The Intrusions of Peggy. Anthony Hope

don't quote them.'

      'I haven't looked for them. I've had my eye on the Glowing Star.' Trix was anxious to give an impression of being business-like in one matter anyhow.

      'Oh, that's good for a few hundreds, but don't you worry about it. I'll look after that for you. As I say, if there's serious apprehension, Dramoffskys go down. Well, there will be—more serious than there is now. And after that——'

      'War?' asked Trix in some excitement.

      'We imagine not. I'd say we know, only one never really knows anything. No, there will be a revival of confidence. And then Dramoffskys—well, you see what follows. Now it's a little risky—not very—and it's a big thing if it comes off, and what I'm telling you is worth a considerable sum as a marketable commodity. Are you inclined to come in?'

      To Trix there could be but one answer. Coming in with Mr. Fricker had always meant coming out better for the process. She thanked him enthusiastically.

      'All right. Lodge five thousand at your bankers' as soon as you can, and let me have it.'

      'Five thousand!' Trix gasped a little. She had not done the thing on such a scale as this before.

      'It's always seemed to me waste of time to fish for herrings with a rod and line,' observed Fricker; 'but just as you like, of course.'

      'Does Beaufort think well of it?'

      'Do you generally find us differing?' Fricker smiled ironically.

      'I'll go in,' said Trix. 'I shall make a lot, sha'n't I?'

      'I think so. Hold your tongue, and stay in till I tell you to come out. You can rely on me.'

      Nothing more passed between them then. Trix was left to consider the plunge that she had made. Could it possibly go wrong? If it did—she reckoned up her position. If it went wrong—if the five thousand or the bulk of it were lost, what was left to her? After payment of all liabilities, she would have about ten thousand pounds. That she had determined to keep intact. On the interest of that—at last the distinction was beginning to thrust itself on her mind with a new and odious sharpness—she would have to live. To live—not to have that flat, or those gowns, or that brougham, or this position; not to have anything that she wanted and loved, but just to live. Pensions again! It would come to going back to pensions.

      No, would it? There was another resource. Trix, rather anxious, a little fretful and uneasy, was sanguine and resolute still. She wrote to Beaufort Chance, telling him what she had done, thanking him, bidding him thank Fricker, expressing the amplest gratitude to both gentlemen. Then she sat down and invited Mervyn to come and see her; he had not been for some days, and, busy as he was, Trix thought it was time to see him, and to blot out, for a season at least, all idea of Audrey Pollington. She reckoned that an interview with her, properly managed, would put Audrey and her ally out of action for some little while to come.

      Mervyn obeyed her summons, but not in a very cheerful mood. Trix's efforts to pump him about the problems and the complications were signally unsuccessful. He snubbed her, giving her to understand that he was amazed at being asked such questions. What, then, was Beaufort Chance doing, she asked in her heart. She passed rapidly from the dangerous ground, declaring with a pout that she thought he might have told her some gossip, to equip her for her next dinner party. He responded to her lighter mood with hardly more cordiality. Evidently there was something wrong with him, something which prevented her spell from working on him as it was wont. Trix was dismayed. Was her power gone? It could not be that statuesque Miss Pollington had triumphed, or was even imminently dangerous.

      At last Mervyn broke out with what he had to say. He looked, she thought, like a husband (not like Vesey Trevalla, but like the abstract conception), and a rather imperious one, as he took his stand on her hearthrug and frowned down at her.

      'You might know—no, you do know—the best people in London,' he said, 'and yet I hear of your going about with the Frickers! I should think Fricker's a rogue, and I know he's a cad. And the women!' Aristocratic scorn embittered his tongue.

      'Whom have you heard it from?'

      'Lots of people. Among others, Viola Blixworth.'

      'Oh, Lady Blixworth! Of course you'd hear it from her!

      'It doesn't matter who tells me, if it's true.'

      That was an annoying line to take. It was easy to show Lady Blixworth's motive, but it was impossible to deny the accuracy of what she said. A hundred safe witnesses would have confounded Trix had she denied.

      'What in the world do you do it for?' he asked angrily and impatiently. 'What can Fricker do for you? Don't you see how you lower yourself? They'll be saying he's bought you next!'

      Trix did not start, but a spot of colour came on her cheeks; her eyes were hard and wary as they watched Mervyn covertly. He came towards her, and, with a sudden softening of manner, laid his hand on hers.

      'Drop them,' he urged. 'Don't have anything more to do with such a lot.'

      Trix looked up at him; there were doubt and distress in her eyes. He was affectionate now, but also very firm.

      'For my sake, drop them,' he said. 'You know people can't come where they may meet the Frickers.'

      Trix was never slow of understanding; she saw very well what Mervyn meant. His words might be smooth, his manner might be kind, and, if she wished it at the moment, ready to grow more than kind. With all this he was asking, nay, he was demanding, that she should drop the Frickers. How difficult the path had suddenly grown; how hard it was to work her complicated plan!

      'A good many people know them. There's Mr. Chance——' she began timidly.

      'Beaufort Chance! Yes, better if he didn't!' His lips, grimly closing again, were a strong condemnation of his colleague.

      'They're kind people, really.'

      'They're entirely beneath you—and beneath your friends.'

      There was no mistaking the position. Mervyn was delivering an ultimatum. It was little use to say that he had no right because he had made her no offer. He had the power, which, it is to be feared, is generally more the question. And at what a moment the ultimatum came! Must Trix relinquish that golden dream of the Dramoffsky Concessions, and give up those hundreds—welcome if few—from the Glowing Star? Or was she to defy Mervyn and cast in her lot with the Frickers—and with Beaufort Chance?

      'Promise me,' he said softly, with as near an approach to a lover's entreaty as his grave and condescending manner allowed. 'I never thought you'd make any difficulty. Do you really hesitate between doing what pleases me and what pleases Chance or the Frickers?'

      Trix would have dearly liked to cry 'Yes, yes, yes!' Such a reply would, she considered, have been wholesome for Mortimer Mervyn, and it would have been most gratifying to herself. She dared not give it; it would mean far too much.

      'I can't be actually rude,' she pleaded. 'I must do it gradually. But since you ask me, I will break with them as much and as soon as I can.'

      'That's all I ask of you,' said Mervyn. He bent and kissed her hand with a reassuring air of homage and devotion. But evidently homage and devotion must be paid for. They bore a resemblance to financial assistance in that respect. Trix was becoming disagreeably conscious that people expected to be paid, in one way or another, for most things that they gave. Chance and Fricker wanted payment. Mervyn claimed it too. And to pay both as they asked seemed now impossible.

      Somehow life appeared to have an objection to being played with, the world to be rather unmalleable as material, the revenge not to be the simple and triumphant progress that it had looked.

      Trix Trevalla, under pressure of circumstances, got thus far on the way towards a judgment of herself and a knowledge of the world; the two things are closely interdependent.

CHAPTER VI CHILDREN OF SHADOW