The Intrusions of Peggy
Some said that Lord Farringham's pessimistic speech was meant only for home consumption, the objects being to induce the country to spend money freely and also to feel that it was no moment for seeking to change the Crown's responsible advisers. Others said that it was intended solely for abroad, either as a warning or, more probably, as an excuse to enable a foreign nation to retire with good grace from an untenable position. A minority considered that the Prime Minister had perhaps said what he thought. On the whole there was considerable uneasiness.
'What does it all mean, Mr. Fricker?' asked Trix, when that gentleman called on her, cool, alert, and apparently in very good spirits.
'It means that fools are making things smooth for wise men, as usual,' he answered, and looked at her with a keen glance.
'If you will only make them plain to one fool!' she suggested with a laugh.
'I presume you aren't interested in international politics as such?'
'Not a bit,' said Trix heartily.
'But if there's any little venture going – ' He smiled as he tempted her, knowing that she would yield.
'You've been very kind to me,' murmured Trix.
'It's a big thing this time – and a good thing. You've heard Beaufort mention the Dramoffsky Concessions, I daresay?'
Trix nodded.
'He'd only mention them casually, of course,' Fricker continued with a passing smile. 'Well, if there's trouble, or serious apprehension of it, the Dramoffsky Concessions would be blown sky-high – because it's all English capital and labour, and for a long time anyhow the whole thing would be brought to a standstill, and the machinery all go to the deuce, and so on.'
Again Trix nodded wisely.
'Whereas, if everything's all right, the Concessions are pretty well all right too. Have you noticed that they've been falling a good deal lately? No, I suppose not. Most papers don't quote them.'
'I haven't looked for them. I've had my eye on the Glowing Star.' Trix was anxious to give an impression of being business-like in one matter anyhow.
'Oh, that's good for a few hundreds, but don't you worry about it. I'll look after that for you. As I say, if there's serious apprehension, Dramoffskys go down. Well, there will be – more serious than there is now. And after that – '
'War?' asked Trix in some excitement.
'We imagine not. I'd say we know, only one never really knows anything. No, there will be a revival of confidence. And then Dramoffskys – well, you see what follows. Now it's a little risky – not very – and it's a big thing if it comes off, and what I'm telling you is worth a considerable sum as a marketable commodity. Are you inclined to come in?'
To Trix there could be but one answer. Coming in with Mr. Fricker had always meant coming out better for the process. She thanked him enthusiastically.
'All right. Lodge five thousand at your bankers' as soon as you can, and let me have it.'
'Five thousand!' Trix gasped a little. She had not done the thing on such a scale as this before.
'It's always seemed to me waste of time to fish for herrings with a rod and line,' observed Fricker; 'but just as you like, of course.'
'Does Beaufort think well of it?'
'Do you generally find us differing?' Fricker smiled ironically.
'I'll go in,' said Trix. 'I shall make a lot, sha'n't I?'
'I think so. Hold your tongue, and stay in till I tell you to come out. You can rely on me.'
Nothing more passed between them then. Trix was left to consider the plunge that she had made. Could it possibly go wrong? If it did – she reckoned up her position. If it went wrong – if the five thousand or the bulk of it were lost, what was left to her? After payment of all liabilities, she would have about ten thousand pounds. That she had determined to keep intact. On the interest of that – at last the distinction was beginning to thrust itself on her mind with a new and odious sharpness – she would have to live. To live – not to have that flat, or those gowns, or that brougham, or this position; not to have anything that she wanted and loved, but just to live. Pensions again! It would come to going back to pensions.
No, would it? There was another resource. Trix, rather anxious, a little fretful and uneasy, was sanguine and resolute still. She wrote to Beaufort Chance, telling him what she had done, thanking him, bidding him thank Fricker, expressing the amplest gratitude to both gentlemen. Then she sat down and invited Mervyn to come and see her; he had not been for some days, and, busy as he was, Trix thought it was time to see him, and to blot out, for a season at least, all idea of Audrey Pollington. She reckoned that an interview with her, properly managed, would put Audrey and her ally out of action for some little while to come.
Mervyn obeyed her summons, but not in a very cheerful mood. Trix's efforts to pump him about the problems and the complications were signally unsuccessful. He snubbed her, giving her to understand that he was amazed at being asked such questions. What, then, was Beaufort Chance doing, she asked in her heart. She passed rapidly from the dangerous ground, declaring with a pout that she thought he might have told her some gossip, to equip her for her next dinner party. He responded to her lighter mood with hardly more cordiality. Evidently there was something wrong with him, something which prevented her spell from working on him as it was wont. Trix was dismayed. Was her power gone? It could not be that statuesque Miss Pollington had triumphed, or was even imminently dangerous.
