It was no wonder that Trix Trevalla was holding up her head again. Her neck was freed from a triple load. Mervyn was gone, and gone, she had warrant for believing, if not in contentment, yet in some degree of charity. Beaufort Chance, that terror of hers, whose coarse rebukes made justice seem base cruelty, was gone too—and Trix was still unregenerate enough not to care a jot with what feelings. His fate seemed so exquisitely appropriate to him as to exclude penitence in her. Lastly, Fricker was gone, and with him the damning sense of folly, of being a silly dupe, which had weighed more sorely than anything else on a spirit full of pride. Never a doubt had she about Fricker's letter. He had indeed been honourable in his dealing with Peggy Ryle; he had left Trix to think that in surrendering the shares to him she fell in with a business proposal which he was interested in making, and that she gave at least as good as she received. It needed very little more to make her believe that she was conferring a favour on him, and thereby cancelling the last item of the score that he once had against her. Surely, then, Peggy was both wise and merciful in arguing that she should not know the truth, but should still think that she was in debt to no man for her emancipation.
Let not Peggy's mercy be disputed, nor her wisdom either; for these points are immaterial. The fault that young lady did commit lay in a little oversight. It is well to decide that a secret shall be kept; but it is prudent, as a preliminary thereto, to consider how many people alreadyknow it or are in a position where they may find it out. Since, though the best thing of all may be that it should never be told, the second best is often to tell it oneself—and the worst of all to leave the telling in the hands of an enemy. It is just possible that Peggy had grown a little too confident with all her successful generalship. At any rate this oversight of hers made not a little trouble.
'Dear Mr. Trent,—Come to me immediately, please. I have heard a most extraordinary story. I can hardly believe it, but I must see you at once. I shall be at home from six to seven and later.'Yours truly,'Trix Trevalla.'
'Dear Mr. Trent,—Come to me immediately, please. I have heard a most extraordinary story. I can hardly believe it, but I must see you at once. I shall be at home from six to seven and later.
'Yours truly,'Trix Trevalla.'
'Now what's the meaning of that?' asked Tommy, smoothing his hat and setting out again without so much as sitting down for a pipe after he got back from the City. 'Has Peggy been up to mischief again?' He frowned; he had not forgiven Peggy. It is not safe to discourage a standard which puts the keeping of promises very high and counts any argument which tends the other way in a particular case as dangerous casuistry. Tommy's temperament was dead against casuistry; perhaps, to be candid, his especial gifts of intellect constituted no temptation to the art.
Trix received him with chilling haughtiness. Evidently something was wrong. And the wrong thing was to be visited on the first chance-comer—just like a woman, thought Tommy, hasty in his inference and doubtless unjust in his psychology. In a few moments he found that he was considered by no means a chance-comer in this affair; nor had he been sent for merely as an adviser. Before Trix really opened the case at all, he had discovered that in some inexplicable way he was a culprit; the tones in which she bade him sit down were enough to show any intelligent man as much.
Trix might be high and mighty, but the assumption of thismanner hid a very sore heart. If what she was now told were true, the last and greatest burden had not been taken away, and still she was shamed. But this inner mind could not be guessed from her demeanour.
'We've been good friends, Mr. Trent,' she began, 'and I have to thank you for much kindness——'
'Not at all. That's all right, really, Mrs. Trevalla.'
'But I'm forced to ask you,' she continued with overriding imperturbability, 'by what right you concern yourself in my affairs?'
Tommy had a temper, and rather a quick one. He had been a good deal vexed lately too. In his heart he thought that rather too much fuss had been occasioned by and about Mrs. Trevalla; this was, perhaps, one of the limitations of sympathy to which lovers are somewhat subject.
'I don't,' he answered rather curtly.
'Oh, I suppose you're in the plot to deceive me!' she flashed out.
If he were, it was very indirectly, and purely as a business man. He had been asked whether the law could reach Fricker, and had been obliged to answer that it could not. He had been told subsequently to raise money on certain securities. That was his whole connection with the matter.
'But don't you think you were taking a liberty—an enormous liberty? You'll say it was kindness. Well, I don't dispute your motive, but it was presumption too.' Trix's disappointment was lashing her into a revenging fury. 'What right had you to turn me into a beggar, to make me take your money, to think I'd live on your charity?' She flung the question at him with a splendid scorn.
Tommy wrinkled his brow in hopeless perplexity.
'On my honour, I don't know what you're talking about,' he declared. 'My charity? I've never offered you charity, Mrs. Trevalla.'
'You brazen it out?' she cried.
'I don't know about brazening,' said Tommy with a wry smile. 'I say it's all nonsense, if that's what you mean.Somebody's been——' He pulled himself up on the edge of an expression not befitting the seriousness of the occasion. 'Somebody's been telling you a cock-and-bull story.'
'What other explanation is there?'
'I might possibly discover one if you'd begin at the beginning,' suggested Tommy with hostile blandness.
'I will begin at the beginning, as you call it,' said Trix, with a contempt for his terminology that seemed hardly warranted. She took a letter from her pocket. 'This is from Mr. Beaufort Chance.'
'That fellow!' ejaculated Tommy.
'Yes, that fellow, Mr. Trent. Mr. Fricker's friend, his partner. Listen to this.' She sought a passage a little way down the first page. 'Not so clever as you think!' she read. 'Glowing Stars were as pure a fraud as ever you thought them. But any story's good enough for you, and you believed Fricker took them back. So he did—for a matter of three thousand pounds. And he could have had four if he liked. That's what your cleverness is worth.' Trix's voice faltered. She got it under control and went on with flushed cheeks, the letter shaking in her hand. 'Who paid the money? Ask Peggy Ryle. Has Peggy Ryle got thousands to throw about? Which of your charming new friends has? Ask Miss Peggy who'd give four thousand for her smiles! If she doesn't know, I should think you might inquire of Tommy Trent.' Trix stopped. 'There's some more about—about me, but it doesn't matter,' she ended.
Tommy Trent pulled his moustache. Here was a very awkward situation. 'Beaufort Chance's last kick was a nasty one. Why couldn't Fricker have held his tongue, instead of indulging his partner with such entertaining confidences?
'Well, what have you to say to that?' His puzzled face and obvious confusion seemed to give her the answer. With something like a sob she cried, 'Ah, you daren't deny it!'
It was difficult for Tommy. It seemed simple indeed to deny that he had given Peggy any money; he might strainhis conscience and declare that he knew nothing of any money being given. What would happen? Of a certainty Peggy Ryle could not dispose of thousands. He foresaw how Trix would track out the truth by her persistent and indignant questions. The truth would implicate his friend Airey Newton, and he himself would stand guilty of just such a crime as that for which he held Peggy so much to blame. His thoughts of Beaufort Chance were deep and dark.
'I can't explain it,' he stammered at length. 'All I know is——'
'I want the truth! Can I never have the truth?' cried Trix. 'Even a letter like that I'm glad of, if it tells me the truth. And I thought——' The bitterness of being deluded was heavy on her again. She attacked Tommy fiercely. 'On your honour do you know nothing about it? On your honour did Peggy pay Mr. Fricker money? On your honour did you give it her?'
The single word 'Woman!' would have summed up Tommy's most intimate feelings. It was, however, too brief for diplomacy, or for a man who wished to keep possession of the floor and exclude further attacks from an opponent in an overpowering superiority.
'What I've always noticed,' he began in a deliberate tone, 'about women is that if they write you the sort of note that looks as if you were the only friend they had on earth, or the only fellow whose advice would save 'em from ruin, and you come on that understanding—well, as soon as they get you there, they proceed to drop on you like a thousand of bricks.'
The simile was superficially inappropriate to Trix's trim tense figure; it had a deeper truth, though.
