Of that drive with Connie Fricker Miles Childwick had, in the after-time, many tales to tell. Truth might claim the inspiration, an artistic intellect perfected them. 'She said things to which no gentleman should listen in a hansom cab, but the things she said were nothing to the things she looked as if she was going to say. In a hansom! No screen between you and a scrutinising public, Mrs. John!' That was the first stage. In the second he had invented for poor Connie all the sayings which he declared her expression to suggest. Whatever the exact facts, while he forgave Peggy Ryle everything else, he did not cease to harbour malice on account of that ride. Connie thought him nice, but rather slow. His must be the blame, since it is agreed that in such cases the man should adapt himself.
The work of the bodyguard was done; it was disbanded with a gracious invitation to supper. Peggy flew up the stairs ahead of her guest. There was a great question to be solved.
'The gentleman has come, miss,' said the charwoman.
'And Mrs. Trevalla?'
'I told him Mrs. Trevalla would be in directly.'
'And where is she?'
'She's still in her room, I think, miss.'
Peggy turned triumphant eyes on her companion. 'Now then, Miss Fricker!' said she. 'That's the door! I shall go and keep Trix quiet. That's the door!' She pointed encouragingly, if rather imperiously, to the sitting-room.
'I'm not afraid,' laughed Connie, putting her hat straight and giving a rattle to her bangles. But there was a ring of agitation in her voice, and in her heart she half-regretted the dismissal of the bodyguard. Still, she had pluck.
She swept in with the sustaining consciousness of a highly dramatic entrance. To come in well is often half the battle.
'You here! The devil!' exclaimed Beaufort Chance.
'Mr. Chance! Well, I declare!' said Connie. 'And alone too!' She looked round suspiciously, as though Trix might perhaps be under the table. 'Well, I suppose Miss Ryle won't be long taking off her things.'
Beaufort already suspected a plot, but, his first surprise over, he would not plead guilty to being an object that invited one.
'I got away earlier than I expected,' he told her, 'and looked in here on my way to Cadogan Square. There was no chance of finding you at home so early.'
'And there was a chance of finding Mrs. Trevalla?' She sat down opposite him, showing her teeth in a mocking smile. His confusion and the weakness of his plea set her courage firmly on its feet.
'I don't know whether there was or not. She's not here, you see.'
'Oh, I'll amuse you till she comes!'
'I sha'n't wait for her long.'
'I sha'n't stay long either. You can drive me back home, can't you?'
He was pitifully caught, and had not the adroitness to hide his sense of it. Perhaps he had been cruelly used. When he had written to Trix, saying he meant to come again and asking for a date, it was hardly fair of Peggy, performing the office of amanuensis for Trix, to say that Mrs. Trevalla saw few visitors, but that this particular day (on which Peggy was to visit Fricker) would be the best chance of seeing her. Such language might be non-committal; it was undoubtedly misleading. He had found in it a signthat Trix was yielding, coming to a sensible frame of mind, recognising what seemed to him so obvious—the power he had over her and her attraction towards him. In his heart he believed that he held both these women, Trix and Connie, in his hand, and could do as he liked with them; thus he would cajole and conciliate Connie (he thought kisses would not lose their efficacy, nor that despotic air either) while he made Trix his own—for towards her lay his stronger inclination. To secure her would be his victory over all the sneerers, over Mervyn, and—the greatest came last—over herself. But, however clever we are, there is a point at which things may fall out too perversely. If Connie came by chance, this acme of bad luck was reached; if by design, then he had miscalculated somewhere.
'You're not greeting me very enthusiastically,' remarked Connie. 'You don't sit stock-still and say you won't stay long when I come to you in the drawing-room at home!'
'Nonsense! That girl may be in here any minute.'
'Well, and mamma might come in any minute at home—which would be much worse. After all, what would she matter? You're not ashamed of me, I suppose?'
Assumption is a valuable device in argument; Connie was using it skilfully. She assumed that she was first in his thoughts, and did not charge him with preferring another; let him explain that—if he dared.
'Nonsense!' he repeated fretfully. 'But I can't play the fool now. I've come to see Mrs. Trevalla on business. 'Isn't there another room?'
'No; and I thought papa did all the business there was with Mrs. Trevalla.'
He had sat down near the table; she came and perched herself on it. Intimidation must probably be the main weapon, but she was alive to the importance of reinforcing it.
'He thinks he does,' she went on significantly.
'Oh, it's a small matter. It won't do him any harm. And I'm a free agent, I suppose?'
'You're free enough anyhow, pretty often,' Connie admitted.
'You've never objected,' he snarled, his temper getting out of hand.
'Well, no. I knew I had to do with a gentleman.'
Kisses might be out of place, even dangerous in view of a possible interruption; but there was the despotic air. Now seemed the minute for it.
'Don't you talk nonsense, child,' he said. 'If I've treated you kindly, it doesn't entitle you to take that tone. And get off that table.'
'I'm very comfortable here,' remarked Connie.
'It doesn't look respectable.'
'What, not with you and me? There's nobody here, is there?'
'Stop playing the fool,' he commanded brusquely. 'What's the matter with you to-day?'
'I'm in ripping spirits to-day, Beaufort. Can't you guess why?'
'I don't believe you came here to see Peggy Ryle at all,' he broke out.
'Never mind why I came here.'
'Have you got an idea that you've done something clever?'
'Never mind. I've awfully good news, Beaufort.'
'They may be listening at the door.' His uneasiness was pitiful.
'It wouldn't matter. Everybody'll know soon,' said Connie consolingly.
'What the deuce are you talking about?' he growled.
She bent forward towards him with a striking, if rather overdone, air of joyous confusion.
'I've spoken to papa, Beaufort,' she whispered.
Startled out of pretence, he sprang to his feet with an oath. His look was very ugly, he glared threateningly. Connie braced her courage and did not quail.