At last Mervyn broke out with what he had to say. He looked, she thought, like a husband (not like Vesey Trevalla, but like the abstract conception), and a rather imperious one, as he took his stand on her hearthrug and frowned down at her.
'You might know – no, you do know – the best people in London,' he said, 'and yet I hear of your going about with the Frickers! I should think Fricker's a rogue, and I know he's a cad. And the women!' Aristocratic scorn embittered his tongue.
'Whom have you heard it from?'
'Lots of people. Among others, Viola Blixworth.'
'Oh, Lady Blixworth! Of course you'd hear it from her!
'It doesn't matter who tells me, if it's true.'
That was an annoying line to take. It was easy to show Lady Blixworth's motive, but it was impossible to deny the accuracy of what she said. A hundred safe witnesses would have confounded Trix had she denied.
'What in the world do you do it for?' he asked angrily and impatiently. 'What can Fricker do for you? Don't you see how you lower yourself? They'll be saying he's bought you next!'
Trix did not start, but a spot of colour came on her cheeks; her eyes were hard and wary as they watched Mervyn covertly. He came towards her, and, with a sudden softening of manner, laid his hand on hers.
'Drop them,' he urged. 'Don't have anything more to do with such a lot.'
Trix looked up at him; there were doubt and distress in her eyes. He was affectionate now, but also very firm.
'For my sake, drop them,' he said. 'You know people can't come where they may meet the Frickers.'
Trix was never slow of understanding; she saw very well what Mervyn meant. His words might be smooth, his manner might be kind, and, if she wished it at the moment, ready to grow more than kind. With all this he was asking, nay, he was demanding, that she should drop the Frickers. How difficult the path had suddenly grown; how hard it was to work her complicated plan!
'A good many people know them. There's Mr. Chance – ' she began timidly.
'Beaufort Chance! Yes, better if he didn't!' His lips, grimly closing again, were a strong condemnation of his colleague.
'They're kind people, really.'
'They're entirely beneath you – and beneath your friends.'
There was no mistaking the position. Mervyn was delivering an ultimatum. It was little use to say that he had no right because he had made her no offer. He had the power, which, it is to be feared, is generally more the question. And at what a moment the ultimatum came! Must Trix relinquish that golden dream of the Dramoffsky Concessions, and give up those hundreds – welcome if few – from the Glowing Star? Or was she to defy Mervyn and cast in her lot with the Frickers – and with Beaufort Chance?
'Promise me,' he said softly, with as near an approach to a lover's entreaty as his grave and condescending manner allowed. 'I never thought you'd make any difficulty. Do you really hesitate between doing what pleases me and what pleases Chance or the Frickers?'
Trix would have dearly liked to cry 'Yes, yes, yes!' Such a reply would, she considered, have been wholesome for Mortimer Mervyn, and it would have been most gratifying to herself. She dared not give it; it would mean far too much.
'I can't be actually rude,' she pleaded. 'I must do it gradually. But since you ask me, I will break with them as much and as soon as I can.'
'That's all I ask of you,' said Mervyn. He bent and kissed her hand with a reassuring air of homage and devotion. But evidently homage and devotion must be paid for. They bore a resemblance to financial assistance in that respect. Trix was becoming disagreeably conscious that people expected to be paid, in one way or another, for most things that they gave. Chance and Fricker wanted payment. Mervyn claimed it too. And to pay both as they asked seemed now impossible.
Somehow life appeared to have an objection to being played with, the world to be rather unmalleable as material, the revenge not to be the simple and triumphant progress that it had looked.
Trix Trevalla, under pressure of circumstances, got thus far on the way towards a judgment of herself and a knowledge of the world; the two things are closely interdependent.
CHAPTER VI
CHILDREN OF SHADOW
'A Politician! I'd as soon be a policeman,' remarked Miles Childwick, with delicate scorn. 'I don't dispute the necessity of either – I never dispute the necessity of things – but it would not occur to me to become either.'
'You're not tall enough for a policeman, anyhow,' said Elfreda Flood.
'Not if it became necessary to take you in charge, I admit' (Elfreda used to be called 'queenly' and had played Hippolyta), 'but your remark is impertinent in every sense of the term. Politicians and policemen are essentially the same.'
Everybody looked at the clock. They were waiting for supper at the Magnifique; it was Tommy Trent's party, and the early comers sat in a group in the luxurious outer room.
