The Intrusions of Peggy

'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 the table d'hôte meal 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 and fidgeted, 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's anxious 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 expedition broke 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 character of 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 be vicious 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's gone 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 her eyes 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!'

CHAPTER XXIII

THE LAST KICK

It was no wonder that Trix Trevalla was holding up her head again. Her neck was freed from a triple load. Mervyn was gone, and gone, she had warrant for believing, if not in contentment, yet in some degree of charity. Beaufort Chance, that terror of hers, whose coarse rebukes made justice seem base cruelty, was gone too – and Trix was still unregenerate enough not to care a jot with what feelings. His fate seemed so exquisitely appropriate to him as to exclude penitence in her. Lastly, Fricker was gone, and with him the damning sense of folly, of being a silly dupe, which had weighed more sorely than anything else on a spirit full of pride. Never a doubt had she about Fricker's letter. He had indeed been honourable in his dealing with Peggy Ryle; he had left Trix to think that in surrendering the shares to him she fell in with a business proposal which he was interested in making, and that she gave at least as good as she received. It needed very little more to make her believe that she was conferring a favour on him, and thereby cancelling the last item of the score that he once had against her. Surely, then, Peggy was both wise and merciful in arguing that she should not know the truth, but should still think that she was in debt to no man for her emancipation.

Let not Peggy's mercy be disputed, nor her wisdom either; for these points are immaterial. The fault that young lady did commit lay in a little oversight. It is well to decide that a secret shall be kept; but it is prudent, as a preliminary thereto, to consider how many people already know it or are in a position where they may find it out. Since, though the best thing of all may be that it should never be told, the second best is often to tell it oneself – and the worst of all to leave the telling in the hands of an enemy. It is just possible that Peggy had grown a little too confident with all her successful generalship. At any rate this oversight of hers made not a little trouble.

'Dear Mr. Trent, – Come to me immediately, please. I have heard a most extraordinary story. I can hardly believe it, but I must see you at once. I shall be at home from six to seven and later.

'Yours truly,'Trix Trevalla.'

'Now what's the meaning of that?' asked Tommy, smoothing his hat and setting out again without so much as sitting down for a pipe after he got back from the City. 'Has Peggy been up to mischief again?' He frowned; he had not forgiven Peggy. It is not safe to discourage a standard which puts the keeping of promises very high and counts any argument which tends the other way in a particular case as dangerous casuistry. Tommy's temperament was dead against casuistry; perhaps, to be candid, his especial gifts of intellect constituted no temptation to the art.

Trix received him with chilling haughtiness. Evidently something was wrong. And the wrong thing was to be visited on the first chance-comer – just like a woman, thought Tommy, hasty in his inference and doubtless unjust in his psychology. In a few moments he found that he was considered by no means a chance-comer in this affair; nor had he been sent for merely as an adviser. Before Trix really opened the case at all, he had discovered that in some inexplicable way he was a culprit; the tones in which she bade him sit down were enough to show any intelligent man as much.

Trix might be high and mighty, but the assumption of this manner hid a very sore heart. If what she was now told were true, the last and greatest burden had not been taken away, and still she was shamed. But this inner mind could not be guessed from her demeanour.

'We've been good friends, Mr. Trent,' she began, 'and I have to thank you for much kindness – '

'Not at all. That's all right, really, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'But I'm forced to ask you,' she continued with overriding imperturbability, 'by what right you concern yourself in my affairs?'

Tommy had a temper, and rather a quick one. He had been a good deal vexed lately too. In his heart he thought that rather too much fuss had been occasioned by and about Mrs. Trevalla; this was, perhaps, one of the limitations of sympathy to which lovers are somewhat subject.

'I don't,' he answered rather curtly.

'Oh, I suppose you're in the plot to deceive me!' she flashed out.

If he were, it was very indirectly, and purely as a business man. He had been asked whether the law could reach Fricker, and had been obliged to answer that it could not. He had been told subsequently to raise money on certain securities. That was his whole connection with the matter.

'But don't you think you were taking a liberty – an enormous liberty? You'll say it was kindness. Well, I don't dispute your motive, but it was presumption too.' Trix's disappointment was lashing her into a revenging fury. 'What right had you to turn me into a beggar, to make me take your money, to think I'd live on your charity?' She flung the question at him with a splendid scorn.

Tommy wrinkled his brow in hopeless perplexity.

'On my honour, I don't know what you're talking about,' he declared. 'My charity? I've never offered you charity, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'You brazen it out?' she cried.

'I don't know about brazening,' said Tommy with a wry smile. 'I say it's all nonsense, if that's what you mean. Somebody's been – ' He pulled himself up on the edge of an expression not befitting the seriousness of the occasion. 'Somebody's been telling you a cock-and-bull story.'

'What other explanation is there?'

'I might possibly discover one if you'd begin at the beginning,' suggested Tommy with hostile blandness.

'I will begin at the beginning, as you call it,' said Trix, with a contempt for his terminology that seemed hardly warranted. She took a letter from her pocket. 'This is from Mr. Beaufort Chance.'

'That fellow!' ejaculated Tommy.

'Yes, that fellow, Mr. Trent. Mr. Fricker's friend, his partner. Listen to this.' She sought a passage a little way down the first page. 'Not so clever as you think!' she read. 'Glowing Stars were as pure a fraud as ever you thought them. But any story's good enough for you, and you believed Fricker took them back. So he did – for a matter of three thousand pounds. And he could have had four if he liked. That's what your cleverness is worth.' Trix's voice faltered. She got it under control and went on with flushed cheeks, the letter shaking in her hand. 'Who paid the money? Ask Peggy Ryle. Has Peggy Ryle got thousands to throw about? Which of your charming new friends has? Ask Miss Peggy who'd give four thousand for her smiles! If she doesn't know, I should think you might inquire of Tommy Trent.' Trix stopped. 'There's some more about – about me, but it doesn't matter,' she ended.

Tommy Trent pulled his moustache. Here was a very awkward situation. 'Beaufort Chance's last kick was a nasty one. Why couldn't Fricker have held his tongue, instead of indulging his partner with such entertaining confidences?