The Intrusions of Peggy

'Well, what have you to say to that?' His puzzled face and obvious confusion seemed to give her the answer. With something like a sob she cried, 'Ah, you daren't deny it!'

It was difficult for Tommy. It seemed simple indeed to deny that he had given Peggy any money; he might strain his conscience and declare that he knew nothing of any money being given. What would happen? Of a certainty Peggy Ryle could not dispose of thousands. He foresaw how Trix would track out the truth by her persistent and indignant questions. The truth would implicate his friend Airey Newton, and he himself would stand guilty of just such a crime as that for which he held Peggy so much to blame. His thoughts of Beaufort Chance were deep and dark.

'I can't explain it,' he stammered at length. 'All I know is – '

'I want the truth! Can I never have the truth?' cried Trix. 'Even a letter like that I'm glad of, if it tells me the truth. And I thought – ' The bitterness of being deluded was heavy on her again. She attacked Tommy fiercely. 'On your honour do you know nothing about it? On your honour did Peggy pay Mr. Fricker money? On your honour did you give it her?'

The single word 'Woman!' would have summed up Tommy's most intimate feelings. It was, however, too brief for diplomacy, or for a man who wished to keep possession of the floor and exclude further attacks from an opponent in an overpowering superiority.

'What I've always noticed,' he began in a deliberate tone, 'about women is that if they write you the sort of note that looks as if you were the only friend they had on earth, or the only fellow whose advice would save 'em from ruin, and you come on that understanding – well, as soon as they get you there, they proceed to drop on you like a thousand of bricks.'

The simile was superficially inappropriate to Trix's trim tense figure; it had a deeper truth, though.

'If you'd answer my questions – ' she began in an ominous and deceptive calm.

'Which of them?' cried Tommy in mad exasperation.

'Take them in any order you please,' she conceded graciously.

Tommy's back was against the wall; he fought desperately for his own honour, desperately for his friends' secrets. One of the friends had betrayed his. She was a girl. Cadit quæstio.

'If I had supposed that this was going to be a business interview – '

'And about your business, it seems, though I thought it was mine! Am I living on your charity?'

'No!' he thundered out, greeting the simple question and the possible denial. 'I've never paid a shilling for you.' His tone implied that he was content, moreover, to leave that state of affairs as it was.

'Then on whose?' asked Trix. Her voice became pathetic; her attitude was imploring now. She blamed herself for this, thinking it lost her all command. How profoundly wrong she was Tommy's increased distress witnessed very plainly.

'I say, now, let's discuss it calmly. Now just suppose – just take the hypothesis – '

Trix turned from him with a quick jerk of her head. The baize door outside had swung to and fro. Tommy heard it too; his eye brightened; there was no intruder whom he would not have welcomed, from the tax-collector to the bull of Bashan; he would have preferred the latter as being presumably the more violent.

'There, somebody's coming! I told you it was no place to discuss things of this kind, Mrs. Trevalla.'

'Of all cowardly creatures, men are – ' began Trix.

A low, gently crooned song reached them from the passage. The words were not very distinct – Peggy sang to please herself, not to inform the world – but the air was soothing and the tones tender. Yet neither of them seemed moved to artistic enjoyment.

'Peggy, by Jove!' whispered Tommy in a fearful voice.

'Now we can have the truth,' said Trix. She spoke almost like a virago; but when she sat at the table, her chin between her hands, she turned on Tommy such a pitiful, harassed face that he could have cried with her.

In came Peggy; she had been to one or two places since Danes Inn, but the glory and gaiety of her visit there hung about her still. She entered gallantly. Then she saw Tommy – and Tommy only at first.

'Oh!' she exclaimed. 'Are you waiting for me?'

Her joy fled; that was strange, since it was Tommy. But there he sat, and sat frowning. It was the day of reckoning!

'I've – I've been meaning to come and see you,' Peggy went on hastily, 'and – and explain.'

'I must ask you to explain to me first, Peggy.'

This from a most forbidding, majestic Trix, hitherto unperceived. She had summoned her forces again; the pleading pitifulness was gone from her face. Tommy reproached himself for a sneak and a coward, but for the life of him he could not help thinking, 'Now they can fight it out together!'

At first Peggy was relieved; a tête-à-tête was avoided. She did not dream that her secret was found out. Who would have thought of Fricker's taste for a good story or of that last kick of malice in Beaufort Chance?