'From what I know of policemen in the witness-box, I incline to agree,' said Manson Smith.
'The salaries, however, are different,' yawned Tommy, without removing his eyes from the clock.
'I'm most infernally hungry,' announced Arty Kane, a robust-looking youth, somewhat famous as a tragic poet. 'Myra Lacrimans' was perhaps his best-known work.
Mrs. John Maturin smiled; she was not great at repartee outside her writings. 'It is late,' she observed.
'But while policemen,' pursued Miles Childwick, sublimely careless of interruption, 'while policemen make things endurable by a decent neglect of their duties (or how do we get home at night?), politicians are constantly raising the income tax. I speak with no personal bitterness, since to me it happens to be a small matter, but I observe a laceration of the feelings of my wealthy friends.'
'He'd go on all night, whether we listened or not,' said Horace Harnack, half in despair, half in admiration. 'I suppose it wouldn't do to have a song, Tommy?'
His suggestion met with no attention, for at the moment Tommy sprang to his feet, exclaiming, 'Here's Peggy at last!'
The big glass doors were swung open and Peggy came in. The five men advanced to meet her; Mrs. John Maturin smiled in a rather pitying way at Elfreda, but Elfreda took this rush quite as a matter of course and looked at the clock again.
'Is Airey here?' asked Peggy.
'Not yet,' replied Tommy. 'I hope he's coming, though.'
'He said something about being afraid he might be kept,' said Peggy; then she drew Tommy aside and whispered, 'Had to get his coat mended, you know.'
Tommy nodded cautiously.
'And she hasn't come either?' Peggy went on.
'No; and whoever she is, I hate her,' remarked Arty Kane. 'But who is she? We're all here.' He waved his arm round the assembly.
'Going to introduce you to society to-night, Arty,' his host promised. 'Mrs. Trevalla's coming.'
'Duchesses I know, and countesses I know,' said Childwick; 'but who – '
'Oh, nobody expected you to know,' interrupted Peggy. She came up to Elfreda and made a rapid scrutiny. 'New frock?'
Elfreda nodded with an assumption of indifference.
'How lucky!' said Peggy, who was evidently rather excited. 'You're always smart,' she assured Mrs. John Maturin.
Mrs. John smiled.
Timidly and with unfamiliar step Airey Newton entered the gorgeous apartment. Relief was dominant on his face when he saw the group of friends, and he made a hasty dart towards them, giving on the way a nervous glance at his shoes, which showed two or three spots of mud – the pavements were wet outside. He hastened to hide himself behind Elfreda Flood, and, thus sheltered, surveyed the scene.
'I was just saying, Airey, that politicians – '
Arty Kane stopped further progress by the hasty suggestion of a glass of sherry, and the two went off together to the side room, where supper was laid, leaving the rest again regarding the clock – except Peggy, who had put a half-crown in her glove, or her purse, or her pocket, and could not find it, and declared that she could not get home unless she did; she created no sympathy and (were such degrees possible) less surprise, when at last she distinctly recollected having left it on the piano.
'Whose half-crown on whose piano?' asked Manson Smith with a forensic frown.
When the sherry-bibbers returned with the surreptitious air usual in such cases, the group had undergone a marked change; it was clustered round a very brilliant person in a gown of resplendent blue, with a flash of jewels about her, a hint of perfume, a generally dazzling effect. Miles Childwick came up to Manson Smith.
'This,' said Childwick, 'we must presume to be Mrs. Trevalla. Let me be introduced, Manson, before my eyes are blinded by the blaze.'
'Is she a new flame of Tommy's?' asked Manson in a whisper.
The question showed great ignorance; but Manson was comparatively an outsider, and Miles Childwick let it pass with a scornful smile.
'What a pity we're not supping in the public room!' said Peggy.
'We might trot Mrs. Trevalla through first, in procession, you know,' suggested Tommy. 'It's awfully good of you to come. I hardly dared ask you,' he added to Trix.
'I was just as afraid, but Miss Ryle encouraged me. I met her two or three nights ago at Mrs. Bonfill's.'
They went in to supper. Trix was placed between Tommy and Airey Newton, Peggy was at the other end, supported by Childwick and Arty Kane. The rest disposed themselves, if not according to taste, yet with apparent harmony; there was, however, a momentary hesitation about sitting by Mrs. John. 'Mrs. John means just one glass more champagne than is good for one,' Childwick had once said, and the remark was felt to be just.
'No, politicians are essentially concerned with the things that perish,' resumed Miles Childwick; he addressed Peggy – Mrs. John was on his other side.