'If you'd answer my questions——' she began in an ominous and deceptive calm.
'Which of them?' cried Tommy in mad exasperation.
'Take them in any order you please,' she conceded graciously.
Tommy's back was against the wall; he fought desperatelyfor his own honour, desperately for his friends' secrets. One of the friends had betrayed his. She was a girl.Cadit quæstio.
'If I had supposed that this was going to be a business interview——'
'And about your business, it seems, though I thought it was mine! Am I living on your charity?'
'No!' he thundered out, greeting the simple question and the possible denial. 'I've never paid a shilling for you.' His tone implied that he was content, moreover, to leave that state of affairs as it was.
'Then on whose?' asked Trix. Her voice became pathetic; her attitude was imploring now. She blamed herself for this, thinking it lost her all command. How profoundly wrong she was Tommy's increased distress witnessed very plainly.
'I say, now, let's discuss it calmly. Now just suppose—just take the hypothesis——'
Trix turned from him with a quick jerk of her head. The baize door outside had swung to and fro. Tommy heard it too; his eye brightened; there was no intruder whom he would not have welcomed, from the tax-collector to the bull of Bashan; he would have preferred the latter as being presumably the more violent.
'There, somebody's coming! I told you it was no place to discuss things of this kind, Mrs. Trevalla.'
'Of all cowardly creatures, men are——' began Trix.
A low, gently crooned song reached them from the passage. The words were not very distinct—Peggy sang to please herself, not to inform the world—but the air was soothing and the tones tender. Yet neither of them seemed moved to artistic enjoyment.
'Peggy, by Jove!' whispered Tommy in a fearful voice.
'Now we can have the truth,' said Trix. She spoke almost like a virago; but when she sat at the table, her chin between her hands, she turned on Tommy such a pitiful, harassed face that he could have cried with her.
In came Peggy; she had been to one or two places since Danes Inn, but the glory and gaiety of her visit there hung about her still. She entered gallantly. Then she saw Tommy—and Tommy only at first.
'Oh!' she exclaimed. 'Are you waiting for me?'
Her joy fled; that was strange, since it was Tommy. But there he sat, and sat frowning. It was the day of reckoning!
'I've—I've been meaning to come and see you,' Peggy went on hastily, 'and—and explain.'
'I must ask you to explain to me first, Peggy.'
This from a most forbidding, majestic Trix, hitherto unperceived. She had summoned her forces again; the pleading pitifulness was gone from her face. Tommy reproached himself for a sneak and a coward, but for the life of him he could not help thinking, 'Now they can fight it out together!'
At first Peggy was relieved; atête-à-têtewas avoided. She did not dream that her secret was found out. Who would have thought of Fricker's taste for a good story or of that last kick of malice in Beaufort Chance?
'Oh, there you are too, Trix! So glad to find you. I've only run in for just a minute to change my frock before I go out to dinner with the——'
'It's only a quarter to seven. I want to ask you a question first.'
Trix's chilliness was again most pronounced and unmistakable. Peggy glanced at Tommy; a sullen and wilfully uninforming shrug of the shoulders was all that she got. Peggy had enjoyed the day very much; she was young enough to expect the evening to be like it; she protested vigorously against this sort of atmosphere.
'What's the matter with you both?' she cried.
Trix came straight to the point this time. She would have doubted Beaufort if he had brought gifts in his hand; she did not doubt him when he came with a knife.
'Whose money did you give Mr. Fricker to buy me off?' she asked. She held out her letter to Peggy.
Without a word, beyond a word, Peggy took it and read. Yes, there it was. No honour among thieves! None between her and Fricker! Stay, he had said he would not tell Trix; he had never said or written that he would not tell his partner Beaufort Chance. The letter of the bond! And he had professed to disapprove of Shylock! All that she had ever said about his honourable dealing, all that handsome testimonial of hers, Peggy took back on the spot. Thus did the whole of the beautiful scheme go awry!
'Trix dearest——' she began.
'My question, please,' said Trix Trevalla. But she had not the control to stop there. 'All of you, all of you!' she broke out passionately. 'Even you, Peggy! Have I no friend left—nobody who'll treat me openly, not play with me as if I were a child, and a silly child? What can I believe? Oh, it's too hard for me!' Again her face sank between her hands; again was the awakening very bitter to her.
They sat silent. Both were loyal; both felt as though they were found out in iniquity.
'You did it?' asked Trix in a dull voice, looking across at Peggy.
There was no way out of that. But where was the exultation of the achievement, where the glory?
'Forgive me, dear; forgive me,' Peggy murmured, almost with a sob.
'Your own money?'
'Mine!' echoed Peggy, between a sob and a laugh now.
'Whose?' Trix asked. There was no answer. She turned on Tommy. 'Whose?' she demanded again.
They would not answer. It waspeine forte et dure; they were crushed, but they made no answer. Trix rose from her chair. Her manner was tragic, and no pretence went to give that impression.
'I—I'm not equal to it,' she declared. 'It drives me mad. But I have one friend still. I'll go to him. He'll find out the truth for me and tell it me. He'll make you take back your money and give me back my shares.'
Irresistibly the man of business found voice in Tommy Trent. An appeal to instinct beats everything.
'Do you really suppose,' he asked, 'that old Fricker will disgorge three thousand pounds?'
'That's it!' cried Trix. 'Look what that makes of me! And I thought——'
'The money's past praying for now, anyhow,' said Tommy, in a sort of gloomy satisfaction. There is, as often observed, a comfort in knowing the worst.
'I'll go to him,' said Trix. 'I can trust him. He wouldn't betray me behind my back. He'll tell me the truth as—as I told it to him. Yes, I'll go to Mr. Newton.'
It was odd, but neither of them had anticipated the name. It struck on them with all the unexpectedness of farce. On a moment's reflection it had the proper inevitability of tragedy. Tommy was blankly aghast; he could make nothing of it. In all its mingled effect, the poignancy of its emotion, the ludicrousness of its coincidences, the situation was more than Peggy Ryle could bear. She fell to laughing feebly—laughing though miserable at heart.
'Yes, I'll go to Airey Newton. He won't laugh at me, and he'll let me have the truth.' She turned on them again. 'I've treated some people badly; I've never treated you badly,' she cried. 'Why should you play tricks on me? Why should you laugh? And I was ready to turn from all the world to you! But now—yes, I'll go to Airey Newton.'
Fortune had not done yet; she had another effect in store. Yet she used no far-fetched materials—only a man's desire to see the woman whom he had come to love. There was nothing extraordinary about this. The wonder would have been had he taken an hour longer in coming.
Peggy heard the step on the stairs; the others heard it a second later. Again Tommy brightened up in the hope of a respite—ah, let it be a stranger, someone outside all secrets, whose presence would drive them underground! Trix's denunciations were stayed. Did she know the step? Peggy knew it. 'You'll go to her soon?' 'This very night, mydear.' The snatch of talk came back to her in blazing vividness.
The baize door swung to and fro. 'All right, Mrs. Welling; I'll knock,' came in well-known tones.
'Why, it is Mr. Newton!' cried Trix, turning a glance of satisfied anger on her pair of miserable culprits.
Tommy was paralysed. Peggy rose and retreated into a corner of the room. A chair was in her way; she caught hold of it and held it in front of her, seeming to make it a barricade. She was very upset still, but traitorous laughter played about the corners of her mouth—it reconnoitred, seeking to make its position good. Aggressive satisfaction breathed from Trix Trevalla as she waited for the opening of the door.
Airey put his head inside.
'Mrs. Welling told me I should find you,' he began; for Trix's was the first figure that he saw.
'You find us all, old fellow,' interrupted Tommy Trent, with malicious and bitter jocularity.