'Oh, there you are too, Trix! So glad to find you. I've only run in for just a minute to change my frock before I go out to dinner with the – '

'It's only a quarter to seven. I want to ask you a question first.'

Trix's chilliness was again most pronounced and unmistakable. Peggy glanced at Tommy; a sullen and wilfully uninforming shrug of the shoulders was all that she got. Peggy had enjoyed the day very much; she was young enough to expect the evening to be like it; she protested vigorously against this sort of atmosphere.

'What's the matter with you both?' she cried.

Trix came straight to the point this time. She would have doubted Beaufort if he had brought gifts in his hand; she did not doubt him when he came with a knife.

'Whose money did you give Mr. Fricker to buy me off?' she asked. She held out her letter to Peggy.

Without a word, beyond a word, Peggy took it and read. Yes, there it was. No honour among thieves! None between her and Fricker! Stay, he had said he would not tell Trix; he had never said or written that he would not tell his partner Beaufort Chance. The letter of the bond! And he had professed to disapprove of Shylock! All that she had ever said about his honourable dealing, all that handsome testimonial of hers, Peggy took back on the spot. Thus did the whole of the beautiful scheme go awry!

'Trix dearest – ' she began.

'My question, please,' said Trix Trevalla. But she had not the control to stop there. 'All of you, all of you!' she broke out passionately. 'Even you, Peggy! Have I no friend left – nobody who'll treat me openly, not play with me as if I were a child, and a silly child? What can I believe? Oh, it's too hard for me!' Again her face sank between her hands; again was the awakening very bitter to her.

They sat silent. Both were loyal; both felt as though they were found out in iniquity.

'You did it?' asked Trix in a dull voice, looking across at Peggy.

There was no way out of that. But where was the exultation of the achievement, where the glory?

'Forgive me, dear; forgive me,' Peggy murmured, almost with a sob.

'Your own money?'

'Mine!' echoed Peggy, between a sob and a laugh now.

'Whose?' Trix asked. There was no answer. She turned on Tommy. 'Whose?' she demanded again.

They would not answer. It was peine forte et dure; they were crushed, but they made no answer. Trix rose from her chair. Her manner was tragic, and no pretence went to give that impression.

'I – I'm not equal to it,' she declared. 'It drives me mad. But I have one friend still. I'll go to him. He'll find out the truth for me and tell it me. He'll make you take back your money and give me back my shares.'

Irresistibly the man of business found voice in Tommy Trent. An appeal to instinct beats everything.

'Do you really suppose,' he asked, 'that old Fricker will disgorge three thousand pounds?'

'That's it!' cried Trix. 'Look what that makes of me! And I thought – '

'The money's past praying for now, anyhow,' said Tommy, in a sort of gloomy satisfaction. There is, as often observed, a comfort in knowing the worst.

'I'll go to him,' said Trix. 'I can trust him. He wouldn't betray me behind my back. He'll tell me the truth as – as I told it to him. Yes, I'll go to Mr. Newton.'

It was odd, but neither of them had anticipated the name. It struck on them with all the unexpectedness of farce. On a moment's reflection it had the proper inevitability of tragedy. Tommy was blankly aghast; he could make nothing of it. In all its mingled effect, the poignancy of its emotion, the ludicrousness of its coincidences, the situation was more than Peggy Ryle could bear. She fell to laughing feebly – laughing though miserable at heart.

'Yes, I'll go to Airey Newton. He won't laugh at me, and he'll let me have the truth.' She turned on them again. 'I've treated some people badly; I've never treated you badly,' she cried. 'Why should you play tricks on me? Why should you laugh? And I was ready to turn from all the world to you! But now – yes, I'll go to Airey Newton.'

Fortune had not done yet; she had another effect in store. Yet she used no far-fetched materials – only a man's desire to see the woman whom he had come to love. There was nothing extraordinary about this. The wonder would have been had he taken an hour longer in coming.

Peggy heard the step on the stairs; the others heard it a second later. Again Tommy brightened up in the hope of a respite – ah, let it be a stranger, someone outside all secrets, whose presence would drive them underground! Trix's denunciations were stayed. Did she know the step? Peggy knew it. 'You'll go to her soon?' 'This very night, my dear.' The snatch of talk came back to her in blazing vividness.