'Everything perishes,' observed Arty Kane, putting down his empty soup-cup with a refreshed and cheerful air.
'Do learn the use of language. I said "essentially concerned." Now we are essentially concerned with – '
Trix Trevalla heard the conversation in fragments. She did not observe that Peggy took much part in it, but every now and then she laughed in a rich gurgle, as though things and people in general were very amusing. Whenever she did this, all the young men looked at her and smiled, or themselves laughed too, and Peggy laughed more and, perhaps, blushed a little. Trix turned to Tommy and whispered, 'I like her.'
'Rather!' said Tommy. 'Here, waiter, bring some ice.'
Most of the conversation was far less formidable than Miles Childwick's. It was for the most part frank and very keen discussion of a number of things and persons entirely, or almost entirely, unfamiliar to Trix Trevalla. On the other hand, not one of the problems with which she, as a citizen and as a woman, had been so occupied was mentioned, and the people who filled her sky did not seem to have risen above the horizon here. Somebody did mention Russia once, and Horace Harnack expressed a desire to have 'a slap' at that great nation; but politics were evidently an alien plant, and soon died out of the conversation. The last play or the last novel, the most recent success on the stage, the newest paradox of criticism, were the topics when gossip was ousted for a few moments from its habitual and evidently welcome sway. People's gossip, however, shows their tastes and habits better than anything else, and in this case Trix was not too dull to learn from it; it reproduced another atmosphere and told her that there was another world than hers. She turned suddenly to Airey Newton.
'We talk of living in London, but it's a most inadequate description. There must be ten Londons to live in!'
'Quite – without counting the slums.'
'We ought to say London A, or London B, or London C. Social districts, like the postal ones; only far more of them. I suppose some people can live in more than one?'
'Yes, a few; and a good many people pay visits.'
'Are you Bohemian?' she asked, indicating the company with a little movement of her hand.
'Look at them!' he answered. 'They are smart and spotless. I'm the only one who looks the part in the least. And, behold, I am frugal, temperate, a hard worker, and a scientific man!'
'There are believed to be Bohemians still in Kensington and Chelsea,' observed Tommy Trent. 'They will think anything you please, but they won't dine out without their husbands.'
'If that's the criterion, we can manage it nearer than Chelsea,' said Trix. 'This side of Park Lane, I think.'
'You've got to have the thinking too, though,' smiled Airey.
Miles Childwick had apparently been listening; he raised his voice a little and remarked: 'The divorce between the theoretical bases of immorality – '
'Falsely so called,' murmured Hanson Smith.
'And its practical development is one of the most – '
It was no use; Peggy gurgled helplessly, and hid her face in her napkin. Childwick scowled for an instant, then leant back in his chair, smiling pathetically.
'She is the living negation of serious thought,' he complained, regarding her affectionately.
Peggy, emerging, darted him a glance as she returned to her chicken.
'When I published "Myra Lacrimans" – ' began Arty Kane.
In an instant everybody was silent. They leant forward towards him with a grave and eager attention, signing to one another to keep still. Tommy whispered: 'Don't move for a moment, waiter!'
'Oh, confound you all!' exclaimed poor Arty Kane, as he joined in the general outburst of laughter.
Trix found herself swelling it light-heartedly.
'We've found by experience that that's the only way to stop him,' Tommy explained, as with a gesture he released the grinning waiter. 'He'll talk about "Myra" through any conversation, but absolute silence makes him shy. Peggy found it out. It's most valuable. Isn't it, Mrs. John?'
'Most valuable,' agreed Mrs. John. She had made no other contribution to the conversation for some time.
'All the same,' Childwick resumed, in a more conversational tone, but with unabated perseverance, 'what I was going to say is true. In nine cases out of ten the people who are – ' He paused a moment.
'Irregular,' suggested Manson Smith.
'Thank you, Manson. The people who are irregular think they ought to be regular, and the people who are regular have established their right to be irregular. There's a reason for it, of course – '
'It seems rather more interesting without one,' remarked Elfreda Flood.
'No reason, I think?' asked Horace Harnack, gathering the suffrages of the table.
'Certainly not,' agreed the table as a whole.
'To give reasons is a slur on our intellects and a waste of our time,' pronounced Manson Smith.
'It's such a terribly long while since I heard anybody talk nonsense on purpose,' Trix said to Airey, with a sigh of enjoyment.
'They do it all the time; and, yes, it's rather refreshing.'
'Does Mr. Childwick mind?'