At this information Airey's face did not glow with pleasure. Friends are friends, but sometimes their appropriate place is elsewhere. He carried it off well though, exclaiming:
'What, you? And Peggy too?'
Trix had no idea of allowing wandering or diversions.
'I was just coming round to Danes Inn, Mr. Newton,' she said, in a voice resolute but trembling.
'To Danes Inn?' The listeners detected a thrill of pleasure in his voice.
'Yes, to see you. I want your help. I want you to tell me something. Peggy here——' she pointed a scornful finger at Peggy entrenched in the corner behind her chair, and looking as though she thought that personal violence was not out of the possible range of events—'Peggy here has been kind—what she calls kind, I suppose—to me. She's been to Mr. Fricker and paid him a lot of money to get me out of Glowing Stars—to persuade him to let me out of them.You told me there was some hope of them. You were wrong. There was none. But Peggy went and bought me out. Mr. Chance has written and told me so.'
Airey had never got further than the threshold. He stood there listening.
Trix went on, in a level hard voice: 'He thinks Mr. Trent found the money. It was three thousand pounds—it might have been four. I don't know why Mr. Fricker only took three when he might have had four.'
For an instant Airey glanced at Peggy's face.
'But whether it was three or four, it couldn't have been Peggy's own money. I've asked Peggy whose it was. I've asked Mr. Trent whether it was his. I can't get any answer out of either of them. They both seem to think there's no need to answer me. They both seem to think that I've been such a—such a—— Oh, what shall I do?' She dropped suddenly into a chair and hid her face in her hands.
At last Airey Newton advanced slowly towards her.
'Come, come, Mrs. Trevalla,' he began.
Trix raised her face to his. 'So, as I had no other friend—no other friend I could trust—and they wouldn't help me, I was coming to you. You won't forsake me? You'll tell me the truth?' Her voice rose strong again for a minute. 'This is terribly hard to bear,' she said, 'because I'd come to think it was all right, and that I hadn't been a wretched dupe. And now I have! And my own dear friends have done it too! First my enemies, then my friends!'
Tommy Trent cleared his throat, and looked shamefully indifferent; but for no apparent reason he stood up. Peggy sallied suddenly from her entrenchments, ran to Trix, and fell on her knees beside her.
'Trix, dear Trix!' she murmured.
'Yes, I daresay you loved me, but it's too hard, Peggy.' Trix's voice was hard and unforgiving still.
Was the position desperate? So far as Fortune's caprice went, so it seemed. Among the three the secret was gone beyond recall. Not falsehood the most thorough norpretence the most artistic could save it. The fine scheme of keeping Trix in the dark now and telling her at some future moment—some future moment of idyllic peace—was hopelessly gone. Now in the stress of the thing, in the face of the turmoil of her spirit, she must be told. It was from this that Tommy Trent had shrunk—from this no less than from the injury to his plighted word. At the idea of this Peggy had cowered even more than from any superstitious awe of the same obligation binding her.
But Airey Newton did not appear frightened nor at a loss. His air was gentle but quite decided, his manner quiet but confident. A calm happiness seemed to be about him. There was subtle amusement in his glance at his two friends; the same thing was not absent from his eyes when they turned to Trix, although it was dominated by something tenderer. Above all, he seemed to know what to do.
Tommy watched him with surprised admiration. The gladdest of smiles broke out suddenly on Peggy's face. She darted from Trix to him and stood by him, saying just 'Airey!'
He took her hand for a moment and patted it. 'It's all right,' said he.
Trix's drooping head was raised again; her eyes too were on him now.
'All right?' she echoed in wondering tones.
'Yes, we can put all this straight directly. But——'
There was the first hint of embarrassment in his manner.
'But what?' asked Trix.
He had no chance to answer her. 'Yes, yes!' burst from Peggy in triumphant understanding. She ran across to Tommy and caught him by the arm. 'There's only my room, but that must do for once,' she cried.
'What? What do you mean?' he inquired.
'Peggy's right,' said Airey, smiling. There was no doubt that he felt equal to the situation. He seemed a new man to Peggy, and her heart grew warm; even Tommy looked at him with altered eyes.
'The fact is, Tommy,' said Airey easily, 'I think I can explain this better to Mrs. Trevalla if you leave us alone.'
Trix's head was raised; her eyes leapt to meet his. She did not yet understand—her idea of him was too deep-rooted. It was trust that her eyes spoke, not understanding.
'Leave us alone,' said Airey Newton.
Peggy beckoned to Tommy, and herself made towards the door. As she passed Airey, he smiled at her. 'All right!' he whispered again.
Then Peggy knew. She ran into the passage and thence to her room. Tommy followed, amazed and rather rueful.
'We must wait here. You may smoke,' said she kindly; but she added eagerly, 'and so will I.'
'But, I say, Peggy——'
'Wasn't it just splendid that he should come then?'
'Capital for us! But he did it, you know!' Tommy's tone was awestruck.
'Why, of course he did it, Tommy.'
'Then, in my opinion, he's in for a precious nasty quarter of an hour.'
Peggy plumped down on the bed, and her laugh rang out in mellow gentleness again.
'Doesn't it strike you that she might forgive him what she wouldn't forgive us?' she asked.
'By Jove! Because she's in love with him?'
'Oh, I suppose that's not a reason for forgiveness with everybody,' murmured Peggy, smoking hard.
With the departure of the other two, Trix's tempestuousness finally left her; it had worn itself out—and her. She sat very quiet, watching Airey Newton with a look that was saved from forlorn despair only by a sort of appeal; it witnessed to a hope which smouldered still, and might burn again if he would fan it. A sense of great physical fatigue was on her; she lay back in a collapse of energy, her head resting against the chair, her hands relaxed and idle on the arms of it.
'What a pity we can't leave it just where it is!' said Airey with a compassionate smile. 'Because we can't really put it all straight to-night; that'll take ever so much longer.' He sighed, and smiled at her. He came and laid his hand on one of hers. 'If I've got a life worth living, it's through you,' he told her. 'You were very angry with Tommy Trent, who had nothing to do with it. You were very, very angry with poor Peggy. Well, she was partly responsible; I don't forget that. But in the end it's a thing between you and me. We haven't seen so very much of one another—not if you count by time at least; but ever since that night at Paris there seems to have been something uniting us. Things that happened to you affected me, and—well, anyhow, you used to feel you had to come and tell me about them.'
He caressed her hand gently, and then walked away to the window.
'Yes, I used to feel that,' said Trix softly. 'I came and told you even—even bad things.'
'You chose your man well,' he went on. 'Better than you knew. If you had known, it wouldn't have been fair to choose a confessor so much worse than yourself. But you didn't know. I believe you thought quite highly of me!' There was no bitterness about him, rather a tone of exultation, almost of amusement. He took hold of a chair, brought it nearer to her, and rested his knee on it. 'There was a man who loved a woman and knew that she was ruined. There was no doubt about it. A friend told him; the woman herself told him. The friend said: "You can help." The woman he loved said, "Nobody can help." He could help, but even still he wouldn't. The friend said, "You can give her back life and her care about living." She said, "I have no joy now in living"—her eyes said that to him. Come, guess what his answer was! Can you guess? No, by heaven, nobody in the world could guess! He answered, "Yes, perhaps, but it would cost too much."'
For an instant she glanced at his face; she found him smiling still.
'That's what he said,' Airey pursued, in a tone of cheerful sarcasm. 'The fellow said it would cost too much. Prudent man, wasn't he? Careful and circumspect, setting a capital example to the thriftless folk we see all about us. It was suggested to him—oh, very delicately!—that it was hardly the occasion to count pennies. Then he got as far as asking that the thing should be reduced to figures. The figures appalled him!' A dry chuckle made her look again; she smiled faintly, in sympathy, not in understanding.
