never forget.
Myself: I should think not, Lord B.
Then the excellent old dear said that he trusted he had no unchristian feelings towards Trix; he had been inclined to like her, and so on. But he failed to perceive how they could have treated her differently in any single particular. 'You could not depend on her word, Viola.' I remembered, Sarah, that in early youth, and under circumstances needless to specify exactly, you could not depend on mine—unless the evidence against me was hopelessly clear. I suppose that was Trix's mistake. She fibbed when she was bound to befound out, and saw it herself a minute later. Have you any personal objection to my dropping a tear?
I don't pretend to say I should go on writing if there was anything else to do, but it will open your mind to give you one more scrap.
Myself: What, Audrey dear, come in already? (It is 9.30 p.m.—evening fine—moon full.)
Audrey: Yes, it was rather chilly, Auntie, and there's a heavy dew.
Myself(sweetly): I thought it such a charming evening for a stroll.
Audrey: I was afraid of my new frock, Auntie.
Myself(very sweetly): You're so thoughtful, dear. Has Mortimer come in too?
Audrey: I knew he was busy, so I told him he mustn't leave his work for me. He went in directly then, Auntie.
Myself(most sweetly):Howthoughtful of you,darling!
Audrey: He did suggest I should stay a little while, but the dew——
Myself(breaking down): Good gracious, Audrey, what in the world &c., &c., &c.
Audrey(pathetically): I'm so sorry, Auntie dear!
Now what would you do in such a case, Herr Professor Sarah?
No doubt things will turn out for the best in the end, and I suppose I shall be grateful to poor Trix. But for the moment I wish to goodness she'd never run away! Anyhow she has achieved immortality. Barmouths of future ages will hush their sons and daughters into good marriages by threatening them with Trix Trevalla. She stands for ever the Monument of Lawlessness—with locks bedraggled, and skirts high above the ankle! She has made this aristocratic family safe for a hundred years. She has not lived in vain. And tell me any news of her. Have you had the Frickers to dinner since my eye was off you? There, I must have my little joke. Forgive me, Sarah!
Affectionately,V. B.
'Tut!' said Mrs. Bonfill, laying down the letter, extracts from which she had been reading to her friend Lord Glentorly.
'She's about right as to Chance, anyhow,' he remarked. 'I was in the House, and you couldn't mistake his venom.'
'He doesn't count any longer.' Mrs. Bonfill pronounced the sentence ruthlessly.
'No, not politically. And in every other way he's no more than a tool of Fricker's. Fricker must have him in the hollow of his hand. He knows how he stands; that's the meaning of his bitterness. But he can make poor Mortimer feel, all the same. Still, as you say, there's an end of him!'
'And of her too! She was an extraordinary young woman, George.'
'Uncommonly attractive—no ballast,' summed up Glentorly. 'You never see her now, I suppose?'
'Nobody does,' said Mrs. Bonfill, using 'nobody' in its accepted sense. She sighed gently. 'You can't help people who won't be helped.'
'So Viola Blixworth implies,' he reminded her with a laugh.
'Oh, Viola's hopelessly flippant; but she'll manage it in the end, I expect.' She sighed again and went on, 'I don't know that, after all, one does much good by meddling with other people's affairs.'
'Come, come, this is only a moment of despondency, Sarah.'
'I suppose so,' she agreed, with returning hope. To consider that her present mood represented a right and ultimate conclusion would have been to pronounce a ban on all her activities. 'I've half a mind to propose myself for a visit to Barslett.'
'You couldn't do better,' Lord Glentorly cordially agreed. 'Everything will soon be over here, you see.'
She looked at him a little suspiciously. Did he suggest that she should retreat for a while and let the talk of her failures blow over? He was an old friend, and it wasconceivable that he should seek to convey such a hint delicately.
'I had one letter from Trix,' she continued. 'A confused rigmarole—explanations, and defence, and apologies, and all the rest of it.'
'What did you write to her?'
'I didn't write at all. I put it in the fire.'
Glentorly glanced at his friend as she made this decisive reply. Her handsome, rather massive features were set in a calm repose; no scruples or doubts as to the rectitude of her action assailed her. Trix had chosen to jump over the pale; outside the pale she must abide. But that night, when a lady at dinner argued that she ought to have a vote, he exclaimed with an unmistakable shudder, 'By Jove, you'd be wanting to be judges next!' What turned his thoughts to that direful possibility?
But of course he did not let Mrs. Bonfill perceive any dissent from her judgment or her sentence. He contented himself with saying, 'Well, she's made a pretty mess of it!'
