The Intrusions of Peggy. Hope Anthony
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.
'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