'Remarkable fellow, wasn't he? And the best of it was that the woman he loved was so cut up about being ruined and not having made a success of it altogether that she thought it very condescending and noble of him to show any concern about her or to trouble to give her advice. Now this man was always most ready to give advice; all his friends relied on him for that. As far as advice went, he was one of the most generous men in England. Well, there she lay—in the dust, as somebody put it to him. But, as Isay, when it came to figures, the cost of raising her was enormous. Are you feeling an admiration for this hero? Don't you think that the worst, the foolishest woman on earth would have been a bit too good for him? This little trouble of his about figures he had once described as a propensity.'
She leant forward suddenly and looked hard at him. He saw her breath come more quickly.
Airey pulled his beard and continued, smiling still: 'That was the position. Then a girl came to him, a very dangerous girl in my opinion, one who goes about sowing love all over the place in an indiscriminate and hazardous fashion—she carries it about her everywhere, from her shoes to the waves of her hair. She came to him and said, "Well, you're a pretty fellow, aren't you? I've got twopence that I'm going to give. We want tenpence. Out with eightpence, please," said she. "Why so?" he asked, with his hand tight on the eightpence. "She's got ruined just on purpose to give you the chance," said she. That was rather a new point of view to him—but she said it no less.'
'Tell it me plainly,' Trix implored.
'I'm telling it quite plainly,' Airey insisted. 'At last he forked out the tenpence—and sat down and groaned and cried. Lord, how he cried over that tenpence! Till one day the girl came back again and——'
'I thought she only asked for eightpence?' put in Trix, with a swift glance.
'Did I say that? Oh, well, that's not material. She came back, and laid twopence on the table, and said eightpence had been enough. He was just going to grab the twopence and put it back in his pocket again, when she said, "Wouldn't it be nice to spend it?" "Spend it? What on?" he cried. "A new soul," said she, in that wholesale reckless way of hers. "If you get a new soul, she may like you. You can't suppose she'd like you with the one you've got?" She could be candid at times, that girl—oh, all in a very delicate way! So they went out together in a hansomcab, and drove to the soul shop and bought one. There's a ready-made soul shop, if you know where to find it. It's dearer than the others, but they don't keep you waiting, and you can leave the worn-out article behind you.'
'Well?'
'He liked the feel of the new soul, and began to thank the girl for it. And she said, "Don't thank me. I didn't do it." So he thanked her just a little—but the rest of his thanks he kept.'
There was a long silence. Trix gazed before her with wide-open eyes. Airey tilted his chair gently to and fro.
'You paid the money for me?' she asked at last in a dull voice.
'I gave it and Peggy took it. We did it between us.'
'Was it all yours or any of hers?'
'It was all mine. In the end I had that decency about me.' He went on with a touch of eagerness: 'But it wasn't giving the money; any churl must have done that. It's that now—to-day—I rejoice in it. I thank God the money's gone. And when some came back I wouldn't have it. Ah, there was the last tug—it was so easy to take it back! But no, we went out and—wasted it!' He gave a low, delighted laugh. 'By Jove, how we wasted it!' he repeated with a relish.
'Of all people in the world I never thought of you.'
'What I called my life was half-spent in making it impossible that you should.'
'Where did you get the money from?'
The last touch of his old shame, the last remnant of his old secret triumph, showed in his face.
'I had five or six times as much—there in the safe at Danes Inn. It lay there accumulating, accumulating, accumulating. That was my delight.'
'You were rich?'
'I had made a good income for five or six years. You know what I spent. Will you give a name to what was mypropensity?' For an instant he was bitter. The mood passed; he laughed again.
'You must have been very miserable?' she concluded.
'Worse than that. I was rather happy. Happy, but afraid. A week ago I should have fled to the ends of the earth sooner than tell you. I couldn't have borne to be found out.'
'I know, I know,' she cried, in quick understanding. 'I felt that at——' She stopped in embarrassment. Airey's nod saved her the rest.
'But now I can talk of it. I don't mind now. I'm free.' He broke into open laughter. 'I've spent a thousand pounds to-day. It sounds too deliciously impossible.'
She gave a passing smile; she had not seen the thing done, and hardly appreciated it. Her mind flew back to herself again.
'And you bought Mr. Fricker off? You ransomed me?'
'You were angry with Tommy, you were angry with Peggy'—he turned his chair round suddenly and rested his hands on the back of it—'are you angry with me?'
She made a gesture of petulant protest. 'It leaves me a helpless fool again,' she murmured.
'It was the price of my liberty more than of yours. I had a right—a right—to pay it. Won't you come to the soul shop too? I've been there now; I can show you the way. There was my life—and yours. What was I to do?'
'You meant to deceive me?'
'Yes.' He paused an instant. 'Unless there ever came a time when you would like to be undeceived—when it might seem better to have been helped than not to have needed help. Well, Beaufort Chance upset that scheme. Here we are, face to face with the truth. We've not been that before. How we made pretence with one another!' He shook his head in half-humorous reprobation. She saw with wonder how little unhappy he was about it all, how it all seemed to him a bygone thing, a strange dream which mightretain its meaning and its interest, but ceased to have living importance the moment dawning day put it to flight.
'You told me you weren't cured,' he went on. 'That you still wanted the old life, the old ambition—that my advice still appealed to you. That fatal advice of mine! It did half the mischief. Don't you see my right to pay the money in that again? Still, I tell you, I didn't pay it for you; I paid it for myself.'
'I can give you no return for it.'
'I ask none. The return I have got I've told you. I am free.' He loved the thought; again it brought a smile to his lips. 'There's no question of a return from you to me.'
'Yes, but I shall owe you everything,' she cried. 'The very means of living decently!' Her pride was in arms again as the truth came back to her.
'Then sell all you have and repay me the money,' he suggested. 'Say I'm Fricker. There'll be nobody to buy me off, as Peggy and I bought Fricker off.'
'What?' she exclaimed, startled into betraying her surprise.
'Pay it back,' he cried gaily. 'Pay it all back. I'll take it. I'm not afraid of money now. It might come rolling into Danes Inn—in barrels! Like beer-casks! And a couple of draymen hard on the rope! I shouldn't so much as turn round. I shouldn't count the barrels—I should go on counting the sparrows on the roof. I've not the least objection to be repaid.'
She fell into silence. Airey began strolling about the room again; he smoked a cigarette while she sat without speaking, with her brows knit and her hands now clenching the arms of her chair. Suddenly she broke out in a new protest.
'Oh, that's not it, that's not it! Paying the money back wouldn't cure it. As far as that goes, I could have paid Fricker myself. It's the failure. It's the failure and the shame. Nothing can cure that.'
'Think of my failure, think of my shame! Worse thanyours! You only set about living a little bit in the wrong way. I never set about living at all! I shut out at least a half of life. I refused it. Isn't that the great refusal?'
'You had your work. You worked well?'
'Yes, I did do that. Well, shall we give that half? I had half a life then.'
'And what had I?'
'At least that. More, I think, in spite of everything.'
'And you can forget the failure and the shame?'
'I can almost laugh at them.'
She held out her hands to him, crying again for help:
'How? How?'
A low sound of singing came through the door. Peggy beguiled the vigil with a song. Airey held up his hand for silence. Trix listened; the tears gathered in her eyes.
'Does that say nothing to you?' he asked as the song died away. 'Does that give you no hint of our mistake? No clue to where the rest of life lies? Life isn't taking in only, it's giving out too. And it's not giving out only work, or deeds, or things we've made. It's giving ourselves out too—freely, freely!'
'Giving ourselves out?'
'Yes, to other people. Giving ourselves in comradeship, in understanding, in joy, in love. Oh, good Lord, fancy not having found that out before! What a roundabout road to find it! Hedges and briars and bleeding shins!' He laughed gently. 'But she knows it,' he said, pointing to the door. 'She goes on the royal road to it—straight on the King's highway. She goes blindfold too, which is a funny thing. She couldn't even tell you where she was going.'