'I know I ought to have asked you,' she admitted with asmile that belied her professed penitence, 'but I caught him in such a beautiful humour that I had to take advantage of it. So I told him everything. I just confessed everything, Beaufort! Of course he scolded me—it hasn't been quite right, has it?—but he was very kind. He said that, since we were engaged, he'd forgive me and make mamma forgive me too.' She paused before her climax. 'I think that he's really simply awfully pleased.'
'You've told your father that you're engaged to me? You know it's a damned lie.'
Connie's eyes gleamed dangerously, but she kept admirably cool.
'Well, I told him that you'd said you loved me, and that you always kissed me when we were alone, and called me your little Connie, and so on, you know. And papa said that he presumed from all that that we were engaged.'
'Well?' he muttered savagely.
'And I said that of course I presumed so too.'
It was spoken with the innocence of the dove, but it put Beaufort Chance in a very awkward position; the reference is not to his sensibilities but to his tactics. Connie's dexterity forced him to a broad alternative—submission or open war. She deprived him of any half-way house, any compromise by which cajolery and kisses would serve in place of a promise and an obligation. She did not leave the matter there; she jumped down from the table and put her arm on his shoulder—indeed, half-way round his neck. 'You must have meant me to; and it made me so happy to—to feel that I was yours, Beaufort.'
To this pass his shifty dealings had brought him, even as in public affairs they had forbidden him a career, and in business had condemned him to a sort of outlawry, although an outlawry tempered by riches. He was in an extremity; his chance of Trix was at stake, his dominion over Connie herself was challenged. He saw the broad alternative, and he chose open war.
'It's all a very pretty trick of yours, my dear,' he sneeredthrowing her arm off him none too gently; 'but a man doesn't marry every girl he kisses, especially not when she's so ready to be kissed as some people we know. You can explain it to your father any way you like, but you're not going to bluff me.'
'I see why you came here now,' said Connie coolly. 'You came to make love to Trix Trevalla. Well, you can't, that's all.'
'That's for Mrs. Trevalla to say, not for you.'
'I don't expect Mrs. Trevalla'll show up at all,' remarked Connie, leaning against the table again.
'That's the little plan, is it?' He gave a jerk of his head. 'By Jove, I see! That hussy of a Ryle girl's in it!'
'I don't know who's in it; you seem rather out of it,' smiled Connie.
'I am, am I? We'll see. So Mrs. Trevalla won't show, won't she? That's hardly final, is it? She's on the premises, I rather fancy.'
'Going to force your way into her bedroom? Oh, Beaufort!'
'You'd be mightily shocked, wouldn't you?' He moved towards the door; his purpose was only half-formed, but he wished her to think it was absolute.
'I don't mind; but I'm sure papa and mamma would. I don't think they'd like you for a son-in-law after that.'
'Then we should all be pleased.'
'Or perhaps for a partner either.'
He turned round sharply, and came back a step or two towards her.
'What do you mean by that?' he asked slowly.
'I don't suppose papa would care to have anything to do with a man who trifled with his daughter's affections.' Connie stuck loyally to the old phrases.
He was full in front of her now and looking hard at her.
'You little devil! I believe you've squared him,' said he.
Connie, well on the table again, put her arms akimbo,stuck her legs out in front of her straight from the knee, and laughed in his face.
'If you're going into Mrs. Trevalla's room, you might ask her if, from her experience, she thinks it wise to quarrel with papa.'
'I'm not a woman and a fool.'
'Oh, you know your own business best, Beaufort!'
It was sorely against the grain, but he shirked his open war; he tried coaxing.
'Come, be reasonable, Connie. You're a sensible girl. I mean all that's square, but——'
'I mean that if you wait here after I've gone, or go now and see Trix Trevalla, I'll never speak to you again. And papa—— Well, as I say, you know your own business best about that.'
Her cool certainty, her concentration on one purpose, gave her all the advantage over him with his divided counsels, his inconsistent desires, his efforts to hedge. Again she pinned him to a choice.
'What do you want?' he asked curtly.
'I want you to take me home to Cadogan Square.' That was hard and business-like, and bore for him all the significance that she meant to put into it. Then her voice grew lower and her large eyes turned on him with a different expression. 'We can have a really friendly talk about it there.' She meant to beat him, but she was highly content to soften the submission by all means in her power. She would not hesitate about begging his forgiveness, provided the spoils of victory were hers—in the fashion of some turbulent vassal after defying his feeble overlord.
Beaufort read it all well enough. He saw that she liked him and was ready to be pleasant: his dream of mastery vanished from before his eyes. He might have broken Trix Trevalla's proud but sensitive spirit; Miss Connie's pliant pride and unpliant purposes were quite different things to deal with. He knew that in effect, whatever the forms were, he submitted if he took her to Cadogan Square.Henceforward his lot was with the Frickers—and not as their master either.
The truth came home to him with cutting bitterness. He had been able to say to himself that he might use Fricker, but that he was very different from Fricker; that he flirted with Connie, but that his wife would have to be very different from her. He had to give up, too, all thought of Trix Trevalla. Or he must face the alternative and be at war with Fricker. Had he the courage? Had he the strength? He stood looking gloomily at Connie.
'You're a fool, Beaufort,' she told him plainly, with a glittering smile. 'I'm sure you seemed fond enough of me. Why shouldn't we be very jolly? You think I'm nasty now, but I'm not generally, am I?' She coaxed him with the look that she would have said was her most 'fetching.' To do her justice, a more expressive word for the particular variety of glance is hard to find.
At this moment Peggy Ryle came out of Trix's room (where she had beguiled the time in idle conversation), shut the door carefully behind her, crossed the passage, and entered the sitting-room. The time Connie had estimated as sufficient for the interview had elapsed.
'Oh, Mr. Chance, I'm sorry! Trix has such a headache that she can't come in. She has tried, but standing up or moving——' Peggy threw out her hands in an expressive gesture. 'That's what kept me,' she added apologetically to Connie. 'I hope you've amused one another all this time?'