'There's nothing left for her—absolutely nothing,' Mrs. Bonfill concluded. Her tone would have excused, if not justified, Trix's making an end of herself in the river.
Lady Glentorly was equally emphatic on another aspect of the case.
'It's a lesson to all of us,' she told her husband. 'I don't acquit myself, much less can I acquit Sarah Bonfill. This taking up of people merely because they're good-looking and agreeable has gone far enough. You men are mainly responsible for it.'
'My dear!' murmured Glentorly weakly.
'It's well enough to send them a card now and then, but anything more than that—we must put our foot down. The Barmouths of all people! I declare it serves them right!'
'The affair seems to have resulted in serving everybody right,' he reflected. 'So I suppose it's all for the best.'
'Marriage is the point on which we must make a stand.After a short pause she added an inevitable qualification: 'Unless there are overwhelming reasons the other way. And this woman was never even supposed to be more than decently off.'
'The Barmouths are very much the old style. It was bad luck that she should happen on them.'
'Bad luck, George? It was Sarah Bonfill!'
'Bad luck for Mrs. Trevalla, I mean.'
'You take extraordinary views sometimes, George. Now I call it a Providence.'
In face of a difference so irreconcilable Glentorly abandoned the argument. There were a few like him who harboured a shame-faced sympathy for Trix. They were awed into silence, and the sentence of condemnation passed unopposed.
Yet there were regrets and longings in Mervyn's heart. Veiled under his dignified manner, censured by his cool judgment, hustled into the background by his resolute devotion to the Trans-Euphratic railway and other affairs of state, made to seem shameful by his determination to find a new ideal in a girl of Audrey Pollington's irreproachable stamp, they maintained an obstinate vitality, and, by a perverse turn of feeling, drew their strength from the very features in Trix and in Trix's behaviour which had incurred his severest censure while she was still his and with him.
Remembering her recklessness and her gaiety, recalling her hardly-suppressed rebellion against the life he asked her to lead and the air he gave her to breathe, rehearsing even the offences which had, directly or indirectly, driven her to flight and entailed exile on her, he found in her the embodiment of something that he condemned and yet desired, of something that could not be contained in his life, and thereby seemed in some sort to accuse that life of narrowness. She had shown him a country which he could not and would not enter; at moments the thought of her derisively beckoned him whither he could not go.At last, under the influence of these ideas, which grew and grew as the first shock of amazed resentment wore off, he came to put questions to himself as to the part that he had played, to realise a little how it had all seemed to her. This was not to blame himself or his part; he and it were still to him right and inevitable. But it was a step towards perceiving something deeper than the casual perversity or dishonesty of one woman. He had inklings of an ultimate incompatibility of lives, of ways, of training, of thought, of outlook on the world. Both she and he had disregarded the existence of such a thing. The immediate causes of her flight—her dishonesty and her fear of discovery—became, in this view, merely the occasion of it. In the end he asked whether she had not shown a kind of desperate courage, perhaps even a wild inspiration of wisdom, in what she had done. Gradually his anger against her died away, and there came in its place a sorrow, not that the thing she fled from was not to be, but that it never could have been in any true or adequate sense. Perhaps she herself had seen that—seen it in some flashing vision of despair which drove her headlong from the house by night. Feelings that Trix could not analyse for herself he thought out for her with his slow, narrow, but patient and thorough-going mind. The task was hard, for wounded pride still cried out in loud protest against it; but he made way with it. If he could traverse the path of it to the end, there stood comprehension, yes, and acquiescence; then it would appear that Trix Trevalla had refused to pile error on error; in her blind way she would have done right.
That things we have desired did not come to pass may be sad; that they never could have is sadder, by so much as the law we understand seems a more cruel force than the chance that hits us once, we know not whence, and may never strike again. The chance seems only a perverse accident falling on us from outside; the law abides, a limitation of ourselves. Towards such a consciousness as this Mervyn struggled.
At last he hinted something of what was in his mind to Viola Blixworth. He talked in abstract terms, with an air of studying human nature, not of discussing any concrete case; he was still a little pompous over it, and still entirely engrossed in his own feelings. His preoccupation was to prove that he deserved no ridicule, since fate, and not merely folly, had made him its unwilling plaything. She heard him with unusual seriousness, in an instant divining the direction of his thoughts; and she fastened on the mood, turning it to what she wanted.
'That should make you tolerant towards Mrs. Trevalla,' she suggested, as they walked together by the fountains.
'I suppose so, yes. It leaves us both slaves of something too strong for us.'