Another snatch of song came. It was sentimental in character, but it ended abruptly in uncontrolled gurgles of a mirth free from all such weakness.
'Yes, she gets there, dainty, trim, serene!'
He shook his head, smiling with an infinite affection. Trix Trevalla leant her head on her hand and regarded him with searching eyes.
'Yes, that's true of her,' she said, 'that's true. You've found out the meaning of it.'
'Everything's so plain to find out to-day.'
'Then surely you must be in love with her?' Her eyes were grave and curious still. 'How can you help it? She mayn't love you, but that makes no difference. How can you help loving her?'
'Does it make no difference? I don't know.' He came across to Trix. 'We've travelled the bad road together, you and I,' he said softly. 'I may have seen her far off—against the sky—and steered a course by hers. The course isn't everything. But for your arm I should have fallen by the way. And—should you never have fallen if you'd been quite alone? Or did you fall and need to be picked up again?'
He took both her hands and she let them lie in his; but she still looked at him in fear and doubt, unable to rise to his serenity, unable to put the past behind her as he did. The spectres rose and seemed to bar the path, crying to her that she had no right to tread it.
'I've grown so hard, I've been so hard. Can I forget what I've been and what I've done? Sha'n't I always hear them accusing me? Can I trust myself not to want to go back again? It seems to me that I've lost the power of doing what you say.'
'Never,' said Airey confidently. 'Never!' His smile broke out again. 'Well, certainly not your side of thirty,' he amended, trying to make her laugh.
'Oh, ask Mrs. Bonfill, or Lord Mervyn, or Beaufort Chance of me!'
'They'd all tell me the truth of what they know, I don't doubt it.'
'And you know it too!' she cried, in a sort of shrinking wonder.
'To be sure I know it,' he agreed cheerfully. 'Wasn't I walking beside you all the way?'
'Tell me,' she said. 'If you'd really been a very poorman, as we all believed you were, would you ever have thought it wise or possible to marry a woman like me?'
She had an eye for a searching question. Airey perceived that.
'Most pertinent, if I were poor! But now you see I'm not. I'm well off—and I'm a prodigal.'
'Ah, you know the truth, you never would!'
'I can't know the truth. I shall find it out only if you marry me now.'
'Suppose I said yes? I said yes to Mortimer Mervyn!'
'And you ran away because——'
'Because I told him——'
'Let me put it in my way, please,' interrupted Airey, suavely but decisively. 'Because you weren't a perfect individual, and he was a difficult person to explain that to. Isn't that about it?'
Trix made a woeful gesture; that was rather less than it, she thought.
'And what did he do? Did he come after you? Did he say, "The woman I love is in trouble; she's ruined; she's so ashamed that she couldn't tell the truth even to me. Even from me she has fled, because she has become unbearable to herself and is terrified of me"? Did he say that? And did he put his traps in a bag, and take a special train, and come after you?'
Trix's lips curved in an irrepressible smile at this picture of a line of conduct imputed, even hypothetically, to the Under-Secretary for War. 'He didn't do exactly that,' she murmured.
'Not he! He said, "She's come a cropper—that's her look-out. But people who come croppers won't do for me. No croppers in the Barmouth family! We don't like them; we aren't accustomed to them in the Barmouth family. I've my career," he said. "That's more to me than she is."' Airey paused a moment and held up an emphatic finger. 'In point of fact, that miserable man, Mervyn, behaved exactly as I should have done a fortnight ago. Substitutehis prejudices and his career for my safe and my money, and he and I would be exactly the same—I mean, a fortnight ago. If ever a man lost a woman by his own act, Mervyn is the man!'
'So if I say yes to you, and run away——?'
'The earth isn't big enough to hide you, nor the railway fares big enough to stop me.'
'And Beaufort Chance?' she murmured, trying him again.
'Men who buy love get the sort of love that's for sale,' he answered in brief contempt.
She smiled as, leaning forward, she put her last question.
'And Mr. Fricker?' said she.
Airey gave a tug at his beard and a puzzled whimsical glance at her.
'Do you press me as to that?'
'Yes, of course I do. What about Mr. Fricker?'
'Well, from all I can learn, it does appear to me that you behaved in a damned shabby way to Fricker. I've not a word to say for you there, not one.'
The answer was so unexpected, so true, so honest, that Trix's laughter rang out in genuine merriment for the first time for many days.
'And when old Fricker saw his chance, I don't wonder that he gave you a nasty dig. It was pure business with Fricker—and you went back on him all along the line!'
She looked at him with eyes still newly mirthful. He had dismissed Beaufort Chance and Mervyn contemptuously enough; one had sought to barter where no barter should be; the other had lost his prize because he did not know how to value it. But when Airey spoke of Fricker's wrongs, there was real and convinced indignation in his voice; in Fricker's interest he did not spare the woman he loved.
'How funny!' she said. 'I've never felt very guilty about Mr. Fricker.'
'You ought to. That was worst of all, in my opinion,' he insisted.
'Well, I was afraid you'd quite acquitted me! Should you be always throwing Mr. Fricker in my face?'
'On occasions probably. I can't resist a good argumentative point. You've got the safe and the red book, you know.'
'I'd sooner die than remind you of them.'
'Nonsense! I sha'n't care in the least,' said Airey.
'Then what will be the good of them to me?' He laughed. But she grew serious, saying, 'I shall care about Mr. Fricker, though.'
'Then don't ask me what I think again.'
He laughed, took a turn the length of the room, and came quickly and suddenly back to her.
'Well, is the unforgivable forgiven?' he asked, standing opposite to her.
'The unforgivable? What do you mean?' she said, with a little start of surprise. He had struck sharply across her current of thought.
'What you couldn't have forgiven Tommy, or Peggy, or anybody? What you couldn't possibly forgive me? You know.' His smile mocked her. 'My having sent the money to Fricker.'
'Oh, I'd forgotten all about it!'
'Things forgotten are things forgiven—and the other way round too. Forgiving, but not forgetting—don't you recognise the twang of hard-hearted righteousness?' He came up to her. 'It was very unforgivable—and you forgot it! Haven't you stumbled on the right principle, Trix?'
She did not rise to any philosophic or general principle. She followed her feeling and gave it expression—or a hint of expression, her eyes being left to fill in the context.
'Somehow it's not so bad, coming from you,' she said.
In an instant he was sitting by her. 'Now I'll tell you what we did this afternoon.'
'You and Peggy Ryle? I'm jealous of Peggy Ryle!'
'A sound instinct, in this case misapplied,' commented Airey. 'Now just you listen.'
The sound of song had ceased. Were all sounds equally able to penetrate doors and cross passages, quite another would have struck on Trix's ears. Peggy was yawning vigorously—while Tommy was trying to find patience in a cigar.
'Where had you been going to dine?' asked Peggy, referring to the meal as a bright but bygone possibility.
'I had been going to have a chop at the club,' murmured Tommy sadly.
'That doesn't help me much,' observed Peggy. 'And I suppose you're going to begin about that wretched promise again? I'm tired to death, but I'll sing again if you do.'
'I've expressed my sentiments. I don't want to rub it in.'
'If Airey hadn't come, you'd have done just the same yourself.'
'No, I shouldn't, Peggy.'
'What would you have done, then?'
'I should have bolted—and dined. And I rather wish I had. I tell you what; if I were you, I'd have one comfortable chair in this room.' He was perched on a straight-backed affair with spindly legs—a base imitation of what (from the sitter's point of view) was always an unfortunate ideal.
'I'd bolt with you—for the sake of dinner,' moaned Peggy. 'What are they doing all this time, Tommy?'