The plot was plain now; the bulk of Beaufort's resentment turned on Peggy. What was the use of that? Peggy had no fear of him. She was radiantly invulnerable.
'I'm sorry she's so seedy.' He hesitated; he longed to see Trix, even if it were no more than to see her and to give her a parting blow. 'Perhaps you'll let me send a note in, to say what my business is? It's pressing, and she might make an effort to see me for——'
'I'm afraid I must go,' Connie interrupted. 'I promised to be home.'
'Must you really? I suppose the cab's waiting.'
'You mustn't bother poor Mrs. Trevalla with business now, must he, Miss Ryle? It must wait for another day. You were coming to Cadogan Square, weren't you? I'll take you with me.'
He looked from one to the other. Never was man in a more hopeless corner. Nothing would have pleased him so much as to knock their heads together. Connie was imitating Peggy's external unconsciousness of anything remarkable in the situation as well as she could.
'We mustn't stay. Mrs. Trevalla must want you,' pursued Connie.
'Oh, I can leave her for just a few minutes,' Peggy assured her, with an anxious look at the clock.
'Good-bye, Miss Ryle,' said Connie, giving Peggy's hand a hearty squeeze. She passed on towards the door and opened it. Holding it ajar, she looked round and waited for Beaufort Chance. For an instant he stood where he was. The idea of rebellion was still in him. But his spirit failed. He came up to Peggy and sullenly bade her farewell.
'Good-bye,' said Peggy in a low voice. Its tone struck him as odd; when he looked in her eyes he saw a touch of compassion. It flashed across him that she understood what he was feeling, that she saw how his acts had brought him lower than his nature need have been brought—or at least that she was sorry that this fate, and nothing less than this, must be held to be justice.
'Good-bye, Miss Ryle. My regrets to Mrs. Trevalla. I hope for another opportunity. Now I'm ready, Miss Fricker, and most delighted to have the chance.'
At all times let the proprieties be sacred!
That is, let them be observed in the presence of third parties—especially if those parties have brought us to humiliation. They are not so exacting in a vehicle that holds only two.
'Your turn to-day; mine some other day, Connie,' saidBeaufort Chance, as he sullenly settled himself in the cab.
'Oh, don't talk bosh, and don't sulk. You've found out that I'm not a fool. Is there any harm in that?' She turned to him briskly. 'There are just two ways of taking this,' she told him. 'One is to be bullied into it by papa. The other is to do it pleasantly. Since there's no way not to do it, which of those two do you think best?'
'Did you mean it all the time?' he asked, sullen still, but curious.
'As soon as I began to be really gone on you,' she answered him. The phrase is not classical, but she used it, and used it with a very clear purpose. 'You don't suppose I like being—being disagreeable, and seeming to have—to have to force you to what you'd always let me understand you wanted? A girl has some self-respect, Beaufort.'
'Some girls have got a deuced good set of brains, anyhow,' he said, feeling for her some of the admiration that her father's clear purposes and resolute pursuit of them always claimed for him.
'Do you suppose' (Connie's face looked out of the other side of the cab) 'that if I hadn't been awfully fond of you——?'
He believed her, which was not strange; what she said was near enough to the truth to be rather strange. Yet it was not incongruous in her. And she seized a good moment for confessing it. If he would choose the pleasant way of accepting the inevitable, it should be made very pleasant to him. Nor was she indifferent as to which way he chose. She had her father in reserve, and would invoke his help if need be; but she hated to think of his smile while he gave it. Suddenly, under the board of the cab, she put her hand into Beaufort Chance's and gave his a squeeze.
He surrendered; but he kept up a little bit of pretence to the last. Connie let him keep it up, and humoured him in it.
'All right. But I'll tell you what I think of your little game when we're alone together!'
'Oh, I say, you frighten me!' cried Connie tactfully. 'You won't be cruel, will you, Beaufort dear?'
She would have made an excellent Mayor of the Palace to a blustering but easily managed king.
He had chosen the pleasant way, and verily all things were made pleasant to him. Mrs. Fricker was archly maternal. A mother's greeting for him, an indulgent mother's forgiveness for Connie's secrecy. No more than a ponderously playful 'Naughty child!' redeemed in an instant by 'But we could always trust her!' Not thus always Mrs. Fricker towards Connie and her diversions, as Connie's anxiety in the past well testified. But there, an engagement in the end does make a difference—if it is a desirable one. It would seem dangerous to divorce morality and prudence, since the apostles of each have ever been supremely anxious to prove that it coincided with, if it did not even include, the other; let us hope that they seek rather to excuse their opponents than to fortify themselves.
Fricker too was benevolent; he hinted at millions; he gave Beaufort to understand that while a partner or associate was one thing, a member of the family would be quite another; crumbs from the rich man's table compared with 'All that I have is thine' was about the difference. It is true that Fricker smiled here and there, and just at first had seemed to telegraph something to his daughter's wide-awake eyes, and to receive a reply that increased his cordiality. What of that? Who cares for a whip if it be left hanging on the peg? It is at worst a hint which any wise and well-bred slave will notice, but ignore. Not a reminder of it came from Fricker, unless in a certain far-away reflectiveness of smile. He had spent an hour that day in the task of finding out how entirely he held Beaufort in the hollow of his hand. The time was not wasted—besides, it was a recreation. But he did not wish to have to shut his fist and squeeze; he preferred at all times that things should go pleasantly, andhis favourite moral lessons be inculcated by the mild uses of persuasion. 'Now you're one of us,' he told Beaufort, grasping his hand. Well, possibly he glanced at the whip out of the corner of his eye when he was saying that.