The baize door swung to and fro. 'All right, Mrs. Welling; I'll knock,' came in well-known tones.

'Why, it is Mr. Newton!' cried Trix, turning a glance of satisfied anger on her pair of miserable culprits.

Tommy was paralysed. Peggy rose and retreated into a corner of the room. A chair was in her way; she caught hold of it and held it in front of her, seeming to make it a barricade. She was very upset still, but traitorous laughter played about the corners of her mouth – it reconnoitred, seeking to make its position good. Aggressive satisfaction breathed from Trix Trevalla as she waited for the opening of the door.

Airey put his head inside.

'Mrs. Welling told me I should find you,' he began; for Trix's was the first figure that he saw.

'You find us all, old fellow,' interrupted Tommy Trent, with malicious and bitter jocularity.

At this information Airey's face did not glow with pleasure. Friends are friends, but sometimes their appropriate place is elsewhere. He carried it off well though, exclaiming:

'What, you? And Peggy too?'

Trix had no idea of allowing wandering or diversions.

'I was just coming round to Danes Inn, Mr. Newton,' she said, in a voice resolute but trembling.

'To Danes Inn?' The listeners detected a thrill of pleasure in his voice.

'Yes, to see you. I want your help. I want you to tell me something. Peggy here – ' she pointed a scornful finger at Peggy entrenched in the corner behind her chair, and looking as though she thought that personal violence was not out of the possible range of events – 'Peggy here has been kind – what she calls kind, I suppose – to me. She's been to Mr. Fricker and paid him a lot of money to get me out of Glowing Stars – to persuade him to let me out of them. You told me there was some hope of them. You were wrong. There was none. But Peggy went and bought me out. Mr. Chance has written and told me so.'

Airey had never got further than the threshold. He stood there listening.

Trix went on, in a level hard voice: 'He thinks Mr. Trent found the money. It was three thousand pounds – it might have been four. I don't know why Mr. Fricker only took three when he might have had four.'

For an instant Airey glanced at Peggy's face.

'But whether it was three or four, it couldn't have been Peggy's own money. I've asked Peggy whose it was. I've asked Mr. Trent whether it was his. I can't get any answer out of either of them. They both seem to think there's no need to answer me. They both seem to think that I've been such a – such a – Oh, what shall I do?' She dropped suddenly into a chair and hid her face in her hands.

At last Airey Newton advanced slowly towards her.

'Come, come, Mrs. Trevalla,' he began.

Trix raised her face to his. 'So, as I had no other friend – no other friend I could trust – and they wouldn't help me, I was coming to you. You won't forsake me? You'll tell me the truth?' Her voice rose strong again for a minute. 'This is terribly hard to bear,' she said, 'because I'd come to think it was all right, and that I hadn't been a wretched dupe. And now I have! And my own dear friends have done it too! First my enemies, then my friends!'

Tommy Trent cleared his throat, and looked shamefully indifferent; but for no apparent reason he stood up. Peggy sallied suddenly from her entrenchments, ran to Trix, and fell on her knees beside her.

'Trix, dear Trix!' she murmured.

'Yes, I daresay you loved me, but it's too hard, Peggy.' Trix's voice was hard and unforgiving still.

Was the position desperate? So far as Fortune's caprice went, so it seemed. Among the three the secret was gone beyond recall. Not falsehood the most thorough nor pretence the most artistic could save it. The fine scheme of keeping Trix in the dark now and telling her at some future moment – some future moment of idyllic peace – was hopelessly gone. Now in the stress of the thing, in the face of the turmoil of her spirit, she must be told. It was from this that Tommy Trent had shrunk – from this no less than from the injury to his plighted word. At the idea of this Peggy had cowered even more than from any superstitious awe of the same obligation binding her.

But Airey Newton did not appear frightened nor at a loss. His air was gentle but quite decided, his manner quiet but confident. A calm happiness seemed to be about him. There was subtle amusement in his glance at his two friends; the same thing was not absent from his eyes when they turned to Trix, although it was dominated by something tenderer. Above all, he seemed to know what to do.

Tommy watched him with surprised admiration. The gladdest of smiles broke out suddenly on Peggy's face. She darted from Trix to him and stood by him, saying just 'Airey!'

He took her hand for a moment and patted it. 'It's all right,' said he.