Tommy shrugged his shoulders in undisguised contempt. 'Couldn't we go and dine?' he suggested, with a gleam of hope.
'I want to dine very, very much,' avowed Peggy; 'but I'm too excited.' She looked straight at him, pointed towards the door, and declared, 'I'm going in.'
'You'd better knock something over first.'
'No, I'm going straight in. If it's all right, it won't matter, and we can all go out to dinner together. If they're being silly, I shall stop them. I'm going in, Tommy!'
Tommy rose from the spindle-shanked counterfeit with a determined air.
'You'll do nothing of the kind. It isn't fair play,' he said.
'It's not you that's going in, is it?' asked Peggy, as though that disposed of his claim to interfere. 'And you needn't tell me I'm dishonourable any more. It's dull. I'm going.'
In fact she had got to the handle of the door. She had grasped it when Tommy came and took hold of her arm.
'No, you don't!' he said.
For an instant Peggy thought that she would take offense. Tommy's rigidity of moral principle, within the limits of his vision, proved, however, too much for her. She still held the handle, but she leant against the door, laughing as she looked up in his face.
'Let go, Tommy! In short, unhand me!'
'Will you go, if I do?'
'That's what I want you to do it for,' Peggy explained, with a rapid and pronounced gravity.
Her eyes sparkled at him, her lips were mischievous, the waves of her hair seemed dowered with new grace. Perhaps there was something, too, in the general atmosphere of the flat that night. Anyhow the thought of vindicating moral principles and the code of honour lost the first place in Tommy's thoughts. Yet he did not let go of his prisoner.
With the change in his thoughts—did it betray itself on his face?—came a change in Peggy also. She was still gaily defiant, but she looked rather on the defensive too. A touch of timidity mingled with the challenge which her eyes still directed at him.
'It's not the least good lecturing you,' he declared.
'I don't know how you ever came to think you knew how to do it.'
'Peggy, am I never to get any forwarder?'
'Not much, I hope,' answered Peggy, with a stifled laugh.
He looked at her steadily for a minute.
'You like me,' he said. 'If you hadn't liked me, I should have been kicked out by now.'
'I call that taking a very unfair advantage,' murmured Peggy.
'Because you're not the sort of girl to let a man——'
'Then why don't you let go of my arm?'
This was glaringly illogical. It seized Tommy's premise and twisted it to an absolutely opposite conclusion. But Tommy was bewildered by the mental gymnastics—or by something else that dazzled him. He released her arm and stepped back almost ceremoniously. Peggy lifted her arm and seemed to study it for a second.
'That's nice of you,' she said. 'But'—her laugh rang out—'I'm going all the same!'
In an instant she had darted through the door. Tommy made as though he would follow, but paused on the threshold and pulled the door close again. Perhaps she could carry it off; he could not. He walked slowly back to the spindle-shanked chair and sat down again. Tommy's head was rather in a whirl, but his heart beat gaily. 'By Jove—yes!' he thought to himself. 'Give her time, and it's yes!'
Peggy, unrepentant, strode across the passage and stopped outside the sitting-room. Human nature would not stand it. She must listen or go in. She did not hesitate: in she went.
Airey was standing by the window; she saw but hardly noticed him. In the middle of the room was Trix Trevalla. But what a Trix! Peggy stood motionless a minute at the sight of her. Her quick eye took in the ring on Trix's finger, the sparkle of the diamonds on her wrist, the softer lustre of the pearls about her neck. The plain gown she wore showed them off bravely, and she seemed as though she were hung with jewels. Peggy recognised the jewels; the small boxes she knew also, and marked where they lay on the table. All that was the work of an instant. Her eyes returned to Trix and rose above the pearls to Trix's face. The hardness and the haggardness, the weariness and shame, all suspicion and all reserve, were gone from it.The face was younger, softer; it seemed rounder and more girlish. The eyes glowed with a veiled brightness.
Peggy stood there on the threshold, looking.
At last Airey spoke to her; for Trix, though she met her eyes, said nothing and did not move from her place.
'Peggy,' he said, 'she's been with me. She's been where we went this afternoon. You know the way; you showed it to me.'
Now Trix Trevalla came towards her, a little blindly and unsteadily as it seemed. She held out both hands, and Peggy went forward a step to meet them.
'Yes, I've been. I think I've been to—to the soul shop, Peggy.' She threw herself in the girl's arms.
'Is it—is it all right?' gasped Peggy.
'It's going to be,' said Airey Newton.
She put Trix at arm's length and gazed at her. 'They look beautiful, and you look beautiful. I wonder if you've ever looked like that before!'
'It's all gone,' said Trix, passing her hand across her eyes. 'All gone, I think, Peggy.'
'Oh, I can't stay here!' cried Peggy in dismay. For her eyes too grew dim; and now she could no more have sung than yawned. She caught Trix to her, kissed her, and ran from the room.
'I beg your pardon; you were quite right, sir,' she said to Tommy. 'I never ought to have gone in.'
'But, I say, what's happened, Peggy?' Of another's sin it seems no such great crime to take advantage.
'Everything,' said Peggy, with a comprehensive wave of her arms. 'Everything, Tommy!'
'They've fixed it up?' he asked eagerly.
'If you don't feel disgraced by putting it like that—they have,' said Peggy, breaking into glad laughter again.
He rose and came near to her.
'And what are we going to do?' he inquired.
Peggy regarded him with eyes professedly judicial, though mischief and mockery lurked in them.
'As I don't think it's the least use waiting for them, I suggest that we go and have some dinner,' she said.
'That's not a bad idea,' agreed Tommy.
He turned quietly, took up his hat and stick, and went out into the passage; Peggy stayed a minute to put on a hat and jacket. She came out to join him then, treading softly and with her linger on her lips. Tommy nodded understanding, took hold of the handle of the baize door, and made way for her to pass. His air was decorous and friendly. Peggy looked at him, immeasurable amusement nestling in her eyes. As she passed, she flung one arm lightly about his neck and kissed him.
'Just to celebrate the event!' she whispered.
Tommy followed her downstairs with heart aglow.