And Connie herself? She was the finest diplomatist of the three, for her heart was in the work. So much falsehood comes from no cause as from labelling human folk with a single ticket; a bundle of them might have been adequate to Connie. The time came which Beaufort had threatened—when they were alone as an affianced pair. The thing was done; she had spared no roughness in doing it. Now she set herself to make him content; nor did she force him to retract his threats. Her own mind was divided as to their relations When it came to the point of a clash of wills (to use a phrase consecrated by criticism), she found always that she wished her's to prevail; in lighter questions she was primitive enough to cherish the ideal of herself as a willing slave. If Beaufort had not been able to raise that illusion in her from time to time, she would not have liked him so much, nor gone to such lengths to prove her own ultimate mastery. Almost persuading herself, she almost persuaded him; and in this effort she became pleasant to him again. Thus she compromised between her woman's temperament and her masculine will. If he would accept the compromise as a permanent basis, their union promised to go very smoothly.
'If you'd been like this,' he told her, 'there wouldn't have been any trouble this afternoon.'
She endorsed the monstrous falsehood readily.
'No, it was all my fault. But I was—so terrified of losing you.'
'You tried to threaten me into it!'
He could not be so deluded as to doubt what she had done. But he wanted the forlorn comfort of a brave face over a beaten heart.
'You threatened me too,' whispered Connie.
She broke away from him and took up her old jauntyattitude—arm on the mantel-piece, foot on the fender—again: there was challenge in the eyes that met his boldly.
'You did want some persuading,' she reminded him.
He laughed. 'Well, Trix Trevalla's a devilish pretty woman—and a bit easier to hold than you.'
'I'm easy enough, if your hand's light. As for her, she'd have worried you to death. She'd have hated you, Beaufort.'
He did not like that, and showed it.
'And I—don't!' Connie went on with a dazzling smile. 'Well, you're staring at me. How do I look?'
So she played her fish, with just enough hint of her power, with just enough submission to the legitimate sway she invited him to exercise. It was all very dexterous; there was probably no other road to her end. If it seems in some ways not attractive—well, we must use the weapons we have or be content to go to the wall. When she bade him good-night—still Mrs. Fricker was strong on reputable hours, and Connie herself assumed a new touch of scrupulousness (she was a free lance no more)—his embrace did not lack ardour. She disengaged herself from his arms with a victorious laugh.
Her mother waited for her, vigilant but approving—just a little anxious too.
'Well, Connie, is he very happy?'
'It's all right, mamma.' Her assurance was jovially impudent. 'I can do just what I like with him!'
'You'll have a job sometimes,' opined Mrs. Fricker.
'That's half the fun.' She thought a moment, and then spoke with a startling candour—with an unceremoniousness which Mrs. Fricker would have reproved twenty-four hours earlier. 'I'm very fond of him,' she said, 'but Beaufort's a funk in the end, you know.' She swung herself off to bed, singing a song. Her title to triumph is not to be denied. Peggy Ryle had furnished the opportunity, but the use of it had been all her own. A natural exultation may excuse the exclamation with which she jumped into bed:
'I knew Mrs. Trevalla wouldn't be in it if I got a fair show!'
Beaufort Chance stayed a while alone in the drawing-room before he went down to join Fricker over a cigar. He had enjoyed Connie's company that night; the truth stood out undeniable. She had made him forget what her company meant and would cost—nay, more, what it would bring him in worldly gain. She had made him forget, or cease to wish for, Trix Trevalla. She had banished the thought of what he had been and once had hoped to be. If she could do that for him, would he be unhappy? For a moment he almost prayed to be always unhappy in the thing which he was now set to do. For after an hour of blindness there came, as often, an hour of illumination almost unnatural. In the light of it he saw one of the worst things that a man can see. Enough of his old self and of his old traditions remained to make his eyes capable of the vision. He knew that the worst in him had been pleased; he saw that to please the worst in him threatened now to become enough. His record was not very good, but had he deserved this? It is useless to impugn the way of things. The knowledge came to him that, as he had more and more sought the low and not the high, so more and more the low had become sufficient to him. The knowledge was very bitter; but with a startled horror he anticipated the time when he would lose it. He had lost so much—public honour, private scruples, delicacy of taste. He had set out with at least a respect for these things and with that share in them which the manner of his life and the standard of his associates imparted to him. They were all gone. He was degraded. He knew that now, and he feared that even the consciousness of it would soon die.
There was no help for it. In such cases there is none, unless a man will forsake all and go naked into the wilderness. To such a violent remedy he was unequal. It did not need Fricker's smooth assumption that all was settled to tell him that all was settled indeed. It did not needFricker's welcome to the bosom of the family to tell him that of that family he would now be. Fricker's eulogy of his daughter was unnecessary, since soon to Beaufort too she would seem a meet subject for unstinted praise.
Yet Fricker did not lack some insight into his thoughts.
'I daresay, old fellow,' he remarked, warming his back before the fire—which he liked at nights, whatever the season of the year—'that this isn't quite what you expected when you began life, but, depend upon it, it's very good business. After all, we very few of us get what we think we shall when we set up in the thing. Here am I—and, by Jove, I started life secretary to a Diocesan Benevolent Fund, and wanting to marry the Archdeacon's daughter! Here are you—well, we know all about you, Beaufort, my boy! Old Mervyn hasn't quite done the course he set out to do. Where's our friend Mrs. Trevalla? What's going to happen to pretty Peggy Ryle?' He dropped his coat-tails and shrugged his shoulders. 'Between you and me, and not for the ladies, we take what we can get and try to be thankful. It's a queer business, but you haven't drawn such a bad ticket after all.'
Beaufort Chance took a long pull of whisky-and-soda. The last idea of violent rebellion was gone. Under the easy tones, the comfortably pessimistic doctrine (there is much and peculiar comfort in doctrine of that colour), proceeding from the suave and well-warmed preacher on the hearthrug, there lay a polite intimation of the inevitable. If Fate and the Frickers seemed to mingle and become indistinct in conception, why, so they did in fact. Whose was the whip on the peg—Fate's or Fricker's? And who gives either Fate or Frickers power? Whatever the answer to these questions, Beaufort Chance had no mind that the whip should be taken down.
'I've nothing to complain of,' said he, and drank again.