Trix's drooping head was raised again; her eyes too were on him now.

'All right?' she echoed in wondering tones.

'Yes, we can put all this straight directly. But – '

There was the first hint of embarrassment in his manner.

'But what?' asked Trix.

He had no chance to answer her. 'Yes, yes!' burst from Peggy in triumphant understanding. She ran across to Tommy and caught him by the arm. 'There's only my room, but that must do for once,' she cried.

'What? What do you mean?' he inquired.

'Peggy's right,' said Airey, smiling. There was no doubt that he felt equal to the situation. He seemed a new man to Peggy, and her heart grew warm; even Tommy looked at him with altered eyes.

'The fact is, Tommy,' said Airey easily, 'I think I can explain this better to Mrs. Trevalla if you leave us alone.'

Trix's head was raised; her eyes leapt to meet his. She did not yet understand – her idea of him was too deep-rooted. It was trust that her eyes spoke, not understanding.

'Leave us alone,' said Airey Newton.

Peggy beckoned to Tommy, and herself made towards the door. As she passed Airey, he smiled at her. 'All right!' he whispered again.

Then Peggy knew. She ran into the passage and thence to her room. Tommy followed, amazed and rather rueful.

'We must wait here. You may smoke,' said she kindly; but she added eagerly, 'and so will I.'

'But, I say, Peggy – '

'Wasn't it just splendid that he should come then?'

'Capital for us! But he did it, you know!' Tommy's tone was awestruck.

'Why, of course he did it, Tommy.'

'Then, in my opinion, he's in for a precious nasty quarter of an hour.'

Peggy plumped down on the bed, and her laugh rang out in mellow gentleness again.

'Doesn't it strike you that she might forgive him what she wouldn't forgive us?' she asked.

'By Jove! Because she's in love with him?'

'Oh, I suppose that's not a reason for forgiveness with everybody,' murmured Peggy, smoking hard.

CHAPTER XXIV

TO THE SOUL SHOP

With the departure of the other two, Trix's tempestuousness finally left her; it had worn itself out – and her. She sat very quiet, watching Airey Newton with a look that was saved from forlorn despair only by a sort of appeal; it witnessed to a hope which smouldered still, and might burn again if he would fan it. A sense of great physical fatigue was on her; she lay back in a collapse of energy, her head resting against the chair, her hands relaxed and idle on the arms of it.

'What a pity we can't leave it just where it is!' said Airey with a compassionate smile. 'Because we can't really put it all straight to-night; that'll take ever so much longer.' He sighed, and smiled at her. He came and laid his hand on one of hers. 'If I've got a life worth living, it's through you,' he told her. 'You were very angry with Tommy Trent, who had nothing to do with it. You were very, very angry with poor Peggy. Well, she was partly responsible; I don't forget that. But in the end it's a thing between you and me. We haven't seen so very much of one another – not if you count by time at least; but ever since that night at Paris there seems to have been something uniting us. Things that happened to you affected me, and – well, anyhow, you used to feel you had to come and tell me about them.'

He caressed her hand gently, and then walked away to the window.

'Yes, I used to feel that,' said Trix softly. 'I came and told you even – even bad things.'

'You chose your man well,' he went on. 'Better than you knew. If you had known, it wouldn't have been fair to choose a confessor so much worse than yourself. But you didn't know. I believe you thought quite highly of me!' There was no bitterness about him, rather a tone of exultation, almost of amusement. He took hold of a chair, brought it nearer to her, and rested his knee on it. 'There was a man who loved a woman and knew that she was ruined. There was no doubt about it. A friend told him; the woman herself told him. The friend said: "You can help." The woman he loved said, "Nobody can help." He could help, but even still he wouldn't. The friend said, "You can give her back life and her care about living." She said, "I have no joy now in living" – her eyes said that to him. Come, guess what his answer was! Can you guess? No, by heaven, nobody in the world could guess! He answered, "Yes, perhaps, but it would cost too much."'

For an instant she glanced at his face; she found him smiling still.

'That's what he said,' Airey pursued, in a tone of cheerful sarcasm. 'The fellow said it would cost too much. Prudent man, wasn't he? Careful and circumspect, setting a capital example to the thriftless folk we see all about us. It was suggested to him – oh, very delicately! – that it was hardly the occasion to count pennies. Then he got as far as asking that the thing should be reduced to figures. The figures appalled him!' A dry chuckle made her look again; she smiled faintly, in sympathy, not in understanding.