'Mind?' interposed Tommy. 'Gracious, no! He's playing the game too; he knows all about it. He won't let on that he does, of course, but he does all the same.'
'The reason is,' said Childwick, speaking with lightning speed, 'that the intellect merely disestablishes morality, while the emotions disregard it. Thank you for having heard me with such patience, ladies and gentlemen.' He finished his champagne with a triumphant air.
'You beat us that time,' said Peggy, with a smile of congratulation.
Elfreda Flood addressed Harnack, apparently resuming an interrupted conversation.
'If I wear green I look horrid, and if she wears blue she looks horrid, and if we don't wear either green or blue, the scene looks horrid. I'm sure I don't know what to do.'
'It'll end in your having to wear green,' prophesied Harnack.
'I suppose it will,' Elfreda moaned disconsolately. 'She always gets her way.'
'I happen to know he reviewed it,' declared Arty Kane with some warmth, 'because he spelt "dreamed" with a "t." He always does. And he'd dined with me only two nights before!'
'Where?' asked Manson Smith.
'At my own rooms.'
'Then he certainly wrote it. I've dined with you there myself.'
Trix had fallen into silence, and Airey Newton seemed content not to disturb her. The snatches of varied talk fell on her ears, each with its implication of a different interest and a different life, all foreign to her. The very frivolity, the sort of schoolboy and chaffy friendliness of everybody's tone, was new in her experience, when it was united, as here it seemed to be, with a liveliness of wits and a nimble play of thought. The effect, so far as she could sum it up, was of carelessness combined with interest, independence without indifference, an alertness of mind which laughter softened. These people, she thought, were all poor (she did not include Tommy Trent, who was more of her own world), they were none of them well known, they did not particularly care to be, they aspired to no great position. No doubt they had to fight for themselves sometimes – witness Elfreda and her battle of the colours – but they fought as little as they could, and laughed while they fought, if fight they must. But they all thought and felt; they had emotions and brains. She knew, looking at Mrs. John's delicate fine face, that she too had brains, though she did not talk.
'I don't say,' began Childwick once more, 'that when Mrs. John puts us in a book, as she does once a year, she fails to do justice to our conversation, but she lamentably neglects and misrepresents her own.'
Trix had been momentarily uneasy, but Mrs. John was smiling merrily.
'I miss her pregnant assents, her brief but weighty disagreements, the rich background of silence which she imparts to the entertainment.'
Yes, Mrs. John had brains too, and evidently Miles Childwick and the rest knew it.
'When Arty wrote a sonnet on Mrs. John,' remarked Manson Smith, 'he made it only twelve lines long. The outside world jeered, declaring that such a thing was unusual, if not ignorant. But we of the elect traced the spiritual significance.'
'Are you enjoying yourself, Airey?' called Peggy Ryle.
He nodded to her cordially.
'What a comfort!' sighed Peggy. She looked round the table, laughed, and cried 'Hurrah!' for no obvious reason.
Trix whispered to Airey, 'She nearly makes me cry when she does that.'
'You can feel it?' he asked in a quick low question, looking at her curiously.
'Oh, yes, I don't know why,' she answered, glancing again at the girl whose mirth and exultation stirred her to so strange a mood.
Her eyes turned back to Airey Newton, and found a strong attraction in his face too. The strength and kindness of it, coming home to her with a keener realisation, were refined by the ever-present shadow of sorrow or self-discontent. This hint of melancholy persisted even while he took his share in the gaiety of the evening; he was cheerful, but he had not the exuberance of most of them; he was far from bubbling over in sheer joyousness like Peggy; he could not achieve even the unruffled and pain-proof placidity of Tommy Trent. Like herself then – in spite of a superficial remoteness from her, and an obviously nearer kinship with the company in life and circumstances – he was in spirit something of a stranger there. In the end he, like herself, must look on at the fun rather than share in it wholeheartedly. There was a background for her and him, rather dark and sombre; for the rest there seemed to be none; their joy blazed unshadowed. Whatever she had or had not attained in her attack on the world, however well her critical and doubtful fortunes might in the end turn out, she had not come near to reaching this; indeed it had never yet been set before her eyes as a thing within human reach. But how naturally it belonged to Peggy and her friends! There are children of the sunlight and children of the shadow. Was it possible to pass from one to the other, to change your origin and name? It seemed to her that, if she had not been born in the shadow, it had fallen on her full soon and heavily, and had stayed very long. Had her life now, her new life with all its brilliance, quite driven it away? All the day it had been dark and heavy on her; not even now was it wholly banished.