Barslett: Sept. 13.My dearest Sarah,—I know how much you value my letters. I know more—how valuable my letters are to you. Only by letter (as I've mentioned before) can I come near telling you the truth. In your presence, no! For aren't you, your dear old stately self, in the end, a—(so glad there are hundreds of miles between us!)—a splendid semi-mendacity?I have just answered Trix's brief note. Here I wrote just as I should have spoken: 'I'm sure you'll be so happy, dear,' above my breath; 'why, in Heaven's name, does she do it?' under the same. Trix was curt. She marries 'Airey Newton, the well-known inventor'! Little Peggy was rather more communicative; but Peggy is an enthusiast, and (politics apart) I see no use for the quality. 'The well-known inventor'! I never heard of the man.Ça n'empêche pas, by all means. Shall we say 'Like to like'? Trix was rather a well-known inventor in her day and season—which is the one from which we are all precariously recovering. (How's the marital liver?) I wonder if we've got to say 'Like to like' in any other way, Sarah? You are no philosopher. You abound in general rules, but haven't a shred of principle. I will instruct you in my old way. But first I must tell you that Audrey is positively improving. She coquetted the other night! The floor creaked, as it seemed to me, but it bore well; and she did it. The Trans-Euphratic is, as you are aware, active even in thedead season. I fancy the Trans-Euphratic helps Audrey. There are similarities, most especially in a certain slowness in getting under way. The Trans-Euphratic is going to get there. An American engineer who came down to Barslett the other day, and said he had always dreamed of such a place (he was sallow and thin), told me so. Audrey's going to get there too. Now isn't she? Don't say it's labour wasted!I digress. Listen, then:—Lord B.: Do you—er—know a Mr. Airey Newton—Newton, Viola?Myself: Very slightly. Oh, you're thinking of——?Lord B.: I saw it in the daily paper. (He means the 'Times'—he doesn't know of any others.)Myself(hedging): Curious, isn't it?Lord B.: It will possibly prove very suitable—possibly. As we grow old we learn to accept things, Viola.Myself(looking young): I suppose we do, Lord B.Lord B.: For my own part, I hope she will be happy.Myself(murmuring): You're always so generous!Lord B.(clearing his throat): I am happy to think that Mortimer has recovered his balance—balance, Viola.Myself: He'd be nothing without it, would he, Lord B.? (This needed careful delivery, but it went all right.)Lord B.(appreciative): You're perfectly correct, Viola. (Pause.) Should you be writing to Mrs. Trevalla, express my sincere wishes for her happiness.Now, considering that Trix knocked him down, isn't he an old dear of a gentleman?But Mortimer? A gentleman too, my dear—except that a man shouldn't be too thankful at being rid of a woman! He showed signs once of having been shaken up. They have vanished! This is partly the prospect of the Cabinet, partly the family, a little bit Audrey, and mainly—Me! I have deliberately fostered his worst respectabilities and ministered to his profoundest conceits. As a woman? I scorn the imputation. As a friend? I wouldn't take the trouble. As anaunt? I plead guilty. I had my purposes to serve. Incidentally I have obliterated Trix Trevalla. If he talks of her at all, it is as a converted statesman does of the time when he belonged to the opposite party (as most of them have). He vindicates himself, but is bound to admit that he needs vindication. He says he couldn't have done otherwise, but tells you with a shrug that you're not to take that too seriously.Mortimer: We were fundamentally unsuited.Myself(tactfully): She was. (What did I mean? Sheer, base flattery, Sarah!)Mortimer: She had not our (waving arm)—our instincts.Myself: I think I always told you so. [!!!]Mortimer: I daresay. I would listen to nothing. I was very impetuous. (Bless him, Sarah!)Myself: Well, it's hardly the time—— (Do wise people ever finish sentences, Sarah?)Mortimer: It is a curious chapter. Closed, closed! By the way, do you know anything of this Airey Newton?Myself: A distinguished inventor, I believe, Mortimer.Mortimer: So the papers say. (He 'glances at' them all.) What sort of man is he?Myself: Oh, I suppose she likes him. Bohemian, you know.Mortimer: Ah, yes, Bohemian! (A reverie.) Bo-hem-i-an! Exactly!Myself: Is that Audrey in her habit?Mortimer: Yes, yes, of course. Bohemian, is he? Yes! Well, I mustn't keep her waiting.That is how I behave. 'O limèd soul that, struggling to be free'—gets other people more and more engaged! Tennyson, Sarah. And when they're quite engaged, whether it's in or out of the season, I'm going to Monte Carlo—for the same reason that the gentleman in the story travelled third, you know.Oh, I must tell you one more thing. Running up to town the other day to get my hair—— I beg your pardon, Sarah! Running up to town the other day on businessconnected with the family estates (a mortgage on my life-interest in the settled funds—no matter), who should shake me by the hand but Miss Connie Fricker! Where had I met Miss Connie Fricker? Once—once only. And where, Sarah? Everywhere, unless I had withstood you to the face! And I don't know why I did, because she's rather amusing. In fact, at your house, dearest. Long ago, I admit. She has come on much in appearance, and she's going to marry Beaufort Chance. I know she is, because she says it—a weak reason in the case of most girls, but not in hers.Quod vult, valde vult.(A motto in one branch of our family, meaning 'She won't be happy till she gets it.') I am vaguely sorry for our Beaufort of days gone by. These occurrences, Sarah, prejudice one in favour of morality. She has gleaming teeth and dazzling eyes (reverse the adjectives, if you like), and she has also—may I say it?—she has also—a bust! She says darling Beaufort is positively silly about her. My impression is that darling Beaufort is handling a large contract. (Metaphor, Sarah, not slang. Same thing though, generally.) That man wanted a slave; he has got—well, I shall call on them after marriage. I spoke to her of Trix Trevalla. 'I thought she'd quite gone under,' says Connie. 'Underwhere?' would have been my retort; but I'm weakly, and I thought perhaps she'd slap me. It's as pure a case of buying and selling as was ever done, I suppose; and if the Frickers gave hard cash I think they've got the worst of the bargain.What's the moral, Sarah? Not that it's any good asking you. One might as well philosophise to an Established Church (of which, somehow, you always remind me very much). 'Open your mouth and shut your eyes'—that's out of date. Our eyes are open, but we open our mouths all the wider. That's superficial! In the end, each to his own, Sarah. I don't mean that as you'd mean it, O Priestess of Precedence. But through perilous ways—and through the Barslett shrubberies by night, knocking down his lordship and half a dozen things besides—perhaps she has reached afine, a fine—— Perhaps! I hope so, for she had a wit and a soul, Sarah; and—and I'll call on them after marriage. And if that little compound of love and mischief named Peggy Ryle doesn't find twenty men to worship her and one who won't mind it, men are not what they were and women have lost their prerogative. Which God forbid! But, as my lord here would say, 'The change appears to me—humbly appears to me—to be looming—looming, Viola.'Fol-de-rol, Sarah! Scotland as misty and slaughterous as ever? You might be a little bit nice to Mrs. Airey Newton. You liked her, and she liked you. Yes, I know you! Pretences are vain! Sarah, you have a heart!J'accuse!Yours,V. B.
Barslett: Sept. 13.
My dearest Sarah,—I know how much you value my letters. I know more—how valuable my letters are to you. Only by letter (as I've mentioned before) can I come near telling you the truth. In your presence, no! For aren't you, your dear old stately self, in the end, a—(so glad there are hundreds of miles between us!)—a splendid semi-mendacity?
I have just answered Trix's brief note. Here I wrote just as I should have spoken: 'I'm sure you'll be so happy, dear,' above my breath; 'why, in Heaven's name, does she do it?' under the same. Trix was curt. She marries 'Airey Newton, the well-known inventor'! Little Peggy was rather more communicative; but Peggy is an enthusiast, and (politics apart) I see no use for the quality. 'The well-known inventor'! I never heard of the man.Ça n'empêche pas, by all means. Shall we say 'Like to like'? Trix was rather a well-known inventor in her day and season—which is the one from which we are all precariously recovering. (How's the marital liver?) I wonder if we've got to say 'Like to like' in any other way, Sarah? You are no philosopher. You abound in general rules, but haven't a shred of principle. I will instruct you in my old way. But first I must tell you that Audrey is positively improving. She coquetted the other night! The floor creaked, as it seemed to me, but it bore well; and she did it. The Trans-Euphratic is, as you are aware, active even in thedead season. I fancy the Trans-Euphratic helps Audrey. There are similarities, most especially in a certain slowness in getting under way. The Trans-Euphratic is going to get there. An American engineer who came down to Barslett the other day, and said he had always dreamed of such a place (he was sallow and thin), told me so. Audrey's going to get there too. Now isn't she? Don't say it's labour wasted!
I digress. Listen, then:—
Lord B.: Do you—er—know a Mr. Airey Newton—Newton, Viola?
Myself: Very slightly. Oh, you're thinking of——?
Lord B.: I saw it in the daily paper. (He means the 'Times'—he doesn't know of any others.)
Myself(hedging): Curious, isn't it?
Lord B.: It will possibly prove very suitable—possibly. As we grow old we learn to accept things, Viola.
Myself(looking young): I suppose we do, Lord B.
Lord B.: For my own part, I hope she will be happy.
Myself(murmuring): You're always so generous!
Lord B.(clearing his throat): I am happy to think that Mortimer has recovered his balance—balance, Viola.