Fricker watched the gulps with a fatherly smile.
'And I think that's an end of any worry about Beaufort Chance!'
It was a heartlessly external way of regarding a fellow-creature's fate, but in relating how Connie Fricker had carried off her prisoner, and how subsequent despatches had confirmed his unconditional submission, Peggy had dealt with the narrative in a comedy vein throughout. Though she showed no gratitude to Beaufort, she owed him some as a conversational resource if in no other capacity; he enabled her to carry off the opening of her interview with Airey in that spirit of sturdy unemotionality which she desired—and was rather doubtful of maintaining. Coinciding in her wish and appreciating the device, Airey had listened with an applauding smile.
Peggy now made cautious approaches to more difficult ground.
'So he's off Trix's mind,' she concluded, sighing with relief. 'And the other thing's off her mind too. She's heard from Mr. Fricker.'
'Ah!' Airey, who had been walking about, turned short round on her and waited.
'Yes, she believes it all. He did it very well. As far as I'm concerned he's behaved most honourably.' Peggy had the air of giving a handsome testimonial. 'She asked me no questions; she never thought I had anything to do with it; she just flew at me with the letter. You can't think what a difference it makes! She holds up her head again.'
'Is it quite fair?' he asked doubtfully.
'Yes, yes, for the present,' Peggy insisted. 'Perhaps she might be told some day.' She looked at him significantly.
'Some day? How do you mean?'
'When she can bear it.' Peggy grew embarrassed as the ground became more difficult. 'If ever other things made her feel that what had happened didn't matter, that now at all events people valued her, or—or that she'd rather owe it to somebody else than to herself or her own luck.'
He did not mistake her meaning, but his face was still clouded; hesitation and struggle hung about him still. Neither by word nor in writing had Peggy ever thanked him for what he had done; since she had kissed his hand and left him, nothing had passed between them till to-day. She guessed his mind; he had done what she asked, but he was still miserable. His misery perhaps made the act more splendid, but it left the future still in shade. How could the shade be taken away?
She gathered her courage and faced the perilous advance.
'You'll have observed,' she said, with a nervous laugh, 'that I didn't exactly press my—my contribution on you. I—I rather want it, Airey.'
'I suppose you do. But that's not your reason—and it wasn't mine,' he answered.
'Is it there still?' She pointed to the safe. He nodded. 'Take it out and give it to me. No, give me just—just twenty-five.'
'You're in a saving mood,' remarked Airey grimly, as he obeyed her.
'Don't shut the safe yet,' she commanded hastily. 'Leave it like that—yes, just half-way. What ogreish old bolts it's got!'
'Why not shut it?' he objected in apparent annoyance. Did the sight of its partial depletion vex him? For before Peggy could go to Fricker's, some of its hoard had gone to Tommy Trent.
'There's something to put in it,' she answered in an eager timid voice. She set her little bag on the table and opened it. 'You gave me too much. Here's some back again.' She held out a bundle of notes. 'A thousand pounds.'
He came slowly across to the table.
'How did you manage that?'
'I don't know. I never thought of it. He just gave them back to me. Here they are. Take them and put them in.'
He looked at them and at her. The old demon stirred in him; he reached out his hand towards them with his old eagerness. He had run over figures in his mind; they made up a round sum—and round sums he had loved. Peggy did not glance at him; her arms were on the table and her eyes studied the cloth. He walked away to the hearthrug and stood silent for a long while. There was no reason why he should not take back his money; no reproach lay in that, it was the obvious and the sensible thing to do. All these considerations the demon duly adduced; the demon had always been a plausible arguer. Airey Newton listened, but his ears were not as amenable as they had been wont to be. He saw through the demon's specious case. Here was the gate by which the demon tried to slip back to the citadel of his heart!
Peggy had expected nothing else than that he would take them at once. In a way it would have given her pleasure to see him thus consoled; she would have understood and condoned the comfort he got, and thought no less of his sacrifice. His hesitation planted in her the hope of a pleasure infinitely finer. The demon's plausible suggestions carried no force at all for her. She saw the inner truth. She had resolved not to look at Airey; under irresistible temptation she raised her eyes to his.
'That's not mine,' he said at last. 'You say Fricker gave it back to you. It's yours, then.'
'Oh, no, that's nonsense! It's yours, of course, Airey.'
'I won't touch it.' He walked across to the safe, banged it to, and locked it with savage decision; the key he flung down on the table. Then he came back to the hearthrug. 'I won't touch it. It's not mine, I say.'
'I won't touch it; it's not mine either,' insisted Peggy.
The despised notes lay on the table between them. Peggy rose and slowly came to him. She took his hands.
'Oh, Airey, Airey!' she said in whispered rapture.
'Bosh! Be business-like. Put them in your bag again.'
'Never!' she laughed softly.
'Then there they lie.' He broke into a laugh. 'And there they would, even if you left me alone with them!'
'Airey, you'll see her soon?'
'What the deuce has that got to do with it?'
'Nothing, nothing!' Her gaiety rose and would not be denied. 'A little mistake of mine! But what are we to do with them?'
'The poor?' he suggested. Peggy felt that prosaic, and shook her head. 'The fire? Only there isn't one. Spills? The butterman?'
'They do crackle so seductively,' sighed Peggy.
'Hush!' said Airey with great severity.
Her heart was very light in her. If he could jest about the trouble, surely the trouble was well-nigh past? Could it be abolished altogether? A sudden inspiration filled her mind; her eyes grew bright in eagerness, and her laugh came full though low.
'How stupid we are! Why, we'll spend them, Airey!'
'What?' That suggestion did startle him.
'This very day.'
'All of them?'
'Every farthing. It'll be glorious!'
'What are we to spend them on?' He looked at them apprehensively.
'Oh, that won't be difficult,' she declared. 'You must just do as I tell you, and I can manage it.'
'Well, I don't know that I could have a better guide.'
'Go and put on your best clothes. You're going out with me.'