'Remarkable fellow, wasn't he? And the best of it was that the woman he loved was so cut up about being ruined and not having made a success of it altogether that she thought it very condescending and noble of him to show any concern about her or to trouble to give her advice. Now this man was always most ready to give advice; all his friends relied on him for that. As far as advice went, he was one of the most generous men in England. Well, there she lay – in the dust, as somebody put it to him. But, as I say, when it came to figures, the cost of raising her was enormous. Are you feeling an admiration for this hero? Don't you think that the worst, the foolishest woman on earth would have been a bit too good for him? This little trouble of his about figures he had once described as a propensity.'

She leant forward suddenly and looked hard at him. He saw her breath come more quickly.

Airey pulled his beard and continued, smiling still: 'That was the position. Then a girl came to him, a very dangerous girl in my opinion, one who goes about sowing love all over the place in an indiscriminate and hazardous fashion – she carries it about her everywhere, from her shoes to the waves of her hair. She came to him and said, "Well, you're a pretty fellow, aren't you? I've got twopence that I'm going to give. We want tenpence. Out with eightpence, please," said she. "Why so?" he asked, with his hand tight on the eightpence. "She's got ruined just on purpose to give you the chance," said she. That was rather a new point of view to him – but she said it no less.'

'Tell it me plainly,' Trix implored.

'I'm telling it quite plainly,' Airey insisted. 'At last he forked out the tenpence – and sat down and groaned and cried. Lord, how he cried over that tenpence! Till one day the girl came back again and – '

'I thought she only asked for eightpence?' put in Trix, with a swift glance.

'Did I say that? Oh, well, that's not material. She came back, and laid twopence on the table, and said eightpence had been enough. He was just going to grab the twopence and put it back in his pocket again, when she said, "Wouldn't it be nice to spend it?" "Spend it? What on?" he cried. "A new soul," said she, in that wholesale reckless way of hers. "If you get a new soul, she may like you. You can't suppose she'd like you with the one you've got?" She could be candid at times, that girl – oh, all in a very delicate way! So they went out together in a hansom cab, and drove to the soul shop and bought one. There's a ready-made soul shop, if you know where to find it. It's dearer than the others, but they don't keep you waiting, and you can leave the worn-out article behind you.'

'Well?'

'He liked the feel of the new soul, and began to thank the girl for it. And she said, "Don't thank me. I didn't do it." So he thanked her just a little – but the rest of his thanks he kept.'

There was a long silence. Trix gazed before her with wide-open eyes. Airey tilted his chair gently to and fro.

'You paid the money for me?' she asked at last in a dull voice.

'I gave it and Peggy took it. We did it between us.'

'Was it all yours or any of hers?'

'It was all mine. In the end I had that decency about me.' He went on with a touch of eagerness: 'But it wasn't giving the money; any churl must have done that. It's that now – to-day – I rejoice in it. I thank God the money's gone. And when some came back I wouldn't have it. Ah, there was the last tug – it was so easy to take it back! But no, we went out and – wasted it!' He gave a low, delighted laugh. 'By Jove, how we wasted it!' he repeated with a relish.

'Of all people in the world I never thought of you.'

'What I called my life was half-spent in making it impossible that you should.'

'Where did you get the money from?'

The last touch of his old shame, the last remnant of his old secret triumph, showed in his face.

'I had five or six times as much – there in the safe at Danes Inn. It lay there accumulating, accumulating, accumulating. That was my delight.'

'You were rich?'

'I had made a good income for five or six years. You know what I spent. Will you give a name to what was my propensity?' For an instant he was bitter. The mood passed; he laughed again.

'You must have been very miserable?' she concluded.

'Worse than that. I was rather happy. Happy, but afraid. A week ago I should have fled to the ends of the earth sooner than tell you. I couldn't have borne to be found out.'

'I know, I know,' she cried, in quick understanding. 'I felt that at – ' She stopped in embarrassment. Airey's nod saved her the rest.

'But now I can talk of it. I don't mind now. I'm free.' He broke into open laughter. 'I've spent a thousand pounds to-day. It sounds too deliciously impossible.'

She gave a passing smile; she had not seen the thing done, and hardly appreciated it. Her mind flew back to herself again.