Myself: He'd be nothing without it, would he, Lord B.? (This needed careful delivery, but it went all right.)
Lord B.(appreciative): You're perfectly correct, Viola. (Pause.) Should you be writing to Mrs. Trevalla, express my sincere wishes for her happiness.
Now, considering that Trix knocked him down, isn't he an old dear of a gentleman?
But Mortimer? A gentleman too, my dear—except that a man shouldn't be too thankful at being rid of a woman! He showed signs once of having been shaken up. They have vanished! This is partly the prospect of the Cabinet, partly the family, a little bit Audrey, and mainly—Me! I have deliberately fostered his worst respectabilities and ministered to his profoundest conceits. As a woman? I scorn the imputation. As a friend? I wouldn't take the trouble. As anaunt? I plead guilty. I had my purposes to serve. Incidentally I have obliterated Trix Trevalla. If he talks of her at all, it is as a converted statesman does of the time when he belonged to the opposite party (as most of them have). He vindicates himself, but is bound to admit that he needs vindication. He says he couldn't have done otherwise, but tells you with a shrug that you're not to take that too seriously.
Mortimer: We were fundamentally unsuited.
Myself(tactfully): She was. (What did I mean? Sheer, base flattery, Sarah!)
Mortimer: She had not our (waving arm)—our instincts.
Myself: I think I always told you so. [!!!]
Mortimer: I daresay. I would listen to nothing. I was very impetuous. (Bless him, Sarah!)
Myself: Well, it's hardly the time—— (Do wise people ever finish sentences, Sarah?)
Mortimer: It is a curious chapter. Closed, closed! By the way, do you know anything of this Airey Newton?
Myself: A distinguished inventor, I believe, Mortimer.
Mortimer: So the papers say. (He 'glances at' them all.) What sort of man is he?
Myself: Oh, I suppose she likes him. Bohemian, you know.
Mortimer: Ah, yes, Bohemian! (A reverie.) Bo-hem-i-an! Exactly!
Myself: Is that Audrey in her habit?
Mortimer: Yes, yes, of course. Bohemian, is he? Yes! Well, I mustn't keep her waiting.
That is how I behave. 'O limèd soul that, struggling to be free'—gets other people more and more engaged! Tennyson, Sarah. And when they're quite engaged, whether it's in or out of the season, I'm going to Monte Carlo—for the same reason that the gentleman in the story travelled third, you know.
Oh, I must tell you one more thing. Running up to town the other day to get my hair—— I beg your pardon, Sarah! Running up to town the other day on businessconnected with the family estates (a mortgage on my life-interest in the settled funds—no matter), who should shake me by the hand but Miss Connie Fricker! Where had I met Miss Connie Fricker? Once—once only. And where, Sarah? Everywhere, unless I had withstood you to the face! And I don't know why I did, because she's rather amusing. In fact, at your house, dearest. Long ago, I admit. She has come on much in appearance, and she's going to marry Beaufort Chance. I know she is, because she says it—a weak reason in the case of most girls, but not in hers.Quod vult, valde vult.(A motto in one branch of our family, meaning 'She won't be happy till she gets it.') I am vaguely sorry for our Beaufort of days gone by. These occurrences, Sarah, prejudice one in favour of morality. She has gleaming teeth and dazzling eyes (reverse the adjectives, if you like), and she has also—may I say it?—she has also—a bust! She says darling Beaufort is positively silly about her. My impression is that darling Beaufort is handling a large contract. (Metaphor, Sarah, not slang. Same thing though, generally.) That man wanted a slave; he has got—well, I shall call on them after marriage. I spoke to her of Trix Trevalla. 'I thought she'd quite gone under,' says Connie. 'Underwhere?' would have been my retort; but I'm weakly, and I thought perhaps she'd slap me. It's as pure a case of buying and selling as was ever done, I suppose; and if the Frickers gave hard cash I think they've got the worst of the bargain.
What's the moral, Sarah? Not that it's any good asking you. One might as well philosophise to an Established Church (of which, somehow, you always remind me very much). 'Open your mouth and shut your eyes'—that's out of date. Our eyes are open, but we open our mouths all the wider. That's superficial! In the end, each to his own, Sarah. I don't mean that as you'd mean it, O Priestess of Precedence. But through perilous ways—and through the Barslett shrubberies by night, knocking down his lordship and half a dozen things besides—perhaps she has reached afine, a fine—— Perhaps! I hope so, for she had a wit and a soul, Sarah; and—and I'll call on them after marriage. And if that little compound of love and mischief named Peggy Ryle doesn't find twenty men to worship her and one who won't mind it, men are not what they were and women have lost their prerogative. Which God forbid! But, as my lord here would say, 'The change appears to me—humbly appears to me—to be looming—looming, Viola.'
Fol-de-rol, Sarah! Scotland as misty and slaughterous as ever? You might be a little bit nice to Mrs. Airey Newton. You liked her, and she liked you. Yes, I know you! Pretences are vain! Sarah, you have a heart!J'accuse!
Yours,V. B.
As on a previous occasion, Mrs. Bonfill ejaculated 'Tut!' But she added, 'I'm sure I wish no harm to poor Trix Trevalla.'
It is satisfactory to be able to add that society at large shared this point of view. It is exceedingly charitable towards people who are definitely and finally out of the running. Those in the race run all; they become much more popular when it is understood that they do not compete for a prize. There was a revulsion of feeling in Trix's favour when the word went round that she was irredeemably ruined and was going to throw herself away on a certain Airey Newton.
'Who is he?' asked Lady Glentorly, bewildered but ready to be benevolent.
'Excuse me, my dear, I'm really busy with the paper.'
If Trix's object had been to rehabilitate herself socially, she could have taken no more politic step than that of contracting an utterly insignificant marriage. 'Well, we needn't see anything ofhim,' said quite a number of people. It is always a comfort to be able to write off the obligations that other folks' marriages may seem to entail.
Mr. Fricker had one word to say.
'Avoid her virtues and imitate her faults, and you'll get on very well with your husband, Connie.'
'Oh, I don't want to hear anything more about her,' cried Connie defiantly.
His pensive smile came to Fricker's lips.
'These little fits of restiveness—I don't mean in you—are nothing, Connie? You said you could manage him.'
'So I can—if you won't say things when he's there.'
'I'm to blame,' said Fricker gravely. 'But I'm fond of you, Connie.'
She broke out violently, 'Yes, but you wish I'd been rather different!'
'Live and let live, Connie. When's the wedding-day?'
She came to him and kissed him. Her vexation did not endure. Her next confidence amused him.
'After all, I've only got to say "Trix," and he's as quiet as a lamb,' she whispered, with her glittering laugh.
It is hopelessly symptomatic of social obscurity to be dining in London in September—and that as a matter of course, and not by way of a snatch of food between two railway stations. Yet at the date borne at the top of Lady Blixworth's notepaper something more than a dinner, almost a banquet, celebrated in town an event which had taken place some hundreds of miles away. Lady Blixworth had blessed the interval between herself and her dearest Sarah, opining that it made for candour, not to say for philosophy. Something of the same notion seemed to move in Miles Childwick's brain.
'In electing to be married in the wilds of Wales,' he remarked as he lit his cigarette, 'our friends the Newtons have shown a consideration not only for our wardrobes—a point with which, I admit, I was preoccupied—but also for our feelings. Yet we, by subscribing a shilling each towards a wire, deliberately threw away the main advantage of the telegraphic system. We could have expressed our aspirations for sixpence; as it is, we were led into something perilously like discussion. Finally, at Mrs. John's urgentrequest, and in order not to have sixpence left on our hands, we committed ourselves to the audacious statement that we had foreseen it from the first.'
'So I did—since Airey's dinner,' declared Mrs. John stoutly.