'I've got them on,' smiled Airey Newton.
'Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Peggy in momentary distress. His face reassured her; they both fell to laughing.
'Well, anyhow,' she suggested, as a last resort, 'suppose you brush them?'
Airey had no objection to that, and departed to his room.
Peggy moved about in restless excitement, fired by her idea. 'First for her, and then——' She shook her head at her own audacity. Yet confidence would not die in her. Had she really struck on the way? Had not the demon summoned up all his most seductive arguments just because he was sore afraid? It was madness? 'Yes, madness to cure madness!' cried Peggy in her heart. A gift to the poor would not do that; the fire would consume and offer nothing in return. She would try.
Airey seemed to surrender himself into her hands; he climbed into the cab docilely. She had run down first and given the man a direction. Airey did not ask where they were going. She opened the little bag, took out its contents, and thrust them into his hands; he pocketed them without a word. They drove westward. She glanced at him covertly once or twice; his face was puzzled, but not pained. He wore an air of sedate meditation; it was so out of keeping with the character of the expedition that Peggy smiled again.
She darted another quick look at him as they drew up at their first destination. He raised his brows a little, but followed her in silence. Peggy gave a gasp of relief as they passed within the doors.
The shopman was not tall and prim, like the bank clerk; he was short, stout, and inclined to roguishness; his eyes twinkled over Peggy, but he was fairly at his wits' end for an explanation. They could not be an engaged pair; Airey's manner gave no hint of it—and the shopman was an experienced judge. Was it an intrigue? Really, in the shopman's opinion, Airey's coat forbade the supposition.He inclined to the theory of a doting uncle or a prodigal godfather. He tumbled out his wares in the profusion such a chance demanded.
At first Airey was very indifferent, but presently he warmed up. He became critical as to the setting of a ring, as to the stones in a bracelet. He even suggested once or twice that the colour of the stones was not suitable, and Peggy was eager to agree. The shopman groped in deeper darkness, since he had taken Peggy's complexion as his guiding star. However the bargains were made—that was the thing; three or four little boxes lay on the counter neatly packed.
'I will bring them round myself, madame, if you will favour me with the address.'
'We'll take them with us, please,' said Peggy.
There was a moment's pause; a polite but embarrassed smile appeared on the shopman's face; an altogether different explanation had for the moment suggested itself.
'We'll pay now and take them with us,' said Peggy.
'Oh, certainly, if you prefer, madame,' murmured the shopman gratefully. He engaged upon figures. Peggy jumped down from her chair and ranged about the shop, inspecting tiaras at impossible prices. She did not come back for three or four minutes. Airey was waiting for her, the small boxes in his hand.
She darted out of the shop and gave the cabman another direction. Airey followed her with a slowness that seemed deliberate. She said nothing till they stopped again; then she observed, just as she got out of the cab, 'This is the best place for pearls.'
Airey was a connoisseur of pearls, or so it seemed. He awoke to an extraordinary interest in them; Peggy and he actually quarrelled over the relative merits of a couple of strings. The shopman arbitrated in favour of the more highly priced; it had been Airey's choice, and he was ungracefully exultant.
'I don't like shopping with you,' declared Peggy pettishly.
'Anything for a quiet life!' sighed Airey. 'We'll have them both.'
A quick suspicion shot into her eyes.
'No, no, no,' she whispered imperatively.
'Why not?'
'It would just spoil it all. Don't spoil it, Airey!'
He yielded. Here again the shopman had several theories, but no conviction as to the situation.
'Now we might lunch,' Peggy suggested. 'It's very tiring work, isn't it?'
At lunch Airey was positively cantankerous. Nothing in thetable d'hôtemeal satisfied him; the place had to be ransacked for recondite dainties. As for wine, he tried three brands before he would drink, and then did not pretend to be satisfied. The cigar he lit afterwards was an ostentatious gold-wrapped monster. 'We procure them especially for the Baron von Plutopluter,' the waiter informed him significantly.
'I'll put half a dozen in my pocket,' said Airey.
Peggy eyed the cigar apprehensively.
'Will that take very long?' she asked. 'We've lots more to do, you know.'
'What more is there to do?' he inquired amiably.
'Well, there's a good deal left still, you know,' she murmured in a rather embarrassed way.
'By Jove, so there is,' he agreed. 'But I don't quite see——'
Certainly Peggy was a little troubled; her confidence seemed to fail her rather; she appeared to contemplate a new and difficult enterprise.
'There isn't a bit too much if—if we do the proper thing,' she said. She looked at him—it might be said she looked over him—with a significant gaze. He glanced down at his coat:
'Oh, nonsense! There's no fun in that,' he objected.
'It's quite half the whole thing,' she insisted.
There were signs of rebellion about him; he fussed andfidgeted, hardly doing justice to the Baron von Plutopluter's taste in cigars.
'I shall look such an ass,' he grumbled at last.
'You shall be quite moderate,' she pleaded speciously, but insincerely. She was relieved at the form of his objection; she had feared worse. His brow, too, cleared a little.
'Is there really any philosophy in it, Peggy?' he asked in a humorous puzzle.
'You liked it. You know you enjoyed it this morning.'
'That was for—well, I hope for somebody else.'
'Do try it—just this once,' she implored.
He abandoned himself to her persuasion; had not that been his bargain for the day? The hansom was called into service again. First to Panting's—where Airey's coat gave a shock such as the establishment had not experienced for many a day—then to other high-class shops. Into some of these Peggy did not accompany him. She would point to a note and say, 'Not more than half the change out of that,' or 'No change at all out of that.' When Airey came out she watched eagerly to see how profound would be the shopman's bow, how urgent his entreaty that he might be honoured by further favours. It is said that the rumour of a new millionaire ran through the London of trade that day.
'Are you liking it, Airey?' She was nearly at an end of her invention when she put the question.
He would give her no answer. 'Have you anywhere else you want to go?'
She thought hard. He turned to her smiling:
'Positively I will not become the owner of a grand piano.'
