The Intrusions of Peggy

'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,' said Beaufort 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, and his 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 jaunty attitude – 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 need Fricker'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.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PHILOSOPHY OF IT

'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.