Anthony Hope - The Intrusions of Peggy

'We're not equal to it, you and I,' she said with a laugh. 'We don't live there; we can only pay a visit, as you said.'

He nodded, leaning back against the well-padded cushions with an air of finding unwonted ease. He looked tired and worn.

'Why? We work too hard, I suppose. Yes, I work too, in my way.'

'It's not work exactly,' he said. 'They work too, you know.'

'What is it then?' She bent forward to look at his face, pale in the light of the small carriage lamp.

'It's the Devil,' he told her. Their eyes met in a long gaze. Trix smiled appealingly. She had to go back to her difficult life – to Mervyn, to the Chance and Fricker entanglement. She felt alone and afraid.

'The Devil, is it? Have I raised him?' she asked. 'Well, you taught me how. If I – if I come to grief, you must help me.'

'You don't know in the least the sort of man you're talking to,' he declared, almost roughly.

'I know you're a good friend.'

'I am not,' said Airey Newton.

Again their eyes met, their hearts were like to open and tell secrets that daylight hours would hold safely hidden. But it is not far – save in the judgment of fashion – from the Magnifique to Danes Inn, and the horse moved at a good trot. They came to a stand before the gates.

'I don't take your word for that,' she declared, giving him her hand. 'I sha'n't believe it without a test,' she went on in a lighter tone. 'And at any rate I sha'n't fail at your dinner-party.'

'No, don't fail at my party – my only party.' His smile was very bitter, as he relinquished her hand and opened the door of the brougham. But she detained him a moment; she was still reluctant to lose him, to be left alone, to be driven back to her flat and to her life.

'We're nice people! We have a splendid evening, and we end it up in the depths of woe! At least – you're in them too, aren't you?' She glanced past him up the gloomy passage, and gave a little shudder. 'How could you be anything else, living here?' she cried in accents of pity.

'You don't live here, yet you don't seem much better,' he retorted. 'You are beautiful and beautifully turned out – gorgeous! And your brougham is most comfortable. Yet you don't seem much better.'

Trix was put on her defence; she awoke suddenly to the fact that she had been very near to a mood dangerously confidential.

'I've a few worries,' she laughed, 'but I have my pleasures too.'

'And I've my pleasures,' said Airey. 'And I suppose we both find them in the end the best. Good-night.'

Each had put out a hand towards the veil that was between them; to each had come an impulse to pluck it away. But courage failed, and it hung there still. Both went back to their pleasures. In the ears of both Peggy Ryle's whole-hearted laughter, her soft merry 'Hurrah!' that no obvious cause called forth, echoed with the mockery of an unattainable delight. You need clear soul-space for a laugh like that.

There were whispers about Beaufort Chance, and nods and winks such as a man in his position had better have given no occasion for; men told one another things in confidence at the club; they were quite sure of them, but at the same time very anxious not to be vouched as authority. For there seemed no proof. The list of shareholders of the Dramoffsky Concessions did not display his name; it did display, as owners of blocks of shares, now larger, now smaller, a number of names unknown to fame, social or financial; even Fricker's interest was modest according to the list, and Beaufort Chance's seemed absolutely nothing. Yet still the whispers grew.

Beaufort knew it by the subtle sense that will tell men who depend on what people say of them what people are saying. He divined it with a politician's sensitiveness to opinion. He saw a touch of embarrassment where he was accustomed to meet frankness, he discerned constraint in quarters where everything had been cordiality. He perceived the riskiness of the game he played. He urged Fricker to secrecy and to speed; they must not be seen together so much, and the matter must be put through quickly; these were his two requirements. He was in something of a terror; his manner grew nervous and his face careworn. He knew that he could look for little mercy if he were discovered; he had outraged the code. But he held on his way. His own money was in the venture; if it were lost he was crippled in the race on which he had entered. Trix Trevalla's money was in it too; he wanted Trix Trevalla and he wanted her rich. He was so hard-driven by anxiety that he no longer scrupled to put these things plainly to himself. His available capital had not sufficed for a big stroke; hers and his, if he could consider them as united, and if the big stroke succeeded, meant a decent fortune; it was a fine scheme to get her to make him rich while at the same time he earned her gratitude. He depended on Fricker to manage this; he was, by himself, rather a helpless man in such affairs. Mrs. Bonfill had never expected that he would rise to the top, even while she was helping him to rise as high as he could.

Fricker was not inclined to hurry himself, and he played with the plea for secrecy in a way that showed a consciousness of power over his associate. He had been in one or two scandals, and to be in another would have interfered with his plans – or at least with Mrs. Fricker's. Yet there is much difference between a man who does not want any more scandals and him who, for the sake of a great prize risking one, would be ruined if his venture miscarried. Fricker's shrewd equable face displayed none of the trouble which made Chance's heavy and careworn.

But there was hurry in Fricker's family, though not in Fricker. The season was half-gone, little progress had been made, effect from Trix Trevalla's patronage or favour was conspicuously lacking. Mrs. Fricker did not hesitate to impute double-dealing to Trix, to declare that she meant to give nothing and to take all she could. Fricker had a soul somewhat above these small matters, but he observed honour with his wife – for his oath's sake and a quiet life's. Moreover, be the affair what it would, suggest to him that he was being 'bested' in it, and he became dangerous.

A word is necessary about the position of Dramoffskys. They had collapsed badly on Lord Farringham's pessimistic speech. Presently they began to revive on the strength of 'inside buying'; yet their rise was slow and languid, the Stock Exchange was distrustful, the public would not come in. There was a nice little profit ('Not a scoop at present,' observed Fricker) for those who had bought at the lowest figure, but more rumours would stop the rise and might send quotations tumbling again. It was all-important to know, or to be informed by somebody who did, just how long to hold on, just when to come out. Dramoffskys, in fine, needed a great deal of watching; the operator in them required the earliest, best, and most confidential information that he could get. Fricker was the operator. Beaufort Chance had his sphere. Trix, it will be noticed, was inclined to behave purely as a sleeping partner, which was all very well as regarded Dramoffskys themselves, but very far from well as it touched her relations towards her fellows in the game.

Trix was praying for speed and secrecy as urgently as Beaufort Chance himself; for secrecy from Mrs. Bonfill, from Mervyn, from all her eminent friends; for speed that the enterprise might be prosperously accomplished, the money made, and she be free again. No more ventures for her, if once she were free, she declared. If once she were – free! There she would pause and insist with herself that she had given Beaufort Chance no reason to expect more than the friendship which was all that he had openly claimed, nor the Frickers any right to look for greater countenance or aid than her own acquaintance and hospitality ensured them. Had she ever promised to marry Chance, or to take the Frickers to Mrs. Bonfill's or the Glentorly's? She defied them to prove any such thing – and looked forward with terror to telling them so.