A brilliant idea flashed on her—obvious as soon as discovered, like all brilliant ideas:
'Why, you'll have nothing decent to carry them in when you go visiting!'
A sudden sense of ludicrousness overcame Airey; he lay back in the cab and laughed. Was the idea of visiting so ludicrous? Or was it the whole thing? And Peggy'sanxious seriousness alternating with fits of triumphant vivacity? All through the visit to the trunk-maker's Airey laughed.
'I can't think of anything else—though there's a note left,' she said with an air of vexed perplexity.
'You're absolutely gravelled, are you?' he asked. 'No, no, not the piano!'
'I'm finished,' she acknowledged sorrowfully. She turned to him with an outburst of gleefulness. 'Hasn't it been a wonderful day? Haven't we squandered, Airey?'
'We've certainly done ourselves very well,' said he.
The cabman begged directions through the roof.
'I don't know,' murmured Peggy in smiling despair. 'Yes, yes,' she called, 'back to Danes Inn! Tea and bread-and-butter, Airey!'
He took the key of his chambers from his pocket. 'You go and make tea. I'll be after you directly.'
'Have you thought of anything else?' she cried with a merry smile.
'I want to walk home and think about it,' said Airey. 'I sha'n't be long. Good-bye.' He recollected a trifle. 'Here's some money for the cab.'
'All that?' asked Peggy.
'He's sure we're mad already. Don't let's disturb his convictions,' Airey argued.
She gave no order to the man for a moment; she sat and watched Airey stroll off down Regent Street, his hands in his pockets (he never would carry a stick) and his head bent a little forward, as his custom was. 'What is he thinking?' she asked herself. What would he think when he realised the freak into which she had led him? He might turn very bitter—not with her, but with himself. The enjoyment into which he had been betrayed might now, in a reaction of feeling, seem the merest folly. How should she argue that it had not been? What would any sober judgment on it say? Peggy drove back to Danes Inn in an anxious and depressed state. Yet ever and again the humours of the expeditionbroke in on her memory, and she smiled again. She chinked the two sovereigns he had given her in her hand. What was the upshot of the day? When she paid the cabman she exchanged smiles with him; that gave her some little comfort.
Danes Inn was comforting too. She hastened to make tea; everything was to be as in old days; to add to the illusion, she herself, having been too excited to eat lunch, was now genuinely hungry. She began to cut bread-and-butter. The loaf was stale! Why, that was like old days too; she used to grumble at that, and Airey always seemed distressed; he used to pledge himself to have new loaves, but they did not always come. Now she saw why. She cut the bread with a liberal and energetic hand; but as she cut—nothing could be more absurd or incongruous—tears came into her eyes. 'He never grudged me enough, anyhow,' she murmured, buttering busily.
Surely, surely, what she had done should turn to good? Must it stand only as a fit of madness, to be looked back on with shame or spoken of with bitter ridicule? It was open enough to all this. Her heart still declared that it was open to something else too. The sun shot a ray in at the big dingy window, and lit up her face and hair. Her task was finished; she threw herself into her usual chair and waited. When he came she would know. He would have thought it over. His step was on the stair; she had left the door unlatched for him; she sat and waited, shutting her eyes before the brightness of that intruding ray.
An apprehension seized her—the fear of a task which she delayed. The step might not be Airey's; it might be Tommy Trent's. She might never be ready with her apology to Tommy, but at any rate she was not ready yet. No, surely it could not be Tommy! Why should he happen to come now? It was much more likely to be Airey.
The expected happened; after all, it sometimes does. Airey it was; the idea that it was Tommy had served only to increase Peggy's sense of the generally critical characterof the situation. She had taken such risks with everybody—perhaps she must say such liberties.
'Tea's ready,' she called to Airey the moment he appeared.
He took no sort of notice of that. His face, grave, as a rule, and strong, heretofore careworn too, had put on a strange boyish gaiety. He came up behind her chair. She tried to rise. He pressed her down, his hands on her shoulders.
'Sit still,' he commanded. 'Lean your head forward. You've got a plaguey lot of hair, Peggy!'
'What are you doing?' she demanded fiercely.
'You've ordered me about all day. Sit still.'
She felt his fingers on her neck; then she felt too, the touch of things smooth and cold. A little clasp clicked home. Airey Newton sprang back. Peggy was on her feet in a moment.
'You've done that, after all?' she cried indignantly.
'You were at the end of your ideas. That's mine—and it balanced the thing out to the last farthing!'
'I told you it would spoil it all!' Her reproach was bitter, as she touched the string of pearls.
'No, Peggy,' he said. 'It only spoils it if it was a prank, an experiment, a test of your ingenuity, young woman. But it doesn't spoil it if it was something else.'
'What else?' she asked softly, sinking back again into her chair and fingering his present with a touch so gentle as to seem almost reverent. 'What else, Airey dear?'
'It came on me as I walked away from the shop—not while I was going there. I was rather unhappy till I got there. But as I walked home—with that thing—it seemed to come on me.' He was standing before her with the happy look of a man to whom happiness is something strange and new. '"That's it," I thought to myself, "though how the deuce that chit found it out——!" It would be bad, Peggy, if a man who had worshipped an idol kicked it every day after he was converted. It would bevicious and unbecoming. But he should kick it once in token of emancipation. If a man had loved an unworthy woman (supposing there are any), he should be most courteous to her always, shouldn't he?'
'As a rule,' smiled Peggy.
'As a rule, yes,' he caught up eagerly. 'But shouldn't she have the truth once? She'd have been a superstition too, and for once the truth should be told. Well, all that came to me. And that's the philosophy of it. Though how you found it out——! Well, no matter. So it's not a mere freak. Was it a mere test of your ingenuity, young friend?'
'I just had to try it,' said Peggy Ryle, bewildered, delighted, bordering on tears.
