Anthony Hope - The Intrusions of Peggy

'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.

When the party broke up – it was not an early hour – Peggy came over to Airey Newton. Trix did not understand the conversation.

'I got your letter, but I'm not coming,' she said. 'I told you I wouldn't come, and I won't.' She was very reproachful, and seemed to consider that she had been insulted somehow.

'Oh, I say now, Peggy!' urged Tommy Trent, looking very miserable.

'It's your fault, and you know it,' she told him severely.

'Well, everybody else is coming,' declared Tommy. Airey said nothing, but nodded assent in a manner half-rueful, half-triumphant.

'It's shameful,' Peggy persisted.

There was a moment's pause. Trix, feeling like an eavesdropper, looked the other way, but she could not avoid hearing.

'But I've had a windfall, Peggy,' said Airey Newton. 'On my honour, I have.'

'Yes, on my honour, he has,' urged Tommy earnestly. 'A good thumping one, isn't it, Airey?'

'One of my things has been a success, you know.'

'Oh, he hits 'em in the eye sometimes, Peggy.'

'Are you two men telling anything like the truth?'

'The absolute truth.'

'Bible truth!' declared Tommy Trent.

'Well, then, I'll come; but I don't think it makes what Tommy did any better.'

'Who cares, if you'll come?' asked Tommy.

Suddenly Airey stepped forward to Trix Trevalla. His manner was full of hesitation – he was, in fact, awkward; but then he was performing a most unusual function. Peggy and Tommy Trent stood watching him, now and then exchanging a word.

'He's going to ask her,' whispered Peggy.

'Hanged if he isn't!' Tommy whispered back.

'Then he must have had it!'

'I told you so,' replied Tommy in an extraordinarily triumphant, imperfectly lowered voice.

Yes, Airey Newton was asking Trix to join his dinner-party.

'It's – it's not much in my line,' he was heard explaining, 'but Trent's promised to look after everything for me. It's a small affair, of course, and – and just a small dinner.'

'Is it?' whispered Tommy with a wink, but Peggy did not hear this time.

'If you'd come – '

'Of course I will,' said Trix. 'Write and tell me the day, and I shall be delighted.' She did not see why he should hesitate quite so much, but a glance at Peggy and Tommy showed her that something very unusual had happened.

'It'll be the first dinner-party he's ever given,' whispered Peggy excitedly, and she added to Tommy, 'Are you going to order it, Tommy?'

'I've asked him to,' interposed Airey, still with an odd mixture of pride and apprehension.

Peggy looked at Tommy suspiciously.

'If you don't behave well about it, I shall get up and go away,' was her final remark.

Trix's brougham was at the door – she found it necessary now to hire one for night-work, her own horse and man finding enough to do in the daytime – and after a moment's hesitation she offered to drive Airey Newton home, declaring that she would enjoy so much of a digression from her way. He had been looking on rather vaguely while the others were dividing themselves into hansom-cab parties, and she received the impression that he meant, when everybody was paired, to walk off quietly by himself. Peggy overheard her invitation and said with a sort of relief: —

'That'll do splendidly, Airey.'

Airey agreed, but it seemed with more embarrassment than pleasure.

But Trix was pleased to prolong, even by so little, the atmosphere and associations of the evening, to be able to talk about it a little more, to question him while she questioned herself also indirectly. She put him through a catechism about the members of the party, delighted to elicit anything that confirmed her notion of their independence, their carelessness, and their comradeship. He answered what she asked, but in a rather absent melancholy fashion; a pall seemed to have fallen on his spirits again. She turned to him, attracted, not repelled, by his relapse into sadness.