She passed by the affected humility that defaced his smile; she never expected too much, and was finding in him more than she had hoped.
'If you've any allowance for her, any gentleness towards her——'
'I feel very little anger now.'
'Then tell her so, Mortimer. Oh, I don't mean go to her. On all accounts you'd better not do that.' (Her smile was not altogether for Mervyn here; she spared some of it for her duties and position as an aunt.) 'But write to her.'
'What should I say?' The idea was plainly new to him. 'Do you mean that I'm to forgive her?'
'I wouldn't put it quite like that, Mortimer. That would be all right if you were proposing to—renew the arrangement. But I suppose you're not?'
He shook his head decisively. As a woman Lady Blixworth was rather sorry to see so much decision; it was her duty as an aunt to rejoice.
'Couldn't you manage to convey that it was nobody's fault in particular? Or something like that?'
He weighed the suggestion. 'I couldn't go quite so far,' he concluded, with a judicial air.
'Well, then, that the mistake was in trying it at all? Or in being in a hurry? Or—or that perhaps your manner——?'
'No, I don't think there was anything wrong with my manner.'
'Could you say you understood her feelings—or, at any rate, allowed for them?'
'Perhaps I might say that.'
'At any rate you could say something comforting.' She put her arm through his. 'She's miserable about you, I know. You can say something?'
'I'll try to say something.'
'I know you'll say it nicely. You're a gentleman, Mortimer.'
She could not have used a better appeal, simple as it sounded. All through the affair—all through his life, it might be said—he had been a gentleman; he had never been consciously unkind, although he had often been to Trix unconsciously unbearable. Viola Blixworth put him on his honour by the name he reverenced.
'You'll feel better after you've done it—and more like settling down again,' said she. Friendship and auntship mingled. It would comfort Trix to hear that he had no bitterness; it would certainly assist Audrey if he could cease from studying his precise feelings, of any nature whatsoever, about another woman. Lady Blixworth was so accustomed to finding her motives mixed that a moderate degree of adulteration in them had ceased to impair her satisfaction with a useful deed. Besides, is not auntship also praiseworthy? Society said yes, and she never differed from it when its verdicts were convenient.
The letter was written; it was a hard morning's work, for he penned it as carefully as though it were to go into some archives of state. He would say no more than the truth as he had at last reached it; he said no less with equal conscientiousness. The result was stiff with all his stiffness, but there was kindness in it too. It was not forgiveness; it was acquiescence and a measure of understanding. And heconvinced himself more and more as he wrote; in the end he did come very near to saying that there had been mistakes on both sides; he even set it down as a possible hypothesis that the initial error had been his. He had a born respect for written documents, and of written documents not the least of his respect was for his own. He had never felt so sure that there was an end of Trix Trevalla, so far as he was concerned, as when he had put the fact on record over his own signature.
With a sigh he rose and came out into the garden. Audrey sat there reading a novel, which she laid face downwards in her lap at his approach. He took a chair by her, and looked round on the domain that was to be his. Then he glanced at statuesque Audrey. Lady Blixworth viewed them from afar; an instinct told her that the letter had been written. The aunt hoped while the friend rejoiced.
'He must have proved that he needs quite a different wife from Trix, and where could he find one more different?' she mused.
'It's beautiful here in summer, isn't it?' he asked Audrey.
'It must be splendid always,' said she.
'I wish public life allowed me to enjoy more of it.' It is what public men generally say.
'Your work is so important, you see.'
He stretched out his legs and took off his hat.
'But you must rest sometimes,' she urged, with an imploring glance.
'So my mother's always telling me. Well, anyhow, since you like Barslett, I hope you'll stay a long time, Miss Pollington.'
It was not much, but Audrey carried it to Lady Blixworth—or, to put the matter with more propriety, she repeated his remark quite casually. It was not poor Audrey's fault if, in self-defence, she had to make the most of such remarks. Lady Blixworth kissed her niece thoughtfully.
'Another year of my life,' she remarked to thelooking-glass that evening, in the course of a study of time's ravages—'another year or thereabouts will probably see a successful termination to the affair.'
She smiled a little bitterly. Her life, as she understood the term, had few more years to run, and to give up one was a sacrifice. It was, however, no use trying to alter the Barmouth pace. She had done what she could—a good turn to Trix Trevalla, another little lift for Audrey.
'I'm becoming a regular Sarah Bonfill,' she concluded, as she went down to dinner.
The next Saturday Mrs. Bonfill herself came.
'How is Mortimer?' she whispered at the first opportunity.
'My dear Sarah, I doubt if you could have interfered with more tactfulness yourself.'