'So will you wear the pearls?' He paused, then laughed. 'Yes, and eat your bread-and-butter.' He came up to her, holding out his hands. 'The chains are loose, Peggy; the chains are loose.' He seized his pipe and began to fill it, motioning her again towards the tea-table. To humour him she went to it and took up a slice of bread-and-butter.
'A stale loaf, Airey!' she whispered—and seemed to choke before she tasted it in an anticipated struggle with its obstinate substance.
He smiled in understanding. 'How men go wrong—and women! Look at me, look at Fricker, yes, look at—her! We none of us knew the way. Fricker won't learn. She has—perhaps! I have, I think.' He moved towards her. 'And you've done it, Peggy.'
'No, no,' she cried. 'Oh, how can you be so wrong as that?'
'What?' He stood still in surprise. 'Didn't you suggest it all? Didn't you take me? Wasn't it for you that I did it?'
'Oh, you're so blind!' she cried scornfully. 'Perhaps I suggested it, perhaps I went with you! What does that matter?'
'Well, Peggy?' he said in his old indulgent, pleasant way.
'Oh, I'm glad only one thing's changed in you!' she burst out.
'Well, Peggy?' he persisted.
'Were you thinking of me?' she demanded contemptuously. 'Were you kicking your idol for me? Were you buying for me? What made it harder to buy after lunch than before? Was that the difference between buying for yourself and for me?' Her scorn grew with every question. 'What have I done that you should give me this?' She plucked fretfully at the offending string of pearls.
'Never mind that. It was only to use up the change—if you like. What do you mean by the rest of it?'
'What do I mean?' cried Peggy. 'I mean that if you've done her a service, she's done you more. If you've given her back her self-respect, what hasn't she done for you? Are you going to her as her saviour? Oh, I know you won't talk about it! But is that in your mind? Go to her as yours too! Be honest, Airey! Whose face was in your mind through the drive to-day? If you ever thought of telling it all, whom were you going to tell it to? If you wanted to be free, for whom did you want your freedom? I! What had I to do with it? If I could seem to speak with her voice, it was all I could do. And you've been thinking that she's done nothing for you. Oh, the injustice of it!' She put up her hand and laid it on his, which now rested on the back of her chair. 'Don't you see, Airey; don't you see?'
He smoked his pipe steadily, but as yet he gave her no assent.
'It's cost me nothing—or not much,' Peggy went on. 'I broke two promises——'
'Two?' he interrupted quickly.
'Yes, one you know—to Tommy.' He nodded. 'The other to her—I promised to tell no one she was ruined. But that's not much. It seems to me as if all that she'sgone through, all she's lost, all she's suffered—yes, if you like, all the wrong things she's done—had somehow all been for you. She was the only woman who could have made the change in you. Nobody else could have driven out the idol, Airey. You talk of me. You've known me for years. Did I ever drive it out? No, she had to do it. And before she could, she had to be ruined, she had to be in the dust—perhaps she had to be cruel or unjust to others. I can't work out the philosophy of it, but that's how it's happened.' She paused, only to break out vehemently again: 'You spoil it with your talk of me; you spoil it with the necklace!' With a sudden movement she raised her hands, unclasped the pearls from about her neck, and threw them on the table. 'Everything for her, Airey,' she begged, 'everything for her!'
His eyes followed the pearls, and he smiled. 'But what about all the things for me?'
'Aren't they for her too? Aren't you for her? Wouldn't you go to her as fine as you could?'
'What a woman—what a very woman you are!' he chuckled softly.
'No, that's all right,' she insisted eagerly. 'Would she be happy if you lavished things on her and were still wretched if you had anything for yourself?' She was full of her subject; she sprang up and faced him. 'Not this time to the poor, because they can't repay! Not this time to the fire, because it would give you no profit! You must love this—it's a great investment!'
He sat down in the chair she had left empty and played with the pearls that lay on the table.
'Yes, you're right,' he said at last. 'She was the beginning of it. It was she who—but shall I tell that to her?'
'Yes, tell it to her, to her only,' urged Peggy Ryle.
'Give me your hands, Peggy. I want to tell something to you.'
'No, no, there's nothing to tell me—nothing!'
'If the philosophy is great and true, is there to be no credit for the teacher?'
'Did I?' murmured Peggy, 'did I?' She went on in a hurried whisper: 'If that's at all true, perhaps Tommy Trent will forgive me for breaking my word.'
'If Fricker fell, and I have fallen, who is Tommy Trent?'
She moved away with a laugh, hunted for a cigarette—the box was hidden by papers—found it, and lit it. She saw Airey take up the pearls, go to the safe, open it, and lock them in.
'Never!' she cried in gay but determined protest.
'Yes, some day,' said he quietly, as he went back to his seat.
They sat together in silence till Peggy had finished her cigarette and thrown it away.
'If all goes well,' he said softly, more as though he spoke to himself than to her, 'I shall have something to work for now. I can fancy work will be very pleasant now, if things go well, Peggy.'
She rose and crossed over to him.
'I must run away,' she said softly. She leant down towards him. 'Is it a great change?' she asked.
'Tremendous—as tremendous as its philosophy.' He was serious under the banter. She was encouraged to her last venture, which he might have laughed back into retreat.
'It isn't really any change to me,' she told him in a voice that trembled a little. 'You've always been all right to me. This has always been a refuge and a hospitable home to me. If it had all failed, I should have loved you still, Airey, my friend.'
Airey was silent again for an instant.
'Thank God, I think I can believe you in that,' he said at last.
She waited a moment longer, caressing his hand gently.
'And you'll go soon?' she whispered. 'You'll go to her soon?'
'This very night, my dear,' said Airey Newton.
Peggy stood upright. Again the sun's rays caught hereyes and hair, and flashed on her hands as she stretched them out in an ample luxury of joy.
'Oh, what a world it is, if you treat it properly, Airey!' she cried.
But she also had made her discovery. It was with plain amusement and a little laugh, still half-incredulous, that she added: 'And after all there may be some good in saving money too!'