'And where's dear Audrey?'
'I hope and believe that she's sticking pins into a map to show where the Trans-Euphratic is to run. Kindly pat me on the back, Sarah.'
Mrs. Bonfill's smile was friendly pat enough, but it was all for Audrey; she asked nothing about Trix Trevalla.
Wide apart as the two were, Trix read the letter with something of the feeling under which Mervyn had written it. He was a good man, but not good for her—that seemed to sum up the matter. Perhaps her first smile of genuine mirth since her fall and flight was summoned to her lips by the familiar stiffness, the old careful balance of his sentences, the pain by which he held himself back from lecturing. A smile of another kind recognised his straightforwardness and his chivalry; he wrote like a gentleman, as Viola Blixworth knew he would. She was more in sympathy with him when he deplored the gulf between them than when he had told her it was but a ford which duty called on her to pass. 'How much have I escaped, and how much have I lost?' she asked; but the question came in sadness, not in doubt. It was not hers to taste the good; it would have been hers to drink the evil to the dregs. Reading his letter, she praisedhim and reviled herself; but she rejoiced that she had left him while yet there was time; she rejoiced honestly to see that she would remain in his memory as a thing that was unaccountable, that should not have been, that had come and gone, had given some pain but had done no permanent harm.
'I've got off cheaply,' she thought; her own sufferings were not in her mind, but his; she was glad that her burden of guilt was no heavier. For Mervyn was not as Beaufort Chance; he had done nothing to make her feel that they were quits and her wrong-doing obliterated by the revenge taken for it. She could blame herself less, since even Mervyn seemed to see that, if to begin had been criminal, to go on would have been worse. But bitterness was still in her; her folly seemed still so black, her ruin so humiliating, that she must cry, 'Unfit for him! No, it's for any man that I'm unfit!' Mervyn could but comfort her a little as to what concerned himself; her sin against herself remained unpardoned. And now in her mind that sin had taken on a darker colour; since she had looked in Airey Newton's eyes she could not believe herself the woman who had done such things. The man who, having found the pearl, went and sold all that he had and bought the field where it lay, doubtless did well and was well-pleased. What did the vendor feel who bartered his right for a small price because he had overlooked the pearl?
Mervyn showed her reply to Lady Blixworth—another proof that Aunt Viola was advancing in his confidence, and repressing natural emotions with a laudable devotion to duty. Upon this Lady Blixworth wrote to Peggy Ryle:—
'This letter is not,' she said, 'to praise myself, Peggy, nor to point out my many virtues, but to ask a question. I have indeed done much good. Mortimer is convinced that immutable laws were in fault—and I agree, since the dulness of Barslett and the family preachiness are absolutely immutable. Trix is convinced too—and again I agree, since Trix is naturally both headlong and sincere, an awful combinationif one were married to Mortimer. So I praise myself for having made both of them resigned, and presently to be cheerful! Needless to say, I praise myself on another score, and am backing myself to mother young women against Sarah Bonfill herself (who, by the way, is here, and resettles the Cabinet twice a day—mere bravado, I believe, after her shocking blunders, but Sarah bravadoes with a noble solidity that makes the thing almost a British quality!). I wander! What I really ask—and I want to ask it in italics—is,Whom is she in love with?Trix, I mean, of course. I am not in telegraphic, telephonic, or telepathic communication with her, but she says in her letter to Mortimer, "I was not fit for you. Am I fit for any man?" My dear, believe your elders when you can, and listen in silence when you can't! In all my experience I never knew a woman ask that question unless she was in love. Heavens, do we want to be fit for or to please the Abstract Man? Not a bit of it, Peggy! The idea is even revolting, as a thousand good ladies would prove to you. "Am I fit for any man?" Who's "any man," Peggy? Let's have his name and the street where he resides. For my part, I believed there was a man at the back of it all the time—which was no great sagacity—and I said so to Lord Barmouth—which I felt to be audacity. Peggy, tell me his name. "Am I fit for any man?" Poor Trix is still rather upset and melodramatic! But we know what it means. And what are you doing? Do you want a husband? Here am I, started in trade as an honest broker! Come along!'
This letter, Peggy felt, was in a way consoling; she hoped that Trix was in love. But so far as it seemed to be intended to be amusing, Peggy really didn't see it. The fact is, Peggy was in a mood to perceive wit only of the clearest and most commanding quality. Things were very dark indeed, just these days, with Peggy. However, she replied to Lady Blixworth, said she had no notion what she meant, but told her that she was a good friend and a good aunt.